by Beth Goobie
“C’mon, Dyl,” said Cam, turning toward me. “You have a go at it.”
With a grin he stepped back from the controls, and I moved into the player’s position. But just as he leaned forward to drop a looney into the slot, I glanced around the room and who did I see but hot lips Sheila, the passion of Confederation Collegiate, standing in the entrance to the arcade. Immediately I froze, watching as her eyes traveled the dimly lit room. She appeared to be looking for someone, and a sick feeling in my gut told me who it probably was. Would she be able to see me from the entrance, I wondered frantically. Cam and I were at the rear of the room, partially hidden by several junior high boys at the next machine, but as I watched, Sheila’s eyes focused in on me and she stiffened. Yes, she’d seen me, and there was that familiar desperate hungry look again, erupting all over her face.
“Uh, Cam,” I said, every nerve in my body going into red alert. “I’ve gotta go to the can, actually. C’mon.”
“Hey, I don’t have to pee,” Cam grinned. “You go and I’ll wait here.”
“Okay, fine,” I said, ducked around the junior high boys and took off through the crowd. Across the arcade I could see Sheila steaming down the far aisle, probably headed for Streetfighter. If I stuck to the aisle I was in, I would reach the entrance without a direct encounter—if Sheila didn’t suddenly start leaping over the rows of video games that separated us, that is.
That left the question of how long she would hang around Streetfighter, watching Cam play once she’d realized that I was gone, but there was no point in worrying about it now. Barreling out of the arcade, I headed down the mall at light speed toward the food court and the nearest girls washroom. A small private space, that was what I needed—something I could close myself inside, get my head together and think. Fortunately the lineup waiting at the washroom entrance was short, and I got into a cubicle quickly. Without even checking the toilet seat to make sure it was clean, I sat down and buried my face in my hands. I could feel it coming—another extraterrestrial funk. Mad chaos was taking over my brain, and all I could think about was how much I wanted a smoke. A smoke with Joc. Where was she now? What was she doing? Was she sick in bed with a head cold, from being out in yesterday’s rain? Or was she with Dikker, working her way through a six-pack and not even thinking about me?
Miserably I glanced at my watch. Fifteen minutes had gone by. Would Sheila have given up looking for me in the arcade and headed off somewhere else? And Cam must be wondering what was taking me so long. Reluctantly I stood up, flushed the toilet and stepped out of the cubicle. A quick scan of the waiting lineup revealed no one with a desperate hungry look on her face. But as I approached the sinks my eyes fell on a familiar figure, half-hidden behind several women and leaning against the paper-towel dispenser.
Hot lips Sheila. Waiting for me. Obviously.
“Uh-uh,” she said grimly, ducking behind me and cutting off my escape. I had to give her credit—she moved fast, faster than I could think. Turning to face me, she added sarcastically, “Don’t you want to wash your hands?”
“That’s my business,” I snapped, trying to step around her, but she moved with me, cutting me off again.
“Fine,” I said, trying to keep a grip as I turned back to the sinks. “I will wash them.”
Soaping my hands carefully, I held them under the tap and watched the water sluice off each and every soap bubble. Under no circumstances was I looking at Sheila, the line of gawking women behind her, or the mirror and my beet-red, obviously guilty expression. With a grim dead-end feeling, I dried my hands and tossed the paper towel into the garbage. Then I turned toward Sheila and fixed my eyes on her left shoulder.
“There,” I said coldly. “Satisfied?”
She shrugged, then said, “Are you?”
I wanted to slug her. I mean, why didn’t she just get it? Didn’t she ever fuck up? Had she never made the slightest itsy-bitsy little mistake?
“What business is it of yours?” I demanded. “What business is anything I do of yours?”
“It is when you kiss me,” she replied, her voice calm and deadly clear.
Panic swept me and I almost clapped a hand over her mouth. “I did NOT...kiss you,” I spluttered, taking a step back. “I was drunk. I wasn’t kissing you, I was drunk.”
