“Hey,” Jared said afterwards.
“Hey,” Lex said.
“You wanna hang later?”
“Ugh,” she said, getting up to leave. “Don’t smother me.”
Jared brought his biology notecards to the airport and flipped through them while he sat on a bench near the carousel destined to spit out Mave’s luggage. Either he was getting the hang of studying or he was delusional. He almost felt ready for the first quiz tomorrow. He’d never felt ready for a quiz before. He heard Mave before he saw her, a piercing shriek. He saw her hand waving above a crush of rumpled passengers.
“Jared!” she shouted as if they were on different mountaintops.
“Hey,” Jared said as she ran in for a bulldozing hug.
They rocked. She pecked his cheek. “How was your weekend?”
He shrugged.
“I hear we have an asylum seeker.”
“What?”
“Kota.”
“He’s just crashing. He’s not moving in or anything.”
“My sweet Jelly Bean. We need to chat about who you are responsible for and who you are not.”
“There’s your suitcase.”
It was hard to miss. Someone had painted her black suitcase with a giant red ovoid eye and glued an abalone button on it for a pupil. It also had red pom-poms around the edges. He grabbed it and wheeled it to Mave, who linked arms with him as they walked towards the parking.
“You missed a great trip,” she said. “You’ll have to come next time.”
“We’re on level three.”
Once the elevator doors opened and she saw her refreshed ride, Mave uttered a piercing scream that rang through the parking lot. Mave skipped. She immediately had to go for a spin. She honked the horn before they got out of the garage, and the horn played “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”
On the highway, other Canuck fans honked enthusiastically as they passed. When Mave honked back, they went nuts, a noisy parade of two. They grabbed drive-through coffee and cruised up and down the Drive.
“I know it was supposed to be a surprise, but Justice also put up an armoire in your room,” Jared said, in a plot to get them home.
More screaming when they reached the apartment. Kota groggily hopped off the couch to watch Mave bounce up and down in front of her new-to-her closet.
“I love it!” she screamed, temporarily deafening them.
“Neighbours,” Jared said. “Lots of neighbours.” To Kota, he said, “There’s bannock in the kitchen.”
“Oh, my God, look at it!” Mave ran her hands over the inlaid wood. “Look at it.”
She insisted on taking him out to dinner to celebrate. She then invited Kota, who said he had to take care of some shit. Mave tugged on Jared’s sleeve and they left. They parked in front of a small red house that was divided into smaller apartments. Mave cried as soon as Justice opened her door, and then Justice cried. She lived in a bachelor suite with the oven and sink beside her daybed. Her window overlooked the backyard, an untamed jungle of trees, vines and birds. Justice wore a flouncy dress the colour of lemon curd. She had oversized sunglasses perched on her head. They held each other like one of them was dying. Jared jammed his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels, wishing he’d stayed home.
“Really, Maamaan,” Justice said, holding Mave at arm’s length and studying her yoga pants.
“Travel gear, darling.”
“That’s all well and good, but why on earth are you still wearing it?”
“I had to thank you immediately. I love my new closet. I adore my Canuck bug.”
“Ah. Good. I was worried it was the first signs of incipient insanity.”
After supper, Mave dropped him off at the apartment so she could take Justice out for mimosas. He went upstairs and unplugged his phone from its charger, flopping down on the couch. Kota was gone, along with one of Jared’s shirts and a note saying he’d bring it back. Dent was back on the recliner with the TV tuned to the science fiction channel.
Jared made himself coffee. He brought the mug to his bedroom and cracked open his books when the intercom buzzed.
“Hey,” Sarah said.
“Come on up,” Jared said.
