“So somebody took them?” Dr. Captain said.
“I guess so.” Cole wasn’t about to tell Dr. Captain that, according to Jayne, the boogeyman took the files. “They didn’t disappear into thin air, so I’ll just keep searching. They’ll turn up. They have to turn up.”
“Any ideas where?”
“No good ones. I was going to stop by the RCMP office, see if they cleaned the camp out, along with the files. But it feels like a stretch.”
Cole looked at Eva again. She seemed impatient. Dr. Captain saw Cole looking at her. She looked back and forth, from Cole to Eva and pushed herself away from the stage. “You’ll let me know if…”
“Yeah, I’ll let you know.”
When Dr. Captain left the gym with a smattering of Cole’s high school contemporaries, Eva took her place, standing right where Dr. Captain was. But then she hopped up onto the stage and sat beside Cole.
“What’s with the silent treatment? Is it about last night?”
He looked at his hands, interlocked and resting between his thighs, his scars hidden. She was direct, he’d give her that.
“I’m sorry for last night,” he said, “I was being a jerk, and you were just trying to make life easier for me.”
“Maybe you were right, too, though,” she said. “It’s like I was saying yesterday morning, me and Brady. Some things you can handle on your own, right?”
Cole nodded. “But I wasn’t trying to give you the silent treatment, it was more that I had to sit at the front, for this…” Cole indicated the whole gym with a sweeping gesture that required both arms “…thing.”
“You looked me off,” Eva chuckled, “you know you looked me off.”
“Can you imagine if I had to, like, get from where you guys were sitting, to the stage, when I was called up? I would’ve died halfway there. My heart was just…” Cole hit his palm against his chest rapidly.
Eva and Cole were the last people in the gym, aside from some kids, including Pam, who’d stayed behind to stack and remove chairs. Metal legs cracked closed against metal frames and echoed in the gym. Cole found his eyes wandering over to Pam every few seconds.
“Was it because of her?” Eva asked.
Cole returned his attention to Eva. “What?”
“Did you just want to sit beside Pam? It’s okay if you did. I’d just…if you just told me that, instead of making something up.”
She knew he was making something up. She always knew.
“Eva, this isn’t really…I don’t want to talk about that right now. I mean, it’s mostly about Mike. I’m trying to…I want to make that right, on my own, and I want to be your friend, and somebody please shoot me in the head, okay?”
“You don’t want to talk about it right now, but you’re talking about it right now, and you look like you just got kicked in the balls. Cole, help me out here.”
“Can we talk about it later? Really?” Cole hopped off the stage. He extended his hand to help Eva off the stage, but she gave him a look like, come on, and jumped by herself.
“Since when do we do this? Honestly?”
Cole listened to the sound of metal against metal, counting each chair being placed on top of another chair. “Eva, I—”
“Fine. Can we talk tonight? What are you doing?”
Whatever he wanted to do tonight, and whether or not he wanted her around for it, Michael’s face popped into his head. Michael’s face with that familiar look: the furrowed eyebrow. The icy stare. The hardened features. “I’m kind of busy.”
“Busy doing what? You can’t go look for those files without me. That shit was done on me, too. Don’t forget that.”
“I haven’t forgot, I’m just busy, alright?” Cole said. “Maybe tomorrow. How about tomorrow?”
Eva looked at him deeply. Sometimes, when Eva looked at him, it felt like she was looking into him. Then, resignedly, she said, “Okay, tomorrow. I’ll see ya,” and left.
“See ya.” Cole said, but she was already gone.
Cole’s shot hit the rim. In the empty gym, the sound echoed. He still couldn’t shoot worth a damn. If only Choch had given Cole the ability to make basketball shots. Cole would have traded something like…strength…for that skill, but only if he’d be able to bring it back to Winnipeg with him after all of this was done (and if his coach was going to let him on the team at all, since he’d missed tryouts).
