by Melanie Mah
“Boyfriend?”
“Ty.”
“Ty’s not my boyfriend. How do you know about him?”
“From your friend Kay. ’Member she got lost during the party? I found her, told her you were looking for her. We started talking about you and she mentions this guy, Ty. Turns out, I’d already talked to him earlier in the night. Tall skid guy in an army coat. He was, uhh … charming.”
“Charming?”
“Not really. He’s a bit of a pig.”
“Oh?”
“Kept pointing at different girls, saying which ones he wanted to fuck, which ones he could fuck — ends up being the same for a guy like that. Yeah, then he points at this cute girl in a nasa t-shirt, and …” He breathes deep. “So I guess he likes you or you like him or maybe something’s gonna happen?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“You can do a lot better, though. Just saying.” He pulls up his sleeve, looks at his watch. The bee head under his arm looks out into space. “Did you maybe wanna go somewhere?” He starts taking his bee suit off. I turn away, but he says, “It’s okay. I’ve got clothes on under here.”
“Don’t you have to go back to the game?”
“Nah,” he says. “Some benchwarmers owe me a favour. A couple of them asked about being the bee.” He sees me smile. “Yeah, some guys are good at sports, others want love however they get it. Any good places to eat around here?”
WE TALK ALL the way down the highway. When we get to town limits I stay back, saying I have an errand to run, before sending him off to Perry’s. We pick it because he’s vegetarian.
“You don’t eat meat?” I say.
“No.”
“Never?”
“No.”
“That’s huge. My dad would lose his shit if I stopped eating meat.”
“What’s it to him?”
I shrug and tell him to meet me at the Dairy Burger. Fifteen minutes later, he comes in with a steaming box of pizza. We go back to school, where I buy us Cokes at a machine, then take us to sit in the far stairwell. It’s cold but no one ever goes here. I try giving him money for my share of the pizza, he doesn’t want it, so I sneak it into his bag when he goes to the bathroom. When he comes back, he says, “That pizza’s the best thing I’ve eaten in a fifty-mile radius.”
I ask if I can tell him about butterflies. For some reason, I think he’ll understand or appreciate the knowledge. He says sure, so I start telling him about how, most often, flight is the thing that kills them. “Most butterflies live between a day and a week, and with every beat of their wings, they tear little holes in them — ’cause, like, wind resistance causes lift, right? — and that’s fine, but eventually, a butterfly’s wings are so full of holes that they can’t fly anymore. When that happens, they spend all their energy trying to fly or they can’t get food, or a predator gets them, and that’s the end.”
“That’s pretty intense,” he says. Then he starts talking about what it’s like to be the weird kid in his town. “If I lived here, too, no one would know which of us to hate more. Or maybe all the other science geeks would start coming out of the woodwork. We’d make this whole new social group.”
“People don’t hate me,” I say. “Yeah, a couple of people don’t like me, but mostly they leave me alone. Except for, well …” I gesture at my bandage. “People are used to my family being weird.” He asks me how and I start telling him, cautiously, about my parents, how in their own way they’re individuals who don’t give a fuck about what other people think.
I’m not much of a talker normally, but Conrad laughs when things are funny, he listens, he keeps asking questions. Still, it feels weird talking about my parents with Trina’s letter on my mind. I don’t know if I want to tell him, but it ends up coming out anyway. I didn’t know it would feel so good, like I just stopped holding my breath. I tell him more: about how Trina ran away and how I can’t find her, about Mike Brown’s dad at the cop shop being a dick, about how sad we all are, about how Trina told me not to tell my parents and how it’s going to be hard to lie to them.
“That sucks,” he says.
“Remember at the party when you asked me what the worst thing that ever happened to me was?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you?”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Is it maybe, like, your parents splitting up?”
A mocking look. “No,” he says. “Not even close.”
“I’m listening.”
