Exit, Pursued by a Bear

by E. K. Johnston

  There’s a polite knock on the door, which means it can’t be Caledon. I wonder whether it’s my dad, somehow alerted to my quasi-breakdown, but when Karen opens the door, it’s Amy who is standing there, still in her uniform, though her hair has been half taken out. It’s all curly where the braids were and she looks younger than she usually does.

  “Permission to come aboard?” she says. “I mean, I know technically I’m the enemy, but still.”

  Everyone looks at Polly, because she’s usually the one who makes decisions like this, and it catches her off guard.

  “Come on in, Amy,” says Mallory, and I remember that she has been Clarence’s best friend for a very long time, and is always good at noticing things anyway.

  “Yeah,” I say, “it’s not like you can really damage us at this point.”

  I can see the remark hovering right on the tip of Tig’s tongue as Amy crosses towards us. The team has respected Polly’s privacy, which makes me very proud of them. But it’s absolutely killing Tig right now. Polly looks at him with a calculating expression on her face, and then pulls Amy right down into her lap. Amy shrieks in surprise, and then starts to giggle.

  “We missed your turn because of a thing,” Polly says. Amy would have seen us leave the stands, but she also would have heard the music. She knows what it means. “How did it go?”

  “Oh no,” Amy says. “You’re not getting any secret information out of me!”

  “Jeez, Olivier,” says Leo. “What good is having an inside source if you can’t get her to give it up?”

  The thing about Leo is that he’s generally the nicer of him and Tig. His treatment of me, and Tig’s, have been kind of a weird aberration, another hint that something had changed. So I know, absolutely, that he did not intend to say what he just said.

  Tig starts to laugh so hard he has to lie down on the floor. Leo turns a shade of pink I didn’t think was humanly possible. Amy turns her face into Polly’s shoulder, but I can tell she’s shaking with laughter. Polly just looks completely shocked. She’s probably spent all this time coming up with witty comebacks for Tig, only to be blindsided by the boy she’s been giving the cold shoulder to for months.

  “Leon McKenna!” says Brenda.

  “No, no, you know what I meant!” he protests, but by then everyone has dissolved into hysterics. “I’m really sorry,” he says to Amy. “I totally didn’t mean . . . that.”

  “It’s okay.” Amy hiccoughs, still laughing. “I’m still not telling you anything, except that I think we did okay, and mostly I’m just glad it’s over.”

  “The competition?” Polly asks.

  “No,” says Amy. “High school. My team isn’t quite like yours.”

  That kills the laughter fairly effectively, but we don’t all sink into maudlin contemplation. Nine of the eighteen of us will be going out on the floor for the last time today. It’s the biggest exit by graduation we’ve had since I joined the team in grade nine. In many ways, it’s the end of an era. More than anything, I want to go out on top.

  An alarm beeps next to Polly’s pillow, and she gets up to shut it off.

  “That’s one o’clock, guys,” she announces. “Boys, out. We need to do our last-minute stuff, and then we’ll meet you outside.”

  Amy follows the guys out, and we turn on one another, fixing ribbons and tucking away straying hairs. Last-minute makeup touch-ups are done. Jenny cracks her neck and Mallory yells at her. We’re as ready as we’re going to get. We join the boys outside and head over to the bleachers as a group.

  Caledon is waiting for us, and we warm up doing our best to ignore the cheering and the music from the other teams. At quarter to two, she calls a halt and leaves us to stretch. She’ll be watching with Florry and our parents from the stands, but she’s brought us as far as she can. The rest is up to us.

  “Bring it in,” I say, and my team huddles around me.

  Last year, we had done this and been full of hope. We had been good, but other teams were better. This year, I know we have it. We just have to find it and leave it on the floor. I take a deep breath. The pine is in the air, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. The teams who have just come off the floor mingle around us. I can hear whispers, like wind in the trees.

  “That’s her,” they say. “She’s the one.”

  My team starts to break open, to find the source of the whispering and shut them down. This is the moment where I choose. It won’t be the last time.

