Under the Dusty Moon

by Suzanne Sutherland

  “You said he was an idiot. I like him.”

  “Why?” she asked. Hadn’t we been through this before?

  “’Cause he’s cool and cute and, you know …”

  “What?” she bit the rest of her popsicle and pulled the sticks out of her mouth. My teeth hurt just watching her.

  “I like him, okay? I really like him. But I totally screwed up. It was so embarrassing.” I hugged my knees to my chest with my one good arm and waited for Lucy to ask me how the date had gone so badly, but it was clear that she had something else on her mind entirely.

  “Yeah,” she said, “that sucks. But, look, I’ve got to show you what I found.”

  “What is it?” I asked, as Lucy opened up the laptop on the coffee table. “A new LoA trailer or something?”

  “Just wait,” she said. “Jazleen was posting about this last night. She’s so jealous ’cause she lives in Peterborough and they don’t have one.”

  “One what?” I asked. Jazleen is one of Lucy’s best online friends, and she’s going to be visiting Toronto at the end of the month just to go to Fan Con. She’s really cool but kind of intimidating. I follow her Tumblr and am constantly amazed that she seems to know more about what’s going on in our city than I do.

  “Just wait. This is going to blow your mind.”

  Lucy typed a few short words into the search bar and then turned the computer around to face me.

  “She Shoots?” I asked, reading the first search result.

  “Keep reading,” Lucy said, perched over my shoulder like an oversized parrot.

  I clicked the link and read the banner at the top of the page: SHE SHOOTS — SUPPORTING GALS IN GAMES SINCE 2012.

  “What is this?” I asked, confused, but somehow already excited.

  Lucy’s face was basically broken, she was smiling so hard, and she started talking a mile a minute as she caught me up on what was clearly her new favourite thing.

  “Look, it’s this group, right?” she said. “And they help you make your own games. It’s amazing!”

  It did sound kind of amazing, but I still had no idea what exactly Lucy was talking about. “How?” I asked.

  “They hold these game jams, see?” Lucy said, pointing to an event listing on the screen. “Where you make a whole game over a weekend. They’re doing a jam next month all about food, so all these people are going to get together and make games about, like, eating and stuff. Isn’t that cool?”

  I’d never seen her this excited, which was really saying something, because LoA made her practically rabid.

  “And, like, anyone can join?” I asked.

  “That’s the best part,” Lucy said, “it’s just girls. Or, you know, women. At least, some of the events are.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Cool.”

  “They’re even tabling at Fan Con!”

  “Great,” I said, “something else I’ll be missing out on.”

  “Oh right, sorry,” Lucy said distractedly. She was still poring over the site, like she was trying to drink in the coolness of the group through her eyeballs.

  “So, like … should we join?” I asked.

  I wasn’t even sure if this was the kind of group where I’d fit in, but, I figured, it might at least help my case with the LoAers. Besides, it was something to do, which meant that it met all of my basic requirements. And with Mom on her way out of the country and any more action with Shaun now officially impossible, it seemed like pretty much the only choice.

  “That’s kind of the problem,” Lucy said, finally pulling herself away from the screen. “I don’t know if they’d let, like, kids join.”

  “We’re sixteen!” I said.

  “I’m fifteen,” Lucy reminded me. “And anyway, I don’t want to show up not having any idea what’s going on. I want them to think we’re …”

  “What,” I said, “cool?”

  “Experienced,” Lucy corrected me. “I don’t want to look like some poser, you know?”

  “Oh, come on. Nobody would ever accuse you of being a fake geek girl,” I said. “Your LoA obsession alone speaks for itself.”

  “Yeah,” Lucy said, “but I don’t know any of the systems they’re using.”

  “So?” I said. “Isn’t this whole group about, like, teaching you that kind of stuff?”

  “Look,” Lucy said, ignoring my reasoning, “they have a tutorial up on their website. It’ll show us how to make a basic text-based game. You remember that game Zork I showed you a couple of months ago?”

