The Journey Prize Stories 25

by Various

  Lucas took the bike outside. There was a parking lot in back with an old, rusted out bike rack pushed up against the side of the building; Lucas thought maybe if he locked it up there someone would eventually come along and steal it. It wasn’t like he could ever ride it himself, even if he took the basket off the handlebars. It wasn’t a practical bike for a man. And then there was the whole Laure thing. Laure with her soft, dark hair curling around her green bike helmet, smile like a little kid’s, all teeth and gums. It really wasn’t a practical bike for a man.

  After he had looped the flimsy lock through the front wheel to one of the rusting spikes of the bike rack, he leaned against the wall and pulled out a Belmont Mild. He rarely smoked anymore, since Laure left, but he had ten minutes to kill before his shift and thought the occasion called for it. He was just finishing when the red Civic pulled into the parking lot, one headlight busted out, plastic storage tubs from Canadian Tire bungeed to the roof rack. The driver was a woman in her forties, a bottle blonde with an expensive looking tan, looking almost too classy for the car. In the passenger seat there was a younger girl, obviously a daughter: same blonde hair as her mother, only natural. She opened the door. She was wearing an oversized Canucks jersey belted at her waist like a dress, a pair of Heelys, and a plastic tiara on her head. She smiled and waved at Lucas, but her mother swatted her hand down.

  “God, Casey, you’d think you just fell off the turnip wagon,” she said. She grabbed Casey’s hand and dragged her toward the door of the building. Casey turned around and stared at Lucas until the door closed behind them.

  Lucas had never even owned a blender before he moved to the little apartment above World Famous Comics. He had never owned a television or a set of tea towels printed with pictures of various herbs. Stuff had just somehow come to him over the years, left behind by various roommates: a vase carved with the image of Mayahuel, the Aztec goddess of fertility; pens from Canadian Blood Services; a shower curtain with a map of the world on it. Lucas had always just assumed that these things belonged to somebody else until one day he woke up and realized there was no one else there but him.

  Laure had been the last one to leave. Dave and his girlfriend, Julie, had moved out maybe three months earlier, and Lucas and Laure had never bothered to get anyone to take over their room. Before that, there must have been at least a dozen roommates. Lucas couldn’t be bothered to keep track. Pearl used to call them orphans.

  “Where’d your latest orphans take off to?” she’d ask every time one of the roommates moved out.

  “Adopted,” Lucas would always answer.

  Aside from being his neighbour, Pearl was also his landlady and technically his boss, although according to the other employees at World Famous she hadn’t been down to the store since her husband died. That was ten years ago. “Nate is in every single one of those silly comic books,” she told Lucas once. “And I just can’t stand to see him reduced to that.” Lucas wondered if the things his roommates left behind contained pieces of them. He pulled a Canadian Blood Services pen out of his pocket and stared at it, trying to see Kurt or Angela or Dave or whomever else it had belonged to. But it was pretty much still just a pen.

  And his apartment was still his apartment, no matter who else lived there. His name was on the lease and had been for the past five years, since he’d been a graduate student in the English department at York. Lucas had never thought about moving. The rent was good, the noise from the intersection below didn’t bother him, and his job was right downstairs.

  Laure used to complain about this all the time. “Your world is supposed to get bigger as you grow up, Lucas. Not smaller,” she’d say. But Lucas liked things to be contained. The grocery store, the library, the bar, a decent souvlaki: they were all within a block of World Famous, and this was as far into Toronto as Lucas was willing to go.

  Lucas came on his shift just as Mel was leaving. There was never more than one person working at World Famous at one time, except on Saturday afternoons or right before Christmas. Mel was sitting behind the counter writing in a Hilroy scribbler like the ones that Lucas used to use in elementary school. Lucas thought she was some kind of writer, although she didn’t ever talk about it. But Kyle, the kid who worked the weekends, had found some of her poetry online. Kyle liked to tell people he could find anything online. The poetry was all about crows and was on a website for a magazine that only published poetry by lesbians. Mel had never told Lucas that she was a lesbian, but she did have very short hair. Kyle and Lucas had had a good laugh over those poems, and sometimes Lucas felt as though Mel somehow knew about it.

