by Karen Rivers
Then I’m up, Cake trembling from the anticipation. Flecks of sweat on his neck, which I smooth out gently with my hands. His flesh is so alive. Hot. His nerves always ratchet up at events like this, all the other horses, the buzz in the air. Axel runs up at the last minute with my number, forty-four. I hate fours, ever since someone told me that in Chinese the number four signifies death. I blanche but pin the number on anyway. It’s too late now to change it.
Thanks, I say. Trying not to sound sarcastic, but he knows about my thing with fours. And his slowness has almost caused me to miss the start. Thanks a lot.
Worse, I’m sure I see a hickey on his neck. A mass of pink around him, his thoughts are of things that make me want to crawl out of myself and hide somewhere, cover my eyes. Like Gigi’s boobs, even though they barely exist. The girl is flat as a board.
I wave at Maman, who is sitting right up at the fence line, where surely the horses will be too close, their hooves kicking dirt onto her lap, her blanket freckled with brown muck. Maman waves back, gives me the signal she made up that means, “Good luck and be safe and I love you” all rolled up in one. I press my hand to my chest, blow Maman a kiss in response.
Then in a cavalcade of hooves and whinnies, we’re off. And like magic, I’m not nervous anymore. It’s instantly gone. The thundering of the horse underneath me makes me forget everything: my cramps, my stupid bad mood, Axel and Gigi. The air is fresh and surprisingly cool for late June, Cake feels solid and good beneath me. I breathe deeply, keep my eyes ahead on the path and on Cake’s ears and the posture of his head. I can’t read his thoughts. I’d almost rather be able to do that than to know so much about my brother. If I could choose, I’d definitely apply the gift to Cake, I decide. Cake probably never thinks about sex. Cake would be thinking about the path, it would be more useful information. Definitely. We’d be an unbeatable team that way.
Mud spatters up on my legs and the rain starts again, a fresh deluge that smells amazing. Though I can hardly see through it, I feel re-energized by it. Calmed. Electrified, but in a good way. I can see tiny rainbows in each drop. Then it stops as quickly as it started. I pull Cake up even more. I don’t want him to slip. It isn’t worth it. I feel him responding. I feel him needing to slow.
There are obstacles coming, I’ve memorized the order — I can see the map unfolding in my mind, like a photograph. And besides, I’ve ridden this course before so I know it pretty well. I’m not surprised by it. Over the first, easy. I exhale; the first is the one I hate most, a jump that ends in a steep downhill so easy for the horses to slide down, especially when it’s wet. Whump, whump, whump, I can feel Cake breathing, the bellows of his lungs against my legs.
The smells are so intensely green. Gorgeous. This is why I ride. Exactly for this feeling, this movement. This ... everything. It’s the sound: hooves against dirt. And smell: the rich air, scented with pine and damp heat. There’s the slight vertigo and the rustle of trees and other horses in the distance. And me. Just me.
I feel safe. I feel like the colours are wrapped around me like my quilt, thick and warm. I’m in love with the moment and the horse under me and the incredible saturation of the whole feeling. I’m ...
I’m just transported, like when I’m singing a song that I love or in a moment just like this when Cake takes over and it feels like a dance. Like something I’ve fallen into, some kind of scene that I’m dissolving into, something that’s pulling me apart. I’m so caught up. I close my eyes. Tight, not just for a second, but for longer. A full minute maybe. It sounds stupid, but it’s true. I’m just ... in myself.
So when it happens, it... Like the fall from the plane, I don’t realize that the falling is real, not just vertigo. I don’t know that I’m actually falling until my eyes pop back open and I see the sky is in the wrong place and the ground and the ground and the sky and the bulk of Cake’s back and another horse thundering down the course, and I think — without really believing it — that I’m maybe still asleep, dreaming, a nightmare (I’ve been having them since the skydive, terrifying images of crashing into the ground) but it isn’t a dream because I can feel wet dirt, tree roots, a handful of grass or leaves, did I grab it? Of course I black out, my head landing so hard that it indents the mud, making a perfect imprint of my helmet in the ground that later, much later, someone will show me a photo of.
