by Wayne Grady
“How’s life in the underworld?” he asked them. He’d picked up a tray of coffees and scones on the way to his office, and passed them around.
“It ain’t the underworld no more,” Melissa said. “Drugs are, like, everywhere. I swear. It’s like the drug culture has become pop culture. People don’t take Tylenol for headaches, they smoke a joint. They need to stay up to study, they pop a few pills and don’t sleep for a couple of days. Then they take different pills to help them sleep, then they take more pills to wake themselves up. They pop pills instead of eating so they don’t get hungry. Football players take pills to put on weight.”
“We think it’s because everyone’s hoarding all kinds of drugs,” said Blaine, “and it’s all just sitting there, tempting them, like peanuts.”
“Go into a student’s room these days, you don’t see food in there, you see vodka coolers and cases of cough syrup.”
“Cough syrup?”
“To make purple drank.”
“Purple drank?”
“Yeah. Where you been?”
“You might know it as sizzurp,” Blaine said helpfully. “You mix cough syrup with Sprite or grape Fanta.”
“It’s a relaxant,” said Melissa. “It’s like Valium or Xanax, only hundreds of times more powerful. And it’s all over-the-counter stuff, right? Your kid could buy it.”
“Really?” he said, pushing away an image of Daphne knocking back an over-the-counter cocktail after a hard day in grade five.
“Codeine, promethazine, and a ton of sugar,” said Blaine. “Slows down your heart rate.”
“Take enough of it,” said Melissa, “and it slows your heart rate down to zero.”
“And students on campus are drinking this stuff?” Harry asked.
“Like I said,” Melissa said, “go into the drugstore in the student centre and look at everyone in the Cold Remedies section. See how many are sleeping on their arms in the library.”
“Are you going to focus your piece on purple drank?” Harry asked, and Melissa laughed.
“No,” said Blaine. “Maybe in the opening section, but there’s a lot of other stuff around. Really potent stuff.”
“You mean, like heroin?”
“Horse, ecstasy. Over the holidays we’re going to check out a few bars in town, go to a few parties.”
“You’re both nineteen, right? Old enough to go into bars?”
“Oh, for sure,” said Blaine. “Yeah. I’m nineteen and Mel’s twenty.”
“I liked what you said in class,” Melissa said. “About colour. Getting the details right. I mean, we could write about cocaine or ecstasy, no problem, we got all that, but it’d be pretty dry. Wouldn’t it be great to describe someone actually scoring some in a bar?”
“Yes, I suppose it would,” said Harry. “Just be careful. Keep your phones handy. And don’t name the bar. Christ, don’t even name the province.”
“You’re kidding, right?” said Melissa.
“Not about being careful. You’re observers, and some people don’t like being observed.”
“Okay,” said Melissa. “Thanks, Dad.”
“I talked to a doctor who works in emergency,” Blaine said, “and she told me that young people, she didn’t say Madawaska students, they might have been homeless, but young people who have OD’d on opiates are being found unconscious and brought in by friends or the police, and sometimes they’re clinically dead, like their pulses have stopped, and she gives them naloxone and half an hour later they walk out, thanks, see ya later.”
“Clinically dead means brain dead, doesn’t it?” Harry asked.
“These guys were brain dead before they took heroin,” said Blaine.
“That’s a good line. Did you get this doctor on tape?”
“Oh yeah. And I took her photograph, like you said. She wouldn’t let us talk to the patients, though, or give us any names. A few of them might have been high-school kids, but we’re pretty sure some were from the college.”
“High school?” Harry said, alarmed. Daphne wasn’t in high school yet, but she would be in a few years. By then, Blaine and Melissa predicted a wide range of recreational drugs would be a standard fixture of adolescence, even in small-town Ontario. He imagined Daphne lying semi-conscious in a dark place, maybe even in her own bedroom, calling for him to come and help her. Would he be there to rescue her? Yes, of course he would. That’s what fathers were for. Besides, he would know long beforehand if Daphne was getting into that kind of trouble.
“All right,” he said, “sounds like a great story. Go out there and rake some muck.”
How could he have been so stupid?
* * *
—
Stupid on more than one level. Harry convinced himself that the smallness of White Falls would protect Daphne from threats coming from the outside. Everyone knew everyone in White Falls, no one could get away with something as out in the open as selling drugs to minors. Even adults would have difficulty getting narcotics without anyone knowing about it. He knew people who smoked marijuana more or less regularly, and he’d heard of cocaine turning up at parties, although he didn’t know where it came from or who used it. In his world, drug use, like extramarital sex, was furtive and occasional, a topic for rumour and speculation. Far from widespread.
But what if he was wrong? Bob Timmerman, the pharmacist at White Falls Drugs, would sell Daphne a bottle of cough syrup and a can of Sprite without giving it a second thought. Daphne could probably talk Cynthia, the clerk at the liquor store, into selling her a bottle of Scotch if she said it was for her father. White Falls wasn’t safe, and it was naive to think so. As Melissa and Blaine were discovering, hard drugs were becoming as prevalent in small towns as they were in the bigger cities. But he told himself that when the time came, he and Daphne would have a frank discussion about it. And Daphne would take his advice.
