He started patting his hand on his legs. It got louder the more I read. I tried to ignore it. Marxy wasn’t saying anything. Sarah-Beth knocked and said Marxy was going to miss the basketball on TV.
“Okay,” Marxy said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
She closed the door. Marxy kept patting his knees until he finally stopped. “Okay, I think the time is up and you should go.”
“Why is Sarah-Beth here?”
He started patting his knees again. I tried to make him stop the patting and his knees just got crazier and moved more and his hands got louder. I told him to stop it and he made a noise that was very different from any noise I’d ever heard him make before. That was when Pearl opened the door and said I had to go. Marxy got up and took a deep breath.
“Sarah-Beth is my new girlfriend,” he said, so fast that I did not even have time to understand what he was saying properly.
“What do you mean?”
“We are boyfriend and girlfriend,” Marxy said. “You and I are broken up and now I am Sarah-Beth’s boyfriend. You were a shit-heel to me in the hotel, and I feel good enough about myself to say no, Zelda. I don’t want to have mean people in my life.”
* * *
Fuck Marxy. I have never said that before in my life, but that was what I thought. I was a Berserker when I got home. AK47 wanted to stay but I told her that I wanted to be alone. My head-veins pumped blood and my heart shouted. Inside I wanted to break something, so I punched the lamp standing in the corner. The lamp fell over very slow and boring. I thought it would break but it didn’t. It just fell in a stupid way.
I went to the bathroom and when I came back I stood it back up, since the lamp hadn’t done anything to me, and because it was in the way how it was sitting on the ground.
In Viking legends when people died they were put on boats and pushed off into the middle of a lake, or to the sea or ocean. The boat would be set on fire and the dead person’s body burned until it was ashes and the boat would burn and sink too.
I thought that the best way to forget him would be to do what Vikings do: I would burn him.
When dead Vikings got put on their boats, the things that they used in life were put with them, like swords or armor or magical charms or toys. Sometimes their wives and girlfriends were burned alive too.
I had drawings Marxy had made me. Plus the love letters he wrote. I decided I would make my own boat for them.
Vikings burn things in order to show that they are dead. Since Marxy and I were broken up for good, I wanted to make a funeral fire for him.
“You are dead to me” is one of the things AK47 said to Gert when they got into the big fight that broke them up the first time.
“You are dead to me,” I told the drawing Marxy had made for my birthday.
Since I didn’t have a real boat, I had to make one. I ran the bathtub, filling it with water. Then I found a plastic bowl that we made salad in. I put all of the things that were going to be made into ashes into the bowl. Gert had a lighter in one of the drawers for candles, in case the power went out in the building and we didn’t have electricity.
“Good-bye,” I said to Marxy. And then I read the words in Viking: Góða nótt, which means “good night.”
The bowl floated in the bathtub. The fire inside of it didn’t go crazy. It wasn’t very big. When enough of Marxy had burned, I tipped the bowl over and all the paper floated on the water for a while, until it got wet. Then it fell apart and made the water gray.
chapter twenty-three
Before my appointment with Dr. Laird, I wrote Dr. Kepple a letter. I was still so angry that I made lots of spelling mistakes and had to type the letter out twice.
Dear Dr. Kepple,
My boyfriend Marxy is now in love with another person named Sarah-Beth, who chews on her hair. I believe that this makes them both villains, because he has betrayed our true love, and she has stolen him. I have burned a picture of him to show the gods how angry I am with him.
Are there any other ways to make it clear to the gods that we are no longer together anymore? Also, are there any special Viking ways to curse their union?
Zelda
I clicked SEND and waited until Gert knocked on the door to tell me it was time to go to see Dr. Laird.
I clicked REFRESH one more time before turning off my computer.
During the drive to the meeting, Gert tried to get me to talk, but I was too angry, and at our meeting, Dr. Laird wanted to talk to me alone, not with Gert there.
“For now, I want to understand how you feel,” said Dr. Laird.
“Marxy is dead to me,” I said.
Dr. Laird put down his notebook. He said, “Just start with the hotel. And go from there.”
I went over all the things that happened in the hotel room, including how Marxy was not good with the condom, and how I had accidentally laughed at him.
“I didn’t mean to laugh at him. He just looked so funny.” I grabbed the stress ball and started squeezing it. “But I was wearing sexy underwear, and he didn’t notice. And I did sexy poses, and he didn’t find them sexy.”
“I can see how that would be frustrating,” Dr. Laird said.
“And he got angry with me and his mother came in.” I squeezed the ball until it almost popped. “Why does she have to do everything for him all the time?”
“What kind of future did you imagine with him?”
I asked what he meant by asking that question.
“You know,” he said, moving his hands around. “In five years, what does your life with Marxy look like? Are you married?” He told me it might help to close my eyes and imagine a picture of it. “Just take a picture of the future and tell me what it looks like.”
I closed my eyes and tried to do what he said. In my mind we had a big house, kind of like the one Marxy lived in with his mother. “But not with his mother,” I said to Dr. Laird.
“So you live together independently. Not with her.”
“Correct.”
“Is Gert there?”
I went back to the house I was imagining. He was washing his car in the driveway, using a plastic bucket and a yellow sponge.
“He’s there.”
“So you and Marxy and Gert would live together.”
I opened my eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe. Why?”
Dr. Laird spun his ballpoint pen around in his fingers. “Do you think Marxy and Gert would get along?”
“Well. Maybe we don’t live with Gert. But for sure no Pearl.”
“Earlier you mentioned that you think she bosses him around too much.”
“All the time,” I said, and then I went over all the different ways she controlled his life.
“You use the word control,” Dr. Laird said. “I’m interested in that, because there’s another possibility.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Which is that he actually needs someone like her to help him. That he’s not as independent as you are.”
“He can do more than people think,” I said, and found myself getting angry.
Dr. Laird put his pen down gently on the notebook in front of him. “I guess what I’m trying to relay to you is that, while I know it sucks that you guys broke up, it might actually be for the best.”