Cole picked up the ball by the three-point line. He hugged it between his arm and hip, ghosted a shot with his right hand, then took an actual shot. It rolled around the rim, before getting spat out. The old toilet bowl. Joe had told him who’d made the team back in Winnipeg. He was better than, well, all of the kids who made it. He’d be way better if he could hit a jumpshot. He chased the ball to the front corner of the gym, bounced it up to the hoop, and laid it in off the glass. He raised his arms in mock triumph, then took the ball with him to the free throw line.
He shot. It bounced off the rim, off the glass, off the rim, and onto the floor. The ball graciously bounced right back to him.
He’d asked Joe if Coach would take him onto the team if he got back before the season started, seeing as how he’d missed tryouts. Joe had texted back that he wasn’t sure.
COLE: What if you told him I was busy catching a serial killer?
JOE: Dude. Bullshit.
COLE: Wasn’t it on the news? Nothing?
Cole expected the story to have been in the newspaper. Nobody had interviewed him and he hadn’t seen any news crews in the community, but surely the outside world would’ve gotten wind of something. Apparently, that wasn’t the case.
JOE: I’ll talk 2 him, K? Make up real shit tho.
Cole conceded, as he bounced the ball three times then twirled it in his shooting hand, that it did sound made up. But he’d lived it. All those deaths, all that craziness. Nothing on the six o’clock news? The radio? He hugged the ball between his left arm and hip, practised his form with his right hand again, then readied another shot.
“Oh, that’s what that awful sound is. Bricks.” Cole stopped mid-shot. The ball dropped to the floor a few feet in front of him. Pam was by the gym door.
“Oh, hey.” Cole straightened out his sweats, like that would make him look more presentable. “I thought you left.”
Pam picked up the rolling ball. “I was going to sweep your newly waxed floor, as a kindness.”
“I did that already.” Cole motioned to a pile of dirt and debris near the storage room. “I left a pile there if you wanted to…”
“No, that’s okay, thanks. You should really finish a job once you’ve started it, hey?”
“If you only knew the half of it.”
She bounced the ball a few times. “You really get zoned out, Harper.”
“Yeah, sometimes I shoot around just so I can think.” Cole tossed his arms out to the sides.
“Maybe you need to think more.”
“Ha, funny.” Cole received a chest pass from Pam. He aimed again, this time like he was shooting for a championship. The ball soared through the air, hit the front of the rim, skipped to the backboard, and off the side of the rim. “Yeah, maybe.”
The ball rolled back to Cole quietly and slowly, like it was embarrassed for him. He picked it up and extended the ball to Pam, but she shook her head. “Not really my thing. I have a one-shot-per-day maximum.”
“Right,” Cole said, “Fortnite is your game.”
“And I’d be just as nervous if you watched me play.”
“What’s the Fortnite equivalent of bricking a jumpshot?”
“Good question,” Pam nodded thoughtfully. “Getting killed by The Storm when you’re almost out of it? I’ll get back to you on that one.”
Cole missed another shot, rolled his eyes at himself, and chased after the ball as it journeyed to the corner of the gym. On the way, Pam called out, “So what were you thinking about?”
Cole considered how much to tell her, or whether to tell her anything at all, as he jogged
back to the foul line. “Pardon?”
“Any specific thoughts? You said you shot around to think,” Pam said, “sometimes.”
But what could it hurt? Since the assembly had ended and first period started, Cole had missed a bunch of shots, and he wasn’t much further in his planning than going to the RCMP detachment tonight. And Choch wasn’t around to help him brainstorm. Again. Cole was so lost for a good idea he actually wanted the spirit being around. He was ready to decipher whatever cryptic response Choch would give.
“Alright,” Cole said, “I need to find something, but I have no idea where to look.”
“Okay, that’s vague. Care to elaborate?”
“Uhhh,” Cole balked. “I’m not sure that I can.”
“If you’re worried that you’re going to sound weird, just remember that weird is kind of our thing out here,” Pam said.
