Meteorites

by Julie Paul

  “Well, that makes one of us,” she said. “Beam me out of here, and I’d be one happy camper.”

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  After they were back in the car, Cassie felt even more wretched. She’d just shared intimate details of her life with this monster, who was going to trot back and report it all to her monster husband. She tried to think rationally about what to do next. She knew she had to do something to get back at Alicia, or get through, but what would possibly match this direct hit to her belief system, her certainty that there was more goodness than evil in the world?

  As she was driving out of the pub’s parking lot, it came to her. She turned south instead of north, back through a different part of town. She was going to take Alicia on a tour.

  There were many ways this could go: a This is Your Life kind of thing, à la Sesame Street’s Guy Smiley, or a highlights tour of the historically important, or even her own kind of exposé, to make sure Iain got the real story. But was any of that real? There were other types of real. Realer real. If these people wanted authentic, they would get it.

  Cassie drove toward the edge of town, where a second hospital stood. But this one, slowly sliding into neglect, was about to be shut down for good, despite its residents with nowhere to go and no capacity to choose. The name for the population it served had changed over the years, and now, Cassie believed, it was developmentally delayed, but the people hadn’t changed. They were still people, trapped by a curse they could never lift.

  Visiting hours were long over, but Cassie was going to drive there anyway, use it as a backdrop for her own story, the one about her two cousins. Thea was still inside, and Joanne was taken there as a child because her parents thought she was damaged goods—just like her sister. Instead, when the doctors could find nothing wrong with her, her parents kept her locked up in the basement most of the time, all because she reacted to too much noise by making her own noises, noises they didn’t like. That cousin had just written a book: if Alicia wanted to talk stories, well, there was a doozy. The book was about string theory.

  They were nearly at the hospital gates when Alicia’s phone buzzed. “Oh, great,” she said. “Here we go.”

  And little Chloe was broken? Chloe was the only unbroken one in the family. Cassie’s anger was building to dangerous proportions. She started shaking all over.

  “Iain just texted. The girls want to have a sleepover. That okay with you, Cass?”

  June! Her baby was back at this woman’s house, and so was Pete, both unsuspecting players in the play that Iain was watching—and directing. Such effortless acting on their part! Such ease in the role of simple townsfolk, believing in the fun of remote-control cars and potlucks, trapped in a sticky web of pretend hospitality. No, that was not okay with her. And what had she called her, all BFF now? Girlfriend before, and now, Cass? No. Just no.

  She had to rescue her family. The hospital trip would have to wait.

  “Sorry,” Cassie said, slowing down, then turning the car around to head back to the house, telling her the first lie she could think of. “June doesn’t have her medication.”

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  When they got back to the house, Iain looked at Alicia like he’d never seen her before, but he started leering and making kissy sounds. Chloe took one look at her mother and made a face.

  “Eww. I don’t like it.”

  “I didn’t do it for you,” Alicia said.

  For whom had she done it? Evidently, not Cassie; it was yet another ploy to get in with the locals. Not for herself—she had scarcely glanced at her face in the car mirror. And not to tempt Iain, although that appeared to be happening right in front of them. But it must be Iain she’d done it for. It seemed like Alicia was doing everything for this man—and not enjoying any of it.

  After they said their thank yous and goodbyes, they hauled a crying June away from her beloved Chloe and headed back home, and Cassie let Pete tell her all about the ridiculous stuff Iain had in his RC heaven. Her story would need to wait until June was out of earshot.

  Even though the drive was less than fifteen minutes, door to door, June fell asleep in the car. After Pete had carried June into her bedroom and tucked her in for the night, clothes still on, Cassie brought a bag of chips and two bottles of beer into the living room and joined him on the couch. He’d already raided the cupboards for mixed nuts and granola bars.

  “What kind of meal was that?” he said. “I’m starving.”

  “You don’t even know the half of it.”

