Mostly, when your mom talks about Aunt Nickie, she just says that she’s in jail, but you’ve Googled her name. You know the laws. You know what God says, too, that what you want is unclean and perverted, and your mother tries to do right by God, the way prisoners try to do right by the gaze of the panopticon, and so you recite your prayers and go to sleep and don’t think about it. You don’t think about it. You don’t think about it.

You think about Azula, instead. You’re young, you’re watching TV, you’re watching Nickelodeon, and you see Azula on some channel or another, with that high, silky voice and the dangerous eyes, breathing fire, and that’s not the first time the thought presents itself, but it is the first time you really look at it, and you think, I’m like that. They couldn’t ever put her in jail. She’d breathe fire and kill all her guards and go hunt down Mai and Ty Lee like prey animals. You practice persistence hunting yourself after school, walking slowly after rabbits through the forest until they exhaust themselves and you can scoop them up from the brush to pat their soft ears and feel their little hearts racing beneath their skin.

Google says there’s lots of girls like you. Google says you’re not alone. Your mother says Dana, Jesus Christ, Nickie got put away for a very good reason, can we not talk about this at the dinner table? And then when you argue: Dana, eat your dinner and shut the hell up.

And then, after dinner, when she’s sorry: I just don’t want you to turn out like her, and when you say you’re smart, she says that’s what worries her.

You watch the girls at school like you’re a prey animal, even though you’re not. They make your heart race like one, especially Jenny Black, who sits at your table on Thursday and asks if you’re going to the pep rally, and then when you stammer she leans in and says she doesn’t mind long nails, and you stop stammering, because this is a girl who knows what she wants, the way you do, and so the pep rally rolls around and you wait for her in the handicap stall in the bathroom and wonder if she’s going to show, and when she does she locks the door and you can barely wait to press her against the wall, mouthing at the crook of her neck while she gasps like she’s wounded, and you pull back to check, because Google says consent in non-negotiable, and she stares at you with wide, wild eyes and says, yes, god, DanaDanaDana, and tomorrow will find you in a jail cell with your mother weeping because she should’ve known you were a monster like your aunt, but tomorrow is distant, and Jenny Black is here, and you smile and you put your lips back to her neck and you

tear her

throat

out

w ith

yo ur

t e e t h.

Abigail Storey is a 21-year old creative writing major at Murray State University, and is honored to count herself among the ranks of the weird girls that have walked before her.