I saw Joe looking at the playlist on my iPod. I wanted to yell out the window and tell him to keep his paws off my music, but I knew he’d never be able to hear.
Several girls were sitting on the edge of the pool, kicking water at a group of boys. There were kids on the lawn chairs and kids sprawled out on towels in the grass. Sherlock was sneaking through the crowd, licking any ears he could find. I couldn’t believe so many kids had come to my party.
I looked back at the pool. Kyle was in the shallow end, floating on a pool noodle and talking to Aliya. He looked up and saw me in the window. He smiled, then waved. Aliya looked up too.
“Come on in!” Aliya shouted.
I nodded, but I didn’t move right away. I couldn’t. I felt flooded with so much happiness I didn’t want to miss a drop. It was like a fire hose had been suddenly turned on and was filling me to the top.
Kyle looked up again.
“Hurry up!” he yelled.
I waved and called out, “I’m coming.”
That’s when I remembered the guy who’d hanged himself at Halloween. I remembered thinking at the time that he’d had a good reason and suddenly I couldn’t believe such a thought had actually crossed my mind. There’s no good reason to miss the rest of your life, I realized. I also thought about the legless girl and the faceless boy. When they’d talked about being filled with happiness and finding purpose in their lives, I couldn’t grasp it at the time. I couldn’t begin to understand how they managed to feel happy when they had to live without parts of their bodies and the knowledge that they had failed so miserably in trying to kill themselves. But suddenly, with the warm summer air drifting in through the window and the sounds of a party going on outside, my party, I felt so attached to everyone that I glimpsed their meaning, ever so briefly. I understood that they didn’t see it as failure but as a second chance, that they had been spared, had been given the gift to live on. The understanding was fleeting, but in a part of a second, a sliver of time, I felt connected to the kids outside, to my neighbourhood, to the city, to the world. I felt like I belonged to the kids outside my house, to my teachers, to my parents, to the people I didn’t even know but who I saw every day, like the man who drove the bus I took to school. I tried to think if I’d ever said hello to him or offered him a smile. I couldn’t picture his face and yet I’d ridden the same bus for almost three years.
I crossed the hall and looked around my bedroom. It looked happy and inviting with the sunshine flooding in through the window. I loved the new comforter Mom had bought at one of her sales. It was white with giant blue, pink, and lime-green circles. She’d bought new pillows to go with it too. My math binder was lying on my desk, but I already knew the list was gone. I checked when I first got home. Thanks to Kyle, math was the only class I managed to pass. But I knew it didn’t matter, I had the summer to make up the other classes so I could still graduate with everyone next year. I looked at myself in the mirror and took off my T-shirt and shorts. I did look good in my bathing suit. It was a one-piece, not a bikini like the other girls were wearing, but still, I realized, I looked fit and tanned.
For a moment I just wanted to stretch out on my bed and listen to the commotion going on outside, but then I heard Joe calling my name. I knew he wanted to change the music and there was no way he was going to put on his crappy rap music and ruin my party.
“Coming!” I shouted as loud as I could, “Joe! Don’t you dare touch my iPod.”
I twisted the ring on my finger — Granny’s ring that Joe had rescued for me and Dad took to get resized. Whenever I felt it I knew Granny and Gramps were watching me from somewhere and cheering me on, that they wanted me to live. I looked up and smiled. Then I raced down the stairs and headed straight for the pool.
Copyright © Christina Kilbourne, 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
All characters in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Editor: Cheryl Hawley
Design: Courtney Horner
Cover design: Sarah Beaudin
Cover image: vectorarts/iStock
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Kilbourne, Christina, 1967-, author
Detached / Christina Kilbourne.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-3431-9 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-4597-3432-6 (pdf).--
ISBN 978-1-4597-3433-3 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8571.I476D48 2016 jC813’.6 C2015-907490-8
C2015-907491-6
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