Exit, Pursued by a Bear

by E. K. Johnston

  The boys break in about four songs later, masked and hooting, and scrupulously avoiding me. Just as they settle into the circle, a slow song starts. I make a quick escape for the punch bowl, but Amy is less fortunate. Tig catches her, and she agrees to dance with him fairly quickly, with a smile on her face, even. I shoot a glance at Polly, but she’s laughing too. Polly never, ever tires of getting the last laugh when it comes to dealing with Tig, and I suppose having to sit on this one for a while doesn’t make it any less fulfilling.

  Polly agrees to dance with Eric, who is either brave because he’s masked or already drunk. I see Leo start to head towards the refreshment table too, and consider changing direction, but then Mallory surprises me by taking one for the team and grabbing his hand. He seems surprised, but dances with her anyway. There’s a chasm between them, and it doesn’t look like either of them are having any fun at all, but at least I can get a drink in peace. I hesitate for just a moment as I ladle myself a glass. It’s not like punch bowls at high school dances don’t get spiked. But Mrs. Abernathy has been camped out here since, as far as I can tell, the dawn of time, so I just have to take it on faith that she’s done her job. I imagine there was a staff meeting about that too. “Hermione Winters will be at the dance,” they were told, “so you make sure no one interferes with that punch bowl!” Or maybe it was more about how the teachers would like to prevent any of the students from getting drunk on school property. In any case, the punch is cold, which is what I was after, and I bring Mallory a cup as a thank-you when the song winds down, and she smiles.

  The beat picks back up again, a loud and throbbing tone that unsettles my stomach and makes me feel uncomfortable. I can’t place the song right away, which is unusual for me. Eric keeps us all pretty up-to-date on what’s new and danceable on the music scene. I take a sip of my drink, the plastic cup scratching against my overly made-up face, and it hits me. I drop the cup without meaning to, but there’s not a lot of punch left in it, so it doesn’t cause too much of a stir when it splashes on the floor. Polly, who is fake-grinding with Dion, sees me and her face clouds over. I am walking backwards, trying to get out, but there are people everywhere all of a sudden.

  Tig slips in the punch and swears. He’s definitely drunk, because that wouldn’t usually be enough to make him fall, and he lands hard on the gym floor. There’s a melee on the dance floor as Polly tries to get to me, but her skirt gets caught in Tig’s arms, and there was apparently more punch than I thought there was, because all of a sudden people are sliding everywhere. My breath comes faster, and then I start to worry that it’s going to stop coming at all.

  Hands close around my shoulders and I start to panic. I’m about a nanosecond from screaming, when I recognize Dion. He’s lifting me out of the crowd, carrying me to the edge of the gym, and when he sets me down, I’ve more or less got ahold of myself.

  “Are you okay?” he yells. He has his face right next to my ear, and he’s too close, but if he were farther away I wouldn’t be able to hear him.

  “It’s the song,” I shout back. He smells like sweat and cheap costume makeup. There’s no pine. There was nothing in the punch. I’m safe.

  “Hermione!” Polly crashes into me, Amy right behind her. They drag me away from Dion and towards the hallway, where it will be quieter and I can hide from the music until the song is over. It’s so loud that I can’t tell them that I was okay. That I felt safe with Dion. I think they needed to rescue me. So I let them.

  CHAPTER 23

  AMY HAS BROUGHT AN AIR mattress with her, but when we get home from the dance we scrub off our makeup and then flop on my bed like we’re seven instead of seventeen. I end up between them, but when I try to move away, Polly grabs my shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “Are you okay? You didn’t say much in the foyer, and I think this is the first school dance we’ve ever left early.”

  She isn’t wrong. I didn’t feel like talking, because I wasn’t sure what I would say, and when Amy suggested we leave, I jumped at the chance. I used to dance until they forced me out the door.

  “I’m fine,” I tell her. “It was just really loud and the song they played, that was the song that was playing when I drank the spiked punch at camp.”

  Immediately Polly is a picture of concern and Amy’s eyes widen.

