by Karen Rivers
Completely.
For one thing, in the morning, it’s freezing cold and rainy. It keeps almost snowing and then changing it’s mind. Frozen rain is the worst. It’s like being pelted with bullets. Ice bullets. I’m soaked by the time I get to class, my cold pants chafe and I’m really fucking irritated. The one thing I’m looking forward to is seeing you, but you aren’t there.
Hey, I say to Tic. Where’s Ruby?
Why? he says, squinting at me suspiciously.
No reason, I say.
She must be sick or something, he shrugs. How should I know?
I don’t know, I say. Forget it.
I wish I hadn’t asked. Last thing I need is for him to start some stupid fifth grade rumor that I have a crush on you or something. I’d never live that down.
Forgotten, says Tic, banging his head against his desk.
He does shit like that. That’s why we call him “Tic. ” Well, partly because of his last name, but partly because ever since we’ve been kids he’s been a bit … off. He bangs his head. He shouts weird shit in the hallway. He’s not a bad guy, he’s just a little messed in the brain.
What up, bro? says Robbo, slumping into his desk next to me. His hair is soaking wet and dripping into his eyes, which he doesn’t bother to wipe. Cheeks red like he’s been skating.
Nothing, I say. I’m so distracted that I forget to ask him for his homework. We just sit there, waiting for the bell to go. Waiting for something to happen.
Why do you suddenly care about Ruby? Tic says again, loud enough that a few people hear.
I don’t, I say angrily.
So, why’d you ask? He says insistently.
Fuck off, I say, cuffing him in the side of the head just as the teacher walks in, slamming his books down on his desk.
Hand in your homework, he says.
And that’s when I remember that I didn’t do my homework and had no time to rip off Robbo’s. Shit, I think, staring up at the ceiling.
Xenos? says Mr. Unhappy-in-His-Work. Where is it at, my man?
I hate it when teachers talk like that. What IS that? Some kind of groovy seventies lingo?
I shrug. Forgot, I say, like I don’t care.
He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t yell. Just raises his eyebrows at me and writes something down in his book. It can’t be good.
What happened to your head? He says, eyeing my bruise.
Nothing, I say.
The day gets worse from there: I flunk the English test because I forgot to get the answers from Tic. I didn’t forget, I just didn’t feel like talking to him. I thought he might want to talk about you and I already feel like I gave myself away. I used last week’s answers, which I still remember: BCAAACBAAD. Fat lot of good that does. I’m such a moron.
Cat has lunch with me. Or at least she sits next to me drinking a Coke and glowering. She isn’t talking. She looks mad and sad.
What’s up? I say.
Nothing, she says. Same old shit, different day.
Yeah, I say.
Mira’s got a boyfriend, she says.
Really? I say.
I guess, she says. He’s a shit-head football player.
Huh, I say.
I guess you don’t care, she says. Forget it.
I care, I say.
But the truth is that I don’t.
Cat glowers at me. I try putting my arm around her, but she shrugs me off.
I gotta go smoke, she says.
Fuck. I can see that she’s mad. But I don’t get it and can’t be bothered to ask. What the hell have I done wrong? Nothing, that’s what. The girl all but breaks up with me and now I’m in trouble? What’s up with that? I let her go. And just sit there, staring off into space. Ignoring everyone. There are hundreds of people in the cafeteria, but I feel like I’m all alone. You ever feel that way?
Finally, I get up and run through the blood-red hallways to the front door. I step outside. It’s fucking freezing. There is nothing worse than being wet and cold. I hate it, but I don't care. For a second, I think about flying off, but people would see me. For some reason, that’s more than I can handle. I just walk. Nowhere. Around the school and back. By the time I get in again, I’m late for my afternoon class, soaked and with chapped numb hands and wishing I was anywhere but here.
By the end of the day, I’m in a bad-ass mood, so when Cat, Robbo and Tic come up and say, Hey X, come with us, we’ve got something to do, I go.
