“How about I make a pot of coffee before I go?”
“Gone, Cole.” He shifts to lean heavily against me. Which is bad for the survival of my clean shirt. Good, in that I can no longer see his face and I have a sinking feeling that my dad might actually be crying.
“She’s gone,” he says.
And then I get it. It happens to me too. The sudden, acute awareness of Mom’s absence. On TV, the narrator explains armor-piercing uranium. This is like armor-piercing grief.
They don’t warn you about it when they explain the stages of loss. My aunt, for example, said the stages were anger, and shock, and some sort of bargaining with God. “Unforeseen periods of mental collapse” wasn’t on the list.
I pat Dad’s back in sympathy.
“She’s gone to work the Okanagan circuit. They move around, you know . . . the dancers. People get tired of seeing the same bodies, so they switch towns. She’s been able to stay at her cousin’s house until now. . . .”
My whole body turns cold.
It’s Sheri. Dad’s crying over Sheri.
I shove him off my chest and scramble to my feet. Then I smooth my shirt, checking for snot. I’m clear.
“I have to go.”
No response.
“You just grab yourself another beer.”
He doesn’t reply. I leave him staring at the carpet and, with the sounds of falling bombs in the background, slam the door behind me.
chapter 13
ditch sitting: the original version
I’m trapped at a gravel pit party with a bunch of people I don’t want to see.
I’m ignoring them. All of them. In front of me, a bonfire sends sparks swirling and swarming like living creatures, so bright they seem certain to last forever. Or drift into the pine branches and ignite. Or spiral into the stratosphere. Except every time I think one is going to make it, it’s extinguished.
“ ‘Extinguished’ is an ugly word.” I say this to the guy in the red plaid jacket and foam-front baseball cap who’s slumped next to me on the tailgate. Far beyond talking, he raises his beer bottle in a vague toast.
Around us, bodies circle as wildly and erratically as the sparks. Bass is thumping from another pickup. The whole world smells of smoke and beer. People are talking about nothing, loudly. When I let their voices blend, it seems as if they’re speaking another language, one that I can’t understand.
If I were sitting on the back of my own truck, I could go home right now. Maybe take the other guy with me, as an act of human kindness, and roll him out of the cab into his front yard.
But I came in Hannah’s mom’s Saturn. It was the only way to avoid meeting Hannah’s parents. She wanted me to stop by and hang out for a while before the party.
“My dad needs the truck,” I said.
Of course, then I had to explain why the truck was in the driveway when she picked me up. I don’t think Hannah believed my story about his sudden-onset sinus infection. I should have just told her that he was piss-ass drunk.
She’s near the fire now, glowing and giggling, greeting people as if she hasn’t seen them in years—even though she probably saw them downtown this afternoon.
I’ve given up trying to convince her to leave. She’s already called me an old man and told me to go have a drink and stop being so curmudgeonly. That was her word. “Curmudgeonly.” As I stare into the fire, the sparks start to look like code. They’re probably telling me to blow this party and go home to bed.
A shrill voice pierces the blur, draws my attention.
“. . . and you stand here looking like the queen of Sheena. You think you can just grab a guy like an extra handful of candy from the bulk food aisle?”
I recognize Lex’s voice, but I can’t find her in the crowd bobbing around the fire. Beside me, the plaid-jacket guy has managed to raise his head. “Interesting comparison,” he mutters. “Think she meant queen of Sheba, though.” He goes back to rocking to his own internal beat, not quite in sync with the stereo bass.
“So. Completely. Unfair.” Lex is shrieking now, and I finally find her silhouette near the flames. With each word, she gives her target a shove. It’s Hannah. I realize belatedly that her target is Hannah.
“Catfight!” someone hollers.
I’m halfway off the tailgate when my companion throws an arm across my path.
“Never, ever interfere in a girl fight,” he tells me, his eyes suddenly wide, boring into mine as if he’s imparting some cosmic piece of understanding.