  “Slow morning?” he asked, dropping his bag behind the counter.

  Mel nodded. “A couple of online orders came in about an hour ago,” she said without looking up from the scribbler. “I haven’t done anything with them.”

  “Okay,” said Lucas. They usually left the online orders for Kyle anyway. Lucas liked to think of it as a punishment for always bragging about his computer skills. Mel left without saying anything more to Lucas. Lucas sat on the stool behind the counter, which was still warm from Mel sitting on it. He put his elbows up and cupped his head in his hands. This was how he usually spent the first half hour or so of his shift, but today his head felt heavier. He would never admit it to anyone, but he hadn’t really been sleeping well since Laure left. He felt his eyes begin to close.

  He woke to something tickling his face. Opened his eyes to Casey drawing on him with a tube of bright pink lipstick. He reached up and grabbed something off the top of his head. The plastic tiara.

  “Aww, you looked so pretty,” Casey said.

  Lucas put the tiara down on the counter. He turned around and checked himself in the Silver Surfer mirror hanging on the back wall. Whiskers. Casey had made him into a cat. “Please tell me this comes off,” he said.

  Casey reached down and pulled a tissue out of one of her Heelys. “God,” she said, pushing it across the counter. “You’d think someone who worked in a comic book store would be a little more fun.”

  “You obviously haven’t been in a lot of comic book stores,” Lucas said, wiping at his nose. The lipstick left a faint pink stain on his skin.

  Casey put the tiara on her head. “Dude, I’ve never been in a comic book store,” she said. “My sister says that comic books are for losers.”

  Lucas sat back on the stool. “Well, I am a pretty big loser,” he said.

  “Me too,” said Casey. “I mean, that’s what my sister says.”

  “Uh huh,” said Lucas. He wondered how long he would have to ignore Casey before she went away. He pretended to be occupied with something on the computer. When he finally looked up, Casey was still looking at him. “What?” he asked.

  “What’s your name?” Casey asked.

  Lucas pressed some buttons with what he hoped looked like urgency. “Lucas,” he said.

  “My name’s Casey,” she said.

  “I know,” said Lucas. “I saw you outside with your mom.”

  “She’s not my mom,” Casey said, with noticeable venom. Lucas looked at her, surprised. Casey sighed. “Okay. She is my mom. But I like to pretend she’s not. That’s what Dylan told me to do, if she ever makes me mad.” She paused. Lucas didn’t say anything. “Dylan’s my sister, you know.”

  “Cool,” said Lucas.

  “Don’t you want to know where she is?”

  “No.”

  “She died.” Casey paused dramatically. “In a helicopter crash.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “She was on her way to the South Pole to catch a penguin. There was this penguin, see, it was blue. And the scientists, they wanted to figure out why it was blue, but they couldn’t catch it cause the blue penguin kept outsmarting them. But Dylan, she had this ability. With animals. She made them feel safe. So they sent her to the North Pole in a helicopter, but the guy driving the helicopter had just had a fight with his wife, and he drank a whole bunch of alcohol until he was drunk and then the plane crashed.” Casey
rested her head on the edge of the counter and looked at him. “And now the scientists will never know why the penguin was blue.”

  “Maybe he was cold,” Lucas said.

  Casey pouted. “Aren’t you going to tell me you’re sad for me ’cause my sister’s dead?”

  “I would,” Lucas said, “if I thought she really was dead.”

  “Whatever,” said Casey. “She went to live with my dad. In Saskatoon.” She straightened up and wandered over to the nearest shelf and ran her fingers along the book spines. “So she might as well be dead.” She pulled out a book. It was a graphic novel called Red Angels and Lucas knew it was anything but appropriate for a kid Casey’s age. But he didn’t say anything. She flipped it over, reading the back. Then she looked up. “I live upstairs, you know.”

  “So do I,” Lucas said.

  “Well, that makes us neighbours. And that means you have to be nice to me.” She sat on the floor in front of the counter then opened the book and started to read. Lucas turned back to the computer and opened Solitaire.

