Even Weirder Than Before

by Susie Taylor

  A police car pulls up after a few minutes, and Jude, to my surprise, walks right up to it and says, “Hello Officer.”

  She has clicked into Cadet mode, and I think for a minute she might salute, but she doesn’t. She calmly explains our situation. By the time Mr. Jackman comes over, the police have all the details.

  I just stand beside her, stamping my feet.

  “Rough weather for a field trip?” the cop says in an accusatory manner to Mr. Jackman.

  “Caught us by surprise, I’m afraid.”

  “Did you not hear the reports? We gotta get these kids off the road before the plow comes. Can they wait on the bus?” There is now about five centimetres of snow on the ground. And it is accumulating quickly. The officer looks toward the bus, and smoke slowly streams from the open door.

  “Requesting Fire and Emergency,” he says into his radio. “Get these kids on the other side of that ditch now! Away from the bus.”

  The snow is up to our ankles on the other side of the ditch, and we stand there for a good half hour getting colder. A fire truck and ambulance come, and despite the fact several guys from our class keeping yelling “She’s gonna blow!” nothing happens. It’s exciting, and then it is just cold.

  Eventually, a second cop car comes and ferries us four at a time to the highway McDonald’s five minutes down from where we are. Jude and I are in the first car, and Jude sits up front with the cop and asks him a million dorky questions. I keep expecting her to say, “Can I see your gun?”

  “That was so cool.” Jude is enjoying all of this. It turns out she has not one, but two extra pairs of woolly socks in her backpack, and I am so grateful to be able to pull one of these pairs on that I don’t argue with her about the dangers of a police state.

  “Have you ever read 1984?” I ask.

  “No, we do that in grade ten, don’t we?”

  We share a shake and fries, and make them last longer by dipping the salty fries into the sweet icy drink. It takes two hours for a new bus to come and take us back to school. Our field trip is officially cancelled.

  There are advertisements for the Valentine’s roses that the student council sells stuck to all of our lockers. I watch a couple of the grade thirteens walking hand in hand down the hallway. It’s lunch, two days before Valentine’s Day, and we are hanging out here in the hallway. None of us are eating, only sipping cans of warm coke we got from the machine. Its refrigeration system isn’t working right.

  “I’m so sick of being fourteen,” I say.

  “Even in all the books, if something happens to you before sixteen, really it happens to your parents—they die, or get in a car accident, or split up,” Jude explains.

  “What about Romeo and Juliet? Juliet’s only thirteen.” “That’s not a real book,” says Jude. “That’s Shakespeare.” Steve walks by us. He has a curly mass of hair on his head and wears plaid jackets and motorcycle boots. “Wanda,” he says. “Wanda’s friends.” He nods at me and Jude. He continues down the hall. At the last locker before the corner, he pulls a pair of drum sticks out of his back pocket, plays a small drum roll on a metal locker, then disappears around the corner.

  “There is no one at this school I find even vaguely attractive,” says Wanda.

  “I still think Damon is good-looking,” I say.

  “You’re wasting your time with him. Rebel guys always date boring chicks. Have you seen The Breakfast Club? Cool chick gets boring guy; popular boring girl gets cool guy. It’s how it goes. That’s why I like Cadets. When everyone’s in uniform, no one knows how rich your parents are or if you have cool clothes,” Jude unhelpfully tells me.

  “I don’t think Morrissey is into the military?” I say.

  “He just doesn’t understand it. It’s easy to say you’re a pacifist until you’re at war.”

  Wanda rolls her eyes.

  Mum is getting ready for a date and I’m getting ready to babysit Millie. Mum borrows my lipstick, puts it on, takes it off.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just to the movies. It’s a documentary about sweatshops.”

  “Romantic.”

  “It just happens that it’s playing today. Grahame and I are too old for all this Cupid nonsense.”

  I open the door, and Grahame is wearing a suit and holding a red rose.

  I bring a bag of milk-chocolate hearts to the Jones house. Millie hands me a card as soon as I get there. It is a large red heart with bits of cut-up paper doily stuck on with generous amounts of glue.

  “That card is bigger than the one I got,” Damon complains to Millie.

