Under the Dusty Moon

by Suzanne Sutherland

  “Yeah,” I said, “sure. You wanna lead?”

  “You do it,” he said, “I’ll follow you.”

  I smiled nervously and snapped my pink skateboard bucket to my head. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. His hair was perfectly tousled and slightly spiked; I wanted to roll around in a whole field of it, maybe forever. I could feel my cheeks flushing again, so I turned away from him and mounted PYT.

  “All right,” I yelled over my shoulder. “Let’s do this!”

  “You got it,” he called back to me.

  With Shaun riding behind me I was so nervous I could’ve puked right there on the road. I booked it as fast as I could down the street, my legs straining to pound the pedals as hard as my body would let me. I turned around every so often to make sure that Shaun was keeping up with me, but he made my frantic pace look easy, even on his borrowed miniature bike. I pedalled harder.

  We passed a giant park and a whole row of cute shops and restaurants that made up the trendy part of Queen Street West. Our neighbourhood was poorer, with more immigrant families and broke artists, though the trendiness had also started creeping our way with DIY bike shops and designer vintage clothing stores in between the roti shops and sketchy old-man bars.

  I stood up on my pedals as we rode over a tiny hill that threatened to slow me down, and I gripped my brakes not a second too soon as a car parked on the side of the road chose the instant I was riding past to make a left-hand turn out of the parking space and back onto the road. I paused for an instant and then swerved around the car, just barely missing being laid out flat by a giant hunk of metal and machinery.

  “Whoa, that was close!” Shaun called from behind me, as I tried my best to keep the pace. “You okay?”

  I turned my head back to face him. “Fine!” I yelled.

  I could feel the sweat from my forehead dripping down into my eyes and it stung.

  “It’s no problem,” I said, looking back ahead of me at the road, “I just wish these cars would watch where they’re going!”

  “What?” Shaun yelled.

  “I said I wish these cars would be careful of where they’re going!”

  “I can’t hear you!”

  “It’s nothing,” I said, giving up on being heard over the sound of traffic, and then, louder, “I’m fine!”

  “Okay!” he yelled.

  We managed to make it through a few construction snarls and down to the ferry docks in record time. We dismounted and started walking our bikes and I couldn’t decide which would make me look stupider: wearing my bike helmet for the rest of the day, or revealing just how sweaty and disgusting my hair was underneath. Realizing that I’d have a pretty hard time justifying the former, I chose the latter.

  “Wow,” Shaun said. “You’re really hot, eh?”

  “Heh, yeah,” I smiled nervously and turned away from him to fix my hair. “Gotta love this heat wave.”

  “Serious. I’m pretty sure I could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool with my sweat. My parents’ house is, like, an oven.”

  Change the subject, I told myself. Change it quick or else you’re going to be making dick and fart jokes with this mega babe the rest of the afternoon and he’s only going to think of you as one of his dudes.

  “So,” I said, pointing PYT toward the forming ferry line, “should we go and buy our tickets?”

  “Oh. Yeah. I’ve never been to the Island before,” Shaun said. “How does this, you know, work?”

  “Seriously?” I said, at last feeling like I had the upper cool-hand, “My mom and I come here all the time. We buy our tickets over there.” I said, pointing to the row of booths with giant lines of Island-goers in front of them.

  “Ah, okay,” Shaun said. “Cool.”

  We walked our bikes over and picked a line. When we finally got up to the front, I thought for a second that Shaun might offer to pay for my ticket, acting all chivalrous or whatever. He didn’t, though. He bought his own ticket and then walked his bike over to the loading area just behind the row of booths.

  Once I’d bought my ticket I had to dodge about a thousand sets of kids and parents to finally find him again, waiting with a small crowd by a gate marked HANLAN’S POINT ONLY: GATE #4.

  “What’s with the crowd?” Shaun asked, pointing to the gate next to us that was swarmed with families.

  “That’s Centre Island. There’s a little amusement park there. It’s got a log ride and stuff. My mom and I once went on it like fifteen times in a row.”

  “Oh yeah?” he said, taking off his sunglasses as we waited in the shade. “Cool.”