Stupid on so many levels.
* * *
—
January 1 came and went without a tremor on the Richter scale, but neither Blaine nor Melissa was in the first class of the new semester. Harry assumed they had been unable to get to White Falls because of the weather, which had taken a considerable turn for the worse during the final week of December. First an unseasonal thaw melted most of the snow and covered the city with thick, grey slush, then two days of cold rain followed by a sudden freeze turned the slush into rigid gullies of solid ice. On Monday the third, the day classes started again, a heavy dump of snow hid the ice and made it more slippery, so that even walking became a challenge. The city had used up its snow-clearing budget, so residential streets and the college parking lots remained impassable. Harry walked to class, leaving the car home. His wife would take a cab to work and drop Daphne off at school on the way.
When the class was over, Harry asked the students filing out if any of them had seen Blaine and Melissa. There was a pause in the exeunt while everyone stood about exchanging uneasy glances. Eventually, Leona said, “I saw Blaine in the cafeteria this morning. He was taking a tray across to their apartment.”
“So they’re back,” said Harry. “Okay, good to know, thanks.”
He left his briefcase in his office and walked to the apartment building in which Blaine and Melissa shared an apartment. He took the elevator to the sixth floor and knocked on their door. The class’s reaction to his asking about the couple made him feel awkward and somewhat apprehensive—had they split up over the holidays?—but he thought the others had probably just been reluctant to admit that Blaine and Melissa were back in town but hadn’t shown up for class. Harry didn’t care about their attendance, but he did want to know how their story was going. They were usually the first to show up, were often in the classroom before Harry. Something was wrong.
Blaine answered the door. When he saw Harry he hesitated, then said, “Professor Bowes.”
“
Lecturer, actually. I’m just dropping by to see if you’re all right.”
“Why shouldn’t we be?”
“You weren’t in class today. That’s unusual.”
“I guess you can come in,” Blaine said, stepping back from the door. “Okay, Mel?”
No answer from Melissa.
The apartment was small and simply furnished. A sofa bed, in sofa mode; a round glass-and-metal dining table with two wicker chairs; a small sound system on a stand beside a window that would have afforded a view of the Madawaska River had the curtains been open. The room was dark and smelled of air that had been breathed too many times. On the dining table was a cafeteria tray with cutlery and two empty cups. Melissa was curled up on an easy chair in another corner, dressed in a bulky sweater and with her legs tucked under her. In the poor light, he almost thought she was comfortable. She looked up at him and attempted a smile.
“Mr. Bowes,” she said.
“Melissa,” Harry said. “How was your holiday?”
Melissa’s smile tightened, and she buried her face in the sleeves of her sweater. Harry stepped towards her, then back. Behind him, Blaine cleared his throat.
“We’re dropping the course,” he said.
“What?” said Harry, turning. “Why?”
“We can’t write the article.”
“Why not? What happened?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re just not going to do it.”
“Of course it matters,” said Harry. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No,” Melissa said, taking her hands from her face. “Well, not wrong, exactly. Just…”
“What is it?”
“Something happened over the break.”
“Something she can’t talk about,” said Blaine. “Much less write about. We’re sorry.”
“Is there anything I can do? Maybe you can write something else.”
“No. We don’t want to write something else. We just can’t write this.”
“Why not? Please tell me what happened.”
Blaine looked at Melissa and shrugged. “I went to my parents’ in Ottawa for the holidays,” he said. “Melissa stayed here. She can tell you, if she wants.”
Melissa took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as though even breathing was something she had to think about before doing. “I was here alone between Christmas and New Year’s,” she said. “One night I went down to the Mad Max, the student pub, you know, to have a beer, talk to some friends. I thought I could take some notes for our article if I saw something shady going on. I don’t know what I was thinking, it was stupid, I guess. Anyway, I saw this guy I knew from another class, Gord, and we started talking. He’d always seemed like a nice guy, we weren’t flirting or anything. And then a couple of other guys came over, and one of them bought me a beer, and then Gord left, and the next thing I knew I was, like, slurring my words, and my head was spinning, and I could hardly walk straight. I tried to get up to go to the toilet but I fell down. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Not even two beers. Someone helped me up, and the next thing I knew it was the next day and I was lying outside on a snowbank. It was the day of that thaw. My clothes were soaking wet and I couldn’t remember how I got there.”
Harry looked at Blaine.
“But I was sore, and I had bruises, and I felt like shit. I was really, really scared. I came up here to get cleaned up, then I went to the health clinic to get checked out, and the nurse told me I’d been raped.”
Blaine went to her and tried to put his arm around her, but she pushed him away, although gently. Harry didn’t move.
“Obviously she was drugged,” Blaine said to Harry. “One of those assholes put a roofie in her beer.”
“You mean the date-rape drug?” Harry asked.
