by E. Graziani
“They won’t. We’ll be back before they know we’re gone. You and I will go first, Norma, like we’re going to the bathroom. Then, Ish, you come in a few minutes.” I make up the plan as I speak. “We can grab our coats upstairs and then leave through the side entrance at the end of our hall. Let’s meet in the little clearing at the side of the hotel. Then we can find a spot…maybe in the woods? Won’t that be nice—like that song by John Denver…‘Rocky Mountain High.’” That just blurted out.
“Wow, you’re really thinking tonight.” Norma smiles.
“John who?” asks Ish.
My Gran listens to John Denver. He was a seventies country singer who died in a plane crash. I like his stuff but I’d die before admitting to it. “Never mind—just do it,” I say. Norma and I get up first.
“Do I ever have to pee,” I say loud enough for the others at the table to hear.
“Yeah, me too—like my bladder’s gonna burst,” echoes Norma.
“Little too much information,” says the girl next to me, her mouth twisted to show us how grossed out she is.
“Shut your hole,” says Norma. And off we go.
We get to our room, scoop up our coats, and exit through the side door, then we wait for Ishaan. In a few minutes, the side door opens and out walks Ish.
“Okay, let’s go,” he says, tromping his way toward us. “We need to find a more private spot. Norma, you got a lighter?”
“Duh” is all she says. She sticks her hands in her pockets and begins walking toward the woods. Ishaan catches up to her as I lag behind, quite intentionally.
“Hope we don’t get lost in there,” he says to no one in particular, his tone betraying some concern.
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” says Norma. She turns and points to our footprints in the snow. “See?” We don’t have to worry about finding our way back, because there is a fresh blanket of snow and our tracks are plainly visible.
They continue to walk ahead a few paces and chatter softly about something or other, but I hang back and just take in the scene around me.
As we walk, I look skyward and catch sight of the moon, high in the sky, surrounded by millions of tiny points of light like a quilted blanket of distant suns. I’ve never seen a sky so clear, so inky blue against the white contrast of fresh snow on the tall pines that line our path like wintry sentinels. It’s so quiet, so majestic.
We find a clearing and stop, our breath making vapor clouds in the crisp night air. For a long moment, our gazes feast on the stately beauty of the Canadian north in all its soundless tranquility. This must be what Connie was talking about. I let it feed my inner peace.
“So do you guys wanna smoke?” asks Norma, fumbling around in her bra and finally producing the joint. “Ah, here it is.” She winds and finishes the end, then pulls a lighter out of her pocket. As I look at the splendor around me, I decide that the moment would be tainted if my mind is in any way altered by smoking pot. I look at her and shake my head.
“You never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice.” Bob Marley said that.
“I think I’m gonna pass this time.” My gaze is once again drawn to the dots in the sky. I imagine the distance between us and the points of light and think about the fact that some of those suns might have already lived their lives and burned out, but we are only getting the light just now, right this very second. And then I think of the billions of years that the suns have shone brightly in the night sky, and how their light at this very moment was meant for me to see, right here in this exact spot. I feel both very important and insignificantly small.
“Why?” asks Norma, surprised.
“Because I want to just be me—not me on weed—and see this.”
“But it’s better with weed.” She brings the joint to her lips and lights the end expertly, drawing a deep drag into her lungs. She passes it to Ishaan. “The experience is enhanced. It’s better, clearer even.”
I shake my head again and keep my eyes looking up. “Maybe I don’t want it enhanced. Maybe I want it just the way it is.” I wipe my nose on my sleeve and marvel at the Milky Way and the moon on the other side of the snowy mountain in the background. “Is it so bad if we just look at the sky and see sky—and be happy to see only sky, instead of wanting it to be some kind of earthmoving, wildly distorted experience all the time?” No one responds.
John Denver was a wise man—that’s all I’m saying. I look back at my two friends and smile. “Come on, hurry up and finish that thing—we have to get back before they realize we’re gone.”
...
