Evie of the Deepthorn

by André Babyn

  Maybe something I had been trying to do with my documentary was discover what separated Huddy from them, to trace their respective outlines, to see him through that lens, inhabit the terror that Jeff must have felt even if he didn’t cop to it, what they all must have felt, the worry, constant, that it was possible they could slip even lower.

  8

  Lauren ignored me the whole next week in bio, making a point of sitting a couple seats away. I watched her all through that first class, confused and unsure how to make things better. I approached her after the bell rang and asked if we could talk, but she told me that she didn’t talk to bullies. I said that she didn’t understand and she told me that she always understood and abruptly stalked off. At lunch Walid told me that it was better that she wasn’t talking to me, because she was a bitch and uptight and I was spending so much time with her that I was killing any chances I had of “getting any” with anyone else, but I told him that Lauren was probably the least uptight person I knew, and that I liked hanging out with her and it wasn’t like that even though it sort of was, and that she had principles and that I even agreed with her. He asked me if I was on my period or if I was feeling sick or faint and I asked him if he was bleeding out of his penis because his logic sucked and (the implication was) he was a dickhead getting soft and losing focus. He told me that was lame or a reach and I had to agree, it was a reach, and that was the end of that, things were fine, mostly, and I got up to buy a chocolate milk.

  “I need to change my tampon,” I said, joking. Walid and Kyle laughed and Alex said, “Gross, man,” and Devon said, “You wear tampons?” like he had caught me in something and it was his fucking joke. He could be a total moron sometimes. I wasn’t sure if he was just playing along or being an idiot, but I didn’t care either way. When I was standing in line I told myself that reality didn’t matter to me and that I could make any joke I liked. That I could make anything into anything else. That was a strange thought for me to have but I was getting sick of the guys, I guess, and their sometimes — I thought — limited repertoire. I can’t wait until I’m out of here for good, I thought, or for forever, whichever comes first.

  For good or forever.

  I felt stupid.

  All of a sudden, a wave of feeling.

  I was lost.

  I was so deep in my thoughts that I didn’t notice Watt standing in front of me. He kept looking back, like he wanted to say something, and I only realized what he was doing when it was too late. I didn’t want to talk to him — more than any of Jeff’s friends, Watt was weird: tall and gangly, always choking back his words, even then saying the wrong thing, constantly directing conversation my way, asking more of me than I could ever hope to give, because I was kind to him, just kind, because he had been my brother’s friend, and for no other reason. I was too polite to tell him that it wasn’t okay, but it really got on my nerves. And he’d only gotten weirder with time, as the others graduated and moved on with their lives.

  Finally, after we’d both gone through cash, he stopped me. It took him a moment to come out with what he was struggling to say. I braced myself, but even then I wasn’t prepared for what came next.

  “Do you still have any of Jeff’s cards?” he asked.

  My face must have told him everything he needed to know, because he took an alarmed step backward.

  “What?” I said.

  Was he serious? What the fuck did he want with Jeff’s cards?

  “I just —”

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  “That’s —”

  “Get lost.”

  But I didn’t give him the opportunity to, because I left him standing by the registers. I heard him calling after me, but weakly, like a mouse pulled into a hurricane. Not even worth turning around. When I sat down Devon asked me if I’d put my tampon in wrong and I asked him what the fuck was wrong with him. If he’d ever had an original thought in his whole fucking life. He shrugged. Walid asked me what the hell was up with me and I told him that Watt was a creep and that he wanted some of my brother’s things and Walid said, “Jesus,” and I said, “Yeah.”

  I didn’t even blame Watt, weirdly, because I knew that whatever he was after he didn’t know any better, but I was still pissed off. There was nothing that Jeff put more of himself into than his cards. Every one of them bore his fingerprints. Each one told a small part of his story. Together they combined to form the most accurate picture of him that remained.

  When I got home later that day I headed straight upstairs, in a hurry, but afraid to run. I was afraid that when I made it to his room everything would be changed somehow — his things suddenly boxed, or swept away, or gone. And that if it wasn’t like that, that hurrying would make it so. When I crossed the threshold I realized that I hadn’t entered his room since the night before he left for the tournament, when I went in to wish him a hesitant but sincere “good luck.” To take another look at his cards and determine whether they were good enough to do what he wanted or needed them to.

  The cards I am now careful not to touch.

  * * *

  I sent Lauren a long email, explaining that I had gotten carried away in class and that my intention wasn’t to make fun of Huddy, but to understand him, that I had misrepresented myself, but that I agreed with her, anyway, that the project was stupid and maybe I was a bully and I wasn’t doing it anymore. And that I had made this decision before my encounter with Johnson, though I told her about that, too, and how I knew I was lucky not to have got in worse shit. For some reason I didn’t mention what Walid had done. It seemed like it wasn’t important.

