A/N: Thanks everyone for your continued interest. I hope you will like Lisa, the new character I'm introducing in this chapter...Please continue to leave comments as I move the story forward, and thanks to Joel Shell for your guest review about including a certain Stones song. I'd planned to incorporate it here, but unfortunately 'Gimme Shelter' wasn't released unyil December '69. I'll find a place for it later in the story.
As always, enjoy, and keep the comments coming!
PS – Hi, Avenue! If you're reading this, thanks for your comments and feedback on Chapter 12. Talk to you soon!
Chapter 18 – The Wrong Little Girl
Sunday, January 12, 1969 – 10am.
Today Lisa Ramey turns thirteen, which to be honest excites her mother more – way more – than it excites her.
So I'm a teenager. Big stupid deal.
"Aren't you happy to be thirteen at last?" Mary Ramey asks, looking hurt at her daughter's decided lack of enthusiasm for her big day. "It isn't every day a girl passes from childhood to teenagerhood."
Teenagerhood? Seriously?
She shrugs. "Nothin' feels different, Ma."
Lisa pads over to the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door, still in Josie's Rebel Creek Renegades sweatshirt she'd slept in, her legs and feet bare and her shoulder-length blonde hair a total mess.
She cocks her head to one side, looking at herself through narrowed blue eyes.
"Nothin' looks different, neither."
Least of all her barely-there breasts.
As if reading the girl's thoughts, Mary meets her gaze in the mirror and smiles.
"Be patient, honey. They won't always be that small. Josie got hers at fourteen, and if I remember right, mine didn't make an appearance 'til I was almost sixteen."
"You ain't helpin', Ma."
With a deep sigh Lisa throws herself down onto her unmade bed and stares up at the ceiling.
"You workin' today?" she asks after a moment.
Mary nods. "I am. Gotta be at the shop at eleven." She eyes Lisa's long, unruly locks. "You should come with me, I could trim up that mop of yours for the party this evening."
Lisa sits up, horrified not only by the party she knows nothing about, but also by the thought of letting her mother anywhere near her hair with a pair of scissors in her hand.
"No way, Ma! I like my mop just the way it is." She curls her left leg up under her butt and digs the toes of her right foot into the plush carpet. "But thanks very much for the lip gloss an' nail polish. I really like the Purple Passion."
"You are very welcome," Mary replies, glancing at her watch. "I should head out."
And just like that, after a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek for Lisa, she's gone.
Brandon's at the sink doing dishes when Lisa comes into the kitchen a short time later, barefoot as usual in tight, faded jeans and the same sweatshirt.
"Don't you ever wear shoes?" he asks sourly, annoyed with her for no reason she can think of.
"Mostly for school an' when it snows. Why do you care, anyway? Ain't no skin off your ass if I wear shoes or not."
He scowls at her sass. "Maybe not, but still. You and Josie are like two barefoot peas in a pod."
"Don't forget Lacy. And why is that bad?"
Brandon ignores that, finally noticing her glossy lips and purple toenails.
"What's that greasy shit on your mouth?"
"Lip gloss. Ma gave it to me."
"Well, get rid of it. You look like some teenybopper slut."
Lisa stares at him, mouth agape.
"Did you seriously just call me a slut?"
"Course not. I said you look like one. And you need to get that shit off your mouth before I do it for you."
"No."
Without another word Brandon grabs her chin with one hand and the wet, greasy dishrag with the other, then proceeds to wipe her entire face with it.
"That'll teach you," he mutters, wringing the dishrag out in her hair as a final insult.
Lisa, struggling to free herself, lands a wild punch to his left ear.
He lets go finally, giving her an amused, insolent grin.
"You still hit like a girl."
"I am a girl, you stupid shit!" she cries, throwing a left jab that flattens his nose and spatters blood all over both of them.
Brandon stares at her for a full five seconds before the back of his hand smacks across her face and sends her falling back against the sink.
They glare at each other, breathing hard, until with a muttered oath Brandon slams out the back door and roars off on his Harley.
I hope you crash, Lisa thinks, too furious to cry and humiliated beyond words. An' I'll show you who hits like a girl.
Back in her room, with The Rolling Stones' new album Beggars Banquet – her early birthday gift from Lacy – blasting from her speakers, Lisa strips off the wet Renegades sweatshirt and replaces it with her favorite tee, the Don't Tread On Me one with the rattlesnake on it.
She looks in the mirror, at her greasy face and icky hair, and just manages not to slam her fist into her reflection.
