“Was it—” I started, almost choking.
“Oh!” Taylor said with a jolt of realization that made me hate her intensely. How could it not have occurred to her what I would think? Was she being thoughtless or was everyone that sure that I knew where Chloe was?
“No! Jenny, it wasn’t her,” Taylor said. “My brother’s a cop, and he came in this morning so I asked him who it was. It was actually this other girl who went here.”
“Who?” I asked, mentally running through the faces of all the girls who shared this building with me. Which one was gone?
“Some girl named Helen,” Taylor said with a shrug, her eyes flicking over my shoulder. She was probably aware of how many people were staring at me. People seemed to assume that they could divine Chloe’s whereabouts from my appearance.
“I don’t know her,” I said.
“Well, you know, she lived on the reserve,” Taylor said, as if that explained everything. In a way, it did. I didn’t have any friends on the Native reserve. It was a patch of houses in the woods, about twelve miles out of town, and there was no reason to go there, unless you wanted cheap cigarettes. It was where all of the parents in my neighborhood got theirs, my mom included. They sat on top of our microwave in a large, translucent bag that would last her three weeks so long as she wasn’t working doubles.
“How did she die?” I asked.
“All my brother would say was that someone killed her…someone really twisted,” Taylor said.
I felt a chill steal over my spine. Things like that didn’t usually happen in Thunder Creek, and it seemed unlikely that this would be the year of coincidences. We didn’t have a lot of murders, and when they did occur they were much more personal. People were killed in bar fights, in domestic disputes and on hunting trips where the perpetrators could claim that it was an accident. Admittedly, the hunting defense was a stretch when the friend was three feet away and wearing a bright orange vest. Thunder Creek had an extremely low rate of murder but an extremely high rate of hunting accidents.
“First Chloe? Then this? I mean…,” Taylor said, encouraged by my sudden interest. “Do you think maybe this guy also got Chloe and—”
“I have to go to class,” I interrupted, my heart contracting at the casual way Taylor mentioned Chloe’s name.
I dodged past her and walked quickly down the hall. Taylor had always been more interested in a story than the people involved. In the excitement of someone reaching out to me, I had almost forgotten how badly she’d treated Chloe. I felt disloyal just thinking about it.
“What? Wait, Jenny? No…,” Taylor called out, but I was already gone.
—
The school suddenly felt overheated, as if the building was closing in on me. Pressure built in my head and I took shallow breaths, forcing the air through the crumpled cage of my ribs.
I walked down the hall as fast as I could without breaking into a run, my ski jacket making a scratching noise as I swung my arms. I tried to focus on the door instead of the sick feeling washing over me. When had this become my life?
I burst out of a back door by the cafeteria, stumbling as I crunched down into the shin-high snow. Dropping my ski jacket on the ground, I let the cold air begin to dissipate the heat raging under my skin. I stared up at the sky and tried to calm my racing heart.
The bell rang. Class had started, but I had no intention of going back inside. I’d never realized how intolerable school could be until Chloe was gone. We had always complained about school, about the people we knew, the town we lived in, but being alone made everything seem so much worse.
That Helen girl. I wondered if her parents knew yet. I hoped so, because it made me queasy to think I might have heard about her death before they did. I didn’t need any more secrets.
Suddenly, the door swung open and a guy hopped out into the snow. He wasn’t wearing outdoor clothing, just a black sweater, jeans and Converse. I glanced at his face, meeting dark eyes half-obscured by thick eyebrows and a head of rumpled light brown hair.
It was Tom Grey. I averted my eyes because I didn’t really know him. He was only a grade above me but I had never said a word to him. Tom had moved here from Vancouver when I was in seventh grade. Our class had been a grade seven/eight split, an arrangement that resulted in students running wild and the teacher taking early retirement.
I could remember the first day he’d walked in and flopped down at a desk in the back row. Tom hadn’t bothered to scope out the other people and figure out where he belonged. The sulk on his face made it pretty clear that he didn’t want to fit in here. He had spent the whole year in the back, slouched down in an uncomfortable position. It was always a shock when he stood up and you remembered that he was a head taller than everyone else.
