That never happened. But Ravenhurst had. Maybe my mythical friend was waiting for me in the dorms.
“Please let them like me,” I whispered, squeezing my hands into fists in a silent prayer.
The door opened and Cassie, my roommate, tore into the room. She was fresh from the shower and her robe hung off one shoulder. “Shit!” she wailed, frantic. “I’m late!”
We’d barely said hello yesterday. She’d tiptoed in just before “lights out” and had whispered a greeting in the dark. Her parents had taken her out for dinner. From a small town five hours east of the city, she spoke quickly and laughed loudly.
“Can you pass me those socks?” she asked from her bed, where she sat rubbing lotion onto her legs. “Thanks!” she said with a relieved grin and yanked them on. They stuck to her legs like sausage casings. I caught a flash of dimpled, cherub thighs as she wriggled into them.
“Oh,” she cried, pulling back her blanket. “Seen my sweater?”
Even though I wanted to get to the dining hall and find a place to sit before it got crowded, I helped her search. “Is this it?” I asked, pulling a sleeve out from under a pile of books on her desk chair. The rest of the sweater followed.
“Thanks!” she said and took it from me. Her hair had left splotches of wetness on her robe. “So, where are you from?”
“Lumsville. It’s small, you probably don’t know it. Three hours west of the city.”
“You’ve probably never heard of Waterton, either. Dad got posted there for work and it’s in the boondocks, hours from anywhere. Small towns.” She shrugged, as if they were a lost cause. “What’s Lumsville like?”
I gave her a wry smile. “About the same as Waterton, probably.”
“I started at Ravenhurst last year,” she said, vigorously towel drying her hair. “My brother’s at Melton Prep. That’s, like, the boys’ school to RH. We do activities with them sometimes. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
She turned around, her naked back to me, and slipped on her bra, hooking it closed in one quick motion and turned back to me. I looked away, shy for her. “Just a brother. He’s older and done school.” Sort of. I didn’t explain that school was more done with him than he with it. I gave a silent sigh of regret for him. Even here, at boarding school, his choices loomed over me.
Cassie started to button her shirt. “Maybe it’ll be different for you, but these girls are a prickly bunch.” I didn’t have time to ask what she meant because she glanced at a clock on her nightstand and groaned. “Ugh! Is that the time? I’m gonna be late my first day. Do you mind grabbing me some breakfast? Toast or something? I’ll meet you in the cafeteria after I dry my hair.” Cassie was already turning on her dryer and didn’t look at me when I gave a reluctant wave and left.
The dining area wasn’t fancy, but with long tables and benches, it could hold all the boarders, plus the day students. The smell of toast and sizzling bacon wafted out from an industrial-style kitchen. I followed the other girls as they took trays from the rolling rack at the entrance and stood in line for food. Staff bustled behind the counter, refilling vats of scrambled eggs and sausages.
Too nervous to eat, I didn’t pause at the French toast or hash browns, even though they smelled delicious. A few pieces of toast for Cassie and a lonely bowl of cereal were all that I carried to a table as far in the back as I could get.
I watched the other girls. Most of them had tweaked their uniform in some way, by un-tucking their blouse so the shirttails hung out or by flipping up the collar. A few of them had slouchy socks that hung over their shoes, not the knee-highs that I wore, which looked juvenile, like I should be playing on the monkey bars at recess.
Three girls walked in and others shuffled aside to make room for them in line. They’d all rolled up the waistband of their skirts so the hem grazed mid-thigh. I felt like a country church mouse watching them. Their laughter was high-pitched and cackling, hard to miss first thing in the morning.
Scanning the line, I waited for Cassie. Her toast was growing cold. A sudden stab of longing for the breakfast table at home made my cereal turn into tasteless mush.
The girls with the short skirts scanned the dining hall for a table. One of them, tall with long, dark hair and a gash of red lipstick, spotted mine, empty except for me. She nudged the other two and nodded in my direction. I hurriedly tossed the half-finished bowl of cereal back onto the tray and wrapped up Cassie’s toast in a napkin. I didn’t want company.
