Meteorites

by Julie Paul

  “Oh, Tituba, you’re breaking my heart,” Scotty sang, to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Cecilia.”

  “God, Scotty,” I said. “Kind of crass, don’t you think?”

  He didn’t stop. “Oh, Tituba, get down on your knees.”

  I watched Sara smile and then quickly hide it. “Let’s leave these infants, Lori. Disgusting.”

  Twice every evening, the staff at the museum re-enacted the trial of an innocent woman, condemning her to death. We didn’t get to see it, however, because the schedule said dinnertime.

  After a repulsive meal at McDonald’s, where some jerks started a ketchup fight and a blob landed on Sara’s shirt like a nosebleed, we were given our tokens for the haunted house.

  “You wanna skip this?” Greg asked me, out of earshot of the others. “Take a walk or something?”

  Mrs. Dobbs and Mr. Conway had disappeared. “I don’t know,” I lied. “I kind of like a heart-stopping fright once in a while.” My heart was nearly stopping with Greg’s attention. But where was Sara? Weren’t we supposed to go through the house together?

  We walked a few paces before Greg clutched his chest. “Oh, God,” he said. “I’ve been hit.” He landed on the grassy boulevard and rolled onto his back, then gave one last gasp before his head lolled to the side.

  “Nice try, there, Magnum PI.” I nudged his leg with my shoe. He didn’t move.

  “Okay,” I said. “See you later.” I walked away, heart racing. He was back at my side within ten seconds.

  “Hi there,” he said, and draped his arm around my shoulder. “Let’s do it. Let’s get scared shitless.”

  I looked around for Sara. I was shaking. Where was she? But Sara wasn’t going to help me through this one. No, it was better that she was somewhere else entirely. And where was Scotty?

  “Oh, baby,” I said, in my best eastern seaboard accent. “I thought you’d never ask.”

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  The magazine promised a frightening experience. It didn’t say terror. Greg and I walked past the bars of the first cage, and when a hand reached out for me, I screamed. Then I found my hand suddenly wrapped in another hand. I screamed louder until I realized it was Greg’s.

  “It’s okay,” he said. Greg kept holding my hand. I could feel the calluses on his palms from where he held shovels and rakes. Another creature jumped out at us. I screamed again and squeezed Greg’s hand. He squeezed back.

  My arms had goosebumps. I knew it was physiological, a common reaction to being creeped out, but it wasn’t only that: I was holding hands with a boy who shaved every morning.

  “Aren’t you scared?” I asked him.

  He leaned down so his lips were grazing my ear. The whole right side of my body got gooseflesh. “Yes,” he said. “Isn’t that the point?”

  We made it out of the haunted house with only a few more screaming episodes. Then Greg led me to a stand of trees along Salem Commons, pulled me closer, and planted a kiss on my lips.

  A kiss. This kiss. It was not in the long-term plans. Not in the curriculum. But I remember it now as clearly as if I’d been studying it for years: the sureness of his mouth on mine, the warmth. I hadn’t really dated either, but I’d played around a bit. The other boys I’d kissed before, who numbered exactly two, had been tentative, nervous, their kisses leading to nothing but a string of slow dances in the gym. I kissed him back. He tasted like Pepsi and Big Red cinnamon gum.

  “Um,” I said. “Should we be doing this here?”

  “You’re right,” Greg said. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

  “Won’t they be looking for us?” How much time did we have? I’d lost all sense of it.

  “Nah, we’ve still got loads of time.” He leaned in closer to my ear. “Let’s go see if the bus is open,” he whispered. “Just for a few minutes.”

  “Dobbs will lose it.”

  “She doesn’t have to know a thing.”

  How had Greg known? The bus driver was nowhere to be seen, but he had left the doors open. We climbed the stairs and checked every seat as we walked the aisle: no one else on board.

  “What if we get caught?” I said.

  Greg laughed. “Relax.” He shifted his hands down my back until they were on my bum. “You have an amazing ass,” he said into my hair.

