“Faster!” he’d shout tirelessly. “Faster!” And I’d propel his featherweight body through space till my arms ached and I had to let him drop. And his bare legs dragged along the ground, leaving him with green grass-stained reminders of the inevitable fall, because everyone, even little kids, must pay some kind of price for the dizzy high.
Suddenly my stomach churns. I jump up and run to the toilet, grip it with both hands, and hurl into the brownstained bowl. Just the stench of the toilet bowl makes me puke more. When I’m done, I lower myself onto the bathroom tiles and curl up in a ball, lying on my side. It’s dark. I didn’t turn on the light. I hear my breathing. And a slight pounding in my head.
My mind spirals down to somewhere dark and cold. I suppose it’s natural to think only of the good times with Michael, but the bad memories have always been there, hovering somewhere in the past. Sometimes, it’s the body that remembers. Sometimes, the body’s memory is so much more powerful than the mind’s. Even if you don’t want to think about it, even if you fight it, the moment comes to you anyway in its entirety, flashing through your mind, smashing your skull like a bullet.
It happened on our last night. Before he said the words and I walked out the door.
Michael had applied for teacher’s college before I met him. He was so nervous about it, always saying he feared he wouldn’t get in. I knew it would be no problem because his high school marks were so good, even if he did drop out of his science degree. But he said the acceptance would depend on a number of things, like volunteer work and experience, so it was all a gamble. He was all doomsday-like, which made me oddly optimistic. I swear, if you want to cure depression, put a sad person around someone even sadder, and that’s better than five years of Prozac.
The closer the acceptance deadline came, the more agitated he grew. And when the acceptance deadline passed, it was like there was an instant fog over his eyes.
“You’d make a great teacher,” I encouraged. I was jumping up and down on his bed while he sat at his desk surfing the Web. “Maybe you could teach at my school. Excuse me, Mr. Butler?” I raised my hand as I jumped. “Excuse me, Mr. Butler, but may I go to the bathroom? And Mr. Butler, while I’m in the bathroom, can we have sex?”
Michael threw a pillow at me. “Stop it. That’s gross. I couldn’t be your teacher. That would make me some kind of pervert.”
“So what are you now?”
He turned in his chair and stared strangely at me. “I don’t know. Not a pervert. Maybe fucked up. Maybe irresponsible. But not a pervert.”
“Pervert. Pervert. Pervert …” I taunted, turning round and round on the bed, bouncing up and down.
Oomph.
My feet were pulled out from beneath me and I landed face first on the bed, just inches away from the wooden headboard. I was stunned, the air knocked out of me. Michael was on my back, pinning me down, knee digging into my spine. Despite the soft mattress, I felt like I was being crushed. I felt his hot breath at my ear. I held my own breath. I closed my eyes. I braced.
“It’s not a joke,” he said firmly, in a gruff, deep voice. An old voice. A voice that sounded twenty-eight.
Forty-Five
I’m fired.
Dr. Williams asks me to come into his office as soon as I arrive at work. He gets all serious and tells me someone has tampered with the filing cabinet in his office. He says he has a security camera and knows that it was me.
“Where’s the camera?” I ask, sensing that he’s lying. Adults who don’t have a lot of experience with teenagers are so transparent. They think we’re six-year-old gullible kids who will believe anything.
“It’s hidden,” he says. Then he swallows. A sure sign of lying.
“So what did you see?” I challenge him, because he’d have to mention Rachel being in the room if there was really a camera. “If you saw me, who else did you see? Was anything taken?”
“You know what happened, Melissa.”
“No, I don’t.” I start to get angry. “What happened? Tell me. Exactly. What did you see?”
“Melissa, I don’t think there’s any point arguing about it. I’ve met with the team and we’ve made our decision. We are such a small office and we need to trust our employees. There are valuable things in this clinic that we could be really liable for if they were to get into the wrong hands.”
I know what he’s saying. He’s talking about the painkillers. I shake my head at the injustice of it all, that I’m immediately typecast as a punk ’cause I’m the poor girl, not like Rachel. So what if I broke into the cabinet? Who am I hurting? “I only took a phone number. I didn’t take anything important,” I finally admit.
He shrugs his shoulders, all sorry-like, as if it’s too late for him to change his mind.
It gets all awkward and I don’t know what to say. And he just stands there, like he’s waiting for me to leave. But I’ve been here for almost two years. And I’m great at my job. And I love the animals. And I worked so hard. And I didn’t steal anything but a stupid number. And I can’t imagine my life without this place. And it’s my only connection to Michael … “But I love this job,” I plead. I feel like I’m about to cry.
“I’m sorry, Melissa. You really did well here. We just can’t … Our team already met … I tried … It’s a shame. I’m really upset it happened. I know it’s hard for you and your mom … I just wish …”
My mom? Where did that come from? What does he know about my mom? “It’s okay,” I say, quickly turning to walk out the door because I don’t want him to get all pitying over me. I rush down the hallway, wiping my face with my shirt. I feel like I should take something, do something, tidy up something … but there is nothing of mine here. Not even a leftbehind jacket or a notebook. Nothing.
