At the Edge of the World

by Jones, Kari;

  “Her family should have come to see how Ivan is,” says Maddie, who’s joined us. She hands me another cup of hot chocolate, replacing the old one though I haven’t drunk any of it.

  “Drink this one,” she says.

  My fingers are so numb I can hardly move them, so I just hold on to the cup until she lifts it to my mouth, and then I take a sip. The heat seeps through me.

  “Let’s get you home, buddy,” Des says.

  I take a few more sips of the hot chocolate. My fingers and toes are burning, but the rest of me is shivering, and it’s hard to control my legs enough to stand. I have to stomp my feet a few times before I can make my legs move enough to walk. My teeth are chattering, and my whole body shakes with cold. Maddie takes my hand and pulls me along the dock, followed by Des and Bo and Peter and Noah and Laurie.

  People move out of the way as we walk past. They’re talking about me; I can tell by the way they stare. They probably think I fell in. Whatever. Let them think what they want.

  As we reach the parking lot a woman runs up to me.

  “Thank you, thank you,” she says. She takes my hand and presses it in both of hers. She’s crying. “You saved her life.” She wipes her eyes, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference, as the tears keep pouring down her face.

  I smile at her and let her hold my hand. “Someone else would have gone after her if I didn’t.”

  “I think he needs to get home,” Des says.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” the woman says. “Thank you, I can’t thank you enough. Before you go, tell me your name.”

  “It’s Ivan,” says Des. He puts his arm on my shoulder and steers me toward the road.

  I smile at the woman again.

  * * *

  “In you go,” Des says when we reach the house. He opens the door for me, and I make a beeline for the shower, standing under the hot water until it runs out. My fingers have thawed, but I’m still cold inside.

  “Made you a cup of coffee,” Des says when I eventually join him outside.

  We sit together on our bar stools while I sip the coffee.

  “Maybe we’ll rent a movie this evening, eh?” Des says. “And I’ll make you some mac and cheese, your favorite.”

  “Sounds great.” It shouldn’t be such a big deal, but the whole experience shook me, if I’m being honest, and a quiet evening sounds about right to me. When I’m done my coffee, I head inside to find a warmer sweater. On my way back down the stairs I hear voices, and when I walk outside, Pedro is sitting on my stool.

  “We’re headed over to Sayward Harbour for the evening,” he says.

  I look at Des, but he won’t meet my eye. He’s got his wallet in one hand and car key in the other.

  “I thought we were watching a movie and you were making dinner,” I say.

  “Another time, eh?”

  “Is there food? Something I can make dinner with?”

  “Must be. I’m sure there is. You didn’t want to spend the evening with me anyway, did you?”

  “Actually, I did. At least, I wanted you to make me dinner.”

  Pedro laughs. “Kids, eh? Always wanting something.”

  Des laughs with him and grabs his coat from the peg on the wall. “Make sure to stay warm, Ivan. And don’t expect me back tonight,” he says as he walks through the door.

  FOURTEEN

  Maddie

  Ivan’s already pretty drunk when I see him later at Jack’s house. It’s Jack’s parents’ twentieth wedding anniversary, and practically the whole town has been invited. There’s champagne and lox and strawberries inside, and a keg out back. Someone’s made a huge cake with two plastic people in wedding gear standing on top, and it sits in the middle of the dining-room table.

  Kyra and Laurie and their friends are in the living room, dancing to some hippie New Age music with lots of drums and flutes.

  “Hi, Maddie,” Kyra calls out as I weave through the swaying crowd.

  I talk to her for a bit, until Ivan comes up behind me and says, “Hey, Maddie, there you are. Come outside with me,” and I follow him to the back patio. Jack, River and Noah are already in the hot tub, along with some other kids from the high school, people I don’t really know. But I am pretty sure they’ll be slobbery beer drinkers I don’t want to spend time with.

  “Hey, we were waiting for you guys,” shouts Jack when we get there.

  “What for?” I ask.

  Noah holds up a bottle of tequila. “We haven’t even opened it yet. We were waiting for the hero,” he says.