  I’d never even thought of it as an ass before. He grabbed my bum harder this time, as if the cheeks were apples he might break in half with his bare hands, something I’d seen him do in the cafeteria.

  “We should go,” I said. But did I mean it? Why did it matter what his father did, or what he did after Grade 12, or whether we wanted the same things in the future? I was shaking. I wanted more kisses. Wanted more.

  He slid his hand under my shirt, fingers climbing to the lace of my bra. My nipples reacted as they were programmed to do, standing up straight and tall and ready for more of the same. I gasped a little as we sank to the seat. He unbuttoned my shirt and ran his tongue over the mole on my shoulder. I could feel him murmuring against my skin.

  “What was that?” I pulled away to hear him better.

  “You’re a witch.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  He laughed. “Oh, yeah. The Devil’s gotten inside of you,” he said. “But I know how to get him out.”

  He had just wedged his other hand between my legs, pressing up gently into my crotch while my hand found his waistband, when we heard people entering the bus. Greg quickly pulled me down to lie beside him.

  “You see anyone?” Sara’s voice said.

  “Nah,” Scotty’s voice said. “But it was worth a shot.”

  Greg covered my mouth with his palm and guided one of my hands to the front of his jeans.

  “Shit,” Sara said. “If they don’t show soon, they’re going to get it. I don’t know what’s gotten into Lori.”

  “Yeah, well,” Scotty said. “Greg’s had a crush on her forever.”

  Greg pressed his palm harder against my lips. I pressed my hand against the shape of his penis. His breath caught, his heart drumming against my shoulder. I bit Greg’s palm, lightly. He put his other hand back between my legs, and I bit harder. There were maybe five seconds before we were about to be found, but my body, and his body, they didn’t care. We would go down burning.

  Sara sighed loudly. I knew that sound well: she was pissed off.

  “I guess we better keep looking.”

  “I guess,” Scotty said. “Unless you want to just hang out here?”

  “Nah, I don’t think so,” she said. “We’ve spent way too much time on this bus.”

  We heard two sets of footsteps leave the bus. Alone again.

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  When the teachers and the rest of the class came back on board, Greg and I pretended that we were in the right, that we’d followed instructions to meet on the bus. For some reason, they believed us.

  Sara completely ignored me the whole ride back to the hotel. She sat with Scotty, though, so that was a good sign.

  Once we got back, we got the warning.

  “Big day, tomorrow, guys,” Mr. Conway told us. “No foolin’ around tonight.” He looked pointedly at me, then Greg, before heading into his room.

  Greg popped into another handstand in the hallway, waving with his feet.

  “Show off,” Sara muttered. “Ta-ta for now,” she said, louder. Scotty was walking backwards and nearly bumped his head on the vending machine. Still trying to impress her.

  Mrs. Dobbs popped her head in at ten o’clock and delivered the half-hour warning. Then I watched through the peephole as she doubled back to Mr. Conway’s room, running her talons through her frizzy hair.

  Sara wouldn’t say a word to me. We went to sleep in the same bed, under the same covers, but it was l
ike I was dead to her.

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  We spent the whole next day at Harvard, Sara and I as far from each other as possible. Twice, when no one was looking, Greg pulled me aside and kissed me.

  After our tour and souvenir shopping, the bus took us back to the hotel, and in a moment of lax judgement, Mr. Conway allowed us all another half-hour of free time before we were to meet for dinner at a seafood restaurant across the highway. Once the Fraud Squad was enmeshed in a game of euchre in the courtyard, I pulled out the Pearl Drops teeth-whitening kit we’d bought at a drugstore downtown.

  “Give it a try with me?” I asked. I’d never felt that alone before. It was a freeze-out.

  She put down her eyeliner and looked at my mouth. “Yeah, you could use it.”

  I took it as a step in the right direction.

  The box said it would only take half an hour, but by the time we got the stuff plastered onto our yellowed canines, it was time to go. Scotty and Greg came knocking on our door. We ignored them. Then Mrs. Dobbs. I told her we had a bit of girl trouble, and that we’d come as soon as we could.