AXEL
Chapter 5
AXEL COULD TELL it had happened before it was announced. He could feel it in that same creepy way that Zara once tried to explain to him about how she knew what he was thinking. He’s sitting there next to Maman, Gigi at his feet like, well, like a ventriloquist’s dummy (he could imagine Zara saying that as clearly as if she’d been standing beside him). And then he looks up and all of a sudden there’s a colour, a shape. Then he could have sworn that Zara was standing beside him. Except that wasn’t possible.
Zara, he says. Z?
A, she says (or somehow implies, there is no voice, he just understands it immediately and clearly). I’ve fallen. You’ve got to help me. Cake is freaking out.
She is right there. She is holding her head. Hallucinations like this are not something that happen to him. He’s too sane for that. This is Zara’s nutty territory. This kind of thing happens to hec, not to him. He’s not crazy.
Is he?
Axel, she says. I’m serious. This isn’t about you.
Axel can’t respond, that’s the problem. He is paralyzed. He sees the blood streaming down over her eyes and he gets dizzy. Turns his head just slightly (not enough) and throws up all over the place. (His weak stomach getting him again. Such a weird thing to do, to always be throwing up when things happen. Throwing up like a little girl, that’s what Dad would say. That’s what Dad did say when he was young and used to throw up even more, at every sight of blood, every squeamish event. As though puking was an entirely feminine act.) It’s bad — like he’s turning inside out. Some of it spatters on Gigi’s back, just as she was jumping up to see what was wrong.
Embarrassing.
I can’t believe I did that, he says. I’m so sorry. It’s Zara, Maman. It’s Zara.
His voice rises childishly, like he doesn’t know what to do or how to do it. Butch starts to bark.
At the same minute, same second, of course, there’s the announcement and paramedics running everywhere. People standing and shouting, horses all over, the ones who haven’t gone yet turned back from the start. The confusion seeping through the crowd like spilled ink in water.
Go, says Maman. Go! Vite! Now, I mean it. GO.
Axel runs. Runs down the course like he’s a horse himself, his mane flopping over his forehead. His legs pumping, striated with muscles. So fast. So hard he can feel the ground jarring all the way up his spine. He can feel the evidence of his weak reaction, the wetness of his own vomit on his pants, the dampness rubbing his skin. He doesn’t care. He’s just hurrying, clearing tree roots at a fast gallop.
Everything about everything is all wrong. The trees look like they are reaching out to stop him, like in some kind of horror film or fairy tale. The sky opens up and then out of nowhere a roll of thunder that sounds like the end of everything. Rocks spike up unguarded, how could a horse manoeuvre this? When finally he gets to the place where she’s fallen, Cake is standing over her, like one of Martian’s dogs, not letting the paramedics get close. His eyes are wild, rolling. He’s snorting and stomping. If he were actually a dog, he’d be snarling and slathering. He looks possessed, scary. Why hasn’t someone led him away? He could step on her, crush her.
Her eyes are closed.
Get up already, he says out loud. Get up right now.
Then he reaches for Cake, singing softly, doing what he knows he has to do to get the animal away. Cake shudders visibly under his touch. He blows and huffs. Axel is so afraid that he thinks his heart is going to explode in his chest and he is going to die. He’s more afraid than he was when he leaped from the plane, more afraid than he’s ever been in his life,
more afraid than when he found Maman, or at least as afraid.
The paramedics shift her efficiently onto the backboard and lift her onto the stretcher; wrapping her up like a baby in swaddling clothes. She’s floppy, loose. Like a doll. Then she’s strapped on, limbs bound down, as if there’s a risk that she might start to make a getaway. For a minute, he thinks he sees something hovering around her head, like a swarm of wasps, and then it’s gone.
Is he going crazy?
Before he knows it, the stretcher is carried off down the trail, the paramedics moving quickly but carefully. Shouting back and forth to each other, Careful! To the left! LEFT! Slow up!