  She drank a couple points worth of beer, and then, she told him everything, from meteorite to makeover to their messed-up intentions. Nearly everything. She left out just how much she had overshared.

  As predicted, Pete was pissed off. Once she got to the part about Iain’s story, he stood up and started pacing and swearing—a string of impressive names, even for him. Then, it only took him a few minutes to form a clear idea of what to do about it. She’d never seen him grin in quite that way.

  “Tell me,” Cassie said.

  “We’ll take them hunting.”

  “What? Really? Is deer season open already?”

  “Not for deer. For fucking meteorites. As if that’s really what hit out there.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  Pete laughed. “No. But that doesn’t matter. We’ll take them on a little tour, give them a little extra bang for their buck.”

  “What?”

  “A local favourite.”

  Cassie listed the possibilities: the chocolate or cheese factory, the antiques place, cow tipping or cow chip throwing, but it wasn’t any of these.

  There was that grin again. “You said it hit down by the quarry, right? Well, we’re gonna take them there. For a swim.”

  To anyone else this would sound like code for drowning, but she knew that wasn’t Pete’s intention. It was simply that—a swim—in freezing cold water, a thing that local people did as a rite of passage, usually when they got drunk enough to have it hurt a little less. Even Pete had gone into the questionable water one night with a local buddy, after he moved to Stevens Falls, just to call himself a part of the community.

  After he shared his plan with her, they sat quietly, sipping their beer and picturing the scene they would bring to life the following day.

  “It’s a good idea,” she said. But she had to ask. “Naked?”

  “It’s November. They won’t be packing their swimsuits.” Then, he added, gently, “You don’t mind, do you?”

  Cassie hadn’t let him see her fully nude in the daylight for years, but she was getting closer to her goals. Frankly, the chips and beer and ice cream aside, she’d eaten so little all night that it felt like she’d lost a few pounds since lunch. Soon, if things continued to go her way, he would see her waist again, the faint hint of hipbones. Alicia was not a threat, and even if she were supermodel material, Cassie knew Pete was repulsed by her. And was he worried about her seeing Iain? Was any man worried about his wife seeing a naked man in this kind of weather?

  “I think I’ll manage.”

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  That night, Cassie couldn’t fall asleep. She trusted Pete and knew that the plan was in keeping with the Dawsons’ local agenda. Still, it played out in her weary head a hundred times, over and over, all variations ending abruptly before the final step.

  How had a simple dinner party ended up like this?

  Friendliness, that’s how. The very thing her mother had always encouraged—those flies with honey, and so on. And what would her mother think, now, of their grand plan?

  She would not think it was friendly in the least. But neither was having their lives poked through and made fun of!

  It was really just more of a prank than a plan, Pete’s idea, better than doing nothing. Wasn’t it?

>   When these thoughts finally settled, the meteorite appeared in her head. Their little town, nearly struck by a giant chunk of rock, hurled from space! The image of it hitting earth made her eyes pop open wide again. If it was true, then they should be celebrating, shouldn’t they? Getting off this lucky? No houses destroyed, no one hurt at all?

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  The next morning, after strong coffee, a few Tylenols, and a couple of phone calls, Pete and Cassie picked up their regular sitter, Brenda, and took her and June out to the subdivision with a three-DVD set of Barbie movies and exchanged them for Alicia and Iain. The pair of them were decked out in sparkling new hiking outfits, but they looked bedraggled when they climbed into the back seat. Cassie could see that Alicia’s makeup hadn’t been properly removed; she didn’t bring it up.

  When he called and woke them up that morning, Pete had called it an adventure. He’d told them to bring all their magnets, so they could put them together and help locate the meteorite, and they’d actually done it. They had a bag beside them filled with plastic vegetable magnets and a 3-D moose one—Cassie had seen them the night before on the fridge. She and Pete had brought a few of their own, including a horseshoe magnet, to keep things plausible.