I kept my thoughts about the woods and the distant suns to myself that night—I didn’t share them with anyone, because if I did, it would somehow diminish the beauty of it all.
When I got home the next day, I called Connie. “Hey,” I said.
“Hey, how was it?”
“It was everything you said it would be.” I paused. “And I didn’t.”
“I’m smiling big right now,” she said.
So was I.
Chapter 14
Second semester started before I knew it. I was feeling a little better about myself lately. I had sort of turned a new leaf. I know that sounds lame, but I really was trying. As much as I loved what Norma and Ishaan had done for me during my deepest, darkest times, I felt that I had almost outgrown them. All they wanted to do on the weekend was get high.
Go to the movies—get high.
Go to the park—get high.
Watch Netflix—get high.
Connie had really tried hard to put me in a better place, and for that I was grateful. I owed it to her to make an effort. Whenever we talked, or when she came over, it was the first thing she’d ask.
“You haven’t been getting high, have you?”
“No,” I answered.
“Or drinking.”
“No.” I was truthful. The only thing that still irked her was the way I dressed. I told her not to judge.
So, things were getting better, but, of course, as soon as my life started to look up, there was always another crisis looming on the horizon.
...
One day, I’m sitting with Ishaan in the cafetorium when Norma walks in, her eyes red and puffy. She spots us and ambles over, her apple and water bottle tucked against her chest. She isn’t eating much these days, as she thinks she’s fat. I beg to differ on that one.
“Hey.” I nod to her as she pulls a chair up to the table. “Wut up?”
“My parents.” She sits down hard, lets her “lunch” tumble out of her hands, and folds her arms on the table, laying her head down on them. “I hate them. I hate them so much.” Her apple rolls across the table and stops precariously close to the edge.
“So? That’s news?” Ish tries to make eye contact with her, but she turns her head away. “We all hate our parents.”
“What happened?” I ask, eyeing her with caution and wondering if she’s sliding into another bad spell.
“The usual,” she says stoically. “I get ninety percent on a test, and they ask why I didn’t get a hundred. Mom grounds me and hides her diet pills ’cause she figures out I’m taking them. I try so hard to do my best, but they’re never happy.” Norma amazes me. She’s a total pothead, but an incredibly brainy one. She got top standing in the Cramer Math Test, beating out every other preppy wannabe in the school, and still her parents won’t relax.
“No matter what I do, they can never say they’re proud—they just make me feel like shit about my hair and my clothes and stuff like that.” She’s sniffling now, and her back is heaving.
“And they said that if I cut myself again, they’re gonna put me in a hospital, because they’re scared I’ll overdose or hang myself with a belt in my closet or something.” She pulls her sleeves down over her hands and buries her face even farther in her arms.
&n
bsp; I reach out and squeeze her shoulder. “Come on, Norma.” I glance briefly at Ish, encouraging him to do something. “Just do good for yourself. Not for them—do good for you.”
“Yeah, who cares,” echoes Ish.
She looks up, resting her head on one hand. “Last night they said they want me to go to therapy. They want me to be like everyone else, but I’m not. Maybe I should be just like everyone else and say ‘screw the homework’ and see how they like it then.”
I’m not sure what to say to her so I say the only things that come to mind. “Maybe therapy will be good. I saw a counselor a couple times in school. Talking about stuff actually helps sometimes.” I lick my lips and hope my next statement will do more good than harm. “Maybe you could try not smoking and drinking and just let your body be on its own for a while. It’s not as hard as you think. You can try, too, Ishaan.” Ish’s expression doesn’t change, but I know that the idea of giving up weed doesn’t appeal to him much. He says it helps with the stress he feels coming from home—his dad pushing the tyranny of “normality” on him.
Norma shoots me a wary side-glance. “But it makes me feel good.” She wipes her nose on her sleeve. “It helps me.”
“How?”
She shrugs. “It makes things tolerable.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I don’t have to think of anything if I’m high—or wasted.”