  I remembered sitting in front of Lucy’s computer at her house, watching her type commands into a text-prompt that told us we were standing in front of a house. She told me that it was one of the first-ever computer games. Which was cool, but I had trouble picturing the scene the game was describing without any graphics, and we kept getting eaten by something called a Grue.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Why? Can we make something like that?”

  “Totally,” Lucy said. “And it can be about whatever we want.”

  “Wow,” I said, “that sounds cool. But isn’t it, like, hard?”

  “Not really,” Lucy said, taking over the computer again to find another site. “There’s this software called Twine that we can download for free. Then you just write your scenes and map them all out together. I already tried it at my place. It’s great.”

  “Except we can’t download it. You know how my mom is.”

  “Like she’d even notice.”

  “No, seriously,” I said, “when she found out we’d downloaded those old system emulators last year she totally flipped out. She gave me this whole lecture about how we’d opened the gates of hell to a bunch of viruses or whatever.”

  “Your mom’s weird,” Lucy said. “That’s her biggest concern?”

  “She’s a total technophobe. I’m just glad she hasn’t started hassling me about sexting.”

  “Yet,” said Lucy.

  “Whatever,” I said, scanning the page that she’d pulled up, “look, there’s an in-browser version anyway. Let’s just use that.”

  After a two-second tutorial on how to save our work, Lucy and were looking at a perfectly blank page.

  We decided to write a tiny game, just as a test, so we put together a seven-screen story called No, Seriously, I Really Love Lucy about Lucy finding a unicorn hidden behind the chip rack at her parents’ store and going on an incredibly short adventure. The first screen introduced the story and then gave you two different links to click on to decide what happened next; would Lucy try to speak to the unicorn or call magical pest control instead? Depending on which option you chose, you’d get a different screen with more story and another two choices until you finally reached THE END. The best ending saw Lucy and the unicorn flying off into space for more adventures, and the worst one had her eaten by a family-size bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. The game was super goofy, but it was pretty fun to make. And Lucy was right, it was easy. Between the two of us we could really make something cool.

  We test-played it four times so that we got all the different endings, but then Lucy checked her phone and said she had to get going.

  “Come over tomorrow,” she said, “and we’ll start plotting out our real game.”

  “You’re sure you can’t stay for dinner?” I asked, mentally counting the hours until Mom was due home from work.

  “Sorry,” she said, “I’ve gotta go.”

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Cool,” she said. “G-Day.”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, you know,” she said, smiling self-consciously. “Game Day.”

  I nodded and we high-fived before I closed the door behind her. It was going to be great.

  But tomorrow felt like forever away.

  I wanted to keep on messing around with Twine, but the blank page was too intimidating on my own. I was itching to build another story and see how far I could take it, but I didn’t know what story to tell. I needed Lucy for her big ideas.<
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  Without even thinking about it, I wound up in a YouTube hole, and soon enough I was looking up clips of old Dusty Moon shows. They always seem to show up in my recommended sidebar, but maybe that’s because I can’t help clicking on them whenever they show up.

  I’ve watched most of them already, but that day there was a new video I hadn’t seen before. It was just a bunch of footage that some fan had put together of a few of the bands’ shows. I hit play and lay down on my side on the couch with the screen tilted at an angle so I could see it. My bulging, sweaty thighs stuck to the couch and each other and the tiny jean shorts I had on were helpless to stop them.

  It was weird and kind of comforting to watch the band play, but it was nothing I hadn’t seen before. The songs I’ve heard over and over again: “Stranded in Daylight”, “Shadow Tree,” and “Fixing to Fix You.” The same chords and the same melodies. I’d heard them so many times they were almost white noise to me now. That is until the live footage abruptly stopped and a scrolling text screen, that looked like a six-year-old kid had picked the font, appeared in its place.

  DENNIS MAHLER, 1978–2005

  MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD

  …

  OR IS HE???

  Oh god, I thought, another conspiracy theorist whack-job. Great. But I looked at the date that the video had been uploaded. It was only a week old and it already had ten thousand views.