  As he drove, Pete started telling stories. Stories, in the old sense—made-up, fantastical tales, flights of imagination—about the area. Tales of his family planting the first lilac trees, of Cassie’s family walking with herds of animals and children all the way from Montreal, of his family drifting down the Rideau on rafts. Some were based on truth, at least the seeds of them. Iain kept saying, that’s amazing, that’s incredible, giving Alicia complicit glances all the while.

  It started to snow as they turned down Old Quarry Road.

  “And so it begins,” Iain said. “Father Winter’s dandruff.”

  “God, Iain,” Alicia said. “That’s a horrid simile.”

  “Metaphor, darling. Similes use ‘like’ or ‘as.’”

  They were both insufferable.

  Pete and Cassie were quiet, scanning the side of the road for the trailhead. Once Pete spotted it, he pulled over and killed the engine, then turned to face the back seat. Cassie did the same.

  “So,” he said, mildly. “Cassie tells me you’re writing about this place.”

  Iain’s narrow face turned red. Then, he slapped Alicia’s arm with the back of his hand. “How could you?”

  Before she could answer, Pete said, “Don’t sweat it. We won’t say a thing.”

  “But the whole point was to—” Iain stopped. “It’s just—”

  “Guys,” Pete interrupted, “we want to help you. Show you some local rituals, hidden gems and stuff. Things that won’t find their way into the tourist guide.”

  “You see?” Alicia said. “It’s better that they know. They can help you, Iain!”

  “I doubt it,” Iain muttered. “Dammit, Alicia. We made a deal.”

  “It’s true,” Cassie said. “We’ll let you in on things no one else will share. Secrets.”

  What she wanted to share was that she and Pete thought Iain and Alicia were the worst kind of people. Despicable. Having no morals or ethics or scruples in the least. But they’d probably think she was taking all those words from a book under her seat, unlikely, as a local, to be any sort of educated at all.

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  Through lightly falling snow, Pete led the way down the trail, over dead yellow leaves and a couple of fallen aspens. Alicia followed him, and despite her never having been a Girl Guide, she seemed adept at stepping over the barricades. Iain was not as agile. Cassie brought up the rear, Iain ahead of her, stumbling more than walking and twice nearly causing her to fall before she put another metre between them.

  Cassie hadn’t been out to the quarry in years, and never this late in the season. November was her least favourite month—the pall of Remembrance Day created an umbrella of sadness over the whole thirty days. But she always felt guilty as soon as she complained about it: sadness was the bloody point.

  Pete’s plan was simple: to convince them to take an initiation swim, if they really wanted to do what locals did. In exchange, he would tell them much more than they’d ever learn otherwise. After the two idiots had stripped down and jumped into the quarry pool, likely cursing and yelling at the cold, Pete and Cassie would remain on the edge and laugh. Maybe they’d wave their hands in the sign of the cross above the water, for effect, and then, when Iain and Alicia climbed out again, they’d offer them the towels from Pete’s backpack, a slap on the back, and a shot of whisky.

  Ten minutes of crunching, tripping, and small talk later, in which Cassie tried and failed to keep her worries about the danger of the plan from her head, there they were: a rock pond with walls the colour of orange tabby cats, danger signs posted everywhere, prohibiting trespassers.

  “Welcoming sort of place,” Alicia remarked.

  “Oh, it’s not so bad,” Pete said. “They just want to keep the kids out.”

  He left the trail, found the hole in the chain-link fence and waited, holding it open for the rest of them. Alicia and Iain didn’t move.

  “It’s fine,” he called. “I want to show you something.”

  “Really,” Cassie said. “There’s a story in it.”

  Once they were all standing a few feet from the edge, Pete made his suggestion, emphasizing the initiation process.

  “Prime material,” he said. “You’ll win awards for this story.”

  “Not a chance,” Iain said, lightly. “That looks like certain death.”

  “It’s all good,” Pete encouraged. “You’ll be in and out in no time.”

