by Karen Rivers
Want me to braid your hair for you? Cassidy had asked.
No, you’d said.
No thank you, said your Dad.
I wasn’t offering to braid your hair, darling, Cassidy had said and then laughed like she was the funniest person alive.
That’s hilarious, you’d said flatly, rearranging your fish on your plate and tucking some beans underneath it.
Why aren’t you eating? Your father asked.
No reason, you said. Nervous, I guess.
Well, that’s normal, he said.
Yeah, you said. I know. It’s just a dance. I’m not really nervous. I just said that.
I love dancing, said Cassidy.
Well, we don’t do much dancing, you said. It’s not like a real dance. It’s just everyone dressed up making out with each other.
Sounds … fun, said Cassidy.
You glared at her at and pushed your chair back from the table. I’ve got to get ready, you said. The truth was, you were starving. There was just something about Cassidy and the way she kept touching your father’s hand that made a lump rise in your throat. It was hard to swallow past it.
And now here you are. Swallowing and swallowing. Tic and Robbo aren’t exactly great conversationalists. It’s pretty much just drinking.
Hey Joey, you say.
Yeah, he says. No one calls me that.
I know, you say. I just wanted to ask you something.
Yeah, he says. What?
But before you can ask, he says, Cat looks so hot tonight. I wish she’d just dump X so I can take a crack at her.
Which stops you cold. You can’t ask him now. Even fuelled by alcohol.
Oh, you say. I…
You almost tell him. For a split second, you almost want to say, She’s pregnant. But something stops you. You don’t have a lot of friends, after all. Maybe Cat will be the one friend that you remember from high school. No one remembers their high school friends. Your dad told you that. He told you none of it was as important as it seemed.
My dad says, you start. Then you stop. Tic and Robbo don’t care. They’re just jackasses. Jackasses you’ve known for a long time, but still jackasses. It occurs to you that you and Joey have never really had a good conversation. It’s mostly just been you listening and him getting high and talking and puking and letting you watch.
I’ve got to go find my friends, you say, getting to your feet.
Don’t leave, says Robbo in a tone that means “leave already”.
Whatever, you say. Catch you later.
You stumble a bit on the stairs and have to pause for a minute to get oriented. I’m drunk, you think. You’ve never been drunk. It’s kind of funny. You start to laugh, but it echoes in the hallway so you stop. You try to walk normally. In a weird way, you feel like everyone is looking at you. You keep your eyes on the blood-red linoleum.
Blood-red, you whisper. For a second, you think you’re going to faint. Fade to black, you say out loud. And you laugh. Shh, you say, you’re embarrassing yourself.
You duck into the washroom and splash cold water on your face. Your cheeks are bright red, not to mention your nose. You drink deeply from the faucet, not caring about the germs for once. You actually feel pretty good. You don’t look that good, but who cares? There’s no one here to impress. Fuck you, Joey, you say to the mirror.
You have a weird feeling in the pit of your stomach. Like you’re going to throw up, but different. More like a feeling of …you don’t know. You can’t explain it, so it’s a good thing you don’t have to try. You head back towards the gym, trying not to stumble and give yourself away. For some reason, you think that if you can get to the music, you’ll be all right. Like it can somehow prop you up. You stumble past the front door and you see Cat sitting there, but you don’t stop. You don’t even acknowledge her. You just feel like you have to get to the music.
When you get to the gym, you feel like you can finally breathe. Even though there is a crush of people and they all seem to be pressing up against you. It makes you feel safe. You step out onto the dance floor and start swaying to the music. This is okay, you think. I’m okay.
You don’t know how long you are there for, dancing by yourself. It seems like forever and it seems like only a few minutes. You are still dancing when the music stops and the fire alarms start to go off. It takes you forever to recognize that it’s not part of the song. It takes even longer for you to realize what it means.
Fade to black, you say, and then you faint. Hitting your head hard on the gym floor as all around you, students rush to get out of the building. To escape.
X.
Chapter 16
I didn’t even want to come to this dance. Fuck it. It’s going to be a disaster. I’m pretty sure Cat is going to dump me for real, or maybe she and Tic will just show up together, which would be worse. I’m wearing a suit that I borrowed from one of the other guys at the golf course. It’s too short in the legs, so I look like an idiot. I shouldn’t have come. I don’t want to be here. I stand outside the dance for a long time. The gym is throbbing with music. I have no desire to go in. Instead, I cut around back and I go sit in the breezeway. There’s a guy there, smoking, but it’s not a kid. It’s a teacher, Mr. Bored-Off-My-Ass Beardsley.
Hi, I say.
Yeah, he says. I hate this school.
Me too, I say.
He doesn’t look inclined to say anything else, so I turn my back on him. He looks a little crazy, to tell you the truth. Or a little drunk. He’s such a loser. Such an insipid guy pointless guy, like a human slug, heavy and somehow untouchable. Tonight he looks … crazed. Great, I think. It’s the stuff that horror movies are made of. Maybe he’ll go nuts and kill us all. But really he just looks old and sad. And maybe wasted.
What a jerk.