  “Did you remember anything?” Polly asks.

  “Just the song,” I say. “Before then, I guess I hadn’t thought about it or something, but I didn’t remember what music was playing. I didn’t remember the scene or anything like that. Just the song.”

  “Do you want to listen again and see what happens?” Amy suggested. “You could listen and we’d be here if you needed us.”

  It’s tempting. It would mean I wasn’t standing on the edge anymore. I’ve gone back and forth between being on the edge of the cliff and being safely ensconced in my nest so many times in the last few weeks that I’m starting to get dizzy.

  “No,” I say. “I think I’ll wait until I have another session with Dr. Hutt. He’ll know what questions to ask to help me.”

  Polly nods and flops back on the pillow. I wonder whether we’re really going to sleep like this, packed in like sardines. “I’m starving.”

  “You know where the snacks are,” I tell her. “I’m exhausted and I don’t want to do the stairs again.”

  What I mean by that, naturally, is that I don’t want to talk to my parents again. They were waiting for us in the kitchen when we got home, ever the competent care providers. They didn’t interrogate us too badly, but I really don’t want to go back down and answer more questions, inane or otherwise.

  “Done and done,” Polly says. “I’ll tell them you are untangling that disaster you called a hairstyle. C’mon, Amy. You can carry the cups.”

  They head back down the stairs, already giggling again. I do my best not to think about the music or the song, or how it made me feel, and as a result I keep thinking about Dion instead. Leo and I hadn’t exactly been models of teenage virtue, though we did have an unspoken agreement that one of us would keep his or her pants on. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Leo made me uncomfortable, at least not before the wild jealousy thing started at Manitouwabing, but there had always been a certain element of verboten when we were fooling around. Dion had only touched me for about ten seconds, and maybe I am only reacting like this because I was emotionally vulnerable, but he had felt so safe.

  I wonder if he had done it on purpose. If he had somehow seen my panic, and decided to come to my rescue. He’d been dancing with Polly, after all. It was probable that she had kept an eye on me, and when she saw me start to freak out that clued him in. His costume was much less bulky than hers was, and so he had been able to cross the dance floor with greater speed. Yes, that made sense. It hadn’t been anything special. It had just been very . . . nice.

  I hear Polly and Amy on the stairs, and I do my best to drive those thoughts out of my head. For starters, I’m pretty sure I can never date anyone again as long as I attend Palermo Heights. The school can deal with me being a victim, but I don’t think my classmates would know what to do if I started acting like a real person again, or at least the person I had been. More importantly, Dion is in grade eleven. That’s just not done.

  “Earth to Hermione!” Polly says, bouncing on the foot of the bed. I hear a thump and a rustle, as though half a dozen plastic bags and several bottles of pop have been deposited on the blanket. “You looked like you were about to sprain something.”

  “Very funny,” I say, sitting up. I take a look at what they’ve brought back. “Good lord, did you leave anything for breakfast?”

  Polly and Amy have, apparently, brought every piece of food in the kitchen and put it on the foot of my bed. My parents must be really happy that I’m having friends over again.

  “Your father just kept handing me stuff,” Amy says apologetically.

&nb
sp; “It’s okay,” I say. “He’s just glad I’m doing normal things again. I haven’t exactly been a social butterfly this year, and he thinks I’m getting back to my old self. He’s just overreacting a tiny bit.”

  “Here.” Polly passes me a bag of licquorice nibs and a bottle of root beer. “And he was offering ice-cream sandwiches too, but we managed to escape before it got completely out of hand.”

  “Yes,” I say, eyeing the chips, pop and Halloween candy that litters the foot of my bed. “Thank goodness for your speedy retreat. Thank goodness Mum gave away all the caramel apples.”

  “It’s so cool that you guys can give away homemade candy,” Amy says. “If we tried that in Mississauga, we’d probably get the police dropping by to make sure we weren’t slipping in razor blades.”

  “Small towns have some advantages,” Polly says. “Even though our nightlife is remarkably docile.”

