Pearl

by Deirdre Riordan Hall

  Sure enough, we pull up next to a large cement building marking the US–Canada border. After a friendly guard welcomes us in French and English, we show our IDs, he asks a few questions, and then Sorel whisks the Volvo through to Canada.

  “Holy shit, we’re in Canada,” Pepper says.

  “Bien-ven-frickin’-ue!” Sorel screams.

  I take a deep breath and let a large smile cross my face, feeling an incredible sense of lightness, like velvet snow. Boldly, I chance a look at Grant. He returns my smile, and it reaches right up to the corners of his eyes.

  Chapter 20

  “Let’s never go back!” Pepper shouts. He laughs. “Good-bye, USA. Ha! Those suckers back at Laurel Hill have no frickin’ idea!”

  “Don’t get carried away there, farm boy,” Sorel says, as usual trying to control Pepper with her verbal dimmer switch. “But let’s have a frickin’ riot while we’re here,” she yells as she pumps up the volume on the stereo and tears away from the border.

  About an hour later, the turbid waters of the Saint Lawrence welcome us to Montreal. Pepper guides Sorel to a parking garage next to a towering hotel.

  “Welcome home, boys and girls,” Sorel says as we enter the swanky lobby.

  A mahogany-paneled drop ceiling runs the length of the space, with clear orbs hanging like giant soap bubbles. A red carpet cushions the area between several long gray couches with matching red pillows, where the guys and I wait. With practiced skill, Sorel approaches the reception desk. I watch her carefully, seeing the quizzical look on my face reflected in the mirrored columns.

  Pepper smirks. “She’s loaded, PJ. Her dad’s like a millionaire, and she has him wrapped around her finger. I guess she caught him cheating on her mom, and now she gets whatever she wants, just to keep her quiet. She wasn’t like this a year ago. Nope, she played her ace card. Seems to be working out pretty well too,” he finishes as Sorel returns.

  We ride to the fifth floor and then follow Sorel down a long hallway to the end. She hands me a key card for the room opposite as she opens door 528.

  “Have fun, kids.” She winks and disappears inside.

  A mixture of panic and appeal courses through me. If I look at Grant, I’ll be acknowledging what the single key means, but being far from Laurel Hill helps cast aside the boundaries I constructed to hold my place there. Off campus, I slip easily back into my reckless and feckless self.

  I lean forward to slide the key card into the door, leaving an impossibly small amount of space between Grant and me. Another inch and I could crash into him.

  In the center of the spacious room, a king-size bed rests expectantly alongside a large window. The modern decor of blue and gray hues contrasts with the white linens. Grant downs a complimentary bottle of water, while I let my gaze skip over the peaks of the buildings dotting the skyline. The northern city light reflects off the mirrored windows that cascade toward the river. The snow glows on a postage stamp–shaped park far below.

  Grant clears his throat, breaking the silence that keeps us both safe from the possibility that anything more between us isn’t a good idea. I’m like a tempest that will destroy us both. I want to explain how dangerous liking me could be, all the while reminding myself that the inverse is probably also true. Hearts are fragile.

  “I’m sorry I—”

  “You don’t have to apologize. Sometimes things get complicated,” he says.

  It’s true.

  I want to cry, but I’m not sure how that will show him that I’m the rogue to all his sweetness and excellence. I want to rip open my chest and show him everything ugly and beautiful that lives there. All the hurt. All the loneliness. All my desires and dreams. I lack one thing, and that is courage.

  “Grant, I exist in the wreckage of my mother’s life, and I don’t want to involve you in that. It’s too messy. Sometimes I just get so sad. Other times I feel almost blissful, but mostly I just tell myself it’s easier not to feel.”

  Grant steps closer. The polite boyishness of Laurel Hill doesn’t seem to have followed him into Canada. He seems sure of himself, not at all shy. The set of his jaw and the confidence on his lips tell me we both mold to life on campus.

  “But I think you do feel. A lot. More than you’d admit.”

  Tears continue to threaten.