He waited at the door for her, heart trip-hammering, palms clammy. Sarah’s hair was braided into a crown and she wore a jumpsuit that looked like it had been designed by grannies tripping on acid. Her glittery makeup had a smeared lightning bolt over one eye. Her dark lipstick had feathered and run beyond her mouth. This Sarah didn’t have any fireflies, though. The only other time he’d seen Sarah without fireflies was when he was actually looking at a shape-shifting otter who was using Sarah’s form to try to lure him into the woods. That had ended in a cave, with him being used as a chew toy, his toe bitten off and eaten in front of him.
They were both silent.
“Who are you?” Jared said.
“Britney Spears,” this version of Sarah said.
“You’re not Sarah.”
“It’s me,” she said. “Jared. For fuck’s sake, stop playing around.”
He looked up to see if the fireflies were in the ceiling or something, but he couldn’t hear their telltale hum. “You’re not Sarah.”
“They’re gone,” Sarah said. Her shoulders heaved and she leaked tears. “He ate them and then he left me.”
Jared crossed his arms over his chest, refusing to let her inside the apartment until he was sure it was Sarah. “Who ate them?”
“He said he was a medicine man. I couldn’t stop him. He disappeared and he took them. I felt them leave.” Her face contorted, and then she took a few deep breaths. “Are any of them left?” Sarah said, suddenly looking away. “Can you see any of them?”
Jared watched her. “No.”
She bent over, sobbing. Jared reluctantly led her inside and sat her at one of the kitchen chairs and then sat beside her. He didn’t feel like she was a fake Sarah, but it was weird seeing her without her fireflies.
“I killed them,” she whispered. “I got them killed.”
Eventually, Jared reached over and she crawled into his lap and cried into his shoulder. He held her as waves of her grief washed over him. Dent made an annoyed sound and popped out of the room.
* * *
—
Her body was warm and heavy against his. They lay in his bed, curled together under the quilt. He wiped the snot from her nose with the hem of his T-shirt. Sarah blew her nose hard.
“Missed you,” she said.
“Missed you, too,” Jared admitted.
Her eyes looked up to the ceiling. “Are you sure they’re gone?”
“Yes.”
“He seemed like a good guy,” Sarah said. “I thought he was my friend right up to the moment his jaw unhinged and he started eating them. He put the rest of them in some kind of bag and disappeared. Poof.”
They were quiet. The traffic outside was a steady rumble. Having Sarah beside him was comfortable. Jared drifted. He felt his cellphone buzz, but he was too tired to check who was texting him. He wondered if the fireflies had suffered. If they felt pain the way humans felt pain. He didn’t like them, but he didn’t want them eaten. If any of them were alive, he hoped they found their way back to Sarah. He hated to see her suffer like this.
The painted heads on his bedroom wall shivered. A spot of light above the bed began to glow and then sparked like bulbs exploding. Suddenly, about a dozen fireflies hung in the air above them, faint and silent.
Sarah sat up. She raised her face, staring blindly. “Are they back?”
“Just a few of them,” Jared said. “They seem pretty weak.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Jared said, not wanting to get into the whole painted heads and ghosts and spirits conversation with her. “They just appeared.”
“You did something,” Sarah insisted.
“I didn’t. I really didn’t.”
The fireflies rose, until they were circli
ng half-through the ceiling.
Sarah pushed the quilt off her legs and rolled out of bed. “Are they saying anything?”
“No.”
“Thank you,” the fireflies said.
“I didn’t do anything,” Jared said.
The painted heads had done something. They had read his mind. Or the fireflies had just come back. It wasn’t him. He wasn’t responsible. He didn’t even like the pompous little asses.
Sarah lay back down beside him, her makeup smeared more than ever, and rested her head on his arm.
“Thank you,” she said. “I knew you could help us.”
Jared made coffee. Sarah was asleep in his bed. He was too wired to do homework. He checked the freezer and brought out a pack of ground hamburger. He defrosted it in the microwave. He boiled some sweet potatoes and mashed them, throwing together a pan of shepherd’s pie. He needed to keep busy, to not think too hard about what it all meant. The oven timer clicked.