  “You had a good time, though?” I ask Amy. She’s probably used to dances where they play “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy” ironically.

  “Oh yeah,” she says. “It was fun not to know anyone. There’s all kind of expectations at St. Ignatius for the cheerleaders. You guys just blend right in.”

  “Well, things are a bit different this year,” I say. “The team has kind of turned in on itself, in the good way, for the most part, since my attack.”

  “That’s pretty cool,” Amy says. I bristle, and she hurries to continue. “I mean, it sucks that it happened because of what happened to you, but if something like that had happened to me, well, let’s just say I’d probably transfer. Or get homeschooled.”

  “I guess I hadn’t thought of that,” I say. “It was pretty bad the first couple of weeks, but it got better.”

  “Polly kept me in the loop,” Amy says.

  “Okay, before we get crazy maudlin, what the hell was up with Leo and Mallory?” Polly says. “I assume I missed something, but she practically threw herself at him!”

  “We were both headed to the punch bowl at the same time,” I explain. “Mallory was being a hero.”

  “That explains why it was the most awkward dance of all time,” Polly says. “Sorry I couldn’t save you from Tig, Amy.”

  “It was okay,” she says. “He’s a pretty good dancer.”

  “Another benefit of having a close-knit team,” I say. “There’s almost always a boy who doesn’t mind dancing handy.”

  “Speaking of,” Polly says. “I think I should probably warn you that Dion spent the whole time we were dancing watching you like a hawk.”

  “I wondered how he got to me so fast,” I say. “You’re usually the first one up the scaling ladder.”

  “So . . . ,” prompts Polly. “Spill.”

  “Nothing to spill,” I lie, hoping like hell that I am not turning a bright colour. “He took me out of the way and asked me if I was okay. Then you guys got there.”

  “He was awfully close to you.” Amy looks speculative, but she’s probably wondering if I’d been planning to kick him in the groin and run for it.

  “It was really loud,” I say. “I could barely hear him. I couldn’t even hear you two until we got into the foyer.”

  Polly chooses that moment to roll on top of a bag of chips, exploding shards of baked-not-fried potatoes all over my bed. That effectively changes the subject.

  “So,” Amy says, when we’ve cleaned up most of the mess and shaken out the blanket. “Air mattress?”

  “I’m tired,” says Polly. “Let’s just sleep here.”

  “Are you okay with that?” Amy asks me. I can’t tell if she’s worried about me being crowded or being a third wheel, which is fair, because I’m not sure either.

  “If it’s okay with you,” I say. “But I’m sleeping on the edge, and I’m not sharing a blanket with Polly. She kicks.”

  “Hermione!” Polly protests. “You promised!”

  “You filled my bed with inappropriate starches!” I fire back.

  There’s a lot of laughing as we make our final preparations for bed. Amy and Polly arrive at a wordless decision to keep their hands mostly to themselves. I realize they haven’t spent a lot of the evening touching each other, and that this feel-each-other-out weekend has been entirely metaphorical. Maybe I should have insisted that they sleep at Polly’s house instead of inviting them back here after the dance.

  Of course, if I had done that, I’d be alone in bed with no snacks and nothing but awkward thoughts about Dion floating around in my head. I am almost pleased about it. That I can still feel this way without wanting to die or having an unfortunate flashback. If I can still feel, then maybe someday I’ll be able to have sex with someone I like and it won’t be a problem. But at the same time, it’s Dion. He’s a person, not a thing. And I’m making him into a thing with every thought, an experiment to see if I’m still a real girl.

  I concentrate on an imaginary blank white wall, and force myself to breathe in and out in a measured way. Dr. Hutt suggested this if I have a panic attack, but I forgot it earlier when the music was blaring. I’m tired enough that it’s relatively easy to clear my mind. I forget about Leo and Dion, about my ugly zombie costume and my fears about the punch. I make myself stop imagining what Dion will say to me when I see him on Monday morning. I make myself stop thinking about what I’ll think or do or say when I see him. Beside me, Polly and Amy are whispering, very quietly, to each other. It sounds like wind through the trees. Like the waves of the lake against the rocky shore. I blot that out too. And then I fall asleep.