It’s too late anyway. Someone else hugs Lex from behind, pinning her arms. Hannah spins and stalks away, away from Lex and away from my tailgate and into the crowd, where I see Greg step forward and Dallas throw a consoling arm around her shoulders.
Those two are good guys. Always around, always wearing the same easygoing smiles. If one of their friends decided to build himself a grizzly-proof suit, they would be there, every weekend, strapping on his armor and passing him his beer.
Hannah probably wishes I were more like them.
I watch her until she’s pasted her smile back on and accepted another drink, which takes all of three minutes. And probably means I’m driving her Saturn home tonight.
I’ve been sitting on this tailgate for a long time.
“Going for a walk. See you later, bud.”
My companion doesn’t even raise his beer this time. His eyes have turned back into slits and his mouth is slack.
I sort of envy him.
I suppose what I should do is check on Hannah, make sure she’s okay. That’s what a good boyfriend would do. Hannah and I aren’t officially boyfriend and girlfriend, though, and that has to have some benefits. Right? Benefits such as not having to meet her parents. Let Greg and Dallas take care of her. Besides, there’s the cosmic wisdom to consider.
Turning away from the fire, I head down the dirt road—the one leading back toward town. The early September air feels suddenly crisp, prickling my lungs. As I walk, my eyes slowly adjust to the darkness. The woods separate themselves into individual tree trunks and the road appears as a faint gray strip in front of me. After a while, I see a flash of orange, like an ember, glowing at the side of the road.
“Is that Cole over there?”
I stop.
“Cole Owens? The one with Academy Awards in his future?”
Lauren’s words float like a string of silvery bubbles in the dark. The smell of pot wafts after them.
I peer in the direction of her voice. She’s facing the road, perched halfway down the slope of the ditch, her arms wrapped around her knees, a joint dangling from her fingers. “Are you sitting down there by yourself?”
“Like an island,” she says.
I look from her to the gravel road. I can’t walk all the way home. I definitely don’t want to go back to the party yet. It’s been three months. Lauren must be over our breakup by now, no matter what Lex was hollering about. It would be a relief to talk to someone normal.
“Can I join you?”
She shrugs. “Free country.”
I take a running step to cross the swamp water at the bottom of the ditch. Once I’m settled, I turn to look at her more closely. This isn’t the usual Lauren.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” she asks.
“It’s a bit weird.”
“What is?”
“You sitting here by yourself, smoking pot.”
“I’m having a sit-in-the-ditch night,” she says, flicking a lighter and taking a long drag as if to prove herself.
“You don’t smoke.”
“I do now. It’s relaxing.”
“Where are your friends?”
“Who knows?” she says, with a smirk that should belong to someone else. Someone more sardonic. Me, for example.
“Lex was causing a bit of a scene at the party back there.”
Lauren sighs. For a few minutes, she tries unsuccessfully to blow a smoke ring. “She’s overprotective these days. Why does she think it’s he
r job to look after me?”
I have no answer for that. Taking Lauren’s joint from her lips, I attempt my own smoke ring. I’m a spectacular failure. They can probably hear me hacking from the next town over.
When I can breathe again, we listen to some guys shouting from the party, followed by a loud, rolling laugh that seems to bounce over us and down the road.
For a while, I fool around with my camera’s night vision and Lauren tries to blow smoke rings on film. When a frog croaks from beneath our feet, we both jump and I almost send the camera flying into the mud. It croaks a second time, as if claiming the ditch for itself. Lauren was never a fan of slimy things, but she makes no move to leave.
“You’re going to get dirty sitting here,” I say. I can already feel dampness soaking through the seat of my jeans. “Your butt will be wet.”
“Don’t care,” she says.
I squint at her. “Who are you, exactly, and what have you done with the real Lauren?” The Lauren I knew would need a gun at her head before she agreed to sit in the mud, let alone smoke pot.
