Circle of Stones

by Suzanne Alyssa Andrew

“Lady from a really old black-and-white movie.”

  We hear the crunch of shifting concrete and turn to look, but there’s no one there. The building’s remnants are settling. Lyle leans into me. I feel his breath on the back of my neck. I look at him and he blows smoke into my face. It makes me cough.

  “Gross!”

  “What?” Lyle leans in closer. “Blowing smoke in someone’s face means you want them.”

  Lyle’s leather jacket presses into my shoulder. His jeans rub against my knee. I stop breathing. I think I’m going to need my mom’s defibrillator.

  “I want to taste cigarettes on your tongue,” Lyle whispers into my ear. The stubble of his chin tickles and scratches.

  My mind races. No. Yes. No. Mom’sgoingto­killmeI’m ­definitelygoingtohell.

  Out loud I say, “Okay,” and tap the ash end of the cigarette over the edge, like Lyle did. I hold the cigarette up to my mouth and taste paper. I suck in toxins, let the smoke release again through my mouth. I try not to huff it down into my lungs. I think of surgeon general’s warnings about cigarette-smoking, mom’s threats, cancer, tuburculosis, tumours, heart disease, stroke, death. I feel Lyle’s hands on my back and then his lips push against mine, softer than I imagined, and then his tongue. My mouth must taste like warm, musty, slippery, greasy, tobacco dirt. Lyle stops to breathe, his face an inch away from mine, and I want to kiss him again. I feel all quivery, funny, shaky, and I giggle and Lyle laughs a little and neither of us are sure what to do next so we do kiss again and it’s as good as the first time if not better and then he takes a drag and I make the mistake of looking at my watch. All I want to do is remember the time, record it in my own personal history forever and ever. Amen. This moment, 2:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m., 2:00 a.m. Lyle gives me a look and leans back.

  “Do you have to go?”

  I’m a ruiner.

  Lyle flicks his cigarette butt into the rubble. I stare at it, waiting for the debris below to flare into movie flames or TV explosions. Nothing happens. I flick my cigarette in the same direction. It doesn’t make it nearly as far. No more fire, no more sparks. Lyle considers the empty street below.

  “Ottawa is soooo boring,” he says, which I take to mean I’m boring. I am a concrete slab. I shiver.

  “You’re cold.” Lyle rubs my arm. “We should go.”

  I think it’s going to be like in the movies now. The scene where Lyle gives me his coat, takes my hand, and guides me steadily with his other hand on my back. I want to be guided. But Lyle gets up, dusts off his pants, and starts walking down the steps without looking back. I try to keep up. I see him sink-sliding down the rubble ahead of me. My skirt catches on metal, rips. My nose runs from the dust and I catch it with the dirty fingertip of my glove, which still smells like Value Village. And now smoke. I’m not glamorous or adventurous. Lyle doesn’t want to kiss me again. I slip and there’s nothing solid to grab on to. I regain my balance by sheer will. A few more steps and I’m finally at the bottom. Lyle waits for me to hop over the inadequate orange plastic fencing. He doesn’t even look as I hike up my skirt. I’m over the top and on the sidewalk. I stand thisclose to him. He’s already lit another cigarette for himself. He smiles, his eyes crinkling as shadows dance on his face in the yellow streetlight.

  “Where do you live?”

  “This way. A few blocks.” I gesture, take a step, and Lyle starts walking with me. We are halfway down the block when an orange municipal truck packed with pylons slows past us. Two huge workers in coveralls and ball caps stare at us as if they know where we were and what we were doing. I’m afraid we’re about to get busted for climbing around the demolition site, but then Lyle takes my hand. He leans down and kisses me lightly on the mouth until the workers drive away.

  Lyle stuffs his hands in his pockets and we start walking again. I can’t think of anything to say. Silence for a whole block, and then another.

  “It’s this one.” I point at the condo building where my mom and I live. “Ground floor. I’m going to go through the window because —”

  “Do you have roommates?” Lyle looks around, hands still in his pockets. I’m not sure if he wants to come in. If he’s supposed to come in. If he should come in.

