Flannery

by Lisa Moore

  Suddenly there seem to be more than a hundred people jammed into the dining room alone. The kitchen, the living room — every room seems to have people in it. The staircase.

  The smell of pot mixes with the chemical smell of the dry ice from the fog machine. There’s a strobe light and a black light in the living room and everything is juddering and teeth and white clothes are lit like they’ve been washed in radioactive milk.

  The doorbell is ringing continuously now, and people are still coming into the house. In the dining room they are pressed shoulder to shoulder, dancing on the spot, just jumping up and down to the beat, pogoing, crashing into each other. The music is very loud and now it’s techno and somebody shouts that there’s a fire in the kitchen.

  We hear there was a dish towel on fire and then people are coming out of the kitchen covered in fire-extinguisher foam.

  Somebody else has a can of crazy string and people have squiggles of neon string in their hair and all over their clothes.

  Even though it’s minus ten outside, it’s sweltering in the house and the windows are open and people are spilling out onto the deck on the second floor, dancing out there under the stars.

  Then I see the guy who owns the Sunbird, and Mercy Hanrahan is with him.

  She doesn’t notice me. She’s busy taking twenty-dollar bills from people and handing out little packages of coke and pills. The guy is just standing there with his big arms crossed over his chest, casting his glance around the room while she collects the money, and then they leave together.

  Brittany Bishop says you can do coke in the upstairs bathroom. There’s lots of it. People are lined up.

  Forget trying to get in there to pee, Brittany shouts.

  Chad has been shaking a beer with his thumb over the mouth of the bottle and he lets it spray out all over Jordan who is necking with a girl and they don’t even notice.

  Then a bunch of people tip over the crystal cabinet with all of Chad’s mother’s crystal wine glasses and fancy china and it smashes and the cabinet is lying face down and people are dancing on the back of it.

  I see the shock on Chad’s face. He’s very drunk and he’s holding a bottle of Captain Morgan by his side and he’s weaving and he’s turned into a kid again, looking sort of scared.

  I can remember him in the Halloween parade at Bishop Feild dressed as the Lone Ranger, all in white with white vinyl chaps and a cowboy hat that kept falling over his eyes. Chad always got ten out of ten on his spelling and was obsessed with snowy owls. Even his backpack had a snowy owl on it.

  He lifts the bottle of rum to his mouth and guzzles it.

  The whole house seems to be throbbing, and then there is Amber standing on the living-room table. She kicks the bowl of chips off the table and it flies out into the crowd like a mini flying saucer with a serious malfunction. She has a microphone and she is outrageously drunk.

  Amber has been transformed. She must have put on black eyeliner and she must have been crying because there are black patches under her eyes. She’s wearing very red lipstick and a leopard-skin fun-fur skirt and high boots that go all the way up, almost to the top of her legs. The boots have very high heels.

  She’s weaving like crazy up there. She could definitely break her ankle. The fog is crawling up the table legs and slithering toward her feet. I can’t help but think of her at the Bursting Boils concert — what? Two months ago? When she was still a serious swimmer. When she was still my friend.

  Brittany Bishop shouts in my ear, Amber’s on something pretty bad.

  Everybody, I give you the extremely talented Gary Bowen, Amber slurs into the mike. The microphone is too loud and people cover their ears because it hurts. There’s feedback and static and a slicing noise that could puncture every eardrum in the room.

  Oops, says Amber. Then Amber throws her arm out toward the bedsheet behind her. Everybody turns toward the bedsheet. For a brief moment, everybody is quiet. Someone has turned off the other music.

  And then the screen comes alive with Gary Bowen’s music video. Though it kills me to admit this, the video is fantastic. The music is propulsive and nostalgic and sweet and sexy. There are horns and somebody playing a saw and even a glockenspiel.

  There’s a field at night with fireworks and a white limo bumping through the ruts on a dirt road, and then a shot of a hill. Just an empty hill with yellow grass rippling in the wind and then maybe twenty people on stilts cresting the hill.

  The stilts must have been Amber’s idea, from when Hank taught us how to walk on them.

