Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility

by Theodora Armstrong

  The houses are pushing up into the mountains. Or maybe it’s the mountains pushing against the houses. I’m not sure which one it is, but their cold gigantic weight makes me anxious and I want to be somewhere else. An empty bus comes down the street and when I get on the driver doesn’t look at me. I sit near the back. The bus is the only thing on the road and everything is quiet at this time of the morning — cars in their driveways, newspapers on front porches, heads on pillows full of rest. The bus driver and I are the only two dreamless, awake when we shouldn’t be. I’m not sure where the feeling comes from, but all at once I need to talk to Kate so desperately I start to cry. I get off at Grand Boulevard and walk the rest of the way home. Across the inlet, in the distance, the city is a lit grid of neat cubes.

  One of the cats has been left out overnight and he sits tall on the top step of the porch, watching me. As I climb the stairs, he paces and I bend down to kiss his soft, grey head. I slip my key into the lock and slowly and quietly open the door. The cat enters the house with intent, disappearing down the hallway as I creep up the stairs to my bedroom. My dirty clothes are everywhere. There are piles of dishes and a pool of hard candle wax across my desk. I close the door and go down the hall to my sister’s room. Carlie’s window is open and everything smells like a summer morning, clean and fresh with promises of lawnmowers and sprinklers. I slip under the covers beside her and in her sleep she makes a space for me. We used to do this if we got scared when we were little kids and shared a room. We have the same eyes and the same smell because I always borrow her perfume. If I wish hard enough, I can believe I was the one in here sleeping all night and Carlie was the one in the forest with Max.

  Eventually I fall asleep, but at the same time I hear all the movements in the house. My father’s alarm, the drum of the shower, the car backing out of the driveway. My mom’s bare feet on the stairs, her hands through the dishwater, each piece of cutlery sinking, settling. It’s the first day of summer vacation and there are two months ahead with nothing to do.

  When I come downstairs later, Carlie doesn’t ask me why I slept in her bed last night. We both pretend it never happened.

  ~

  IT TAKES ME A WHILE to pick an outfit for the party — like over the summer I’ve forgotten how to dress myself — and in the end I go for something simple: jeans, a purple hoodie, sneakers. Mom’s standing by the sink, hidden in a cloud of spaghetti steam as she dumps the noodles into the colander. “Take a jacket,” she says. “Chilly tonight.” There’s a hint of blue left in the night sky and a purple stain where the sun has disappeared. As I round the corner of our block, I hear the bus pull away from the stop, so I decide to keep walking down to Lonsdale, where I can catch another one. Ambulance sirens whir out of the hospital on 13th Street and the sidewalks are empty, a cool wind — the first sign of fall — whistling down the street.

  I flip up my hood and walk quickly, rubbing my arms for warmth. My slow-death summer is truly over. I spent it helping my dad with odd jobs around the house: painting the rec room, weeding the garden, clearing out the garage. I lost two months covered in cobwebs, hauling garbage bags of my parents’ old hippie clothes for Goodwill. Mom made me drain the backyard pond because she didn’t want to be held responsible for attracting West Nile virus mosquitos that could potentially wipe out the entire neighbourhood. God forbid my parents let me just lie on the couch, eating fruit cups topped with microwaved marshmallows.

  So I wasn’t dreading going back to school, but I wouldn’t say I was cheery about it either. I wouldn’t say I was skipping the whole way through the halls into grade nine homeroom. Over the summer there was some sort of tectonic shift beneath the school and I spent the first week wandering around like a new student, even though I spent a thousand hours in this purgatory last year. I was always on the wrong floor or walking into the wrong classroom, thirty pairs of eyes laser-zapping me in the chest. Things still aren’t quite right, as though everyone is walking on a tilt — at least that’s the way it looks through my eyes.

  Kids are talking about what went on between me and Max, but it’s hard to figure out exactly what they’re saying because I get all my information from Kate and she was occupied with Elgin all summer. I thought things might be different now that we’re back at school, but so far Kate’s spent every lunch hour with Elgin in a little windowed alcove next to the library that no one knew even existed before Kate and Elgin started eating there. I walked by on the first day of school and Kate was curled in a ball on the floor, resting her head in his lap. It’s probably the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.