  Five hours later, Lucas was ready to close the store and Casey had finished Red Angels. Lucas had almost forgotten she was there. He had filed away two more online orders for Kyle to fill on Saturday, talked to a regular on the phone who wanted to know when the new Siege was coming in, and sent an email to his friend Mike in Alberta. And Casey had finished a book. “Can I ask you a question?” she asked Lucas.

  “No,” Lucas said.

  She kept talking anyway. “I know what a hand job is,” she said. “But I’m not sure what a blow job is. And the picture didn’t really make any sense.”

  “No,” said Lucas. “I’m not answering that. Ask your mom or something.”

  “My mom?” Casey threw the book on the counter. “My mom doesn’t know.” She narrowed her eyes at Lucas, who was counting up the deposit for the night. “Maybe I’ll ask Nana. I’ll tell her I read about it in a book you gave me.”

  “Christ,” said Lucas. He ripped the top off the deposit bag and stuffed it in an envelope. “Fine. A blow job is like a hand job, but with your mouth. Understand?” He banged open the back cupboard where they kept the safe, and started fumbling with his keys.

  “Yeah, I understand.” Casey was quiet for a few moments. Lucas stuffed the deposit bag in the safe and locked the door. He turned around. Casey was still staring at him. “But why do they call them ‘blow jobs’? Do you actually blow?”

  Lucas stared back. “How old are you?” he asked.

  “How old are you?”

  Silence. They both answered at the same time.

  “Thirty-four.”

  “Twelve.”

  Twelve. Lucas could hardly remember twelve, and he saw on Casey’s face that she could hardly picture thirty-four. He grabbed his bag and started walking around the store, switching off power bars. Casey followed him silently. When he got to the door, he flicked off the lights. The store was dark except for the neon glow of the Green Lantern lantern hanging on the wall. He looked at Casey. In the green light, she looked like a little alien.

  “You don’t really blow,” Lucas said. “It’s more like you suck. So I don’t know why they call it that.”

  “Have you ever had one?” Casey asked.

  Lucas had a momentary flash of Laure on her knees, looking up at him. He shook it off. “I’m definitely not answering that,” he said. He opened the door and gave Casey a push outside.

  On the way upstairs, Casey ran ahead of him. When she got to the top of the stairs, she turned around and said, “Can I come over?” She slid back and forth across the hall on her Heelys, pulling at a piece of her hair.

  “I’m going out,” Lucas lied. “Besides, don’t you think your mother is wondering where you are?”

  Casey’s face darkened. “My mother’s gone out,” she said. Then she rolled inside Pearl’s apartment and slammed the door.

  Four of the things Laure left in the apartment: a bottle of Bath and Body Works Vanilla Noir shower gel, a set of Egyptian cotton sheets, a copy of The Royal Tenenbaums on DVD, and the bike. The shower gel Lucas threw out. He never told Laure, but the smell of it always made him sick. The sheets were on their bed and hadn’t been washed since the last time Laure had done the laundry. The DVD, Lucas figured, was partially his anyway. But the bike really bothered him. He had bought it for her, after all, at a yard sale down the block the spring that she moved in. It was pink and green and had a basket attached to the handlebars with a plastic flower in the middle of it. It was exactly the type of thing Laure loved, and Lucas felt she should have been more sentimental about it.

  Laure’s father had been a hockey player in the nineties, a fourth-line journeyman who had played for twelve teams in eight years. Name a city with a hockey team and Laure had lived there, if only for a few months. Toronto had been her favourite, or so she had said. In every other city they had lived in downtown condos fifteen storeys above the street, but in Toronto they had a rented house near the university and Laure remembered backyard cookouts, neighbours with dogs, kids on bikes everywhere. When she came back, after finishing her undergrad in some isolated New England college town, she ended up renting one of Lucas’s rooms above World Famous. She ended up sharing Lucas’s own room, too, but that came later. There were no dogs, no cookouts. Just a comic book store and some IKEA furniture.

