Specifically, I want to swear at the heat and the bugs and the disgusting stuff that can still come out of long-forgotten garbage when I impale it on my spike. But I won’t. I’ll tough it out and head home at lunch. Whenever that is. I’ve caught myself reaching for my iPod a few times to check the time, but I’m not allowed to have it with me. Part of my sentence.
And I don’t own a phone. Mom says I can decide later this year, when I turn sixteen, whether I want one or not but I’ll have to get a job to pay for the data. A year ago I’d have said, Of course I’ll want one. I’m a teenager, after all, but now I’m not sure. Of course, I can do pretty much anything on my iPod I could do on a phone, but between nudie apps and sexting and cyberbullying and the trolls who look to make life miserable for anyone who’s experienced tragedy, there’s so much wrongness online. You think a lot about safe places after a thing like Windsor.
I’ve followed a well-worn path into the bush to try to cool down a bit. I didn’t know a guy could sweat like this. Ever. I’ve played sports and felt the little beads running down my face, but this is different. I’m soaked through. Even my undies. I’m getting a rubbed-raw patch between my legs. I should drink more, but the little plastic water bottle has been empty for a couple of hours now. I’ll have to get Mom to buy me a bigger one. I’ve only peed once, running into the bush to go behind a tree — it was dark yellow, and thick, like syrup.
“Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Water is the most important thing, troop.”
Jesse’s words again. Yes, out loud. I do that a lot more these days, ever since the shooting. That’s how I got on Patrick’s radar. At lunch one day he came around a corner to find me alone, having one of my conversations with Jesse. He told everyone else I was talking to myself, like a baby. But I don’t talk to myself — I talk to Jesse. I say his words, too, sometimes. He used to be home all the time, so I could talk to him whenever I needed to, morning, lunchtime, after school.
I feel faint. This is not good. Plus there’s a suspicious burning on the back of my neck. Sunburn. Or more chafing from the cheap, rough collar on my safety vest. Both, maybe. I should head home now, I think as I spear another faded, collapsed can and put it into my bag. Would Sean know that I left, the stupid box on my ankle broadcasting where I am, my deviation from my work locations? Would he care?
Whatever. I’m going. I stash the stick and the garbage bag and walk out of the woods. Home is right across the field. Sean and the courts would go easy if they knew I was dying out here, right?
Ah, man. Something claws its way up from behind my ribcage and I have to stop midstep and take a few deep breaths to push it down. I can’t think about the word dying anymore. Even when I’m obviously exaggerating.
“Aww, is Baby crying now?”
Patrick. Sitting on one of the park benches pushed up against the edge of the field. I blink away the blurriness. He’s wearing shorts and a sleeveless green and yellow jersey, the scar I gave him on his bicep pink and angry. He flinched when I lashed out at him. Just in time to keep me from cutting his face. We were doing one of those combined lessons that are supposed to teach us how science and math and life are all connected. The teacher gave everyone a box cutter, one of those clicky yellow utility knives. There was a lot of leaf cutting and counting and dividing. Pat and I were assigned as partners. Him whispering taunts. Me lashing out in a moment of pure weakness.
“I heard you got stuck here,” he says.
“How’d you hear that?”
“Nice vest.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to beat the shit out of you, but who needs the hassle?” He points at my ankle monitor.
“Pat, I said I was sorry —”
He’s up and in my face before I finish the thought. “And I told you never to call me that.”
Must’ve been the back of my brain throwing his nickname out there. It’s almost funny, but even though he’s afraid to hurt me because of my supervision, I know better than to laugh. He can’t stand that Pat can be a girl’s name. So much that his stupid lizard brain might make the decision for him. Mom says that there are “glands and mysterious forces” that make guys do things. Especially the ones whose parents started them in school late so they could be “more ready.” Pat relishes being bigger than everyone. He actually gets five o’clock shadow when he forgets to shave.
I hear myself apologize again.
“Punch me,” he says.
“What?”
“Anywhere you want. I won’t even hit back.”
