by Karen Rivers
You look around. A handful of people are conspicuously missing: X. And Cat. You notice without really noticing. You notice how uncomfortable the chair is and you notice that your ink-smudged hand has left a blue mark on your khaki pants. You think about knitting. Your mother used to knit apparently. Your dad told you in passing before he left. Maybe you should knit. Maybe she passed on to you some kind of magical knitting gene. You try to picture the kind of sweater you would knit yourself. Bulky and beige, you think. Comfortable and thickly warm. You’re staring into space, not thinking anything, when you realize you are staring at Joey, without meaning to. You feel defensive, you feel like saying, “I was thinking about knitting! Not you!”.
He winks at you. You glare back. Has he even noticed that you were gone? That you were sick? He belches into his cupped hand and then waves his hand around like he’s just performed an incredible party trick. Joanne, sitting on his left, giggles hysterically but he ignores her. Staring at you. His eyes are so blue that they look like marbles. Glassy, too. He’s probably baked. This makes you mad at him, even though he’s always baked. He passes you a note that says, “Where have you been? Did you fall down the rabbit hole?”
You send one back that says, “No.”
He throws his pen at you. You grab it and nod at him and half-smile, like you’d wanted his pen. You put it in your purse. Now he’ll have to ask for it back. You know for a fact that he only ever has one pen.
It’s really pretty sad that he’s the closest thing you have to a friend. Other than Courtney and Joanne, but you don’t care about them, so they don’t count. They might want to be your friend, but you don’t want them. Isn’t that how life goes? The people you want don’t want you, the wanters are unwanted. Courtney and Joanne with their matching highlights and overly careful eye makeup and future plans, well. They aren’t like real friends, they’re more like … accessories. People that you wear so that you aren’t naked. Being alone makes you feel naked. When you are with them, you are properly hidden.
You don’t really know anything about them.
You doodle your name in the margin of your notes. Some curlicues. A scribble that you colour in.
Psst, says Joey.
You don’t turn around. You wish you didn’t like him. Like him like that. You can tell he doesn’t like you. But it doesn’t stop you. You wish that his whisper didn’t make you flush with happiness. You really wish you could get a crush on someone safe or someone more obvious. You cough. He coughs. You turn to glare at him again but you feel like you’re over-acting your part. Your face reddens, no doubt making your pimples glow furiously under the flourescent lights, and you look away. Cover your chin with your hand. You jot down something in your notebook that resembles something that Mr. Beardsley is saying. Your pen is nearly out of ink and the dry sound of the nib scratching the paper makes you shudder.
Shit, you think to yourself. You feel like screaming it.
Then you are interrupted from your anger by the door suddenly flinging open and Cat lurching through. She can get away with that, you know it. Mr. Beardsley pauses, flinches, doesn’t say anything. Cat takes her time getting settled, her books slamming against her desk. Everyone watches.
You catch her eye and she winks at you. You stifle a laugh. You want to laugh.
Maybe she knows, you think. Maybe she gets it, on some level. Maybe…
Maybe not.
Cat leans back, like her desk chair is a lounge at the beach. Mr. B. starts talking again, stammering a bit. Cat starts gouging something into her desk with the back of her earring. From where you are sitting it looks like an X. Of course, it’s an X. She’s X’s girlfriend. Duh. Even Cat has a boyfriend. Pierced, weird Cat. And you don’t.
You’re too lethargic to do anything more energetic than watching the dust of fake wood falling to the ground beside her desk.
Your dad called last night to say he was coming on the morning flight. This morning. He’s probably arriving now. He was bubbling over with an idea for a new “project”, a thought which you find nearly unbearable. “Project” in his lingo means “book”. What is he going to write about next? What more can he say about you?
In spite of that, knowing he is home is making you feel sleepy. He’s probably there now. You hope the housekeeper got there first and cleaned up all the plates and dishes you left scattered everywhere. You hope she threw out all the casseroles.
