Swimmers

by Amy Bright

  "What’s up?" I asked her.

  I’m not saying me and Poppy were friends, exactly. Twelve wasn’t seventeen and we didn’t have a ton in common. What I’m saying is that seeing the same person every day for six hours a day makes you friendly, if not friends.

  "There wasn’t much going on at my house."

  "Join the club," I told her.

  "Do you need any help?" she asked.

  Poppy picked up my packet of instructions from the floor, Walmart’s Rosetta Stone of languages crammed into a ten-page booklet.

  "Have at it," I told her.

  My knees crunched when I stood up. I plopped onto my bed so Poppy could take my place by the bookshelf. There was just the sound of the tiny pages turning and Poppy’s near-silent nose breathing.

  "I think you did this wrong," she said.

  "I don’t care," I said. "Just keep building it wrong."

  "Okaaay," she said.

  To say that Poppy tinkered would be an understatement. It sounded heavy duty, what she was doing with the bookshelf. I had been all touchy-feely with the wooden shelf, but you could really hear Poppy going to town on that thing. Dad had never been a very hands-on guy around the house, and it wasn’t like I’d ever had any interest in Shop class and woodworking.

  "I guess I should call you next time I need something put together," I told her. "Where’d you learn to do that?"

  "My dad," she said.

  Aunt Lynne had been all weird about Poppy’s dad. Mr. Haynes is not around. There is no Mr. Haynes. Made it sound like we were in a movie from the future, with Tom Cruise hanging out around the corner and making people disappear. Poppy’s voice didn’t crackle when she said, "My dad." Either he’d been gone for a long time, or she was just over the fact that he wasn’t around anymore.

  "Thanks, Poppy’s dad," I said out loud.

  Poppy’s shoulders went still. "It’s done, basically," she said. "You just have to glue on this thing."

  She waved a wood-colored piece of floppy paper at me.

  "I can probably manage that," I said. Glue was not my strong point. I always ended up pasting my thumb to my first finger.

  "Want to get out of here for a bit?" I asked Poppy. "We could take Gregory for a walk."

  Poppy shrugged her shoulders. "I guess."

  "Meet you out front?"

  I stood the bookshelf up and pushed it against the wall. I skipped the glue step. I rolled up the wood-colored paper and tossed it into my bathroom trash. Some heavy classical music was coming from upstairs, Aunt Lynne shut into the front room for the afternoon. She’d left a post-it note on the fridge for me.

  Don’t forget to call Mr. Penner today. I mean it, Hunter.

  I balled it up and threw it in the trash. I’d call Penner later. I’d make it go with his after-dinner drink.

  "Pops, when did you get a sweater for Gregory?"

  The cat was wearing a red and black striped sweater with two leg holes popped out the front. It wasn’t cold out—more an accessory than a necessity. Fall had happened in Lethbridge in one day, all of the leaves blowing down off of the trees. It was still blowing. I pulled my hood up over my head.

  "Want to come with me on an errand?" I asked Poppy.

  What I did next wasn’t family approved. Bringing a kid along on a drug deal was not par for the course.

  "Where are we going?"

  "To my friend’s house. I’m just going to pick something up."

  "You have a friend?"

  Poppy deadpanned it, and I couldn’t tell if she was genuinely asking or if she was making fun of me.

  "Call it an acquaintance."

  I held Gregory’s leash. His tail swished back and forth. One difference between Lethbridge and Victoria was that I didn’t know anyone in Lethbridge. I was Hunter Anonymous. You wouldn’t catch me walking a cat in Victoria, but I didn’t give a shit doing it in Lethbridge. Give me fifty cats on leashes and I’d still be cool as a cucumber about it.

  There wasn’t much traffic on the roads. We had the sidewalk to ourselves, and Poppy was busy avoiding stepping on the cracks. It was tail-end-of-summer weather. Flicking back and forth in a goodbye.

  "I thought Alberta was supposed to be like the arctic," I said. I had to roll up the sleeves of my sweater.

  "Sometimes it’s warm even in the winter. You haven’t heard of Chinooks?"

  "No."

  "Look it up," Poppy said and walked ahead.