I don’t want to see anyone, so I leave by the back door. And that’s where I see Rachel, wearing a matching red ski jacket and wool hat, walking a stupid beagle across the parking lot. Then it occurs to me: it was Rachel who ratted. It had to be. My sadness immediately turns to anger.
“Why did you tell them?” I demand, approaching her.
“I didn’t. Tell them what?”
“About the file cabinet.”
She walks past me, hurrying her pace. Dragging the dog a little. “They asked me.”
“So lie!” I follow her, trailing her closely through the parking lot.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s wrong.”
What? What a stupid thing to say. “Because it’s wrong?” I say, mocking her. “Who the fuck cares if it’s wrong? What business is it of yours?”
She turns a little to walk around her princess-white Mini, parked just by the back door. “It’s wrong,” she repeats with growing confidence now that the car is between us. “And if I see wrong, it’s my responsibility to do something about it. That’s the problem with society—people just turn a blind eye.”
I screw my face up in disgust. “Are you for fucking real?” It’s as if she was spoon-fed the words during a little dinnertime talk with her family. “What language are you speaking? I see your lips moving, but it’s like an old lady talking.”
“Don’t get mad at me, Melissa. You’re the one who did it. You stole something.”
“God, Rachel,” I say, exasperated. “Life’s not so fucking simple.”
She crosses her arms and stands firm. “Mine is,” she says, smirking.
And that stabs me more deeply than any knife could do. Rachel is no innocent uptown girl—she knew the precision of her words. Instantly, it’s like this huge divide opens between us. Like some earthquake crack parts us. And I hate her. I hate her life. I hate her fucking car. I hate her stupid, prissy face. I want to kill her.
I look around, then down, searching for something. I don’t know … something. Anything. Then I see it: a big piece of wood sticking out of the metal garbage bin behind me. I pick it up, hold it high above my head like I’m going to launch it at her. I won’t, but I
want to scare her. She ducks, and then I bring it down hard onto her car windshield. It smashes. A muffled crunch. A punctured round centre, with cracks snaking out from it.
She gasps. So do I. I can’t believe I did it. My hands throb. She looks up, horrified, then terrified that I’ll come after her. She drops the dog’s leash and it starts to hobble away, back toward the patch of grass.
She starts crying and her face gets red.“You’re fucking dead! You’re fucking going to jail!” she shouts as she runs around the side of the building, down the driveway, and toward the front door of the clinic.
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” I look around for a second, trying to take in what just happened. “Fuck!” I hurl the wood into the bin and then quickly run after the stupid dog, which is wobbling toward the road. I drag it back, its reluctant little nails scraping along the pavement, and loop its leash around the car antenna.
Then I take off.
Forty-Six
I always fuck up.
Before I get out of the boat, I must get in the boat.
I’m not even in the goddamn fucking boat yet.
I stand barefoot in the sooty mud by the riverbank. The tall reeds brush against my face as I reach out to the edge. I hold up my frilly dress in one hand while still managing to lift myself in. The water splashes, echoing in my head. Beautiful. I take the oar and push it into the soft ground, propelling the boat off the bank. And then I’m taken by the current. I lie down on the wooden seat, at first staring into the rippling water, then staring at the blue, blue sky. I close my eyes. Still drifting, drifting, drifting. Then I slip one foot over the edge.
I can’t sleep.
How many days since I bashed in the car? Five now?
I can’t sleep.
Each night, I wait for the police to come to my door. Listen for the knock. Wait for my mother’s devastated face. Wait for them to take me away in the back seat of the cruiser so I can spend the night in some shitty dorm room with some screwed-up girls who scare the hell out of me and make me seem like a princess.
In the middle of the night, I hear my mom in the living room. I guess she can’t sleep either. I don’t go see what she’s doing, but I know she’s upset because Scott has left her. She finally told him about the pregnancy, hoping he would assume it was his, but it turns out he got snipped a few years ago. They had a huge fight and somehow she turned it all around and got mad at him for lying all this time about the vasectomy. He said he never told her because he didn’t think it mattered because she had said she was done having kids.
That was only a couple of days ago, but since then she’s seemed really out of it. Which gives me a panicked feeling, because I just don’t trust her. I look at the clock: three A.M. I close my eyes to try to go back to sleep, but my mind races … She’ll start drinking … Her kid will be born a retard … She’s probably long gone off her medication … We are going to lose the apartment … I can never move into the group home now, because if I do, my mom won’t get her child benefit government money for me, and if she doesn’t get that, and she’s not working, she’ll lose the apartment … But we’ll probably lose it anyway, and then we’ll be homeless … CAS will probably leave me alone because I’m sixteen, but they’ll take my mom’s baby … especially if we’re homeless … especially if I’m in jail. Which is where I’m going now. Jail. Because of that stupid bitch Rachel.
Forty-Seven
Everything has changed. Now that I don’t have my job, I don’t have a future. How can I be a veterinarian if I get fired from my first job in a veterinary clinic? How can I get into university without that reference? I was such an idiot to even think it was possible.