I’d be lying if I said that the thought of punching him has never crossed my mind. Or that I’m not tempted to bury my fist in his gut to see him fall. But there’s a wicked little glint in his eye and a suspicious burn in my throat telling me not to. That’s how I’d fall. I’d get busted for breaking the conditions of my sentencing. You’re not allowed to get in fights, much less with the person you’re doing time for hurting.
Jesse would tell me to walk away. I can hear him. He just wants to bring you down. Don’t drop to his level. Clear as mud?
“Clear as mud,” I say.
Patrick is confused. “Huh? What are you talking about, Baby?”
Clear as mud is one of Jesse’s favourite sayings. He picked it up in the army, one of a thousand things that sound like gibberish to non-army people. Mud’s not clear. It’s muddy. You say it when you know what you have to do even when it’s not entirely sensible or logical. Jesse always explains the sayings to me. Get a jag on. On the bus, off the bus. We’re all mushrooms, fed shit and kept in the dark.
Or maybe it’s explained. Past tense. In reality, he can’t explain anything to me any more than one of the trees can. He’s still in that Windsor Regional Hospital bed. When the police finally swept the school, they found him in a bathroom. Almost dead but not quite. He’d tried to kill himself. At first the cops kept Jesse in restraints and stationed an officer outside the intensive care room. They hoped he’d wake up so they could charge him and lock him away forever. But the doctors say he’ll never wake up, that it’s not a coma but a “persistent vegetative state.” Now everyone is waiting for him to die, which is a little sad. There’s been so much death already.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I say.
“Be a man and hit me.”
I shake my head and walk away. I think, Don’t you get it, Pat? I’m not a man. I’m not supposed to be. Not yet.
Why does everyone expect me to be older than I am? I hear him say dumb things to my back about how sorry I’ll be and how he’ll be around every day but I’ll never know when. Even my own lizard brain knows that you only say those kinds of things when you’re out of other options.
S&C
Our cool, air-conditioned house is five minutes from the park, my massive, sweltering prison cell. Sean didn’t say I can’t go home during the day while I’m doing my time, but it still feels like I’m doing something wrong. Even though it makes sense for me to use our own bathroom and eat lunch there. I’ve been torturing myself.
There’s a bright blue Elantra parked at the curb out front, and Mom is talking to someone on the step. It’s the reporter from court. Walters. Mom isn’t happy to be talking to her. Her arms are folded and she’s standing in the middle of the doorway like she’s blocking it. You don’t stand that way when you’re friendly with the other person. You lean against the door frame or turn aside so they can come in.
Walters turns and sees me coming up the walk. She smiles. “Wendell, hello. I’m Cathy, a reporter from —”
“Stop talking to him.”
“Vicky, I just have a few questions for your son.”
“No, you don’t. And you don’t get to call me Vicky.”
“Hey —”
“I said no. He’s still a minor, so it’s my call. Dills, come inside and don’t say a thing.”
She turns slightly to allow me access, but the reporter hasn’t moved. I stop. Awkward.
“Get out of the way,” Mom says.
“Why did
the judge ask everyone to leave the courtroom?”
“Inside, kiddo. Now.”
Mom says the last word with extra weight. I know that tone. I call it “Do Not Argue with Me Right Now, Young Man.” Walters steps aside and lets me past.
“Don’t come here again,” Mom says.
She closes the door in her face, cutting off the next question. With a low groan, the door eases open a bit. Mom has to thunk it closed twice more before it catches. Old doors and twisted frames, I suppose. But it steals some of Mom’s thunder — Walters is probably out there laughing at the dramatic but missed attempt.
I make for the sink and drain four full glasses of tap water, Mom’s eyes on my back the entire time. I put the glass down, my belly as tight and round as a medicine ball.
“Are you all right?”
“I need a bigger water bottle.”
“Let me see your neck.” Mom moves behind me and grabs my shoulders. Tut-tuts under her breath. “You got some sun, too.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’re already burned. Didn’t Sean give you sunscreen?”
“It was cloudy when I started this morning.”
