Finding Hope

by Colleen Nelson

  And then, the sweet hereafter. I’d find a dealer.

  The money was all in twenties, fresh from a bank machine. The wad of cash bulged in my back pocket. I put it in the one with a button so it wouldn’t fall out. Safe with Hope’s poems.

  Ha! Hope. I didn’t need to find her now. If I did, I could show her how well I was doing on my own.

  Some kids sat on a grassy field, playing guitars and a bongo. Hippies. From the walking path, I could smell the pot they weren’t being very careful to hide. “Hey, man!” I called and raised a hand in greeting. Storm tugged at the leash to get closer to them, desperate to be friends with everyone. “You guys know anyone around here?” I asked, waiting to see if my vague question would be understood.

  “What are looking for?” a guy with shaggy blond hair asked, eyeing me.

  I crouched down so we were all at the same level. “Crank, if you got any.”

  A shadow of distaste crossed his face. “Nah, man, we don’t do that shit. You gotta head downtown for that.”

  There was a girl with them. She wasn’t pretty—her nose was too big and she had huge, buggy eyes—but I used to be able to get what I wanted from girls. “Well, what do you guys have?” I asked her.

  She took me in and pulled her legs under her skirt self-consciously. “Just the pot.”

  “You mind, man?” The blond guy said. “This is a private party.”

  I stood up and yanked on Storm’s leash, pulling her away from sniffing their blanket, on the hunt for some food. “I don’t mind,” I said, sneering at them. As if I wanted to hang out with a bunch of hippies anyway. “Which way’s downtown?” I called to them as I walked away.

  They pointed to a bridge that crossed a river.

  I didn’t have time to wait for Storm to pee. I hurried her along, half dragging her toward whatever lay downtown, at the promised land of dark alleys and vacant buildings.

  Eric

  The streets got dirtier. A few abandoned buildings with plywood nailed over their windows, weeds growing up the sides of the houses, and empty lots filled with garbage. It smelled gritty here, like gravel and exhaust. A steady stream of cars flowed past, pressing forward.

  Storm and I hurried too. She was giddy like me, leaping, then catching the leash in her mouth and trying to play with it. The wad of cash thick in my pocket. I’d get mugged if I didn’t spend it.

  A beige car drove past. Mom’s car. The brake lights flashed on, glowing candy-apple red and my throat squeezed shut. She’d come to find me. The elation I felt shocked me.

  But when I looked again, I saw that the woman in this car had long blonde hair. It didn’t stick out frizzy like mom’s. And she was tall. Mom’s head didn’t go past the back of the seat. I stared at her through the window. She looked straight ahead, maybe ignoring me. Or maybe just not seeing me.

  I wondered if Mom had noticed I’d left Lumsville, or if she even cared?

  “What are you doing?” Like a keening animal, she’d asked that question too many times. When I came home hyped on meth, when I raged in my room for no reason that she understood, when I ran my bank account dry, when I sold my hockey gear, when I punched Dick, when I stole her bank card.

  I never answered her. Not with the truth, anyway.

  “What are you doing, Mom?” I should have fired back. Letting me go off with a hockey coach we barely knew, letting him drive me and stay in hotels with me, letting him touch me and making me touch him. What were you doing, Mom, to let that happen?

  Hot anger pulsed through me. My hands clenched, balling up into fists at my sides. Black seeped into the corner of my eyes, making everything go dark.

  A guy, one who looked like me, only with a full beard and wearing a baseball cap, crossed the street and bent down to pat Storm. I yanked her away from him, too hard. She slipped and yelped.

  He stood up and watched me, small blue eyes peeking out from a grizzled face. Coach Williams had blue eyes. “What the fuck are you looking at?” I said. Yelled. He stepped away and held up his hands in surrender.

  I took a step closer to him, intimidating. He backed up until he was against a wall. Broken shards of stucco lay at his feet.

  “Don’t you follow me! Leave me alone!” I screamed in his face.