  Today I found a note in my locker that said, Quit spreading STDs — anonymous, of course. I was scurrying by the alcove, ready to skip out and go home early, when Kate called out to me. “You coming tonight?” I had no idea what she was talking about, but I said, Yeah, yeah, see you there, and found out from Rana where the party was.

  On the bus, I sit near the front, as far away as I can get from a group of kids from my grade. We all get off at the same stop, and I hold back, waiting for them to get far enough ahead so I can follow them to the party without them noticing me. The house is near the top of Montroyal, two blocks from my old elementary school, in one of those stuccoed Vancouver Specials kids always want to trash. As soon as I walk through the front door, I catch sight of Max’s ratty old toque weaving through the crowded living room, so I head down a flight of stairs and end up in the laundry room, where it’s so warm and cozy I think, What’s the harm in staying here awhile? I turn the dryer on even though it’s empty, the room filling with the smell of fabric softener and warm socks, and lie back, letting the vibrations jiggle my brain. It’s a good solution because it’s impossible to hear my heart thumping in my chest over the racket.

  Max’s name has become a joke — no one knows how it started. MAX. At the beginning of the school year, his name began appearing all over, scrawled on lockers with sharpie, dug into the wood tops of desks, scribbled on the doors of the bathroom stalls. It’s nothing but his name, but it’s become a swear word like fuck or slut. If his name ends up on your locker you scrub it off. Sometimes I hear it whispered at my back like a dirty secret. Lately I’ve been pretending to have headaches. It’s good for getting out of things — gym class, school presentations, lunch in the cafeteria. My mother took me to the family doctor yesterday. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said. “You’re in perfect health.” It was almost an accusation.

  Kate opens the laundry room door, music pouring in around her. “This is sad,” she says.

  “I was waiting for you.” I sit up cross-legged to make room for her.

  “You need to get a life,” she says, hopping up beside me and resting her head on my shoulder.

  “I have one,” I say. “How was your summer?”

  “Fantastic!” Kate doesn’t mention anything about abandoning me. We pick up as though nothing has changed. She’s in a great mood, better than I’ve ever seen, and it makes me realize how badly I miss her.

  “Is he out there?” I ask.

  “Yeah, he’s out there,” she says. Her cheeks are pink. Drama turns her on. “I’m not staying in here all night.”

  “I know,” I say, bringing my legs to my chest and dropping my head on my knees.

  “Fine, a few more minutes, but then we go out there.”

  Elgin opens the laundry room door. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Now it really is a pity party,” Kate says.

  “I want him to disappear,” I say, closing my eyes. I think they both assume I mean Max, but I actually mean Elgin.

  “You guys are so bitchy,” he says, sitting on a laundry hamper and pulling a baggie of mushrooms out of his coat pocket. “What’s so bad about Max anyway?”

  “There’s nothing bad about him — ” I say.

  “He’s strange,” Kate says, holding out her hands.

  “He dropped acid. He
’s so messed up right now he probably doesn’t even know you’re here.” Elgin places a tangle of slug-like mushrooms into Kate’s cupped palms. “I don’t think he even knows he’s here.”

  “You could’ve baked us some brownies or something,” Kate says, grabbing the bottle of water Elgin hands to her and swallowing the mushrooms with one big gulp. “Didn’t even taste them.”

  I do the same and taste the earth — dirt, dead leaves and the bottoms of everyone’s shoes.

  “I did mine already,” Elgin says. “Let’s go.”

  “You’ll feel better around lots of people,” Kate says.

  “Right,” I say, following them out the door. “Sure I will.”

  The living room is packed with kids, but Max is nowhere in sight. There’s still a buzz in the house, though, like a mosquito in a dark bedroom. Rana sees me through all the people and waves me over to the couch where she’s sitting. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she says, gazing up at me with this expectant look like she’s waiting for me to do a cartwheel. Kate turns away to find someone else to talk to — she doesn’t even pretend to like Rana. I shrug and squeeze onto the couch between her and two kids playing video games, my bum sinking into the crack between the cushions where there are crumbs and loose change.

