by Ria Voros
This Is Worse than the Grey Place
At least in the grey place
everything was frozen.
Nothing was harder than just being.
Now I’m stuck
in a new place
where everything feels.
And it’s not just James.
Dean hasn’t called
or emailed
or shown up
to say he’s going to be okay now.
I go to bed exhausted
every night and wake up
still tired.
Blink
My parents
exchange sidelong glances
when they think
I’m not looking.
I’m always looking —
even when I sleep
I dream things I can’t
turn away from.
James’s face. His clean,
motionless hands.
Dean’s curled-tight body
on the floor
of the hospital basement.
Sometimes I see
my own face
underwater, still and drowned.
I look so peaceful,
so unaffected.
Dear Gretchen,
I’m so sorry about your friend. I understand if you want to be alone right now, but I wanted to say if you need a hug I’m here. I’m not supposed to bug you and I don’t want to make you upset. I know I would be if I lost one of my best friends. I’m just worried about you. It’s like you’re someone else. If you need to talk, or hug, I’m one door over.
Love, Layla
Eleven P.M.
On my way to the kitchen for a glass of water, I meet Layla in the hall. She rubs her eyes en route to the bathroom.
“You …?” she mumbles.
“Water,” I say.
“Hmmm.”
“Thanks,” I say, “for the note.”
“You’re welcome.”
She holds out her arms, like she assumes I want a hug just because we’re both in the same place so late at night.
But I walk into her scrawny kid frame and we hug and hug and it feels good to be close to something so warm.
Family Dinner
The next night we sit down to our
macaroni and cheese with ham,
my dad’s favourite, and we could be
any family. We pass the salt, we chat
about the weather, what to have for dessert.
Or: I listen while my family
does this. I focus on getting
food into my mouth. Even so, it tastes
like salty goo.
My sister keeps looking over at me
as if I’ll blow up like a bomb.
I push away my plate.
Mum makes noises about my wasting away.
I make noises back, but she doesn’t
agree with my reasoning.
Dad keeps his head down.
“Do you think you could go
to school on Monday?” he asks.
I feel the familiar stomach drop usually reserved
for chemistry tests.
I almost forgot school was my job in life.
It’s clear they’ll consider
forgoing the planned punishment
of hanging, drawing and quartering
in the hopes I will ease back
into school and be normal again.
I’ll have to break it to them that I am not,
maybe never was, whatever normal means —
there was a geek inside me all the time.
The phone rings. It rings
like it’s for me, so I get up.
Maybe it’s Dean. I pray to hear
his voice on the other end.
“Gretchen? It’s Ms Long. How are you?”
How random, I think.
But then I see it’s not random.
My family stares at me hopefully.
I smell a setup.
Concern Morphs
through the phoneline from the tooth fairy’s mouth into my ear. She has the best “so sorry” voice.
“I know this might feel too soon, but it’s important we talk about what’s going on, how you’re feeling.” She waits for me to speak.
I don’t.
“I’ll try not to get all grown-up on you, Gretchen.”
I walk into my room with the phone, and the comforting dark stuffiness envelops me. Why can’t I just stay here forever?
“I know school might seem like a big thing right now, but how about we just meet for a chat?” She wants to meet in her office. I say no.
She suggests after school hours.
No.
She asks if I have any other words in my vocabulary.
“What do you want, Gretchen?” She waits.
I imagine her perched somewhere. I look at the clock; it’s seven-fifteen. This can’t be part of her job description. Tiny, committed Ms Long. An idea forms in the foggy recesses of my brain. I ask for her email address.
Her Name Is Jenny
I remember that from a letter I once saw
on her desk. I stare at my computer screen
for hours (it seems). How do I start this email?
Dear Jenny? Dear Jenny Long? Ms Long?
Dear Tooth Fairy sounds best, but then
I remember that Nemiah and I gave her that name
together —
god, I haven’t seen Nemiah in so long.
Were we ever really friends? What does friends mean?
I pull the choking-throat feeling in
for later, when I can soak my pillow.
Dear Ms Long …
Walk in the Woods
When Layla and I were kids
we’d play in the ravine by our house
all day and all evening,
dragging ourselves home tired, hungry
and happy. We dreamed up new worlds
down there. And that’s where I go
for my first real trip out of the house
in a week. The cedars rustle
in the wind and the air
smells like pine needles and wet dirt.