  I sent the email to her on Saturday afternoon and two days later she still hadn’t responded. I was nervous, because the two first semester grade twelve English classes were going on a field trip that Monday and she would be on the bus. I didn’t want things to be awkward between us. I mean, to continue to be awkward.

  We were going to see As You Like It at a theatre in Brampton. Our class hadn’t read the book yet, but the other form had. I was kind of nervous about seeing the play, both because I wasn’t sure I would understand it and because it had such a stupid title. Mrs. Wilson seemed really excited, too, which was a huge point against.

  On Monday I deliberately dragged my feet in the parking lot to avoid an awkward encounter with Lauren, sitting out on one of the benches in front of the school, getting carried away talking to Chris and Nick, neither of whom had English that term, but who did have a free first period. I saw that people were lining up to go, but by the time I got to the bus the doors were clear and the engine was rumbling.

  I mumbled an apology to Mrs. Wilson and hurried down the aisle, looking for a spot. Walid was sitting next to Samantha, Kyle with Alex. Even Mrs. Wilson had a partner, Karly Gladkis, who had taken the opportunity to discuss her ISU project in more detail. The only seat remaining was next to Watt. I had to take it, trying not to make eye contact with him when I did.

  My only consolation was that Lauren had gotten on the other bus.

  I was only a couple seats away from the others, so I perched on the edge and tried to lean over to hear what they were talking about. But it seemed like everyone else was wrapped up in their partner. And with the windows open anyway and the sound of all the other kids it was impossible to hear what they were saying. I was stuck, for at least the next hour.

  About halfway through the drive, which I had spent watching hills undulate through the window across the aisle, I noticed that Watt was getting restless. He wanted to say something, I was sure of it. I tried to absorb myself even more in the view outside, which was hard because people I loved were between me and the far windows and I wanted to talk to them but their heads were bowed together, cloistered, oblivious.

  “Hey,” Watt said finally, touching me on the arm (I guess giving up on ever making incidental eye contact).

  I turned, reluctantly.

  “What? ” I said.

  He looked at me for a moment, his eyes watery.


  “Oh, sorry,” he said.

  And was quiet. I waited.

  “Before, I didn’t mean to …” he started.

  “Jesus,” I said, turning away from him.

  A few minutes later he touched my shoulder again.

  “I’m sorry for … the other day …”

  I just looked at him. In response he banged his head softly against the window, and remained with his head pushed up against the pane for the rest of the ride.

  He tried talking to me again when we were pulling in. I was already standing in the aisle, and I only heard him the second time he raised his voice.

  “I said, I didn’t want the cards for myself. The other day.”

  “Good for you,” I said.

  The line moved.

  * * *

  I guess I could have been nicer to him. But maybe I didn’t care. Watt was a creep but he should have known better. There are some things you just don’t ask for.

  Ever.

  Walid turned to me as we were walking into the lobby, briefly separated from the others. “So — an hour with Watt, eh? You two looked like you were having fun.”

  He made a jerking-off motion with his hand. Right. Sometimes he was the stupidest person in the whole fucking world.

  “Go to hell,” I said. “Thanks for saving me a seat.”

  Walid looked around, and seeing that Samantha was momentarily distracted, gave me a knowing look before dragging his index finger under his nose and sniffing audibly.

  “Butterscotch,” he said.

  It was a line from a movie I had never seen. But I knew what he meant.

  “You did not,” I said. I tried to remember their posture on the bus. They’d just been talking. I was looking their way almost the whole ride, and I hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

  I looked at Sam. Would she actually let Walid do that? On the bus?

  For that matter, would Walid really do it? In front of everyone?

  “Believe whatever you want, man,” he said, shrugging.

  It couldn’t be true. Could it?

  I felt backward, like I was a lamb or a holy innocent taking their first, hesitant steps into the world. I hated that feeling, but it came over me all the time. I wouldn’t have cared that I was a virgin except for that. I wanted to know what everyone was talking about, not just to experience it for myself, but so I could stop feeling so left out.

  * * *

  Theatre seems really dumb until the lights go down and the curtains open. But as soon as the lights do go down, something changes. There’s a hush, and you realize that everyone else is immersed in what’s happening on the stage, and it’s impossible not to be caught in that charge. Mrs. Wilson spent a lot of time talking about “suspension of disbelief” when she was talking about the play and about our coming trip. But I wondered if it couldn’t be looked at from the other way around. Not that reality was being suspended, but changed — creating an entirely new reality, dreaming the characters into existence.

  I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s ever thought that before. But that’s exactly how I felt sitting in the theatre, watching Orlando as he walked out of the wings, bearing the weight of his tyrannical older brother.

  Orlando is supposed to be young. But the guy they had playing Orlando was not young, except in comparison with some of the other actors in the play. They’d shaved his face clean, but by the middle of the second act I swear I already saw a five o’clock shadow. And his heavy gut and puffing face weren’t exactly a testament to his youth, either. But something about the way he walked and spoke made me buy it. Maybe I was just ready to.

