by Joey Comeau
“Wow,” Courtney said. “Joan is the one who gets a boyfriend first? Joan?! How is that fair?” But both girls were smiling.
Joan ignored them, and adjusted one of the dials on her telescope slowly.
Martin couldn’t think of anything to say. He wasn’t supposed to say anything. Joan was the one they were talking to, not him. He was just the boy. He squeezed Joan’s hand, and looked up at the sky. It was beautiful even without the telescope.
My dearest Martin,
Oh, woe are the hours since we last spoke. I’m not being funny, those hours were seriously woe. Fuck those hours. It was good to get away from this hotel of the damned, at least. And I got to see more of the city. You can buy barbecued squirrels on sticks from street vendors here. They don’t have any fur on them, but other than that they are still squirrel-shaped, so that was fun.
Jesus, the squirrels are big! They’re as big as cats, pretty much. Huge mutant squirrels, and nobody even seems to notice them. They sit there on their hind legs, watching people all day long, observing us, looking for our weaknesses. Getting angrier and angrier as we eat their brothers and sisters on big squirrel-kebabs with hot sauce. That didn’t stop me from trying one, though. They might rise up against us and wipe humanity off the face of the earth, or turn us all into slaves. I’d feel pretty stupid if I was a vegetarian or something and they killed me anyway.
Someone at the party gave me some terrible advice about places to see. His idea of “interesting Toronto” was a rooftop garden, downtown. That is exactly what it sounds like. A garden on a rooftop.
I may have had some wine, but you will be happy to know that I did not spill one drop. It is all where God would have intended it to be, if God existed. Oh no, now I’ve gotten your mail flagged by the Bible camp censors! Unless they don’t read them. That would probably be pretty boring for those guys. Oh, but they could automate it. They could program up some censor sensors. They would sense what to censor. I’m getting off track here. Rooftop gardens! Wine!
There were shops in the building, but there also seemed to be an art gallery and offices. I didn’t get a good look at the building directory as we passed. I was too busy tiptoeing like a cartoon wolf in a henhouse. I had to break a window to get in. I used a diamond to cut a big mom-shaped hole in the glass, and lifted it out with a big suction cup. It was some sort of architecture institute, maybe. I found the stairs up, and then kapow! A rooftop garden.
Have you ever been underwhelmed, Martin? Stepping out onto the roof was not much different from stepping back out onto the street. The traffic sounds were just as loud up there, and there were lights along the wall that were almost the same yellow as the streetlamps.
I looked around at the view, at the buildings on all sides. The sky was cloudy, but I don’t imagine that it’s all that much better on a clear night. The city lights would make the stars almost invisible.
There were trees in planters around the roof, with a wooden walkway winding through them, and a couple benches. It wasn’t terrible, exactly. It was a small approximation of nature in the middle of the city, and it was probably a welcome escape for the people who worked in these buildings that surrounded the garden, but I wasn’t on an hour long lunch break. That rooftop garden was terrible sightseeing advice. I could have gone anywhere. So why not a real park? Or why not down into one of those vents I passed?
They have vents in the sidewalk here, and you can hear something down underneath it, Martin. There’s a whole strange city down there. The subways rumble and screech, but there are voices underneath that, too. Weird howling laughter like you might expect from a mole person. Mole men and mole women, laughing and crying and living their whole lives away from our hideous sun. I could have been down there among them, learning their customs, eating their weird worm goulash, pretending to find their disgusting personal habits charming! But instead I ended up sitting on a plank looking at a bunch of smog-poisoned plants.
Underwhelmed is the word I was looking for. Did I find it just now or earlier?
