Dying to Go Viral

by Sylvia McNicoll

  “Dad, you were going to invite Mrs. Chalms to our family outing tomorrow?

  “Yes, I certainly was. Vanessa, we have a special adventure planned for tomorrow, a great opportunity for amazing photographs.”

  “Oh that sounds wonderful.” Her smile dropped. “But I have a placement Friday. Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Hmm, I’d rather keep the details a surprise but we have to be in Kitchener at 5:30 in the morning.”

  “Wow, that’s early,” Scratch croaked.

  “It will be worth it. I promise.”

  “You’re with your dad on Friday,” Mrs. Chalms said. “You can’t go either.”

  Scratch looked at me, corners of his lips twitching. “Okay, Mom.”

  We each took a Nanaimo bar from the dessert table, then the parents said their goodbyes to Mrs. Nor and we all headed back for the parking lot.

  “Wouldn’t it be funny if your father arranged for you to go skydiving after all?” said Scratch.

  “Skydiving? No. Some kind of fishing thing. Otherwise why would we have to leave so early?”

  In the parking lot, Dad and Mrs. Chalms hesitated.

  “If you ever want to share an outing on the weekend, we’ll be there.” Mrs. Chalms said.

  “I’ll make sure to let you know.” Dad smiled and waved as he climbed into the jeep.

  That’s when the most amazing thing happened. Scratch reached over and kissed me. On the lips. So quick I almost couldn’t believe it happened. He had no reason to either. He wasn’t grateful or practising.

  “Good night,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, stunned. In the car, I touched my lips with my fingers to hold the tingling. Wow. I loved it. Did this mean he thought we were boyfriend and girlfriend, though?

  Chapter 19

  SIGNING MY LIFE AWAY

  Friday morning, I awoke to the rumble of thunder and the smell of Dad’s coffee. After dressing in my best jeans, with holes on the knees and faded patches on the legs and butt, I headed into the kitchen.

  “Our adventure will probably be cancelled,” Dad told me as he peered out the window.

  “I thought fish liked the rain,” I said as I slid some bread into the toaster.

  “Maybe the fish do, but lightning and wind will make the trip unsafe.”

  At the table, Devon already sat slurping up the leftover milk from his cereal.

  “I hope you don’t do that in the college cafeteria,” Dad told him.

  “Absolutely not,” Devon said, setting the bowl down.

  I glared at Devon, grabbed my toast, and then turned to Dad. “Can we just do something else—indoors?” I didn’t really want to go fishing at all—hated the idea in fact—I was just going along with it to be with them, after all. “Let’s go to the Science Centre or…”

  Dad held up a finger as he answered his phone. “Hello… Uh huh, I figured as much…Sure, we can postpone till Sunday if that works best for you…Okay, see you then.” He hung up and answered me, “You heard all that. Devon and I will just go to work today.”

  “Aw, no. What if the weather is bad Sunday, too?”

  “We’ll just keep postponing till the conditions are safe, Jade. It will be worth it. I promise.” He started clearing the breakfast plates into the dishwasher.

  Buttering my toast, I asked, “Can you invite Mrs. Chalms then? She has Sundays off.” I finished and bit in.

  “Can’t you just ask Scratch and his mom yourself? You know how busy I am. Are the dishes in here dirty or clean?”

  “They used to be clean till you put yours in,” Devon answered.

  The doorbell rang then and Aiden walked in.

  I finished a triangle of bread.

  “Good morning, Aiden. Help yourself to coffee,” Dad called as he removed his dishes and put them back in the sink.

  “Hey, Aiden,” Devon said. “Sorry, but the trip got cancelled. Bad weather for it.”

  Aiden poured himself some coffee. “So I got up this early for nothing?”

  “You could film the storm,” I suggested. I finished the rest of my toast and put my plate in the sink.

  “Why can’t you empty the dishwasher right when it’s done?” Dad grumbled at Devon. “It was your turn.”

  “Cause they were hot then and I forgot.” Devon stood up and began clattering the dishes into the cupboard.

  “Gently!” Dad told him.

  “So what do you want to do instead, Devon?” Aiden asked.

  Dad answered for him. “He’s leaving for work with me. We’ll get an early start and finish faster that way. C’mon, Devon.”

  Devon shut the dishwasher and turned to Aiden. “Relax, and let yourself out when you’re done. I’ll see ya later,” he called as he followed Dad out the door.

  “Well, I’ve got nothing to do now.” Aiden sipped at his coffee, eyeing me over the cup. “How about you?”