“But that doesn’t solve shit.”
Norma’s eyes become razor-thin slits. “Well, maybe it does for me.” Her voice is edgy and sharp. I know that’s my cue for “shut up and mind your own business.”
“Okay, then,” says Ishaan in an overly optimistic tone. “Let’s all relax here.” He turns to me. “Faith, it’s just weed—and vodka. People are actually prescribed weed for certain diseases. It’s not like she’s regularly doing meth or something crazy like that.”
No, of course she’s not doing meth—my mother did meth. Excuse me for confusing the two. And thanks for making me feel like shit. “Thanks for that, Ish. I was only trying to help.”
As I sit in awkward silence between my two friends, I’m suddenly sad for Norma—yeah, she has parents, a nice house, nice things, but she’s even more alone than me. And Ishaan, I love Ishaan, but he follows Norma around like a puppy. I wish he thought more for himself, and I wish that Norma was stronger. I wish that she had someone—like I have my big sister—to hold a mirror up and show her who she is and who she could become.
And then I have a repugnant thought—am I maybe outgrowing my two best friends? Am I actually moving beyond them, beyond their old ideas and interests in favor of my own new ones? Do I find the two people who got me through middle school immature, selfish, and reckless?
...
Our conversation ended when the bell rang for last period. We went our separate ways to class and then off to our buses. But that night, something must have gone very wrong at Norma’s house, because the next day, she didn’t show up at school. Ishaan wasn’t in our first class, and when I saw him in the cafetorium, he was shaken up pretty badly. He sat alone at our spot in the caf, looking small and isolated as I walked over to him.
“Oh, Faith,” he says, expressionless. “I wanted to text you, but then I thought I should tell you in person—it’s Norma.” He draws in a deep breath. “She hurt herself last night—really badly. She’s in the hospital on suicide watch.”
My mouth tries to work, but nothing comes out. She tried to kill herself. I feel the air leave my lungs, expelled by the force of the terrible news. Tried to kill herself. Ish grabs me under the arm and he steers me toward the nearest chair. How could she feel so alone, so hopeless that she thought there was no other way out?
“Are you okay?” asks Ishaan, guiding me to sit down. I shake my head no, unable to get words. Ishaan continues. “Her mom called early this morning from the hospital. They’re keeping her there, until she heals up, and then they’re holding her for observation.”
I nod. Tears tumble down over my cheeks and onto my T-shirt. “What happened?” I ask choking back a sob.
Ish looks at the floor for answers, but finds none. “I don’t know. That’s all she said. It must have been really bad though, for Norma to do that.”
“But I don’t get it, Ish. I mean, she’s got everything.” I can’t help but see things from my perspective. Is it really impossible for her to find some small degree of happiness in her want-for-nothing world, while my world is a crappy town house in a subsidized survey in a crappy part of Greenleigh, one of the crappiest places on earth?
“Yeah, well, yesterday when she came into the caf—you knew she was going over the edge—she could have used your support, you know.” He can’t look at me. Goddamn Ishaan can’t look at me, and I just figured out why—he blames me for this.
“What? Are you trying to say that she did this ’cause I told her to try to stop drinking and smoking weed?” How dare he think that I could be responsible for her cutting her veins open?
“Well, you could have—”
“Fuck you, Ishaan!” My chest is heaving. I am hurt to the core. I grab my things and stalk off, letting my hair fall over my face to cover my eyes. It seems an eternity before I get to the girls’ washroom, where I hope there’s a limited number of occupants. All I want to do is duck into a stall and cry my eyes out in peace.
Sitting on the toilet, I console myself with the fact that there are only a few weeks left until the end of the school year. Typically, I hate school’s end, but now I’m looking forward to it.
...
As time went on, the news of Norma’s “incident” spread through the school, giving rise to sympathetic looks and comments from some, while others only looked at it as fodder for more torture; statements like “Why don’t you two freaks do the same, then the school won’t smell so bad,” or “It’s about time she finished what she started,” and my personal favorite, “She couldn’t even do that right?”
