Hell's Hotel

by Lesley Choyce

  The sight of the needle and the drop of blood was enough to make her feel she was going to pass out. She tried to stand up but fell onto Megan. Finally, she got her bearings. Everyone was looking at her in a curious way, as if to say, What’s the problem?

  Tara took a deep breath, tried to act cool, tried to reduce the panic building up inside her. “Gotta go,” she said, as casually as she could muster.

  “Later,” Megan said.

  But as she walked out of the apartment and onto the street she decided there would be no later.

  Tara didn’t tell her mother where she’d been after school. Her mother was all aglow about her course and her meeting with the gallery owners who were eager to exhibit some of her framed photographs. “At one place they said I might get three hundred dollars for a single print. How was school?”

  “Okay,” Tara answered.

  “Anything interesting happen?”

  “You know. Nothing much. It was pretty boring, most of it.”

  “But you liked it okay?”

  “I like the school,” she said.

  That night her father called and talked to her for half an hour. “I miss you, Tara. But I’m glad you’re with your mother. You think it’s going to work out there?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” Tara decided not to tell her father about the sleeping accommodations. She knew he’d be angry at her mom if it turned out his daughter was stuck in the living room while the second bedroom was used to develop photographs.

  “Meet any new friends?”

  “Some.”

  “What are they like?” A dumb parent question if ever there was one.

  “They’re very nice,” she said. “Very generous.” She imagined giving a true description of her “friends.” She imagined describing the scene at Matthew’s brother’s apartment.

  That night, Tara heard shouting in the streets. She heard glass breaking, people screaming. She got up and woke up her mother. “Shouldn’t we call the police or something?”

  “I’m afraid it won’t do much good. Every once in a while you hear that around here. I don’t much like it either, but you’ll get used to it. Vancouver’s a big city, remember?”

  So this was all part of life in the big city.

  For the rest of the week Tara avoided Megan. Megan took the hint after the third time she was snubbed and called Tara a snob. It hurt a little, but Tara decided it was better than getting in with Megan’s crowd. The only problem was that Tara was having a not-so-great time getting to know anyone else. And Megan turned out to have the biggest mouth on the high-school campus. First she had told everyone about Tara being at Matthew’s brother’s — and everyone knew what went on there. Second, Megan started talking up the fact that the new kid was very much into her school work, very preppy and very pretentious.

  The labels stuck hard and fast, and it seemed that no one wanted to find out if the situation was otherwise. Tara found herself turning into a real loner. Where once she had tried to start up conversation with kids she didn’t know, now she found herself just not bothering. Ten days after her visit to the drug den, Matthew’s brother got busted. This started up a rumour that Tara was responsible for blowing the whistle.

  In truth, she had considered phoning the cops, anonymously. She knew these were not just kids getting kicks from something harmless. These were serious drug users who might end up like that guy from Bone Music. She had thought it might be the right thing to do, but she had felt unsure of herself here in Vancouver. She could never bring herself to get on the phone.

  But everyone had known about Megan and the guys and where they went. Getting busted was inevitable. Nonetheless, Tara found herself shunned even more. What kind of a crazy, mixed-up place was this anyway?

  After two weeks in Vancouver, life had grown worse, not better. Her mother knew she was unhappy, and so she took her for a walk through Stanley Park. The trees were huge and the forest was so beautiful with the sunlight filtering down from three-hundred-year-old Douglas fir trees. There were ferns that were taller than her. Along the shoreline, she could see whales off in the distance, dolphins closer in. The totem poles were like something out of a dream. She loved the smell of the forest, the feel of walking along the shoreline and the paths that led deep, deep into the forest like in some fairy tale story. It was in such contrast to the life she had been introduced to by Megan, the city life of kids in Vancouver.

  “Give it time,” her mother said as they walked beneath the canopy of green.

  “I feel as if I don’t belong here.”

  “But look at how beautiful it is. There’s no other place quite like this on earth.”