  “Yeah, the islands are all kind of connected but that one’s, you know, for little kids.”

  “Sounds fun.” He grinned, and I couldn’t believe how huge his lips were. They looked, well, delicious.

  “Oh, well, I mean, we could go,” I said, suddenly losing any cool I’d picked up on the way in. “Do you want to? We could totally go to Centreville if you want. It could be fun.”

  “Ha, no,” he said, waving me off, “it’s cool, I was kidding. Wherever we’re going is fine.”

  Of course. Could I not just play it cool for fifteen seconds?

  The ferry arrived, and we walked with our bikes to take our place on deck. Everyone else on board looked older and more relaxed. They were snapping pictures with their phones and smiling and wearing cool hats and brightly coloured bathing suits under their clothes. And then the wind hit me and I finally got a whiff of myself. I was deeply, deeply funky. Why the hell did I leave the house in Mom’s old shirt? I smelled disgusting. How was I going to manage this?

  I tried at first to figure out exactly how strong the smell was — were other people around me stopping to look, or did no one else notice? What was Shaun doing, was he having a good time? Should we take a selfie together, just us, the ferry, and the waves? No, I thought, getting too close right now was definitely not an option. I was ripe.

  “Wow, this is pretty great,” Shaun said, his sunglasses back on, looking out at the sailboats nearby.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “I just meant …” he said, turning to face me, “is everything okay?”

  “Oh?” I said. “No. I’m not. I’m just. I’m so happy to be here, I can’t believe you’ve never been here, the Island is the best! I love it so much!” The words tumbled out of my mouth clinging on to one another and I was helpless to stop them.

  “Yeah,” he said, looking me up and down skeptically. “I can tell.”

  “Oh,” I said, reaching into my bag, “I almost forgot.” I pulled out the Coke and handed him the bottle.

  “Thanks,” he said, “but I’m cool.”

  “No, seriously,” I insisted, “you should try some.”

  He raised an eyebrow before taking a small sip. He smiled, and then took a gulp that drained nearly half the bottle.

  “Nice,” he said, handing it back with a wink. “Crafty.”

  I took a small swig and a trail of rum and Coke dribbled down my chin and onto my T. Perfect, just what the stank shirt needed. But I breathed in deeply through my nose and let the wind toss around my still sweaty hair. I could feel the tense muscles in my shoulders start to relax a bit. I just had to remember to breathe.

  We docked a few minutes after that. We walked with the crowd getting off the ferry, and then as soon as I had the space to move, I hopped back on my bike. At least while we were riding we didn’t have to talk. And I couldn’t say anything stupid.

  We rode more slowly than on the mainland. Shaun kept trying to catch up and ride beside me, but I fought to stay ahead, where he couldn’t hear the words coming out of my dumb mouth. It only took a few minutes before we found the entrance to the beach. There was a little path that led to a boardwalk and we locked our bikes up nearby.

  The sand was scorching hot on our feet and we walked in slow motion over the little hills of sand that finally gave way to the lake. It looked good enough to drink, though I knew that that was a terrible idea. Lake Ontario was
a giant pool of poison, but it looked pretty good from the Island.

  We inched our way closer to the water, and I pointed out a spot near a giant beach umbrella. “Is here okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “fine by me.”

  He took off his shirt and his sandals. His belly was soft and a little bit flabby, and his chest was pale and spotted all over with freckles. There were thousands of freckles, nearly blotting out the pale skin on his shoulders and his chest. I wanted to kiss every single one of them. Or his lips, at the very least. I dared myself to do it. I was buzzed already, but I definitely wasn’t drunk enough for that kind of bravery.

  I took off my shirt, grateful at last to have an excuse to stash the offending stench. It’s okay, I told myself, let the bikini work its magic. Just relax. I rolled my head around on my neck in a full circle and felt a tiny crack. Loosen up, I thought. Loose. Loose. Loose.

  I laid my towel out and flopped down onto it. I breathed deeply and tried to slow my heart to the speed of the crashing waves. “More?” I asked, offering him the spiked Coke.