You sigh noisily. You’re hyperventilating, you can tell, but that doesn’t stop you from continuing to sigh. You’re feeling light-headed. You get into this weird thing where you have to yawn and sigh all the time. Your dad says it’s classic hyperventilation syndrome. Anxiety, he says.
I’m not anxious, you tell him. I don’t care.
Still, the symptoms fit his description. You feel like you are there, but not quite there. Like you are at a distance from yourself.
Mr. Beardsley drones on and on. It’s like he’s in a trance or something. Like he doesn’t notice how no one cares. No one is listening.
Will he ever stop talking? you think. Fifty minutes can be forever.
You wake up when your head slams hard against your desk.
Shit, you say, this time out loud.
The bruise leaks across your forehead like ink dropped into water, you feel like you can actually sense it spreading. You grab your stuff and just leave, hurrying. Straight to the washroom, to a mirror, to inspect the damage. You see that the bruise somehow makes all your veins creepily hyper-visible. Like they were drawn onto your forehead with a blue ink pen. You comb your hair out of its ponytail and let it hang over your face. It doesn’t look any better, kinked where the elastic held it together, crooked. But at least you feel a bit concealed. The bell goes and you hesitate. The idea of going to your next class seems like too much. You sigh again (don’t hyperventilate, you remind yourself sharply), slide down onto the floor and just sit there, your hands resting on the cold tile.
You’re so sleepy. Has it been a week since you’ve slept? Really slept? Or were you asleep the whole time?
You start to fade, and nearly jump out of your skin when the door swings open barely missing your leg. Cat jumps over you and barely makes it to the toilet, throwing up like she’s about to turn inside out. Your heart hammers in your throat, the loud sound of her seems like too much to bear.
Oh, God, you say, when she stops. Are you okay?
I’m fine, she says, eyes glittery. Sweat on her brow. You can see her annoyance. She doesn’t like you, you think. You duck your head down. You were wrong. You’d thought there was a glimmer of something, but no. As usual, you imagined it. Like you imagine that Joey likes you back.
Hangover, she explains rudely. You know how it is.
She pushes past you to the sink. She puts her head right in it, gulping from the tap. Rinsing and spitting. You can’t imagine doing that. You think, germs. You think of all the filth.
Don’t… you start, but then remember it’s none of your business and she doesn’t like you anyway.
She smiles at you vaguely.
Nice bruise, she says.
Thanks, you say. You want to say something else, but you don’t.
You hate yourself for being intimidated by her. It’s so stupid. You’re so stupid. She leaves in a flurry of paper towel.
Fuck you, too, you say to her departing back.
Nobody really likes you.
Finally, you hoist yourself up of the ground. Your pants are damp. You feel filthy and disgusting, like the smell of Cat’s vomit is clinging to you even though it can’t be. It didn’t touch you. You’re afraid of throwing up yourself. You hate that feeling so much, food punching at the back of your throat, like choking in reverse.
You shudder and push open the door. Fall back out into the stream of students moving from one class to the next. Let them envelop you.
I’m invisible, you tell yourself. And you reach up to press on the bump on your head because at least the part that hurts jerks you back int
o the moment. You can’t slip away while it hurts.
X.
Chapter 10
I try to swing the club with one arm. When I was learning this game, I remember my old teacher showing me how you only need one arm to play. Your left. Your right hand just rests there, he said. The left does all the work. He had a drill that he used to make me do where I hit bucket after bucket with my left hand. I can’t do it at all now. I’m all off-balance. Fuck it, I think. It’s pointless anyway. Why am I practicing? I won’t be in the tournament this weekend, that’s for sure. The cast will be on for 12 weeks, says the doctor. Twelve weeks is forever. I’m screwed. I’ll be so out of practice by spring, there is no way I’ll get scouted.
It’s over. No golf scholarship for me. Makes it easy when your choices are narrowed, huh. Makes you realize what a great thing you just fucked up.
Thwack, I hit the club into the mat, hard, jarring my left arm. The lady in the next cubicle misses her shot and says, fuck.
You said it, I say out loud and she looks over.