  CHAPTER 24

  WHEN I WAKE UP, I remember where I am and I don’t remember what has happened. For a few glorious seconds, there is peace. Polly is on her side, hands cradling her face while she sleeps, and it is like every sleepover we’ve ever had. I always wake up before she does, whether we’re at my house or at hers. Over Polly’s shoulder, there is Amy. And then I remember everything, and the peace of morning is gone. Again.

  It’s snowing, so I stay burrowed under the covers with them, and wait for them to wake up. I feel like I am intruding—this should be important for them—but it’s my bed, and I don’t want to get up. I settle for rolling over so I’m not staring, and that’s enough movement to wake Polly, who shakes Amy awake with threats of missing pancakes if she sleeps a moment longer. It’s new, but my mornings of waking up with Polly were coming to an end anyway, and this is one difference in my life I can actually appreciate.

  —

  Amy drives home on Sunday afternoon, when the initial flurries have died off and hopefully after everyone will have gotten over their sudden-onset amnesia about how to drive on snowy roads. By Monday morning, the snow’s all gone, but it never gets warm again.

  The cheerleading team moves on to practice for the routines for the winter season, which means we focus on choreography and small lifts until it’s warm and dry enough to go outside for the larger throws. It also means we start to focus on two specific routines. The first one is the routine we’ll do for the alumni basketball game, which is played between Christmas and New Year’s, and the second is the routine we do at elementary schools in January as part of our recruitment.

  It’s kind of pointless, really. Everyone has heard of us by the time they hit grade three or so, and if a grade eight student really wants on the team, they’ll probably have been practicing since they were old enough to start going to Caledon’s special summer camps for the elementary kids. But I like putting on a show or, at least, I did, so I don’t mind. These two small routines, without huge throws and elaborate stunts, ensure that we don’t focus too much on the showy parts of cheerleading. There’s a lot of hard work in the fundamentals, dance, synchronicity and so on. It’s not all spelling with your arms and throwing tiny blonde people up in the air.

  Dr. Hutt does not understand any of this. He never fails to make some kind of insulting comment about cheerleading. Usually somet
hing like “You know, I’m impressed! I would never have expected a cheerleader to do this well in calculus.” It’s a bit infuriating, but nothing new, sadly. Apparently it doesn’t matter how hard you work: As long as you’re a cheerleader, you will never be a real athlete.

  He is immediately interested when I tell him about my reaction to the song at the dance, though. We missed the first two weeks of November because of some conference he had to go to, and so it’s the first time he’s heard about my breakthrough. I bought the song on iTunes after the Halloween dance, though I haven’t listened to it again yet. I’m not scared, exactly, but I am feeling overly cautious. Also, it’s not really that great a song, which is something I’m glad of. If it was a favourite and I had to stop listening to it, I’d be pissed. When he asks, I cue the song, and then sit in my chair with my eyes closed.

  “Well?” he says when it has played through once. I set it up on its own playlist, so it doesn’t jump to something else when the song is done.

  “Nothing,” I say. “Maybe it’s too quiet.”

  Dr. Hutt gets up and cranks the volume. He also sets it on repeat.

  “Think about the dance,” he says.

  “Which one?” I ask.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Just do your best to think about the noise and how dark it was and how many people were around you.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t believe in cognitive interviews,” I say, but I’m already stuck in those thoughts.

  “Have you been doing background reading without any encouragement?” he asks. “Well done. Hardly typical of a cheerleader.”

  And another check mark for today.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “No more talking,” he says, and presses play.

  This time, I can feel the music in my bones. It’s not the same level of bass, largely because my parents actually like their neighbours, but it is getting closer to the noise level at the dance. With my eyes closed, I can almost imagine I’m in the gym, surrounded by the others and dancing. The song runs its course, and I crack my eyes open when it starts again.