  “Listen up,” I say, and just like that, they are back with me. “This is our day. We didn’t have to come across the country, or even that far across the province, because this is our day. We’ve practiced for this and trained and thought. Tig stopped drinking coffee and I’m pretty sure Jenny hasn’t had ice cream since March Break. You’ve failed tests because of practice. You had late assignments. Each and every one of you chose to be here. You all chose to try out when the competition was stiff. You chose to give up ever sleeping in so we could practice in the mornings. You chose to limit your social life. You chose to make your teammates your friends as well. And you chose today.

  “I’ve asked a lot of you all, on the floor and off, this year. And I’m going to ask one more thing.” I’m almost whispering now, like the wind and trees, and my team is leaning in to hear me speak. “Choose to go out there with me, one more time. Choose to do your best. Choose to trust your team. Choose to win, and I know—I know—we can.”

  Tig starts the growl in the back of his throat. I’ve never mastered that, mine always sounds like a lion cub with an upset stomach, but I join in when the others do. It’s the thing we save for nationals, our trump card to keep the other teams from Ontario guessing. We’re the Fighting Golden Bears all the time, but on very special occasions, we dig deep.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” calls the announcer. “From Palermo, Ontario, please welcome the Fighting Golden Bears!”

  We run out, all teeth and fury, and I watch the tumblers do their practice runs as the clock starts ticking. We do one of the cross-throws, just to see how it goes, and Tig reports that the ground is fine. We haven’t ruined the effect, though. When we do it for real, there will be four of us in the air, and it will look much cooler. We have forty-five seconds to go, and Polly is marshalling everyone into their spots for when the clock runs out. Leo falls into place beside me, rolling his shoulders as nerves and adrenaline take their last run before instinct takes over.

  “I’m sorry, Winters,” he says, so that only I can hear. No one has called me that in months. I missed having him as a friend.

  “Thank you,” I tell him, and it’s awful, because we are already wearing our fake plastic smiles. “Tell me again,” I say. “After.”

  “I’ll tell you as often as you want,” Leo says. That’s how I know he means it. He’s not going to spend any more time waiting for an apology that’s never going to come. He’s grown as a person, and for the next five seconds, I don’t care about the cause.

  Then the music starts, and I know I’m going to fly.

  CHAPTER 32

  I DON’T SEE OFFICER PLUMMER in the crowd until after we’re done. I never see the audience until after the music stops. Some of the girls and guys look for their parents for a discreet head nod (waving is forbidden by Caledon, on pain of many, many laps), but I never do. My focus is my best weapon. As a flier, a lot of my fate is in other people’s hands, literally, so I do the best I can to keep myself steady in the hope that it will help the others keep me steady in the air.

  So I do the routine. And it’s perfect. We hit every landing, we point every toe. Tig gets more height on his tumbling pass than I’ve ever seen, and the crowd goes wild when we do the full-bore pass of the crossover basket tosses. At the beginning of the routine, my cheerleading smile is about fifty percent fake, but by the time Dion throws me up in the air and I sail past Polly into Cameron and Clarence’s waiting catch,
it’s all the real me. When the music stops, and we hold our formation for five perfect seconds afterwards, the audience cheers so loudly that a forest fire helicopter could have flown over my head and I wouldn’t have heard it. Then we’re off the mats, and into the kiss and cry, exactly when the clock hits zero.

  Mallory is bouncing towards me, happier than I’ve ever seen her. She throws her arms around me, laughing and I think also crying, but it’s so noisy I can’t hear her properly. Her mouth lands near my ear, and I make out the repeated strains of “We did it! We did it!” before Polly and the other graduating students wade in, and we become a mass of arms and braids and giggles.

  “Shut up, shut up!” says Leo, but he’s not angry. He’s only telling us that they’re about to post our score.