  He lifts a hand as if he wants to stroke my arm and comfort me. Instead, he speaks. “As far as I understand it, that’s life. What would happen if you did let yourself feel?”

  I want to warn him that he doesn’t understand. Flimsy bandages hide the open wounds underneath. My voice creaks like cracks forming in a frozen pond.

  “There’s a tether that connects me all the way back to Manhattan or Chicago or wherever my mother is. I can’t run or fly from it, hide from it, or pretend it isn’t there. I don’t know what to do with all the shit that gets in the way of me getting close enough to someone to shatter the pain and wipe it away—” Making me incapable of painting an image of myself on a stupid canvas in a stupid art studio. Making me unlovable.

  Grant joins me at the window, enveloping me in his arms. He presses into my back as if promising that there’s glue strong enough to hold us together.

  Yet, I’m confused. I worry that if I push him away, I might fall apart.

  “I’m afraid too,” he says and holds me until I stop trembling and the threat of tears disappears and, at least temporarily, so does my fear.

  “What do you suppose Pepper and Sorel are up to?” I ask foolishly, knowing very well what they’re doing. I look at the king-size bed in our room, and a quiet question forms in my mind, likely in Grant’s too. I wander into the bathroom, trying out the moisturizer and silently admiring the posh amenities.

  Grant leans in the doorway. His eyes sparkle.

  “One time I was in a hotel like this after my mom had met this guy, Taylor. He was in an opening band, huge tour—I forget the name, the Veins, or something—at Madison Square Garden. They never quite made it all the way. Anyway, somehow my mom hooked up with him.” I roll my eyes. “We were freshly kicked out of our apartment, so she brought me to this luxury hotel overlooking Central Park, where he was staying. We were perched high above the city, and I gazed out the window for hours, like a princess surveying her kingdom. Then I discovered a cable TV lay hidden in a cabinet. I quickly caught up on all the pop culture I’d missed after the cable was shut off at our old place.”

  I flop onto the bed, tumbling back in time. “We stayed there for like four nights, but then the guy moved on. Never saw him again, but we did make off with some plush towels.” I laugh at the memory. “I guess my mother thought the view, the TV, and the full mini fridge were a good enough babysitter for an eight-year-old.”

  Grant looks at me with such a deep sadness I feel like I need to comfort him. He softly says, “Like I said, that’s life. Sometimes it gets complicated.”

  “No, Grant, that’s not what I call life.”

  “We can talk,” he says. “The card, what I said about not being friends, not talking . . .”

  “Trying to figure me out would make you crazy. I know, because I’ve already tried.”

  He’s undaunted. “Want to take a walk?” he asks instead.

  “I’ll do anything to get away from that memory, every memory I have except one.” I think of us that night in the snow, playing, kissing, and liberating ourselves.

  On our way out, we stop by room 528. Sorel answers, looking perturbed and wearing the same white bathrobe I found hanging on the back of the door in our room.

  “We’re taking a walk,” Grant says.

  She rolls her eyes. “I got you a king-size bed and you’re leaving?” She looks at me with pity. “Meet us on the corner of Saint Laurent at eleven.”

  “That robe, it’s a good look on you,” I say, mocking her typical punk style, before turning and marching down the hall.

/>   Once in the fresh air, on the broad streets of Montreal, I feel freer still. The city awakens me. I could soar into the sky, erupting from the pressure of the rural confines of Laurel Hill and my past like a long-dormant volcano.

  “Are you hungry?” Grant asks.

  “I’m alive.” I laugh, practically skipping.

  Grant lights up a cigarette and holds it in one hand and catches my hand in the other as we walk in the urban darkness, neon signs beckoning us, menus waving in our direction, and strangers pressing invitations to clubs and parties, on little cards, into our hands. The world rushes by as Grant and I sweep along the sidewalk, hand in hand. Maybe he and I could work if we moved as far away as possible from the past. I glide as if I have little wings on my feet, buoyed by hope instead of bound by my own personal history.