He takes a swig of Coke. “The worst, and best, thing that ever happened to me was three summers ago when my dog died.” He sees my face. “Chrysler, hear me out. Her name was Checkers. She was a golden retriever, husky mix. She came when you called and she had, like, the nicest bark. We had her for eight years. One day I was on my way home from my summer job when I saw something in the road near my house. When I got closer, I got a weird feeling, it told me to run, so I ran to it and it was her. That whole fucking summer I was distraught, but the bigger thing was that it made me think about death. I mean, I’d thought about it before, but this was the first time I seriously contemplated my own end. It made me think, All of this right here?” A finger to his temple. “All of this, everything — my personality, everything I am and everything I’ve seen, all my memories — will be gone. Even worse, I won’t be able to see, touch, taste, smell, hear anything. I will be nothing. My dog died, and I realized I’d die, too. Chrysler, someday we will die and we will be nothing. Can you imagine that?”
“No,” I say because I can’t. I’ve spent years thinking about this, wondering what happens, but I can’t imagine how any of it would actually feel.
“See, I couldn’t, either, the first few times I thought about it. It’s scary as fuck. But it’s motivating, too.”
“And sad.”
He’s looking at me in this grave way. “It’s just you and your sister in your family?”
I ask him for a walk.
Outside, far from anyone else’s ears and in the comforting cold, I tell him, not the details, but the broad strokes, about my siblings, the curse, how careful I have to be. It seems to knock the wind out of him.
“I can’t imagine,” he says.
“I’m the life of the party.”
“You don’t have to joke about it,” he says, and it’s a blow to the head, those words.
Don’t cry, I think. Don’t cry. We’re stopped on the shoulder in front of Fas Gas, and Conrad’s looking at me so concerned, and no one ever asks me how I am or how things were, and no one knows I’ve had the best years of my life already and that I’ll never feel that good again. I used to be able to cry in front of Stef or Trina. I’ve cried in front of Gene, even Reg. The more I try not to, the sadder I feel.
I shake my head, see the blue whale on his shirt. “Do you think the barnacles on a blue whale die soon after the whale does?”
“What?”
“Do the barnacles benefit from coming up for air sometimes, or is there a certain pressure level they need to live at? Or maybe whatever scavenger fish that eat the blue whale accidentally eat some of the barnacles, too?”
“I don’t know.”
“I thought you’d know since you have one on your shirt.”
“That’s, umm, some pretty specialized information.”
I look at my watch. Five-sixteen. 5+1=6. “Yeah, I should probably go. My dad gets weird if he doesn’t know where I am every minute of the day. He might be shitting bricks as we speak. I’ll have to pretend I didn’t already eat.”
“I have half an hour before the bus leaves. I could, uhh … walk you home?”
“Maybe partway,” I say.
We walk on the south service road, parallel to the highway. Light is fading, cars go by with their red and white lights. We turn at the school, pass the kfc and Tomboy, the hospital and the furniture shop where iga used to be. We don’t talk much. The sky is dark and pretty. Cars and trucks pull up and down Main, lou
d without their mufflers. Ten feet in from my corner, in front of the bar and out of view of the store, I stop walking, and so does he.
“This is gonna sound ridiculous,” I say, “but my friend Nancy likes Jamie Aaronson. Do you think you could get his number for her?”
“It might emasculate him, but I’ll try.”
“That’s my store right there.” I point. “Jack’s Western Wear. I’m sorry, but you can’t come in.” He looks confused. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Can I at least call you?”
A boxy brown beater goes by, then a souped-up truck going the other way with the bass up high.
“I’m not special,” I say. “Not that pretty, not that smart.”
He gives me a look.
I shrug. “I guess I don’t understand why you’d want to talk to me.”
“Why wouldn’t I want that? We just talked for two hours. Again. You’re smart and weird in a good way and we care about the same things, and I think I understand some things about you.”
What’s the problem? You’re gonna die. You can’t get close to anyone. You’re gonna die, and soon. “You seem nice,” I say.
“I am nice.”
“So meet someone this summer or next year at university or tomorrow.” I stick my hand out. “I had fun.”
He takes it. “Me too.”
“I’ll see you,” I say, then start walking.
