by Sheree Fitch
“Where are the others?” I shouted. I gathered the pages up and stashed them in the binder, along with the magnifying glass. Skye was afraid of me—that’s all I kept thinking. Skye feared my anger. Was I some sort of monster? I stood up and yelled and punched my fist through the basement wall and pounded the pillow on the sofa. Herc barked in excitement or terror, I’m not sure which. Then, when he realized I was choking back sobs, not coughing, he stopped barking, put his nose against mine and licked my face.
Within an hour, I’d packed a few things, including Skye’s red binder, eaten a bowl of leftover chowder and made a Thermos of coffee. When I knew Shep would be gone to her Wednesday night meeting, I dressed in my warmest outdoor gear, pulled a ski mask down over my face, kissed Herc on the nose and made my way back to Shep’s garage.
Here’s the note I left:
Dear Shep—
Sory abut tuday & car—I’m only borrowin it
Explane latir
Hope u understand
Jake
Not very considerate, I realize. Still, it was better than the one I’d left my dad. “Sorry. Culdn’t wait. Later. J.”
I folded Shep’s note and placed it in the tin box and then folded myself into the Volvo. Taking the back roads, I sped away from Poplar Hills, crossing over into the next county. I chose a route I figured no one could guess and one that would lead me, eventually, to Halifax. And finally, to Skye.
There are two things I know now that I didn’t know then. One, someone who knew me saw me. That would be the guy who just kept on giving—Brett Manderson. Two, I was heading directly into the path of an upcoming snowstorm.
The coming of spring is slippery business in Cumberland County at the best of times. Every year it seems to be getting worse. The winters last longer and the potholes get deeper. Some of them are so deep they’re more like bottomless sinkholes that swallow you up and no matter how hard you try, you think unless there’s a miracle, you’ll most likely never, ever get out.
So that’s what I was thinking as I drove on towards the city, my mind travelling faster than the car. Didn’t take long for Nova Scotia to glide slide far away and behind me. I sailed thousands of miles and a few months back and lived for a bit in my very own rear-view-mirror reality.
take three
a
If you were to drive sixty-some miles west of Washington, D.C., on Highway 66 then turn onto Route 29, you’d find yourself in the heart of Virginia. Virginia Is for Lovers declare the licence plates and, well, hello, it sure turned out that way for me. More than the landscape changed in a hurry on that trip. First off, it’s amazing how quickly the capital of the United States, its traffic, its history, its troubling present and even its self-importance, is gone. Long gone. Vanished. You breathe easy and begin to feel safe, folded in the hug of rolling hills and split-rail fences that frame mile after mile of green pastures where horses and cattle graze. You might want to stop. You might even be tempted to lie down in those green pastures because you think maybe you are in a postcard or someone’s idea of heaven, especially if you don’t know what’s going on underground. But jeez—there’s a freakin’ freeway of sorts. There’s CIA hideaways and FBI getaway tunnels for starters. Keep on going and you eventually come to a stretch of road called Skyline Drive. It zigzags, spirals up and into the Shenandoah, the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Those mountains really are, on certain days, in a certain light, a shade of blue as deep as indigo, a blue that can crack a heart open if you take time to feel the soak of the landscape through your body. You can stop and take pictures along Skyline Drive or keep on going until you reach the small town of Luray. You would have noticed the huge signs along the way telling you to stop there, the home of the famous Luray Caverns. Around half a million visitors a year do just that. From all over the world, amateur geologists, families on vacation, wannabe spelunkers arrive and take the journey underground. It’s a well-lit, easy enough walking trail. A friendly guide leads the way. Still, everyone who enters is gobbled up by darkness. Eyes adjust. Then? You’re surrounded by these hanging rock gardens overhead; natural rock sculptures everywhere you look. You walk past pillars of stone through time, like you’re in a museum of rock, part of some sort of underworld bazillions of years old. So yeah, underworlds exist. I said, like nothing any of us from Poplar Hills had ever seen before in our lives.