I sit there for a while and then I get up and walk over to the track. I kind of jog around it. I don’t know why I do that. It’s cold and slippery and my shoes, which don’t fit properly, slip on the patches of ice. I’m not a good runner at the best of times. I’m out of breath by the time I get to the furthest point from the school. That’s okay though. It’s really dark here and the sky is like fucking velvet or something. It’s really beautiful. It’s a full moon, and it’s below freezing, so the moon has that halo it forms on really chilled nights. I stand there until my feet get so cold I can hardly stand the pain. Weird how being cold hurts so much. It’s stupid, I know, but I fly up to the roof of the gym. I don’t know what I’m thinking. Anyone could see me. Mr. B. probably saw me for sure. I don’t care.
I wish I had X-ray vision and then I could look through the roof at the dancers. See who’s dancing with who and all that. See Cat dancing with Tic, which is what I figure is happening. It’s a shitty feeling to be screwed over by a guy who’s supposed to be your friend, but I don’t care that much. What I really want to see is who you are dancing with. If you are dancing at all. If you are even here.
Man, I think, shivering. This is so fucked up. My arm aches more from the cold, like the ice has seeped into the crack in the bone and the bone is shivering under my skin. It's the kind of ache you want to get at, want to cut into so you can get closer to it and rub it away.
What am I doing up here? I used t be the guy who never ever climbed a ladder’ because I’m afraid of height. I don’t understand what’s happened to me why it’s all changed, who I’m turning into. I’m dangling my feet over the edge. If you were to be driving down the street, you’d see me. My shiny shoes are right over the second S in the sign that says SECONDARY SCHOOL. You’d think, look at that asshole, there’s an accident waiting to happen.
But I’m not really, am I? An accident waiting to happen, I mean,. I’m probably an asshole, sure. I’m pretty accident proof now, I guess.
I’m the kid who can fly. I’m the kid who can save myself. It’s like being immortal in a way, isn’t it? I can’t fall.
I lean forward and look down to see if I can even scare myself, but the thing is that I c
an’t. I don’t feel even slightly nervous. I just feel safe.
And more than a little bit cold.
I should go in, but I’m dreading the scene. Dreading the drama. Dreading seeing Cat. That’s a different kind of pain. The kind of pain you can’t just rub away.
I lie back and stare up at the stars and say, Well, God, what next then? Or Goddess? To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I believe as far as God and all that goes. I used to not believe in anything. Now that I can fly, I have to believe in something. I just don’t know what it is.
Magic, maybe.
Myself.
But that’s so fucked up – it’s like a joke – because while I no longer think that I can ever fall, I don’t believe in myself at all. That’s why I’m such a crappy golfer, if you must know. Technically, I’m good. I may even be great. I know I am. But when I’m up there on the tee and everyone is staring at me and expecting me to make the drive, I choke. I don’t believe I can do it. That’s the real truth. And now I’ll probably never get a chance to try. I look at my arm. Deer and Mutt decorated it up for me for the dance. It’s covered with glitter, which is mostly all over my suit. There is red and green holly. And Deer has written Merry Christmas, but upside down, so that it looks the right way up to me when I look down.
As I was leaving, she grabbed me and said, Promise me you’ll be careful.
I said, Yeah, sure. Then I kissed Mutty good-bye.
Be careful? It’s just a dance, after all. What could possibly go wrong?
I’m just about to go down and face the music when the fire alarm starts to go off. At first, I think it’s a joke. I mean, there is always some asshole who pulls the alarm thing at a dance. Probably on a dare, or whatever. Just to be a jerk. So I don't think much of it until people start streaming out of the school. Now I’m really fucked, I think, pulling my legs up and backing up so they can’t see me. I mean, I can’t exactly fly down there in front of all those people, can I?
No.
Of course not.
So I hide. Because I’m a big fucking hero, shivering behind the air conditioning ducts on the roof of the school while it starts to burn underneath me.
I told you I was an asshole, right? So you can’t be surprised by this. I close my eyes, too. I can hear people shouting and in the distance, the sirens approach. Even as I can see the flashing lights, I start to see smoke coming up from the vents. It can’t be happening, I think. It isn’t real. Just like the flying thing isn’t real. It’s just some kind of fucked up hallucination.
Then I think of you. And I think, Oh no.
Ruby.
Fire.
Cat
Chapter 17
As soon as the fire alarm starts to go, Cat leaps to her feet. Her heart pounding like crazy. In her minds eye, she sees the candles. Tic, she thinks. Oh fuck, no. She runs against the flow of people who are all pushing to get out. Runs towards the basement and manages to get the door open. It’s full of smoke. Of course it is. She’s yelling, Tic Tic Tic and she’s choking on the smoke and she can’t see and that’s when she trips and falls. It’s not like the last time that she fell.
This time, no one catches her. Her body falling hard on the stairs and landing impossibly twisted on the basement floor. Between racks of burning clothes. Beside boxes that are just beginning to ignite.
Cat, someone yells, but she doesn’t know who, or maybe she’s just imagined it. She’s floating and falling and what is she doing. She’s landing, but she’s not. She’s up and down and dizzy and falling.