“But your friend wants Jamie’s number.”
“Right.” The store glows yellow out the front windows. Dark blue sky. “Right.” I take a pen from my back pocket. “I shouldn’t be doing this. You can call me, but only for this.”
“You’re seriously saying that?”
“Do you want my number or not?”
“I want it,” he says.
I write it on a receipt, hand it to him. “You can only call after eight or on Sundays. Otherwise, my dad’ll pick up.”
“And he’ll shit bricks.”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” he says. “Goodnight.” His eyes are big and dark like the woods at sundown. The store is a beacon of light. I’m there in time to help my mom close. Supper is a can of salmon with fried bacon on top and stir fried greens on the side. I push the food around my bowl and think about how flying kills a butterfly.
11
*
WHEN I GET up for school I feel stronger somehow. In the hall at lunch, I see Ty and remember what Conrad said about him maybe liking me when he turns his head as I pass. Then I think, God, you’re fucking high on yourself.
In third period, Mr. Birch says to me, as he’s handing back exams, “I’ve been disappointed by some of your siblings, Chrysler, but with you, we get another Reggie Wong.” He proudly places my exam on my desk, a 94 scrawled in red at the top. “Highest mark in the class,” he says, and for a second, I smile like a keener, though that’s just reflex.
Ninety-four. When I get home, my mom’ll get all excited and ask if I’ve applied to Harvard yet. My dad won’t care. No one will ask if I even like chemistry. I don’t, it’s hard and boring. The night before the exam, instead of studying, I typed out the words to my favourite Ray Bradbury story, “One Night in Your Life.” I had my mom read it out to me. She over-pronounced most of the words, and when I watched her read, I saw that she moved her mouth a lot. It was the first story she ever read to me. I guess I wasn’t sorry it was.
The store is busy after school so there’s no time to tell her about the test. You can’t always predict it. A Tuesday that feels like a Saturday afternoon, and then at 8:01, the phone rings. I pick up. “Jack’s Western Wear,” I say in my chipper work voice.
“Umm, hi. Can I talk to Chrysler?” It’s Conrad.
“Is this the bee?” I say. My mom’s right there, cashing somebody out.
“Is this the apiary?”
“You don’t waste time.”
“I got the … uhh … stuff you wanted.” His voice is playful.
“Oh, the stuff. Uhh … meet you in the alley?” My mom perks up. “It’s busy today.”
“Should I let you go?”
“Maybe. We can talk later, though.”
“I’ll call you tonight?”
Say no. Say no. “Sure.”
“Good luck today.”
“Thanks. Bye.”
After I hang up, my mom says, in Cantonese, “What’s in the alley?”
I look at her slyly and shrug.
Pretty soon the rush ends. We count up, cook, eat, do dishes. I do homework, watch tv with my parents. They go to bed and I go to my room, and at ten-thirty, the phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Guess what I learned today.”
“Did you learn that pirates wore eye patches so that one eye would be adjusted to see below deck?”
“Is that real?”
“Yeah. Also not the thing you learned today.”
“You got a pen?”
“Yeah.”
“Seven two nine seven one five four.” Jamie Aaronson’s number.
“Thanks! Goodnight!” A smile on my face.
“I’ll bet you look really pretty right now, even if you’re mean.”
“Can you believe this guy? Complimenting me and tearing me down all in one sentence.” Pretty? No one’s ever said that.
“I’m a real wordsmith,” he says. “How was your day?”
I tell him about my Chem test, how Mr. Birch and probably all my other teachers taught my siblings and know what happened to them.
“Small town life is an aquarium,” he says. “Teachers were extra-easy on me while my parents were splitting up. Also? You’re fucking smart.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Uhh … ninety-four? Yes, you are. Chem is hard.”
THE NEXT DAY, I pass Jamie’s number on to Nancy, and she looks at me all starry-eyed like that slip of paper is a winning lottery ticket.