  Over there, Brittany says, tugging my shirtsleeve and pointing. She makes me tear my eyes away from the video. It’s the guys from Gary Bowen’s basketball team. They’ve all worn their jerseys to the party. They aren’t looking at the video. They’re all looking at their phones at the same time. They’re all standing still, their faces lit by the blue light of their phones, and their heads are bent as if in prayer.

  Brittany pushes herself off the wall and heads over in their direction. She jabs her way through the crowd. Everyone has started dancing and Amber is still up on the table, dancing by herself and wobbling dangerously close to the edge while the video plays and she’s sort of singing along. Her shadow is blocking the video and it’s playing all over her face and arms and white lace blouse.

  I see Gary, then, and he is trying to get to Amber because he’s furious. The video is running through a second time and nobody seems to be watching it anymore. Somebody switches the music then, right in the middle of the projection, and everybody starts dancing to Kanye West. Gary is screaming his lungs out at Amber to get down.

  Get off the table, you fat cow, he shouts.

  But Amber is still singing Gary’s song into the microphone with her eyes shut. She’s off-key and screechy.

  Tyrone and the girl from the Aquarena, Evelyn, come into the room then. Tyrone is trying to make his way toward me. Evelyn follows. They are holding hands. Tyrone is dragging her through the crowd. Brittany is talking to one of the guys on the basketball team. No, she’s screaming at him.

  I see Brittany grab the guy’s phone and she’s heading back over to me. Brittany gets to me before Tyrone and shows me the picture on the phone.

  It’s Amber, completely naked. Brittany scrolls up to show the texts.

  Pretty hot, right? Now you guys send pictures of your bitches!

  Gary has sent Amber’s picture to the whole basketball team.

  And that’s when I notice Gary shouldering his way toward the projector, grabbing people by their shirt collars and wrenching them out of his path. He’s at the computer and the desktop screen is projected onto the bedsheet for an instant, and then there is the naked picture of Amber, the picture on the phone in Brittany’s hand larger than life all over the wall behind her for the whole party to see.

  All the guys in the room start a whooping noise. They scream for Amber to take it all off, take it all off. She stumbles a little, confused, and her hands are fluttering near her head.

  Let’s see those tits, bitch, somebody yells.

  Amber reels and she’s about to fall off the table, but she catches her balance and turns around to see what everyone is pointing at on the screen. The image reaches all the way up the wall and part of her forehead is projected on the ceiling. She turns back to look through the crowd, to look for Gary, and she sees him at the projector.

  I said get off the table, you fat cow, Gary shouts.

  I trusted you, she says into the mike. But her voice sounds small.

  Tyrone has finally made it through the crowd. He’s grabbing me, saying, Come on, we have to get out of here. The cops are coming. They’ll arrest me if they find me here. Somebody gave them my name about the graffiti. Flannery, come on.

  You go, I say.

  Come on, he says. I’m afraid you’ll get trampled.

  I can’t leave Amber, I shout. For a second Tyrone stands absolutely still, looking up at Amber and the projection. He looks back at the doorway. And then he s
tarts fighting his way through the crowd toward Amber.

  I’ll get her, he shouts over his shoulder.

  Amber turns back to look at herself, then starts backing away from the projection. She has covered her mouth with one hand.

  And that’s when we hear the deck.

  It’s a high-pitched wrenching. The wood cracking and nails screaming as they’re torn from the house and the screams of all the people on the deck. The deck is coming away from the house and for a brief moment it seems to sway on its struts like the whole deck is on walking stilts and it’s going to walk all those stoned, drunken, dancing people across the city and over the Southside Hills and far away into the sky and the stars.

  Then it crashes through the maple trees tossing forty-three teenagers out of it as it falls.

  Cops, someone yells. Cops! We can hear the sirens on the street.

  Everyone in the house is rushing toward the back door. People are climbing out all the ground-floor windows.

  Amber whirls around to face us again and there is no Amber. Whatever drugs she has taken, or whatever Gary might have slipped in her drink, she isn’t Amber anymore. She is searching the crowd for Gary and she sees him.