“Mel called me and I came right back,” Blaine said. “I went to see Gord, but he said he didn’t know the two guys who joined them. He wasn’t even sure if they were students. I didn’t tell him why I was asking. I talked to the waitresses and a few other people we know who’d been there, but no one remembered seeing anyone with Melissa. There was a local band there that night, the Dead Soldiers, and a lot of people came up from town, the place was packed.”
“Melissa,” Harry said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this. It’s horrific. Are you seeing anyone? I mean, are you getting counselling? Have you had enough medical attention?”
“I’m not seeing anyone. I’m not going to talk about it.”
“The nurse must have reported it. Surely she called the police.”
“Maybe, I don’t know. No one’s been here.”
“Did she take a blood sample?”
“No. Why would she do that?”
“So they could at least find out what drug you were given.”
“It was likely a roofie,” said Blaine. “Rohypnol. The dye colours the beer a bit, but she wouldn’t have noticed that in a dark room. It causes something called anterograde amnesia, which means you don’t remember being assaulted. I mean, obviously she was assaulted, but if she can’t remember what happened, and the drug hasn’t been detected in her system, there’s not much the police can do, right?”
“Melissa,” Harry said, “please don’t make any big decisions right away. You, too, Blaine. If you drop the course, you’ll lose six credits that you’ll have to make up. If you stay in, I promise you won’t have to write about this, or about drugs. We’ll find something else for you—something totally safe, like the number of rabbits that are turning up on campus. Have you noticed that? They’re everywhere. And if you miss a few classes, so be it. I don’t take attendance. If asked, I’ll say you’re outside counting rabbits.”
Melissa nodded. “I could do that,” she said. “I like rabbits.”
Harry left the couple’s apartment feeling he had accomplished something. He had shown concern and advised caution. He felt nimble. He felt useful. He had sown a little ray of hope. Maybe, when their initial shock had had time to dissipate, he could gently suggest they write the article after all. No pressure, but it might be good for them. It might be the best thing for everyone.
At the end of January, Melissa and Blaine started coming back to class. Harry didn’t ask what they were working on; he hoped it was the drug story, but he trusted them to do what they could handle. They handed in their story three weeks before the end of term. He found a letter-sized manila envelope on the floor of his office with their names, the date, April 2000, and the title, “Rabbits,” written at the top. Harry smiled when he saw it, and put the envelope on his desk to read after class.
* * *
—
“In the fall,” Harry read when he was back in his office, “the young rabbits came down from the surrounding hills to feed on juniper and cedar berries in the yard below my dorm window. When it snowed, I looked down on a confusion of tiny exclamation points in the snow and tried to decipher what story they had written for me in the night. Often it was about being yearlings and naturally curious and leaving the adults behind. They congregated under the conifers, watchful for foxes.
“I have my own stories about rabbits.
“I used to hunt rabbits with my father. Young ones like these would slip through our snares, too light to set off the trip lines. We never minded. We were patient for next year’s harvest. My grandmother made stew from the old ones, with carrots and juniper berries, and my aunt knitted me a tuque with yarn spun from rabbit fur, with droopy ears and, on my forehead, black and pink buttons for eyes and a nose.
“When I looked down from the safety of my dorm at the tracks made by the rabbits, I saw the tuque my aunt knitted. I saw my grandmother at the stove, and smelled her stew. I saw empty snares and heard my father say, Never mind, we’ll catch him next year.
“Three weeks ago, I was raped. I think it happened right down there, among those conifers, because that’s
where I was when I woke up. My clothes were torn and soaked. My hands were numb. I was bleeding. My face was swollen. My body hurt. I was lying in my own vomit.
“Now, when I look down from my dorm window, I don’t see the rabbits. I don’t see my aunt’s tuque or smell my grandmother’s stew. All that has been stolen from me. Nor do I hear my father saying, Never mind, we’ll catch him next year.”
* * *
—
There was more, probably contributed by Blaine, much of it related to date-rape drugs: statistics on the number of reported sexual assaults in Canada each year—almost half a million; an estimate that reported incidents represented less than five percent of all assaults; a rundown of the different kinds of date-rape drugs in use—Rohypnol, Zolpidem, gamma-hydroxybutyrate, or GHB, and gamma-butyrolactone, or GLB. They had colourful common names: roofies, rope, mind erasers, forget pills, love pills, lunch money, circles.
The cumulative effect of these journalistic sections was disturbing enough, but the first-person accounts from Melissa were devastating: details of her night in the Mad Max, the little she could remember of the two men who joined her and bought her the beer, her terror in the morning, the long night at the health clinic, her subsequent mistrust of everything and everyone she thought she knew, including herself. Harry admired the way the article pulled away from the campus microcosm to take in the larger issue of drugs in the general population, then zoomed back in to the here and now to drive the statistics home. Each time Blaine’s work took the focus away from Melissa’s ordeal, a first-person section from her brought it crashing back to the foreground. The final section returned the article to its beginning: “I’m beginning to see the rabbits again,” Melissa wrote. “But now they’re older, and sadder, and maybe wiser. And big enough for the snares.”