Falling.
And then she stops hearing anything at all. Because she’s not conscious any more. She’s left her body. She’s up somewhere near the stars, where there is a cold halo around the moon, where the air is clean and breathable.
She’s gone.
Blood drips down in a widening pool on Mira’s pretty mauve top.
Ruby
Chapter 18
You are gone. Checked out. Faded to black. Around you, the gym is empty but rapidly filling with smoke. It’s coming from the basement, bit you don’t know that. It’s just everywhere. In your lungs. Touching your skin.
Outside, the firemen have arrived and are bursting through the front door with hoses and masks. But you don’t hear them. You aren’t there.
Someone told you once that people who are unconscious don’t dream, but that can’t be true. Because you are dreaming now. You are having a dream that X. is there. You are dreaming that he is picking you up and that he is carrying you up towards the ceiling. You are dreaming that you are lying on the roof of the burning school and that X is sitting next to you saying, Please wake up Ruby please wake up oh shit oh shit oh shit
X.
Chapter 19
Please wake up Ruby, I say again.
I’m shaking you. I know I shouldn’t. I don’t want you to be dead. Is this it? I ask out loud. Was this what I was supposed to do?
But if I wanted to save you, I shouldn’t have brought you up here. I can’t get you down. I don’t know what happened, but once we landed here, I couldn’t do it any more. I don’t know what to do. I’m so fucked. One day, they’ll make a fucking comic book of this and I’ll be like the anti-hero. So far, I’ve done two things. One of them crippled me, and now I’ve saved you but only temporarily. If the school burns down, we’ll go down with it.
I stand up and rock back on my heels. Come on, I say to myself. Just do it.
But I can’t. What if I fuck it up? This isn’t something I can mess up and live with myself. You know? This is so important. It’s the most important. It’s the only thing that matters.
You.
Please wake up, I say.
And you do. You look at me with wild red eyes. Your breath is sweet, like you’ve been drinking. You say, what am I doing on the roof?
I try to explain, about the fire, but you just stare off into the sky. You say, I have dreams like this, full of fire. Everyone always dies. Melts. You know?
I nod and say, I know. I want to take you in my arms, but I’m not that suave. I can’t pull it off. This isn’t a Hollywood movie. If it was, I would have soared with you in my arms down to the ground. I would have saved you, instead of this.
There is the sound of breaking glass. People shouting.
I guess we should call for help, you say. And for a second, I almost laugh. I didn’t think of that. I’m such a jerk. I told you I was stupid.
We go over to the edge and start shouting. Me and you. And they see us, of course they do. I’m sure later they’ll ask how the hell we got up here and we’ll have to lie or explain somehow, I’m not even sure how. In the meantime, I stand on the roof with you and hold your hand and we wait for them to rescue us.
And you know something, holding your hand is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. But then it’s ruined, because you turn to me and you say, I’m drunk.
I know, I say. It’s okay.
Cat’s pregnant, you say. I feel like I’m the one who is falling this time. It’s like the roof drops away from behind me.
What? I say.
You heard me, she says. I don’t know why I’m telling you.
Just then, a couple of firemen appear. I guess they came up on a ladder. I don’t know why I didn’t look. Oh, yeah, because I’m stupid, that’s right. They kind of push us down between them and we have to go and I’m just reeling and the school is exploding in front of me and it’s the most surreal thing ever, you holding my hand and the gas in the science labs blowing up and no sign of Cat anywhere in the crowd and no one knows where she is and I feel like I’m broken inside and I’ll never ever be okay again.
Cat
Chapter 20
The firemen strap you to the body board and lift you. You’re only vaguely aware of it. You can breathe. There is something over your nose and lips. There is blood all over you. You can’t tell where it is coming from. It’s warm and sticky. You feel like you’ll be okay though. The flames are almost pretty.
/> I’m okay, you try to say, but you can’t talk because there is a tube in your nose. You’re so sleepy, it’s hard to stay awake. Hard to concentrate on the way they lift you out and run down the hall, with you jostling up and down, and your locker passing by, and an explosion behind you that propels you out of the building and somehow you are in an ambulance and you are …
Ruby
Chapter 21
You watch the school burn, from a safe distance. The flames are unfamiliar to you, like you’ve never seen fire before. They seem too colourless to be real. After all, in your dreams they were always so orange.
So colourful.
So bright.
You feel sick from drinking and from the smoke and your body is bruised and battered from people stepping on you while they were trying to escape.
No one is dead, right? you ask, but no one answers you. No one knows anything. It’s freezing outside, but no one is going anywhere except the people who are carried away in ambulances. You all just stand there and watch the school burn, colourless flames licking the sky like a thirsty dog, like a million thirsty dogs. Parched. Desperate.
It feels like the end of the world. You think, nothing else matters. You think, this is the second time I’ve survived it, that has to mean something. You think, I’m immortal. Maybe nothing can kill me.
X stands next to you. He’s crying. He seems to be holding your hand and that feels okay. They took Cat off in an ambulance. She was covered with blood and soot and she was unconscious. You don’t know what to think.