But I was too slow. They were at my table, standing over me. All three had long hair. Besides the tall girl, the other two were in varying stages of blondness. One had a big nose, big eyes, and pouty lips. Unusual-looking but striking.
The other was the shortest of the three. Her hair, betraying its true origins, was fluffy; curls at her temples had rebelled against the straightening iron. Well-tanned and cute in a stereotypical cheerleader sort of way.
The first girl, with the scarlet lips, appraised me. “Are you leaving?”
I nodded, sliding my tray to the edge of the table. The other two backed up slightly to make room for me, but she didn’t. I had to swing my legs wide to avoid her as I got off the bench.
“You’re new.” It was a statement, with an undertone of disapproval.
I met her eyes. Green, wide-set over high cheekbones and a square jaw. She was pretty, but there was no softness to her.
Again, I nodded. I could feel her eyes on me as I picked up my tray and moved off the bench. I looked up quickly, once, as I was leaving. The girl looked through me, as if I wasn’t there.
Cassie waved at me from the entrance, her blond hair bouncing behind her as she walked across the room. Glancing behind me, she made a face. “Did they kick you out?”
“No, I was done, sort of.” I passed her the napkin-wrapped toast and put my soupy cereal leftovers on the refuse cart.
“Did Lizzie talk to you?” Cassie asked.
“The one with the brown hair? Not really.” Cassie grabbed a packet of jam and a knife and found an empty stool along a counter near the exit. She sat down and smeared jam on her toast, and took some loud, crunchy bites.
“She can be a real bitch, so watch out. Do not get on her bad side.” Red jam glued crumbs to her top lip.
I snorted. “I kinda got that. What’s her deal?”
Cassie licked the crumbs off the corner of her mouth and shrugged. “Everyone listens to Lizzie. By tomorrow, all the girls’ skirts will be like hers.” She stood up. It was almost time to get to first period. “Her friends are Emily, the short one, and Vivian, who’s actually really smart and nice, but Lizzie sucked her in last year. We used to be friends.” I noticed the emphasis on used to. “There’s my field hockey friends.” She waved to a group heading toward us. I pasted a smile on my face, but Cassie brushed past me with no introductions. She and her girlfriends barrelled out the doors.
I was left standing alone, again, with a ridiculous smile plastered on my face.
Eric
The Wolf Creek kids came into town sometimes, sitting on the edge of a pickup that rumbled down Main Street. The kids all knew me, or knew of me. Some of them played for the Wolves and had something to prove. Taking out the star player for the Hornets was bragging rights, even if I didn’t play anymore.
Even if I was sleeping all afternoon on a park bench.
Hope didn’t ask about the bloodstains anymore. Or the broken face. She didn’t want to know and I didn’t want to tell her.
If I’d been in the city, I could have found a place to stay, but out here, no one wanted to admit kids like me existed. The meth got cooked, sold out of the back door of someone’s shed in the middle of nowhere. And kids eager to fight the boredom of small-town living bought it. I’d become a walking cliché. Pathetic.
Only, it wasn’t boredom that had led me to this.
Sometimes I thought about my dad,
what I would have been like if he’d been around more, or for longer. I guess you can’t miss what you never had, but still, I miss him. The idea of him. I talk to him a lot, especially when I’m high, wanting him here and blaming him ’cause he isn’t.
Mom wanted Dick to be that guy. Sold us to him as a package deal. But it never took. The same way he’d never love me as his own, I could never let him take the place of the guy I wished had never left.
My real dad was a long-haul truck driver. He’d go all the way up to Alaska or down to Texas. Gone for most of my first years, he was just a shadowy figure, like a cardboard cut-out in my mind, taking up space but without any substance, one-dimensional.
Sometimes, I pictured my dad on the bench beside me and talked to him. I probably looked crazy, but I didn’t care. The conversation would be going great until I looked over and saw Coach Williams instead of Dad. Coach would be wearing his AAA ALL-STARS warm-up jacket and smiling at me. He’d lay a hand on my shoulder and give it a squeeze like he used to before I’d go out for a shift. A signal that everything was going to be okay.
