by Kim Hood
But I honestly didn’t keep talking because I wanted to crush her dream, or somehow insult her. I just desperately wanted someone to agree with me, to wake up and think ‘You’re right, I can’t believe we have all been happy with our stupid, ignorant little lives. We need to get out!’
That is not what happened.
This is what happened, and I didn’t see it coming.
First, there was silence. Not really the stunned kind either. More the building rage kind.
‘So you think you are above us, is that it?’ That was Brenda. I got the point that she was hurt, but I didn’t get the ‘above us’ part.
‘I think I kind of included myself in that group.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ Brenda retorted. ‘You think you are better than us because you have Dell. And just because your Mom is a bigshot lawyer.’
Brenda’s face was bright red. Aishling had crossed her arms. Tracey’s gaze was so far down she was practically looking behind herself.
‘So let me get this straight. I think I’m better than all of you because I have a boyfriend who has every prospect of ending up to be the manager of a gas station for the rest of his life, and I have a mother who has, or should I say had, an office where she spent most of her time playing solitaire because if anyone actually needs a lawyer here, they certainly don’t want it to be their neighbour.’
‘That’s just it, Jane!’ Aishling sat closer to Brenda as she said this, the two of them a wall of opposition against me. ‘You constantly put Verwood down. Just because you aren’t from there.’
‘I’ve lived there since I was six! My mother was born thirty miles away!’
‘That’s not the same.’ Aishling was shaking her head.
‘So I am constantly reminded.’ I had to agree with her there. There had to be some reason why I couldn’t seem to care about a single thing everyone else did.
We’d had fall outs before, but this one had been different. Maybe it was that we didn’t need each other as much anymore. When we’d all gone to elementary school in Verwood there only had been us four so we kind of had to get along. In a village of 423 people, class sizes didn’t leave much choice for friendship. Brenda didn’t even have another girl in her year, so she’d had us by default. And at first we had clung to each other when we moved to high school, with everything new, big and overwhelming.
But now Aishling and Brenda had friends outside of our circle. Aishling had gotten her driver’s licence in the summer, and her mom let her use the car to go to Kendal on the weekends to hang out with her other friends. Brenda, of course, had Stan and his buddies.
They didn’t need to repair things with me. And I had pretty much stopped giving a shit about any of it.
Tracey though, now Tracey was a bit stuck. Aishling and Brenda let her hang around with them when I wasn’t there, but if she dropped off the earth tomorrow I honestly don’t think they’d notice. I’m pretty sure Tracey knew that too. So I really wanted to give a shit about Tracey. At the very least I could ask her if she wanted to skip class with me. Or tell her the truth, that there wasn’t a hope in hell that I would be anywhere near the school by lunchtime.
Instead I said, ‘Sure, Tracey.’
And she linked my arm then and grinned as if I had just handed her a present, while the acidic guilt released in my gut caused the milk from my breakfast to curdle.
Do you ever feel like you are living your life on a treadmill? You open your eyes in the morning and you know that it’s going to be the exact same day as it was yesterday. Not one thing will have changed. And you know that you should probably just step off the bloody exercise machine, maybe even go over and try out the new stationary bike.
Only, in my case, when I look down, I realise that my treadmill is suspended over this huge chasm, and that even if I make a giant lunge for the bike, I’m probably going to fall into that black hole. I’ll probably just fall forever. It will be the same as now, only darker.
I think, if I can know at all, that when I began not going to classes, it was kind of like jumping into that chasm. I thought, what the hell, it can’t be worse than what is happening now, can it? The first time I just walked out of the door instead of going to class it actually felt fantastic. Like something was finally going to happen.
Only it didn’t. Absolutely nothing happened. Or if it did – it had no impact on my life at all.
The bottom line is – nobody truly cares if I am there or not. Mom and Dad don’t have the time or the energy to really care. And in the grand scheme of things, what is more to worry about, a daughter trying not to die, or one not doing so well in school? We all know what trumps that. So, the school is hardly going to care are they? Who is ‘the school’ anyway? I learned through Eva’s departure that nobody was necessarily going to be there long.
It’s weird though. Now that I can basically be at school whenever I want, or leave whenever I don’t want to be there – it’s turned into a different kind of pressure. It’s up to me to decide every day whether I go or not. You’d be surprised how much effort that is. Some mornings I miss the time when I woke up whining that I really wanted to stay home, only to have Mom clap me on the back of the head and tell me that, ‘no Hamilton member stayed away from work or school for something as lame as a cold’. I haven’t heard that one in a couple of years now. Emma sure put a spanner in that mantra! If she had planned it, I would have congratulated her on her coup.
English was not such a bad first period to have though, especially when we were in the middle of a novel study, which we were. Ms Foster was really into her literature, and she tended to ramble on a bit when she was excited about a book. She liked the sound of her own voice and she could fill up half of the time with reading aloud to us. All the less reading to do at home.
Second period was maths, and even though I didn’t love it, I had my rule – zero, two, three or five class days. So I went to maths.
