Jasmyn finds the stereo, blasts FLOW 93.5, and begins to dance in the living room. The windows vibrate. The last pill starts to hit me hard. I can’t think straight. I start dancing. More like jumping up and down. I pretend I’m more high than I am, and I keep my eyes closed mostly because I don’t want anything to do with stealing. I won’t steal from a person. It’s just not right. Stores are different. They make so much money, and they’re not going to miss a shirt or eyeshadow. But stealing from a person is just hurtful. Unless they’re a bitch or a jerk, in which case they might deserve it. And this family? They’re probably away at a cottage or something, having a nice time, and they’re gonna come home to find their stuff gone, and I just can’t be a part of that.
A while later, the girls return from upstairs. Ally proudly shows me a fistful of jewellery and shoves it in her jacket pocket. Even though I didn’t really steal anything myself, I’d be lying if I didn’t say the rush feels good. It’s like all of me is alive and tingling and breathing. We laugh and laugh and laugh while marching down the middle of the street, as if we owned the whole world. But it takes only a few seconds for the red flashing lights to appear behind us.
Jasmyn tries to run for it but falls over her ridiculous highheeled shoes and does a face-plant on the pavement. Ally and I just stand there with bewildered looks on our faces. But then, when the police approach, I start to laugh. Hysterically. Laugh, laugh, laugh so hard it’s not until I feel the heat between my legs and the wet between my toes that I realize I’ve pissed my pants. And then I laugh even harder, because life is such a joke. Reality has a way of slapping you in the face over and over and over again, like it’s waking you up from the stupid dream that had you believing your life was actually going to get better. And somehow the predictability of that disappointment, those flashing red lights, the fact that you totally knew the defeat was coming, is just so funny.
Nine
I always stand a moment or two outside the front door to our shitty little apartment, on our shitty little street, in our even shittier neighbourhood. I stand there as if I’m trying to decide whether or not to enter. As if I have a choice. As if I am ever brave enough to just turn and run.
But I do it anyway. Stand a moment or two. Fantasizing about the possibility.
When I open the door, I step into another world. In this world, I am not Echo. In this world, I am Syphilis. Okay, that’s not his real name. I call him that to make myself laugh. His real name is Sisyphus. He showed a lack of respect for the gods, and pretty much any authority. Because of this, he was cursed by Zeus and doomed to forever roll a huge, heavy boulder up a hill. I mean forever. When he got to the top, instead of rejoicing in his achievement, or sitting down for a rest, he had to immediately roll the rock back down and then heave it up the hill again. It never stopped. He never finished his task. For all eternity.
To me, the tragedy isn’t that he was doomed to labour up and down this crappy hill. It’s that he got no false hope along the way.
False hope is a blessing. It keeps us alive.
And so, when I open the door to my apartment, I’m Syphilis.
Sometimes a door is just a door. Other times a door is the partition between two things. Like a past and a future. A good choice and a mistake. Your life now and your life after. Thing is, with a door, you pretty much have to walk through it. You pretty much don’t have a choice. You could walk on by, but that’s useless if the intent is to get to the other side.
When I open the door, on the other side is the rest of my life. In the living room, seated around a surprisingly clean coffee table, is my Children’s Aid Society social worker, my probation officer, my mother, and her hippie flower child best friend, Crystal. It’s been two days since the cops brought me home in the cruiser that night, waking my mom up, explaining to her that they found me with two girls who had stolen goods in their possession. They had taken Jasmyn and Ally to the detention centre, but charged me with break and enter and drove me home since I didn’t have anything on me.
“Melissa?”
Which one said it? Lately, all four of their voices have blurred into one. And even though I’ve sobered up, I’m still dopey after those days of partying.
My heart races.
Turn and run. Turn and run. Turn and run.
“We need to talk to you.”
And so, just like that, I am moving into a group home. My mother can no longer control my behaviour. It is dangerous to have a sixteen-year-old girl AWOL all weekend, spending nights in strange guys’ apartments, doing drugs, and exposing herself to other potentially harmful experiences. And since my break and enter charge and my school suspension, there seems to be no hope left for me.