I’d signed up for the trip to Washington and Virginia because Teddy nagged me to and I went to the first organizational meeting just to please him. Then—wham! Sometimes things happen and you slide into another chamber in the cave called your life. Treasure’s yours to be had.
See, that day, Skye glided into the room, looking so beautiful in that stuck-up way of hers, turning her head away from me like I was the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Then she sat as far away from me as possible, and yeah so that was when I decided I really wanted to go. The hard-to-get girl she’d turned into was an act. At least, I was hell-bent on finding out.
The application procedure was a royal pain.
In order to be selected, we had to participate in all these fundraising efforts as a group. Normally I wasn’t that social. I couldn’t really see myself cheerfully washing cars at the farmers’ market on Saturday. (But I did.) On top of that, we each had to submit an essay on why we wanted to go, plus select a topic for presenting to the rest of the group if we wanted credit. Which I did. Give credit where credit is due, as the saying goes.
I know it wasn’t on account of my application I was admitted.
I want to go to Washington as it is the capital of the free world and there’s cool things to see. I’ve chosen my main topic on the Burning of Washington in the War of 1812 because my father said Major General Robert Ross who led the charge and is buried in Halifax could possibly be related to the Ross’s on my mother’s side of the family in Cape Breton also, I am looking, forward, to seeing stalagmites and stalactites for geology class as we hope to get a day trip to the Shenandoah Mountains where there are caverns. Who knows, if I could get over my claustrophobia, I might want to be a speleologist.
Mr. Pritchard, the principal, initially stamped “Rejected” on my application. Pritchard’s a spindly, spidery-like looking man who takes himself seriously. He delivers words and orders over the intercom like we’re all his prisoners. His final word is THE LAW to everyone. Almost everyone.
When I told her about my rejection, Shep marched into Pritchard’s office and argued like an indignant parent on my behalf. She hauled me with her and told me if I really wanted to go to be on my best behaviour and present myself as the mature young man she knew I was.
“Good day,” I said to Pritchard. “Your tie kicks ass. I mean, looks nice. Strangle me with a jockstrap. Sorry. Look, I really want to go on this trip, sir.”
His eyebrows, which normally met in the middle, separated like the goddam waves of the Red Sea. I folded my hands in my lap and focused on the floor. Little tumbleweeds of dust rolled about. I kept my mouth zipped up.
“He’s the only one I rejected,” Pritchard protested, not looking at me.
“Precisely,” Shep argued back. “Why?”
Pritchard suggested then that the very mention of my topic, “The Burning of Washington,” made him think of me, Jake the Pyromaniac, let loose in the capital of the free world.
“I also did not like your sarcasm,” Pritchard added, and he looked at me all smug like, the turnip face, and showed Shep the letter. “I guess you didn’t vet them first,” he said.
Shep read my essay, her mouth twitching at the corners, and then wagged her finger at Pritchard as if he’d been a very naughty boy.
“Mr. Pritchard,” she said, “sarcasm aside, Jake Upshore is NOT a pyromaniac. There’s nothing wrong with this essay other than comma abuse, and it lacks…decorum. I will personally take responsibility for Jake. I promise I’ll keep him under surveillance.” Her eyes twinkled, I swear. Pritchard agreed, finally, and reluctantly.
“After all,” he reminded her, “
you can’t really blame me, there was a time not so very long ago we had Mr. Upshore’s number on speed-dial. As far as I’m concerned, Jake, you were not expelled for long enough after almost burning this place down. Accident shhmaccident my foot. And from all accounts, most of your teachers are not at all happy with your attitude in class, did you know that?”
I nodded. Just the day before Ms. Groves had told me I was crude, lewd and rude, and when I asked her was it because she was an English teacher she rhymed when she was angry, I ended up in detention.
“Mr. Pritchard, have you heard the expression ‘When the student is ready, the teacher appears’?” Shep said, as she rose from her chair.
“Well, of course, an ancient saying, attributed to Buddha, isn’t it?”
“Over the years, Mr. Pritchard, I’ve come to see the opposite is just as true: the student appears when the teacher is ready. You might want to think that over a bit.”
