by Beth Goobie
HELLO, GROIN
BETH GOOBIE
Copyright © 2006 Beth Goobie
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be
invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Goobie, Beth, 1959-
Hello, groin / Beth Goobie.
Electronic Monograph
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 9781551434605(pdf) -- ISBN 9781554696321 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8563.O8326H44 2006 C813’.54 C2006-903098-7
First published in the United States, 2006
Library of Congress Control Number: 2006927980
Summary: Dylan discovers that friendship can get in the way of love.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing
programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through
the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for
the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the
Book Publishing Tax Credit.
The author gratefully acknowledges the Saskatchewan Arts Board grant that
partially funded the writing of this book.
Design and typesetting: Christine Toller
Cover artwork: James Kingsley
In Canada:
Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 5626, Station B
Victoria, BC Canada
V8R 6S4
In the United States:
Orca Book Publishers
PO Box 468
Custer, WA USA
98240-0468
www.orcabook.com
08 07 06 • 6 5 4 3 2 1
for Sue
Chapter One
We were coming around a bend in the road just before the Dundurn Street bridge. I was double-riding my best friend, Jocelyn Hersch, on my bike, and we were running late, Diefenbaker Collegiate’s last warning bell about to sound. So I was tearing along with my head down, pretty much oblivious to the local scenery, when Joc tightened her grip on my waist and let out a yelp that could have raised the dead. Of course, right away my head snapped up and the first thing I saw was the bridge straight ahead, a two-lane overpass that arced about twenty feet above the river. Then my eyes landed on a thick white haze that appeared to be rising out of the water. In the morning sunlight it glowed a brilliant white and was so tall it touched the underside of the bridge and over-rode the nearest bank by at least a hundred feet. Putting on the brakes, I stood, holding onto my bike and staring. The day was warm for mid-September and somewhat cloudy, but not foggy—whatever the haze was, it hadn’t been caused by the weather.
“The city woke up, but the river’s still dreaming,” said Joc, her chin nudging the back of my shoulder. Then, sliding off the bike seat, she headed into the small park that ran this side of the river. Laying down my bike, I took off after her, catching up just as she reached the edge of the massive glowing haze.
“What d’you think it is?” I asked, staring up at it. Now that I was closer, I could see the haze was made of a zillion bubbles, and the air was full of the soft sound of their popping. A gust of wind kicked up, scattering yellow poplar leaves across the surface.
“I told you, Dyllie,” said Joc. “It’s a dream. The river’s dreaming.”
Up on the bridge a car drove slowly past, the driver gawking maniacally through his window. Then the car was gone, the rumble of its engine sucked completely into the morning quiet. Another gust of wind kicked up, full of that sweet September smell, and twenty more leaves were scattered across the top of the haze. For a moment then, just a moment, I got a sense of the entire city spread out in all directions and settled peacefully into itself, the morning traffic rush over, kids safely in school. All that quiet made the haze in front of me even more mysterious, with its softly breaking bubbles, a world of undone hearts.
Putting out a hand, Joc scooped some into her palm.
“Careful,” I said. “Could be toxic.”
She gave it a sniff. “Smells like laundry soap,” she said. “Dish soap or bubblebath.”
Without another word, she stepped directly into the mysterious cloud. For a second I could still see her—the vague outline of a dark-haired, low-hipped, sixteen-year-old girl—and then she disappeared into the soft bubble-breaking haze.
“Joc,” I called, but no sound came back to me. So I stepped in after her, leaving the city and its everyday sights and sounds behind, and was immediately surrounded by the faint sweet scent of soap, the constant whispering of breaking bubbles and an eerie all-around white. Then, somewhere up in the sky the sun must have come out, because the bubbles above my head suddenly lit up, glowing pink, yellow and blue. Off to my right, Joc cried out in delight, and I started toward her. The bubbles gave easily as I moved, and breathing wasn’t a problem. The whole thing was a little like walking through a trance, thinking in soft colors, sweet scents and vague secret murmurings. Or like stepping into one of my five-year-old sister Keelie’s drawings. Yesterday I’d caught her sitting in the living room with paper and crayons, staring straight ahead with an intense expression on her face. When I’d asked what she was doing, she’d said, “I am drawing silence. I am drawing the beautiful quiet in the air.”
So that was what walking through the pink-yellow-blue haze reminded me of—the beautiful quiet in the air—and it took me deep into one of those inner watching places of the mind. As I moved toward Joc, she came gradually into view, a vague dark outline humming to itself and spinning lazy pirouettes. Because of the haze, I could only see her in bits and pieces, and it was a moment before I realized that she was naked. Stumbling to a halt, I stood staring, just staring, my heart pounding so hard it was about busting me open. Then, before I could stop her, Joc walked over and reached out toward me.
I don’t know exactly what happened next, it went by so quick. Her hands reached toward me as if she was about to start unbuttoning my shirt, and instantly a hundred different thoughts slammed into me: I can’t, someone else might come walking into the haze, someone might see. But mostly it was a giant panicky No! as my hands swung up to fend her off. Frozen, we stood staring at each other, and then Joc reached out again and grabbed my hands.
