To Me You Seem Giant

by Greg Rhyno

  “Oh. Yeah, sorry,” I get up and put my beer bottle on the coffee table. “You probably have stuff you want to do.”

  “What, me? Nah. Me and Howie are going to get stoned and watch Baraka. You, though, are going to want to be close to a bathroom pretty soon. You don’t have a lot of time.”

  His statement doesn’t register. “Sorry—why’s that?” Jimmy Page eyeballs me from behind his mutant guitar.

  “Because I put some magnesium citrate in your beer.”

  “Some ... what?” I feel a confused smile fading on my face. My gut fish flicks a tailfin.

  “Magnesium citrate. Kyle left it here. He used to get bunged-up pretty bad. It’s kind of like Ex-Lax, but stronger, and works a lot faster.”

  “Why would you do that?” I’m torn between punching him in the mouth and putting my shoes on as quickly as I can. I choose the latter.

  “It’s like I said, Pete—payback’s a bitch.”

  Steve cackles as I lose my balance tying up my runners. Howie comes out of the kitchen to see what’s going on and laughs at me too.

  “You are very clumsy,” he says.

  “You’re a dick,” I tell Steve.

  I push out the front door and start running. Even after my full tilt is reduced to an ass-clenching hobble, I can hear his hyena laughter in my ears. I never do make it to Ruth and Evie’s show.

  By second period the next day, I still feel like I have to go to the bathroom, but know full well there’s nothing left in there. There couldn’t be. During my tenure on the toilet, I imagined a variety of violent and detailed revenge scenarios involving Steve, but eventually I realized that I kind of had it coming.

  I’m starving by the time the lunch bell rings, so I walk downtown and risk buying a meatball sandwich from Mr. Sub. It’s been almost twenty-four hours since I left Banning Street, so I figure I’m in the clear. I squish myself into one of the hard booths, wolf down my sandwich, and chase it with a root beer that’s mostly just rattly ice chips. I think about the summer Mark Zaborniak worked here. Soda and I would come down during his graveyard shift to visit him. One time, Mark didn’t see us come in because he was crouched down looking for something behind the counter. Soda crept up, turned around, pulled down his jeans, and put his bare ass against the glass display. When Mark looked up, the first thing he saw was Soda’s pressed ham. He chased us out of the store, and I’m willing to bet that afterward he made a pretty good show of disinfecting the glass for the security camera.

  Fucking Soda. Is this what it’s going to be like from now on? I spent the last seven years hanging out with the guy, and now it’s like every memory I have of him is tainted. What do you do with seven years of turncoat memories?

  When I leave the restaurant, I can see it’s becoming one of those real blue sky days. I still haven’t heard the latest Eric’s Trip album, and I’m pissed about missing the show, so I make an executive decision to skip Murdock’s class for the billionth time and walk over to Cumberland Stereo. As of yet, I haven’t got a single detention. I guess Murdock hasn’t reported my absences to the office, but I’m not sure if he’s doing it out of pity or laziness or what.

  I make it back to Mackenzie King just in time for Kohler’s law class. It turns out to be a work period for the final essay, so everyone’s reading books on serial killers or miscarriages of justice when the intercom calls me down to Guidance. As I go, the Führer watches me leave the room like I’m the Nazi war criminal.

  When I sit down in her office, Mrs. Leedy smiles, but it’s not her usual Hey, how’s it going? Want a Jolly Rancher? kind of smile. It’s the kind of sad smile that parents wear just before they tell their kids about a dead pet.

  “So, Peter. How are things going in Mr. Murdock’s art class?”

  I know she’s not going to sell me down the river, so I tell her the truth. “Not so good. I haven’t really been going a lot.”

  Leedy breathes a disappointed sigh. “Pete, we talked about how the U of T Admissions Scholarship offer was based on your midterm marks, right?”

  I nod. It might be some residual magnesium citrate, but I once again have a bad niggle in the pit of my stomach.

  “Well, the Scholarship Board still requires an estimated mark before final report cards—I guess so they can arrange housing and numbers—and Mr. Murdock has estimated your mark at about sixty-five percent. Would you say that’s fair?”

