Something Wicked

by Lesley Anne Cowan

  PUFFIN CANADA

  SOMETHING WICKED

  LESLEY ANNE COWAN was born in Toronto and studied English and education at McGill University in Montreal. She has travelled extensively and works as a secondary school teacher of at-risk youth. Her first novel, As She Grows, first published as adult literary fiction, was shortlisted for the Chapters/ Robertson Davies First Novel Prize. Something Wicked is the second in a series of adolescent novels exploring the lives of today’s young, urban women.

  Visit the author’s website at www.lesleyanne cowan.com.

  ALSO BY LESLEY ANNE COWAN

  As She Grows

  LESLEY ANNE COWAN

  PUFFIN CANADA

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  a cognizant original v5 release october 27 2010

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published 2010

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

  Copyright © Lesley Anne Cowan, 2010

  Author representation: Westwood Creative Artists

  94 Harbord Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1G6

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in Canada.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Cowan, Lesley Anne

  Something wicked / Lesley Anne Cowan.

  ISBN 978-0-14-317393-9

  I. Title.

  PS8555.O85763S66 2010 C813’.6 C2010-901982-2

  Visit the author’s website at www.lesleyannecowan.com

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  To those I’ve taught,

  and those who’ve taught me

  One

  I am “sexually promiscuous.”

  The words are written down in my file. I can’t escape it. It goes along with all my other labels: ADD, learning disability, irritability, and impulsivity. Once someone writes a label down, it’s like a big fat bread crumb leading the counsellor down the care and treatment plan. You see, it’s the person who holds the pen who matters; this is who can ruin your life. The one who takes every mistake you’ve made and every blurted-out word and etches it into your future with the stroke of a pen. Of course, the past shapes everyone’s future, but with counsellors, the past is the future. The past is never, ever forgotten. You are forced to live it every day. And soon, it becomes who you are.

  “Sexually promiscuous,” I slowly read aloud, staring at the opened file on the table. “That’s a new one. So you’re saying I’m a slut?”

  Eric, my counsellor, quickly covers up the papers. “No. It means you are perhaps more liberal in your sexual relations than adults feel is appropriate for your age group.”

  “So?” I challenge. “Does it matter?”

  “It can.”

  “Well. It doesn’t make a difference to me. Sex is not a big deal. It doesn’t damage me or anything.”

  Eric shrugs and raises a brow, the way he does when I say something loaded and he’s thinking whether or not to get into it with me. He knows, if it’s the wrong time, I’ll just argue and not listen, so he waits, like a predator in the grass, for a vulnerable moment when his attack is more likely to yield a good kill.

  “I know the difference between fucking around and love,” I add, because I don’t want him thinking I’m a total idiot.

  “I hope you do,” Eric says casually.

  I eye him with suspicion. I have slipped up. I shouldn’t be telling him about all the guys I’m with. Even though he’s a good counsellor, he’s still from an old generation of people who think sex matters. It’s just not a big deal anymore, and so I’ve divulged too much, as usual. Old habits die young. That’s why teenagers are so exciting in therapy. We haven’t yet learned that you aren’t supposed to confess everything. We don’t know that there are two languages: the one you keep in your head and the other you share with everyone else.

  If you only knew. If you only really knew the truth about what I really do, I think, moving my gaze to the fishbowl.“So you still want me to name it?” I ask, trying to change the topic before he uses it as a window to further discussion. Eric has a goldfish that he always offers his clients to name. He pretends it’s the same one, but from time to time I notice a slight change—a different brownish mark on the belly, a slightly thinner fin. It’s been almost a year, and I’ve refused to do it.

  “Sure.”

  I reconsider. “But isn’t it a little schizophrenic for the little thing, all those names? It’s a good thing you’re a shrink.”

  Eric raises his hand to his reddish beard and pulls at the short hairs on his chin. “I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m a counsellor,” he corrects me. He is so serious sometimes. “So, any ideas?”

  “No.” I lie, not wanting to give him the satisfaction. But I know exactly what I’d call it. And I actually don’t think having more than one name is such a bad idea.

  I have more than one name for myself. I also call myself Echo. It’s sort of like a tag name, but I use it only for adults. I always like to introduce myself to strangers as this. Some of them stare at me like they know I’m bullshitting, but most either don’t care or are too self-absorbed to care, and just don’t question the name.

  Eric has a hard time calling me this, though. I don’t think he’s ever said it, despite my insistence. So I’m not about to name his stupid fish. But if I did, I’d call her Amphitrite, because she was the goddess queen of the sea.

