Drawn Away

by Holly Bennett

  His clothing was so strange. No jacket, no waistcoat, just a plain, close-cut, short tunic that left his arms almost entirely bare. Some soft, thin fabric I’ve never seen, and the color! A deep royal blue that only a rich man, surely, could afford.

  When I’m not remembering Jack, I’m remembering my life. I’d rather not, truly, but it comes to me now unbidden. The cold, the hunger, the beatings, my father’s brute drunken ravings. I felt safer on the street corner than in my own home—but even that was changing, wasn’t it, as I got older? How many men, that last year, came leering up to me? “I don’t need no matches, Missy, but I’ll pay you a mark to have a go in that alleyway with me!” I had to run off more than once, when they wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  And that last night. It wasn’t just a beating my father had threatened. His shouts echoed down the street after me. “You’ve bled me dry since the day you were born, but by God, girl, you’ll earn your keep now! I don’t care how you get it, but you come back here with some real money! Real money, mind, or after I knock the stuffing out of you I’ll sell you to the first fancy man who’ll take you!”

  I hated him by then. I never disobeyed him, never did anything but his bidding, but I only got cuffs and curses back.

  Was my mother different, when she lived? Did she hold me and feed me and warm me at night? A memory of her seems to hover in the air before me, just out of reach, the sound of her voice in my ears.

  It’s just a foolish wish, nothing more. My mother abandoned me, as my father reminded me often enough. I don’t want these memories. Jack made me think of them, and now I can’t stop.

  I’ll think about Jack again. His arms look strong—I could see the swell of his muscles—but lean. He wears something around his wrist—a sort of bracelet, with silver on it.

  Come back, Jack. Come back and talk to me again.

  FIVE

  JACK

  “So, mon gars, when are you coming back to civilization for a visit?”

  It was a common refrain with my friends from Montreal. Or things like, How are you surviving in Tim Hortonsland? and How’s your mullet coming along?

  It was nearly the end of September, and I was Skyping with my friend, Michel. I found myself saying, “Thanksgiving, I hope. Can’t wait to see you guys. But really, Michel, it’s not bad here.”

  My reaction to Michel’s snotty little crack made me realize I was already starting to feel comfortable here. I mean, Kershaw was definitely small, but I was discovering there were nice things about that—like how easy it was to find your friends downtown. The fact I already had some to meet was the nicest surprise. I’d always gotten along easily with people, but I wasn’t sure I’d find “real” friends here, if that makes sense. Okay, to be honest, I was worried they might all be lame hicks. That thought seemed pretty ignorant now. My new school had its share of jerks—they all do—but Rafe was great, and he’d introduced me to a group of kids I already liked.

  Even the school itself was not so bad. At my old school, they were always talking about “lifelong learning” and “self-direction.” That meant we were given a lot of responsibility for our own work: What interests you in this course? What are your learning goals? How will you demonstrate you’ve achieved them? In a way it was good, but, like anything that’s repeated too often, it got to be a tedious pain in the butt, and we mostly bullshitted our way through it. Still, the regimentation of my new school had rubbed me the wrong way at first—until I realized how much easier it was. Show up for class, read chapter eight, do the assignment. It was kind of a relief, honestly.

  And Lucy—Lucy was awesome. I’d never met a girl quite like her. She had this kick-ass sort of don’t-mess-with-me look, but that’s not what she was like—at least, not entirely. She was funny and smart and, I don’t know, direct, but not in a rude way, just like she knew who she was and wasn’t going to pretend to be anyone else. I really liked spending time with her and was already hoping we’d be a lot more than math buddies before too long.

  I began to realize there were things I didn’t understand about Lucy though. I noticed she didn’t seem to have that many friends at school, though Rafe and his gang were happy to have her hang out with us. She was friends with this girl, Ali, who also seemed to be a bit of a loner, and a couple of others. But she didn’t hesitate when I asked if she wanted to come along to a party Rafe’s friend Alex was having, and she seemed to have a good time.