Conrad calls again — I should’ve known he would — and he tells me about Belize, how he wants to go, how Pakistan has nuclear capabilities now and what that means. I tell him about Northern bc and the Yukon. He tells me about whale falls, whole ecosystems based on whale carcasses drifting down to the bottom of the ocean. I try to keep our talk short, maybe half an hour, but one evening becomes two, which becomes three, which at the end of the week becomes him asking if I want to hang out on Sunday.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Why not? Store’s closed.”
“I tend to spend the day with my folks, though. Plus, I have to finish this thing I’m working on for that writing contest.”
“Well, my mom likes me to spend weekends with her and Larry.”
“Yeah?”
“So I’ll be in Spring Hills, if you wanna meet up.”
TRINA ALWAYS WANTED to go somewhere. Could be why she got that tattoo of all those birds. Imagine a way of life that forced you to fly halfway around the world twice every year. I wanted to go somewhere, too. Sometimes she’d bring home pamphlets from Destiny Vacations, brochures about Acapulco and Cuba, New York City, and we’d read them together. Black sand, white sand, the Lower East Side. She’d talk about the things she’d wear in each place, about how good the shopping was in New York, how fun it would be to learn to surf or sail. One time I went with her to look at brochures. That’s when I saw it: a scene of soft, snowy peaks and two small trees, sky dark purple like I’d never seen, with alien streaks of cool green light winding through. Yukon. It sounded magic. I took the brochure home with me and read about the Gold Rush, arts festivals, dogsledding, hiking trails, whitewater rafting. I saw pictures of desolation, bears, the warm yellow lights of a chalet town at night, and the unclimbed peaks, glacier caves, and vast ice fields of Kluane National Park.
It became a joke for us. “Just think, Triny,” I’d said. “Twenty-four hours of darkness or light. Glaciers! The Northern Lights! We’ve been to Vancouver. We could go there, too. It’s just, like, ten hours more.”
“Vancouver is Vancouver,” she�
�d said. “Why would I wanna go to the Yukon? It’s fucking cold. It’s all brown and white, and everyone wears a parka all the time.”
It’s still sinking in that she’s alive, really alive and out there. I spend lunches and after schools in the library looking at wildlife guides, a history of the Yukon and Northern bc, a book of photos of the Coast Mountains. I look at the atlas, trace her path to the Alaska Highway, and speculate. She took the 16 because it’s beautiful, it’s random, and it goes west. All those mountains — did she feel hemmed in? And what was the view from Prince Rupert? Water, a thousand miles’ worth, she wouldn’t have known it was the Gulf of Alaska unless she’d looked at a map.
Though I don’t really want to admit it, I think it’s cool she went. What she’s doing? Holy shit. Unbelievably cool, she’s so alive, doing and seeing as much awe-inspiring stuff as she can before she — you know. I picture her driving, seeing ptarmigan and tundra swans, stopping at the side of the road to walk into the woods with a pair of binoculars. But don’t forget: there are also bears there, muskox that can go crazy and stampede. She could fall through thin ice, get run off the road, have a run-in with some miners who want their way with her. There are so many ways to die out there, even more than there are here.
SATURDAY COMES WITH another rush at the store. It’s the middle of the month, and people come in with their loud families in tow, their reserve cheques in hand. We cash them if they buy something. There’s a couple of dozen people in the store right now, lots of native families and some people without cheques, too. My mom and I each have to serve more than one person at once.
I’m running a pair of toddler cowboy boots to the counter for Darren Bigchild, making a mental note to hire someone on part-time, when my dad calls down on the intercom, oblivious, telling me to come up and help with dinner. I look at my mom. She says go like she’s the one noble soldier left behind on the battlefield in a war movie.
Upstairs, he has Chinavision on, some talk show about what to eat and wear when your kids get married. He doesn’t know how to work the tv even though I’ve shown him like a billion times. I find him a show about sharks, start rolling out dough for barbecue pork buns. It’s a personality test. Who pulls for the predator and who for the prey? Dramatic music, near misses, then a seal pops out of the sea like a champagne cork, flapping its fins as it lands in the mouth of a shark.