  I am into myths. We study them in English class and my mother gave me a book on them last Christmas. It’s the only book she’s ever given me, despite the fact I love reading. She says myths contain more wisdom than the Bible, and more insight than a Dr. Phil episode. I just like them because the women sometimes kick ass and there’s tons of crazy, heartless jealousy and revenge. Everybody is sleeping with everybody else. It’s completely insane.

  I liked Echo right away. She was a sleazy, beautiful nymph who tried to steal the goddess Hera’s husband. Instead of getting mad at her man, the goddess put a stop to the flirting by cursing Echo to just repeat whatever a person said to
her. She would have only the power of reply, no power to speak first. No original thought. So after that, her conversations with the guy went something like this:

  “Who’s here?” he asks.

  “Here.”

  “Why do you shun me?” he asks.

  “Shun me.”

  But this is where I’m torn. Though I identify with Echo, I have respect for Hera. She recognized the slut’s true charm and instead of making her ugly, she took away her ability to flirt. That goddess was smart. And I’d like to think I’m pretty smart like that too. Not school smart. People smart. Most women would have mistakenly gone straight to the beauty factor. But we all know it’s those ugly women who can pose the most threat.

  You see? It’s all about the words. Words control your destiny. Not just the ones etched on paper. Even the fleeting words in your mouth stain the air with deceptive permanence.

  So I call myself Echo to remind me not to give away too much of myself when I talk to adults: repeat what they say. Say what they want to hear.

  Eric trips me up sometimes. It’s especially hard to be Echo with him. In fact, it’s hard to remember most of the time, which is why I write this name on my library card, sign it on school papers, throw it into conversations. I want to make it obvious to adults that I get it, that I am now in the game: think what you want of me, you’ll never get inside.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Everything all right?”

  “All right.”

  But it’s not just the words I repeat. It’s not that literal. I replicate the tone. I use the same thought censorship that adults do. I’ve learned what shouldn’t be divulged. I’ve learned to make the space between the words not impenetrable, but empty. So that when they try to dissect me, all they find is a void.

  Two

  Only two weeks since the beginning of the school year and already I’m tired of it. Is there a rule somewhere that school must be boring? That it must be irrelevant? That it must suck the life out of learning? You go into grade one all enthusiastic and curious, but by the time you graduate, you’re shrivelled and dried like a dead lizard carcass you find behind the fridge.

  Even this is not an original thought. Millions of teenagers believe school is boring. Even the teachers think it. Books have been written. Songs have been sung. It’s so cliché.

  So why does it continue?

  “Tonight’s homework will be worth five percent of your final mark.”

  Ms. Switzer’s voice snaps me out of my daydream rant. My mind is pretty wild. Sometimes it just goes to places so far away that even I don’t realize it’s taken off until something jars me back to the present. That’s my ADD. It takes me a moment to regain my bearings. Here I am, inside my stupid gradeeleven body, inside my stupid school uniform, inside a stupid English classroom, inside a stupid rundown high school, inside a pretty decent city, inside a pretty decent country, inside a stupid fucked-up world, inside a pretty cool universe.

  Ms. Switzer’s hand goes up and she scribbles our essay topic across the blackboard. Occasionally you get a good teacher like Ms. Switzer who makes you actually wake up out of your dazed stupor and learn something. She’s not young or old, ugly or pretty. She’s not a bitch or a softie. She’s something in the middle of all those things, which just makes her … real.

  She writes, The first human statement is a scream.

  I am excited to do this assignment. I have so much to say. Great ideas race through my mind, but by the time I place my hand on the page, my head is already empty again. That’s my learning disability: I can’t squeeze my brilliant, billowing thoughts through my teeny, tiny pen and into sentences on a page.

  The excitement over the English homework never went away, it’s just that I get caught up in other things. Like after school, meeting my best friends Allison and Jessica, who beg me to come smoke a few blunts in the park because I’ve barely seen them all summer since I’m always with Michael. I met Ally in the beginning of grade nine, but Jess has been my friend since grade one. They’re a lot different. Allison is tough and butchy, with steel-toed black combats, while Jessica is more like a plain-Jane princess with a sharp stick. But we all get along really good, especially when we’re high.