  Ivan laughs and walks around to the back of the hot tub, where he strips to his board shorts, which, I notice for the first time ever, are long and cover his scar. He slides into the tub. Too fast. Too far away. Too interested in tequila. He and Noah unscrew the cap and swig from the bottle. I stand at the side of the hot tub and let the steam wash over me.

  “Come on in, Maddie,” Jack says. He shoves the guy next to him to make room for me, but I can see the bottle of tequila doing the rounds, and Ivan’s already slouched in an I’m-not-moving-from-here position on the other side of the tub. He doesn’t meet my eye when I look at him, so I shake my head and go back into the house.

  I chill with the girls for a while, swaying and dancing to their music, but they’re kids and they giggle a lot, so after a while I go to the dining room to get some food. Bea and Katia are there, so I stay and talk to them. Bea’s heading off to McGill in a few weeks, and Katia’s going to Victoria for nursing school. I haven’t told them, or anyone else, that I got into Emily Carr but am not going. I’m afraid they’d also look at me like I’m insane.

  When I finish a plate of bagels and lox and strawberries and have had a couple of glasses of champagne, I excuse myself and head back outside to tell Ivan I’m leaving with Bea and Katia. The boys are still in the hot tub, staring at the stars. I make my way around the hot tub until I’m standing next to Ivan.

  “I’m going,” I say. There are so many things I’m not saying with those words. Many things.

  “Aw, come on, why? The evening’s just getting going.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  He looks at me and frowns. “No I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “Yeah, I am. Come get drunk with me.” He pats the seat next to him, but his head lolls unappealingly on the side of the hot tub, and I back away.

  “Whatever, Ivan. I’ll see you later.”

  Enough with the drunk boys. Bea and Katia and I head to Bea’s house, on the other side of the harbor. We’ve taken a bottle of champagne with us for the walk.

  “Ivan’s really hot, Maddie. You should totally go for him,” Katia says. She’s been saying this since about the eighth grade, so I ignore her.

  “He is,” Bea says.

  “You know we’re, like, best friends,” I say to them. “I’ve known him since forever.”

  “So what? All the better.” Katia shoves my shoulder playfully, and I stumble into the road.

  “Come on, you guys. He’s Ivan. I mean, we used to take baths together, and Bo taught us both how to tie our shoes. He’s like my brother or something.”

  “And he’s super hot. And you know everything about him. You know him better than anyone. What could be more perfect?” Katia says.

  Tears fill my eyes. Even a week ago I might have agreed with her, that Ivan and I had no secrets. But it’s not true. Ivan has secrets from me, and I’m beginning to suspect they’re big ones.

  “I hate it!” I shout into the night.

  “What do you hate?” Bea asks, but I don’t answer.

  “Come in. My parents are still at the party,” Bea says when we reach her house.

  “I think I’m going to head home,” I say.

  “Oh, come on,” Katia says, but Bea laughs and says, “Yeah right, you’re going home. You’re going to go and get Ivan, aren’t you?”

  “Sure, Bea, I’m going to get Ivan.”

  Let them think what they want. I am going to get Ivan,
but not for the reason they think.

  * * *

  I try texting him, but there’s no answer. Not a surprise, because he always forgets to keep his phone charged. I also try the party, but Jack’s mom says she saw him leave a few minutes ago.

  I hardly ever take the road home from town because I love walking along the beach, but I have a better chance of finding Ivan if I go past his house, so that’s what I do. I finally catch up with him as he’s fumbling with the lock to his door. He opens the door and walks in, and I slip in beside him before he even notices I’m there.

  “There you are,” I say.

  “Shit, Maddie, you scared the life out of me.”

  “I wanted to see if you were okay,” I say.

  “Okay as ever.”

  “You saved a girl from drowning this morning, remember?”

  Ivan smiles at me and takes my hand. “You’re my best cheerleader, Maddie.”

  “Want to come out to the beach for a bit?” I hold up the half-empty bottle of champagne that I’m still holding.

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll just get a sweater. Wait here.”