Cat
Chapter 8
Cat sits in the car and roars the gas impatiently, snapping her Juicy Fruit gum. The boys are taking forever and she wants to get going. She’s revved up like she gets when she’s going to do something crazy. Something wild. Yeah, she knows it has something to do with Mira and her new perfect football playing boyfriend. A white guy, natch. And the way her mum goes on about him and how great he is. Nathan-this and Nathan-that. They met him for all of five minutes and they’ve known X forever. Two years. Bigots. She hates them. Nathan is half-Italian. Great. X can’t compete with that.
She sticks the lighter in and tucks a cigarette behind her ear so she’ll be ready when it pops. Her new haircut is slightly itchy. The shaved patches were supposed to look like something but they didn’t really work. Some kind of pattern that looks more like, if she’s being honest, a disease. She touches the bare skin of her scalp where it’s coming through. She kind of likes the way it feels. Soft and bristly. It doesn’t look right, but who cares. The rest of it is long enough and messy enough that it doesn’t matter. She runs her fingers through it and shakes it into place. Sings to herself. Turns the stereo up loud enough to make the car shimmy and shake. The school parking lot is full of students, milling around. Waiting. She moves the car from one spot to another for no reason, just to watch some cheerleading girls jump out of the way. The bus-stop is right in front of her, crowded with the losers who don’t have cars.
She catches Ruby’s eye and drops her gaze. Ruby freaks her out, with her big dark staring eyes. When Ruby looks at her, it makes her feel uneasy. Like the other girl is reading her thoughts, or worse.
She half-smiles, half-sneers. Testing the water.
Ruby doesn’t smile back. She probably can’t even see her, the windows steaming up from the heater and her wet clothes. The music crackles in the speakers and Cat turns it down slightly so they don’t blow. Cranks the heat up further. In spite of the hot blasting air coming in the vents, Cat is always cold. She’s been cold her whole life.
Finally, the boys tumble into the car. Tic and Robbo in the back, X in the front looking apprehensive. Cat wishes he wasn’t such a granny.
Granny, she says. How’s it going?
Did you call me Granny? X says, looking annoyed.
No, she says.
Tic and Robbo laugh. Punch each other. Light up a joint.
Not here, idiots, she says, revving the engine again. The little car’s wheels spin against the gravel. She half-thinks that X is with her and that Robbo and Tic are friends with her because she has a car. Her parents gave it to her on her sixteenth birthday. And it’s not an old car, either. It’s brand-new. Embarrassing. She wanted to paint it up, right away. Paint a mural on the side, or a bowl of rotting fruit on the hood. Something unexpected, quirky, edgy. Beat it with a chain. Take the suburban newness off it and turn it into something she could imagine driving. It’s hard to be cool and edgy when you drive a Honda Civic, even one with zebra seat covers, a backseat full of fast food wrappers and a trunk full of beer bottles.
X wiggles the heat knob.
It’s already on, she says.
Yeah, he says. It’s hot. I was turning it down.
Leave it, she says. It’s my car.
Fine, he says, opening his window a crack. He leans his head back on the seat. She looks at him out of the corner of her eye. He looks tired. He’s so good-looking she feels like something in her chest is shattering like glass blown too thin. She’s loved him forever. Really loved him. That’s the whole problem,
she knows it. He doesn’t know it, doesn’t know about the love, that she feels that. He thinks she’s just a good-time girl. Well, maybe she is. She’s no Mira with a Harvard-bound boyfriend and … and what? Really good posture.
She sings along a bit to the music while Tic and Robbo horse around and X ignores her. In a way, she feels more at home with them than she does with her own family. They’re like a dysfunctional family of sorts, she thinks. She and X are like the parents, sort of. And the other two are definitely the kids.
Pipe down, back there, she says, glowering at them in the mirror.
Where are we going, anyway? X says, not opening his eyes.
Nowhere, she says. Somewhere fun.
She lights another cigarette and blows the smoke out in rings. X coughs and glares. He hates smoke. She blows the rest out in a sharp, pencil-thin stream in his direction. She knows he’s worried about the whole break-up situation. She wants him to be worried, to fucking care. Secretly, she wants him to ask her to stay. To never leave him. She could imagine her life just fine with him or without him. She could carry his bags on the tour. Hang with the other player’s Barbie-doll wives. Or caddy for him. Newscasters would talk about how they were high-school sweethearts. How she was always there for him.
