by Ria Voros
Nemiah has left me in the middle of the lawn and taken off with Shay and a few other swim girlies, and I stand there like a tree waiting for her to realize she forgot me. I imitate cedar and Douglas fir for ten minutes. Then maple for ten minutes more.
This Is Stupid
I know I look like a fool.
A foolish tree.
People brush past me, trying not to stare. How could she leave me here? Bitterness rises in my stomach and I make a move. To the bathroom.
I can think in there, on the toilet with the lid down. It’s fuzzy pink. Okay, breathe.
I have to find Nemiah. She’s probably looking for me.
Shut Down
In the kitchen, Shay’s filling balloons with water. Aha.
“Is there a battle?” I ask, trying to sound casual.
She glances my way and shrugs. “If you say so.”
“Those — are you going to throw them?”
She ties one off. “That’s what they’re usually used for.”
I can tell I’m a noxious underground insect to Shay, but I dig myself a little deeper.
“Do you know where Nemiah is?”
Shay puts the water balloons in a tub and walks toward the deck. “At this second? Not sure.”
I follow, waiting long enough that I look like I’m not following. I fail.
Shay turns and gives me a look that hisses don’t follow me.
I glance around. This is about as much female hostility as I can take in a day. I feel a little shaky. Nowhere do I glimpse Nemiah’s long, dark ponytail. It’s all I want to see in the world.
Finally I Spot Her
by the rhododendrons,
crouching with other girls
like they’re hiding.
Something flashes past
and splooshes water —
a balloon. Shay runs to them
with her ammo,
squealing. She says something
to Nemiah, handing her
a balloon. I watch, waiting
for her to get up, leave
the fun and games
and tell me it’s stupid,
she’s going home with me
to hang out, just us.
But she looks at me
for a second, back at Shay,
and back at me, motioning
with her hand. “Come here,”
she mouths. Shay’s busy
fighting the good fight.
My gut drops. She’ll never
believe me if I tell her
how bitchy Shay was.
I wait one more
second, but a water bomb
hits her on the head,
and she shrieks, grabbing
at Shay to get out
of firing range.
I take two clumsy
steps backwards.
Then another, and
another.
Soon I’ve walked
all the way down
the driveway
and onto the road.
After Effects
My ears ring like I’ve been at a concert.
Did that just happen?
I feel hazy, a little dizzy.
I walk down the cul-de-sac, where the grade twelves’
cars are parked, all shiny and borrowed,
along the sidewalk.
Long Road Home
I wander the neighbourhood looking for a bus stop and thinking how Nemiah’s new friends will all glare at me on Monday. I don’t care. She left me.
She left me. I’m officially pissed off and hurt.
I stomp out onto a main road and try to find a landmark I recognize. All strange houses, strange cars, nothing I know — damn, I should have asked where the hell we were. Finally a bus comes by and I race ahead of it, looking for the bus stop. Guess who gets there first?
I sit at the bus stop for half an hour. An old man plunks down next to me. He smells overwhelmingly like cat food.
Right now I’d even take Layla for conversation.
I call home on my cell, but there’s no answer so I sit there and try not to smell cat-food-man or get gunk on my jeans from the bench.
I get home two hours after I left the party. Naturally, my parents were out shopping until just before I got there.
My mum questions me lightly, but I don’t give much away. She asks if I want to help make a trifle for a dinner party they’re going to. I like custard and cake, so I say okay, but I feel like a kid who’s left out of the playgroup and is placated by the grown-up with some unimportant job. Placing slices of banana between custard and brandy-soaked cake.
Recipe for a Mother-Daughter Relationship
Ingredients:
One controlling mother
One strong-willed daughter
Detailed history
A sprinkle of hormones
A lot of tension
A few misunderstandings
Directions:
Marinate the first two ingredients in the history for sixteen years. Sprinkle in the hormones and tension and watch the mixture bubble up. Stir in a few misunderstandings. Pour everything into a pan and bake in a 350-degree oven for as long as you can stand it. After a while, you’ll have a hot mess that will continue developing flavour the longer you leave it.
Haiku: Cereal
Crunch like breakfast bones
milky morning spoon droplets
time makes things soggy
And here’s a real one that kind of cheers me up. Kind of.
First winter rain —
even the monkey
seems to want a raincoat.
– Bashō
The Update on the Date
I forgot with all my own drama that my sister is dating a grade seven boy. His name is Wes (no last name apparently) and he took her to see a romantic comedy and they ate popcorn and held hands. Yes, they had a gaggle of friends around them, but still — I’d kill for any of those scenarios right now.
She arrived home at nine-thirty-two, a smile stretched across her face, her makeup still pristine, and my mum gave her a hug that meant both My baby’s growing up! and You’re two minutes after curfew!
I watched from the couch and finally she sat down beside me. “Thanks for your help,” she said.