  Lately I’ve been doing more stuff with Rana and somehow she’s come to the conclusion she’s my new best friend, and maybe she is now. Maybe that’s how friendships happen. The couple of times I did leave my parents’ place over the summer, I hung out at Rana’s house against my wishes — I was forced by total boredom. Her house is cold and smells like mildew and her mother always asks us to be quiet, but her Dad owns a sandwich shop, so at least there are always good cold cuts in the fridge. We sit at her kitchen table, whispering and eating deli slices rolled into tubes, and every half hour or so she asks me if I’m having fun and I tell her I’d have more fun if she stopped asking me that. We were eating mint chocolate chip ice cream one afternoon and when her father came home we had to hide our bowls on our knees under the table. The whole place makes me nervous. Rana acts like her house is the most normal home on earth and maybe to her it is. I sat with my bowl of ice cream melting on my knees while Rana’s dad asked me questions about school — what subjects I liked, if I played a musical instrument, if I was interested in sports. When he left, Rana set her bowl on the table and went back to eating as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

  “What are you guys doing?” Rana says, peering into my eyes and I wonder if I look high even though I’m not feeling anything yet.

  “Shrooms.” I look for Kate, but she’s disappeared into the crowd. It’s no fun being high with someone who’s not — all you do is worry the whole time about being too high.

  “Can I have some?” Rana asks.

  The TV explodes in pulpy blood. “Dead!” one of the kids shouts, fist-pumping and punching his friend in the leg. “Next level!”

  “Elgin gave them to me,” I say.

  “I’ll find him.” Rana gets up from the couch and weaves through a bunch of kids crammed around the stereo. I sink further between the cushions, watching the guys twist the video controls and grimace with concentration. Their faces are a weird combination of slack and serious, and I can’t tell if they’re stoned or just really into their game. I’m so caught up watching them, I barely notice Elgin slide in beside me on the couch. He has to tap me on the shoulder to ask me if I feel anything yet, and I say no. “Rana was looking for you,” I say.

  “Who?” Elgin lights a joint and passes it to me.

  “No one,” I say, taking a puff. “Forget it.”

  The voices in the room grow louder and I start going sh, shh, shhh, but no one seems to want to listen to me. Elgin looks over at me and starts laughing. “Now do you feel it?” he says, and I say, “Ah!” and let out a whole bunch of phony laughter even though I’m terrified.

  “Cunt!” One of the kids has beaten the other and they wrestle on the couch. I move onto the armrest to get out of their way and Elgin disappears into the kitchen, coming back with a beer to finish watching the fight from a safe distance. One kid has the other in a headlock asking, You had enough, pussy, and the other one keeps saying cunt, cunt.

  Last week in science class someone wrote whore on my desk in purple pen. There was a large, dripping penis under the word. I tried wiping it off with my hand, but it was permanent. When Max walked into class, he looked at me for the first time in a while. He looked really sad and it made me feel a whole hell of a lot worse. I poured Liquid Paper on the desk, and the teacher sent me to Paul, the school counsellor/drama teacher, who starts his classes with a circle massage. “Why vandalize?” He sat in a chair with his elbows on his desk, his hands cupping his chin, making an exaggerated sad face. It was ridiculous. He looked like a five-year-old. I didn’t even answer him.

  “I’m fucked.” Elgin’s in a ball on the couch, rubbing his knees. Someone grabs the joint out of my hand and goes running out onto the porch, saying, “Guys, you can’t smoke in here.”

  “Why’d you give away my joint?” Elgin says. He’s stopped giggling.

  “Sorry.” I scrunch my eyebrows together and concentrate on him. “Why are you angry at me?”

  “Cause you gave away my joint.” He lies back on the couch. “Now there’s nothing to do.”