  Moonlight shines through the window at the top of the stairs and gives him a halo as he walks up. I haven’t been up there for years. The last time must have been before Ivan’s mom left. We used to have sleepovers, and I’m pretty sure the last time I went upstairs in Ivan’s house was also the last time I had a sleepover with him. Ten, eleven years ago. It’s not right that I never come here.

  At the top of the stairs, Ivan stops abruptly, and I bump into him.

  “What’s that smell?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. You followed me?”

  “It’s like vomit,” I say.

  “Shit.” Ivan’s voice changes. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  The stench makes me gag when we open a door at the top of the stairs. Inside, Des lies on his bed. A gray-green ooze of vomit spreads from his beard and across his chest. His breathing is short and raspy; an old-fashioned alarm clock ticks by his pillow. When I step toward him, something crunches under my foot, and I look down to see broken glass and a smattering of pills strewn across the wooden floor.

  “Oh, Ivan, what’s he done?”

  Ivan steps up to the bed and rolls Des over onto his side, then thumps him on the back until Des sputters and coughs. He groans loudly, and Ivan says, “Up, Des, get up.”

  Des groans again.

  Ivan pulls the covers off Des and bends over so that his head and shoulders are under Des’s arm, then pulls Des to a sitting position.

  “Come on, Des, we’re getting you into the shower.”

  Des opens his eyes and stares at Ivan. He tries to say something, but Ivan says, “Come on, Des.”

  My hands shake badly as I open the door wider so that Ivan and Des can pass through and stagger to the bathroom. The smell of alcohol trails after them, and the only sound I can hear is Ivan huffing as he mostly carries Des down the hall. My own breath comes out in gasps.

  When they reach the bathroom, Ivan crouches down next to Des in front of the toilet and holds his head while he sticks his fingers down Des’s throat. Des gags and retches, and again the stench of vomit stings my eyes. When he’s done, Des leans back against the wall, but Ivan pulls him to his feet and into the shower.

  I go back to the bedroom, where I use a slipper to sweep the broken glass into a corner. Then I pick up all the pills and pile them into the palm of my hand. There’s no sign of a bottle they might have come from. I try to count the pills, but my eyes are blurred with tears, and in the end I just throw them into the pile with the broken glass.

  The shower turns off and there’s noise from the bathroom, but when I go out to the hallway, Ivan closes the bathroom door.

  “Ivan?” I call through the door.

  “We’re fine,” he calls back.

  “Come on, open up,” I say, but a second later he opens the door and steps out into the hallway, closing the door behind him. He’s soaked, and his eyes are rimmed with red.

  “Should I call an ambulance?”

  He shakes his head. “He’ll be fine.”

  “There were pills.”

  “I know. He’s fine.”

  “But…Ivan…” My voice trails off because I can’t find the words to say what I want to say.

  There’s more noise inside the bathroom, and then the door opens and Des lurches out. He’s naked and still dripping from the shower, and when he sees me he stops and puts his hand out to steady himself, but when he does, he misses the wall and instead falls into Ivan, who stumbles and then falls, hitting his face on the doorjamb as he goes down.

  I gasp and scramble over to cradle Ivan’s head in my hands.

  “Just go, Maddie,” he whispers.

  “What?”

  He holds his head in his hands but sits up and says, “Maddie, leave.”

  “Maddie, leave,” mimics Des. His words slur, and he stumbles as he rights himself.

  I’m shaking so much I can hardly form the words to say, “No, I can’t leave you.”

  “We’re fine,” Ivan says. He wriggles until he’s untangled from Des and stands up.

  “Come on, Des, into bed with you.” He once again ducks under Des’s arm and hoists him by the shoulder.

  “Ivan.” I reach out to him, but he moves away. “Please, Ivan, let me call an ambulance. Or Bo—let me call Bo. He’ll come and deal with this.”

  “Just go, Maddie. We’ll be fine.” He turns his back to me and walks down the hall to another bedroom.

  “Ivan!”