It’s like all that learning has been for nothing, because I’ll never get the life I want. Something is always going to drag me down. What’s the point of even trying? So every day before school, I meet up with Tyler in the park and we drink, because I still have to go to school and it’s the only way to make it bearable. I usually miss the first period. When I finally get to the church, I brush my teeth in the washroom and chew tons of grape bubblegum. No one notices, because I’m not drunk out of my mind, just enough to get my work done. Just enough to shut off all that misery for a while.
But today, right in the middle of class, Ms. Dally tells me to go into the couch room. Without asking why, or making a scene, I just do what she tells me. I sit in the corner of the green paisley couch, waiting, reviewing today’s list of misdemeanours. Does she know I smoked before school? Does she know I cheated on my math test? Does she know there’s a half-empty bottle of vodka in my bag?
“You’re not in trouble,” she assures me as she walks in. She closes the door behind her and comes to sit on the couch beside me. She smiles warmly. “I just wanted to talk to you. Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I wriggle uncomfortably in my seat. It’s going to be one of those conversations.
“I’m asking because you seem upset.”
“I’m fine.” I’m being a bitch to her and I know it, but I don’t really care.
“Well, I’m in the classroom trying to teach you math, but to be honest, it feels a little awkward because you seem so distant. You’re really resisting. And I feel that perhaps algebra is rather unimportant in comparison to what you might be dealing with. I just don’t want to push you too much, Melissa. I want you to know you could draw in your sketchbook or journal for a while if you’d like.”
“I’m okay,” I insist.
She sighs. It’s not the right answer and she keeps looking at me with these sympathy eyes like she’s trying to coax the tears out of me.
“Can I be honest, Melissa?”
Leave me alone! I shrug my shoulders. “Whatever.”
“You look like you’re going to crack. Break open. Like you’re on the edge and you’re barely holding it together.”
It’s a terrible thing to say to someone. It’s like telling someone they look tired. Who wants to hear how shitty they look? Who wants to hear that they look like a miserable, unstable wreck? “I’m okay,” I repeat, annoyed. “I mean, I’m not happy, but I’m not gonna start bawling or throwing up or having a seizure or something, if that’s what you mean.”
She keeps looking at me and I feel horribly transparent now. It’s as if she wants her analysis of me to come true. She wants me to break open right here and spill myself onto the floor. “Is anything on your mind you want to talk about? Is there stuff going on at home?”
“At home? No,” Echo says.
Silence.
I can’t bear the quiet. I have an urge to fill it.“There is always stuff going on at home,” I add.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
“What about the group home? Sheila told me they called a few days ago to set up your last intake appointment with your mom. She left a message at your house.”
I raise a brow and look at her. My mom has never mentioned anything to me. “Really?” I had forgotten about the group home. I can’t believe I actually was considering it. I shrug my shoulders. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to go anymore.”
Ms. Dally sighs. “That’s too bad, Melissa. I think it would have given you and your mom a break. Allowed you some breathing space to get things on track. Okay … Well. They say you’re a good candidate and you can reapply any time. In the meantime, do you have someone to talk to about what’s happening in your life?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“My friends. My uncle.”
“Good. Well, if you need to talk, I’m here. And in the meantime, if you need to journal or to take a break from school work and sketch, then tell me.”
“Okay.”
Her intentions are good, but I’ve met countless optimistic, fresh-faced adults who think they can help me. Like they’re going to be the one who makes me cry or remember or confess or release or forgive. But there comes a point when you’ve just talked enough and you realize that talking can’t ever help you. You talk to
counsellors and uncles and friends and boyfriends, and all that conversation—all those suggestions and interpretations—doesn’t change a thing. When their mouths finally shut, you still have the same family. The same life. The same sadness. The same fog in your head that dulls everything.
I ask to go to the washroom, where I look at my face in the mirror. I do look terrible. I have zits all around my mouth and forehead. My hair is greasy and tangled. My roots are black. My eyes are puffy. My eyeliner is running.
I put on some shiny pink lip gloss and try to puff up my hair. Then I move in closer toward my reflection and consider the person who is looking back at me. Maybe my eyes do look sad, but I don’t think I look like I’m going to break. One thing about feeling shitty inside is that you think you’re doing a good job of covering it up. So that no one will ask. So that no one will speculate.
You look like you’re going to crack. Ms. Dally’s words echo in my head. I pull back and give myself the finger and simultaneously stick my tongue out. “Fuck you,” I say to my reflection, and then I put my baseball cap on and pull it down to hide the hairline cracks that are spreading across my face.
Forty-Eight
I feel so empty. Everything inside is dry and brittle, and I just don’t care what happens to me or anyone else. I almost forgot this emptiness when I was with Michael. But it’s back now, more hollow than before. When you’re living in this void, the only thing to do is party and get high. So that Nathan’s hand slipping into my underwear can turn me on even though I wouldn’t look twice at him if I were sober. Even though it’s the K that’s making me so horny I want to screw his brains out. On K, it’s like all I want to do is have sex. And the more I have sex, the more stuff Nathan will give me to stay high.
Lesley Anne Cowan Page 14