  Millie is hyped up on candy, and when her mom sees the chocolate hearts, she tells me I shouldn’t have. “Really, you shouldn’t have.” Millie is red lipped and cinnamon scented. She is spinning round and round until she falls on the floor, dizzy.

  Mrs. Jones barks instructions. “Damon, home by nine, it’s not the weekend—and Cora, not much later for you. Daisy, we won’t be much after nine.”

  I’m in the kitchen trying to get ice cream out of a too-frozen container for Millie when the doorbell rings. I can see through to the front entrance from where I am. Mr. Jones answers it and shakes Crystal’s hand.

  “So nice to meet you,” Crystal says.

  “Likewise, I’m sure. I’ll go find Damon for you. You’ll look after him tonight?”

  “Of course, Mr. Jones.” Her laugh tinkles.

  Crystal is wearing a pair of jeans and one of those one-pieces where the top is attached to flaps that you secure between your legs. You can tell by how seamlessly the fabric stretches flat and disappears into her waistband. She’s probably not wearing underwear. Crystal hooks her thumb into one of her belt loops and leans her other hip and elbow against the wall while she waits for Damon. I feel my own jeans cutting into my stomach and become aware of the flesh hanging over my waistband. Crystal isn’t wearing a belt, and her jeans look like they could slip right off.

  Damon hands Crystal a heart-shaped box of chocolates, and she leans in and kisses him on the cheek. It hurts to watch this. They leave the house holding hands. I spoon some of the ice cream into my mouth. It is not satisfying.

  Cora doesn’t emerge from her bedroom until her parents have left.

  She’s wearing a red dress.

  “I can see almost all your boobies!” Millie tells her.

  “You look great,” I say, imagining myself a few years in the future wearing something sexy.

  Cora waits, watching Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown on the TV with me and Millie. Ten minutes in she moves to the window and stares outside. The phone rings at the end of the special. Cora runs to answer it in the kitchen. I hear her slam the phone down and retreat to her room.

  Crystal’s parents drop Damon off, and he comes in and blushes when Millie makes kissy faces at him. The phone rings and he picks it up and says, “Hello,” but obviously no one answers at the other end. It rings again and he answers saying, “What do you want?”

  “Is Cora home?” he asks me. Damon knocks on Cora’s door and I hear muffled voices.

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you,” he says into the phone.

  twelve

  It is the first weekend of March Break and I have no plans. It’s one of those bad weekends. I feel the time I have to fill up like a weight pressing down on me. I am relieved when Mrs. Jones calls and asks if I can take Millie out for a few hours on Saturday afternoon. She asks me in those hushed tones that imply something very bad has happened, and I wonder if Mr. Jones has cancer. And then I wonder if he’s moving out like my father.

  Usually the Jones home is full of conflicting radios and shouted conversations. On the weekends it smells like sawdust as Mr. Jones hammers and saws in whichever room he is improving. Not today. I get to the house, and everyone says hello like everything is normal, but obviously it isn’t. Mr. Jones and Damon are sitting at the kitchen table with separate sections of the newspaper in front of them. Neither of them speaks to me as Mrs. Jones goes to get
Millie. Cora’s jacket is slung over the back of a kitchen chair, but she doesn’t come out to chat while I wait. When the whistle on the kettle goes, I jump at the loud intrusion.

  “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go.”

  “You’ll have a good time,” commands Mrs. Jones. “Back by three, okay, Daisy?” Mrs. Jones is all business. I have instructions to take Millie to the plaza where she can buy a treat from the toy store, and then we should get ice cream.

  The weather’s not bad, but it is still cold. Millie walks slowly. She is halfway through telling me a complicated story involving a class trip, on which they made bird feeders out of pine cones and peanut butter. She interjects, “I’m going to be an aunt.”

  “In a play at school?” I imagine her dressed in a costume made of three round, padded sections with a doodle bopper on her head, her and her grade three classmates carrying an enormous foam sandwich away from a checkered picnic blanket.

  “A real aunt. It will be like having a little sister, only better. My Aunt Carol has a dog. Are you an aunt?”