  I asked Rafe about it a few days ago. He hesitated before he spoke.

  “Lucy had kind of a bad time a while back—I guess it was near the end of ninth grade. Her dad died, and she seemed okay at first, but then…I didn’t know her very well, so I don’t really know what happened, and anyway I guess it’s up to her to tell you if she wants to. But she disappeared for a while, and then partway through the following fall she came back, looking like she does now.”

  “What did she look like before?” I asked, though it was the least of my questions.

  Rafe shrugged. “I dunno. More like everyone else, I guess.” I pointed silently at his loud Hawaiian shirt, and he laughed. “Don’t get me wrong—it’s not that I think everyone should look like everyone else. I like Lucy, and I’m glad we’re hanging out more.” He shrugged again, and I could see he was baffled himself. “I think we were…well, maybe a bit scared of her when she first came back. Maybe it was just easier to stick with the friends we already had.”

  So overall, things were going pretty well for me. I thought maybe Noah was having a harder time of it, though he hadn’t said anything. He’d been home every weekend, and that didn’t seem a good sign. But I figured things would be better once hockey started up. Noah’s a decent player and really loves the game—unlike my mom. She wouldn’t let him try out for the triple-A team last year, saying it would eat up all of our time and money. She tries to be supportive though, despite muttering about “war games” and “sanctioned violence,” and she took him to register the day after we moved in. He’d make friends on the team.

  On our third math session, Mom asked Lucy to stay for dinner. Lucy kind of ducked her head and said almost formally, “Thanks, Mrs. Lavoie, I’d like to.”

  Mom gave this bemused laugh and said, “Oh gosh, just call me Bente.”

  “Bente,” Lucy said. “I’ve never heard that name before.”

  “It’s Danish. I have to spell it a lot.”

  At dinner, the Parental Interrogation began.

  “So, Lucy, what do your parents do?” my dad asked.

  “It’s just me and my mom,” Lucy replied softly. “She works at a retirement home. Three-to-eleven shift, mostly.”

  “Oh, is she a nurse?” Mom asked. She has a love-hate relationship with medical people, depending on their attitude toward midwives and home birth and stuff like that.

  Lucy shook her head. “Admin and reception, mostly. Though I don’t think much happens after nine.” Thankfully, the subject of her father was left behind. Mom moved on to grilling Noah about his geography project, and Dad launched into his concerns about the coming invasion of the Asian carp—which I would normally have been interested in, actually, but that night I was distracted. I was thinking that when we were alone again, Lucy might tell me about her dad, and sure enough she did.

  We were on the couch downstairs, nominally watching Bob’s Burgers, but she was restless. Then she reached for the remote, clicked it off and turned to me.

  “It’s probably time I told you about my checkered past,” she said. And I just shut up and let her tell it.

  “My dad died when I was fifteen.” It came out flat and blunt. “A car crash on the highway to Ottawa. It was—well, you can imagine. It was bad.”

  I nodded sympathetically, but I couldn’t imagine, or maybe I didn’t want to.

  “My mom kind of fell apart. I mean, we were both—oh God—” She faltered. I waited. She took her hand away from the frayed cuff she’d been worrying and began again. “Of course, you fall apart. But she sort of stayed that
way. It was like she just—went away. Day after day. And there I was, trying to make sure that there was food in the house and that she ate something and that the bills were paid.

  “Finally, she had to do something because we were broke. There was a big mortgage and hardly any life insurance, and my mom only had a part-time job. She had to sell the house and find full-time work, and we moved into a little townhouse. We got through all that, and I did what I could to help. But that seemed to be all she could manage. I felt like she couldn’t even see me.”

  Lucy stopped. She ruffled up and then smoothed down her choppy hair, crossed her legs and sighed. “My dad died in March. I was in ninth grade. I held it together, barely, till the end of the school year, and then—I just got really angry. At her, at everything. We had some huge screaming fights. I was acting like a complete bitch, but I think I was just trying to get some kind of reaction. After a couple of weeks of that, I took off. I caught a bus to Toronto and stayed in a hostel for a few days, and when my money ran out I began panhandling and sleeping in parks. I met some people, and the longer I stayed away, the harder it was to come home. I hated it, and I was scared almost all the time, but I felt like I couldn’t go back.”