I wander the thin trail along the ravine,
which we used to think
was a huge valley. What other games
would we have played if James
and Dean had grown up with us?
I sit on a stump and the cold seeps
through my jeans. What would
we be doing right now
if he was still alive? I imagine
these non-moments, so perfect,
and the trees twist around me,
dropping needles.
Dear Gretchen,
I know nothing can really take away the pain you’re feeling, and I won’t pretend I can do that, but I thought these might be something to read, to think about. They helped me when I lost my father a few years ago. The haiku masters really knew how to make things resonate. I can lend you a few more books of them if you like. And keep writing. It seems to be helping you.
Ms Long
Insects on a bough
floating downriver,
still singing.
– Issa
That wren —
looking here, looking there.
You lose something?
– Issa
Coolness —
the sound of the bell
as it leaves the bell.
– Buson
Coming back —
so many pathways
through the spring grass.
– Buson
The Tooth Fairy’s Other Office
My mother drops me at Ginger’s coffee shop, hovers on the corner, unable to leave in case I get snatched up by bandits or just blow away in the wind. Ms Long sits in the window and waves as I walk up, and I wave at my mother, who inches away from the curb.
I order an apple cider and play with the stir sticks while it gets made. Now that I’m here I
don’t know what to say. What if she gets all Guidance Counsellor on me?
When I get to the table, she’s poring over a gossip magazine. “You know, I hate this garbage,” she says. “Here are the most expensive houses fought over in Hollywood — a six-page article.” She looks up at me. “A waste of my time, right? And yet I read it.” I slide into the empty seat. I tell her we’re not allowed to read that stuff at my house. Ms Long pushes it over to me. “Then you need it more than I do.”
We Talk
about the weather — how rainy/windy/cold it has been/will be/should be. What we hate about school. Ms Long remembers high school really well for an adult — but then, she does work in one.
We dance around the subject of James for a long time by talking about poetry, and she hands me another book of haiku. I put it in my bag with the one I carry next to my wallet.
“James came to see me a few times,” she says after a moment. “He had these fascinating theories about the social networks of high school.”
I look out the window.
“But he had some rough days,” she says. “When people don’t understand something, exclusion or fear can drive their reactions.”
“Is that what it was?” I mutter.
“What’s that?” Ms Long peers at me.
“Nothing.”
She waits. Glasses clink behind the coffee bar.
“They didn’t know him,” I say. “They judged and harassed him and made school hell for him.”
“You were an antidote to that,” she says.
“But I saw them do it. Three idiots on the lacrosse team. They cornered him every chance they got.”
I put my mug down because my hands are shaking.
“They didn’t kill him — you know that, right?”
“Well, he wouldn’t be dead if they’d left him alone. And those kids at the funeral had the nerve to look sad — like they knew him. Those girls were sobbing like he was their brother!”
“Gretchen, you don’t hold the patent on grief.”
I want to smash something. “How can you defend them?”
Ms Long puts a hand on my knee. “I understand their reactions might seem false to you. I’m just saying that everyone is sad about James’s death. The whole school is affected.”
I take a breath. Two. “But why should the people who acted like he never existed, who laughed at him while he was standing in front of them, be able to grieve as if they’re as broken as I am?”
Ms Long closes her eyes, as if to focus, before she speaks. “It was an accident, Gretchen. The road was incredibly slippery. The car that hit James was going way too fast. It’s a tragedy and everyone knows that.”
“No, they don’t.” I snap. “They know nothing about tragedy.”
She Looks at Me
as if she’s seeing something new,
something hard to look at.
I don’t think what she’s seeing
is something I want to be.
“You need to get past this,” she whispers.
“Find a way — because I know you can —
to create a path out of this.
“I am here, your parents are here.
Any support you need you will have.
But you need to take the steps.”
She takes my hands,
hers cool while mine are too warm.
“Poets are made for this.
You have it in you. Find it.”
And in the End
when my mother arrives right on time
and Ms Long hugs me
before walking to her car,
I know she’s right about one thing
at least.
Being this angry
isn’t working for me.
I need to find
an exit.
Two Days Later
I am sitting on the bus
in an area of town I don’t know,
have never been to on my own
(small lie told about being with Ms Long),
going to a thing
I’m hoping can give me the key.