And he’s left there in the rain, holding Cake’s lead. From somewhere there is a vet he doesn’t recognize, not their regular one. The man is bald as a bowling ball, rain pouring off his dome and into his eyes so that the poor guy has to continually swipe at his face as though he’s coming up from underwater. He pulls and pushes on the horse, examining the animal’s shaking flank. The rain is pouring off Axel, off Cake, off the vet. Off all three of them like a waterfall. On the ground, there is a fast- dissolving puddle of blood vanishing into the dirt in red rivulets.
Zara’s blood.
He feels crazy inside, as if his brain is whirring like the blades of a helicopter but it doesn’t know where it’s trying to go.
S’okay, says the vet. He looks okay. Shaken up.
Axel nods.
You look a little shaken up yourself, says the vet. Let me take him.
He leads Cake slowly back over the now-abandoned course. By the time they get back to the start, the place is already beginning to clear. Only Gigi is there, huddled in the front seat of the car, windows steamed up. Waiting. Maman has gone on ahead in the ambulance, of course. Gone with Zara.
Finally, the horse back in the trailer, he thanks the vet. Mumbles about the bill, and the vet says, Don’t worry, it’s paid for by the sponsors. I come with the event, this time. Let me know if you need anything else.
Thank you, says Axel. Tears prick his eyes. Thanks. Thanks so much. He knows he’s repeating himself but he can’t help it.
Awkwardly, the vet claps him on the back in a half-hug. Axel stifles a sob, nods, jumps into the car. Then he’s on the road, Gigi in the seat next to him. She has never felt as much like a stranger as she does right now.
She reaches forward, turns up the radio. I love this song, she says.
Huh, he says. I’m not really in the mood for it.
He shuts the radio off and she winces, like he’s struck her. Looks out the window, chin trembling. Why is she crying? None of this is about her.
Sorry, he sighs.
He concentrates on driving carefully. After all, he has to get Cake home before he can go up to the hospital, before he can know what happened. He turns the radio back on, too loud, to a rock station he’d never normally listen to. He feels like he has to drown everything out.
Gigi looks at him funny, curls her legs under herself as if to protect herself from the sound. Boy, he’s mad at her. Beyond what’s rational. He wants her to go away. He wants her to have never been there to begin with.
His phone buzzes in his pocket. It’s Maman, from the hospital. Her voice crackles with emotion.
She’s going to be okay, Maman says. She’s okay.
He bursts into tears. He’s embarrassed but he isn’t. Gigi is almost invisible to him, faded into the upholstery of the seat. He punches the dashboard. Okay, he says. Okay.
I called your daddy, Maman says. He’s coming over, okay? He’s coming home.
I’m trying to drive, Maman. I can’t talk and drive at the same time. It’s too dangerous. I’ll be there as soon as I can.
He flips the phone closed and presses it against his forehead, driving with one hand. He’s only been driving for six months and it still feels like he’s pretending to know how, though he feels like that about so much of his life that the surrealism of his actions is starting to feel normal.
Wow, says Gigi. Great news.
He’d forgotten she was there, like he’d willed her gone and so she was. That’s the thing with her: she just sort of fades when you’re not looking right at her. Like a hologram that’s only active when you look at it full on. Maybe that’s why he likes her, he thinks, he somehow doesn’t have to notice her. And it’s nothing to do with her, not really. She’d probably like it if he did nothing but stare at her, but he can opt out. He can tune her out. Not like Zara who he has to notice all the time. Because she’s always too close. With an opinion that has to win out over his, no matter what. Gigi — and it feels like an awful thing to even think — is willing to let him opine, let him ignore her, let him be. Because — and this is the part that makes him hesitate a bit — because she likes him so much more than he likes her. It’s how the balance works. He doesn’t have to care. She’s too afraid to demand his focus, unlike Zara who demands and demands and ...
Then he feels guilty right away for thinking of his sister like that; she could have died, he figures. Could have broken her neck. Her back. Her skull.
But no.
She has a concussion. She’s okay. She’ll be okay.