Weird? Weird would be putting it lightly. Cole bounced the ball a few times, right over a dead spot. It sounded like empty thuds. Mihko waxed the floor, but they hadn’t really fixed it. “Somebody saw who took this…thing…but I don’t think they’re the most reliable witness.”
“Somebody like…”
“A kid. A kid saw it.” Cole stopped bouncing the ball and took another shot. This time, it didn’t even hit the rim. Off the backboard, onto the ground, and the ball rolled down to the other side of the gym. Cole left it. “She said she saw the boogeyman take it, okay? So, that’s how much help she was.”
“The boogeyman took the thing? Wow.”
“I know it sounds dumb. I’ve been trying to think about what she really meant, and other than, you know, what Victor saw…”
“Oh, I heard about that. Bananas.”
“Yeah, so I’m stuck.”
Pam paced twice between the baseline and Cole. Then, she stopped. “You know, to a kid, a scary guy could be a boogeyman.”
Cole nodded. “True.” He started to think about scary guys, but nobody seemed scary to him. Scott, he supposed. But Scott was indisposed. Ha! CB, that rhymed!
Wait! Cole thought. Come to the gym! Choch didn’t respond.
“Hey.” Pam waved a hand in front of Cole’s face.
“Sorry,” Cole said.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter, right now, who or what this boogeyman thing is,” Pam said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Cole said thoughtfully, trying to let those words percolate.
“Maybe you should be thinking about the thing, you know? Back to basics. Okay, here’s a question: what is the thing?”
“A folder with files in it,” Cole said.
“Wow, boring. Didn’t expect that,” Pam said. “So, maybe it would be easier to think about the boring folder rather than who took the folder. Get me? Like, what are the files? Does it make sense that they’d be somewhere? Where is most likely? I search for files all the time on computers here. They’re digital files, but the principle is the same, maybe?”
Where is most likely? Cole tossed that around in his head. Files on kids. Medical experiments that were done on his friends a decade ago, to be specific. A specificity that he didn’t think he could, or should, tell Pam about. If it wasn’t at the RCMP office, then where else could it be? The answer hit Cole hard, and when it did, he realized that it was obvious, and maybe that he’d been willfully ignoring it. Because of what it would remind him of. The research facility. Where his dad worked. Where his dad took part in the experiments. Where his dad died. Cole leaned forward, as though the breath had been sucked right out of him.
“Need Dr. Captain, Harper? Or did you just have an epiphany?”
“I think epiphanies are good. This sucks.”
Pam walked towards the ball at the other side of the gym. She called out, “Thank you, Pam. You’re super helpful, Pam.” Cole watched her clumsily bounce the ball as she made her way back to him.
He straightened up. “Sorry. Thank you, Pam. You’re super helpful, Pam.”
“Not convincing.” Pam tossed the ball from one hand to the other, then she bounced a pass to Cole that hit him in the stomach. “Harper, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Cole picked up the ball and stared at it, and he tried to just see orange and think orange and not think of anything else—not the facility, or the vitamins, or his dad. But it didn’t work. He dropped the ball and neither of them said anything until it had finished bouncing, and rolled away.
“Care to tell me why you look like you might vomit on the newly waxed floor?” Pam asked.
“I just…” breathe in five seconds, out seven seconds “…think I have to go somewhere that I don’t want to go. Sorry, it was helpful, just…I think I knew, in a way, and I just didn’t want to know. If that makes sense.”
“It makes no sense, but okay.”
“Sorry.”
“Oh my god, Harper, enough sorrys.” She retrieved the ball and came back to him. “Okay, let’s try this: when do you have to go ‘somewhere that you don’t want to go’?”
Cole shrugged. “Tonight, I guess.” After the RCMP detachment, he thought. It seemed useless now, the files weren’t going to be there. He knew that before. But Lauren might have information about Mikho or Scott. If the files were at the facility, then they weren’t going anywhere. “Ooof!” Pam had thrown the ball again, and this time it hit him a bit lower than his stomach.