By now every woman in the lineup had forgotten her need to pee and was eyeballing us frantically. Fortunately they were all complete strangers. With any luck, I would never see them again. Arms crossed, Sheila was also ignoring the row of fascinated expressions, her dark eyes flat on me, bright and full of hurt—hurt that had undeniably been caused by me, hurt that I was continuing to cause. Well, that was her fault, really. If she hadn’t come in here, looking for me when I so obviously didn’t want to see her, this conversation wouldn’t be happening.
“I just want to talk to you,” she said softly, her eyes getting even brighter. Then she started blinking rapidly, and I realized that she was trying to keep herself from crying. “Just...talk,” she added, her voice trailing off.
“Yeah, well,” I said, my eyes flitting everywhere but her face. “I don’t want to talk, okay?”
This time when I moved toward the door, she let me pass. The lineup of waiting women stepped back quickly, creating a path, and then I was out of there and letting the washroom door swing closed behind me. With a deep breath, I turned to head back to the arcade and saw Cam leaning against a nearby wall, a concerned expression on his face.
“There you are,” he said, coming toward me. “A girl asked me where you went and I told her, but you were taking so long I got worried.”
Behind me the washroom door opened and Sheila came bursting out. Hurt still glimmered in her eyes, but the desperate hungry expression was back and she looked very determined. Walking up to me, she held out a slip of paper. When I didn’t take it, she jammed it into the left front pocket of my jeans.
“Call me,” she said, leaning so close I could feel her breath on my face. Then she turned and strode off across the food court.
“That’s the girl who asked about you in the arcade,” said Cam, watching her go. “Who is she? What did she want?”
“Just someone I met at the Confed dance,” I said quickly. “It’s not important.”
“Confed?” asked Cam, looking startled.
“Yeah,” I said, shooting him a glance. “Why?”
His eyes dropped. “Nothing,” he said, but he seemed uneasy. “Hey, the movie’s about to start. We’d better get in line.”
I held out my hand and for a second, just the flicker of a heartbeat, he hesitated. Then he reached out, our hands connected and we were in sync again, headed down the mall toward the movie theater.
Chapter Nineteen
I spent Sunday in bed, riding out my cold and working my way through a box of Kleenex. Every now and then Mom or Dad would come into my room with some tea or chicken broth, and Keelie thudded in regularly on her Quidditch broom. Outside my window rain poured steadily down, and the phone beside my bed remained quiet. As the hours dragged by, Joc didn’t call me and I didn’t call her. Inside and out, everything felt the same— thick, gray and cold, like something out of The Egyptian Book of the Dead: Hail, Basti, I have not, did not, am not.
Mid-afternoon, I dragged myself downstairs for a grilled cheese sandwich. As I was going back up, I noticed a dog-eared copy of Hamlet sitting on the top shelf of the hallway bookcase. Pulling it out, I took it to my room and crawled into bed. When I opened the front cover, I found Dad’s name written on the overleaf—Daniel Brian Kowolski. The book was obviously one of his university texts and it got me thinking about him, trying to imagine him in his twenties, going to classes and hanging out with his friends. His girlfriends. How many had he had? What had they been like? What if one of them had become my mother? It would have meant an entirely different set of genes contributing to my makeup, and a very different me. Maybe then I would have turned out hetero. Maybe then I wouldn’t have been so fucked up.
But then I remembered that it was Dad who had the questionable uncle and sister. So having a different mother wouldn’t have solved the faulty gene problem. If only Dad had been infertile, and Mom had resorted to a sperm bank.
With a sigh I opened Hamlet to Act I, scene i, and started reading. The story was definitely geared for a head cold and a rainy day—poison, ghosts, insanity and talking to skulls. If, that is, you could understand half of what you were reading. Like Joc said, it was almost a foreign language. After looking up twenty or so ancient words in the dictionary, I gave up on all that to be or not to be-ing, closed the book and just lay in bed, listening to the air whistle through my stuffed nose. After a bit I realized that by blowing harder or softer, I could whistle different notes. It took a lot of concentration, but I’d managed to work my way through half of “Mary Had A Little Lamb” when my phone rang, interrupting my musical masterpiece.