We heard that he’d been sent to live with his dad in Thunder Creek after he started getting into trouble in Vancouver. Everyone had their own theories, but most people assumed it had been drugs that landed him here. It didn’t escape me that living in my hometown had been his punishment.
I barely saw Tom in high school. He skipped most classes and was so unresponsive that the teachers had to conceal their disappointment when he did show up. He hung out with the dirtbags, kids who stood in the parking lot smoking and heckling the freshmen who scurried by. Still, compared to a bland person like me, Tom had a certain mystique…even if he did have an unmistakable “lone school shooter” vibe.
“Hey,” Tom said. I snuck a glance at him. He was lighting a cigarette, his hands already turning pink from the cold.
“Hey,” I said.
“You’re Jenny, right?” Tom asked. His voice was nice, a warm tenor that was smoother than I would have expected from a smoker.
“Yeah,” I said, looking back up at him. I was leaning against the wall, my back pressed against the frozen bricks. He leaned next to me, facing the forest as he exhaled a ribbon of smoke.
“Why are you here?” he asked bluntly. I tensed up and turned to leave, but I felt his hand gently grab my shoulder. “No, wait. I just meant this is a random place to hang out,” he said in a rush. It was surreal to hear him apologize, to say anything nice. He was more awkward than I would have expected.
“I don’t know,” I said, turning my head to look at him in profile. Tom had high cheekbones and his cigarette rested on full lips. He had an angular face with the bright, alert eyes of a crow. I had never noticed how attractive he was, never even made eye contact with him before. I could almost hear Chloe whispering in my ear: “Tom Grey! He’s a hottie. Total weirdo but, you know, that can change.” I felt an ache in my heart as I tried to remember if I had ever actually heard her say that. It was more likely that I knew Chloe so well that I could apply her memory to any situation and generate a result. Forget about checking in with Jesus; I seemed to unconsciously ask, “What would Chloe do?”
“I guess…I just got sick of being around so many people,” I said finally. He nodded and we stood there, idly watching a middle-aged man jog down the bike path in winter gear, his labored breathing creating white puffs in the air.
“What about you?” I asked.
“Ah, no real reason,” Tom said, smiling slightly and ducking his head. He looked up at me through his shaggy hair and I felt myself involuntarily smile back. It was like he was sharing a secret with me even though he hadn’t said much of anything. “I have drama and it’s the week everyone has to perform a monologue they wrote. It’s pretty lame. The low point was yesterday when Marie Bouchette started dancing around the stage with a sunflower.”
“Ouch,” I said sympathetically.
Marie was overweight and had bushy eyebrows, but she was sure that someday she would be a star, and that belief left her puffed up with confidence in her own evolution. Her self-esteem was admirable, but I secretly hated her for believing her destiny was somehow more special than mine. As if she would look back on these years someday as the difficult times, whereas I was supposed to treasure my mediocre youth. Chloe had openly mocked
her, but I knew it was because they shared a dream. Chloe was always threatened by the idea that someone near her might hijack her success story. It must have comforted her to have a best friend like me, someone with such low expectations for the future.
“Yeah, I couldn’t face it today,” Tom said. “So, what’s the plan now?”
“I dunno,” I said. “I’m not going back to class. I guess I’ll just kill time until I can go home,” I finished lamely, unable to think of a single thing I could do.
“Want to kill time together?” Tom asked, smiling broadly at me. I bit my lip, momentarily thrown off by this random turn of events.
“Yeah, okay,” I said, grabbing my jacket and folding it over my arm. We set off toward the parking lot, our feet sinking into the hard-edged crust of snow.
I had been trying to find a way to fill the days since Chloe disappeared. The last three weeks had inched along, each day a little harder to get through than the next. Maybe Tom Grey could help.