  Fat fucking cow, he’s shouting over and over.

  Amber suddenly tears her shirt open. Buttons go flying. And she wriggles out of it and whips it around in circles over her head and tosses it.

  I’m screaming at her, No, Amber. Get down. Amber, I’m here. I’m here.

  Then she rips down one bra strap and then the other and pulls the bra down to her waist so it hangs there. She’s just standing there half-naked, not moving, with the picture of her naked on the wall behind her, and she falls face forward onto the floor.

  Get her, Brittany says. She’ll be trampled. But I am already pushing through the crowd. And that’s when I see Kyle Keating. He’s moving against the crowd trying to get to Amber too.

  Somehow Kyle and Tyrone get to her first. Brittany sweeps the cans and booze bottles off the dining-room table and the boys lay her down on it.

  She’s out cold. Tyrone takes off his jean jacket and covers her with it.

  She’s in shock, Kyle says. Get her into the recovery position. We need an ambulance. He’s already punching 911 into his phone.

  Brittany turns away and has disappeared into the crowd. Then I see the naked picture of Amber come down and I glance at the projector, and Brittany has the computer and she’s shoving it into her army surplus bag.

  Amber’s eyes are rolled back in her head and I can only see white slits. She is clammy.

  Wake her up, I keep saying. Wake her up, wake her up. And for a minute her eyes do flutter open and she looks at me. She is looking into my eyes and I have her hand and I’m squeezing her hand.

  Flannery, she says. Did you like the video? Isn’t it great?

  But her eyes roll back in her head again.

  Then the ambulance attendants arrive and Kyle tells them her breathing is slow and he tells them her pulse and one of them writes down everything Kyle tells them on a clipboard. Then they load her onto the stretcher.

  Kids who have been injured on the deck are also being loaded onto stretchers. I am shaking and crying and Kyle is holding my hand.

  Chad has passed out in the corner of the living room. Kyle runs upstairs and comes back with a pillow and a bunch of blankets and we put Chad in the recovery position and go to find our coats. I can’t figure out where Tyrone and Evelyn have gone.

  There is still a huge pile of boots in the porch. People must have taken off in their stocking feet. My boots are gone, but I borrow another pair that fit. And we step out onto the sidewalk.

  It’s only two in the morning. There are broken bottles all over the sidewalk. The glass glitters under the streetlight. The snow is falling in tatters. Kyle throws an arm around me, and he walks me home in the snow.

  30

  It takes me until the next day to find out that Tyrone stayed around to help the people who were hurt when the deck collapsed. And because of that, he got arrested. Someone had posted his picture on Facebook and identified him as the SprayPig and one of the cops who stormed the party recognized him. There were pictures on Instagram of him being cuffed and put in the back of a police cruiser. He was taken straight to the youth corrections facility in Whitbourne.

  Tyrone’s actual trial won’t be scheduled for months. But his lawyer has decided to contest the conditions of his release on bail. They’re saying he’ll have to live with his mother and Marty. Of course Tyrone refuses.

  And so, three days after his arrest, there is a bail hearing.

  Everybody piles into the courtroom for the hearing. Miranda is with Tyrone’s mother. Pretty much everybody in grade twelve at Holy Heart is here. Even some of the teachers.

  The crown prosecutor shows slides of what he calls Tyrone’s “vandalism” over the past two years. There are slides of the Snow Queen mural, of course, and even one of the portrait of Tyrone’s mother at the waterfall, washing the red dress in the river.

  When that image comes up, people in the courthouse fidget in their seats. That painting, even more than the others, shows what an exceptional artist Tyrone is, and everybody can see it’s a portrait of his mother. Even the judge comments on Tyrone’s draftsmanship. Of course it makes me think about the kiss.

  I feel sorry for him up there on the stand, talking about making art. He speaks about Marty too, and how it feels to watch someone punch your mother in the face.

  But none of that is an excuse for treating people badly, he says. He looks straight at me when he says it.