  “Your mom must have been crazy worried,” I said. I tried to picture my mother as a sudden widow. She’d be heartbroken, but I was as sure as I could be that her reaction would be to grab hold of me and Noah and hang on for dear life. But maybe that’s what Lucy had expected of her mom too. Who knows how something like that will affect you?

  She looked at me seriously. “I guess that was the point. But I was in counseling for quite a while before I could see it. At the time, I thought she deserved it, that I was just giving her what she wanted.”

  “What made you come home?” I asked.

  “For one thing, it was October, and it was getting damn cold.” She flashed a quick, tense smile. “But more important, I had two scary things happen to me two nights in a row. A pimp with this poor girl in tow—God, she looked awful: bruises under her makeup and so stoned she could hardly keep her eyes open—tried to recruit me, and not by asking politely. And then a crackhead pulled a broken bottle on me and threatened to cut my face up if I didn’t give him money. He had me up against the wall, and if one of those bike cops hadn’t come pedaling by, I don’t know if I would have got away. I ran until I felt like my head was going to explode, and when I stopped I was at the bus station. And I knew I had to get my life back together, or I was going to end up dead.”

  Wow. I felt like a ten-year-old kid, like nothing bad had ever happened to me. I didn’t know what to say, so I just put my arm around her and pulled her in close, and she snuggled right up to me. She didn’t cry though. She sniffed and dragged the back of her hand across her nose and dogged on through.

  “So. I didn’t have bus fare. I had to call my mother, and she left work and drove up and got me. She found me a counselor and I started going, and I went to the guidance office at school to figure out how to catch up.” She made a face. “I couldn’t quite do it, not without a round of summer school.”

  “And you and your mom?” I asked.

  “We made peace.”

  I nodded cautiously. Made peace didn’t sound exactly like what you’d hope for.

  LUCY

  I’d been okay for quite a while. All last year, I was fine. I kept up in school, got my part-time barista job, cooked myself something decent to eat most nights, got along okay with my mom.

  But now I was actually happy. I used to wake up in the morning and sort of gird myself for the day. Now, pretty often, I woke up looking forward to it. And that was mostly because of Jack. I was pretty messed up when I first came back to school, and I was working so hard to get my life together and get caught up that I really didn’t have room for anything else. I wasn’t exactly approachable, I guess. And maybe that kind of set the tone for my social life. But Jack is the kind of person who connects easily with people, and he was connecting me up too. Now everything was easier. It was like we all—including me—had discovered that I wasn’t prickly or antisocial or scary. At least, not anymore.

  Was I falling for him? Yes, I was. And I was pretty sure he liked me too, but he was a bit hard to read. For all his easy friendships, he seemed more reserved in that department than a lot of guys.

  It’s funny how I assumed at first that he was too preppy and straight for me. Then I caught sight of a photo in his room—a group of kids, all hugging and mugging for the camera. Quite a motley assortment—white and brown and Asian, long hair and punk spikes, a girl with black everything, including major eyeliner, and another who looked like she’d escaped from the 1970s.

  “Who’re all these kids?” I asked.

  “Oh, those are my friends in Montreal.” He came closer to look over my shoulder.

  “Really. They don’t look like you.”

  Jack laughed. “Don’t you recognize me?”

  I looked again, and there he was, hair down to his shoulders, but the same megawatt smile.

  “Omigod, it’s you!” More laughter while I compared the before and after. “Why’d you cut it?”

  He shrugged. “Sort of a rite of passage, I guess. We did it at my going-away party—the girls went at me with scissors, and then Michel pulled out his clippers. A fresh start.” He ran his hand over his head. The bristly buzz cut was just beginning to soften and lie down. “I actually liked it in the hot weather, but I hope it’s a fair bit longer by winter.”