Chapter Three
It would have been cool to climb into Tom’s old truck and drive right out of Thunder Creek. We could have headed to Toronto, or Ottawa, or at least to Sudbury, which had the big movie theater and a Starbucks. But we didn’t. We drove up Carswell Hill on the edge of town, to the old monastery.
I understood why they would put a monastery there. There was nothing in Thunder Creek to distract you from praying. But the monastery had been closed years ago and sold to the technical college in town. The building was empty now, used only for storage.
Tom parked the truck and we sat there with the heat of the cab draped around our shoulders. The warm air contrasted sharply with the chill that pressed against the windows, begging to be let in. I watched him unroll his window and felt the cold air strike my face, a late winter sting on my skin.
Tom reached into the glove compartment, his arm brushing my knee as he tried to stop old CDs and papers from falling out. I could see a scar on the top of his scalp, a shiny patch of pink skin in chestnut hair.
He pulled out an Altoids mint case and opened it up to reveal pot, already ground. I looked away, shy in front of this guy I barely knew and his own personal stash. I had smoked pot a few times before, but Chloe had always been there. She was the constant variable, even if she was just part of the group at a party filling the air with the sickly sweet but sour smell of weed.
People in Thunder Creek smoked a lot of pot. It wasn’t uncommon for parents to get high with their teenage children, curled up in the safety of their own living rooms. I had even been to parties where mothers sat by campfires, passing joints to their teenage children’s friends. They were usually mothers who’d had children early and were now determined to live their forties like they wished they had lived their twenties. My own mother had been young too, but she wasn’t like the party moms with their Walmart tube tops and Donald Duck tattoos. My mom rarely drank, and her idea of a great night was a Danielle Steel novel and a bowl of popcorn.
Weed was the perfect drug for Thunder Creek. It restricted your desires to things that even Northern Ontario could provide: snacks, funny movies, good conversation. Pot forced you to forget the world beyond what you could see in order to appreciate what you had. Sometimes it was difficult to grow up in such an isolated city, surrounded by nothing but hundreds of miles of forest. Pot helped you forget about your secret list of hopeless dreams.
I wasn’t even sure if I liked getting high. Chloe did, if only because she thought we needed to do it to get high school right. It was as if Chloe had a mental to-do list, gleaned from teen movies, senior stories and her own beliefs about what she wanted to remember in the future. But now she was gone and I didn’t know what I wanted to remember from high school…maybe none of it.
Tom got a pipe and a lighter from the back pocket of the car seat and packed the bowl. I watched him light up, the green clumps flashing red before curling into blackened rinds. He swallowed the smoke, involuntarily tipping his chin into his chest, before finally, with one wheezy cough, exhaling out the open window.
“Here,” Tom said, passing the pipe to me. “You smoke, right?”
“A bit,” I said, lighting up and inhaling. I felt warmth curl in my chest. The smoke made me aware of my lungs and how the space inside my rib cage could stretch. I didn’t hold it as long as Tom, but I could already feel tiny bubbles of space appear in my mind. “How did you know I smoked?” I asked.
“I saw you at a party last Halloween. You and Chloe,” Tom said, staring out the window as he lit up again.
“Oh,” I said. “I don’t remember seeing you there.”
Tom smiled at me, his lips sealed shut to keep the smoke back. I felt something inside of me squirm as we made eye contact. I couldn’t tell if it was the pot or something more personal.
“Well, you guys were always so together. Not like…together,” he said, rushing to explain. “It just felt like you didn’t have time for other people.” I took the pipe from him and lit up again, trying to distract myself from how much I hated my life right now.
“I don’t want to talk about her,” I said finally. “I’m sorry, it’s not anything you said. I just…can’t.”
“Let’s just chill then,” Tom said, his voice slow and stoned. “No talking required.” It occurred to me that Tom’s bad reputation might be caused by social awkwardness rather than any real urge to rebel. One-on-one, he seemed more comfortable, and I wondered if, like me, he felt consumed by the chaotic crowds at school.