  I’m not sure if there’s anything “fair” about my situation with Murdock, but considering I’ve missed a few major projects, it’s probably accurate.

  “I guess.”

  “Okay.” She inflates her lungs sharply, like she’s about to jump into a cold lake. “I hate to have to tell you this, but because your overall average is now below 80%, Toronto will be withdrawing its scholarship offer.”

  “What?” The niggle turns into a nightmarish surge. “Why? You just said it’s based on midterm marks. My midterm average was, like, eighty-six percent.”

  “You’re offered the scholarship based on your midterm mark, but, like we discussed, you have to keep your overall average above eighty percent. Your average right now is seventy-six percent.”

  A horrible bell rings in my head.

  “What happened in that class, Pete? You always do well in Art. I thought Mr. Murdock was one of your favourite teachers.”

  I almost tell her. Right there and then, I almost break down and talk about my feelings with a guidance counsellor. I wonder, if I tell her the whole story, whether she’ll go to bat for me. But I don’t. I’m not entirely sure why. Maybe I’m just tired of acting like I’m some kind of victim.

  “So what do I do now?”

  “Well,” she taps her desk with a pen, “you probably need to have a serious conversation with your parents about whether or not they can still afford to send you to U of T.”

  “And if they can’t?”

  “Well, have you taken a tour of Lakehead’s campus yet?” She hands me a brochure. “It’s actually really lovely this time of year.”

  I don’t go back to Kohler’s class. There’s twenty minutes or so left, but I’m just not up to it. I realize I left my pencil case and a biography about Ted Bundy called The Stranger Beside Me in the room, and while I’m sure Kohler will hassle me about it tomorrow, I’m equally sure he won’t let it get lost. Teachers are good like that. Most of them, anyhow.

  Instead, I go to my locker and grab my backpack. I duck out of the school and walk across the football field. When I get to the big elm, I shimmy the bag off my shoulders and sit down on the hard-packed ground.

  The plastic wrapper peels off Forever Again easily enough, and when I crack open the case, I can smell the factory off-gas and the printer’s ink. When I fish my Walkman out of my bag, I realize there’s already something in it—some mixed tape I started ages ago and never finished. There are a bunch of songs by Canadian bands on one side but nothing on the other. I shake it out and throw it in my bag. I slide Eric’s Trip into place and put my head back against the tree trunk as the test tone whistles.

  The sound of my Walkman reversing gears wakes me up, and before I even open my eyes, I recognize the skunky perfume of weed. For just a second, I think it’s Soda.

  “Hey. Want some of this?”

  Brad McLaren sits against the elm just a foot away from me. He’s still wearing his Mackenzie King Lyons jacket, even though he quit the team weeks ago.

  I pull my headphones down to my collar. “No, thanks.”

  “That’s cool.”

  He takes another haul and holds it in his lungs awhile. When he breathes out, the smell reminds me of Matty’s basement.

  “They gave Dave five years,” he says, apparently to me. I guess he’s just stoned enough to abandon all attempts at segue. “It’s like, you get used to things being a certain way, and then this one little thing changes, and it makes everything else change too. You know what I mean?”

  I tell him I do.

  “It’s like that game we used to
have in Mr. Rusnak’s class—Jenga. ‘You take a block from the bottom and you put it on top.’ Remember that?”

  I tell him I do.

  “You take one block out and the whole tower comes crashing down. Man. He had all those old board games. Mousetrap. Connect Four. Battleship. The Game of Life ...”

  He’s quiet for a few seconds as he smokes. The tip of his joint is a tiny neon sign.

  “Life.” He repeats the word like it’s an old trend embarrassingly out of date, like New Kids On the Block or Zubaz pants. “‘Life’s what happens when you’re making other plans.’ That’s what life is. Right?”

  I nod.

  “John Lennon said that ...” He looks out at Mackenzie King the way some people look at a sunset. “Hey, do you like the Beatles?”

  “Brad,” I say, pushing myself to my feet, “everybody likes the Beatles.”

  When I get to my house, Kim is sitting on my front steps. Of course she is. Bad luck comes in threes. Or fours, if you factor in today’s early-morning diarrhea. She’s not teary eyed and repentant looking, like she is in my fantasies, but she is waiting for me. That’s something.