  I fiddled around with my phone, checking up on the GPS map that was taking me to the address I’d scored at the DQ. It was twenty minutes away, straight up Thirteenth Street and then hang a left. I used my hand as a visor to shield my phone from the glare of the sun as I did a quick search for "Chinook."

  "Oh," I told Poppy. "So a warm wind from the Rocky Mountains."

  Poppy elbowed me. "It means snow eater, dude. In Blackfoot."

  "Well," I said, skimming the rest of the Wikipedia entry. "You are correct, Pops."

  I led the way down a side street. Gregory had his nose to the ground. He reminded me of Sherlock Holmes. All he needed was the jaunty hat.

  "Where are you going?" Poppy asked.

  "My friend’s," I said again.

  "This isn’t your friend’s," she said. "I know where we are."

  I parked myself in front of the right house, my GPS dot lining up with my final destination. The houses on this street looked more like Victoria houses, with sunrooms in the front and porches enclosed by glass.

  "Nice. So you’re a pothead?" Poppy asked me.

  "No," I said, defensively. "Why would you think that?"

  Poppy jerked her thumb at the house in front of us. "I’m not stupid. I know where we are," she said. "I went to school with the guy who lives here. I know his dad deals."

  Then she removed my hand from Gregory’s leash and took a step back.

  "Hurry up," she said. "We’ll wait out here."

  I wasn’t in the house for more than ten minutes. Fifteen minutes, tops. Just to get what I needed. When I got back outside, Poppy wasn’t alone. She was standing with three kids, holding Gregory tightly to her chest. The guy I recognized from the alley a few days before, the one who gave me the address. The two girls were both taller than Poppy, with woolen hats over their loose, long hair. They all shut up and went still the second I walked out.

  "Poppy?" I said from the top step of the porch. Walking into the middle of the group crowding her, I said something lame like, "Hey, hey."

  "Need your boyfriend to help you out?" one of the girls said.

  "He’s not my boyfriend," Poppy said.

  "Come on," I said to her. "We should go."

  Poppy broke out of the tiny circle, holding Gregory closer than ever. When we were far enough away from the house and the kids, I put my hand on Poppy’s shoulder. She shrugged it off.

  "Do you know them from school?"

  "I don’t go to school," Poppy said. "Or did you smoke that important fact out of your head?"

  "You used to."

  "Yeah, sure," Poppy said. "They were my friends. Things change. Where are all of your friends from school, Hunter? You still close with them?"

  Poppy took off, fast-walking and disappearing at the corner. I had to stop and type Aunt Lynne’s address back into my GPS.

  Maybe Poppy was bullied, and that’s why her Mom pulled her out for homeschooling. But Poppy didn’t seem like the bullied type.

  "Hunter. Doctor," Aunt Lynne said. She shook her keys at me, guiding me toward the door. I scooped up my shoes with the tips of my toes and stepped into them on my way outside.

  Aunt Lynne’s car still smelled like Chinese food take-out from the night before, when it had sat in the backseat for fifteen minutes while we ran into Shoppers Drug Mart for toothpaste.

  I buckled myself in, wincing as Aunt Lynne launched her phone at my junk.

  "Call your parents," she said. "They’re expecting to hear from you."

  "Jesus," I said. "Right now?"

  "Yes, Hu
nter," she repeated. "Right now."

  Life with Aunt Lynne was actually turning out okay, even though she didn’t let me get away with shit.

  I dialed the number home.

  "Hey, Mom," I said when she answered. First ring.

  "Hunter, how are you?"

  "Fine," I said. "Me and Aunt Lynne are on our way to my doctor’s appointment. Did she tell you I have to get these check-ups? They take about five vials of my blood, makes me all lightheaded. Maybe you could talk to her and ask her to get off my case."

  "Hunter," Aunt Lynne said, her voice criminally level. The clicking sound of the indicator stuck in my head.

  "Anyway," I said, aware of the fact that Mom hadn’t said anything yet. "Things are good. How are you and Dad?"

  Mom filled me in on as much as she could. I could see her skipping over parts and pieces, blacking out large chunks of information. She would’ve made an awesome censor back in WWII, using a felt marker to black out top-secret information in soldiers’ letters home.

  "Have you seen Niall?" I asked her.

  Mom left a thick silence.

  "I have not," she said carefully.