“C’mon, Dyl,” she said and started spinning us in a slow uneven circle. At first my feet tripped a bit, but then we came into sync, leaned out from each other in perfect balance while everything we couldn’t seem to say whirled white and sweet around us. Gradually we slowed, and Joc let go and staggered, giggling, toward her clothes.
“God,” I heard her mutter. “Now I can’t tell where I’m going. What if I can’t find...Oh, here they are.”
There was the quick sound of jeans being pulled on and a sweatshirt being zipped. “Dyl,” Joc called, her voice muffled and low to the ground, and I walked over to find her, shoes still off and crawling around in the grass. “Y’know that ring Dikker gave me last week?” she said. “The one with the amber stone? I can’t find it.”
“What did you take it off for?” I demanded, dropping to my knees beside her and groping in the white-shrouded grass.
“Dunno,” she mumbled. “It’s just so beautiful in here. It made me want to take off everything extra—no interference, nothing but skin.” Swearing softly, she pawed at the grass. “It was just a cheap ring, no big deal. He won it at the Ex at a target booth. It’s not a family heirloom or anything, but—”
She paused, running
her hand again over the same place, and my heart gave a painful kick, thinking she’d found it. “Nope,” she muttered, just as my fingers passed over something small and hard in the grass. A swallow locked my throat, and I traced the object carefully. Circular, with a small hard knob set at one end—no question about it, I had Dikker’s ring in my sweaty little hand.
Cheap, I reminded myself. Not a family heirloom. Holding my breath, I waited as Joc crawled farther into the haze. Then, getting to my knees, I hurled the ring in the direction of the river. A slight splash sounded, followed by more of the eerie white nothingness, me breathing and a zillion bubbles breaking all around.
“What was that?” asked Joc from my right, her voice oddly flattened by the haze.
“What was what?” I asked casually.
“That splash,” she said.
“Dunno,” I said. “A fish?”
A long thinking pause followed, and then a few more swear words, and finally I heard her making her way back toward me. “I guess I’ll tell him I took it off in the bath and it fell down the drain,” she muttered resignedly.
“Good thinking,” I said, probably way too loud and enthusiastic. “He’ll get lost in the bath fantasy and forget all about the ring.”
“Here’s hoping,” she said, and we stepped free of the haze, blinking at the nine-thirty sunshine and the great blobs of bubbles riding our arms. Laughing, we piled scoops of it onto each other’s heads, then got onto my bike and tore through the streets toward the Dief, trailing pink-and-blue bubbles behind us.
By the time school let out, we’d discovered that the mysterious haze had been caused by a factory soap spill upriver. Biking back to the Dundurn Street bridge, we found the haze considerably shrunken and police warning tapes strung along both banks. Two cruisers with flashing lights sat at the edge of the park, blocking entry.
“Just like the cops,” Joc said disgustedly, her chin dug into my shoulder as we surveyed the scene from my bike. “Find a little harmless fun and they have to cut it off.”
“Someone could fall in, I guess,” I shrugged. “A little kid, or a drunk.”
“We didn’t,” said Joc, and we took off down the street, headed for her house. Here and there huddles of green-gold poplars flashed by, murmuring their thoughts to the wind.
“I love this time of year,” I said, tilting my head back to get a straight-on glimpse of the sky. “Everything’s blue and gold, and the smell is so thick, it’s like the earth is breathing.”
“Yeah,” Joc said quietly, her arms tightening around my waist. Braking to take the turn onto her street, I let out a whoop as I saw Joc’s older brother Tim backing his car down their driveway. Well, he called it a car, but the thing was a ‘72 Chev, so ancient it was almost apocalyptic. Joc and I didn’t even have to look at each other, just ditched the bike and took a mutual flying leap onto the car trunk. Arm stuck out the window, Tim gave us a casual wave, then putt-putted several blocks at golf-cart speed while we kicked back and watched the neighborhood roll by. At the first major intersection, he leaned on the horn until we got off, then revved the engine and squealed off around the corner.
“When was the last time he washed that junk heap?” I demanded, staring at the two very obvious bum prints now decorating the trunk of his car. Ruefully I checked the back of my jeans. “I bet I’m wearing the last three months of that car on my butt.”
“Anyone asks,” Joc drawled, “he’ll say it was Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy returned from the dead to bless his trunk.”
“Not far from the truth, I guess,” I said.
Joc grinned and lit a cigarette. “I bought another Morissette CD,” she said. “Feast on Scraps. It’s just as jagged as her last one. You heard it yet?”
“Nope,” I said.
“C’mon,” she said. “It’ll make you howl.”
We headed back up the street, practicing our howling and taking the odd time-out on Joc’s cigarette. When we reached her house, no one was home, so we grabbed two Cokes from the fridge and headed down the hall to her bedroom. Since it was the usual swamp zone, I kicked my way through the laundry and other debris camouflaging the floor, and settled onto the bed. In the meantime Joc inserted Feast on Scraps into a small CD player that stood on her bookshelf, then flicked on her curling iron and started an intense stare fight with her dresser mirror. A base throb that sounded like a great reverb heartbeat poured out of the CD player, filling the room, followed by an upswell of music that was pushed and prodded along by Alanis Morissette’s voice. I listened, bobbing a foot to the beat.