“Is this about something else?” I ask suspiciously.
“About what?” Sue, my CAS social worker, asks, her head cocked like a hawk hearing the faint squeak of a mouse miles away. “A charge? A suspension? What else could there possibly be?”
I figure they must know about Michael. A twenty-eightyear-old boyfriend can’t be kept a secret forever, even if it is legal since I turned sixteen. Jessica must have blabbed at some point. Or perhaps they read my journal. The discovery would be just cause for panic, even if we did just break up.
“Is there something you should tell us?” Sue persists.
Relief. They don’t know. “No.”
“We gave you lots of warnings, Melissa,” says Julie, the probation officer, a youngish woman who barely knows me. “You knew this was coming.”
They are right about that. Syphilis knew it was coming. So she kept doing what she always did. Rolling the rock.
Up. Up. Up.
She kept rolling because she was cursed to do this forever. And hope? That after this crest there will be relief? Life will be better? She would be happy? Why attempt to change when you know the next step is just to roll the rock back up again?
“Yeah … I knew it was coming,” Echo repeats. I look at my mother, who sits with her head buried under her hands. She can’t even look me in the eye. Truth is, I want to go. I don’t want to live here anymore. I don’t want to deal with my mother’s bullshit boyfriends and mood problems. I want my own life. And really, what can I do? Ask to leave my mother? Ask someone to stop her from destroying my life? You can’t ask for that without a gut-wrenching knife ripping open your soul, the guilt oozing out, the stain of mother abandonment forever on your skin. I don’t want to be like psycho Lady Macbeth, wringing her hands and mumbling to herself in dark corners, for the rest of my life.
No. You can’t ask to leave your mother. It must be forced upon you.
You must be taken away kicking and screaming.
But then my mom starts to weep. And even the stupid CAS worker’s eyes well up. And so, in the end, I don’t have to go to a group home, because my mother says she’ll enforce a curfew. I sign a bullshit contract stating I’ll obey. And then we all sit and have coffee. And they talk about me, around me, with these grandiose plans. And I stare in disbelief into the newly polished coffee table, watching our morphed reflections—the stretched mouths, the pinched heads, like sci-fi creatures speaking a fantasy language. What just happened?
“Your court date for the B and E is three months away,” my probation officer says. “That gives you time to turn things around. They will be looking for a big change, especially considering your school suspension last week. It doesn’t look good, Melissa, I’ll be frank with you. You’ll need to go to school, stop AWOLing all weekend. And you’ll need to see your counsellor every week.”
“There’s a great school I’ve referred other young women to. You could be in there within two weeks. It’s a small classroom with a nice teacher and youth workers who can help you. It will look good to the judge if you show them you’re getting treatment,” my CAS worker adds.
“Treatment? For what? What treatment?”
“Attending school. Coping skills for stress. Drugs. Harm reduction. They help you with all that.”
“I’ll t
ry to get some time off work to spend some quality time together,” my mother says.
“Ha!” I laugh. “Like that will ever happen.” It takes me a second to realize I must have thought that aloud, ’cause I look up and everyone is staring at me. I can’t help it. I’m pissed off. What a fucking joke. Gimme a break. Who are these people kidding? All their stupid plans. Always plans to fix things when they can’t be fixed. How can adults be so fucking naive? Of course I’m messed up. Look at my mother. Lives off the men she dates. Can’t keep a job. Doesn’t buy food half the time. Of course I need out of here. I feel the red in my face burn, burn, burn. My knees start bouncing up and down, my jaw clenches, and my mouth gets tiny tight. Why can’t someone have the balls to pull the plug when the tub is obviously overflowing? When I’m drowning, getting sucked down into a shit life? Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. I shake my head at the whole pathetic scene, tightly cross my arms, and fold into myself.
“We know you are trying,” Crystal chimes in with her wishywashy hippie voice. “You’re not a bad girl, Melissa.”