  “Yeah, sort of.” I stand in the row of plants under the window and gaze at Lyle. I wait to see if he’s going to kiss me again or ask for my last name or phone number. He hesitates then takes a step back. The streetlight shines down on the top of his head. I try to memorize his dark brown messy hair, brown eyes, crooked nose, leather jacket, skinny black jeans.

  “Good night.” He sort of shrugs and I think I see him raise his eyebrows and half smile, but I’m not sure. “See you next week, I guess.”

  “Yeah.” I watch him start walking away, but stop myself in case he looks back. I slide the window open, hop up on the ledge, and dive through, back into my normal, everyday life, back into my room. I close the window behind me, straighten the curtains, and then tear off my black corduroy jacket, vintage corset, velvet skirt, black leather boots, gloves. I put on my flannel pajamas and smear gooey cold makeup remover across my eyes. I throw all evidence of my underage drinking, nightclubbing, and curfew-breaking into a heap in the closet. I open my door and tiptoe into the hall. Silence. Mom’s still at work. Night shift. Relief. Every once in awhile she comes home early, which is why I snuck in. But maybe I should have taken Lyle through the front door. Maybe the window thing was weird.

  I wish I could have given Lyle my cellphone number. I am the only high school student on the planet with such a useless hunk of plastic for a phone. I think it’s designed for senior citizens or something. People who need to make an emergency call because they dropped the remote control and can’t find it. I can’t even text with it. I’ve seen documentaries where people in shantytowns are talking on ultra-sweet, brand-new cells. Mom says we can’t afford extras. But everything is an extra, and the condo we’re renting from some civil servant is a shitbox. Awful carpets that probably once looked beige, but are now stained grey. Small rooms like cells. Cracks in the walls my mom tried to cover over with pictures. Ugly kitchen cupboards from the nineties. It’s all so very “homey” as in homely, as in ghetto, as in embarrassing. So when mom asks me why I don’t bring my friends over I give her a look and ask for a new cellphone. Again.

  Seriously. Nobody does anything at school other than text each other, so if you don’t have a real phone you don’t exist. When I’m in class I sit at the back and hold books up in front of me as though they’re camouflage. But I wear black thrift-shop clothes and unravelling sweaters, so I stick out and get picked on in the halls.

  I get:

  “Hey, Morticia, where’s the funeral?”

  “Orphan Annie called and she wants her sweater back.”

  “Ewwwww. Something smells. Like dead people.”

  I wouldn’t want to wear their stupid sweatshop clothes and look exactly like everyone else, even if I could afford them. There’s nothing elegant about jeans and T-shirts. “Ten-year-old kids probably made your shirt, you know,” is my usual (totally inadequate) comeback. I want to grow up to be glamorous. Like in old movies — the ones I watch with my mom, because we both love the clothes. And the drama. And the starlet attitude. I don’t care that nobody else at school has ever seen these movies. It’s my thing. Goth is kinda close if you think about it. Velvet and lace and ruffles and dresses and black and burgundy and dramatic makeup and elaborate hair. I can dress up in black and feel like I’m Dietrich or Hepburn. Ish.

  So I don’t really have any friends at school except for Skye, and I don’t even like her very much. She doesn’t like me, either, but she also dresses in black and dyes crazy stripes in her hair. We started sitting together in the non-participating section of gym class, and in the absolutely no-cheering area of every school assembly. The more people assumed we were friends, the more we began to act that way. Now, instead of sitting and staring at the high school circus in silence, we say things like:

  “Hey
, Skye.”

  “Hey, Lhia.”

  “This sucks.”

  “Yup.”

  I’ve been making real friends at a nightclub in the market called Zaphod Beeblebrox. It has a goth-industrial night once a week. If you show up often enough, people stop glaring at you and start talking. You have to prove you’re not an imposter dressed up for a lark. I’m still learning about the music. I like it, though. It’s heavy and angry and dramatic. Like movies. And Zaphod’s is where I met Lyle. I think he’s in his twenties. He hasn’t asked how old I am so I haven’t told him I’m underage. I can pass for about nineteen and a half when I wear a ton of black eye-makeup and opera gloves, which is why the bouncer keeps letting me in, even though my I.D. is so obviously fake. Other than the black hair, I don’t resemble Mandy Chan, age nineteen, at all.