Rain lashes the bus windows
like a car wash.
Slamming
I sit close to the back, opposite side to last time,
behind a couple with dreadlocks and huge army boots.
It’s louder, more crowded, more crazy this time.
I feel smaller, less sure I should have come.
But when the slam starts, I relax into the words,
into the banter and murmuring crowd,
the way the woman in front of me keeps squeezing her friend’s hand under the table.
The friend gets up to read, and her face — tired, wrinkled, but beautiful —
reminds me of my mother’s.
I feel impossibly homesick. I feel drowned.
She begins to read.
The Lost Boy
It’s her son, dead of cancer at eleven,
who fills the spaces in and between her words
and jumps off the stage
as she brings him to life,
as she makes him
make us laugh and cry.
I see him standing there, listening.
He is James. He is this woman’s son.
He is anyone who died too soon.
And it feels conceivable
that there is hope
at the bottom of all this.
I Have Become
a walker,
a step-at-a-time person.
An enjoyer of flowers,
clean air, good running shoes.
The other day I walked
for two hours, just through
the neighbourhood.
The places we used to think
were so boring and everyday.
Today I walk a new route,
along streets I’ve never seen,
and decide which house
I’d like to own. Cream with
dark blue trim. Front porch.
Bird bath in the front yard.
I stop at an intersection
and a mother with a stroller
pauses beside me. I glance
into the stroller, wondering
how cute the kid is,
and do a double take —
it’s full of wriggling puppies.
Taken
The woman tells me the puppies’ mother is missing. Someone stole her two days ago and the puppies are going to another dog who only has two babies so she can feed them.
The woman has pretty auburn hair and freckles and lets me pick up one of the pups. He squirms against me, warm and alive.
“We need to find their mom — they’re not ready to leave her for another three weeks. And we miss her.” The woman smiles sadly. She holds out a flyer, a lost poster, with the dog’s name, Sasha, boldly on the top and a photo of her.
Under it are the usual details: age, last seen, friendly, affectionate.
Something clicks in my brain. I put the pup back with its siblings, thank her, and take a poster home.
I Am a Flurry of Art
I speak to no one,
hunch over my computer,
type, cut/paste, download
and with all the artistic talent I possess,
create.
Monday: Return
I feel skittish and small
walking into school,
my backpack stuffed with lost posters
to be taped to walls.
My hope is they stay up for a few hours
until Mr. Cunningham, the principal,
sees them and takes them down. By then,
maybe someone will learn something
they didn’t know before.
Strange Things
Ms Long meets me at my first class, English, to tell me that if I feel sad or ill I can leave to find her. It’s a little like kindergarten, but I feel safe. The bell hasn’t rung yet and there are five people in the class. None of them will look
at me. I grit my teeth and step into the hall. It’s full. I stand there for a minute feeling like wallpaper. Nothing has changed.
Then Garth/Thor from the cooking club walks up to me, makes some D&D hand signal I can’t interpret and says somberly, “Gretchen, that poster is really cool. I literally almost cried. I’m sorry for being a loser that one day about you and —”
“It’s okay,” I say, trying not to sound like I ran up a flight of stairs. “Thanks.”
And even though I don’t hear a word of the English lesson, it feels not bad to be back.
Amazingly
most of the posters stay up for Tuesday, Wednesday, and by Thursday I’m getting looks in the hall, glances I can’t quite place.
I hear James’s name in the halls, and not as a point of ridicule. Mr. Marchand takes me aside to weep his gratitude that his star student has been immortalized with his favourite subject.
Mr. Cunningham calls me into his office and quietly congratulates me on a creative memorial. He commends me for using social media to get the word out. I stare at him blankly, think: That would have been a good idea. He shows me his computer screen, a page with photos of my posters, comments from people, dozens of likes.
Overkill?
Ashlyn meets me after French
and we walk to the cafeteria to get juice.
She fills me in on bake sale news —
“and Gerry’s got his aunt who owns
a bakery to donate some muffins, and
Julia will have a flat of doughnuts —
don’t ask me where they’re from —
and Mohammed’s mother will make
these special cakes …”
She goes on and on, not even stopping
to drink her apple/cran. “So that’s why
we’re meeting at three —
to go over logistics.”
I blink stupidly.