  “Who told you you were going to be an aunt?”

  “Cora did. She’s going to be a mommy and call her kid Wolfgang if it’s a boy and Roxanne if it’s a girl. Then it can be Roxie for short.”

  “You mean, when she’s grown up?”

  “No, next year sometime.”

  I’m walking to school the first day back after the break; there’s been a thaw and the snow has all melted. I hear the familiar wheels of Damon coming up behind me. I’m preparing for our usual exchange of half waves, but instead I hear the click-clack of the board being flicked up, and Damon is walking beside me. My face flushes red; luckily, he doesn’t actually look at me, just gets in step beside me.

  “Did Millie tell you about Cora?”

  “Sort of, is she really pregnant?”

  “Yeah, she is.”

  “Is she going to keep the baby?”

  “She says so.”

  “I think Cora’s really brave.”

  “I think she’s really fucking stupid.” Damon puts down his board and zooms away. I feel like I’m going to cry. This was my chance and I’ve messed it up. As he hits the corner, Damon raises his hand and waves goodbye, and this, somehow, makes it okay again.

  In May, Cora starts to show. I couldn’t tell she was pregnant if I didn’t know, but there is definitely a change in her shape.

  On Friday at school, Wanda and I walk down the hall together. One of the senior girls is holding a paper bag of sugar dressed in overalls and wearing a white lace bonnet. The grade twelve Family Studies class is doing a project, where for three weeks, they pretend a bag of sugar is a baby.

  “Take good care of Sweetie.” The girl kisses the bag before handing it and a diaper bag over to her fake husband. Miss Cook, the Family Studies teacher, stops to admire the dressed-up bag. She is cooing at it when she catches sight of Cora just down the hall.

  “So who’s looking after your baby this morning?” she calls down to her. Cora doesn’t turn, she pretends not to hear. Wanda and I stop when we get to Cora and lean against the opposite side of the hallway waiting for her to finish gathering her stuff. I see Cora’s sugar baby suffocating inside a plastic bag up on the top shelf. Cora reaches up and shoves the bag back, but her locker is full, and instead of settling to the back of the shelf, the bag turns sideways. A trickle of sugar streams to the floor; she must have punctured the bag when she was trying to force it further back.

  “Fuck,” she mutters. She closes her locker door, but she doesn’t get the lock on in time. When she turns to acknowledge me and Wanda, Miss Cook has descended and is standing between us, right behind Cora. She stands staring at the small pile of granules that have accumulated outside of Cora’s locker. Then she reaches out and swings open the grey metallic door.

  “I’m surprised at you, Cora. This is a serious project. A baby would be dead if you treated it like that.”

  “It’s a bag of sugar.”

  “It’s not just a bag of sugar. It’s a baby. Your baby, and look how you’re treating it.”

  “My baby is in my fucking womb,” Cora says to her.

  Miss Cook’s eyes travel down to Cora’s belly. “Office,” she says. Cora slams her locker shut, but follows Miss Cook down the hall.

  “Is she really pregnant?” Wanda asks me.

  “I…” This doesn’t feel like my news to tell.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

  By the time my birthday arrives, everyone knows Cora is pregnant, even my mother. I didn’t tell her, but Mrs. Jones did.

  Mum pushes open my bedroom door, humming “Happy Birthday.”

  “You’re sure it’s okay if Grahame comes with us for dinner tonight?” she says.

  “I’m sure.” This must be the hundredth time she has asked me.

  “Daise.” I know this tone. I’m still wiping sleep from my eyes and sitting up.

  “What?”

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Cora and…” I close my eyes and pull the covers over my face. “I brought you these.” She places a box of condoms on the bed.

  “You’re too young to use them. Understand? Don’t use them.”

  “It’s too early for this. Can we talk about something else?”

  “Daisy, I just need you to say you understand.”

  “I understand,” I say, and she hands me a bunch of cards. The cardboard package of prophylactics remains lying on the bed, where I do my best to ignore it. There are cards from Mum, Elizabeth, my grandparents, and two of my aunts. Nothing from Dad.

  “Who’s coming on Friday for the sleepover?”