  While chemicals stripped our enamel, we did our makeup, tidied our suitcases, flipped through tourist magazines. Anything to avoid talking.

  “This place was crazy.” I pointed at a picture of the haunted house we’d been in. It was hard to talk with the whitener on, but I tried my best. “Were you not scared out of your mind in there?”

  “No, I knew what was coming,” Sara said with her pasty mouth.

  “I’m a sucker.” It was true. I got scared watching teen flicks intended to scare kids exactly like me.

  “Schucker,” Sara said, foaming a little at the lips.

  “All day schucker,” I said. “All day.”

  At least that got a half-smile out of her.

  After the thirty minutes were fully up, we rinsed and finished our prep for dinner, admiring the shine of our teeth every few seconds. Sara let her hair down like she was ready for bed, a hump in the back of it from her scrunchie, and paired it with her red Gap rugby shirt. I added a bit more mousse to my hair and wore my new blue Oxford, the one Greg had unbuttoned.

  Ready.

  We raced each other the half-block to the highway, with me ahead by a centimetre.

  “I’m starving,” Sara complained when we got to the highway. “I don’t want to walk all the way down there and back.” She pointed at the walkway, arching over the road three hundred metres down. The restaurant was directly across from us.

  “But wasn’t it worth it?” I asked, pointing to my mouth. “One must suffer to be beautiful.”

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s make a run for it.”

  “No way,” I said, but I followed her to stand beside the four huge signs telling us to USE WALKWAY.

  She watched the traffic.

  “This is crazy,” I said. “They’re all coming way too fast.”

  “We can do it,” she said. She looked like she was waiting for the right time to jump in for Double Dutch. There never seemed to be a right time. Then, she must’ve noticed a space in the stream of lights because before I knew it, she’d grabbed my arm and pulled me across five eastbound lanes.

  Ten or twenty horns blared at us, a chorus of angry bleats and wails, but we’d made it to the traffic divider, with another five-lane stream to cross.

  “You almost got us killed!” I screamed.

  “No, I didn’t! Anyway, we’re halfway to dinner now.”

  “Jesus, Sara. What’s the matter with you?”

  “With me? What’s the matter with me? How about you, all over Mr. Hot Stuff like a . . . like a . . . whore!”

  “What are you talking about?” I could feel my whole body trembling. “We just about died, and you’re calling me a whore?”

  “Did you do it with him, Lori?” She stood in front of me, arms across her chest. “Did you?”

  I jumped when another car laid on the horn as it screamed past us. I didn’t know what she counted as it. He hadn’t come inside me, but stars had exploded. We’d made plans to sneak out later that night. I shook my head.

  “I don’t believe you.” She turned away from me; she was crying. “I thought we had a deal!”

  “I know! And I’m still in!”

  We both stood there, looking at the restaurant across the road where our classmates were probably filling up on free bread or crackers while they waited.

  The traffic between us and them was lighter, but neither of us was making a run for it.

  “Sara,” I called. “Come on. Please. What’s the big deal? I fooled around with Greg. It’s not like we’re getting married!”

  “I know that! But still.” Still crying, she bit her lip. Lips that hadn’t, as far as I knew, ever touched another mouth.

  She walked away from me, but she couldn’t go far: there was nowhere to go. She just stood there and stared at the traffic, hugging herself.

  “Halfway there.” I held out my hand. “Let’s go.”

  “See ya.” Sara sat down on a concrete barrier. Her long hair blew into her face. She wouldn’t look at me, not even to give me the Wither.

  “They’re waiting for us. We’ve gotta go. Come on, Sara! You brought me this far, now let’s just get there.”

  “I’m not coming with you.”

  I waited for her to change her mind, but then the traffic slowed right down. My window of opportunity. “I’m going,” I called out. “I’m going now!”

  From inside the restaurant, where I sat between Greg and Scotty, I couldn’t even see her.