  “Yeah,” Tara said. “Maybe I’d be happier living in a cabin in the middle of a rain forest with trees like this. That I could handle.”

  “You think you’d really like to live in the woods?”

  “I don’t know. I just know that things aren’t easy.”

  “You used to be good at making friends. What’s the problem?”

  It wasn’t really true. Tara had never really been good at making friends. She had Josh and she had known Jenn for such a long time. Josh had been attracted to her because she was smart and always a bit on the outside, not just a follower. And Jenn — well, they had just hit it off when they were in grade six. Each knew there was something different about them, and that had been enough to get things going. “Maybe I could just transfer. I think I’m having a hard time because of the school. The kids just don’t like me.”

  “But the principal seemed so nice.”

  “She is nice. And they play music instead of ringing those annoying bells between classes, but I think I’d be better off some place a little more ...” she groped for a word, an unlikely one. “A place more traditional.”

  Tara’s mother was truly surprised. “I never thought I’d hear you say that. I’m sorry you don’t like it here.”

  “It’s okay. It’s not your fault. But can we talk about it?”

  “Sure. We can both talk to your principal, see what she thinks. I’m sure she’ll be very open and helpful. You’ve only been there a couple of weeks. You haven’t really settled in. So it might be just as easy to try another school. There are a lot of high schools in the city. You can take the bus.”

  Tara and her mother sat on a large boulder by the shore and looked back towards the skyline of the city. She wasn’t sure she wanted to live with long bus rides through the city. Not this city. In Halifax she had always felt at home, safe. The only time she had felt otherwise was that one legendary and horrifying night she’d spent away from home with Jenn. But Vancouver was different, just too different. She’d never been a scaredy-cat, almost never afraid of anything.

  But now, when she went to her locker or when she saw one of Megan’s friends staring at her or when she woke up in the middle of the night and heard a bottle break on the street, she had to admit she felt scared. The girl who had always said she could handle anything was realizing that she spent a lot of her life uncertain, uncomfortable, and even afraid.

  Needed

  Tara found herself sitting alone in her mother’s apartment every night. She was getting used to it. She thought about putting on her jacket and going out on the streets, just to wander around. She’d probably meet somebody. But the Vancouver streets at night seemed pretty bizarre. In the day, it all seemed so friendly; but at night — screams, broken bottles, police sirens. Tara didn’t think she was ready to be out there alone.

  Alone. The word haunted her. Just her and MuchMusic again. Not much of a date. There was that guy again on TV. That writer with another weird poetry video: sitting with a steering wheel in a field of flowers, drinking from a can of motor oil, playing guitar in a junkyard. She remembered the last time she had seen this video on Much. Her living room. At home. Josh had just broken up with her.
Actually, Josh looked pretty good to her in retrospect. Maybe she should have been nicer to him, more supportive about his newspaper. Maybe she’d made a mistake. Maybe she’d made a lot of mistakes.

  She watched music videos until she felt brain-dead. Checked the clock. Midnight. Her mom wasn’t home yet. She was beginning to see that her mother really did have a whole new life here. Non-stop activity. Tara switched to the CBC News. If she was going to get to sleep she figured the only way to do it was to watch the CBC News.

  Death and destruction in the Middle East. People fighting in the streets in Africa. Everybody worrying about global warming. The prime minister discussing the economy. That was the one that had her close to comatose.

  “This just in. Dramatic footage of a fire in Halifax tonight.”

  Halifax. Tara returned from zombieland, her eyes wide open.

  “An abandoned building in downtown Halifax caught fire tonight and is still burning.”

  The image on the screen was unmistakeable: Hell’s Hotel. Burning. Completely out of control. Flames were shooting high into the sky.

  “Firefighters are battling the flames in the building, but the fire chief says it is too unstable to enter.”

  A reporter came on from Halifax. He was a half block away from the fire, held back by a tape line set up by police.