  In the middle of the busy sidewalk, Grant stops abruptly, midstride, and turns to face me. I wait, expecting him to say he forgot something or that we should try the Moroccan restaurant opposite where we stand. The spices and garlic make my mouth water. Instead, he takes my head in his hands and kisses me, a melting, magic-filled kiss that blurs the lights around me, thrusting me deep into myself, with nowhere to land but my heart. Slowly, like forever taking its time, we return to our place on the sidewalk. “You’re all I think about,” Grant whispers.

  People wearing their heavy winter coats brush by us, a crowd claps for a street performer on the corner, and the two of us, connected by a long-desired kiss, look for something as simple as food. Yes, Sorel, we’re going to take a walk.

  Grant and I eat at a cozy Indian place with whitewashed walls and colorful tapestries, sequined pillows, and candlelight. We may as well be on the subcontinent; I feel so far from the whispers of the past, the gaunt and haunting tremors in my mother’s face, and the pervasive deficiency that constantly wells inside me. Our conversation is easy, spanning colorful vinyl records to penguins in New Zealand to the luxury of going barefoot.

  At ten thirty, we wander toward Saint Laurent, not in any rush to join our rowdy benefactor and her pushover boyfriend. I’d prefer to roam the streets all night with Grant as my companion rather than go to a loud club or party.

  Sure enough, Sorel brings us to an underground punk show and pulls me to the front of the crowd. After an hour of head-pounding music and shouting, I seek out Grant. His eyes swim with amusement.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask.

  “People.”

  I cock my head. There doesn’t seem to be much funny about an array of rainbow-colored heads in tattered and pinned-together clothing, bobbing their heads to the discordant music.

  He whisper-yells in my ear, “This isn’t my scene. Let’s go.” Again, he seizes control, as if he left the boy burdened by pleasing his father behind, at Laurel Hill. This version of Grant knows exactly what he wants. A tiny light, like a match, glows with the feeling that he still wants me. But there’s a difference between him telling me and me accepting and believing it.

  I pick Sorel and Pepper out of the crowd. They’re red faced, and their postures reflect a recent argument.

  “See you in the morning,” I say, instead of telling her we’re leaving.

  I don’t have anything to prove to Sorel, but the well-behaved PJ, the girl Sorel knows, is the by-product of Laurel Hill. It was the rule-abiding cleverness of necessity. And like the shy version of Grant, she was left behind and really only created to maintain my place there. The side of me that would run through the city streets until the sun came up, floating everywhere and nowhere with my friends, is reborn, rediscovered, away from books and guidelines. This life, the smoky bars, drinking, rebellion, isn’t quite Sorel’s size, but, for better or worse, it fits me perfectly.

  “Have fun, City Girl,” she calls after me.

  The cold night air urges a sharpening of my senses, but the rush of freedom slurs and blurs my surroundings.

  When Grant and I return to the hotel, the unexpressed suggestion of intimacy causes fear and loathing to grasp at me with starving fingers. I don’t want to believe he could really want me, maybe just my body. Desire wakes inside him as surely as it has in every other boy that’s looked at me hungrily, imagined me without clothing. But I want to be close, to be loved, so much that I have the impulse to trick us both.

  Instead, I click shut the glass shower door to wash away the smoke and city grime. The unwelcome memories the bed in the room brought to mind rub against me like sandpaper.

  Through a smoky haze that seems to color most of my memories, I recall a threadbare couch, scratchy against my backside. There was a boy with dark hair that fell into his eyes and nothing but my T-shirt between us. It seems like ages ago or maybe even another lifetime. It meant nothing, and yet it does. It was my first time. Miraculously, it was my only time. I fooled around with boys in grungy apartments, guys at parties, and in secret places known only to street kids. Either the opportunity for a proper bed had never presented itself or I avoided it because that first time left me feeling as if I gave away something that I could never get back.

  But Grant and I are magnetic. Something sparks between us that tells me he’s different. I want to believe that he is honest and pure. Then, just as soon as the thought ignites hope, my confidence washes down the drain along with the grungy water. I waver. Something inside me contracts like a band wrapped around my chest, tightening with each breath. No, no, no, I plead. I want Grant, I do. Then like a key in a lock, I feel finality, like I will never let us be. I fear that if I let him in, I’ll need him, like my mother needs her fix, and, at the same time, turn into someone I won’t want to recognize. I hold my face under the water. After a few moments, I gasp for air, and as I blink my eyes open, Grant stands before me, handing me my towel.