  “Hey,” she says.

  “Hey.”

  She pats the cement beside her, and I sit down, immediately wishing I wasn’t so obedient. I haven’t seen her since she drove away from me at the Mike’s Milk. She looks good. Her blonde hair is pulled up in a loose bun with little wisps hanging down the nape of her neck. She’s wearing the blue-and-red beaded necklace I made for her when we were first together. She still smells like Dewberry. It’s the smell that gets me the most. I wish that after you broke up with someone they automatically smelled like hot garbage.

  “So, I know it wasn’t you that called Helen.”

  “Who?”

  “Ken’s wife.”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “Ken’s still pretty convinced you had something to do with it.”

  I’m not sure what to say. I mean, obviously I have a few questions. Does she know about Steve’s phone call? Did Murdock and his wife split up? Did she sleep with Murdock while we were still together? I opt not to ask any of them.

  “It doesn’t matter. I think he was just using me to sabotage his marriage.” It’s a pretty heavy thing for a teenage girl to say, and she seems to savour the very grownupness of being able to say it.

  “Shitty.”

  “Nah, it’s cool. We were just cutting ourselves off from the energy of the universe, anyway.”

  “Sure. Wait, what?”

  She sighs, a little impatiently. “Well, when people are in love, they give each other this energy unconsciously, right? Like, it just flows back and forth between them. But when you start expecting this energy to come from just one person, you cut yourself off from the energy of the universe. I mean, I’m paraphrasing James Redfield, but that’s the basic idea.”

  “Who’s James Redfield?”

  “James Redfield? You know? He wrote The Celestine Prophecy.”

  I shrug my ignorance.

  “You haven’t read The Celestine Prophecy? You need to. Everybody does. Ken gave it to me when we broke up, and it’s really helped me.”

  “Wait. Murdock gave you a self-help manual to help you get over him?”

  “It’s not a ‘self-help manual.’ It’s a novel. And it’s really amazing. It could help you with your whole Soda situation.”

  Jesus. Does everybody know about Soda leaving town?

  “If you say so.”

  “Hey, did you hear about the party tomorrow night?”

  I shrug further ignorance.

  “They’re letting Matty come home for the weekend, so his mom is throwing a party at her house. She’s super chill so we can all drink and stuff. Apparently, Matty’s got tons of this medicinal weed called Quadriplegic because—well, it’s for quadriplegics—but it’s also supposed to make all your limbs feel totally numb.”

  “Cool.”

  “You should come.”

  “Maybe ...”

  And for a moment, I really do entertain the thought. I tell myself it would probably mean a lot to Matty, but the truth is—despite everything—the idea of smoking ridiculously strong pot with Kim sounds, at the very least, interesting. Who knows? I mean, here she is, literally on my doorstep. Trying to make amends. Chances are we’ll be going to the same school next year. Maybe the universe really is trying to send me a message.

  “Tons of people will be there. Janey and Cowboy. Khaled and Tom.” She always did that. I don’t know any of these people, and she assumes I’m on a first-name basis with all of them. “Brett’s going to bring his guitar, and Jay’s going to bring his bongos and they’re going to jam. And Steve’s bringing his cute new roommate from Hong Kong.”

  “You mean Howie?” That one I did know.

  “Yeah. Howie. Steve says he’s a Buddhist. He seems so ... spiritual. Like he hasn’t been brainwashed by North American materialism. I’m totally going to fuck him.”

  “Sure. Awesome.”

  God. When will I learn? I want to be mad at her, but she’s too pretty. That’s basically what it comes down to. Beauty is an evolutionary advantage. Pretty people will always be loved. If she was just ten percent uglier, I could recognize her for the terrible person she is and hate her for the rest of our natural lives. Unfortunately, this is not an option.

  We sit in silence a moment while Kim reaches into her bag and pulls out a pack of du Mauriers. She offers me one, but I refuse. There’s no question I could use one, but my folks still don’t know I smoke and I’m about to be in enough shit over this whole scholarship mess.