  I’m very sorry for those people I hurt, he says. I know my behavior has been selfish and wrong. And I’m sorry for it.

  I know that I’m not in love with Tyrone anymore. But I’m ready to forgive him. And it feels good when I nod at him from my place in the audience, or whatever you call it when you’re watching a person up on the stand in court.

  Tyrone’s lawyer talks about the history of graffiti art and compares Tyrone to Banksy — whom everybody in the courtroom quickly Googles on their phones. Except Miranda, of course, who already knows all about Banksy and doesn’t know how to Google anything on her phone.

  The biggest argument in favor of different bail conditions, according to Tyrone’s lawyer, is his contentious relationship with his stepfather.

  The integrity of Tyrone O’Rourke’s living situation has deteriorated over the last several years, his lawyer says. His artwork is a creative response to this crisis, and though it is certainly vandalism and wrong-headed, Mr. O’Rourke is also a talented young man without a previous criminal record.

  Tyrone looks at me again when his lawyer says this, possibly thinking of the headphones.

  You’re welcome — almost, I think.

  Nobody is allowed to report on Tyrone’s bail hearing or identify him by name because he is still a minor. But that hasn’t stopped the media frenzy over the SprayPig’s arrest. The story is in the newspaper every day for a week, and it’s the topic of three call-in radio shows and two separate segments on Here and Now, each showing images of his work. The newspapers have featured full-page photographs of Tyrone’s paintings, and he’s even had some offers — people wanting to buy his sketches. There’s talk he’s been contacted by a gallery in Toronto.

  The judge decided that Tyrone can live in a government-run short-term housing program for youth at risk, just long enough to get himself sorted out. And just days after his court appearance, his mother has Marty charged with several counts of physical assault. So Marty has moved out too and Miranda says Tyrone’s mom is starting to put her life back together — the plan being that Tyrone will eventually move back in with her.

  But even though Tyrone’s no longer being held in custody, he doesn’t show up at the Glacier for the Young Entrepreneurs’ Exhibition. I didn’t expect him to. He no longer wants credit for the work he didn’t do. Miranda says he’s going to do grade twelve over again, but this time at an alternative
school, the Murphy Centre.

  The Glacier has hordes of customers and onlookers passing through the fair. Everybody’s parents show up, of course, and lots of teachers from all the different high schools in the city and rumor has it even the minister of finance is milling around somewhere. The duct tape wallets are a big hit. The bicycle tire sandals not so much. People say they pinch the toes. Somebody from Prince of Wales Collegiate had birdhouses that looked like the bars on George Street, and they flew off the shelves.

  I’m fast selling out of the new batch of love potion. After the first one hundred bottles sold, I got to work on a fifty-bottle special edition for the fair — Super Strength Eternal Love. I know I could have sold even more but Fred the glassblower finally packed up his glass studio and set sail for Europe. These bottles are the last ones.

  Just as I’m getting near to the end of my stock, Sensei Larry shows up at my stall and buys one, deciding to try it right there on the spot. He takes a mouthful and tips his head back and gargles, just for a joke. Then he downs the whole bottle and smacks his lips, just as Miranda’s coming around the corner with Felix. My brother immediately goes into a very deep karate bow to show his respect for Sensei Larry, and he stays bent down like that for a good minute and a half.

  Organic, right? Sensei Larry asks me.

  Yup, I say. It’s just a gag. But the bottles are pretty.

  So, says Sensei Larry to Miranda, There’s this thing happening, a medieval banquet at the Sheraton. People are coming from all over Canada, and I don’t know if this is your thing, but there are costumes. I’ll be going in chainmail. Anyway, you already have the tiara. So I was just wondering if you’d like to come with me. You know, there’ll be mead, and a meal of venison and quail.

  Well, I’d love to, Larry, Miranda says. Thanks for asking.

  Sensei Larry puts the empty potion bottle back on the table and I start to pack up.

  Right about then, Ms. Rideout, the Wiccan lawyer, shows up at my table. She has the cutest little baby in a Snugli strapped to her chest.