  “As you can see, the flames reach high up into the night sky. The building itself has been commonly known as Hell’s Hotel, because it has been a favoured shelter to local kids living on the street. It’s possible that someone in the building, whether accidentally or intentionally, set the fire you now see.”

  Behind the reporter, the police were holding back a small group of angry kids. Tara thought she recognized the girl named Courtenay and maybe Charlotte’s Web in the crowd.

  “You gotta go in there!” someone was shouting at the firefighters. “People are still inside!”

  The reporter took the cue and pushed the microphone towards one of the firefighters who was near the police line. “What about that? Are you certain there is no one inside?”

  The firefighter looked at the camera, then away. “It’s been decided that no one will go inside. The structure was unsafe before the fire. Now it’s just impossible. We don’t know for certain if anyone is in there. We would be risking the lives of our men. Under these circumstances that would be unwise.”

  And that was the end of the story. Cut to commercial.

  Tara clicked off the TV. She felt like someone had just hit her on the head with a hammer. She was stunned. But her head was swarming with feelings, thoughts, images, fears. Her own night in Hell’s Hotel came back to haunt her. There had been candles. And someone had a camp stove. A fire could have started any time.

  Or someone might have grown tired of having street kids around and decided to torch it just for fun, with the kids still inside.

  It could have been her in there tonight. Everyone upstairs might have been asleep. The only way out would have been down the ladder. Craig would have been up there, in charge, ready to get the ladder down. But what if the smoke had been too much? They might all be trapped up there.

  Why hadn’t the fire department got there earlier? Why did they refuse to go inside? If this had been a downtown bank tower — the TD Building or the MT&T tower, it would have been a different story. If it had been the Prince George Hotel, it would have been a different tune. But this was Hell’s Hotel. Nobody really cared who died in the fire. That’s what Tara was thinking. A stream of horrifying possibilities shot through her mind. Faces, kids she knew, kids she had talked to, kids who didn’t seem to have any alternative other than staying at Hell’s Hotel. The very name of the place seemed so horribly accurate tonight.

  She got up and stared out the window onto the now quiet city street. Her mind was still racing but then it came to a skidding stop on one possibility: Jenn. What if Jenn had been in there? She tried to reason it out. How long would she have really stayed with Rob? Not long. None of her relationships with guys had ever lasted. Three weeks seemed to be the limit. That meant that there was a good chance she was back on the street. Tara hadn’t talked to Jenn. That had been part of Tara’s plan. Make a clean break from the past. Too clean.

  Now the possibility seemed very real. Jenn could have been in Hell’s Hotel tonight. Maybe she was even in there at this very minute. Or maybe she was already dead. Tara envisioned every detail of the upstairs: the candles, the blankets, and newspapers. The old mattresses. And where was it Jenn had slept? They had both slept on mattresses far away from the only exit, the hole in the floor where Craig had let down the ladder. The odds were good Jenn would be nearly the last one out. If she made it at all. The scream of the kid behind the reporter still hammered in Tara’s brain: “There’s still some people in there!”

  Tara looked for her address book and zeroed in on the number. She phoned Rob’s apartment, praying that Jenn had stayed on with the creep, praying that she had broken the pattern, praying that she had stuck to the one bad decision that might well have saved her life. After three rings, she got the recording. The number was out of service, said the recorded message. When she got an operator on the line the man said, “I’m sorry, that line has been disconnected. There’s no forwarding number.” Tara gently seated the phone back in its cradle.

  She felt small and helpless, not six thousand kilometres but a million miles away from Halifax.

  Tara saw a taxi pull up down below. Her mother got out. She wanted to scream out the window at her. She felt so mad, so helpless.

  When her mom came in, Tara ran to her and hugged her, told her what she had seen on TV, tried to explain about the kids who lived at Hell’s Hotel. “I have this terrible feeling that Jenn was in there.”

  Her mother saw the terror in her daughter’s face. “You don’t know that. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

  “Someone was in there, I’m sure. And the firefighters wouldn’t go in.”