  "I didn’t think you had," I said. "Just checking. It’s nice to know that nothing changes, hey?"

  "Okay, Hunter, give me the phone," Aunt Lynne said, reaching across the middle console.

  "Pretty sure it’s illegal to talk and drive," I told her, keeping the phone just out of reach.

  "Wrap it up," she told me, spinning an invisible wheel beside her head.

  "We’re almost at the doctor’s," I told Mom. "I’ll call back if they tell me anything serious. How’s that sound?"

  "We’ll talk soon," Mom said.

  Aunt Lynne dropped her phone back into her purse at her feet, between the bottom of the seat and the gas and brake pedals. It looked pretty dangerous down there. Every once in a while she’d catch the heel of her shoe in the straps and frantically work at getting untangled before the next red light.

  "Well, gee," I said. "I sure feel better after talking to Mom."

  "Can it, Hunter," Aunt Lynne said. "You can’t just not talk to her the entire time you’re living here. I don’t care if you talk about world peace or you talk about the weather, you’re going to talk to your parents on a regular basis."

  "Great," I said.

  Aunt Lynne pulled into the parking lot at the clinic and pressed the power locks to let us out. We both went into the clinic together. I wished she’d just let me go in alone. Going in like we were a child/guardian buddy system felt all wrong.

  Aunt Lynne took a seat by the window and started flipping through an old copy of People magazine. When my name was called, she furtively tore out a page from the middle and stuffed it into her jacket pocket. Then she rode my coattails from the waiting room into the patient rooms in the back.

  I’d seen Dr. Griffin a couple of times now. Right off the bat, he gave me a depression inventory. It was this quick list of five questions that mostly focused on how much sleep I got. I couldn’t tell you how pleased I was to tell him that I’d probably never slept better in my entire life. Maybe there was something to sleeping in the basement. Something about being your requisite six feet underground to really get a good rest.

  Aunt Lynne asked the doctor a few questions. You could tell she’d been doing her Google homework. Who knew trying to commit suicide could lead down such a dangerous path. I mean, if you weren’t successful. Aunt Lynne asked him if he could do some extra blood work. He agreed. He was an old guy with a walrus moustache. Gray hair sprouting from his ears. He was probably five years past retirement, still working hard for his access to the sample medication.

  I zoned out and looked over at the cotton swabs and wooden tongue depressors. The box of rubber gloves and the safe-needle deposit.

  I let Aunt Lynne lead the way to the east side of the clinic, where they took their five vials and shipped them off to the lab at the hospital. I got that Aunt Lynne was trying to teach me something here. Something about learning the repercussions of your actions. But there wasn’t really a repercussion. My liver hadn’t failed. My lungs hadn’t shriveled up and died. I was pretty much a normal human teenage boy. Adults got off on teaching lessons to kids. But sometimes there wasn’t a lesson to learn. Sometimes stuff just happened and you dealt with it. It wasn’t all a teachable moment.

  But I did it anyway and hoped she’d give up soon.

  Aunt Lynne dragged me down to the Salvation Army. For a woman who made a killing through the trifecta of teaching piano lessons, reaping the royalties on her old piano recordings, and working part-time as an elementary school music teacher, she sure liked the secondhand stores. Secondhand books, used clothing, scratched records. She bought a lamp for the living room.

  "So, not a complete write-off of a day," Aunt Lynne said, as we pulled back into the driveway. Home again, home again.

  I looked toward Poppy’s house. I saw her skinny silhouette in the window, reading a book. I carried the lamp under my armpit like a football.

  "Not completely," I said.

  The next day, I crossed the back alley to Poppy’s house, where the car was idling in the driveway, Poppy riding shotgun and Mrs. Haynes fiddling around with the heat. Scrape marks were visible on the windshield where Mrs. Haynes had pulled the scraper back and forth to get rid of the frost.

  In Victoria, Lee used to show up at my house on the coldest mornings to give me a ride to school. She always left too late to get the scraping in, and would show up with her face behind a wall of pale blue. Just the tiniest circle scraped for her to see out of.

  "Brrrr," I said, knocking Poppy on the elbow. "It’s freezing out there."

  "It always snows at the end of October," Mrs. Haynes responded. "Takes us all by surprise."