  One afternoon, just after Laure moved out, Pearl came across the hall with muffins. She liked to bake for Lucas, even though he’d told her a dozen times he didn’t like sweet things. “Where’d this orphan run off to?” she asked. She eyed the bike in the corner behind the sofa.

  “She didn’t run,” Lucas answered without thinking about it. “I mean, she didn’t run, because she was adopted.” He laughed. Pearl must have seen something in his face, because she left the muffins and went home without even asking him, the way she did sometimes, for a cup of tea from the teapot shaped like a rooster that, obviously, someone had left behind.

  For some reason, Casey only ever came into the store when Lucas was working. As far as Lucas could tell, Mel had never even met her. On the weekends, Kyle teased him, called Casey his “girlfriend” until Lucas punched him in the arm, hard. Casey’s mom, Lucas had never seen again, although he’d hear her sometimes, coming home late at night, stumbling through the hallway and scraping her key against the lock across the hall while Lucas was playing Call of Duty with the sound off so he wouldn’t wake Pearl. Whenever her mom came up in conversation, Casey would make up some elaborate lie.

  “She’s quarantined in one of Nana’s rooms,” she said once. “She caught malaria when we were in Southeast Asia.”

  “Don’t they have medicine for that nowadays?” Lucas asked.

  “Not for the type she has.” Casey dropped her voice to a whisper, the way she always did. She rolled up the sleeves of her cardigan, which was bright yellow, to reveal rows and rows of shiny metal bracelets crawling up her arm. “She was a ninja, you know. The three of us were. Team Ninja. That’s what the natives called us. We crept through the jungles of Tibet, searching for the evil warlord who was holding the princess hostage in a castle built out of vines high up in the trees. My sister nearly caught him, once, near the end. But then she had to choose between killing the warlord and saving my mom’s life. And here we are.”

  “There is so much wrong with that story,” Lucas said, “that I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “God, Lucas!” Casey slammed her little fists against the counter, and her bracelets sounded like breaking glass. “You have no imagination!”

  Lucas turned back to the computer. “You are not the first person to tell me that,” he said.

  “Well, you should have listened.” Casey rolled over to a box of books at the side of the counter. It was a shipment of the latest issue of Blood Ring. She pulled one out and started flipping through it. “Didn’t you ever want to do anything else?”

  Lucas grabbed the book from Casey and threw it back in the box. “Who are you, my
mother?” He lifted the box up onto the counter. “I have to price these.” He went back to the computer and pulled up the inventory screen. Casey kept watching him while he loaded the printer with labels. The machine started up, a rhythmic whirr and hiss as it spat out the price tags.

  “Wouldn’t you rather be, like, making a comic book than pricing a comic book?” she asked after a while. She pulled on a piece of her hair.

  “Nope,” said Lucas.

  “Why not?”

  The labels spilled out over the edge of the printer in a long loop down to the floor. Lucas picked it up. “Can we not have this conversation?”

  “You never want to have any conversation.”

  Lucas slammed the labels down on the counter. “Casey, I’m working,” he said, a little too loudly. Casey stared at him. Then she rolled away on her Heelys. He could hear her bracelets clinking down one of the aisles.

  Lucas sighed. He walked over to a shelf along the back wall and pulled a book out of one of the bins. He followed the sound of the clinking to the giant Iron Man cutout by the stairs midway through the store. Casey was sitting behind it reading a copy of Techno Wars 3.

  “You’re not much of a ninja with those bracelets on,” he said. Casey didn’t say anything. He held the book out to her. “Kaleidogirl,” he said. “She’s a kid who can see through time. Might be more your kind of thing.”

  Casey put down Techno Wars 3 and took the book from Lucas without looking at him. “See through time?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” Lucas sat on the bottom step. “Like, if she was looking at you, she could see you doing what you were doing now, but she could also see all the other things that had happened in this spot, all at the same time, all whirled together like a kaleidoscope.”

  Casey opened the book. “I wonder what she’d see.”

  Lucas shrugged. “Probably me, vacuuming the carpet or something.”

  “Maybe my grandfather,” Casey said.

  “Maybe.”

  She looked at Lucas, closing the book. “Was he nice?” she asked.