Thanks, Coach, I thought and shook my head. A small part of me still missed him.
And I hated that part.
Hope
I couldn’t sleep. A branch outside scratched against the window in front of my desk. During the day, a blackbird had perched on it, surveying the field below, its caws a warning and a greeting. Cassie’s gentle snores rumbled through the room, and no matter which way I turned, no position felt comfortable. Light from the moon shone into our room, creating shadows where there shouldn’t have been any.
Tossing off my quilt, I tiptoed to the door, grabbed my key, and slid out into the hallway. To see a place empty that was usually so busy felt eerie. Sconces on the wall emitted a low hum and illuminated the hall with an orangey glow. Being out of my room after hours was against the rules. Just a quick trip to the washroom, and then straight back to bed.
I heard voices as soon as I pushed open the heavy door. It was too late to back out. There was a flurry of commotion, a stall door banged shut, a faucet started to gush. Then a sigh of relief when they saw it was another student and not Ms. Harrison, the dorm monitor.
“You scared the shit out of us!” Lizzie groaned, drying her hands. The two blonds from the cafeteria, Emily and Vivian, were with her. They looked at me suspiciously as I took a few more steps into the washroom. Tiled floor to ceiling, with a bank of sinks and mirrors on one wall and toilet and shower stalls on the other, the girls sat on a bench that stretched through the middle of the room.
“I have to pee,” I told them, realizing how ridiculous I sounded. What other reason would I be in the washroom at midnight?
Lizzie snorted. “Go for it.”
Fighting back a blush of embarrassment, I walked past them into the farthest cubicle. Their whispers echoed in the room, punctuating the silence. It was awkward, three people on the others side of the door listening to me pee. My stubborn bladder refused to let anything go. Performance anxiety. But now that I was in the washroom, I couldn’t leave without going.
Closing my eyes, I tried to pretend they weren’t a few metres away and forced my bladder to relax.
On the other side of the stall door, there was a commotion. “Emily, watch the bottle!” But too late, there was a crash and the sound of shattering glass. A few shards skittered across the floor and landed at my feet.
“Shit! You are such a fucking klutz!” Lizzie’s voice, hissing.
“Come on, before Ms. Harrison gets in here!”
A rush of footsteps, the door opened and closed, and then silence. I was left alone in the washroom, with a broken bottle of booze slowly leaking toward me.
Eric
I pulled a gift from Hope out of the hollow space in the stump, then tore through the bubble wrap and red bag to get at what lay inside.
A bomber jacket, distressed black leather and quilted lining. I held it up to my nose, breathing in the pungent animal-skin odour. The jacket was heavy, the leather soft and thick despite its weathered look. It must have cost her a lot of babysitting money.
My heart lurched at the thought of my sister. Ordering it online and leaving it here for me to find, days after she’d gone. I’d come here on a whim, knowing she was in the city at her new school. I’d been hoping for some money, I won’t lie, but also one of her crazy poems, or a picture she’d pilfered from Mom’s photo albums. Anything to show she hadn’t forgotten me.
And it was this. A jacket that must have cost her a couple hundred dollars.
I rubbed a cuff, ribbed like a sweater, and ran the zipper up and down, hooking and unhooking the teeth.
I slipped my arms into the sleeves. Heavy on my shoulders and stiff, it weighed me down, grounding me.
I pulled my collection of photos and poems out of the pocket of my cargo shorts and stuffed them into a pocket of the jacket. It was too hot to wear a jacket like this, but I didn’t care. I wanted it to mould to my body, become part of me, like armour.
I kicked the bag back under the stump. It rustled against the carpet of dead leaves and twigs, garish even in the filtered light of the thicket.
She’d bought it to keep me warm this winter, hedging a bet that I wasn’t coming home.
You think you know me so fucking well? I thought. A hard lump of anger rose in my throat, because she probably did.