She reaches up and takes down the first-aid kit stashed above the cupboards and hands me a bottle of green aloe vera. It’s cool on the back of my neck. Funny how the good feeling makes me more aware of how much I’ll feel the burn tomorrow.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
I expect her to ask me more questions about how my day is going so far, but she doesn’t. She leans against the counter with her arms folded, watching an indistinct point on the fridge across from her. Thinking. Mom’s good at keeping things in, like she can lock them up in strongboxes in her heart and mind, but Walters’s visit has pulled Windsor back to the surface again.
“She doesn’t know anything,” I say.
“For now. She’s tenacious. Always was. Even in high school.”
“You went to school together?”
“She was in the grade below me. Always running around for the school paper and yearbook. Always bugging everyone for stories.”
“I’ll stay away from her.”
“And she’s still here. Seems like everyone else left.”
“You came back. We came back.”
“Not by choice.”
Her eyes fill, and she’s back in Windsor, missing everything about what was good before Jesse walked into my school. Fighting against all the bad that followed. That we tried to leave behind. Mom is a good fighter. But the tears break free, like they often do. She lets them flow for a bit, then sleeves them away. Stretches tall, breathes in deep.
“I love you, Dills.”
“Love you, too, Mom.”
Then it’s silence in the house. Mom and me and all of this old house’s hollow echoes, which I’m coming to know as well as my own breathing. The house has been in the family for a few generations, built by my great-grandpa Gene after the Second World War. He agonized over every joist, every nail, then retreated into the basement workshop and stayed there until he died. Gramma Jan, my grandmother, who was Gene’s only child, said the war pushed him down there so he wouldn’t have to talk to anyone. “He saw things no one should ever see,” she said to me once. I get that.
The workshop is Mom’s studio now. My room is down there, too, in the basement guest room, the quietest place in the house. Gene finished the guest room right after the workshop and slept down there every night. The whole basement is soundproofed. Against his nightmares, I guess. And now mine, although for me it’s pools of sweat and a racing heart. Dream images fading like the flashes you get when you look at the sun. Not knowing where I am until I can identify the house sounds around me.
My stomach growls. “Okay if I stay for lunch?”
“Of course you can. Why wouldn’t you?”
“I almost didn’t come home. I don’t know if I’m allowed to leave.”
She laughs, wiping away a latecomer tear that shines on her cheek. “The judge assigned you to Churchill Park for a reason.”
I frown. I don’t like being laughed at. “Mom.”
“You’re supposed to stay close to home.”
“Sure, but —”
“I’m sorry, Dills. I sent you out today without talking logistics. Bad mommy moment for me, okay?”
I wish she wouldn’t say things like that. Even when I’m pissed at her, I know she’s a great mom. I hear myself saying that it’s fine, that I’m glad I have the option of a home lunch. I’m glad, too, that I can say that to her. When I’m at my maddest, I don’t always give her a break, though she deserves it. Anger is funny that way. Your brain and your heart saying different things, and you know the right thing but your angry heart wins anyhow.
“Actually, I have something you can —”
Mom disappears for an instant without finishing her sentence. Then she’s back, holding a faded olivedrab sling pouch. There’s a flap over the top, but I know what’s in there. Jesse’s old army-surplus canteen. He never would have used it when he was in the service — they use hydration bladders now — but he loved to collect old military things. It’s a dull olive-green blob with a screw top. Thick, thick plastic. Feels indestructible. I can’t believe Mom’s holding it. It’s not like it was sitting on the hallway shelf, waiting for her to grab it on our way out of the house. It was in Jesse’s old footlocker, down in the basement, with his collectibles and other dusty army things. She would’ve had to go out of her way to get it. Way out.
Mom’s speaking as I take the canteen, something about not being able to live with herself if I got heatstroke and passed out in the woods without anyone knowing. Something like that. I notice she’s stopped talking and is waiting for me to respond.
“Huh?”
“So you’ll use it?”
“I guess. Are you sure? It’s Jesse’s.”
“It’s supposed to carry water.”
“Well, yeah, but —”
“He’d be fine with you having it. He’d want you to, actually.”