Her words send a rage through me. What the …? What the …? It’s such garbage, trying to make it seem like everything’s perfect just so they can feel perfect. My head feels like it will explode.
“Yes I am!” I snap. “Get it through your thick skulls. I am bad. A shitty person. Okay? I’m wicked …” I try to think of the right word, but as usual the right word never comes. “… a wicked, wicked person.” I push aside the coffee table and storm past. “Why are you pretending? Are you all fuckin’ retards? I’m sick of this crap.”
I slam the door to my room. My mother and her little posse of ladies can sit and plan my life all they want. I won’t fucking do any of it. I just want them all to leave me alone. Let me live my life. Make my own mistakes. Stop trying to make me the good girl I’m not. Never will be. I turn on my music full blast and then fling my body down on the bed like I want to break it. Not the bed, my body.
Turn and run. Turn and run.
I hear the taunting words in my head again. The idea of leaving is so sweet. I could do it. I could leave right now, out my window. Live my own life. Make my own decisions. Drop out of school. Get a full-time job. I’ve met tons of people who’ve done it. And they’re totally happy.
I look around my room. But what would I pack? How would I carry the stuff? I don’t even have a bag. And what about my job? I couldn’t just show up there on Monday, because the cops would be looking for me.
I stare at my cellphone and wish it would ring. Pray for it to ring. Order it to ring.
Eight days.
It’s been eight days since I last saw him.
Love messes you up. At first it’s like being born again. You meet Life, real life, for the very first time and it gives you this heart full of love and happiness. And everything is as beautiful as it should be. But then suddenly it turns and walks away. And you stand there in shock, watching it go. You want to shout, “Wait a minute!” But it keeps walking. And you want to rip open your chest and throw your heart right back at it, wishing you’d never had a taste of love in the first place.
I get out my notebook and write another letter. The billionth one I have written to Michael.
The ink spills blue blood. I wish it were my blood. Bright, bright red, dead blood.
My heart is schizophrenic. One sentence is about how much I hate him. The next is about how much I love him. It goes on like that, back and forth, pacing. My pen is imprisoned on the paper. It can’t get out. I know he’ll think I’m crazy, but I can’t stop myself. In the first few letters my words were good, like poetry. But now I write everything, anything. Threats. Lies. Warnings. In one letter, I say I’ll kill myself. In another, I say I’m pregnant. And in another, I threaten I’ll call the police and tell them about us. I write anything to get him to call. I don’t care how crazy I sound, or pathetic or desperate. Because I am crazy and pathetic and desperate.
Ten
They say I have a few months to change my life. And if I don’t … what? I spend Christmas in juvenile detention? A diversion program? Screw that. They can’t control my life, though I suppose they could put me in jail.
After school on Monday, I meet up with Jasmyn and Ally and tell them I’m thinking about running. They don’t seem to be the slightest bit worried about their charges because their parents just don’t care and they’re not being forced to go to a different school. Jasmyn tells me to chill and says that chances are, since I’m white and innocent-looking and it’s my first charge, they won’t do anything anyway, so I don’t need to panic. She’s been charged three times and still hasn’t gone to jail. “And I’m black!” she adds, like that’s the proof right there. “The most they’re gonna do is put you on house arrest, and that’s a total joke, ’cause your ma ain’t gonna call the cops on you. She’ll just pretend she don’t see what you do.”
I know what Jasmyn says might be true, but to be honest, part of me kind of likes this ultimatum. ’Cause I want a new life. I want to be new.
As we walk to the park to smoke, Ally and Jasmyn start talking about the break-in night. They laugh hard about all of it, especially the fact I pissed my pants. I fall behind a little because I need to make a decision about my future, and my ADD doesn’t let me talk and think at the same time. I haven’t run yet, which sort of tells me I don’t want to. I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life, so if this was really what I wanted, I would have taken off that first night after the meeting at my house. So the fact I’m still around pretty much tells me I want this change. And sure, I want a new school and a new life, but the real reason I’d agree to go to the special school is because I want Michael back. And if changing my life does it, if being a good girl with a good future brings him back to me, I’ll do it.