Do you ever wish your childhood was different, Martin? Do you think I should have found a father for you? Or raised you somewhere with more trees? Or spent more time with you and less time working? I don’t know if I would change anything about how I raised you. I look back, and all the decisions I made were the decisions I thought were right. And look at you! Look how you turned out. Would you be the same Martin who makes me tea in the morning and talks to himself in his sleep if I had raised you differently? What if your father had stayed? Would you be more like him? I shouldn’t be talking about your father. Not while I’m tipsy. I know I promised you I wouldn’t speak ill of him. Anyway, Toronto! I am going to find that hotel bar if it’s the last thing I do. Why is it so well hidden? Is there treasure up there? Is there a dark secret?
Oh god, speaking of horrible secrets, I think the girl who works at the front desk downstairs might be some kind of swamp creature. She has gills, Martin. They flex while she talks. I could make a special effect like that. A weird wet prosthetic that you move with a hand pump maybe? In any case, she was very impolite when I asked her for a replacement key for my hotel room, and when she handed it to me, it was wet! Slimy. And her fingers were all stuck together and webbed like a duck’s. I hate ducks. Fuck ducks, with their weird pitch-black eyes, like evil marbles. And the front desk girl smelled terrible, too. She didn’t care at all that I was getting telephone calls from dead old men.
“Don’t answer your phone, then,” she told me.
“But what if it’s important?” I asked her.
“If he’s calling you from beyond the grave, it’s probably fairly important,” she said in that smug tone of voice that swamp people are known for. I get worried sometimes that my prejudices will influence you, and you’ll go around saying hateful things that you don’t mean just because you heard me say them. I don’t really think swamp people are smelly, Martin. I mean, they are smelly, yes. They live in a swamp, and they roll around in weird muck and swamp gas with their clothes on, but that’s a part of what it means to be a swamp person. Oh god, now it sounds like I am making a metaphor about people from other cultures, or fat children or something. There is literally a swamp person working at the front desk, Martin. Call the hotel. She even sounds wet.
But I know you heard me call my friends bad names and I hope you don’t ever talk like that. I love my friends. You know that. I was angry and drunk and sometimes when you’re angry you just want to say the thing that is the meanest. Not the thing that you actually believe is meanest, but just the most horrible thing you can think of to say. It’s petty and stupid, and I know you would never do that. You’re better than that, Martin. I should be better than that, too. And if I can’t be better than that, I should at least be better than that in front of you. Try and say that three times fast.
Anyway, I’m stuck here with the weird phone calls and the screaming blood spire. And that hateful slime creature. Fuck that damp fuck. Argh! Why am I so angry all of a sudden? I was sleepy just a minute ago, wasn’t I? Has this hellish place infected me with its evil?
Oh no, wait, now I’m sleepy again!
Love you,
Mom.
Joan walked Martin back to his cabin, and he snuck inside. Chip still hadn’t returned. Martin undressed in the dark, putting his Undead Hungry Grandmother Birthday Party shirt back into the bottom of his suitcase and folding his pants beside the shirt for tomorrow. His cheeks were sore, and he couldn’t figure out why at first. But he was smiling. He had been smiling all night. He put his hand to his face and almost laughed out loud.
In bed, he pulled the blanket tight and looked up at the dark ceiling. Tomorrow he would write to his mother and tell her about camp so far. He didn’t know what he would say about Joan. Maybe he would just say that he had made some friends, and that she would like them. That was true. His mother liked girls like Melissa. They were her favourite characters in movies. Stro
ng take-no-guff type of girls. Joan wasn’t like that, though. She was quieter than Melissa. She was even a little mysterious, he thought. Should he tell his mother that? Should he tell her that they kissed? This was a new situation, and he wasn’t sure how she would react. It seemed wrong to keep it secret from her, but not that wrong. He smiled wider and enjoyed that feeling. He’d never had a secret before.
Outside the window he heard a girl giggle, and sat up quickly. But it was just Chip and Cindy, standing at the corner of the cabin.
“Just a little bit,” Chip said, and Cindy shook her head and giggled again. “Come on, Cindy.”
“Not tonight,” Cindy said. “I have to get back to my cabin. I have those girls to take care of.”
“You still haven’t taken care of me,” Chip said.