  “Sure,” he said, stretching out on the sand next to me.

  But as I reached over to pass Shaun the bottle, my eye got stuck on something.

  Something yellow.

  Fluorescent yellow.

  A huge, hairy man in a tiny fluorescent yellow bathing suit.

  The huge man turned around — it was a thong!

  “What?” Shaun said, noticing my wide eyes. “Oh, yeah, I guess this is, like, a nude beach, huh?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, turning to look behind me as my eyes bugged out of my skull like a chihuahua.

  Naked people. Men, mostly. Old ones. Wrinkly ones with beef-jerky skin. There were some young people, too, though. A group of girls with their tops off were playing a game of volleyball not far from where we’d sat down. Their boobs jiggling as they jumped up to hit the ball.

  Naked people.

  A beach full of them.

  That was where I’d taken Shaun on our first date — a naked beach.

  Did he think I’d brought him here on purpose? That I wanted to take off all my clothes in public — or worse, that I wanted him to? He’d think I was some kind of pervert.

  I could see naked people everywhere now. There was so much skin. How had I not noticed as we sat down?

  I felt sick, nauseous. I was going to hurl. I was going to puke in front of all the naked people on the beach. Oh god, they were so, so naked. They were everywhere.

  A couple in their seventies walked past us on their way across the sand and offered a wink and what I’m sure they thought was a friendly, knowing nod.

  Oh god.

  I had to go.

  “I’ve gotta …” I said, grabbing my putrid shirt back out of my bag and pulling it back over my head. Somehow the smell was magnified now, like it had been put under some kind of smell-microscope.

  “What?” Shaun said, polishing off the bottle of Coke.

  “Go,” I said. “I need to go home. There are some things I need to …” I grabbed my sandals and shoved them back on my feet. “I’ll see you … are you? You’re …?” I couldn’t pick a sentence. All the nakedness had short-circuited my brain.

  “Huh?” Shaun said. “You’re leaving?”

  “You’re, uh, staying?” I asked. I smelled like sewage, worse than sewage. What smells worse than sewage?

  “Yeah,” he said, shrugging, “guess I will.”

  “Okay, cool,” I said. “I’ve just — I’ve got to go.”

  And I ran away as fast as the sand would let me.

  I ran like a dumb little kid.

  I unlocked PYT and wouldn’t let myself cry. I wouldn’t. Though I could feel hot tears of embarrassment stinging the backs of my eyes, I held them in.

  I pedalled back to the ferry, nearly letting the tears go with gratitude when I saw a boat waiting for me. I took my place on the deck, faced out where no one could see me, and I let the hot tears spill down my face. People around me nudged each other — asked, “Do you smell that?” but I just kept on silently sobbing.

  Once we were back on the mainland, I couldn’t get away from the ferry docks fast enough. I cut up Bay Street to Queen, and rode even faster than I had on the way over, trying to outrace my shame as sweat trickled down my forehead, stinging my eyes. I felt painfully sober.

  I finally stopped at a red light at Spadina Avenue — my breath was ragged, and I was nearly out of air — but the second I saw the other side change from green, I stomped back down on my pedal, flinging my body into the intersection.

  I couldn’t stop riding.

  I didn’t ever want to stop.

  It was unbelievable. Unbelievably humiliating.

  Cars skidded around me and blared their horns as I flew through the lights — it was an advance green, I realized, and cars were trying to turn left around me, but it was too late to stop, I had to keep going. My chest was tight with panic as I realized the mistake I’d made, but I finally relaxed enough to breathe as PYT and I cleared the intersection. I closed my eyes in relief — just for a split second, an instant, I swear.

  And that’s when I got doored.

  Five

  A t least seventeen different people told me how lucky I was that I’d been wearing my helmet when it happened. It wasn’t a ton of consolation, though, while I lay there on the sidewalk feeling like my arm had been snapped in half, that my idiot brain hadn’t been goo-ified along with it. Someone had the sense to pull PYT off the road, but she’d been totally mangled in the collision and seeing her lying on the sidewalk with all the wrong angles sticking out hurt almost as bad as my arm did.