“He didn’t really share his army stuff with me.”
She tilts her head. “Oh, I don’t know about that. You should hear all the army-isms that come out of your mouth.”
“That’s different.”
“It is, and it isn’t. Just rinse it out before you use it, okay?”
I twist open the cap. A mustiness wafts up, faint but just strong enough for both of us to smell it. Mom makes a face, I make a face, and we speak the same words at the same time. “Sin and corruption,” we say. And we laugh because we’ve both heard it a thousand times and now it’s coming out of us almost with one voice. Jesse’s voice. “Jesus! Look at the sin and corruption in there!” Something his superiors would yell during inspections when they found anything not completely clean. Dust in corners. Mud in the tread of a combat boot. Smudges on a window. Soot in a rifle’s chamber. Sin. Corruption. Both impossible to see or do anything about, yet the saying is so nonsensically, impossibly perfect.
Mom goes serious again and her eyes get all glittery. Mine, too. The canteen didn’t do it, but that ridiculous saying did. She wipes her eyes and proceeds to assemble two ham-and-cheese sandwiches, cut them diagonally, and spread them out on two plates. Kettle chips and an apple go in the wedge-shaped gaps. Two meals, made without speaking or thinking.
I don’t feel like saying much, either. I never say it out loud, but I miss Jesse so much it’s an actual hole in the middle of me. I hate what he did, obviously, but still. Mom misses him, too, though for her the betrayal is so much worse. I can’t even imagine. I hope it’s all right, but I enjoy our quiet lunch. Sometimes you don’t need to say anything.
HEARING JESSE
I’m better prepared when I go out after lunch. White zinc oxide on my nose and ears and the back of my neck. Mom says you can’t sweat the zinc oxide away. Sean’s sunscreen everywhere else. It smells like coconut, so I smell like the beach.
Before I left, Mom fi
lled the canteen for me and also made me chug another two glasses. Rolled her eyes when I said it would just make me pee more. “You guys love to piss in the woods,” she said. Which is true, of course. Although I must’ve been pretty dehydrated, because even with all the water I drank at lunch, I still don’t feel like I have to go. My body needing everything I can give it.
Pat is nowhere to be seen. I half expected him to be waiting for me. Is it likely he’ll be out all day, every day, to get me back? No. But knowing doesn’t mean I won’t worry.
About midafternoon, the temperature drops and the clouds return, this time dark and heavy. I hope it doesn’t rain. Sean was clear that I have to work in all conditions. Rain. Wind. Shine. “But not in a thunderstorm, yeah?” he said. “The moment you hear thunder or see lightning, you head for the nearest shelter. Safety first.” Mom said she’d go out to buy a bigger water bottle this afternoon, but we didn’t talk about rain gear. If I get dumped on this afternoon, all I can do is get wet and keep going. I work my way onto one of the forest paths again, this one linking the park and the marsh, wondering if the forest counts as shelter.
Then, the strangest thing: as the wind picks up, making the leaves rush against each other and the tree trunks creak and groan, I hear Jesse’s voice.
I’m here, Dills. Come see me.
I practically jump out of my running shoes. (I have to wear them — “Sturdy trainers, Wen-doe,” Sean said. “No sandals, yeah?”) What I heard was not the gentle, kind of blurred voice I hear when I talk out loud and imagine Jesse responding. This was as clear as if he was standing on the path next to me. Talking deep and slow, like he always does, like he has all the time in the world. Clear enough to imagine him on his feet and living normally, like before. I feel like I’ve been punched right above the waistband of my shorts.
I don’t want to miss him as much as I do. I want to forget about him and what he did. All those lives. I want to forget that he might’ve been in the school to get me first. But here’s the thing: I can’t. He’s family. In spite of all his demons, he loved our life together. Demons. That’s Mom’s word for what he carried back from his tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. But we chased them away. On mornings when he’d come into the kitchen with eyes so dark you knew he hadn’t slept a wink, or after days away in the woods, he always smiled. For us. “What’s up, favourite people?” he’d say.
Nothing but Life Page 2