  His eyes swim toward me, reaching out, pulling me in like a rip current. He takes me in his arms and holds me. I fight my way out of the small, impenetrable emotional cage and burst forth into Grant’s arms. I wrap myself around him, feeling our bodies pressing together.

  “I’m afraid of becoming addicted to you,” I whisper.

  “I’m not a drug,” he replies.

  I’m not entirely sure I believe that.

  Grant and I tumble into the bed, my skin still warm and moist from the shower. We each lie on our sides, facing one another. Grant traces a line from my shoulder down to my thigh.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he says. His sincere eyes tell the story of amazement as I lie before him. I laugh softly, deflecting his compliment. “I’m serious,” he insists. “You know those little moments, when I’m not thinking, you’re there, in them. When I’m dreaming, you’re there, waking me up. When I zone out, I see you. Every moment, moments between moments, there you are, radiant and brave, wild, like starlight.”

  A part of me knows he means it. As I skate along the spectrum from feeling worthless and lost inside my own labyrinthine heart, afraid of what might happen if I let him in, I somehow find myself on the other side. With Grant, I know, for the briefest moment, how real and true he is. I hold on to it as we melt into each other, passionately and softly.

  Chapter 21

  When the sky hints at lightening, Grant and I doze off, his arms protectively around me. His cheek rests in the crook of my neck; the backs of my legs nestle against the fronts of his. Sometime later, a loud knock on the door wakes me. I hear Sorel’s voice from the other side, teasing. “Lovebirds, time to get up. Come on, can’t sleep the day away.”

  For someone who probably had a later night than I did, she bursts with energy. We eat crepes from a little café before hitting the underground mall. Also, for a girl who rocks the punk look, Sorel loves to shop. She buys a new pair of Doc Martens, a couple of hoodies, a tourist’s share of trinkets, and a skateboard for Pepper, who rides it through the mall until security prohibits him, shouting, “Arrêtez, arrêtez.”

  We emerge onto the street once again, and after depo
siting her loot back in the hotel, Sorel pulls a bottle out of her ever-present messenger bag. “Come on,” she says, ushering us into a discreet alleyway.

  As Sorel passes the bottle of whiskey to me, I chase it with a drag off Grant’s cigarette. With each sip, we get silly and brave, shedding our cool exteriors and trading them in for a thrill and exposing the ways we dodge vulnerability. I lead the group up a fire escape, where we spit and drop wads of chewing gum to the ground, narrowly missing passersby. It’s surprisingly difficult to time. Pepper spray paints God Save the Queen on a Dumpster, and we heckle a lady wearing a fur coat. Pepper ganks some stickers from a music shop, and we plaster a car. Sorel jumps up and down on the hood of the car and then dances on the roof, denting it with her boots. She flashes no less than a dozen people, her nipples freezing in the cold. Sorel’s cackle is the sound track.

  The whiskey makes us feral.

  We find ourselves in front of a tattoo parlor advertising that it’s open twenty-four hours. In the amber glow of incandescent light, bad ideas wait to happen.

  “Let’s go, kids; Mama’s going to get us inked,” Sorel says, her eyes frenzied.

  Pepper follows her eagerly and selects no less than a dozen images from the wall before settling on a Jolly Roger—the black pirate flag complete with skull and crossbones.

  Sorel sidles up to me. “Happy birthday.”

  “You don’t have to do this, Sorel. I’m not used to gifts, so thanks for bringing me here to begin with.”

  “I knew you just had to let loose. Get off that oppressive campus, away from the books. Live a little.”

  If Sorel had a motto, this would be it: Live a little.

  “Hell yeah,” I say, summoning enthusiasm. But sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live a lot.

  She points out the tribal image she’s getting. The tattoo gun hums in the background, and she’s off, watching someone else be tattooed, psyching herself up.