Third period was family studies though, and sure, it was an easy class, but we were doing some sort of project where we had to work in groups. I’d missed too many classes to really follow it; something about planning and budgeting for a household. My group were all terribly keen and taking the project to a whole new level, with elaborate plans of ‘our house’ and how they were going to decorate it for free.
When I did go to the class, they all kind of sighed, so it was better not to go at all. I couldn’t even pretend to be excited about decorating some virtual house, and even though I know they all resented that I was going to end up sharing their good grade, while doing absolutely nothing to contribute, I also knew they were happier if I wasn’t there to remind them of that fact.
So I walked into town instead, which has its own pitfalls. What is it about those of us between the ages of thirteen and seventeen that threatens the retail industry so much? I haven’t been able to walk into a store for more than two years without feeling like I should hold my hands in the air just so there’s no question about my shoplifting intentions. And I mean really, in a town the size of Kendal, am I honestly going to try to fleece people? I’m not stupid. In the winter, when all of the tourists have left, there can’t be more than ten customers a day. Ten customers, minus three who are relatives, three who are Grannies, equals a one in four chance that I would be blamed for any discrepancy in stock at the end of the day. No way would I chance it, even if I felt like lifting something, which I generally do not.
All I am looking for in town is somewhere to get out of the weather once in a while. Did I mention that it’s November and absolutely freezing? There hasn’t been any snow, but that is only because it’s too bloody cold to snow. So it isn’t even pretty and cold. Just cold.
What I usually do when the temperature reaches the requiring-mittens-to-avoid-losing-fingers-to-frostbite stage is to do some intense browsing, for very short periods of time, in as many stores as it takes to eat up the time I have to kill. Twenty stores, or there-about, at ten minutes per store, equals two hundred minutes at a pu
sh. I can tell you what is in any store in town. I could open a business as a personal shopper in a snap.
Only I hate shopping. I never buy anything. Not that I could even if I wanted to. I believe it’s about nineteen months since Mom and Dad completely stopped supplying me with regular, predictable chore money. You know, the kind you can count on every Saturday, even if it’s only a few bob? I’m not sure if the chore money stopped because (a) I stopped doing chores at all or (b) they could no longer afford it with Mom not working at all now or (c) which is most likely – they stopped remembering that they wanted to teach their daughters ‘the value of money’ and ‘how to manage your own finances’.
We used to have lengthy discussions about this sort of thing. If I remember correctly, most of the conversations went along the line of Emma smiling sweetly, and me arguing every point Mom and Dad said. Something like:
‘Dad, can I have some money to buy Tracey a present for her birthday?’
‘That really isn’t my expense, Jane. That’s what your chore money is for,’ Dad replied.
‘But her birthday party is on Friday, and I don’t get my chore money until Saturday,’ I protested.
‘Again, not my fault. You need to plan for these things. You mean you don’t have one cent saved?’ He knew the answer to that was no, of course.
‘I have seventy-nine dollars,’ Emma had quipped from her corner of the breakfast table.
‘Well good for you, Miss Saver-of-the-Year.’ Emma had a way of saying the worst things at the worst time. To be fair, she didn’t mean to make me look bad; she just instinctively could not pass up an opportunity to look good, and by comparison, I always provided the perfect backdrop for that.
‘Jane, there’s no need for snarkiness here.’
‘Well, it’s super easy to not spend any money when you spend every day in some sort of rehearsal – which is totally paid for by your parents I might add. Whereas myself, I have a social life and it takes money to have one of those.’
I’d had a social life. I guess I didn’t need money anymore without one. It was just one more thing that I couldn’t seem to care about anymore. It all seemed too monotonous to care about. The conversations never went anywhere. It was the same thing over and over. Talk about who was with who, who wanted to be with who, what so and so had done at the last party, what shoes were so cool, what band was so cool. I kind of hated everyone, except maybe Dell, but then it’s difficult to hate someone who generally doesn’t talk.
Everything that came out of anyone’s mouth anymore seemed utterly meaningless. I watched their mouths move. The words came out with not one bit of effort. Their expressions flickered, bright sparks that came and went; they cared about what they said, how they felt. Those words started out vibrant and light, but by the time they got to my ears, they were flat and heavy. I had a difficult time believing that the person uttering them even believed them. Could people really be as happy as they seemed? Really?
I longed to feel that happiness. I wanted to believe them, to feel what they seemed to. I just couldn’t.
That’s another reason, maybe, that I had a hard time staying in school for too many hours at a time. All of that bubbly joy sticking to me as I passed people in the halls made me start to feel kind of itchy. An itch that I couldn’t find to scratch. If I didn’t get away from it I felt I might end up in a corner screaming. That couldn’t be good.
So here I was walking the streets of the big town of Kendal again, reading the sandwich boards outside shops, as if there would be something new written on them, as if I were doing a little early Christmas shopping. Some of the signs were already flat on their faces, blown over by the gusts of wind that punched down the street every once in a while. I stopped to put the sports shop sign right, but the next one – for the novelty shop – I left because my mittens were at home instead of in my jacket pocket where they should be, and my fingers were already losing feeling. Besides, the sports shop sign had hit the ground again with a thud as soon as I walked away from it.