We left Pritchard reeling and red-faced: he’d gone from a turnip to a blood red beet, I couldn’t help thinking. Yeah, he looked like he’d just been hauled into the principal’s office himself. When we were alone in the hallway Shep grabbed my arm, jumped up and clicked her heels to the left three times. I almost hugged her. Almost.
b
Wednesday night. The middle of nowhere.
I bumped along the zigzag of country roads, the sky through my windshield a deep navy blue. Imagine an empty screen and your eyes play tricks, your mind on rewind. The past rolled up and over me, the events of that senior class trip coming in and out of focus. From the very beginning, on the plane, Skye’d acted like I was creepier than an earwig.
“Teddy, would you like to trade with me?” she asked him with a winning smile as we were settling in our seats. I’d somehow managed to snag the seat next to hers.
“No thanks, Skye. I like my seat just fine,” Teddy said and turned back to Jennifer Witners. Teddy, in fact, was in heaven. Jennifer Witners was a pear-shaped girl with a horsey mouth and coils of red hair. Personally I couldn’t see what he saw in her, but there you go. I couldn’t quite believe I had three whole hours beside Skye. In the clouds for real.
Ignoring me completely, Skye put her headphones on and started watching a movie. I did the same, but my heart was still racing from the takeoff. And trying to sit beside her for that long. My twitchy leg was acting up. Other parts of me were twitching too.
“Is the movie good?” I asked when we were served our trail mix and cranberry juice.
“Not really,” she said, burying her nose in a book instead.
“Good book?” I asked.
She sighed and gave me the evil eye. “It’s a biography of Elizabeth Bishop, research for my essay topic.”
“Who’s Elizabeth Bishop?” I asked innocently.
Skye made a sound almost close to a growl.
“A poet,” she said, “my favourite, she’s famous.”
“Well, I never heard of her. Does she live in D.C. or something?”
“She’s dead,” she snapped.
“Sooorree,” I said.
“Well, she did live in D.C. and in Nova Scotia. I’ve been to her house in Nova Scotia in Great Village.”
Skye showed me a bookmark. “Here’s my favourite poem.” She shoved the book in front of me.
“ ‘Fish House,’ ” she said.
“Nice,” I said after I’d pretended to read it.
“So I want to go to the house she lived in in D.C. And take a picture.”
“Neat,” I said, not meaning it really. Chasing after photos of old dead poets’ houses? Fish houses? All I could do was think of the smell.
I wanted to impress her that I was a reader, too, so I pulled out my copy of The Burning of Washington by Anthony Pitch.
“This is my topic,” I said and held up the cover.
“Of course it is,” she said. “Figures. Death and destruction.” She rolled her eyes and huffed and nothing more was said.
The hours flew by and then, out the window, I saw the city below.
“Look!” I said.
“The Capitol,” she shrieked.
“The monument,” said Teddy.
We all pressed our noses against the window. Skye was almost on my lap. I didn’t mind, especially when the plane flew so close to the water I damn near broke out in a sweat.
“It’s okay,” she said to me, like she sensed my fear. “They’ve only had a plane crash into the Potomac once as far as I know.”
Now that, I thought, was just plain mean. I hadn’t known she had a mean bone in her body. We cheered when the plane landed.
“Look out, America—it’s a Canadian invasion!” said Teddy.
“Jake, take my picture?” Skye asked, holding out her purple camera.
“Delighted,” I said.
Skye Derucci was still the most beautiful girl I’d ever laid my eyes on. Those eyes were the colour of pictures I’d seen of the Mediterranean Sea. Her hair so shiny she could have been in those television commercials for shampoo. She was small but not skinny. Curves in all the right places. I always loved her smile. Since Grade Nine she hadn’t smiled my way too often. But there it was in D.C. A grin that stretched across her face. Light dancing in her eyes.