Joc! I thought, and all thoughts of Mary and her lamb exploded out of the top of my head. Petrified, I lay staring at the phone. My sinuses were tap dancing and my heart doing absolute reggae. On the fifth ring I finally got it together, leaned over and picked up the phone.
“Hewwo?” I asked cautiously.
“Dyl—is that you?” asked Cam.
At the sound of his voice my heart took a sky dive, then slowly picked itself up. “Yeah, it’s me,” I said, trying to pull my voice down out of my nose. “My code is worse, and I’m sig in bed.”
Cam laughed softly. “You sound like it,” he said. “I caught a bit of the sniffles off you, but not that bad.”
“Mage sure you eat lots of chiggen soub,” I said, trying to be helpful, then lay there listening while Cam went off into howls of laughter. It sounded as if he would be enjoying himself for a while, so I reached for another Kleenex and tried to blow some of the haze out of my head. But that just set him off again. Finally he calmed down and started telling me about a CFL game he and Len had watched that afternoon.
“So, uh, what did she say?” he asked, changing the subject so abruptly that for a moment I didn’t know what he was talking about.
“What did who say?” I asked slowly.
“On the note,” said Cam. “The girl at the mall, remember?”
“Oh,” I said, my eyes darting to the jeans I’d worn yesterday. After taking them off last night, I’d thrown them across the back of a chair and climbed straight into bed. I’d felt so sick, I hadn’t even bothered to check the note.
“Nothing,” I said carefully. “I haven’t looked at it, actually.” Cam paused, as if thinking, then said, “Well, look at it now.”
Again my eyes darted to my jeans. Why was Cam so interested in this? After last night’s run-in with Sheila outside the girls washroom, he hadn’t mentioned her for the rest of the evening.
“Uh, I can’t,” I stammered, trying to ignore the guilt heating up my face. It was so hard to think with a head cold. “I threw the jeans into the laundry this morning. I guess I forgot about the note. Like I said, it wasn’t important.”
Silence stretched out on the other end of the line. “Cam,” I said nervously, “are you there?”
“Yeah,” he said quickly. “Are you?”
“Of course, I am,” I said indignantly, fighting a flash of panic. “Why are you asking me that? And why is this such a big deal to you? I don’t even know her name.”
Well, not her last name, I added guiltily inside my head.
Cam took a long breath, then let it out slowly. “It’s not a big deal,” he said quietly. “At least...Oh, never mind.”
“Never mind what?” I demanded, sitting up in bed. Suddenly my head felt ten times worse and my heart had graduated to a kick-ass thud. Power funk time, definitely.
“See,” said Cam. “Now you’re making a big deal out of it.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, glancing nervously at my jeans. “Hey, wait a minute,” I added, trying to keep my voice casual. “There’s something on the floor. Maybe the note fell out of my pocket when I took off my jeans last night.”
Placing the phone on the bed, I got up and pulled the note out of my jeans pocket. Then I climbed back into bed and picked up the phone.
“Here it is,” I said, spreading out the crumpled paper. “It’s just her name and phone number. Sheila Warren. Do you want me to give you her number?”
Cam gave a short laugh. “Hardly,” he said. “Why would I want to call her?”
“Exactly,” I said. “And why would I?”
“I dunno, Dyl,” he said. “She seemed to think you would.”
“Ah, she’s just got some crazy ideas in her head,” I muttered. “She needs a reality check, big-time.”
“What kind of crazy ideas?” Cam asked quickly. “I dunno,” I said. “They’re her ideas, not mine. It wasn’t me chasing her around the mall, was it?”
In the long pause that followed, I listened to Cam breathe. “No,” he said finally. “I guess it wasn’t. Look, I’m tired, and I’ve got a Physics test tomorrow. I’d better hit the sack.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, relieved. All this ducking around the truth was way too much work for my sick head. “See you at lunch tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Tomorrow. If you’re not too sick. Bye.”
The phone went dead, and I lay for a while, holding it as I imagined Cam lying motionless in the darkness of his room, both hands above his waist until he fell asleep.