We sat there and stared out at the view, at Thunder Creek lying at our feet. I felt bundled up in the high, as if it was sitting on top of my ski jacket, making me feel untouchable. I breathed slowly, wondering if it would get better from now on, or if it could only get worse.
—
We left when dusk wafted across the valley. It was almost five o’clock—it surprised me when I realized that I had spent the whole day with Tom.
As he drove me to my car, I began to feel the day trickle back into my consciousness. Shamefully, it was the first time I remembered the news about the dead body and what it might mean.
“Did you…did you hear about the girl the cops found?” I asked hesitantly, staring out at the gray-blue dusk.
“No…what was she doing?” Tom asked, frowning at the road. He was probably imagining the gossipy sex stories teenagers traded like currency. The stories always involved household products used for twisted purposes or people catching others going at it. I didn’t tell those stories anymore.
“She was dead. They found her this morning in the woods,” I said. Tom whistled but didn’t look particularly concerned. Likely, he was still stoned. He had kept smoking long after I had stopped. I hoped he was okay to drive, but I didn’t know how to raise the issue without looking supremely uncool.
“Huh. Who was she?”
“I didn’t know her. She was from the reserve. Her name was Helen,” I said, my sentences awkwardly parsed. I was talking about Helen but my thoughts were consumed by the realization that yet another girl from Thunder Creek wasn’t coming home tonight.
“Oh. I’ve never heard of her,” Tom said with a shrug.
I looked out my side window, watching the drab houses and gray snow banks slide by. We passed the Sugar Bowl, a sledding spot, which was teeming with kids in a kaleidoscope of snowsuits.
“I think that’s what’s even worse. That I didn’t know her, that she died today and I have no reason to care,” I said.
“I dunno, Jenny. I grew up in Vancouver. A lot of people I didn’t know died there,” he said. “Like, it’s sad, but what can you do?”
I nodded. I’d never been to Vancouver; all I really knew about it was gang shootings, heroin addicts and that serial killer pig farmer. A girl in the woods probably didn’t pack the same punch for Tom.
“I guess you’re right,” I said and shut my eyes.
Tom noticed that I looked upset and patted my shoulder. His hand felt heavy on my arm. I realized he had just made the connection
between Chloe and Helen.
“Sorry,” Tom said finally.
“Don’t worry about it. You didn’t know either of them,” I said.
I wondered if Helen had a best friend. A girl who had grown up with her and who saw Helen’s bedroom as just as much hers as Helen’s. Someone who always checked both horoscopes in a magazine even when she was alone. I did that. I was still finding Chloe’s old socks and mascara tubes in my room. Even now, I couldn’t help checking Gemini before I checked my sign, Aries. I wasn’t willing to turn down any insight to Chloe, even if it came from a five-dollar magazine written by someone in New York City. I wondered if Helen had a Jenny, someone who was currently having the worst day of her life.
Thunder Creek was becoming a dangerous place to be a teenage girl.
—
Tom pulled up next to my car and I sat there for a second. I wasn’t sure if we would do this again or if it had been a onetime thing fueled by pity. I didn’t know what Tom thought because I barely knew anything about him.
He turned off the truck and we both climbed out. My eyes scanned the sky until they stopped abruptly at the dark line of evergreens that bordered the football field. The parking lot was mostly empty. There were no games or concerts at the school that necessitated people staying late. At this time of year, any displays of school spirit would be across town at the hockey arena. The parking lot resembled a frozen wasteland, with gusts of grainy snow skittering across the surface and clinging to the sand-crusted wheels of cars.
Tom’s eyes met mine over the hood of the truck. They seemed darker against the faded landscape and I felt myself swallow, unsure of what would happen next.
“So, I’ll see you soon,” Tom said. It didn’t feel like a question, more of a confirmation of what he already knew.
“Yeah,” I said. “And uh…thanks. For today. I needed it,” I said. I didn’t know what part exactly I needed: the break from school, the drugs or Tom’s company. Maybe all of it.
The Lives of Desperate Girls Page 2