“Did he kiss you?” I prodded.
She stared at the TV as it flashed.
“Did he?”
She blinked in that satisfied way a python does when it’s digesting a baby warthog. She squeezed my hand. “I’m in love,” she said. And even though I knew in my cynical, older-sister mind that this was not love, I squeezed back.
The Politics of Friendship
Here is how I see it:
Nemiah should call me. I did nothing wrong, nothing any normal jilted person wouldn’t do, walking out of a party that wants to eject me anyway. It’s up to her to apologize.
Here’s how the rest of my weekend went:
No phone ringing. No knock on the door, no paper airplanes through my window. Only Layla practising her revolting dances and swooning about Wes, and my parents talking about Middle East struggles and what to have for dinner.
Here’s what I expect at school:
She’ll come up to me, maybe a little awkwardly at first, and say she’s sorry for not being a better friend at the party and can we hang out, just the two of us, after school? We’ll talk about boys and our least favourite classes and buy licorice on the way home.
What Really Happens
She ignores me.
Flat out and completely. She is flanked by her new posse — Shay in pole position. They breeze by me in the hall, and I’m embarrassed to admit my mouth hangs open for a few seconds after they pass. Time stops.
My lungs are empty and I can’t fill them.
What just happened?
She’s my sister-in-life, my best friend, my rock in this hell we call school. And I’m dead to her?
I rush to the washroom and sit in the nearest stall, waiting
to wake up.
Was I wrong not to call her?
Should I be the one to apologize?
Why do I always end up sitting on the toilet?
My hands are cold and I rub them on my jeans. I know I have a class to get to, but I can’t remember what it is.
“Gretchen?”
I spy unfamiliar sneakers under the stall door. I get up and walk out into the cruel world. It’s Ashlyn. All blond and flower-print-collared-shirt. She looks concerned.
I Have a Half-Friend
and I feel like the biggest loser in school. Everyone Nemiah and I ever talked to knows that we’re not talking (why aren’t we talking?!) and they all have a side. Unfortunately, most side with the swim team — they’re cuter. Nina Chambers and Leanne Soper conveniently become invisible whenever I walk down the hall. I guess that puts them in the opposing corner, or at least neutral, which for me is just as bad.
Ashlyn becomes my personal crutch for the day. For some reason she stayed with me in the bathroom until the second bell rang and I was late for class. She finds me at lunch and offers me her yogurt.
“I just know what girls can be like,” she says, as if she’s beyond us all. Then she smilingly adds, almost as an afterthought, “You’re helping with the banquet later, right?”
Slave Labour at the Banquet
This day has passed like a dream — no, a nightmare — and I can’t believe I’m scooping hummus into glass bowls resting on doilies of which my grandmother would be proud.
I have been socially coerced into labouring as a server for the badminton team’s victory dinner. I need Ashlyn, I realize, if I am to save any kind of reputation from this mess I’m in. Her Blondness smiles at me from across the gym, where she serves punch and giggles with skinny-cute Asian boys on the team.
Everyone knows I am humiliated. Everyone knows I am alone. I just don’t know why. I call my house on my two minute break and explain why I’m not home yet. They’re pumped that I’m helping.
As the badminton team finally wanders off school grounds to find a better party, we begin to clean up. Ashlyn gets me stacking paper plates smeared with dinner remnants. After a minute I duck under the tablecloth when no one’s looking and stay there until a stupid grade nine rips the cloth off and reveals my cave.
I don’t get offered a ride home.
Did I Mention Layla’s Boyfriend?
He’s a hockey player. He eats wheat germ muffins and his mother is a yoga instructor.
Layla tells me this the morning after I’ve spent all night by the phone waiting for Nemiah to call. (More on the depression, anger and bitterness later.)
She announces that they like the same everything — music, sports drinks, cereal, blah blah blah. I want to choke on my toast and disrupt the bliss of the moment: my cute sister smiling through her Cheerios, her hair shiny and her pink t-shirt mocking my pyjamas.
“Why aren’t you dressed?” my mum asks me.
“I think she’s depressed,” says my concerned sister.
Their rhyming forces me to bolt to my room.
Phone Call Prose Poem
After three false tries, a huge lump in my throat, I call Nemiah the next morning. It’s early, barely eight. She doesn’t have swimming on Tuesdays. Leaking through my wall is the sound of Layla butchering a pop song. I thump the wall but she doesn’t hear me. Nemiah’s phone rings and rings. I count eight, nine, ten. Pick up pick up pick up. “Yello?” It’s her mum. “Hi, Ms Hershey,” I say. “Is Nemiah home?” Her phone’s being switched to the other ear. “Well, hey, Gretchen. No, she’s gone. She said you might call.” “She did?” Nemiah’s mum clears her throat. “Yeah, some nonsense about you guys having a fight. You okay?” The tears prickle the back of my eyes and I will them not to show in my voice. “I’m fine. I guess I’ll see her at school.” There’s a radio crackling in their kitchen. “She’s been acting strange, Gretchen, ever since the weekend — don’t know why.” I want to ask her about it, what Nemiah’s told her mum, but my voice will crack. “I better go,” I say. “Thanks.” The numbness in my hands creeps up my arms as I put the phone down. Layla has turned off her music. The silence kills me, and I wish it was still blasting so I could be drowned out — stupid, useless person that I am, friend of no one.