Overnight my cold improved, so when Mom pushed me to spend another day in bed, I told her I couldn’t afford to miss an algebra class right now because I had a major test later in the week. Since math had admittedly never been one of my priorities, she gave me a suspicious look but let me out the door, and I biked straight over to Joc’s place. The morning was dismal and gray, and after a few blocks a thick, burning sensation in my sinuses told me that my head cold hadn’t improved as much as I’d hoped. Worse than that, my thoughts were absolutely all over the place. What in the world was I going to say to Joc? Would she even be home? It wasn’t raining today, but she might have asked Dikker to pick her up again, like last Friday. Since grade nine, when she’d started going out with him, it had been an unspoken thing between us—I double-rode her to school every morning until the snow fell, and then Dikker started picking her up.
But maybe since Thursday afternoon, that had changed. And maybe, when I knocked on the door, Tim would make sure he answered it just so he could deliver that essential bit of information to my face.
As usual I was going into a funk and also as usual, I needn’t have bothered. Just as I pulled up to the curb, the Hersches’ front door flew open, and Joc came jogging across the lawn. In spite of the cold day her jacket was flapping open and her hair looked half-combed, as if I’d caught her in the middle of getting ready. But all she said as she slid onto the seat behind me was, “Boot it quick, before big brother gets his grumpy ass to the door.”
So I took off down the street, my whole mind glued to the fact that this morning her hands were barely touching me—just her fingertips, and those just enough to keep herself balanced. Several blocks went by with neither of us speaking. Finally I worked my way past the burning in my throat and croaked, “You weren’t in English on Friday.”
Half a block away the Dundurn Street bridge came into view, and then we were coasting over it and leaving it behind.
“No,” said Joc, her voice flat, and left it at that. “So...what did you do all weekend?” I asked.
Up ahead was the corner that would take us onto Diefenbaker Avenue. Reluctantly I veered around it.
“Nothing much,” said Joc.
“See Dikker?” I asked casually.
“Yup,” she said.
So it was as I’d thought—I’d completely misinterpreted her actions last Thursday, and she was as tight as ever with Dikker. And today she was being distant with me because she was afraid I wouldn’t get that. Well, unlike hot lips Sheila, I did get it. And, more than anything, I wanted Joc to know that I got i
t.
Coasting up to the bike racks, I braked and let her slide off behind me. Then, before she could take off for Dikker’s locker, I said, “Hey, what’re you doing at lunch?”
“Dunno,” she shrugged, her eyes flicking across mine. With a start I saw they were red-rimmed and heavy-looking, as if she’d been crying. Turning toward the Dief, she stood fiddling with the zipper on her jacket. “Dikker’s working on stage props,” she added, not looking at me. “And, well...I don’t want to.”
This was my chance, I thought, my heart quickening. Now was the moment to prove to her that I understood completely.
“Come sit with me and Cam in the cafeteria,” I said, smiling at her. “I promised I’d eat with him, but you can joi—”
Joc’s eyes cut across my face, almost startled-looking, and the words died on my lips. “Nah,” she said, looking away again. “Not today, Dyl. I mean, Cam’s okay most of the time, but his friends...”. With a shrug, she started toward the school.
“Okay, see you in English,” I called after her, fighting a wave of panic. Walking away casually was just Joc’s way of showing me that Tim had been wrong. No big deal, I understood that. I got it. I wasn’t a hot lips Sheila.
“Oh yeah,” said Joc, glancing back at me. “We’re starting a new book today, aren’t we? 1984. I’m already halfway through it.”
Turning, she disappeared into the crowd.
The morning went by like thick glue. My head was so woozy it felt upside down, and all I wanted was to crawl into a dark hole and let the world go by. But that would have been a catastrophe. If I went home sick now, opting out of things for a few days, Joc was sure to grow even more distant. And there was no question—I had to see Cam as soon as possible. At the end of our phone call last night his voice had sounded so heavy, as if he was having second thoughts about us...as if he was ready to give up. He couldn’t give up, not now. Not when I was in the middle of this massive misunderstanding with Joc. I mean, what if I lost them both—the two most important people in my life—at the very same time? It couldn’t happen, it just couldn’t.