Hope
I felt Lizzie’s eyes on me as soon as I walked into the common room. With brown leather couches and beige walls, it looked utilitarian and homey at the same time. A gas fireplace in the middle of the room with a TV mounted above it was the focal point, but groupings of chairs all over the room meant girls were able to find private space if they wanted it.
I’d intended to beeline for the dormitory hallway and bypass the common room altogether. Ms. Harrison had given me a stern lecture last night. She’d caught me leaving the washroom and demanded to know who else had been in there. I’d lied, insisting I’d just walked in, saw the broken bottle, and was going to tell her. She’d clutched her bathrobe around her and pushed her wire-framed glasses farther up her nose. Honest, I’d told her. Smell my breath.
That morning, we’d all woken up to an email informing us that anyone caught drinking on school property would be suspended indefinitely.
“It’s Hope, right?” Vivian appeared in front of me.
I nodded, shifting my books.
“Come sit with us.” She tilted her head toward the couch in the centre of the room. Lizzie and Emily were there, books spread out around them, but their attention was more focused on phones than on studying.
I hesitated as Vivian walked across the room. Lizzie looked at me with a “What are you waiting for?” expression.
Perching on an armchair beside the couch, I waited for one of them to say something. No one did. Instead, six thumbs pecked at phones, sending texts. I stood up to leave. “Where are you going?” Lizzie asked. Her bright red lipstick intense, memorable against her pale skin.
“I have to study,” I said, annoyed. She cast a glance at Emily and Vivian, both looking up from their phones.
“Study with us.”
All three stared at me. “We owe you for last night,” Emily said with a meaningful look at the other two. “What did you tell her?” Her meaning Ms. Harrison, the prim dorm monitor who had chosen to spend her life supervising boarding students.
I sat back down and leaned toward them. “That I’d just gotten there and found the mess. And that I hadn’t seen anyone.”
Emily gave a relieved laugh. “See? I told you she wouldn’t blab.”
Lizzie didn’t look convinced. “Did you read the email she sent this morning? We’d get kicked out if someone told on us.” Her words were a threat.
“I’m not going to tell on you,” I said, irritated at her implication. Of all the people at this school, I wondered if anyo
ne else was as well-versed in secret keeping as me.
Vivian leaned forward, her blue eyes bulging slightly. “We’re meeting tomorrow night in their room.” She nodded at Lizzie and Emily. “You should come too. At midnight.”
“Maybe,” I said, knowing that a nighttime drinking session wasn’t worth the chance of getting caught by Ms. Harrison.
Lizzie gave a snort of laughter. “And I told you”—she looked pointedly at Emily—“that she’s not Raven material. Never mind,” she said to me so condescendingly my skin crawled, “you’re probably so clean you squeak.”
The disdain in her eyes reminded me of every girl in Lumsville who’d shunned me, deciding I wasn’t cool enough or daring enough to hang out with her.
I had a chance right now to be part of something, more than just the kid sister to a hockey star. I could reinvent myself. And maybe, at Ravenhurst, that meant rolling up my skirt and sneaking through the hallways in the middle of the night.
I tossed Lizzie an offhand smile, as if her comment hadn’t bothered me. “Tomorrow at midnight. Should I bring anything?”
Vivian gave Lizzie a victorious smirk and smiled at me. “Just yourself.”
I settled back into the chair and took out my phone. I didn’t have anyone to text but pretended I did, thumbing a fake message to myself.
Eric
My dad’s grave is in a cemetery outside of town. No stand-up gravestone, just a small marker flush with the grass, beside his parents’. In a far corner, off the walking path, it’s hard to find unless you’re looking for it. Perfect place to smoke a joint or have a long chat.
Mom never took me here when I was a kid. She didn’t live in the past, said it was like dredging up the bottom of a riverbed, just a bunch of gunk she’d get stuck in. And, if I asked about my dad, she’d tell me I had one, Richard, and wasn’t I lucky.
Finding Hope Page 3