  The day before our trip, Mrs. Wilson went on and on in class about that speech of Jacques’s — the famous one, which begins “All the world’s a stage” — and about how that speech was a kind of comment on the device of the play. As if that’s all it was. As if the play couldn’t escape its bounds and impose itself on the world of the reader, as I had imagined it was doing. I like to think Shakespeare wasn’t just speaking playfully about the relationship between his play and the Globe Theatre, he was saying something terrifying about the nature of the world. That no one is anything so much as the role they’ve been forced to play. That underneath they are nothing else. Bound by time and by our pasts and the parts that we play in other people’s lives — and that all of these things together don’t really form a true identity. That we can be undone at any moment. That the play changes and takes us with it.

  It makes me feel so sad and alone.

  * * *

  I didn’t get all of that then. I went home and read As You Like It that night, staying up ’til two in the morning, pushing past whole stanzas I didn’t understand, using what I had felt in the theatre for reference.

  When Orlando outwrestled Charles, saving himself from the gruesome fate Oliver had intended for him, I don’t know why, but I just broke down crying. It was the stupidest thing. I still had so far to go. I pulled my pillow close and just heaved into it — I mean, I really wept. For a good ten minutes, which is a modern record for me. Then I lay back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure out what the heck had just happened. I had no idea. I made it through to the end of the first act before Mom called me down for dinner.

  I washed my face in the mirror and tried to restore my appearance before I walked downstairs. Mom kept squinting at me and asking what I had been doing up there. I think she was joking or that she wanted to get me talk about the book. I just kept saying “reading,” trying not to meet her eyes.

  Finally I got so mad that I pushed myself away from the table.

  “What does it matter what I’m doing?” I said. “What’s it matter?”

  I wouldn’t say that I’m proud of doing that. I ran upstairs and slammed my bedroom door shut behind me. Then I pulled my dresser in front of the door. Then I unscrewed the doorknob and took out the pin that made it work, since I don’t actually have a lock.

  I heard my mom downstairs. She wasn’t happy. But there was no one for her to talk to except herself. I lay in bed a long time, half-heartedly trying to go to sleep, and then I picked up the book again and read until two in the morning.

  * * *

  After the play was finished Lauren leaned over and tapped me on the shoulder, asking if I wanted to go for a walk. “I got your email,” she said. Walid was busy talking to Samantha, and we slipped down the opposite end of the aisle without them even noticing. We had an hour to kill for lunch. Lauren said she knew a place and I followed her up three flights of stairs and to an unlocked door marked STAFF.

  “Is this okay?” I said, meaning “Are we going to get in trouble?”

  “It’s not a big deal,” she said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I used to do theatre when I was a kid,” she explained. “When I lived here. We used to go out here all the time.”

  I didn’t know she used to live in Brampton. I knew about Orangeville, but not Brampton.

  We found ourselves on the lobby’s gravel roof, with the brick of the theatre proper behind us. I could hear people on the sidewalk, but couldn’t see them. I walked out to the edge, once, caught a glimpse of the crowd, and then I hurried back.

  From where we stood we could see the buses camped out in the parking lot, a few drivers standing in a clump before one with its engine running. The theatre’s asphalt parking lot spread out before us like an ocean, hundreds of yards, the traffic on Bovaird like waves breaking in the distance. A few gulls swooped down and strutted haughtily on the roof. I thought I could make out, above the general thrum of conversation, Walid’s discordant “caw” — he sometimes liked to tease birds — and the sound of someone’s laughter.

  “I’m glad that you aren’t doing that documentary anymore,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It was a stupid idea.”

  “I don’t think Wright would have liked it,” she said.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  There was a pau
se in the conversation, and then Lauren told me that she’d just broken up with her boyfriend.

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s big.” I tried to imagine what he looked like, to picture him sad, I guess. But realized I couldn’t. I’d only met him a couple of times. He seemed obnoxious to me, some dumb skater in the grade above us, with a condescending smile. But, then, I hadn’t ever really given him much of a chance. I mean, Lauren must have liked him for a reason.

  “How do you feel about that?” I asked.

  “Good,” she said. “I think. Also not good.”

  We continued talking. I took an apple out of my bag and when I was done I threw the core down the roof for the birds to fight over.

  As we were talking, I picked out a few cars in the distance that — probably just because they were so far away — sort of looked like hers. Like I was waiting on my porch for her to pick me up. It was an old habit that was especially stupid when I was sitting right next to her.

  When we saw our buses emerge from the others, identifiable by our school’s crest posted on neon paper in the windows, we reluctantly stood up and started brushing ourselves off.

  Leaning against the door inside, spooking when we pulled it out from under him, was Watt.

  “Jesus!” screamed Lauren. She quickly apologized when she realized what had happened. And then she grew suspicious.

  “Were you spying on us?”

  “No …” said Watt, in his soft, slow-gathering way. “I didn’t know you were out there.”