  He shrank from me, protecting his face. Emblazoned on his inner arm was a tattoo of a cross, with points like a dagger. A dagger through the heart. It pierced me. I could feel it go in and slide out, thick, oozing blood dripping from it.

  But it wasn’t my blood. The guy’s nose was bleeding. Had I done that? I stared at the throbbing knuckles on my right hand. He cowered against the wall, begging me to leave him alone. Storm barked, warning me of something.

  “Run!” her bark said. So we did.

  Hope

  A package wrapped in silver paper appeared outside my door before dinner. A big red ribbon was tied around it and a gift tag dangled from the bow:

  For Hope

  Have a happy birthday, even if it’s without me.

  Love, Devon

  I stared at the box, a warm, gooey feeling melting my insides. I marvelled at how Devon was able to surprise me, to make me feel so special. I never knew what to expect from him. Had he brought it to RH himself? Or mailed it?

  Stroking the satin bow, I pulled one end of the ribbon until it pooled on my bed, the red clashing against the pastel colours of the quilt. I ripped the paper off the box and pulled out a teddy bear, honey brown with shiny black eyes. A silver necklace glinted around his neck. My face broke into a smile as I held the pendant dangling from it in my hand and noticed the engraving: LOVE, DEVON.

  I pressed the bear to my chest, taking a joyful inhalation of his synthetic fur, revelling in Devon’s attentions.

  Propping the bear up on my pillow, I went to the mirror and fiddled with the clasp of the necklace. The heart hung past my collarbones, slightly obscured by my blouse. I didn’t care if other people could see it, as long as I could feel the cool weight of it against my skin.

  Eric

  I kept looking behind me to see if the guy with the bleeding nose had followed us, but he hadn’t. I yanked on Storm’s leash and dragged her with me into an alley, sinking down against a brick wall. Storm licked my face, jumping up and down from all the excitement.

  From across the street, some guy kept yelling “Hey, Calvin!”until I turned. He was older than me, or maybe he wasn’t. Meth fucks up your face. He was skinny, knobby elbows and bony shoulders sticking out of his T-shirt. He ambled over, a breeze blowing his hair—one side shaved, the other long and stringy—across his face.

  “Where you been, man?” he asked and held out his hand. “God, it’s been fucking forever since you been back here.”

  I looked at him funny. Never seen him before in my life, I was sure of it. But if he could hook me up, I’d be whoever the hell he wanted me to be.

  We were on a street where I knew I’d be able to score. People milled around, pushing shopping carts, stumbling. A couple of kids with dirty faces stared at me from a second-storey window. Pavement everywhere, not one bit of green, except for some weeds growing between sidewalk cracks. The air smelled dank, like rotting garbage, but there weren’t many cars around here. Only a few, going real slow. Maybe looking for a dealer or a hooker. There were a few girls, hanging around on corners and stoops. Nasty-looking.

  “I’m looking to party. You know anyone?” I asked. Storm had found a newspaper and was quietly shredding it at my feet.

  He looked at me like I was crazy. Which was kind of funny, since he was the one calling me Calvin.

  “Who do you think you’re talking to? Goddamned smartass! Course I can hook you up! Jesus fucking Christ, how long you been gone?” He gave me a wide smile. Brown, rotting teeth filled his mouth. He’d been on meth for a long time. “You got a place to stay?”

  I shook my head.

 
“You do now,” he said and nodded with his head that I should follow him. He walked on his toes, like an invisible balloon was tugging at him. “The place hasn’t changed much. Brandi is still here. Had a kid, but it got taken away. I never saw the other guy you were hanging with after you left.” He led me across the street to a house with a boarded-up front window. Graffiti covered the door, and the lock was broken.

  Holes had been punched in the walls and there was more writing on them, like insane, scribbled thoughts. A few random pieces of furniture in each room, mattresses, old wooden chairs, a card table, a lamp with no shade. Some of the windows had sheets for curtains, or cardboard.