  Each team is scored out of sixty, with subcategories for choreography, synchronicity, creativity, technique, execution and style. Currently, the top spot is held by the first team out of British Columbia with a fifty-three. I think we were better, deserving of at least one perfect score, but the judges will have seen things I couldn’t have seen, and they tend not to be so biased towards my own school as I am.

  “Come on,” whispers Tig. It’s killing him that the posting is taking so long. The judges don’t lack a sense of the dramatic either, and as the competition goes on, they tend to drag out the posting time.

  “The score, ladies and gentlemen, for Palermo Heights Secondary School,” announces the commentator. “Fifty-seven out of sixty! Rocketing them into first place.”

  The announcer goes on to break down where we lost our three points, but I can’t hear him anymore. There are seventeen people screaming in my ear, and I’m screaming pretty loudly myself. That’s when I finally look into the crowd, and see my dad jumping up and down, hugging Polly’s mother, while Caledon and Florry holler and wave their hands around. Beside them is Officer Plummer, who is clapping sincerely, if looking a bit confused. A person’s first cheer competition can be that way.

  “Move out, guys,” Polly says. We have to clear the kiss and cry so the next team can come in and do their setup.

  I don’t know how I end up on the edge of the group. Maybe I was trying to take the lead. Maybe I was walking a bit out of step. I don’t remember. What I do remember is looking up as we started to pass by the team from North York, the third team from Ontario who got into the competition on a bye because Ontario was the host province. They were in Amy’s pool, so we didn’t face them at provincials. I don’t know if they’re better than us, but they couldn’t beat St. Ignatius, so I’m not too worried. Additionally, their colours are red and black, and they all wear pants. Before right this minute, that was everything I knew about their school. As they walk by, I look up and, so quickly I’m not even sure it happens, I lock eyes with one of the boys.

  I don’t recognize him, not at all, but I recognize the expression on his face. It’s the expression we wear when our parents say “Did you finish the milk and forget to put a new bag in the container?” It’s the expression we wear when our teachers say “Did you finish the homework?” It’s the expression that boy will be wearing when Officer Plummer says “Did you switch your DNA sample to avoid getting charged with rape and reckless endangerment?” Or it will be, depending on what I choose to do next.

  He’s seen me dance. Before, at camp, and then right now. He has to know I am a real person, not an object. Maybe he thought he was being romantic, if bringing date-rape drugs to cheer camp could ever be considered romantic. Maybe he’s just a jerk. In any case, he drugged me, took me away from my friends, raped me and left me in the lake. Now, the choice is mine. And he knows it. He has to go out there with a plastic smile and be enthusiastic about his high school mascot, and there might be a hammer waiting for him on the sidelines when he comes back. He won’t know until it falls. Until I choose to make it fall.

  I consider my options. I could scream bloody murder right now, but I have no proof. I could tell Polly, heck, I could tell Mallory, and she’d kill him for me. Or at least charge him en masse and see how he runs when pursued by a sleuth of bears. But that might lead to our disqualification. I want him to pay, of course, but I also really, really want to win.

  His team has fully passed me now, and I have fallen to the rear of mine. At the front, Polly has missed me, and checks over her shoulder to see where I am. She says something to Karen and then falls back to stand beside me.

  “What is it?” she asks. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I tell her. Because I am. Right now, I have his entire world in my hands, and it feels very, very good.

  “What are you doing?” she asks.

  “I’m making a choice,” I say. “How do you feel about vengeance?”

  “There’s some saying about digging two graves,” Polly says. “But if you can do it with minimal collateral damage, I’m down with it. Why?”

  I look at her. She’s all ribbons and short skirt right now, but I know what’s underneath all that. When Polly tells people she’s going to Mac because they have a good teaching hospital, most people assume she’s going to be a doctor. They’re wrong. Polly plans to be the first thing a newborn baby sees when it comes into the world, and she plans to help their mothers get them there. She would probably make a great doctor, but she is going to be one hell of a midwife instead. She looks completely harmless, except when her teeth are bared. In her heart, she’s always been a bear.