  What kind of loser rides through a red light at a major intersection without a single freaking scratch, only to get doored on the very next block?

  The woman who doored me — the woman who flung open her driver-side door without looking for any particularly distraught-looking cyclists on the road, sending me flying off of my bike and onto the asphalt — was in hysterical tears when the cops showed up. Someone walking by must have called 911 after it happened, because the police cars got there quick. When they arrived, though, they spent nearly as much time consoling the woman who’d almost killed me as they did making sure I was okay. But I was way too out of it with pain and humiliation to protest.

  She tried to apologize to me — the hysterically crying, carelessly dooring woman — but every time she looked at me she just lost it, and I couldn’t make out any of her squeaky, terrified words even if I’d wanted to.

  The ambulance arrived on the scene pretty quickly, too, but I almost died for real when I saw a cute paramedic with dark, floppy hair and cool retro glasses open the side door and make his way toward me.

  Oh, come on! They couldn’t have sent a hunchbacked medic? Or one with an uncanny resemblance to Steve Buscemi? Oh no, no no no, send out your cutest indie-rock-geek guy to mop up the putrid mess of me, please. Say, handsome, did you know that I’m none other than the only child of former Dusty Moon songstress, Micky Wayne? Why, of course I can get her to sign your ID badge for you! She’ll be so thrilled that the man here to care for her daughter is a fan — she might even take you out to dinner!

  “Are you all right? How’s your pain?” Medic Fanboy asked, snapping me back to reality as he checked me out — fortunately, considering how thoroughly disgusting I was in that moment, it was only in a medical sense.

  “It hurts. My arm,” I said, trying my best to keep my arms down at my sides so that this gorgeous guy couldn’t get a whiff of my blood-, Coke-, and tear-stained stink-bomb of a shirt.

  But it was useless, and I finally had to give in to my total mortification as a team of professionals fussed over me, got me up on a stretcher, and loaded me into the ambulance. I closed my eyes and started counting by threes, hoping to somehow lose myself — my mortification, my throbbing pain, and my utter and complete stank — in the numbers. It was an old trick Mom used to use when I was learning my times tables to
keep me distracted while she practised.

  3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24 …

  But it didn’t work.

  It was a short ride to the hospital and somewhere in my delirium I must have told someone to call Mom at Northeast Southwest, so it wasn’t long before she found me, spaced out and trying to trick myself into believing that this whole nightmare of a day had been just that — an awful dream.

  I could smell Mom — a combination of espresso, maple syrup, and lavender — even before she swooped in on me with a truly classic expression of parental concern: “Jesus Christ, Vic, what the hell happened?”

  Somebody get this woman a Mother of the Year trophy, stat.

  “Hi, Mom,” I mumbled, half-nodding toward an elderly couple sitting nearby us who seemed a bit taken aback by the volume of her concern, which was turned up to eleven. “It’s fine,” I said, nearly chewing off my tongue as it wagged lazily around my mouth. Whatever they’d given me for the pain seemed to have seriously taken control of me. It was kind of nice. A welcome distraction from my garbage dump of a day.

  “What the hell happened?” Mom repeated at an only slightly lower volume. Clearly she hadn’t taken the hint.

  “I was stupid, okay?” I said, waving her off. “I was stupid. I did a stupid thing. A stupid, stupid, stupid —”

  She grabbed me by the chin and made me meet her eyes. “What. Happened.”

  I fidgeted until I could get my chin free, and then explained, “I got doored.”

  “By a car?”

  “No,” I said, already exhausted from her line of questioning, “by a pegasus.”

  “On your bike?” she insisted, taking my chin in her hand again.

  “Yes,” I said, meeting her eyes with a dull stare.

  “But the car that hit you —”

  “I got doored, okay?” I said, shrugging my shoulders to the best of my limited ability. “I’m just a big idiot. A big, dumb idiot, okay?”

  “Oh, sweets,” she said, “that’s not your fault — it was the driver who was being careless.”

  “It wasn’t exactly —” I started to say.