♍

Weeks into the semester, well after she'd established herself as too weird to fail, Virgo found a note in her locker after third period, right before lunch. Taurus had been ignoring her. Call it bruised pride—that's what Virgo called the cherry red of Taurus's cheeks when she caught sight of Virgo in the halls. Quinn had been winking from a distance and passing her notes that smelled like freshly mown grass and old leather from her monogrammed notebook. This note smelled of something floral, like peonies, maybe, or rose petals. Something a girl might wear, or someone who thought they knew enough girls well enough to fake it.

The note read, 'what's it like to take a life?' in lime green Sharpie.

Virgo's heart gave a twist of indescribable emotion. She was a little scared. A little. Not much, not more than it was logical to be when the only thing you had to lose was an assumed name and part-time friend who was bad at showing gratitude. She was annoyed; that fit. Who had touched her things? Those were sacred and hers. Who had watched her from far enough away to avoid detection but close enough to pick her locker out from another student's? Who had picked her out like Father picked out new adherents, singling out the pretty, wayward ones for close, personal attention and private 'tutelage' at his knee, in his quarters to be stripped down to the core of their humanity, inside and outside. Someone had seen Virgo, maybe even met Virgo, and they had seen a girl that wasn't just a girl, they had seen a girl that was a killer.

She had to give them credit, she thought, sniffing the note again. They had a good eye for bad.

As for the note, Virgo didn't know about taking a life. She knew about ending several, all at once. She didn't know about strangers. She knew about friends and loved ones and her mother whose name she still couldn't pick off a list, whose visage in her mind was nothing but a pretty blur of dark brown skin and gleaming locs. Virgo knew choking noises and gagging, accusatory glances that went glassy with the sheen of death. She knew a lot. But taking one life? There was something especially evil in that. She didn't know that, not yet. But she might.

One of her many therapists had told her once, "Having done what you did, you're capable of anything. Only you can limit your capacity for mayhem to those who deserve it. That's your moral duty."

That shrink had been nice, but she hadn't understood Virgo's actions in the least. The people who died that day did deserve it. As would anybody else. Innocent people do not get hurt—that was one of the rules. The stars compel, they do not incline. They compelled her to protect people and so protect them she had, by whatever means necessary. It had made her a pint-sized criminal celebrity at age eleven: the Killer Kid, they called her until they knew who was killed and why. Then the news found their hook and sank it into her throat; she became the Zodiac Cult Killer at her trial, just turned twelve. Wyoming wanted to try her as an adult.

Little black kids are all criminals, you know, never mind who raised them or where they came from. They were grown before they were grown and bad before they were born. Virgo Samuels fit the mold like it was her shape that made it. All the simpering case workers looking down their nose at the little girl in braids and a hemp robe that was drenched in poison punch and water from the firefighters' hoses. She really had tried to save some of them, but some of them refused to go. They refused to leave Father for fear that he would leave them behind. They didn't know as she had that he had much worse planned for the living than Virgo had for the dead. They weren't merely his Disciples, they were his pupils, his concubines and warm bodies to fill his bed. Coleridge Coleridge was no father to love nor any leader to believe in, yet like every religious demagogue who came before he had every Divine Zodiac Disciple snowed blind in their faith. In a way, those born into it were more likely to doubt than those who crawled into its arms over the shattered glass of broken lives. The latter had come for sanctuary whereas the former knew no other way, and those who know nothing else as they age will have much cause to wonder. Virgo had wondered, and when she discovered the answer she sought, Virgo had followed the tradition of disillusioned children throughout history: she had burned the motherfucker down.

But another time for that fond memory, there were more important things to think about in the here and now.

Somebody knew who she was.

There goes the neighborhood.

*

Where's a girl to go when she's got nowhere to go and everything to keep hidden? Not to class. Class wasn't happening. Instructor Madsen was going to have Virgo's head for skipping again but they understood what it was like, entering hostile territory and telling people to look at you like a person and not a label that didn't fit. Their label: DEFECTIVE. Virgo's: NOBODY. Folks were all too eager to look through a nobody like having no relations made them sub-human rather than object of sympathy. That was people for you. Demanding every ounce of sympathy and offering none. Humanity was seriously a disease.

Virgo dumped her books for the day (no way was class happening again and fuck lunch where she was just going to get a smoothie to the face anyway) and retraced her footsteps to the gym and the girls' locker room. She kept her eyes ahead of her, ignoring the girls dressing and undressing between the rows of lockers. Virgo wasn't a prude by any means and girls were very much her type, but the things on her mind (Father and Father's disciples and why he had to die for how he treated them) didn't belong anywhere near these girls. She didn't belong anywhere near them. Brain shampoo would have been a gift to have right now; she'd love to wash these memories right out of her hair.