Or not. She could move to New York. Become a photographer. Be so hip people would be both in love with her and afraid of her.
She has a feeling that the second scenario is more likely in her future. Not the admiration and fear, but the leaving. She’s not going to be anyone’s wife. Who is she kidding? No one would choose her. Not when there are girls like Mira around. People marry Miras. They don’t marry Cats.
Not that she fucking wants to get married or anything. She snorts.
Are we there yet? Robbo whines from the back seat.
Yeah, echoes Tic. How much further?
Not much further, she says, in her most maternal voice.
I’ll never be a mother, she thinks. She’s only sixteen. It’s just that the minute she met Mira’s Nathan, she got an unsettling premonition of Mira’s wedding, Mira’s whole life. Handsome husband, university degrees, great job, perfect kids. And she couldn’t help seeing hers, too. And it wasn’t as pretty. Bad boyfriends, dropping out of college, some kind of drug culture that keeps her scared. Maybe she’ll end up working in a skanky hair salon, waxing peoples’ bikini lines for minimum wage. Or worse, a chat-line. She could be a telephone psychic. No matter what she pictures, it doesn’t look very glamorous. Or fun.
She guns the engine and the car skids on the slippery road.
Jesus, says X. Be careful. He cringes as though that would protect him if they were in an accident. She does it again just to make him mad.
Hey, he says. Don’t. He reaches over and steadies the wheel.
Don’t take care of me, she says between clenched teeth. I know how to drive. More than I can say about you.
Don’t be a bitch, he says.
Fuck you, she says.
Mummy and Daddy are fighting, says Robbo in the backseat.
No, Mummy, squeals Tic.
Oh, shut up, you two, says X. Or you’ll be grounded.
They pull into a gravel driveway a few minutes later. The darkness is filled with heavy fir trees, branches bent low under the weight of the frozen rain. The building looks like some kind of warehouse, abandoned, dark and depressing.
Where are we? says X.
Surprise, Cat says, gets out of the car. They all follow. Robbo slips on the icy pavement, curses, dropping a case of beer. Lies on his back until Tic and X. pick him up. Patches of puddles turned to mini ice rinks crackle underfoot. At the entrance, she produces keys from her pocket on a Grover keychain and opens a huge door, some kind of shipping entrance. Throws a light switch.
Holy shit, says Tic.
Oh, MAN, says Robbo, This rules.
X just stares. Cat tosses back her head and laughs in a way that she imagines to be breezy. To try to get him in the mood.
I’m making a bit of money cleaning up this place for Uncle Troy, she says looking around. It’s closed for the winter.
She admires the place. She is making money but not much, and she isn’t doing much cleaning. Mostly she smokes dope in the turrett while the workmen do their thing, then idly sweeps up afterwards. What she’s earned she’s already spent on clothes and cigarettes. He thinks she’s saving for college or some crap like that but then again Uncle Troy doesn’t know her very well at all. Never bothers to really ask. Assumes she’s Mira, that they’re the same. Gets them mixed up.
She grits her teeth and glowers at her surroundings. Scaled down plastic buildings made to look like a messed-up fairy-tale town and an overly fancy castle, all attached together with colourful slides and tunnels and, the highlight, a net-encased bridge hanging between the town and castle, fifty feet up in the air. Impossible to fall from, but still dizzyingly high.
In the summertime, Troy’s Toy Town is full of screaming toddlers and other assorted brats. Now closed, it smells stale. Empty. Hollow. Scented with dusty plastic and Lysol.
Sure, it’s made for little kids. Really little. Like four or five. Built for birthday parties. But they’ll be able to have some fun here, too, Cat knows. Sure they will. A couple of beers and a splif and it’ll be more fun than any of them have had for weeks. Impulsively, she reaches over and kisses X, a big smack that feels foreign and comical and just wrong. She realizes that she never kisses him. Well, maybe while they’re having sex. He never kisses her. Ever.
He pulls away from her, kind of pushes her back. She shudders.