Broke your arm, huh, she says.
No kidding, I say.
She turns back to her game. She has her hair in one of those tight braids, I don’t know what they’re called. It’s golden and shiny and swings on her back like a rope. She’s pretty for an older woman. Half-heartedly, I line up a ball and try again, flinching when I hit the ground behind it instead. My left arm twinges. And it’s not like my right arm doesn’t hurt bad enough. In its big white fucking cast. I’m such an idiot.
I probably should have let her fall. That sounds so mean, but maybe she wanted to. Maybe she should have broken her arm.
I caught Cat. When she fell.
I didn’t even feel it when the bone snapped, but I saw it on the X-ray. A clean line, like it was drawn there with a Sharpie.
I flew. I saw her start to fall, and I flew. I couldn’t help it. I guess I am some kind of super-hero after all. It was like instinct, like an animal. I flew before I thought of it myself, I was in the air before it occurred to me that I could do that. I could save her that way.
The big fucking punchline of this great fucking joke is that I saved her life and she didn’t even thank me. She didn’t say anything, just kind of shook for a minute. Trembled. Reminded me of a kitten once that we found curled up in the heating unit of the trailer. You’d think it would have fried, but it didn’t. Skinny and starving. We took it to the pound.
She should have fucking said something, that’s all I’m saying. Acknowledged her stupid risk taking, fallen all over herself to apologize. Anything normal. Anything nice.
But no, not Cat.
After I caught her, she kind of paused and then pushed herself off me, like I was holding her back. All but fucking ran away. I guess what it comes down to is that she’s just the kind of person who just expects to be saved. Takes it for granted, like she’s been caught for her whole life. She just expects someone to be there to catch her every time. I don’t know if she saw me flying. Or felt it. I don’t think she could have, because she would have said something. Wouldn’t she have said something?
She must have felt it, though. That feeling of being lifted.
But if she did, would she think it was real? Or just part of her drunken haze, a blur of goings-on that happened while she was spinning colours in her head? I hate that she drinks. I hate that she smokes. I hate it all. Drunk girls are disgusting and she was as drunk as she’s ever been. I could tell by the way she flopped into me, loose limbed, bleary.
I’m such a selfish jerk that my first thought wasn’t, Oh good, I saved her. It was, What if someone saw me? Followed right away with, Way to be grateful, you bitch.
Aren’t I nice? I’m a superhero with a chip on my shoulder. I’m a super-asshole.
Funny twist is that I didn’t even know that my arm was broken until I woke up this morning and felt like I’d been hit by a fucking truck. It didn’t hurt when it happened. How can that be? The doctors at the hospital said they couldn’t believe that I waited so long to come in. They didn’t understand how I could not notice it until the morning.
I honestly didn’t. I think it was all the adrenalin maybe. And the flying, well it makes me feel both separate from myself and more a part of myself than ever, but it’s like I’m disoriented from my body somehow. I just didn’t feel the pain. Does that make sense?
Does any of this make sense?
I’m tired.
I’m so so so tired.
You know what I want? I want to go to your place, where you are, and just crawl into bed beside you. Not to jump you or anything, but just to lie next to you. How fucking lame does that sound? Not only does it sound like a horrible crime, it sounds disturbing. But I still want it. I can’t understand it myself, so don’t ask me to explain. It just seems like maybe that’s the only place where I might be comfortable. I might be okay.
Maybe I’m just exhausted. I’m talking crap because of that. The fatigue, the kind that punches you in the head and forces you to lie down and sleep wherever you are.
I’m mostly just so tired of Cat and her stunts and her neediness and her pushing me away and her pulling me back and all her … stuff. I’m tired of the way she always has to get attention. The way she pushes the envelope. The way she pushes me. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been married to her for twenty years and there’s no way I can be free of her, then I think, what? I can dump her whenever I want. I can get away.
Then I want to go back and save her again.
Stupid, huh.
I’m so tired of her.