“Oh.” Pam put her hand over her mouth. “I haven’t said sorry yet, so sorry about that.”
“Would you stop that?”
“Yes, I promise to not sack you again, but I will, however, continue to throw the ball at you if you keep zoning out on me.”
Cole stopped short of beginning with sorry, and said, “Just got a lot on my mind.”
“Well…” Pam picked the ball up again, and Cole winced, expecting another hard pass. “How about instead of thinking, you, I don’t know, distract yourself.”
“How?”
“Since I’m super helpful, I would be willing to take you out for dinner, and I promise to be totally forward and make you nervous only in the interest of keeping your mind off the boogeyman and the boring files and whatever ghost you just happened to see.”
“Totally forward, like—”
“Wow, Harper. It’s super easy to make you nervous. Not a date, okay? Just two people hanging out, if that floats your boat.”
She tossed the ball at him, and this time he caught it. Cole looked at it again, rolling it around in his hands. Dinner with Pam. He looked up from the ball, to her, standing there, tapping her heel. Standing there in her white shoes, blackened with ink. Her ripped jeans which, Cole noticed for the first time, had letters and numbers written strategically all over the material. Code. Her baggy black shirt, which she still somehow looked cool in. Eva’s voice popped into his head. Was it because of her? She sounded jealous of Pam. What would she think if he went for dinner with her? But then, Cole thought, what would Michael think? Maybe going out with Pam would help fix things with Michael. How could he be jealous of him and Eva, if he was seeing somebody else?
“Yeah,” he said, “okay. Sure.”
“Not so fast, tiger.” She nodded towards the rim. “Hit the shot and it’s a date.”
“And if I miss?”
9
JAGGED VACANCE
“ARE YOU SERIOUSLY NOT GOING TO EAT ANYTHING? Since when do you not eat your food?” Brady was almost finished his second plate. He and Cole were at the kitchen table. All Cole had put into his mouth was water. Just a few sips.
“Sorry,” Cole said.
“I slaved over a hot stove for, like, thirty minutes,” Brady said, grinning.
Cole looked down at his plate of food. Kraft Dinner, mixed vegetables, fried bologna, and bannock. He calculated just how long he thought it would take Brady to put all of this together.
“More like fifteen minutes,” Cole said. “Tops.”
“You could’ve helped,” Brady said.
While Brady had made dinner, Cole laid on the couch and stared at th
e ceiling as his not-date with Pam loomed closer with each passing second.
“I can hardly function,” Cole said.
“You’re always off staring at something,” Brady said. “What is it tonight?”
“It’s just…” Cole didn’t even finish. He just shook his head.
“If you’re not going to eat my food, then you’re going to tell me why you’re off moping in the living room,” Brady said, “and now. You’re so dramatic.”
“I guess some advice would help, anyway.”
“You don’t say.”
Cole shoved the plate away, not keeping up any pretense of eating. “I told Pam I’d go out with her tonight, okay? But now I don’t know if I should’ve said yes.”
“Pam?” Brady asked. “Really?”
“Yeah, Pam.”
“She’s awesome,” Brady said. “So what’s the problem?”
“Well, I didn’t really say yes because I liked her. I mean, I could like her, maybe I like her, but it was more, just, trying to make Michael like me again.” Cole’s chin collapsed into his chest. “If that makes sense.”
“If you’d told anybody else that, literally anybody, they would be totally lost,” Brady said.
“But not you?”
Brady leaned forward. “You think Michael hates you because you’re spending time with Eva, so you’re going out with Pam to show him that he has nothing to worry about.”
Cole raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, that’s exactly right.”
“So, I repeat,” Brady started to sound tired, “what’s the problem?”
“I keep thinking about not what Michael will think, but what Eva will think. I still…”
“You still have feelings for her.”
“Yeah, and, you know, maybe she does, too? And what if I ruin that because I want to suck up to Michael?”
“You’re supposing that Eva has feelings for you, too? She’s with Michael, Cole. It should be irrelevant.”
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