  I like to sketch from photographs sometimes and the fake I.D. is what I drew in this journal-type sketchbook I sketch and write in, which my mom read, which is what got me into so much trouble last week. I tried to tell her everything in there is total fiction. I said my life is so boring I have to make stuff up. I don’t know if she believed me or not. The whole thing was so stupid. I wish I fit in with the art and manga nerds at school, because they’re the only other people I know who walk around with notebooks and write on actual paper, with a pen.

  Mom’s sleeping on and off all day. Shift work makes her cranky, so I can’t stay at home. But I don’t want to go to school. If I skip the morning I’m only missing French, gym, and a spare. I grab my black canvas bag and stuff it with my notebook and a couple of old Sandman graphic novels I found at the public library. I take a juice box from the fridge for lunch, lace up my tall, black second-hand boots, and head out. I like to walk around my neighbourhood and look around. It’s a bizarre mash-up of big, beautiful old homes, formerly big, beautiful old homes converted into dingy student apartments, condo towers, office buildings, and hotels. I usually find a lot of things to sketch.

  There’s a field by the old Ottawa Tech high school on Slater Street. In the summer it’s an endless pickup soccer game, but today it’s empty. I walk past the creepy lot where there’s a crumbling foundation for one of those big beautiful old homes, but no house. No development, either. I always wonder what the story is — what happened to the house and why there’s no condo built there by now. I continue past dirty, tired trees and bushes and a sad, disorganized attempt at a community garden to get to what looks like an ancient stone retaining wall. The wall rises as the street and the sidewalk dip, growing taller and more menacing as you sink lower. Sometimes there are little cards with the Virgin Mary or Catholic saints on them stuck into the crevasses between the stones. Something happened in that knocked-down old house. I can feel it.

  I’m looking for a saint card or candle when I see a tiny picture stuck in the wall. It’s a painting of someone’s hand reaching into deep indigo. I guess that’s supposed to be night. I pull it out. It’s about the size of a Post-it note — a small piece of canvas stretched over popsicle sticks. I turn it over in my hand and there’s a small N on the back in pencil. Or maybe it’s a squiggle. Or a Z. I don’t notice that the paint is still partially wet until I get it all over my fingers. As I rub it off onto my long black skirt I get this feeling I’m being watched. I was planning to slip the painting in my bag and keep it, but now I’m not sure. I turn all the way around, but no one’s there. I hear a twig snap and look up. The bushes are moving, but that might be the wind. I shiver, put the painting back where I found it, and walk away quickly, heading back into Centretown where the modern bricks and mortar are too new to contain any ghost stories.

  I’m almost at Bank Street when someone calls my name.

  “Uh-oh, someone’s not at school today,” I hear, and when I turn around Uncle George is standing there.

  “Hey, Uncle George,” I say, reaching up to give him a quick hug. “What’s with the pants?”

  He’s wearing a plaid button-up shirt, these weird beige slacks, and shiny shoes. I usually see him in expensive jeans that make him look way cooler, but I guess that’s his after-work look.

  “I know.” Uncle George rolls his eyes. “Casual office wear is an awful thing.”

  Uncle George smiles a big old dopey smile at me. He looks at my hair, like he’s going to reach out and goof with it, but I make a face and he sticks his hands in his pockets instead.

  “I’ve been in meetings all morning and I’m desperate for a coffee. Want one, honey?”

  I look around at the civil servants swarming out of the offices around us. I see a tall figure in black turn to look at me, but whoever it is ducks and disappears behind two overweight middle-aged men in suits. It might be someone I know from Zaphod’s. It might be Lyle.

  “Coffee would be cool, but I’m on my spare. I should get back to school.”

  Uncle George looks disappointed, so I give him another hug before I dash away. I’m so busy fantasizing about maybe accidentally-on-purpose bumping into Lyle that I don’t think of the fact Uncle George is watching me go. I walk fast but I don’t find the person in black and I don’t find Lyle, so I keep walking.