  Mark, Luc, Devon, and Kyle and a few other guys come along, stopping for some tokes before going to play hoops. We chill with them because Devon and Jess have been together forever, at least eight months. And Luc bought a twenty-sixer, and this Afro-haired guy who is hilarious had some E for us. And it is an Indian summer, and sitting with the grass tickling my bare legs, talking to Jess and Ally, checking out the guys, is just so … summer. And the ball slap-slaps against the hot asphalt and the metal chain net chink-chinks like shattering crystal, as if every sound were amplified a million times in my ear. And all this just overrides any recollection of English homework, because being here, now, is all that seems to matter. Life isn’t in a classroom. This is where you find living. In this school field. In Jess’s uncontrollable laughter. In Kyle’s hand that picks at the grass and drops the shiny blades into piles on my bare legs. In his warm fingers rubbing the pieces off my thighs. In the smell of green.

  Three

  It’s after nine when I leave the park, and the closer I get to my apartment, the more mad I become. It happens every day lately, no matter how good my day is. But this is nothing that new, because I’m so goddamn angry all the time. I don’t know why. It’s like I’m always on the edge. The only time I’m not angry is when I’m high. That’s the only time I’m nice to people and it’s the only time I feel like I’m a “nice person.”

  My mother says I was born with a scowl on my face, a permanently curled lip. She thinks that even when I was in the womb, I had my arms crossed the way I always do now. She says she could feel my pointy elbows through her tummy, like I was refusing to co-operate even in there. “I mean, what could you possibly be defying in the womb, Hon?”

  She was only half joking when she said this, so I ignored her. I ignore most of what my mother says. She’s not terrible or anything, she’s just not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and most of what she says is stupid.

  I’m hoping my mom won’t be home, but I see her as soon as I open the door. She’s lying on the couch in a tank and underwear, smoking a cigarette and watching her stupid soap opera. I throw my backpack on the chair and head to the kitchen to get something to eat.

  “Well hello to you too!” she shouts.

  I ignore her because I’m too focused on finding something, anything, other than potato chips and cereal to eat. I look in the cupboards and there’s only canned peas and other canned shit. Then I look in the fridge. Nothing. Some pop, some mustard and other bottles, and a package of expired bacon.

  “There’s nothing to eat!”

  “What do you mean? There’s lots. Have some cereal.”

  I come out of the kitchen and pick up my backpack. “I’m fucking sick of that bran crap.”

  “Sorry, Hon, I’ll order pizza,” she says, not taking her eyes off the screen.

  “It’s too late. I’m going to bed.”

  “Where were you, anyway?” she asks, but I ignore her.

  I slam the door to my room to show my disapproval of her mothering skills. I mean, she’s supposed to provide, at the most basic, food and shelter. Isn’t she? I take out my binder and lie in bed to start my English assignment.

  The first human statement is a scream.

  I pick up my pen and wonder where to start, what word to write first. I have so many thoughts. I think it’s so true. That we’re born into suffering. That we’re these innocent little beings and that, as soon as we see the world, we take that first breath and scream ’cause we know life is going to be rough. I think about all the tragedies on the news and the crazy people and the wars happening. It’s like sometimes I think humans were put on this earth as a test to see how much pain we can take.

  After a while of still staring at the page, there’s a knock
on my door. “Hon?”

  “I’m busy!” I shout.

  She opens the door and pokes her head inside. She has makeup on and the perfume stench gushes into my room. “I’m heading out for a bit, okay? Won’t be late, but don’t chain the door.”

  “What about the pizza?”

  “You said you didn’t want any.”

  “Huggghh.” I sigh loudly. “I would have had some. I’m still awake.”

  “Sorry,” she says. “Look, I gotta go. Night night. Okay?” She winks and doesn’t bother waiting for an answer.

  I try to go back to my assignment, but now my mind is on my mom and too pissed off to think clearly, so I decide to just turn off the light and go to sleep and wake up early in the morning to finish it.

  What is it about mothers that screws you up? Why can’t the story ever be about fathers? Is it because they’re always absent? My friends who actually know their messed-up fathers fall into seven categories: A) The father abuses the mother. B) The father abuses them. C) The father is an asshole. D) The father is a lazy ass. E) The father drinks. F) The father took off. G) All of the above.

  All this is so overt. So easy to detect.

  And my father? Trick question. Everything but B. So if this was on a test, I wouldn’t be able to answer. Anyway, my father split when I was just a baby, so there is not much more I know about him (or care to know) other than he slept till noon, he was always late, when he spilled something he didn’t clean it up, and he threw temper tantrums every once in a while. I know this because when I do all these things, my mother will say, “You’re just like your father.”

  Mothers don’t fit into these simple categories. They are more complicated. They screw you up without you even knowing it. At least with fathers, there’s a definite conflict. A clear and present danger. And, hopefully, a clear resolution. Call the police. Call Children’s Aid Society. Leave.