  I looked up at him, hovering just above my shoulder, and had a sudden strong urge to lean in and kiss him. Instead, I put the photo back on his dresser and mumbled something about getting back to the books.

  So I guess it wasn’t just Jack who was acting reserved.

  SIX

  LUCY

  Jack offered a couple of times to meet at my house, but I put him off. I wasn’t ashamed of it or anything—I just liked hanging out at Jack’s. Even though it was distracting, I liked the activity—his brother Noah, who’s shy and sweet, and the pets and even the mommy groups that were sometimes camped in the living room.

  My house—well, it didn’t feel like home, not yet anyway. It was as if there was something we’d never got around to unpacking when we moved here two years ago—the thing that makes a house feel comfy and welcoming.

  So we were at Jack’s again, and neither of us felt like working. It was a perfect early-October day, a sky so clear and blue that it hurt to look at it. We played with Snowball in the backyard, chasing him through the first scattering of fallen leaves and wrestling with him, and then we flopped down against the trunk of the big maple tree and admired the way the sun slanted through the yellow leaves and turned them into something glowing and magical.

  And then Jack leaned over and kissed me. It was just a little brush on the corner of my mouth that left me room to call it a friendship kiss or even ignore it if I wanted to. But I didn’t. I looked over and he was watching me, waiting. I smiled and tipped my face up, and we kissed again, properly, and this ridiculous wave of happiness washed through me. Relief too, because I’d known already that I had a thing for Jack—but what if he didn’t for me?

  We kissed gently at first, getting a feel for each other, and then the heat ramped up and the world faded away and I felt like I could make out with Jack here in the golden light forever. I wished he still had his long hair so I could reach up and grab a handful. Jack pulled me closer, and we wiggled down, leaves crunching beneath us, so we could lie against each other—and that’s when Snowball decided he’d had enough. He turned into a little yapping dynamo, barking in our ears and licking our faces. When he tried to burrow under my head, we burst out laughing, gave up and sat back against the tree. Snowball immediately leaped into Jack’s lap, stretched up onto his chest and went to sleep. Lucky dog. Jack had his hand cupped over the little dog’s back, and the whole scene was just…

  “Hey, Jack,” I said, “can I draw you?”

  “What—you mean now?”

/>   “Yeah. You and Snowball, just like that. Seems like you’re stuck in that position for a while anyway. And I need to submit five sketches a week to Ms. Purcell.”

  He smiled. “Sure, go for it.”

  I ran back to the house and pulled my sketchbook and pencil out of my bag, then sat down by Jack and got to work. I was shy at first about drawing him, but once I got into it my hesitancy fell away. I just thought about the kink of Snowball’s fur, and the way his head nestled under Jack’s Adam’s apple, and how the tips of Jack’s fingers disappeared as they curled around the dog’s spine…

  Time went on, the light got lower, and Jack was being the most awesome model. He didn’t move or complain or hardly even blink, and it was a long time before it occurred to me that he actually looked kind of weird.

  I put down my sketchbook and stared at him. He didn’t notice I’d stopped drawing—didn’t even glance over. He just sat there motionless, his expression blank.

  “Jack?”

  He didn’t answer, and now I was scared. I didn’t know anything about his diabetes, I realized, not really. It was just part of his life—already I didn’t even really notice it. I’d seen him suck down a juice box when he was “low” and knew he carried glucose tablets in his pocket all the time. Was he low now? I ran over and grabbed his shoulders.

  “JACK!”

  JACK

  I don’t believe it. I’m here again.

  I’m here again, and it’s just the same: the long street, the grimy, looming buildings, the mist. More mist, even.

  And the girl.

  I’m still not scared, not exactly, but I don’t have the calm dreaminess of last time. This time there’s no pretending it’s just a dream. This is something really freaky, and not in a good way.

  I walk toward the skinny girl, because what else is there to do? She sees me right away this time, and when she does her face lights up like it’s Christmas Day.