“This is me. With a little extra thrown in.” She turns and puts a hand on my arm. “The real Lauren has changed,” she whispers. “Changing every day.”
She seems to think this is hysterically funny. I have to put an arm across her to keep her from sliding into the water. She wraps a hand around my arm and leans her head on my shoulder. Then, just for a second, I feel it: warmth, like one of those bonfire embers. It’s not the spark of chemistry. It’s more the familiar pressure of her skin and the comfort of knowing exactly where I am.
I let my cheek rest against the top of her head. Lauren and I could actually be friends. I could list her in the rolling credits one day. Maybe get her tickets to a red-carpet event. If she could get away from her husband and four kids for the weekend.
Maybe she’s thinking the same things because neither of us moves.
Eventually, she says, “You know, Cole, life is about choices.” She punctuates her words with conductor-like waves of the joint.
“That’s deep.”
She ignores my sarcasm. “Today, I had two choices. It was the very last day I had two choices. And you know what I did?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
Apparently, I’m not good at ditch-sitting conversations. I have no idea what we’re talking about. “So . . . tomorrow?”
“Nope. Tomorrow’s too late. I didn’t choose today, so now there’s only one choice.”
“One choice,” I repeat. “And that is . . . ?”
“That is . . .” Lauren pauses. “Entirely my choice to make.”
This seems to be the end of the topic and I have to say, I’m a bit relieved. I’m not sure I could handle any more girl logic right now. Sometimes it’s better just to sit. And touch shoulders. And breathe the night air with its trace of campfire smoke and be content to stay where you are. Even if that does happen to be in a ditch.
“I miss you,” she whispers after a while. Thankfully, it doesn’t feel like a demand, the way it did in her living room a few weeks ago. It doesn’t feel like an invitation or a complaint either. Just a statement. A simple statement.
“Me too,” I say.
“It wouldn’t have worked, would it?” she says.
I shake my head.
I suppose I should move. Leaning against my ex-girlfriend in the dark is not a step toward separating myself or building my new, independent life. It’s comfortable here, though. I stay, feeling the warmth of her arm against mine in the cooling air, until a car rounds the bend from the gravel pit and its headlights blind me.
Lauren sits up.
“Thanks,” she says, squaring her shoulders. She pats her hair. The headlights sweep across our bodies like prison yard searchlights, then the tires crunch to a stop on the gravel. Blinking the spots from my eyes and reclaiming my arm, I peer at the window. It’s Greg.
“What are you guys doing out here?” he asks. He’s looking only at Lauren. “Why are you in a ditch?”
So I’m not the only one who thought that was strange.
“We’re . . . meditating,” she says.
He gives her a lopsided smile. “When a night has gotten that far, it’s usually time to head home. You want a ride?”
She turns to me, and I shrug. What am I going to do? Invite her to continue sharing her ditch with me? Offer her a ride in Hannah’s mom’s Saturn?
“All right,” she says to Greg. “Very gentlemanly of you.”
“Hey—I was gentlemanly. Didn’t I just save you from sliding into the mud a minute ago?”
She looks at me as if I’ve just mentioned her underwear in public. Standing, pausing to brush the dirt off her ass like the real Lauren would, she steps across the ditch and onto the road with only a mild waver.
“You’re very sweet. Thank you,” she coos at Greg. Then she closes the car door and the wheels spin on the gravel and they’re gone. Leaving me alone in the ditch.
Which may be where I belong. By myself in the dark, responsible for no one, with nobody expecting anything from me. As I ponder whether this ditch is my ideal habitat, another car rounds the corner. I stand when I recognize the Saturn. It skids to a stop just ahead of me, the window rolls down, and Hannah leans from the passenger seat.
“Cole! Climb in—we’re going to Dallas’s!”
Which is the last thing I want to do, but there are only so many routes out of a ditch near a gravel pit in the middle of the night. I end up squished beside Dallas and two giggling girls in the backseat.
