Chicken Girl

by Heather T. Smith

  A flash of green popped from the blur, again and again and again. Then, a voice.

  “You want some music?”

  I slowed to a reluctant glide. It was Eve, cross-legged on top of the concessions counter.

  I smiled. “You choose.”

  She reached behind the counter. A moment later, Queen filled the arena.

  I burst out laughing.

  “Go on,” she said. “Skate.”

  I was Mrs. Fahrenheit alright. I was two hundred degrees of hot shit. Was I turning the world inside out? Probably not. The world was the world.

  I looked over at Eve. She was eating popcorn and watching my every move. Next to her were two slushies. One had my name written all over it. Literally. In lime-green Sharpie.

  I had only come for a casual skate, to get back into the groove, but with the music pumping and Eve watching I decided to give it my all. I combined my chicken moves with my skating skills. I hopped and I skipped and I jumped. I shimmy-shimmy-kicked and I wiggled my butt. I grapevined and did a kick-ass pirouette. As the song approached its end I knew what I had to do—I slid across the rink on my knees and collapsed in a dramatic heap. I stayed there for a good thirty seconds after the song ended. The effect was staggering. Moments later so was I. Eve helped me hobble off the rink.

  “And this,” she said, “is why we wear kneepads when we skate.”

  “It was supposed to be a casual practice,” I said. “Just to get back into the groove.”

  She sat me down at the snack bar and gave me ice for my right knee, which was already beginning to bruise.

  “And here’s a slushie,” she said. “It has your name on it. Literally.”

  It was like we were psychic or something.

  I raised my cup in the air. “To good friends.”

  She squinted at my eyes. “You know, this classic forties aesthetic you’ve got going on is verging on boring. Maybe try some colored liner. Or some darker shadow.”

  I raised my slushie up higher. “Eve.”

  She smiled, picked up her cup, and tapped it against mine. “To good friends.”

  While I took a long drink, she pulled the lime-green Sharpie out of her pocket and popped the lid off.

  “What are you doing with that?” I asked.

  She leaned forward. “Lining your eyes in a more dramatic fashion.”

  I pulled back. “Not with indelible ink you’re not.”

  “Taylor Swift did it once,” she said. “During a makeup emergency on a plane.”

  I grabbed the marker and put the lid back on it. “Well then, Taylor Swift is a friggin’ nutbar.”

  She slipped the Sharpie back into her pocket. “Maybe I could bring my makeup kit over sometime,” she said. “I’d be happy to try to make you look less boring.”

  I leaned forward, took a good long hard look at her. It was as if someone had dipped a paintbrush into rust-colored paint and, with a gentle flick of the wrist, added a sprinkling of character across her face.

  I smiled. “I’d like that.”

  * * *

  I settled on my bed with my leg rested on a pillow. Cam came in with an icepack.

  “I called Mr. Chen. He said you always did strike him as a skiver.”

  I laughed. “What’s a skiver?”

  Cam put the icepack gently on my knee. “Someone who skips work, I think.”

  I patted the bed. “Stay awhile?”

  He got comfy beside me.

  “Thanks for helping with the photo shoot,” I said.

  “You’re welcome, Pops.”

  I pictured him in his headgear and heels.

  “Go on,” he said. “Ask. I know you want to.”

  He could read me like a book. “Do you think you’ll go back to boxing?”

  He smiled. “Promise you won’t be mad?”

  “Mad about what?”

  “I’ve been back at the gym for months.”

  “You have?”

  “I didn’t tell you,” he said, “because I didn’t want you to make a big deal about it.”

  “Good call,” I said. “Because I would have.”

  He stared at the ceiling.

  “The thing is,” he said, “boxing didn’t seem to fit in. Not once I came out. I didn’t expect that people would treat me differently. But they did. The girls at school were suddenly desperate to be my friend. Ooh, Cam, let’s go to the mall. Ooh, Cam, do my makeup. It’s not that I didn’t want to do those things—I loved every glorious minute of it. It just seemed to overshadow everything else. Even some of the teachers jumped on the Cam bandwagon. Oh, Cam, could you write about your experience as a gay teen for the school newspaper? Oh, Cam, we need someone with flair to decorate the gym for the dance. People expected me to act a certain way, so I did. I let a side of myself slip away. I didn’t mean to—it just happened.”