“Beautiful,” I said as I snapped her photo. “Perfect.”
c
It was the end of that week, and after a lot of flirting around, when we went to Luray and ended up underground in those spectacular caverns. Our class huddled together as the guide took us down under. New Word: Mesmerized. Translate: Stupefied. Hypnotized. But it was when we turned a corner and stood in front of Pluto’s Ghost that the heat between me and Skye turned into a sizzle.
“Why is it called Pluto’s Ghost?” the tour guide asked us. “After the planet? No! After Disney’s dog? No. It’s quite a story,” he said and babbled on. Here’s what I remember of that story. The first explorers of the cave, Stebbins and Campbell, crawling in the dark, rounded a corner, held up their lanterns, saw the honking thing, yelled in terror and beat a hasty retreat back the way they’d come. Freaked out, they thought at first it was an underground creature or demon, a phantom, the devil himself. And so they named it after the god of the underworld, the Roman god Pluto. The smart-arse guide we had that day told us the myth. Some of it I even remember. Pluto fell in love and abducted this gal while she was out picking flowers. Her named started with a P too. It gets confusing because the Greeks have a set of names and the Romans a whole other set of names. Anyhow. The girl’s mother goes looking for her. Can’t find her. Cries. The earth just up and withers, sadness is everywhere. Winter. When the mother finds out Pluto’s taken her underground she kind of negotiates. Makes a deal for joint custody and springtime returns. And so there you have it, sort of kind of Shaky Jake’s version of the myth that explains the reason we have seasons. Right. Whatever. And weirder but true, the bones of an unidentified young girl were found in the Luray Caverns in the early days of the exploration, too. The bones are now housed at the Smithsonian, believed to be those of a twelfth-century Powhatan Indian princess. And some say that she was, quite possibly, pregnant. That story gave me a kind of cold curdled-blood chill.
“We will see where those bones were found up ahead a ways,” the guide told us, pointing the way ahead. “But before we move along, see for yourselves that Pluto’s Ghost is a huge swirling pearlized column of rock, almost human-shaped, a giant sculpture carved by time and Mother Nature. For your information, it’s said some spectators still fall under the spell of Pluto’s Ghost. Take pictures if you wish. My advice is not to linger. Just move on.” The skinny twerp’s voice faded as he hiked along the trail around the bend. I didn’t like the way the guy smiled at Skye one bit or how she smiled back and sighed like she was so utterly fascinated by his string of bull-spiel.
Most of our class finished snapping photos and moved on but Skye stood there, so I hung back, too, seeing my chance to be with her alone, finally. A time to make my first move. I edged towards he
r. And then? Like the impulsive freaking idiot I can be, I reached up and broke off a piece of stalactite from the cave’s roof. Forbidden, the guide told us. A fine if you were to do that. Skye jumped at the snapping sound. “Jake!” She clutched her throat and stared at what I had in my hand. “What did you do that for? You’re not supposed…” “Um,” I said as we stood there awkwardly. I held out the rock to her. Not exactly flowers, I know, but my intentions were good. “A souvenir,” I said. Her arm brushed mine as she accepted the broken rock. I was electrified. Her face turned to mine. Open, eager, scared. Our fingertips touched then and, well, okay, best way I know how to say it is to come right out with it. Something sparked inside us both and I swear some sort of magnetic force field swallowed us. The air was velvet. Moist. Think sauna. I tugged her hand and motioned with my head. She nodded. We stepped off the trail into an unlit chamber of the cavern, a hidden pocket darker than a country road at night in Poplar Hills. My lips found hers and we kissed and even with my eyes closed light seeped in from somewhere. Into the cave. Into my life.
Illumination from the inside out
celestial vibration so I gotta shout it out
even in this grotto see how bright
& it’s getting hot and hotter and there’s no more night
& babe I feel the sun shine sun shine all the time
now that you’re mine
oh yeah.
d
Busted!
Cruiser lights swirled in my rear-view mirror interrupting my time travel and little love song.
“Damn it!” I thumped the wheel. Blockhead Derucci must have already figured out I’d left Poplar Hills and gone cross country. I sped up and lost sight of the car around the next bend.
Waaaaaaawaaaaaaawaaaa!