I guess if I hadn’t caught her, maybe she would have died. It was a long drop and concrete isn’t a soft landing, not even for me, especially with someone in my arms.
What was she thinking? I know she’s wild, but I didn’t think she was suicidal.
Ka-pow.
Ka-pow.
Thwap, I hit a good one, even though moving my body to do it feels like it takes every drop of energy in the world.
Nice one, says the lady next to me.
Thanks, I say. We both watch it vanish into the distance, me squinting of course, I can’t really see it land. I try to do it again and the ball wobbles off the tee and rolls about four feet.
Shit, I say.
Not your best, she says. Probably because I’m watching. I’m heading out anyway.
See ya, I say automatically.
Yeah, she says, tossing her braid over her shoulder and lifting her clubs.
I hit a few more. I’m angry. My anger feels like hunger or something worse. Cramps in my belly. I never play well when I’m angry, even with two good arms.
In my head, I keep seeing Cat leaning over and pushing off into the blurry nothing below her. Laughing. Was she laughing?
She’s crazy.
You know, I’d been there before, to that place. I didn’t know that Troy was Cat’s uncle, she never mentioned it and I’m sure she knew that I took Mutt there last summer with some other kids from his playgroup. She always knows where I am. You’d think she would have mentioned it then, but she didn’t. Those kids were cute, they really were. They called me Uncle Eggs. They were great. I even climbed around inside those stupid castles. Let the kids go down the slides. It’s safe for kids, that place. But they stay inside the tunnels. They don’t crawl around on them like jackasses.
I swing the club aimlessly. Whoosh. Whoosh. The feel of the air it pushes by my body gives me a jolt of energy. A bit of a jolt, anyway. Enough to keep me awake. I don’t even know why I’m still playing. It’s just habit, I guess. Feels like something to do to get through my work shift, I always take an hour or so to practice.
I don’t bother teeing up a ball. What’s the point? It’s freezing and the range is all but deserted. My arm is killing me. I’m obsessively thinking about the flying, the catching, the Incident, the moment when it could have all fallen apart. The truth is that I’m fucking terrified.
If I get caught, then what?
What happens next? T
o me? To anything?
To be honest, I’m freaking the fuck out.
I force myself to hit more balls, fall into the rhythm. The safe rhythm of golf.
Golf is safe. Golf is good. It’s easy. It’s Zen.
What if Cat says something? What if she tells? Then what?
What if she doesn’t remember?
What if she does?
That’s it, my biggest fear. It makes bile rise in the back of my throat and I nearly throw up, right there on the practice mat. The big “what if”: What if I have to explain?
I can’t.
I feel like a freak. Like my heart’s beating wrong, like I’m breathing wrong, like I’m moving wrong, swinging wrong. I’m out of sync with myself, with everyone, with the whole world.
I guess that maybe I AM a freak. I’m a huge freak and if anyone finds out they’ll probably take me away somewhere. And do what, I don’t know. I picture it like a bad science fiction film, electrodes on my head, some kind of cage. Dumb, I know. But I don’t want that. I don’t even want to be able to fly. I don’t want the responsibility of it. I don’t want any of it.
I’m so angry with Cat. I’m so angry. Like she’s playing with me somehow. Breaking up, getting back together. It’s like she’s not even my friend anymore. She’d sell me out for almost anything, if she could get something out of it, she would. She’d tell. I don’t know how I know, but I do. That’s just who she is. She’s someone who sprays the messy truth out there for everyone to see, fuck the consequences. Fuck everyone. That’s Cat. She’s feeling something, whatever it is, and BAM. Everyone wears it.
Like I think she fell on purpose. She was trying to hurt me and she did, but probably not in the way that she meant it. She’s so fucked up in the head. I don’t know what I’m doing with her anymore.
I hit another ball and then for good measure, I smash the club against the ground a few times. The grass is frozen as hard as steel and the blades snap. I do it again, too hard. The head breaks off my club, my favourite driver. Deer’s gift to me. It was expensive. Too expensive. I know she saved for ages. I almost start crying.