Jared walked into the bedroom and watched Sarah sleep. The fireflies were a dim glow. The timer went off in the kitchen. Jared hadn’t been conscious of time passing, but he went and took the shepherd’s pie out of the oven. Kota walked in and helped himself.
“I found another place to stay,” he said. “Everyone can calm the fuck down about me falling off the wagon now. I’m not your fucking problem anymore.”
“Dude,” Jared said. “Chill, okay?”
Kota dropped his plate on the counter. “Suck-up. You’ll say anything for free rent.”
Jared turned the oven off. He watched Kota stomp away and heard the apartment door slam. He heard a telltale slither and from the corner of his eye saw something moving in the wall.
“Huey!” Jared called.
The slithering stopped. Jared covered the shepherd’s pie loosely with tinfoil. He didn’t know when Sarah would wake. He went back to his room and crawled into bed beside her. She made an annoyed sound, then flung an arm over him. The fireflies had perked up and were spinning faster, brighter. The painted faces in the wall watched the fireflies suspiciously.
He liked having Sarah here. He didn’t even mind the fireflies. They glowed. His eyelids shut and he listened to her breathing. He heard Justice and Mave come in, their laughter. He drifted. When he woke again, Sarah was checking her phone beside him.
“What time is it?” Sarah said.
“Dunno.”
“Blanket.”
He pulled the quilt from the bottom of the bed where it was crumpled. He covered her and she kissed his hand.
Sunlight poured through the blinds, warming Jared’s face. He slid his arm out from under Sarah’s head. She stayed asleep as he carefully crawled over her. His arm was numb, tingling to life. He used the bathroom. He brushed his teeth, staring at his reflection.
Jared made coffee. He chopped up some fruit for a salad because he knew Sarah liked that for breakfast. He took his coffee to the couch and blankly watched the morning news with the volume turned low.
“I thought I heard voices,” Mave said, coming into the living room.
“There’s coffee.”
“I love you.” Mave banged around the kitchen and came to sit beside him with a mug and a small bowl of fruit salad. “Who is she?”
“Sarah,” Jared said. “My ex-girlfriend.”
Mave’s eyebrows went up. “Oh?”
“It didn’t work. We want different things.”
“And you’re still friends?”
Jared shrugged. “She dropped by. We started talking. We fell asleep. We didn’t, um, do anything.”
Mave yawned. “That really isn’t any of my business, is it?”
Jared stared at the TV. He hadn’t dated since he broke up with Sarah. He’d been pretty ripped up about everything, and then he’d spent a lot of time getting sober, couchsurfing and working. Plus all the girls he knew were into partying. The sober girls were from square families who didn’t want their daughters dating someone so hard-core he’d needed AA to straighten up. And, if he was forced to admit it, he’d gotten used to arguing with Sarah. She didn’t agree with him just to get along. She wanted to know what he thought about shit like Idle No More and indigenous identity and she razzed him when she thought his opinions were shallow. He missed that.
He heard the fireflies humming louder and winced. Mave stood and held her hand out for his mug. “Want another?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Sarah came out of the bedroom, squinting.
“Good morning,” Mave said. “I’m Mavis Moody, Jared’s aunt.”
“Morning,” Sarah said. “Sarah. Sarah Jaks. The ex.”
“Would you like some coffee?”
“Sure. That’d be great.”
Sarah came and sat beside him on the couch, bringing her knees up to her chest and hugging them.
“She’s deaf to magic,” Jared said quietly.
Sarah side-eyed him again. “And?”
“She’ll think you’re nuts if you try to tell her about it.”
Mave came back and handed Sarah a coffee.
“Thanks,” Sarah said.
“Ziggy Stardust?” Mave said.
“It’s better with the wig,” Sarah said, “but the wig’s itchy.”
“I adored Bowie’s Space Oddity stage. Those shoulder cut-outs are lovely. Did you have the jumpsuit altered or did it come like that?”