  REPORTS THAT DENNIS HAS BEEN SPOTTED IN HUATULCO, MEXICO HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED BY INDEPENDENT SOURCES

  DENNIS MAHLER

  …

  …

  …

  IS ALIVE!!!

  Jesus. They really couldn’t leave it alone, could they? And why did anyone else think this was their story to tell?

  Like this journalist, the one who was writing the book, whoever he was, was sucking blood from Mom’s and Dennis’s story. He was a leech, trying to profit off some supposed Canadian alt-rock mystery. And he was probably creaming his pants over this latest fake news. Oh, sure, Dennis was in Mexico the whole time. Why didn’t anyone think to look for him there?

  There was no mystery.

  There is no mystery.

  Dennis is dead, and anyone who says otherwise should get their tinfoil hat examined. They all just need to get a life.

  I lay there for hours, watching every Dusty Moon clip I could find on YouTube. As repulsed as I was by this new video and the horrible grave-digging rumours that were going to come with it, I couldn’t stop watching the old concert clips and music videos. It was like I was in a trance.

  When it was almost dark, I finally realized that I could feel a cloud of perspiration on my shirt where my cast had been pressed against my stomach all afternoon. I needed a drink, a cold one. And more painkillers.

  It took me nearly twenty minutes just to get the dumb cap off the bottle of pills in the bathroom. The childproof top was nearly cast-proof too, as it turned out. I tried every conceivable combination of pressing my cast down on the lid while turning the bottle with my left hand, but it kept falling out of my grip and onto the floor — still blanketed with Mom’s hair since she rushed out of the apartment in such a hurry that morning. When I did finally manage to pop the top off, I was so unbelievably frustrated that I dumped two pills onto the counter and swallowed them with a big gulp of water from the tap. One pill, I knew, was all I really needed, but I figured that if it was going to take a million years just to get the pills open each time I needed one that I might as well make it worth my while.

  A few minutes later, I started to notice the lightness in my limbs, and that my head felt like a helium balloon full of stones. Smooth, smooth stones that slowly knocked against each other any time I moved my head. I giggled to myself. I was totally high.

  On the other side of the room, my phone started vibrating. The harsh whir it made shaking against our cheapo IKEA coffee table made me jump, but I managed to answer it after half a dozen rings.

  “Hey, sweets.”

  It was Mom, of course. I hoped she couldn’t hear that I was stoned.

  “Hello,” she said, “you there?”

  I realized that I’d been so paranoid that I hadn’t actually opened my mouth yet.

  “Yeah, hey. Hey,” I said, trying to make my voice as steady as possible. In my head it sounded too deep and way too slow.

  “Hey,” she said, clearly not noticing the difference. “Look, I can’t really talk right now. I just wanted to let you know that Sal asked me to work a double and, well, there’s no one else who can cover the shift and we’re totally swamped. It looks like I’m going to be closing. I’m really sorry I’m not going to be home for dinner like I promised, but we’ll talk tomorrow, all right?”

  More silence on my end. She was talking too fast and her voice sounded like a high-pitched whistle.

  “Come on,” she said, “you’re not mad at me, are you? There’s nothing I can do about this. I can’t leave Sal here by himself. I can’t.”

  There was nothing to say. It was just one more time she couldn’t keep her word. One more time that she told me I couldn’t be upset that she’d totally broken her promise. One more time when she couldn’t just step up and be a freaking mom.

  “Vic?” she said, now anxious that I wasn’t responding. “Are you there? I’m going to be home late, yeah?”

  Was everything a question now?

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I said, catching my breath. My chest felt like it was being squeezed tight like a stress-ball. “See you later.”

  “Okay,” she said, “I’ve gotta go. And I’m sorry again, okay? But don’t wait up, I’ll be home late. I love you!”

  “Bye.”

  I took the phone from my ear and put it down on the counter. A part of me couldn’t believe that she’d gone and broken her word — again, again, again — but the stoned part of me, which, by then, was most of me, couldn’t believe I was going to get away with being totally wasted.