I was having a harder time deciding which shop I could go into for a few minutes because there were hardly any people around. It was difficult to appear inconspicuous when you were the only one in a store. I was just walking past ‘the granola café’, as it was nicknamed, when the door slammed open. Bad timing; it had just been hit by a gust. The guy coming through the door couldn’t do much about it because he had his own sandwich board in his hands – and I seemed to be exactly in the spot he wanted to put it.
‘Hmmm.’ He put the sign down, and instead of closing the door like a normal human being would, he just stood there looking at me. Like I was a painting or something. In the wind, with his heavy wooden sign leaning on him, with the door still wide open. I wondered what he was even doing holding that sign instead of being in school. Unless he looked young for his age. Maybe it was the spelt bread that those types had to eat.
It wasn’t like the street was crowded and I could just carry on. This guy was STARING at me, and you know when someone does something weird and you think that you need to do something, respond in some way, but your brain hasn’t figured out what the correct response is? It was like that.
Finally, after tons of seconds went by and he was still staring at me, my brain came up with that response. It wasn’t perhaps the cleverest of responses mind you.
‘And?’ I said.
‘I didn’t know the universe would respond so promptly.’
‘Excuse me?’ The picture was getting clearer. This guy was obviously off-his-rocker stoned. A little early for it, but he fit the profile alright. Kind of. Not really. Well, he was outside of the right shop anyway.
Let me explain about where I live. There are two kinds of people: you are either ‘an earth ravager’ or you are ‘an earth saver’. That sounds kind of extreme, and it is. You also can’t really do much about which camp you are in if you are under the age of say eighteen. It all depends on what your parents do. If you are a logging or a mining family, then you are ‘an earth ravager’. Too bad for you if you are interested in saving the rain forest. If, on the other hand, you had the weird luck of being born into one of the communes (probably literally there, in a pond, with a whale sound track in the background) then you are ‘an earth saver’. Again, if you fancy getting yourself a souped-up car, and a nice house, paid for by a fat mine paycheque, well you better not voice that goal to your family. Now I’m not saying that I am a climate-change denying, death-to-the-left-wing fanatics because my dad happens to work for the mine. I’m not. I’m actually pretty anti-corporation of any kind. Maybe Brenda is right, and I haven’t embraced my ‘earth ravaging’ community values because my dad isn’t your typical miner. He’s actually an artist-turned-miner to pay the bills.
Somehow I highly doubt there’s a whole lot of difference between the two camps though. We are all stuck in this shithole. The hippies are stuck because most of them are descended from draft dodgers – a bunch of Americans who avoided getting sent to some war – by hiding out in Canada instead; maybe they can’t even get passports! The loggers and miners are stuck because, let’s be honest, have you ever talked to a logger who suddenly changed career and became, say, a teacher, who could get a job anywhere they wanted? Not going to happen.
And us kids? We just don’t meet anyone from the other camp. Really, really we don’t. There’s even the hippie school for the hippies. I think they do a lot of baking and making bad clay coffee cups. At least that’s what I know of the school from the spring market. Our school sells raffle tickets for all of the consumer goods donated by business. You get the picture.
The guy standing in front of me was obviously from the baking/pottery side of things. He literally had the sign in front of him stating it: ‘From the Good Earth’, which was the name of the café. Plus, he had on one of those Guatemalan stripy shirts, with a pair of Birkenstock sandals, in November.
But instead of the usual dreadlocks or stringy ponytail, he had massive hair. Massive, disco-seventies
, afro hair. It just didn’t match his outfit. Although, what did I know? I mean, it’s not like there are very many people who are black around Kendal at all. But then I remembered the picture of Bob Marley, and of course, of all hippies, one who is black should have dreadlocks.
As interesting as all of this was, in a rather uncomfortable sort of way, I was beginning to freeze. And this weirdo just stood there. But then another gust of wind nearly took the sign sideways out of his hands and woke him up.
‘You need to come inside,’ he said, propping the sign up against the brick wall, where it was obviously going to fall with the next gust.
‘I don’t need to do anything,’ I protested, but he had already linked my elbow with his and was pulling me in the door.
‘Yes you do. You just don’t know it yet.’
Who did this guy think he was? Cocky, arrogant fucker. Besides, all I had in my pocket was a few small coins. I couldn’t even buy a hot chocolate – if there were such a thing here. It was probably hot carob at twice the price.
‘Here.’ He had guided me over to a table covered in books and binders. He even had to clear a pile off one chair so that he had a place to put me. And then he didn’t so much offer me the chair as push me into it. I may have been more concerned about practically being kidnapped except that it wasn’t just us in the café. There was a woman behind the counter who didn’t seem fazed by our windy entrance; she was flipping through a newspaper and barely glanced up.
‘You might close the door behind you, Farley,’ she said, turning another page. This he did, before sitting opposite to me, grinning widely.