  “Have you figured out where you’re going next year?”

  “Honestly? I don’t think I’m going anywhere.” Kim frowns and I hurry to correct myself. “I mean, I think I’m going to have to go to Lakehead. I had a scholarship for U of T, but I kind of messed things up.”

  And that’s when it really hits me. I’m staring down the barrel of at least three more years in Thunder Bay. Three more years of living in my parents’ house. Three more years of winters that seem like they’re exacting some personal vendetta against me. Three more years of that terrible pulp-and-paper-mill smell that I barely notice anymore, but whenever I do, I feel inexplicably sad.

  “Well, Lakehead’s okay.”

  “Really?”

  “No.” She laughs a little. “Pub Night’s fun. But otherwise ...”

  “Yeah. Great.”

  “Pete—the universe has a plan for you. You just have to decide whether or not you want to follow it.”

  “Thank you, James Hetfield.”

  “Redfield.”

  “I don’t know, Kim. I hope the universe has a backup plan, because so far this one seems pretty shitty.”

  Kim stands up. “Well, on that note.”

  I stand up too. She trots down to the sidewalk and looks back at me.

  “I hope you come—Matty would love to see you—but it’s cool if you don’t.”

  I watch her walk across the street to where the Divorcemobile waits patiently.

  “Oh—hey,” she says as she opens the car door. “It’s at 129 Birchwood Drive. Up in Cherry Ridge. It’s BYOB, and bring a sleeping bag if you’re going to crash.”

  She sits down in the driver’s seat and slams the door shut. She starts to drive away, but after about ten feet, her brakes light up and she comes to a sudden stop. Her window lowers, and for a second my heart involuntarily expects her declaration of undying love.

  “Could you bring my Mazzy Star album?” she shouts. “I haven’t listened to it in, like, forever.”

  And then she’s gone.

  I walk up the remaining stairs and put my hand on the doorknob, wondering how I was going to explain losing an eight-thousand-dollar scholarship without really explaining it. I guess the upside of my parents killing me would be that I wouldn’t have to go to that shitty party.

  SIDE B

  Time is a Force

  Downtown Port Arthur
is a pretty shitty place to party on a Thursday night. I can hear a cover band at Blackjack’s faithfully trudging their way through ‘Enter Sandman’ and I take a pass. From the door of the Phoenix, I hear acoustic guitar and apologetic mumbling. Open mic nights are usually embarrassing for everyone involved, but the performers are also easier to ignore, so I go inside. I figure I can sit through a few songs by some university dude who’s been playing guitar about as long as he’s been growing his hair. The truth is, I just need a drink. I don’t care all that much where I drink it. Deacon called me about an hour ago to tell me that the Wheeler Foundation Fundraiser for Spinal Cord Research had sold over three thousand tickets to the Jesse Maracle concert on Saturday. Three thousand. Jesus Christ.

  I sit down at the bar. The bartender is reaching up on her tiptoes for a bottle of Canadian Club. On the back of her black t-shirt, the words Phoenix: Live Music are spelled diagonally across the x-axis of her bra strap line.

  As the kid on stage strums his resolving note, I contribute a couple polite claps to the applause. I rubberneck a little when I hear the hollow gong of his acoustic guitar hitting the instrument mic, but when the young hopeful has sufficiently untangled himself, I turn back around to order my drink. Surprisingly, there’s already one in front of me.

  “I made it a double. I hope that’s okay.”

  Alex turns over an empty pint and hits a button behind the bar. A fountain of water shoots up like a miniature bidet and cleans the inside of the glass.

  “You missed a unit test on Tuesday,” I tell her. “And some exam review today.”

  “Oh yeah?” She stacks the glass behind the bar.

  “Your dad’s going to be pretty pissed if you fail the course.”

  “That’s kind of the point.”

  “Yeah, but he’ll be pissed at me.”

  She shrugs. “It’s not my fault your boss is such an asshole.”

  “You should at least write the exam. You could still get the credit if you do okay.”

  “Can we not talk about school, Mister Curtis?”

  I nod and take a healthy swallow of what turns out to be a really stiff rye and ginger. It makes me wince and she smiles a little.