  “They probably figured it was too late.”

  “It wasn’t just that,” Tara said, feeling the anger in her veins. “People wanted to see that place gone. No one cares if a few street kids disappear in the process.”

  “Isn’t there anyone you can phone?”

  Tara didn’t know what good it would do. But she would phone someone. She still knew Josh’s number from memory. She dialled.

  Josh answered. His voice had that sound to it, the sound of someone who had been asleep.

  “Josh, it’s Tara.”

  “Do you know what time it is?” He sounded annoyed, ticked off that someone had called the president of the student council at four-thirty in the morning.

  “Josh, do you know anything about the fire?”

  “What fire?”

  “Hell’s Hotel. I saw it on the news. They think some kids were still in there.”

  “Oh my God.”

  He didn’t know. Of course. He’d been asleep. How ironic that she knew, on the other side of the country.

  “Josh, were there still people staying in there?”

  “I’m not sure. But I think so.”

  “Was Craig still hanging around?”

  “Craig is still Craig.”

  Tara knew this was a good thing. Craig was weird but he was dependable. He took care of kids who were not so good at taking care of themselves. He would have done his best to get the ladder down, to get everyone out. If there had been enough time. “What about Jenn?” Tara asked. “Have you seen her?”

  “Not much. She and I were never that close.”

  “I know. But do you know if she was still living with Rob?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t always pry into people’s personal lives.”

  Even at four-thirty in the morning, Josh was still acting like Josh. How quickly he had forgotten about the glory that “Becky’s B
lues” had brought him.

  “Listen, I’m gonna get up and go down there,” Josh said.

  “Wait. Tell me this. Has Jenn been in school?”

  “Dunno. Off and on, I think. Why?”

  “Never mind,” she said. “Go down there, Josh. Talk to the kids. See if you can help.”

  Now Josh sounded wide awake. “Don’t worry about anything. I’ll get down there. I’ll see if I can do something.”

  “Thanks. Bye.”

  Josh hung up the phone.

  Tara had a small piece of the puzzle. If Jenn was showing up for school at all, the odds were good that Rob was out of the picture. He didn’t like her going to school, Tara knew that. If Josh was right and Jenn had been showing up at school even sporadically, then there was a good chance Rob was out of her life and she was back on the street ... and living in Hell’s Hotel.

  Her mother had been watching her the whole time. “What is it?”

  “I have to go back. I have to go to Halifax. Now,” Tara said.

  Her mother took a deep breath. “I know. I’ll help you pack something. I’ll go with you. We’ll catch the first plane.”

  Tara shook her head. She looked at her mother and could see the concern, the love, in her face. She hugged her tightly but said, “No, you stay here. This is where you belong. I belong back there. Whatever happens. I need to be back there. That’s my place.”

  “You can come back after you find out what’s going on.”

  “I know I can. Maybe I will. All I know is that I have to be back there. Now. You’ve been good to me, but I’m not needed here. I’m needed back there.”

  “Let’s start packing. I’ll send most of your stuff on later if you still want me to.”

  “Thanks.”

  Her mother went to the computer and checked online. “WestJet has a flight to Toronto at six-thirty. There’s bound to be a couple of openings on standby.”

  ***

  The sun was just coming up in the east as the plane took off heading first west, then banking and turning back towards the Prairies, towards the Maritimes, towards home. The mountains below now looked so clean, so orderly and so beautiful, like something magical out of a Walt Disney movie. It made everything about her life in B.C. seem unreal, impossible. How she wished she could just snap her fingers and be back in the Maritimes, but she would have to wait out the hours it would take to get home. She’d lose four hours thanks to the time change, and it would be night by the time she got into Halifax. Say goodbye to Vancouver, she told herself. Say goodbye to that new life, the experiment that failed. Goodbye to her mother and her new life. She would visit, she knew that. But she wouldn’t go back to live there.