  The fur-lined hood of Mrs. Haynes’s jacket peeked over the headrest. I pulled my windbreaker across my chest. Eventually the heat kicked in.

  It turned out snow in October was not the big surprise of the century. I was more amazed that the homeschooling kids got together for field trips. I thought the reason for being homeschooled was to stay home.

  Aunt Lynne had filled me in. She did a quick Google Map of Fort Whoop-Up, where we’d be going, and told me a bit about it so I wouldn’t look like a complete tool in front of all the other shut-ins. It was this old fort by the Old Man River that used to be a trading post during the fur trade. Panning for gold. That shit. We were getting a special tour, courtesy of the Lethbridge School Board.

  Poppy put her feet up on the dashboard while we drove down the hill beside a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant. The high-level bridge arched across the coulees. The closest thing Victoria had to that was the Johnson Street Bridge, old and blue. But this thing was high. It was tip-your-head-back-and-look-up. Made my hands sweaty to actually think about getting in a train and riding across there.

  Poppy turned the music up loud on the radio while we drove down the hill and passed under the bridge. Ear-splitting loud. The weird thing was, Mrs. Haynes didn’t say a word about it. Poppy was blasting classic rock at the highest volume the radio could go. My heartbeat had worked its way up into my eardrums and was pounding back there for a while. Poppy’s hand was gripping the door handle. I could see the bones of her knuckles through her skin.

  At the bottom of the hill, Mrs. Haynes pulled into the parking lot outside the fort. She turned down the music and Poppy was dead quiet. She got out of the car and waited for me by the headlights.

  "Thanks for the ride," I told Mrs. Haynes.

  "It’s no problem, Hunter. I’ll be back in two hours to pick you both up."

  "Hope your ears aren’t ringing too bad," I said, making a joke out of Poppy’s music. But Mrs. Haynes didn’t laugh. She barely cracked a smile. She waited for me to get out of the car before she backed out of the parking lot and headed back up the hill.

  I followed Poppy into the fort. Forty kids were crowded into the center courtyard. Me and Poppy were the oldest by far. These kids we
re eight and ten years old, not even close to leaving elementary school. Maybe Poppy looked like she belonged, almost, but I looked like someone you wanted to keep your children away from. I could almost see the parent chaperones stepping between me and everybody else, forming a wall against the seventeen-year-old high school guy.

  Poppy grinned, her first of the morning.

  "You think it’s funny?" I asked her. "It won’t be when they cart me off to jail as the creeper who tags along on homeschooling field trips. Then you’ll be stuck here by yourself."

  "Sounds okay, actually," Poppy said. "Sort of like something I’d pay to see."

  She pulled her hat firmly over her ears and led the way to check-in with the chaperones. Our parent chaperone was a fat woman in a shapeless winter jacket. She had a pair of cat ears attached to her head with a hairband. The Goth trend finally permeating parent culture.

  "Poppy Haynes and Hunter Ryan," Poppy said. She announced our names like we were important people. Introducing Lord and Lady. Announcing the arrival of.

  "I was told you two would be coming," the woman said, bobbing her head down to her attendance sheet. She had a lemon expression on her face, pinched at the corners of her mouth. Her lips turned down. The way she looked at Poppy, you’d think she was the son of Satan. The Antichrist in the flesh.

  "Your ears are falling off," I told the woman.

  "Oh," she said, fixing her headband. No "thank you." She took a step back from both of us. I could tell she wanted one of those Avian flu masks that you pick up for airplane travel. She acted as if we were contagious.

  "Hey," I told her, feeling mean, "you should lose the costume."

  "It’s our Halloween-themed field trip. We like to keep it festive for the kids. The two of you were welcome to dress up," she said, turning her back to us.

  "Well, shit," I said to Poppy when the woman was gone. "Guess we should’ve dressed up, hey? Even though we got about a week to go before it’s actually Halloween."

  Poppy nudged me with her shoulder, encouraging me to take a look around the fort. She was right. Cat Ears wasn’t the only one dressed for the occasion. Most of the parent chaperones had something marking them as cool with the holiday. A witch hat. A pair of angel wings with the too-tight elastic bands that turned their arms into sausages. Cowboy boots.