  Alicia tightened the wool scarf around her neck and turned back toward the trail. “The signs say no. And I thought we were hunting stars, boys. Let’s keep going.”

  “Ah, don’t worry about the signs. I’ve done it lots of times,” Pete said. “It’ll be over in a couple of minutes. You can climb back up right over there.” He pointed at a place in the rock wall that appeared to have a few handholds, a couple of branches hanging over to grab.

  Iain snorted. “Sorry, mate. I’m not a mountain goat. Or a fan of pneumonia.”

  “I brought towels,” Pete said. “And whisky.”

  Cassie should have added her encouragement here, egged them on, but hearing Pete tell them about what he’d brought made her cold to the bone. They could see through them, couldn’t they? The plan was flawed. It would never work. And the rocks were orange—nearly brick-coloured! Iain was likely about to have a panic attack, just by being there.

  It wouldn’t work because Alicia and Iain didn’t want to become locals.

  They were only there to use the locals. To observe, rape, and pillage—and today, more than likely, to make fun of the people who were just half a mile down the road, hunting through the bleak foliage for a nondescript bit of space junk—and get out again, alive. The swimming plan would never work.

  Pete must have realized the same thing just then because, at the very moment that Iain stepped around him to take the lead through the woods, Pete’s shoulder decided to move toward the quarry. His hip—his well-toned, rink-trained hip—made the same decision. Its thrust sent Iain flailing over the edge and into the frigid, murky water.

  Alicia was screaming even before the lip of the splash came up.

  “Iain! Oh my God, oh my God!”

  Below them, they could all hear Iain’s gasping, his splashing struggle.

  “He’ll be okay,” Pete said.

  “Fuck you!” she yelled. “You pushed him!” She began to pace back and forth along the edge, calling down to Iain for him to swim toward her. “Can you hear me, honey? Up here!”

  “He slipped,” Pete said. “Didn’t you see that?”

  But Alicia didn’t answer. She’d ju
mped in after him.

  “Oh, shit!” Cassie yelled. “Pete!”

  Pete nodded. “They just needed some encouragement.”

  Below them, Alicia had resurfaced and was swimming toward Iain, who seemed to be treading water, clumsily. “Keep kicking!” she cried. “Don’t stop!”

  “Over there!” Cassie yelled, pointing to her right, to the easiest way out. “Swim over there!”

  But they didn’t hear her, or if they did, they didn’t care. They began, slowly, to swim toward the other side.

  This was bad. Cassie kept her eye on the two swimmers, making sure they were still moving, still had their heads above water. She’d completed her Bronze Cross training eons ago, and remembered enough about rescue—although what could she do from up here? There were a few storm-blown young trees nearby, and she could use one as a pole to reach them if she were on the same level. But she was at least eight feet above them, and there wasn’t any shore to get to in a hurry. From what she could see, they were managing to stay afloat.

  Her mind was flipping all over the place. Would the police call this kidnapping? It wasn’t kidnapping if the people came willingly, was it? And no one would report them missing, either, because they weren’t missing. She and Pete weren’t trying to hurt anyone. They weren’t psychos! This was just tit-for-tat. A prank. A harmless little prank.

  Pete called down again, told them to find the natural ladder of rock ledges to help them back up. But they couldn’t hear him, either. They were slowly moving away from Cassie and Pete, heading for the far edge of the square hole.

  “Maybe there’s another way out,” Cassie said. “Something they can see from down there.”

  “No,” Pete said. “They’re just fucking dumb.”

  After a minute more of watching the swimmers, Pete wrapped her in a hug from behind. Both of them were very cold, as if they’d been the ones to jump, their toques nearly white with big-flaked snow. They had been, metaphorically: the town’s name was done for now because of them. It was a terrible plan. But they still had each other, and a child, and a babysitter they would have to rescue from the clutches of that subdivision before Iain and Alicia got there.