  “Stay calm,” I say, and thread my arm through hers. I’m not strong enough to hold her back, not really, but I might restrain her a bit. “The tall one, with the brown hair. That’s him.”

  Polly goes absolutely still. I have to double-check to make sure she’s breathing. She doesn’t look angry or vengeful, like I thought she would. Instead, like me, she looks contemplative.

  “What are you going to do?” she asks.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” I admit.

  “Well, remember that Officer Plummer is here,” she says. “If you wanted a professional or something.”

  “I don’t have proof,” I remind her. “This guy somehow evaded the DNA test. He really doesn’t want to get caught. If I just throw an accusation at him, he might bounce past it.”

  We watch as the North York team finishes their huddle. I wonder whether they know. I like to think the girls would toss him out on his ass without second thought, and I hope like hell the boys would too, but maybe they didn’t. Maybe when he’d told them about his summer camp conquest, they congratulated him. Maybe he’d left out the tiny detail where I didn’t consent and they never put the pieces together. Maybe they’re all just jerks.

  “You have to choose something,” Polly says.

  “I know,” I say. To be honest, I’m looking forward to it. He took away my ability to choose last time, left me only with black oblivion. Maybe now I’m just riding it out, enjoying the feeling while it lasts. Maybe I’ve let all the power go to my head. Dr. Hutt will probably be proud of me.

  The announcer calls the team name, and the audience begins to cheer. They bounce out, a blur of red and black, and I see him throw a water bottle into the garbage can.

  “Asshole,” Polly says. “The recycling was right there!”

  “Polly!” I say. “Go get a ziplock from Mallory. A big one.”

  “Why?” she says. Then she realizes why, and leaves like I’ve set her feet on fire.

  I’m not sure of the legalities of this, the finer points. I mean, I know it works on Law & Order, but that’s TV and also American. But he threw it out. It has his DNA on it, and he threw it out. I stand over the garbage can, my eyes locked on his bottle, as the music kicks up.

  Polly comes back with the bag before the routine begins, and she has Officer Plummer with her.

  “I love you,” I say, because I really, really do.

  “I know,” says Polly, because it’s true.

  “You did re
ally well, Hermione,” Officer Plummer says. I’m not sure whether she’s talking about the cheerleading or the part where the bottle might solve her crime. She snaps on a pair of gloves, even though she’s in plainclothes right now, and Polly hands her the bag.

  I watch as she pulls the bottle out, seals it carefully and labels the bag.

  “I’ll get his name off the rolls,” Officer Plummer says. “We’ll do an extraction and run the test as soon as possible.”

  “Thank you, Officer,” I say, one more time. “You’ve been amazing.”

  She looks like she wants to tell me that I’m amazing, but mercifully she doesn’t. Instead, she waves and heads for her car. Maybe she has finally figured out that I want to be amazing for something else.

  “We’d better get going,” Polly says. “Mallory had about a million questions, and they’ll send out a search party if we aren’t back soon.”

  “You just want Amy to kiss you in front of everyone when we win,” I tell her.

  “Shut up,” she says, and takes my arm. “Today, everything is ours if we want it.”

  “Yes,” I tell her. “It is.” I’m not thinking about university or court trials or even cheerleading competitions. I am not worrying about the people who prayed for me or about being the “raped girl.” I will not be a frozen example, a statued monument to there-but-by-the-grace-of-God. I have danced before and I will dance tomorrow. As I exit the field with Polly, I close my eyes and imagine a baby who never was and a little girl who was never anything else. They will be forgotten, for the most part.

  And so will I.

  EXEUNT.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I WAS VERY ANGRY WHEN I sat down to write this book, and as a result it was kind of a mess when the first draft was finished. Thank you to my crit group—Emma, Laura, Faith, and RJ—who helped me through the first few rounds of editing, and to Colleen, who read it even though it doesn’t have any magic or explosions. Thanks also to Christa, Jenn, and Sarah, who helped push the science as far as was reasonable, and who answered some pretty graphic questions in useful ways.