Eleven
Because I’m grounded, my mom and I split a bottle of white wine during dinner on Friday night. Though she has called and set up appointments for the new school, I still haven’t agreed to go. I haven’t talked to her all week and so I’m definitely not happy about staying home for the weekend. “If we’re cooped up together, we may as well have a little fun,” she says cheerily while pouring herself a full cup and giving me just half. She’s trying to be nice and make things good between us, but I just can’t help but be a bitch to her. I don’t know why. There’s no real reason. It’s like it’s instinctual with me.
“Hey …” I object, eyeing the half-empty glass. I am slouched back in the chair, arms crossed, making it clear that I’m not okay with the grounding, despite her attempt to make it fun.
She gives me a look. “That’s enough for you, Hon,” she says, but then she picks up the bottle and adds a little more. Which is pretty much how she is, always saying the right thing, like “You’re grounded” or “No allowance,” but in the end letting me get my own way. It’s like she’s a kid who is only acting the role of a parent. She can’t possibly enforce a rule because she feels bad for me. It’s as if she still feels all the pain of being young. Like instead of being thirty-five, she’s only twenty.
She’s decided to stay in tonight, which I know is a big deal to her. Usually she’s out with one of her boyfriends, so I try to be good about it. I try to be happy, but my mind keeps wandering off.
We pop popcorn and make ice cream floats with Baileys. We get into our pyjamas and watch my mom’s favourite movie: Ice Castles. It’s this sappy movie from the ’70s about a figure skater who goes blind and still wins the competition.
I look over to her near the end, already knowing how I’ll find her. She’s curled up in a ball, red-eyed and sniffling, using her sleeve to wipe her nose. If anyone walked in the room, they’d think she was my little sister. Already I’ve outgrown her. She’s petite. And skinny. And beautiful, with darker olive skin and really nice blue eyes. Beside her I’m this clunky, beefy, pale girl with dark roots and the occasional pimple. Lucky me. I got all my father’s genes—except for my boobs. My mom and I have great boobs.
I throw
a cushion at her. “Jesus, Mom, stop crying, you’ve seen this a thousand times.”
“I know. I know. I can’t help it.” She laughs at herself and then sniffles some more. I think the problem is that my mom has too much emotion, which makes us polar opposites. Sometimes I think that when she was pregnant with me, she sucked all the feelings out of me and kept them for herself.
I don’t cry at movies, but I do sometimes lose it when I watch nature shows. Like the episode I saw last week about a leopard in a South African zoo. The leopard had just had a baby and the doctors were holding it because the baby was screaming in pain. And then one doctor discovered that the baby was missing a hind leg, and he put him back down because now he would not survive. He explained that the mother, in her excitement at delivering it, had severed the leg while chewing off the umbilical cord. The cub was so cute and so tiny, and his life was never even given a chance. Oh, I cried and cried and cried watching it alone on this cold metal surgery table. And I thought, how sad, because the mom would never understand the damage she caused.
Around eleven, I say I’m going to bed. In my room, I smoke a popper and stare at my cellphone. My mind is stuck on the thought of Michael.
Where did he go? Where did he go?
People don’t just disappear like that. Leave without saying goodbye. Things so unfinished. It’s like leaving in the middle of a sentence. I wish I didn’t walk out that last night before he got to tell me why he wanted to break up. Then I’d at least know the reason instead of being left wondering what I did so wrong. Was it because of our age? Was it because of my suspension and that I don’t do good in school? And to not say goodbye? Why? He loves me too much to say goodbye? Not enough? He’s a coward? He had a breakdown? He had given hints about feeling low and there were signs I recognized from my mother’s experiences with depression. Sweating. Staring vacantly at the television. Slow to respond to questions. Not being able to make simple decisions like what toppings to order on a pizza.
Lesley Anne Cowan Page 4