  “Look who I found!” the guy crowed when we got to the kitchen. A girl, her mouth slack and eyes glazed over, didn’t move. The kitchen faucet dripped. Opened boxes of food and used plates sat on a chipped white countertop. An indistinct rancid smell got worse when the guy opened the fridge.

  “Remember Calvin?” he asked her. She didn’t respond. Storm sniffed around the corners and lunged for a mouse that skittered across the floor and shot behind the fridge.

  “I got money,” I told him. “How about twenty bucks’ worth, and maybe a place to chill for a while?” My foot tapped impatiently. I had the cash, I just wanted the stuff. Warning bells were ringing, though. This wasn’t Lumsville. No one here knew me. No one was looking out for me.

  “Yeah, anything for you, man. You get clean or what? Twenty bucks didn’t used to last you a couple hours before you left.” He laughed.

  Shrugging, I pulled a bill out from my pocket, careful to hide what was left. Twenty dollars would last me a day, maybe more. Once I had some juice running through me, I could plan what to do next. My brain couldn’t function without it anymore.

  “You wanna do a line with me?” he asked.

  I could taste it, my teeth already grinding in anticipation. I wanted the hit so bad now that it was so close.

  I followed him upstairs. LEO was scrawled across the door in black marker. “Hey, Leo,” I said, checking that that was his name.

  He turned and gave me a toothless smile.

  “Glad to be back.”

  Hope

  The handles on the plastic shopping bags twisted around my fingers, leaving deep grooves when I deposited them onto the floor under our table. We’d made it to a restaurant after spending the afternoon at the mall.

  I hadn’t told Mom about Devon. Not yet. The necklace he’d sent was tucked into my pocket, waiting to be revealed. I wanted her to be excited for me. He was my first official boyfriend. Smart and funny, he knew just what to say to make me feel better.

  It would matter to Mom that I’d never met him. I’d have to explain that I felt like I knew him better than I knew anyone else.

  I deserved to have someone like Devon in my life. For so long, everything had revolved around Eric. First, his hockey games, his future, and when he’d quit that, the drugs had taken over. We were always talking about his problems, his needs. I never knew how much it bothered me until I had some of my own. Until I was bursting to share my own news.

  I took the pendant out of my pocket, letting it drape across my leg. The silver heart caught the light, glinting under the table. Smiling, I said, “Mom, I have to tell you something.” She wasn’t listening.

  “Mom?” I tried again.

  Her forehead creased with worry. Our annual mother–daughter shopping trip was in honour of my birthday, but now that we were sitting down, without the chaos of a mall to absorb me, I could see how distracted she was. “There’s something I need to tell you.” I clutched the necklace, fingering the chain.

  “The police are looking for Eric,” she blurted. Her mouth drew into a tight line. Lipstick had bled up into the feathery wrinkles around her lips.

  I let the necklace go and rubbed my forehead. Even here, at my birthday dinner, with news of my boyfriend burning a hole in my throat, Eric had taken over. “Why? What did he do?”

  “Broke into the pharmacy. Two weeks ago.”

  “What?” I shook my head in confusion. “Two weeks ago? Where’d he go?”

  Tears filled her eyes when she looked at me. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

  We sat at the table, silent. The server refilled our water glasses and then quickly left. Ice cubes clinked, like grinding teeth, making space for themselves.

  “Did you leave something in the stump, like I said?”

  She nodded. “It was still there this morning.”

  I took a deep, shaky breath. My brother was out there somewhere. If he was high, he wasn’t eating or sleeping. If he wasn’t high, he was doing anything he had to in order to get high.“I thought maybe he’d called you. Let you know where he was, or something.” Her voice trailed off and she used a napkin to wipe her eyes.

  I thought about lying and saying he had, to make the pained look on her face disappear, but then what? My brother was missing and there was nothing I could do.