It's not Brandon's slap she cares about, she's endured those for years, but what has her so incensed is how she'd felt when he took the rag to her face and then so callously squeezed it out on her.
Like she wasn't his sister at all, just some pathetic girl to be treated like dirt and shoved aside.
That's all you are to him. It's all you ever were.
"Fuck that," she says aloud, grabbing her aluminum bat from its corner and heading for the hall. "And fuck him, too."
The first thing Lisa sees as she crosses the narrow hall is the new sign taped to the outside of Brandon's bedroom door.
This is my room, so unless I invite you, stay the fuck out.
With a very unladylike curse she rips the sign off the door, tears it into little bitty pieces, and watches them flutter down like confetti around her bare feet.
Then, choosing not to wait for an invite, Lisa pushes open the door and stalks inside.
She selects her targets carefully, still killing-mad but not wanting to destroy anything Ma paid for, like lamps or mirrors, or anything she might set store by, like Brandon's framed high school diploma and his Boy Scout merit badges.
Everything else, however, is fair game.
First she takes out his baseball trophies, liking the irony of it, then his old Panasonic radio.
She looks for his stereo system, remembers he'd sold it to Lacy, and raises her bat to smash his Revel and Monogram muscle-car models to smithereens.
The bat never descends.
What are you doing? This ain't how Ma raised you.
She plops down on his bed, bat across her thighs, her anger suddenly spent.
God, I'm so tired, she thinks, her mind shutting down, and then Lisa Marie Ramey, 13-year-old vengeful bitch – as she thinks of herself – lies back on the bed and closes her eyes just for a moment.
Which is how Josie finds her an hour later when she returns from a sleepover at Lacy's.
As Lisa tells Josie what Brandon had done, the older girl nearly takes the bat from her to finish what she'd started, but in the end she settles for helping Lisa transfer his models, his red lava lamp, and all the records he can't listen to anyway back to the room they share.
"Two wrongs don't make a right," Mary says when Lisa calls her at the beauty shop where she works to tell her what happened.
"I know, Ma. That's why I stopped." Then something occurs to her. "Oh, shit."
"What?" Mary asks, too frazzled by Lisa's experience with Brandon to correct her daughter's use of profanity.
"You should postpone the party."
"Why?"
"'Cause Brandon don't know I trashed his stuff. He's gonna be pissed when he gets home."
Mary sighs. "He's not coming home."
"How come?" Lisa asks, afraid her earlier wish about him crashing his bike had come true. "He ain't dead, is he?"
"Of course not. Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Never mind. So why isn't he comin' home? 'Cause of me?"
"Yes. He called me here at the shop to tell me he wasn't gonna spend another night under the same roof with, and I quote, 'a raving, mouthy bitch like Lisa.'"
"He called me that? Cool!"
"And why, may I ask, do you find that a good thing?"
"'Cause if he liked me, there'd be somethin' wrong with my ass."
This time Mary does scold. "Lisa Marie Ramey, how many times have I asked you not to use that kind of language?"
Too many, Lisa thinks, but what she says is, "A lot."
"Uh-huh. And have you obeyed me?"
"'Parently not," Lisa admits.
Mary sighs again. "What would you do if I was to wash your mouth out with soap? Other parents do."
Lisa's voice goes flat. "After what Brandon did to me this morning, I'd prob'ly cuss at you." She takes a ragged breath. "So what all did Brandon say to you, anyway?"
"Not a whole lot. All I got outta him was that part about you being mouthy, and would I please have Josie bring his suitcase to Brody's place."
"Wait, he's stayin' at Brody's until his bus leaves for California? That's three whole days!"
"Yeah, I know," Mary says sarcastically. "I can read a calendar same as anybody."
Lisa blows out an exasperated breath. "Ma, don't you get it? Brody Aiken is the biggest weed toker in Rebel Creek. Brandon's gonna show up for Basic either drunk or high, or both."
"Jesus," Mary mutters, absorbing this news. "Does Evvie Wilson know that about Brody?"
"I dunno. Why's it matter?"
"Never mind, I'll have to ask her myself. And honey, I'm sorry about Brandon, okay? I didn't know my son was such an ass."
"Hell, Ma," Lisa says honestly, "I've known that since y'all 'dopted me."
To Lisa's total surprise and relief, the get-together that evening is a Super Bowl party, not a birthday one, and Ma makes her and Josie swear not to mention a word about the incident with Brandon.
A promise Lisa is only too happy to keep.