Humiliation Before Brains
Something comes over me halfway through math — a whim of stupidity, desperation — and I text Nemiah, who has cozied up to a girl from the swim team: beige hair, too much eyeliner.
Nemiah hears her phone beep, I know it, but pretends not to, and it sticks out of her bag for twenty minutes as I use my ESP to make her check it.
Finally she does, just as Mr. Stubbin asks if there are any questions about the homework. Someone in the back asks something stupid and Mr. Stubbin drones out an answer.
Nemiah reads the text, shows it to eyeliner girl, and they giggle together as the bell rings.
Scrape of chairs, thunder of feet and chatter of voices. I am frozen in my seat. I wonder what part they were laughing at: the part that pleads for her to meet me after school to talk, or the part that says she’s still my best friend.
Lesson Rejection
I really
really don’t feel like
dealing with chemistry,
but James is there
when I get to the library.
His green t-shirt reads
Thank God for Science!
and this time I have no patience
for his sense of humour.
I slouch.
He opens my textbook
for me, because all
I can do is stare blankly
at the table.
“You okay?” he asks.
I shrug. “Yeah, why?”
“You seem down.”
“I’m fine.”
“I heard —” he starts,
then stops.
“I’m sure you did,” I say.
He closes my textbook.
“Screw this.
Let’s get out of here.
I’m done with this place.”
Deli-cious
We go to Carter’s Deli, which is owned by James’s uncle. I’ve never heard of it, even though it’s not far from my neighbourhood, but it’s amazing. It rocks fifties counters and black and white lino. We sit by the window with subs packed with meat. I feel like a guy.
James jokes with his cousin, who’s eighteen, works here, also not my type. But they’re both nice. It feels easy.
They both have brown shaggy hair and bad acne, except Cousin’s is healing. Cousin has a long gangly frame like James’s, but it has filled out some — maybe there’s hope. Cousin has a good smile, deep blue eyes unframed by glasses. The two of them joke about working in a deli, being cousins, Star Wars, which is Cousin’s obsession — “Sci-fi in general, but Lucas’s films in particular,” James informs me. I look at him more closely as he laughs. He never laughs at school. It suits him.
After an hour, it starts to rain and I wonder if I should call a parent. “I’m off now,” Cousin says. “You guys want a ride?” His actual name is Dean. (Jokes about James Dean plagued their childhoods. And they’re surprised I know who James Dean is. “Come on,” I say to their obvious approval, “he’s classic.”)
We hop in Dean’s clunky hatchback, Lucy, the smell of french fries rising from the seats. I don’t care — I’m having fun. I’ve even (almost) forgotten about Nemiah. We butcher rock songs as we drive (mandatory singing in Dean’s car due to his broken stereo).
He glances at me (riding shotgun) and chuckles. “You’re one of the boys now, Gretchen. Sure you can handle it?”
“She can handle it,” James says behind me. “She’s pretty hardcore. She knows how to butcher a whole pig.”
I whip my head around to see him grinning. “That’s such a lie! Where did you hear that?”
He shrugs. “Made it up. But it’s based on hearsay I overheard outside the Foods room. Is it even remotely possible?”
“But I’m not driving,” I point out. “And there’s absolutely no truth to that pig thing. Who even does that?”
“A butcher,” James/Dean say together.
And Then
Before I know it, we’ve hung out three days in a week.
It’s always a blast. James becomes this witty, kind-of-shy, kind-of-silly guy who makes inexcusably cheesy science jokes (“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate!”) but listens, really listens, to whoever is talking. It makes you feel like you’re the most important person at that moment.
Dean is loud, funny and always opening the door for me, even when James teases him about it. Dean has Star Wars ringtones on his phone and has a light sabre tattooed on the inside of his index finger. He shows his affection for James by pushing him into the road — when there are no cars coming. It’s actually a lot sweeter than it sounds.
I forget about the soul-crushing loneliness of last week and live in James/Dean world.
It’s always sunny here.
Until
We are driving to the beach to see which one of them is man enough to swim in the ocean in winter. Dean repeats his challenge — ten seconds, total body immersion, no wet suits, no crying.
James looks nervous. I try to catch his gaze, to show him it’s no big deal to back out, but he stares out the window.