Let’s party, she says, swinging away from him, fast, fast, fast. Like a monkey, up onto the castle’s kid-friendly rope ladder with a bottle of beer hanging from her teeth.
Tic and Robbo are right there with her at first, then go in the other direction. Crawl into the tunnels. Their voices echo off the insides of tubular slides. There’s shouting when one of them lands in a pit of plastic balls. X wanders away, not playing. Not sliding. She can see his silhouette climbing up a safety staircase on the outside of one of the toy structures.
X is sulky, she says to the others.
Baby, they yell.
Ouch! Fuck you!
No, fuck YOU.
There is the sounds of a mock fight. Then silence. From somewhere, one of them turns on a sound system and radio noise blasts out through the speakers in a rush of static thunder that immediately blows one speaker with a gun-shot bang. The fuzzy music sounds crooked coming from only one side, but still it makes Cat feel crazy and brave. Or maybe that’s the beer. She doesn’t care. She feels good. To tell the truth, she doesn’t feel good that often. She hooks her legs through the rope ladder, dangles upside down. Throws her empty beer bottle past the safety net and towards the concrete ground where it splinters like light.
Don’t DO that, X yells. He’s leaning on a plastic turret, perched there like he’s about to fall or jump about ten feet up. The crash pads that normally line the floor are stacked up in the corners, moved so the floors can be repainted.
Sorry, she says, unrepentantly. No, I’m not sorry. I’m the one who has to clean it up anyway. Just don’t step in it with bare feet.
She crosses her eyes at him, not that he can see that kind of detail from where he is. He springs up, jumps into the darkness. She hears his feet land with a solid thwack on the unforgiving ground.
She winces on his behalf.
That must have hurt, she says.
Are we just about done here? says X, It’s late. I should be home for dinner.
He’s pacing. She sees him pass somewhere below her, watches him disappear again out of her line of vision.
Aren’t you having fun yet? she says, pulling herself up higher and higher. She uses her most kittenish voice. Play with me, come on.
Yeah, sure, he lies. Fun. She can tell he’s lying. He’s as boring as Mira. Dull as her parents.
Hoisting herself up off the ladder, she pushes through an unlocked safety
gate, and ends up standing on the roof of a toy house. Boring. The plastic buckles a bit under her feet. She jumps experimentally, half-expecting it to crack.
Nothing.
She carefully slides off the roof onto one of the many bits of scaffolding that have been put up for maintenance. Then up the outside of the fake bakery and over the top. The plastic is stupidly slippery under her hard-soled shoes.
She kicks them off and watches them fall out of sight. She hopes she can find them later. From here, she can climb up and up and up. The highlight of the place is the suspension bridge, a rainbow of plastic encased in netting that’s been partially pulled down for repair. The bridge goes from the village clock tower that overlooks the shabby looking houses and shops, to the flashy illuminated metallic and shiny disco-ball of a castle. Like crossing the tracks, she thinks.
She gets to the bridge without following the kid route, the tunnels make her claustrophobic unless she’s using them to get high. She can get to where she wants to go the hard way, it’s better that way anyway. She can get there by climbing on the outside of things. Slipping. Falling. Jumping. Swinging. Playing crazy chicken with herself.
When she was a kid, her parents had her in gymnastics and ballet and god knows what else. To “focus her energy”, they said. She was the wild child. Mira didn’t have to do that crap because she was born quiet and good. Don’t want to put all that training to waste, Cat thinks, putting her hands on a barrier and scrambling over. Then there she is, swinging above nothing, on the underside of the bridge. The concrete floor is a long way down. Too far. Vertigo wobbles through her, but she holds on tightly with her fingers, which suddenly feel not quite strong enough. Hooks her bare feet up into the net so she’s stuck there like a sloth on a branch.
She can hear Robbo and Tic laughing from within one of the castle’s turrets. Probably smoking up. Being jackasses. Tic is cute, she thinks, closing her eyes so she forgets where she is. Robbo isn’t. But still they look mostly the same, only Robbo is like an underexposed photo of Tic. Tic is all too garish colours and too sharp lines. Robbo is softer and blurrier and paler and less noticeable. The thing is that they are always together, and so you look at both of them and then only really notice Tic.