  I looked away and fingered the prongs of my fork, letting each one press into the flesh of my finger.

  I stuffed the pendant back into my pocket.

  Eric

  I could concentrate now that the crank was running through me. I had so much to do. There were plans to make. Places I had to go. I needed to get things. I had to see Hope. Let her know I was okay. She’d tell Mom, not that Mom gave a shit. She and Dick probably didn’t even notice I wasn’t in Lumsville anymore.

  I was being a shit. They’d notice. Mom would worry. But a voice in my head said, Not true. They’d let me go with that fucking pervert. Thank God I had meth. It helped me deal with everything. Meth helped me get through the dark nights—not Mom or Dick. Who gave a fuck if they were hurting? It would never be as much as I was.

  But that didn’t matter right now, I reminded myself and tried to stay focused. My mind raced. I had a lot to do. I’d gone through a dresser in Calvin’s room and found an old notebook, the kind kids use at school, and a pencil. I stuffed everything into my pocket, moving the poems and cash to a zippered pocket on the inside of my jacket. Wasn’t as thick as it used to be, that wad of cash.

  But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. I had what mattered; it was in me. Coursing through me like race cars on a speedway track.

  Oh, I was feeling good. Better. Best.

  Leo still called me Calvin, but I didn’t care. It was better if Eric was gone, left behind on that long stretch of highway between Lumsville and the city. I liked talking to Leo. He listened to me. I told him all about my hockey, how good I was, how far I almost went. He asked what happened. I told him. Coach Williams.

  The name stuck. It kept sticking, like a cog in a machine that wouldn’t move. Or a scratched CD. I couldn’t get past Coach Williams.

  What happened to him? Leo wanted to know.

  I told him. Moved to the city.

  Moved to the city.

  And then that got stuck in my head. Stabbing into my brain, like a shard of glass.

  Coach Williams was in the city.

  Hope

  My phone beeped with a text.

  Do you really care about me? Or are you just saying you do to keep me around?

  D.

  My stomach dropped when I read it. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen his insecure side. Devon worried about all kinds of ridiculous things: that I was cheating on him, that I didn’t really like him, that I was laughing at him; things that couldn’t be further from the truth. I knew how to handle it though: I’d send a message reassuring him that I cared more about him than anyone else.

  A day would pass and he’d send me an apologetic text, blaming his mood on Melton and how much he hated it there. He’d thank me for being understanding, and say that without me, he had nothing.

  I hadn’t told Devon that my brother was missing. I didn’t like keeping a secret from him, but our relationship was the one th
ing in my life that hadn’t been tainted by Eric and his problems. As soon as I told Devon the ugly, sordid truth, it would be.

  Devon had asked once why I’d chosen Ravenhurst. I’d told him it wasn’t because of the friendliness of students (LOL!), but that I’d wanted to get out of Lumsville. If I’d been honest, I would have told him about Eric right then. That as much as I loved my brother, he was tearing me apart. And that I didn’t want to be Eric Randall’s little sister anymore, I just wanted to be me, to have an identity that wasn’t linked to Eric the Hockey Player, or Eric the Junkie.

  So, when he sent me a text, questioning our relationship, all my energy went to reassuring him. Making sure he knew how much he meant to me. I couldn’t lose him now.

  Friday, October 3, 9:44 p.m.

  From: Hope

  Whenever this place gets to be too much, I touch my necklace and everything feels better. It’s like you’re with me all the time. You are the only thing making this place bearable.

  Dangling

  From a thread

  Suspended, breath

  Catching in my throat.

  The drop won’t kill me.

  But how will I catch

  What I lost?

  Friday, October 3, 9:50 p.m.

  From: Devon

  We should run away together. Where would we go? Anywhere is good. As long as it’s me and you …

  His words made me melt. I read each text over and over wishing he was beside me, to hear the words from his own lips. Some days, I wanted to talk to him so badly. To know that I wasn’t alone.