  We sit together for a while without speaking, staring at the blue TV screen, and when I turn to ask Elgin how long mushrooms last, he’s gone and in his place are two kids kissing. I walk around the house looking for Kate, catching glimpses of her, but by the time I get anywhere she’s already gone. I start to worry she’s doing it on purpose, and once I start worrying about Kate, I start worrying about a lot of other things. I think about the dripping penis and STDs. I wonder if Max was the one who told the entire school what we did at the bush party or if it was Kate because she likes to talk. The thought is on the verge of making me sick when I almost knock Kate over in the kitchen. She’s leaning against the wall, shoulder to shoulder in deep conversation with Adrienne. My stomach flops and I catch her by the arm, Adrienne sneering at me as I pull Kate into the hallway. “Are you telling people things?” My body is so relaxed, I’ve lost control of my face. I feel like it’s melting right down the front of my shirt, but then I realize I’m crying. My tear ducts become a problem when I’m messed up. They have a high probability of malfunctioning.

  “Telling people what?” Kate’s smile is twisting like a snake’s tail.

  “I think I’m having a bad trip.”

  “No you’re not, you’re definitely fine,” she says, grabbing me by the shoulders. She shakes me. “You’re fine.”

  “Yeah, keep shaking me. That feels good.”

  Kate walks me outside to the backyard where kids stand around in large groups or hang out in the tents, hot-boxing or making out. Max is walking around the yard making fireballs with hairspray and a lighter and pissing everyone off. Every time he gets close to us I grab Kate’s arm. “Get lost,” Kate says, shooing him as he passes us. He takes a step closer to me and without meaning to I scream. The noise frightens all of us. “I said fuck off,” Kate says, stepping between us. “Can’t you see how afraid she is of you?” He looks high out of his tree. “Let’s go somewhere else,” Kate whispers, wrapping her arm around me protectively and leading me along the side of the house. The front yard is empty, with only a few small groups of people chatting on the street. With the wide vacant yard and the stars flowing like streamers over my head, everything feels much better. Elgin’s sitting on the porch alone, looking sad, so Kate hands him a joint and we all smoke a bit together and then everyone cheers up. “See, it all works out,” I say, before spinning off across the lawn. Kate joins me, grabbing my hands so we can twirl together, but we fall so often that eventually we just lie in the grass.

  “I can taste the moon,” I say.

  “What’s it like?” Kate asks. She opens h
er mouth.

  “Kind of acidic.” I rub the back of my hand over my tongue. “It’s horrible.”

  Max comes stumbling out the front door and trips down the porch steps, ignoring all of us. He wanders down the street away from the party and I feel happier than I ever thought possible. “I’m so much better now,” I say to Kate.

  We climb onto the stone planters beside the front steps and throw ourselves onto the grass, saying over and over, It doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt. Elgin stretches out on the steps and closes his eyes. Without him watching us, things don’t seem as much fun, so Kate and I sit in the grass side by side and stare at the house. It looks so boring from the outside, with the curtains drawn and the porch light flickering. A group of kids stream out the front door, down the steps, and into the street. A couple people say hi to Kate as they go by and Adrienne is with them, trailing at the back. She smiles at me and mouths the word whore. “You’re the whore,” I yell at her as she walks by, but she doesn’t turn around. There’s something about the way Kate sits in the grass — really still, focused on the tan stucco — that makes me feel so sad. “Why don’t we hang out anymore?” I say, after all the kids have disappeared up the street.

  “We can,” Kate says. “It’s not impossible.”

  “I wish things were different.”

  The porch light goes off and we’re surrounded by the dark night. After a few seconds the stars get brighter.

  “Different how?” Kate asks.

  “Just easier,” I say. “The way things were before.”

  Elgin sits up on the stairs and rubs his face. “Hello?” When he calls out, for some reason we don’t move or say anything. He stands and goes back into the house, a sliver of light shooting across the lawn toward us before disappearing again.

  “I’d never want things to be different.” Kate lies back in the grass and stretches her arms overhead, smiling up at the sky. “I think the moon tastes nice. Like almonds.”