  I poured myself a tall glass of water — no ice, of course, Mom hadn’t thought to make any — turned off the computer and pulled up an old Disney movie on Netflix instead. I laughed my face off at scenes I’d watched a hundred times when I was a kid, and clapped my hands with glee at the end when the beastly dude turned into a regulation hunk. I drained a couple of glasses of water, but then I started craving something sweet. I looked for juice in the fridge, but we were all out. It was seriously sad how Old Mother Hubbard our kitchen was. There was only a tub of wilted baby spinach along with two bottles of mustard, a box of baking soda, and a half-empty bottle of white wine.

  I took the wine out of the fridge and put the bottle down on the counter in front of me. It was a big one, the size of two normal wine bottles, because Mom said it was cheaper to buy them that way. Then I got myself a small glass from the cupboard. It was a cup, really. A souvenir from the time Mom’s old boyfriend Fletcher took us to Medieval Times. Even half empty, the bottle was still too heavy for me to lift with my left hand, so I wound up spilling about as much wine as I managed to get into my cup. I shuffled across the small puddle on the floor in my sock feet to clean it up, giggling to myself at the idea that my foot was going to get drunk from the wine. Which made me giggle out loud at how dumb my brain was on painkillers. When I’d mopped up most of the puddle, I peeled the winey socks off my feet and tossed them in the direction of my bedroom.

  “Bottoms up!” I said to myself as I slurped from my cup of wine.

  I looked at the cup more closely, twisting it around to see the cheap hologram effect of the plastic. “I don’t believe I’m supposed to be drinking, Lord Windermere,” I said, addressing the galloping knight on my plastic chalice.

  “We shan’t let your mother know,” I replied in a fake-deep knight voice. “Besides, most surestly it is her own fault for leaving her one-armed daughter alone with nary a crumb in ye olde refrigerator. And besides, shouldn’t she be home by now … eth?”

  I giggled and downed the rest of the cup, then poured myself a bit more. My he
ad was feeling impossibly heavy, like a boulder tied to a kindergarten-craft pipe cleaner. I fumbled my way toward the couch. My feet were heavy now, too, and my stomach was rocking dangerously back and forth. I put Lord Windermere on the floor beside me and curled up to take a nap.

  I woke up when I heard a key in the door. Mom was finally home. I picked up my phone from the coffee table and saw that it was three in the morning. My eyes still felt tacky from sleep and I could barely keep my eyelids open.

  “Aw, sweets, you really shouldn’t have waited up for me,” she said in her quietest voice as she opened the door. “How you feelin’?”

  Putting her purse down by the door and kicking off her sneakers, she moved my legs and sat down next to me on the couch.

  “How was your day?” I asked groggily, half sitting up to look at her.

  “Oh, it was fine, just long,” she said, stroking my leg. It was hypnotizing, and I almost fell right back asleep when Mom spoke again.

  “Vic, what’s that?” she asked, pointing at Lord Windermere.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, reaching out to grab my drinking buddy.

  But Mom’s reflexes were a lot faster than mine and she beat me to it. She sniffed it. “Is this my wine?”

  “Just a little bit.”

  “I don’t care how much you had,” Mom said. “Do you have any idea how stupid it is to drink while you’re on painkillers? Jesus, Vic, you could have killed yourself!”

  “It’s not exactly like there was anything else around to drink,” I said, my mouth dry like a wrung-out sponge. “I was thirsty. I only had a tiny bit.”

  “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you’d do something so stupid. Did you even think about what might happen if you mixed them?”

  “Well maybe if you hadn’t left me alone all day!” I countered, pushing myself up to a full sitting position. My head was still heavy, and I weaved forward and stuck out my hand to keep myself up.

  “No, you are not turning this around on me,” she said. “I had to work, okay? Like an adult. This is about you.” She shook her head. “God, I can’t believe this, Vic. I don’t even know what to say right now. Just go to bed.” She wouldn’t even look me in the eye.