Halfway to Dallas’s house, one of the girls pukes.
I must have done something very wrong in a past life.
chapter 14
betrayal and other high school classes
A couple weeks into the new school year, I have another counselor’s appointment. Everyone gets one, just like every kindergartener gets a measles vaccine. I guess they’re trying to inoculate us against our own stupidity.
I’m the lucky guy with his appointment booked just as people are switching classes, giving them plenty of time to gawk at me through the glass. Squirming a little, I remember what happened with Ms. Gladwell at our botched appointment last spring. The fall. The accidental embrace. Then Dallas walks by, pumping his fist at me. I turn purple.
“Did you research the film school?” Ms. Gladwell asks when she emerges from the inner office. “And are you okay? You look flushed.”
I ignore that last part.
“I downloaded the application info. I’m supposed to submit a short film by January,” I tell her as she motions me inside.
It’s time to get serious about this short. And I’m all fired up by a book I found about a Scottish guy named John Grierson. He wasn’t from a big city, and he wasn’t rich. He was smart as hell, though.
This is what Grierson did: met Robert Flaherty (the Nanook of the North filmmaker) in Hollywood; invented the word “documentary”; went home to Scotland and started a movement in support of documentary film; got invited to Canada to create a report on filmmaking; became head of Canada’s new National Film Board; made all the Canadian news movies about World War II, controlling what tons of people thought about the war; built one of the biggest film studios in the entire world.
The whole time I’ve been reading his story, I’ve been trying to decide whether it’s hopeful. Take one: Yes, his story’s inspiring. We were both born to normal families in small towns, and so there’s hope that I might eventually escape Webster and create a monumental film studio, help invent a genre, and/or possibly change the trajectory of all filmmaking.
Take two: Everything’s already been done, Grierson was way more brilliant than I can ever hope to be, and I was born in the wrong era.
“A short film. Quite an undertaking,” Ms. Gladwell says. “What’s your approach?”
I don’t feel like explaining my Webster-as-web idea. It won’t sound right, and she’ll give suggestions, and I’ll want to
trash the entire thing.
Ms. Gladwell takes my silence to mean I need “guidance.”
“Let’s brainstorm a little, Cole,” she says.
Or we could slice ourselves with razors. “That’s okay. I’m working on some ideas. And I’m going to be late for class . . .”
“I’ll write you a note,” she says.
Great. Perfect. Please excuse Cole’s tardiness. He was confronting deep-seated emotional issues in the counselor’s office.
“Come on. Toss out some ideas,” Ms. Gladwell prods. When did she get so forceful? I peer at her. She looks different. More . . . rosy.
“Did you get your hair cut or something?”
“Nope.” She pushes a piece of paper toward me.
“If you’re not ready to work on actual ideas, why don’t we talk about the reasons you want to go to film school? Write a list. It doesn’t have to make sense or look perfect. Just jot down whatever comes to mind.”
Why would anyone want to make docs? Unless you’re Michael Moore, it doesn’t get you famous. Or rich. Just look at John Grierson. After building one of the world’s largest film studios for the Canadian government, he got hauled in front of a tribunal because one of his secretaries turned out to have Russian spy connections. People accused Grierson of being a communist. Which was bad, in those days. Really bad.
I must look doubtful.
“Anything you want,” Ms. Gladwell says. “It can even be private. I won’t look.” She turns toward her bookshelf and starts flipping through a text.
I pick up the pen. I draw a spaceship shooting at alien invaders.
Okay. A list. I may as well get it over with.
Leave Webster
Make money
Work with cool people
Escape Dad, girlfriend, paella
Give autographs
Meet hot chicks
She did say it was private. I glance over my notes, then up at Ms. Gladwell, who’s pretending to be absorbed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
I go back to my list. It’s not going to cut it. Most of it’s not even true.
I try again.
I think of why I love watching docs. Why my dad and I can spend an entire Saturday night watching the History Channel.
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