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Voices in the Dark
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Part II
She’s out there, you can bet on it. Miss Perfect, Miss Xena 90210, Miss Ooh-look-I-chipped-a-nail-saving-the-world. It’s enough to make me ralph (not that I need to rely on that skanky binge-and-purge stuff, this body is one hundred percent authentic moi). I can match her for looks and blow past her for style, but how do you compete with someone who can make beat-up-and-scruffy seem adorable? I swear, there ought to be a law.
Oh, yeah, she’s out there, guaranteed. How can she keep milking the Protector of Mankind routine if she doesn’t go out and slay? So then she comes skipping to school in the morning with cute little smudges under her eyes, and certain males Who Shall Remain Brainless just absolutely throw themselves at her feet. Meanwhile I spend hours turning myself into a work of art (God, what am I going to do when my custom supply runs out and I have to fall back on name brands?), and who notices? Football players? Please.
No way am I staying in this town after graduation. Even if you don’t count the everyday disadvantages of living on a Hellmouth (like, roughly a fiftieth of the population gets eaten, incinerated, sucked dry, sacrificed, or turned into swamp pus every year), I can’t keep my household situation secret much longer; as in, no house, no money, no pride, no status, no anything. Harmony and the other ex-Cordettes would be on me like a pack of starving Pomeranians if they ever got a whiff of the truth, and I have already had enough experience with humiliation in the past year, thank you very much. Los Angeles is close, and it’s got the whole Hollywood thing going for it, and it’s safe; I mean, what do you run into there besides gangs and riots and your occasional serial killer? Translation: hasta la vista, Sunnydale.
Believe me, I am counting the days. (Sorry, Wesley, you’re on the clock whether you know it or not. Move it or lose it.) Because, even without knowing how far I’ve come down in the world, Harmony’s found a way to keep her claws sharp. The trauma of Xander Harris wore off quick — sure, it still hurts, but not because of anything anybody says — but somehow Harmony has tuned in that I start steaming whenever the talk turns to our friendly local Warrior Princess.
Mostly it’s just a rehash of rumors and gossip, the lamer and ickier the better. She’s having sex with Giles, she’s having sex with Wesley, she’s having sex with Willow, Giles is having sex with her mother. She’s a hit-woman for a neo-Nazi group, the Bandidos have a price on her head, she’s Susan Lucci’s illegitimate daughter. On and on, thinking I care, thinking I still count her as a friend, thinking it bothers me to hear her trashed down.
It bothers me, all right. Because no matter which direction it’s coming from, everything is about her.
I Am Somebody. I am special. I am unique. I don’t play second marimba to any little bottle-blonde Slayer-come-lately.
Oh, yeah. I re-a-ally believe that.
The truth is, the world changed as soon as she came into it. Mostly for the worse, but I won’t try to say it was all bad. But it just never stops, you know? Why does everything have to be so serious? Why do my perfectly appropriate priorities have to get reshuffled on me? They’ve done the job for years, and all of a sudden I start having deep thoughts.
Like: Xander is a goofy loser styleless nobody. Who is brave and reliable and puts his life on the line weekly, just because. And looks really hot in a Speedo.
Like: would I rather have someone with money and a rave car and an invite to Matt Damon’s next little soirée, or a guy who’s helped save the world a couple of times while I was having my legs waxed?
Like: there are important things happening here, and some really special people are right in the middle of it all, and I’m not one of them.
Stop. Stop the insanity. Comparing me to that crowd should be a joke. It should be a joke so bad nobody would even think to make it. Picturing me with them should be a joke.
Sure. Dream on. Everything’s changed, and it’s all her fault. Don’t ask me how, I just know it is. I’m, like, living in two worlds at once. There’s the regular world, the things that used to matter, the things that are supposed to matter: clothes, cars, who’s In and who’s Out, who stands where on the ladder and who’s dating who. Only there’s another world inside it, a secret slimy scary place where the Ins are clueless sheep and the Outs are holding everything together. Total mondo Bizarro.
Well, that and the whole Good versus Evil thing. But you can see my point: it’s just unnatural.
And I’m not clueless anymore. I can’t go back to the regular world, and I don’t fit in the secret world.
That’s why it hurt so much to find Xander and Willow together. You could see it rocked Oz, too, but it wasn’t the same for him. He’s one of them, he belongs. Me? I’ve been saying all my life that I was nothing like them, and I was right. I may catch myself wishing now that I was wrong — and hating myself for wishing it — but I was always right, even when I didn’t know why I was right.
I mean, look at the roster! Top of the pyramid are the Slayer (God, talk about an inversion of the natural order!) and the hunky broody Vampire With A Soul. Then comes her Watcher, major tweed freak but he knows every dead language there is and he can puncture a poltergeist with nothing but a tambourine and a box of paper clips. Under them are the Shy Nerd and the Grunge Nerd, enough IQ between them to power your average classroom through a week’s worth of logarithms or biorhythms or whatever; she could make a computer do lap dances even before she started all the nature Wicca earth goddess stuff, and he rips through a few bags of chew-toys three nights a month and spends the rest of his time slamming out electric chords and sniffing out evil like a short punky Rin-Tin-Tin. Then there’s Xander; how long are they going to keep kidding themselves about Xander? how many times has he saved her, saved me, saved the day? He gets chased by insect women and mummy girls and even that loopy Drusilla (no, I refuse to comment on the totally grotesque story I heard about him and Faith, even he isn’t that demented), and his own friends can’t see that there’s anything unusual about him? Wake up and smell the latté, people.
Oh, and finally there’s me. Don’t forget me. I’m a terror with a charge card (or at least I was before the IRS got them), and I can shake those pom-poms like nobody’s business.
Right. Let’s hear it for the girl. I’m not one of them, I’m not special and I’ll never be special, not the way they are, and I always knew it was only a matter of time before they got tired of me.
Want to know my proudest moment? Not May Queen, not head cheerleader, not even when Hugh Grant turned around to take a second look (and it would have been more than a look, guaranteed, if that anorexic Hurley hadn’t sunk her nails into his arm). No, it was when the world did a flip-frame and I saved her for a change, stood eye-to-eye with that redneck vamp and stared him down. That was my peak, my Shining Time, that was all my heart and brains and (yuck) guts rolled into a solid ball of YES!!! It was the greatest thing I’ve ever done.
They do stuff like that all the time. All the time. I’m supposed to stay and try to live up to that?
No, thanks. I’m for a quiet graduation and a quiet bus ride to L.A. Followed by international superstardom and the rest of my life on the Riviera, the way it was always meant to be. No more mystical people, no more mornings spent trying to figure out how to clean swamp pus out of suede. The Hellmouth can go to … well, to itself. And as for her —
As for her, I hope she lives forever. I only know a few things for total sure, but those you can depend on. I know tie-dye will never come back; I know that thing on Donald Trump’s head can’t possibly be real hair; and I know as long as she’s walking around in this world, the world will keep on turning.
Guaranteed.
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