  I knew what he meant. I’d spent months slipping away too.

  “That photo we took yesterday?” he said. “I posted it on Instagram. I captioned it Coming Out.”

  I smiled. “I like that.”

  “What will you do with your photos?” he asked.

  “Lewis and I uploaded them to a pinup thread on Reddit.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “People might say mean things.”

  I shrugged. “They might say good things too.”

  He leaned over, kissed my nose.

  “Cam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry for being so selfish all the time. You were right; it’s not always about me.”

  He smiled. “Don’t worry, Pops, I’m used to you being my”—he paused for effect—“narcis-sister.”

  I laughed. “Good one.”

  He reached out, moved a strand of hair from my face. “I’m glad we made up. I hate it when things are tense between us.”

  “Me too,” I said. “It’s so”—I paused for effect—“unsibilized.”

  He groaned in defeat. “Damn you, Poppy.”

  I inched closer to him. My heart fluttered at the thought of life without him.

  But that would never happen.

  There was a big layer of superglue between us now.

  I thought of what happened in the back room at Bliss.

  “Cam?” I said. “Will you be okay?”

  His face was sad but hopeful. “I don’t know. Maybe. I think so?”

  I looked into his eyes. “Say something funny, Cam.”

  “I’ve been reading the thesaurus lately,” he said, “because a mind is a terrible thing to garbage.”

  He reached for my pinkie. “Do you remember our very first pinkie promise?”

  I smiled. “It was in the womb. You punched through your amniotic sac and into mine and you grabbed my teeny-tiny baby finger and promised to love me forever.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I remember it clearly.”

  The End

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Feedback was vital to the writing of this book. Special thanks to Nicolas Martinez—for your honesty, your openness, and your enthusiasm. Thanks also to fellow author Robin Stevenson, and to my roller derby go-to girl Kelly Fry (aka Vex Murphy).

  Many thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts. Your generous funding is much appreciated.

  As always, a tip of the hat to my agent, Amy Tompkins. Your guidance is invaluable.

  Last, but not least, heartfelt thanks to Lynne Missen and Peter Phillips. Your keen insights strengthen my writing. I am grateful.

  Don’t miss

  Winner of the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award

  Shortlisted for the OLA White Pine Award, the Amy Mathers Teen Book Award, and the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction

  A Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book of 2017

  It’s Newfoundland, 1986. Fourteen-year-old Bun O’Keefe has lived a solitary life in an unsafe, unsanitary house. Her mother is a compulsive hoarder, and Bun has had little contact with the outside world. What she’s learned about life comes from the random books a
nd old VHS tapes that she finds in the boxes and bags her mother brings home. Bun and her mother rarely talk, so when Bun’s mother tells Bun to leave one day, she does.

  Hitchhiking out of town, Bun ends up on the streets of St. John’s. Fortunately, the first person she meets is Busker Boy, a street musician who senses her naivety and takes her in. Together they live in a house with an eclectic cast of characters: Chef, a hotel dishwasher with culinary dreams; Cher, a drag queen with a tragic past; Big Eyes, a Catholic school girl desperately trying to reinvent herself; and The Landlord, a man whom Bun is told to avoid at all cost.

  Through her experiences with her new roommates, and their sometimes tragic revelations, Bun learns about the world beyond the walls of her mother’s house and discovers the joy of being part of a new family.

  Read on for an excerpt…

  CHAPTER ONE

  She yelled, “Go on! Get out!” So I did. It wasn’t easy. The path to the door was filled in again. I tried to keep it clear. But it was like shoveling in a snowstorm. There was only so much I could pile up on either side before it started caving in again. Not that I left the house much.

  At one point I had to turn sideways and suck in. I wondered how she did it. She was over three hundred pounds. As I inched forward I saw frozen smiles through a clear plastic bin. Barbie Dolls, $10 As Is.

  I knew without looking there’d be some without limbs.