After a while, Ish and I pushed the incident aside and spoke to each other in a civil manner, but only just. I wrestled for a long time with the notion that Norma could think her life was so hopeless that she had no alternative but to end it. Then I remembered the Darkness and how I thought I couldn’t bear it if I had to live with it forever.
But Destiny and Connie kept me going. No matter what, I could always rest assured that we were blood and we were tied together beyond any possible untying. I guess Norma had no one, except parents who, she believed, were never satisfied with her. I wasn’t sure what else it could be.
Chapter 15
I was only five months into grade ten when I ran away.
It was an event that, to me, was totally unexpected, because little by little, I had gained the advantage over the Darkness. I thought I was doing better. I had worked hard to get over my mother’s death with some help from Connie. I was actually taking care of myself, and I was doing my homework occasionally and attending school on a regular basis, again due to Connie’s coaxing. And although Norma’s parents had thought better of their regentrification-of-the-downtown-core notion and moved away to rejoin the upper crust urbanites, I still had Ishaan. I could always rely on him to buoy me up if and when I needed it. And for him, I was happy to return the favor. I was proud of myself for the first time in my life.
But when it happened, even the thought of Ishaan waiting for me the next day at school wasn’t enough to keep me from losing my mind in the maelstrom of feelings.
Though I would never admit it to her, Connie was the person in this world I cared about the most. She was the one whose opinion mattered the most, the sister I looked up to. Frustration, abandonment, rejection, and hopelessness, all tied up in a pretty bow fashioned from vodka and cranberry shooters, sent me reeling that night all the way to the side of a highway, half-drunk out of my mind, hitchhiking my way to Toronto.
Many times I have thought about
how fortunate I was not to end up in a ditch somewhere, facedown, raped, ice cold, my unseeing eyes open, destined to be a headline in the morning paper. In the worst of times, I’ve had fleeting thoughts that, in many respects, I may have been better off that way. But, luckily for me, most of the people I encountered were interested only in convincing me to change my ways. I had the look of a girl in her late teens to early twenties. If they’d only known they were dealing with a fifteen-year-old, I’m sure they would have dropped me off at the nearest police station.
...
It’s January and Connie’s birthday is tomorrow. I dial my big sister’s number and she picks up the phone.
“Hi, Connie.” I crane my neck to check the kitchen clock. Eleven on a Thursday night. “You’re not asleep, are you?”
“Hi, and no, I’m not because I’m answering the phone.” Her tone is a bit snarky, but I let it go.
“Sorry to call so late, but hey, it’s almost your birthday.”
“Yeah, I know.” She laughs a little but says nothing else.
“Nineteen tomorrow, big sister. Actually, in about an hour…so I wanted to be the first to wish you happy birthday, even though it isn’t…quite yet.” I wince because I hate the way I sound when I’m rambling. “Feel any different?”
“Nah, not really. Maybe I’ll—” A voice interrupts her in midsentence.
“Who is that, Connie?” It’s Josephine.
Muffling noises, then Connie’s voice from a distance. “It’s Faith. She called to wish me a happy birthday.”
“Oh, isn’t that nice. Why don’t you invite her to come over tomorrow night with the rest of your friends. Tell her I said hi.” Josie’s footsteps fade.
There is dead silence on the other end of the line until Connie takes a deep breath. Then, in a sugary sweet voice, she responds. “Sure, Gran.” Then to me, “Did you hear, Faith? I’m having people over tomorrow. Not too many, only twenty or so. Why don’t you come over around nine?” Her voice sounds flat.
Afterward, I play the scene over in my mind: My call comes out of the blue, Connie doesn’t expect it, Josie walks into the room and says invite your sister to the party you were never going to invite her to. I would not have been invited had it not been for Josie. Even though I know that, I’m still intrigued at being invited to a nineteenth birthday party—and finally meeting some of Connie’s friends.