“Hey, that’s good,” I said. “What’s this song called?”
“‘Fear of Bliss’,” said Joc.
“Huh,” I grunted, bobbing my foot more energetically. There was always such tension in Morissette’s music, a long fishing line of ache with a hook waiting to catch you—the hook of self-respect. She was different from most rock singers. Joc was right—this album was more jagged than her last.
“Come on,” I said, taking a swig of Coke. “Leave it, okay? You’re already gorgeous.”
“Dikker doesn’t think so,” said Joc. Arcing her neck, she studied the long gleaming slide of her hair.
“He told you that?” I demanded. With a sigh, I propped Joc’s pillow behind my head and settled in for yet another extended discourse on Barry Alan Preddy, more commonly known as “Dikker”—a guy who’d told Joc on their first date that he wanted to be dead before he turned thirty. Talk about being paranoid of commitment.
“He didn’t have to,” said Joc. Licking a fingertip, she tapped the curling iron to test it for heat. “It’s all in a guy’s eyes,” she said. “Where they are when you’re with him.”
“So where are his?” I asked in a decided monotone. I mean, we’d been through every possible angle and permutation of this subject countless times. Too many of my conversations with Joc were beginning to feel like a repeat of a repeat of something that had been interesting three years ago.
“Everywhere but on me,” she muttered, leaning toward the mirror and poking at a zit on her chin.
“Why doesn’t he break up with you then?” I yawned.
“Because I’d kill him,” Joc said casually, catching the edge of her bangs expertly with the curling iron. “And then I’d kill myself.”
“Oh yeah,” I muttered. I’d heard this comment before. Many times. “Romeo and Juliet,” I added without thinking. “Front page news.”
“Look, Dyl,” snapped Joc. Releasing half her bangs into a perfect curl, she turned to glare at me. “It is, of course, obvious to you and everyone else that you’re superior to the rest of the human race,” she said acidly. “For some reason known only to His very divine self, God dumped us normal people with a shit-load of hormones and you just got a sprinkling, which you take care of with the occasional mastie.”
Turning back to the mirror, she started up another stare fight with her reflection while I lay rigid on the bed, observing the ceiling. Here it was again, that conversational scorpion that leapt out of nowhere, poisoned the most innocently intentioned words and vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The last time Joc snapped at me like this, we’d ended up heaving large objects at each other. Tim had actually turned down his bedroom stereo and sauntered across the hall to find out what all the high-pitched squealing was about.
“Cat fight,” he’d said, unimpressed, and left again.
It had taken a week to work our way back to speaking terms, and that had been only last month. Tension like this never used to happen between us. Sweet sixteen could really suck. Pressing my cheek against my can of Coke, I waited for the fire in my face to burn down.
“Okay,” I said thickly. “Dumb thing to say, agreed. It’s just... I never liked Dikker, you know that. He’s always making you feel like crap. When’s the last time he made you really happy?”
“Last Friday,” said Joc, forgiving me with a smug grin. “Around 1:00 AM.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “You were proba
bly stoned.”
“As a matter of fact, I was,” she said complacently and set down the curling iron. Then, without the slightest warning she crossed the room, climbed onto the bed and straddled my hips. Leaning over me, she poked her intense narrow face into mine.
“C’mon Dyl,” she said, her large purplish blue eyes trapping mine. “When are you going to let Cam get what he wants? You’ve been seeing him for eight months now. You’re practically married. You should hear the poor guy moan when you’re not around. Says he’s almost forgotten how to use it.”
The perfect curl of her bangs dangled from her forehead, and the rest of her hair dropped in a smooth, coconut-scented fall around my face. “Don’t you like him?” she whispered, her lips inches from mine. I could smell tobacco on her breath. “He’s decent enough,” she added thoughtfully. “Doesn’t two-time, has a great car.”
At that moment she shifted, and the unexpected movement on my hips set off a wave of sweet singing heat that shot everywhere through me, suspending me in an edgy horrified bliss. Then the sensation passed and I came back to myself, eyes closed, fighting panic. Shit, how had that happened? It sure as hell hadn’t been my fault—I wasn’t the one who’d crossed the room and jumped all over someone else’s body. Joc must have hit some goddamn hyper-alert nerve when she shifted, but I hadn’t asked for it. I hadn’t.
Well, the first thing to figure out now was whether or not Joc had noticed. Had I moaned, had my expression changed or given anything away?
“I dunno,” I mumbled, keeping my eyes closed. “Sometimes I feel like it, but never when he wants to, y’know?”
Joc hesitated. I could hear the soft come-and-go of her breathing as she thought. “Is he rough?” she asked. “Pushy?”
“No,” I said.
“What would it hurt to try it with him then?” she asked. “C’mon, you’ve got to give the guy some hope.”
“Maybe,” I whispered.
“Open your eyes, would you?” she said and tugged gently at my left eyelid. “I feel like I’m talking to a corpse here.”