  //// Barkers’ Berries

  Gerry was barely two years old the day her mother painted the BARKERS’ BERRIES sign for the main road, just before their first decent crop had ripened. Eighteen years later, the memory of that sign was as fresh as this morning’s breakfast, although that hadn’t been fresh at all—a stale bagel, toasted and smeared with the last of her peanut butter.

  Her mother was the artist in the family, and the smiling strawberry being carted in a wagon was far beneath her abilities, as if Chagall had been asked to design a business card for a daycare. But she hadn’t minded a bit, at least not in Gerry’s memory; it meant her work would be seen beyond the high-school notebooks she kept in a damp box in the basement. It would be seen thousands of times a week, in fact, to entice people driving by to come down their long laneway to buy their berries, and later, when the business had grown enough to sponsor the local team, on T-shirts and Tyke hockey jerseys.

  Gerry and her five-year-old sister Patti were no help at all that day; their mother needed her full attention for the graphic design job. So, she’d set them in their empty kiddie pool with a whole bag of mini marshmallows and told them to stay put. The sun went higher, the day grew hot, and although they were within sight, their mother didn’t notice what they’d been doing until Gerry began to cry.

  “Can’t see! Can’t see!” she wailed, and then only cried louder after Patti dumped a pail of water on her head.

  Their mother came running, and when she saw Gerry, began to roar with laughter, which brought their father out from the closest barn.

  Gerry had stuck her eyes completely closed with marshmallow goo.

  “What’s all this?” he said. Then he, too, had a good chuckle at Gerry’s expense before lifting the screaming toddler up and away for a bath.

  She didn’t really know if this was a first memory or just a story retold so often it had become embedded in her brain, but Gerry held onto this moment as a pure one, a portrait of a young family, early summer, a moment she crawled back into when there was nowhere else as golden.

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  Some days, Gerry felt the sky press down on her like a pillow to her face, a diagnosis, a death. But she was young and privileged and
healthy—as far as she knew. It didn’t matter. After months of Vancouver Island rain, she had reached her limit. She’d been warned, on the train trip west and often since then, about the winters, but just as often, people had consoled her with statistics about the mainland being worse. Thirty percent less rain here! Far fewer suicides! Did she look that sad?

  Her roommate, Flora, called Gerry’s emerald-green shirt “a gift to the eyes” when she saw it after a long shift at the at-risk youth health clinic. Many things were gifts: the weather, a day off, her meditation teacher. Other reminders she was no longer in rural Ontario? The rainbow crosswalk. Artisanal doughnuts. Lavender cakes. The bearded, beaded guy in a sarong who served her coffee. The fruitiness of the coffee beans, not roasted until black and oily but just to the colour of her hair—chestnut. The chestnuts littering the streets last autumn like giant June bugs. Trees taller than the highest buildings in the city, or so it seemed from the ground.

  If she wrote it all down in an email to her sister, as she longed to, it would seem fictitious, fanciful, farcical. She could just hear her replies too: who cared about the name of the family who grew her coffee beans, or if drug addicts had safe places to shoot up? But Gerry hadn’t contacted Patti in weeks, not since Christmas, and even then, it had just been a few texts back and forth, a couple seasonal emojis, a photo of her nephew in a storm of wrapping paper, not even looking at the camera. Her mother and father had wished her Merry Christmas on the phone, but they’d mailed no gifts, just a card with a fifty-dollar bill tucked inside. Gerry had sent them a package of smoked salmon, wrapped in paper embedded with wildflower seeds, to be planted in the spring.

  Tonight, Gerry was at the Norway House for the Sunday Night Folk Music series. It was partly a reward for making it through the winter, and partly a huge challenge she’d set for herself: to perform at an open stage. She’d been playing guitar for a few years, writing songs for less than that, singing since before she could talk, but the only times she’d officially performed had been at the church hall Christmas concert and once in the high-school talent show, when she’d played “Blowin’ in the Wind.” The boys in the smoke pit had gotten good mileage out of that one, for months teasing her every time she walked past to get to the buses waiting out behind the school.