  It took me an hour and about one hundred bobby pins to get my hair to look the right amount of tangled. Now that I’m here at Zaphod’s for goth night I see another girl wearing her hair the same way, except that it looks better on her. I’m sitting on one of the plush-covered seats against the wall, but toward the back so I can see when (and if) Lyle arrives. It’s still early though for this crowd. Only half past midnight. I’ve got my one rye and ginger — all I can afford for the night unless someone decides to buy me a drink — and I’m analyzing what people are wearing. Girls walk past in tiny corsets and short shorts with fishnets, or elaborate medieval gowns they’ve made themselves. The guys are in long combat shorts and tall boots, long-sleeved black T-shirts with names of industrial bands on them, black leather jackets. Everyone’s got tattoos, extreme hairstyles, and attitude. Oh, and everyone’s wearing plenty of black eyeliner. And black nail polish. And weird jewellery — necklaces and bangles and rings. Girls with overlong eyelashes that flutter like spiders. I have to figure out how to put those on. A boy in a top hat. One with an elaborate cane. I like the fact the sight of anyone here would freak out the bland brand kids from school. I feel like this is some place where I could belong.

  The DJ plays a particularly discordant industrial song and the dance floor clears, sending a flood of sweaty people to the bar. There’s an odd hush in the club and I turn to see a tiny girl in a tight black dress flanked by two thin men. She’s on crutches. One of her legs is wrapped from toe to knee in braces and bandages. But she’s beautiful, in that annoying ethereal way that seems impossible, unreal. The two creature-like men glide like eighteenth-century courtesans. The regulars eye the girl with a mixture of suspicion, curiosity, and envy, which means this bizarre trio has never been here before. As they make their way to the bar, I see two large eyes peering in through the glass by the door. Fuzzy hair. Someone tall and slim. I push through the crowd to see if it’s Lyle, but the lobby is empty except for the oversized bouncer, who’s sitting at his barstool post reading a paperback. I tap on his enormous shoulder.

  “Hey, Shane. Did you see who just left?”

  “I didn’t see nothin’.” Shane looks up at me with slow, old brown dog eyes.

  “But the front door is still closing.” I point to the slowly shortening gap between outside and in. Shane looks at it, furrows his brow, and the door clicks shut.

  “Oh. That’s weird.” Shane places his sci-fi novel down on the windowsill. He swings the door open for me with a quick push of his massive arm. For a guy with a neck the size of my waist, Shane’s really nice. We step out onto the sidewalk, but nobody’s there. The market is suspended in Hitchcockian silence. I hold my breath, spooked. Then a car door slams. A giggling middle-aged couple walks toward the strip club two doors down. A woman in yoga-wear and a gigantic helmet speeds past on a bike.

  “Mu
st have been the wind,” Shane says. He opens the door for me again to go back in.

  “I swore I saw someone looking in through the glass,” I say. I lean against the cool black brick wall as Shane resumes his barstool post.

  “Uh-huh.” He picks up his book and winks at me. “Watching too many horror movies lately, eh?”

  The industrial noise pulsates in my ears as soon as I open the club door. I don’t recognize the song that’s playing, but the dance floor is full, so I walk over and join in. I’m getting into it and over my self-consciousness when I look up and see Lyle standing by the DJ booth. He runs his fingers through his hair. A skinny blonde girl stands closely at his side. She’s wearing his leather jacket over a tight PVC minidress.

  I slip off the dance floor along the bar side so I don’t have to walk past them. That’s when I see the tiny girl and her two creature courtesans again. She’s perched on a tall barstool with her injured leg propped up on a chair. Even with her awkward leg, she sits perfectly straight, her neck impossibly long, thin arms elegantly posed. A slight shine on her face turns her skin plastic. She looks like a mannequin. Intrigued regulars lurk around her, but she gazes straight ahead at the dance floor. Not a mingler. The courtesans resemble ninjas the way they’re standing by with crossed arms. I wonder if she’s ever had any close friends who are girls, or only ever boys. And men. She seems too beautiful to ever want to be a best friend. Or to just want to chat or laugh about whatever. I feel big and shabby next to her. She’s probably used to being adored and has no idea what it’s like for a girl like me. I wish someone would look at me with adoration. Once or twice. Three times and I’d be charmed forever.

  I make the mistake of looking straight at her on my way by. She fishhooks my eye and reels me in.

  “Hi. I’m Jennifer.”

  She touches my arm. It feels like static and makes my skin crawl.

  “Hi.” I wipe my arm against my skirt to stop the tingles. “I’m Lhia.”