  I follow him, but he turns at the door and says, “I know what I’m doing. You should just go.” His voice is barely a whisper, but there’s no mistaking that he means it.

  I don’t understand. Not at all. The only thing I want at this moment is to get Ivan some help, but he’s already turning away from me again, and as he does, he says, “Please don’t tell anyone, Maddie. Not Bo, not anyone.”

  He doesn’t look back as he walks into the room and closes the door, and I don’t follow him. I wait until I hear the sound of the two of them talking, and I can tell myself that at least Des is conscious now, and then I stumble down the stairs and sprint out the door as my eyes fill with tears. My breath is so sharp it hurts my throat, and my mind fills with the sound of Ivan’s voice—the edge of panic, the desperate pleading. Keep our secret, he was saying. Keep our secret like I always have.

  FIFTEEN

  Ivan

  Shit. How could I let this happen? After all this time, why the hell did I believe him? Why did I think if he said he would be away for the night that he would really be away? How stupid am I that I keep believing him?

  My head spins as I stand up, but I’ve done this before, settled Des into my own bed, then crawled to the sofa and slept there for the night. We keep a blanket down here. I reach around in the dark until I find it, then pull it over me. My head throbs, especially my jaw.

  I go in and out of sleep, but the throbbing of my jaw is constant. It’s dark in here, and it stinks. My jaw needs ice. I wake up properly and wipe the drool off my chin and sit up, though my head pounds when I do so. This one’s going to hurt for a long time.

  There’s movement upstairs, so I go up to check on Des. The blankets have slipped off him, so I cover him again, and I also close the blind, which I forgot to do earlier. What a fucking stereotype he is. At the door I hesitate until I hear Des start to snore, and then I head back downstairs and get an ice pack from the freezer. I close the door slowly and grab a dishtowel to wrap the ice in before I creep back to the sofa. My jaw hurts way too much for me to cry.

  * * *

  In the morning, Maddie’s and Noah’s voices outside wake me up.

  “Ivan, wake up. Riley Point’s going off. We’re leaving in ten minutes with or without you,” Noah says.

  I roll over, but Noah calls again, “Ivan, we’re coming in,” and then both he and Maddie giggle, like they’ve got a shared secret.

  Shit.

&
nbsp; I roll over but don’t get up until the voices get closer. When I hear the door open, I swing my legs over the edge of the sofa and sit up. The world spins, and I put my hands out to steady myself.

  “You look like crap,” Noah says, coming into the doorway of the living room.

  I stare at the floor.

  “Someone broke something last night. There’s glass all over the kitchen floor,” Maddie says.

  I nod but don’t say anything. Maddie joins Noah in the doorway. I breathe deeply. Count to ten, then look, I think, but before I can, she walks to the sofa, sits down next to me and puts her arms around me.

  “Get dressed. We’ll wait for you,” she says. I still don’t look at her face. My jaw hurts, but it’s not too bad now, so I head upstairs to take a look at Des and get some fresh clothes. Des is snoring loudly. It stinks up here, but I’ll deal with that later.

  When I come downstairs a few minutes later, Maddie and Noah are picking pieces of glass up off the kitchen floor. It’s a disaster in there—broken plates and glasses, food spilled all over the table.

  “Leave it,” I say.

  “You guys really need to take better care of yourselves, you know,” Maddie says. “Just because there aren’t any women around here is no excuse for living like slobs.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “What happened to you?” Noah asks, pointing to my swollen jaw.

  “You must have hit harder than we thought when you fell last night,” Maddie says.

  “I guess,” I say. We look at each other, and her face tells me everything I need to know. She’s not smiling, not frowning, just looking serious, like there’s business to get on with today. No change from the way she looked at me yesterday. It’s a totally Maddie look, and holy shit, I love her for it. I breathe properly for the first time since last night.

  She takes my hand and wraps her fingers around it, then pulls at my arm so I have to follow her.

  “So what’s going on anyway?” says Noah.

  “That is none of your business,” says Maddie, but she smiles as she says it, so Noah laughs and says, “Well, it’s about time. You two have been drooling over each other ever since I met you.”