So maybe he’s free to think mean things, after all. Not that she knows what he’s thinking. Well, at least not when she’s not looking at him.
She’ll be okay, says Gigi. Fabu. So cheer up already.
I know, he snaps. I know. I’m just... it’s just...
I totally get it, she says. I’m not stupid you know.
I know, he says. You don’t have a twin, though. You don’t know what it’s like.
Guess not, she says. How could I? I have a sister, though, so I could kind of guess. If anything happened to her, I’d be totally broken up about it.
Yeah, he says. You don’t know.
The rain spatters hard off the windshield. He has to turn the wipers up all the way to get enough of a clearing to see through, so he can see his way home through the storm.
SIN
Chapter 6
SOMEONE HAS TO be the first one to say it, so it might as well be you. Why not? You aren’t afraid to. Yet, you are. You would never say it out loud, certainly not to Zara. Even voicing it to yourself makes it seem both more sad and more true. It’s just that since the accident, Zara has changed. And not just a little bit, either. Seriously changed. Transformed. Become someone else. She’s not Zara-with-a- headache. She just isn’t Zara anymore. Except for the new hollows under her eyes and the firm set of her mouth, she looks mostly the same — but even this isn’t quite accurate. Something is altogether different and darker about her appearance — and her personality has become elusive. It’s not that she seems depressed, not exactly. Or angry. Or sullen. It’s just that she’s ... she’s not light now, for one thing. Not her fun, easygoing self. She’s heavy, dense, impermeable as lead. In fact, she’s changed so much, you hardly know how to be around her. You feel like you don’t know how to act and that’s certainly never happened with Zara before. With other people, sure. But never Zara.
You call her and put on your best German accent.
Vat are you doink? you say.
Nothing, she says. I mean, I’m busy, I’ll call you back.
You call her right back and say in a Scottish burr, Lassie, what’s wrong with you child? You wouldn’t be hanging up on your best mate?
She hangs up.
Bitch, you say to the dial tone, and then feel awful about it. After all, she’s the one who could have died. Not you. You weren’t even there. Maybe if you had been, the timing would all somehow have been incrementally different. Just maybe by being there, she would have been a few seconds extra getting to that corner, Cake would have been a few paces faster or slower, and the whole thing might not have happened at all.
Not that you can blame yourself. Well, you can. But you won’t. It’s not your fault.
You just miss her. It’s as simple as that. But when you do see her, like yesterday when you went for a walk and hung out fo
r a while at the beach, it just didn’t click the way you and her have always clicked. It felt awkward. You felt like you were trying too hard. And she ... well, it felt like she wasn’t. It felt like she didn’t care. That’s the part you can’t get past. Like she was putting in time with you but really wanted to be somewhere else.
Anywhere else.
Or maybe it’s you who has changed.
You have changed, after all.
In fact, you have big news.
Last night, for the first time, you did it with Hamster. It.
This makes you grin and feel sick and feel strange in the pit of your stomach. You both liked it and you didn’t like it. You
feel different. You feel invulnerable in a strangely ironic way. Like now you are an adult and all the stuff of your childhood, including Zara, maybe those are things that are behind you now. Things that used to be you but now aren’t you because you are a woman. Possibly the cheesiest thought you’ve ever entertained but still somehow inherently true. You, Sin (Cynthia) Louise Beacham, are no longer a virgin. The experience itself suffered from the surrealism of the fact that you’d had a few drinks of beer and were dizzy and sleepy. Which was probably better because it blurred the image of Hamster’s puffing and sweating and turned him into something slightly closer to Tobey Maguire. Certainly, it obfuscated his acne.
It wasn’t even anything to do with him that made you like it. It was you. It was really in spite of the fact that you are coming to terms with the idea that it’s okay that you don’t like him. That you aren’t obligated to like everyone who likes you, just because you are fat. You don’t have to be grateful.
Even though, at one point, when he was jamming away at you, you got this really funny and inappropriate mental image of a pin jabbing away at a balloon and you were the balloon. Pop. It was all you could do not to laugh.