  “It’s not a sleepover. That makes me sound like I’m ten. We’re just hanging out, and it’s only Jude and Wanda.”

  “Did you invite Cathy?”

  “No.”

  “I saw her mom at work the other day. She was asking after you. It is up to you, but you might regret it if you don’t ask her. You don’t want to hurt her feelings, do you?”

  At school Wanda gives me a card she has made. There is a daisy with a yellow centre, with white petals around the outside; one of the petals is being pulled away and drips of red, like blood, fall from it. Around the outside of the card, she has written he loves me, he loves me not. And inside it says 15! SEX, DRUGS, ROCK-N-ROLL.

  I’m telling her about the horror of being presented with a box of condoms at 7:30 a.m. when I see Cathy walking down the hall.

  “Hang on,” I tell Wanda, and I run down to catch up with her.

  “You didn’t invite her? Did you?” Wanda asks when I get back.

  Grahame is a vegetarian. He eats a bean burrito and Mum and I get steak fajitas for two. Mum lets me take sips from her margarita. The salt around the rim of her glass doesn’t last long. Grahame doesn’t ask me about school; he asks about what books I’m reading and what I think of Joni Mitchell. Mum orders another margarita.

  Grahame drops us off at home. Mum gives me her keys and sends me in the house first. I don’t turn on the hall light as I sneak into the living room. From the window I see Grahame lean over and kiss Mum in the car.

  Wanda bats an inflated condom in the air above her head. In honour of my birthday, Mum has absented herself from the house. Cathy can’t stay the night because it’s her youth group’s day at the food bank tomorrow, but she has joined me, Jude, and Wanda for the early part of the evening.

  “I’m just saying. She had options. She didn’t have to decide to keep the baby. I’d have an abortion if I was her,” Wanda says.

  “Abortion is murder,” Cathy interjects.

  “Jesus, Cathy,” says Wanda.

  “Who’s the father anyway?” Jude says, and Wanda cocks her eyebrow at me. I had told her about seeing Mr. Dean pulling out of the Joneses’ driveway, but that was in the strictest confidence.

  “No one knows,” I say.

  “I guess there’s adoption. She could give it up for adoption, that’s the only other mo
ral thing she could do,” Cathy persists.

  I see the twitch in Wanda’s eyebrow, and Jude must see it too because she gets up and snatches the condom out of the air above Wanda and then slams it down hard. It bounces off of Wanda’s skull.

  “Hey.” Wanda gets up and grabs the condom, and they bat it back and forth. It comes my way, and I jump on my bed and hit it towards Cathy, who, still seated, hits it away from her. Wanda catches it and lobs it up. It hits my ceiling lamp and bursts.

  “Condom failure,” Jude says deadpan, and even Cathy laughs. “I brought my Ouija board, do you want to play?” Jude says.

  “No, it’s too dangerous,” Cathy says. “I heard about a bunch of kids playing it at a sleepover in the States. It didn’t seem like anything had happened when they were playing. They thought they were just fooling around. That night, one of the girls suffocated four girls to death with her pillow. The fifth woke up in time and managed to push her away. The one who killed them didn’t remember any of it. They think she was possessed. Both her and the girl that survived ended up in a mental institution. The girl that survived the attack ended up killing herself. She hung herself with a bed sheet, and the murderer girl, she cut off her own tongue with a pair of scissors.”

  Wanda lies on the floor, grabs her pillow and puts it over her face and flails her arms, then slowly stops and lies still, her arm stretched out limp on either side of her.

  “What about the falling game then?” Jude ignores Wanda’s performance.

  “That’s not the same as Light as a Feather, when you pretend you’re dead?” asks Cathy.

  “No, it’s just a trust exercise. We do it at Cadets.”

  “Okay,” Cathy agrees.

  We go downstairs; there’s not enough room to play in my bedroom. We dim the lights and move the coffee table away from the middle of the room. I stand in front of Jude. I am supposed to keep myself stiff and fall backwards, and trust that Jude will catch me.

  “Close your eyes, Daisy, I’ll count to three, then you just fall back. I’ll catch you. One, two, three,” Jude says.