  I tripped on a lamp and fell on a bike. She didn’t even laugh. The only sound was the tick-tick-tick of the bike’s spinning wheel. I watched till it slowed to a stop.

  I took one last look at her before I disappeared behind a mountain of junk. She was nestled into a pile of garbage bags, a cup of tea balanced on her chest, and I wondered, how will she get up without me?

  Boxes and bags lined the walls. As I squeezed down the hall I said therianthropy over and over ’cause I liked the way it bounced in my mouth. It was one of the words I said out loud when I hadn’t used my voice in a while. It meant “having the power to turn into an animal.” I’d read it in an old anthropology textbook and I thought, Wouldn’t it be nice if my mother could turn herself into a hummingbird? That way she could flit in and out through the piles of junk that filled every nook and cranny of the house. It was a nice thought, her being a shape-shifter. Maybe, I decided, that’s how I should remember her.

  * * *

  —

  I walked down our laneway with my arms crossed over my chest. I had forgotten my jacket. I wouldn’t go back for it. Not after the trouble it took me to get out.

  I counted Mississippis down the long gravel road. By the time I reached the highway I’d had two coughing fits. She did the trek every day. An empty wagon on the way into town, a full one on the way back. I figured she had exceptional lungs.

  At the main road I stuck out my thumb. What I knew about hitchhiking came from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It came home in a box of VHS tapes. When I told her we didn’t have a player she said, “There she goes, never satisfied, always asking for more.” When I pointed out that I had asked for nothing and was simply stating a fact, she didn’t talk to me for days. Months later a VHS player showed up and I popped in the tape. I watched it on the floor model TV she’d pulled home on a wooden toboggan. It had a missing button so I had to change the channel with a pair of pliers. The screen had fuzzy lines going through it, which made the movie even scarier. The hitchhiker wanted to kill people. I had no intentions of killing anyone so I figured there was no harm in sticking out my thumb on the main road.

  I went to St. John’s. Seemed as good a place as any. Only two hours away and easy to disappear into.

  * * *

  —

  I figured there were places for people like me, people whose mother said, “Go on! Get out!” After all, there were places for people like Jimmy Quinlan. He was in the box with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. He drank too much alcohol and lived on the streets of Montreal. Just one of the many “derelict human beings in Canada—living their lives around a bottle of cheap wine, rubbing alcohol or even, on a bad day, aftershave lotion.”

  I watched the documentary so much I’d memorized the script. Alone in the house I’d recite it. Sometimes I’d say aftershave lotion, over and over, putting the emphasis on shave, just as the narrator had. I’d copy his gravelly voice too. I’d say, “Quinlan’s nerves are raw,” till I wasn’t me anymore; I was a faceless man in the TV.

  I walked along Duckworth Street and asked the first person that looked like they might know. I waited till he finished his song.

  “Any missions around here?”

  “Missions?”

  “Yes. Where alcoholics with no homes go.”

  He smiled. “You’re an alcoholic, are you?”

  “No. But I have no home.”

  “Sorry. I don’t know of any missions.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  I must have looked doubtful ’cause he said, “Why are you asking me? Do I look like a homeless alcoholic?”

  He looked nothing like Jimmy Quinlan or the other derelict human beings. For one thing, he had teeth. But he was begging, which is what Jimmy Quinlan did within the first two minutes of the film. He stopped cars and people on the busy streets. “Bonjour, monsieur! Bonjour, monsieur!”

  “You look like a normal person,” I said. “But you are begging.”

  He gathered the loose change from the guitar case in front of him. “I’m not begging. I’m busking.”

  “So you have a home?”

  “I never said that.”

  “So you don’t have a home.”

  He fit his guitar into the guitar-shaped space and squinted at me. “Who are you?”

  “Bun O’Keefe.”

  He snapped the lid shut and hopped to his feet.

  “First time in the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “Hitchhiked.”

  “You shouldn’t do that.”

  “Why not? I wasn’t going to murder anyone.”

  He gave me a funny look and headed down a steep hill toward the harbor. He didn’t say good-bye so I followed. When he went into a coffee shop, I stood behind him in line, and the girl behind the counter said, “You two together?” and I said, “Yes.”