“It’ll give you something to look forward to,” she said. “Anticipation is always the best part anyway.”
“I can think of a better part,” Chip said, but she was already skipping away, laughing. Chip sighed, and Martin listened as he opened the cabin door quietly and crept across the floor, the floorboards creaking.
He wondered if Joan was still awake, lying in her bed looking up at the ceiling, too. Tomorrow he would write to his mother and see his new friends again. He would see Joan again. Maybe Bible camp was going to be fun after all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“There’s something not quite Christian about it,” Father Tony said. He sat back in his chair and looked up to where his Bible sat on the shelf. “I can’t put my finger on why exactly, but it doesn’t seem right for a couple of young ladies to be out there in the middle of the night, obsessing over their telescopes.”
Melissa didn’t say anything, but she squeezed Joan’s hand a bit. Joan and Courtney were watching her nervously. Melissa didn’t like that word, obsessing. They could see her back straighten a bit, and that was a bad sign. Sherri-Lynn, their cabin’s counsellor, nodded in agreement with Tony and patted Courtney’s shoulder.
“I know you girls are probably mad at me for ratting you out,” Sherri-Lynn said, “but I was worried about you last night. It’s my job to make sure you’re safe, and I didn’t know where you were. What if one of you were hurt?”
“It’s not dangerous,” Melissa said. “And we didn’t think you’d let us if we asked.”
“Well,” Sherri-Lynn said. “That’s not really up to me.” She looked at Tony, and he nodded at her.
“I just don’t like the idea,” Tony said. “This is camping! We’re supposed to leave all our gadgets behind. No cell phones or video games! Just good times with friends out in the woods.”
“This comet has been brightening,” Melissa said, “and soon it might even be visible to the naked eye. It’s so perfect out here in the middle of nowhere. There’s no ambient light. These are really good conditions for observation. And we can’t watch it because of a rule that doesn’t even make sense.” She realized how loud her voice had gotten and tried to bring herself under control. “Even just an hour. Just one hour a night would be enough.”
“Your parents didn’t send you here to look up at the stars,” the priest said. “You’re here to make friends and learn about the Bible. There’s a reason we don’t call it ‘science camp,’ you know?” He laughed. “I know it seems unfair to you now, but there’ll be plenty of time for you to look through your binoculars when you go home. We’re here to teach you about the Lord our saviour.”
“God made comets,” Joan said quietly. “He made stars and galaxies and he made comets. And he made them beautiful. Why would he have made them so beautiful if he didn’t want us to enjoy them?”
Melissa and Courtney looked at Joan, and then back at Tony. He seemed to be considering her words.
“You aren’t wrong,” Tony said to Joan after a moment. “That’s very well put. Very well put. What was your name again?”
“Joan,” she said.
“I wish I could say yes, Joan,” Tony said, “and you do make a very good point. But there are practical considerations here, too. We don’t have enough counsellors to spare. We were already short-staffed before one of them had a family emergency last night. We need Sherri-Lynn to stay with the campers in her cabin, and we can’t very well have you three girls out wandering the night by yourselves. It’s important that we know where everyone is at all times.” He smiled. “We have a responsibility to your parents, after all.”
Margaret turned ten years old just three weeks ago, but she looked older. She was tall and skinny. She fit in with the other girls in her cabin, and most of them were twelve or thirteen. Her mother lied to get Margaret into the older kid session of the camp. The under-ten camp ran earlier in the summer. This was just better timing. This way, her mother and father could align their vacations. They could get away together for the first time in years.
So she was stuck here, with all these older girls. At least her counsellor was nice. Sherri-Lynn had been teaching her to play chess, and it was more fun than Margaret expected. She liked how much sense it made. When she lost a piece, it wasn’t because of a roll of the dice, or how fast she could run. It was because she had made a mistake. She could see exactly what she had done wrong. That was weirdly satisfying. And so she had decided already that she would play as much as she could, whenever Sherri-Lynn was free to play with her.