“The suit’s vintage. I did the cut-outs myself.”
“Such exquisite piping. Most people would have just used fabric glue.”
“Mom used to knock off designers when she couldn’t afford the clothes she wanted. We were a little sweatshop of two.”
“Fast fashion is all the rage these days.”
“Her days of seizing the means of production are so done.”
Mave laughed. “I thought Marx was passé among young radicals.”
“He’s still relevant. Our government is the executive committee of the One Percenters who hoard their wealth offshore while the rest of us are indentured to cheap credit to survive.”
“Then don’t use credit cards,” Jared said.
“That’s wasn’t my point!” Sarah said.
“Well,” Mave said, turning to Jared. “You have impeccable taste in women.”
Jared and Sarah looked at each other for a moment, and then Sarah ducked her head and pulled her knees closer.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Mave said, “who else have you read?”
Sarah shrugged, then said, “Recolonization. The Birth of Biopolitics. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Centre—”
Mave nodded. “Hooks, good, good.”
“Words themselves are doors,” the fireflies suddenly intoned, their voices ringing slightly out of unison like church bells tolling across town. “Metaphors leading to and from comprehension for un esprit enfermé dans la langue.”
Oh, good gravy, Jared thought.
He slowly realized that Mave and Sarah had stopped speaking and were staring at him. He’d pressed his hands over his ears, even though he knew it was impossible not to hear the fireflies. The women were silent.
“Sorry,” Jared said, releasing his hands.
“Language coheres with itself, not reality,” the fireflies continued, oblivious.
Would you shut it, Jared thought at them. Please.
“Are you all right?” Mave said.
“Headache,” Jared said.
Sarah looked up, her eyes sliding blindly past the cluster of fireflies.
“Words or language,” the fireflies said, “as they’re written or spoken, don’t play any role in the mechanism of thought. Tell Sarah we can’t go home if she doesn’t find her path. We need her help.”
“I’m going to lie down,” he said. “You guys keep talking.”
“Are you okay with that?” Aunt Mave said.
“Yeah. Philosophy bores the crap out of me.”
“Politics,” Sarah said. “Not philosophy.”
Jared glanced up at the firef
lies. “Whatevs. Later.”
He stood and Mave gripped his hand, squeezed it and let him go. The fireflies swarmed Sarah and she glowed, lines of energy sparking between the cloud and her head.
“This is how we live in a world run by thugs,” the fireflies said mournfully as they followed him to the bedroom in a gloomy, glowing cloud, “who think a mind is just a weapon.”
The walls of Jared’s bedroom trembled, like the horizon on a hot day, like the air above a fire. The faces painted on the mural blinked, began to vibrate and then spun madly, as if they were possessed and about to spew bile. The fireflies flattened into a single layer. They hovered just below the ceiling. The faces on the walls screamed all at once.
“What the hell?” the fireflies said.
Jared went over to his desk and opened his copy of the Big Book, which was generally referred to as the Big Book because of its size. He turned to Chapter Five, stuck his fingers in his ears and read about the Twelve Steps.
“ ‘We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable,’ ” Jared read out loud.
“We want to go home!” the fireflies shrieked.
The painted faces suddenly went silent. Jared cautiously took his fingers out of his ears and turned. The fireflies had left. He could hear them back in the living room snapping like mosquitoes hitting a bug zapper, but at least they had stopped trying to talk to him. The faces bobbed around the wall.
“Thank you,” Jared said.
The faces blinked all at once and then were still.
Jared listened carefully, but his aunt and his ex didn’t seem to have picked up on the screaming and screeching that had just finished. He could hear them talking excitedly, sometimes running over each other’s words, finishing each other’s sentences. He slowly let out a breath.
He felt safe in this room. Jared wasn’t sure what that meant. He wished he could talk to someone, but he wasn’t sure who, or what he’d say. Some things were so insane, the only thing to do was ignore them as stubbornly as humanly possible.
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