But this morning, Sherri-Lynn had taken those girls to Father Tony, and Margaret didn’t know anyone else. She was upset and it felt like she was alone. And there were no cell phones here. Margaret was used to her cell phone. She never had to remember anyone’s number, because everything was right there, programmed into the small blue phone. It was easy. But there were no cell phones allowed at camp. So her mother had written down her number for Margaret in the front of a little notebook.
“You can call me whenever you like,” she said. And then she had driven away.
Like her mother, Margaret had dark, straight hair that constantly fell over her eyes. As she walked across the campground with the notebook clutched in her hand, she was glad to have the hair over her eyes. She was trying not to cry. She knew what was going on. Her mother had told her about menstruation. That’s all this was. She was having her first period. It was earlier than she expected but she knew that it was fine and she knew how she was supposed to deal with it. Seeing the blood had been a shock, though. She just wanted to hear her mother’s voice. She just wanted to hear her mother say that everything was okay, even if it was just on the phone.
And there had to be a phone in that main building. Someone would let her call her mother.
Martin’s cabin had first shower in the morning. Chip led everyone up to the showers in the main building. Martin had his towel folded in his hands, thick and plush and comforting. His soap was still wrapped in the waxy paper packaging, and it sat on top of the towel. He loved the rough edges of new soap, and how they softened over the first few days. He loved how the grass felt under his bare feet, too. Everything was pretty great this morning.
“I’ll check to make sure there aren’t any animals in the showers before you go in there,” Chip said. “And I’ll take a quick look up at the ceiling for wasps’ nests. The only thing worse than being stung by dozens of angry wasps is being stung by dozens of angry wasps when you’re naked.”
The shower room was tiled on the walls and floor, and the showers themselves were just a row of showerheads sticking out along one of the walls. Martin undressed down to his underwear and folded his clothes on the small bench, far enough away that they wouldn’t be splashed by any of the showers. Then he set his towel just beside them and took his soap, and he went under one of the showers.
“Martin, you can’t shower in your underpants,” Chip said, sticking his head in, and Ricky laughed. “You gotta get properly clean.”
Martin didn’t answer. What did it matter if he showered with his underwear on? He had a pair of clean ones folded into his towel, for h
im to change into afterward.
Chip said something else, but Martin ignored him. He unwrapped the soap and set it down against the wall, still sitting on the now-open wrapper. He turned the water on.
It was cool, but not cold, and Martin washed himself all over. The edges of the soap were hard and reassuring, and he always felt cleanest when he used a new bar. He washed his hair once, and then rinsed it clean, and then he washed it again. The lather was always way better the second time. Beside him, Ricky was using the shampoo to give himself a mohawk.
“Can I use your soap, Martin?” Ricky said.
“Sure.” Martin passed him the fresh bar of soap, and went back to rinsing his hair.
“He’s gone,” Ricky said, looking back toward the door. “I thought he was gonna stare at us showering the whole time. Jeez.”
Chip was waiting outside in the hallway when everyone finished.
“Cool,” he said. “Is everybody ready?”
“Are we going to write to our parents now?” Martin asked him.
“You’ve only been here one night, and already you want to write to your parents?” Chip laughed. “What, do you miss your mommy? Where’s your sense of adventure? Aren’t you having fun?”
“He doesn’t miss his mommy,” Ricky said, elbowing Martin in the ribs and grinning. “He’s just tired of you bugging us, probably!”
“Well, we’re going to send letters later this afternoon,” Chip said. “But right now we’ve got breakfast and then we have our first chapel. I know that most of you brought a Bible with you, but let me know if you haven’t got a copy of the New Testament. We read along a lot in morning chapel, usually. Afternoon chapel is when Father Tony gives a sermon, and then tonight we’ll probably sing songs. You get used to the pattern pretty quickly. In between chapel we’ve got a ton of fun stuff planned.”