  “No, nothing…We could go indoor skydiving,” I suggested as he stared. “There’s this place in Niagara Falls.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, you wanna go?” I couldn’t believe my luck. I couldn’t bond with my family but I would get closer to Aiden instead. “Excuse me for just a minute.” I rushed to the bathroom, put makeup on and stacked my hair up. I double checked the mirror for smudges, then took a scarf out as well as my sunglasses, in case the weather changed.

  Slowly, calmly, I walked back to the kitchen. “Take your time. I’m going to feed Oreo.” I didn’t see any more tuna so I gave Oreo another vanilla yogurt. He nodded a lot and sounded very happy.

  “Look at that—the weather is clearing.” Aiden clicked his tongue and shook his head.

  “It wasn’t Dad’s call. The client cancelled. Not calm enough for the boat, I guess.”

  “The boat, eh. I guess. Ready to go?”

  I smiled. “Uh huh.” We headed out.

  Aiden opened my car door for me and looked up at the sky. “We could put the top down. It’s warm.”

  I slid into the front, wrapped the scarf around my head, and slipped on my sunglasses. The wind still felt strong against my face as we sped along Brant. I wanted to wave to everyone as they headed for work. Look at me! Audrey Hepburn in a Mustang. Wheee!

  Aiden pulled to the side just before the on-ramp to the highway. “It will get too windy here.” The roof hummed back up. I hooked it down on my side and removed my scarf. We sped off, over the Burlingon Bay Bridge onto the QEW to Niagara.

  With the top up, I could hear the music he was playing. You spin me round, round, right round…

  I glanced at Aiden as he drove. He did send me swirling. His pale, serious face, eyes intent on driving, lips in a pout. I’m going to die for you, I thought. I also realized he resembled one of the main characters in my vampire story which had been so appealing before I was killed. How did Aiden manage to stay so pale?

  Less than an hour later, we drove down Falls Drive, once again with the top down. Unlike the other day with Scratch, we pulled immediately to the side of the road right at The Falls, with no slow buildup as when we walked toward them. Clouds of white spray billowed up from the roaring water. Tourists milled around the rails. A guy in a purple robe and turban stood posing for a photo. Above him hung the rainbow.

  The mist against my skin felt like a cold kiss. I smiled at the rainbow.

  “Excuse me, sir.” A police constable tapped at Aiden’s window. “This is a no-stopping zone.”

  “Oh sorry. I didn’t know!” Immediately, Aiden started the engine. “Where is this skydiving place?” he asked me.

  I directed him up the hill on Main. “Turn on Stanley. There!” He drove into the parking lot. A jet engine roared from inside the tower beside the glass pyramid so that the Mustang roof seemed to close silently this time.

  “Do they really fly a plane in that small building?” Aiden asked.

  “No. I think we just jump from someplace high.”

  “Not we. I’m filming.” He smiled as though there were some secret
he knew.

  My heart dropped. “I’m going alone?”

  “Oh, come on, surely there will be others. They wouldn’t start the engine for just one person.”

  Without him? I guess I really didn’t want to turn back. My heart began thrumming as we stepped through the door. It was still exciting. “I’d like to sign up for the skydiving,” I told the lady at the cash, a blonde with a pouffy hairdo and a FREE FALL t-shirt.

  “Okay. Here’s the form to fill in. A class starts in five minutes.”

  “A class?” Aiden repeated.

  “You her next of kin? You can go in, too. It’s a safety video. Compulsory.”

  He looked around as though he was checking for an escape route.

  I sat down and read the form, all four pages:

  I voluntarily, freely, and expressly choose to incur all risks associated with the activities covered by this agreement, understanding that those risks may include bodily and personal injury, damage to property, disfigurement or death.

  The words injury and death appeared several times throughout the document and in each paragraph that it did, I had to initial. Each time, I told myself that I was going to die on Monday anyway, this was no biggie. But what had I promised my father on my birthday? That I would take no unnecessary risks.

  I signed my full name at the bottom and handed the clipboard back. I headed upstairs for the class. Aiden followed.

  Nothing scary or dangerous about the video. The actor looked like our instructor, a skinny guy with a beard, dressed in a grey sweatsuit, but on screen he wore a helmet and nylon jumpsuit. He demonstrated the hand signals to use to communicate because once the engine started up, no one could hear anything. He also showed the correct body position to “dive” in and the way to roll when you fell.

  When the live instructor shut the television dude off, one at a time each participant had to lie across a long footstool to demonstrate the correct way to hold the body when diving.

  I went last and felt stupid, like everyone was watching me do something really lame. The instructor lifted my feet, forcing my leg to bend at the knee. Would I remember to hold them in exactly that way when I was jumping in the tunnel? If I didn’t, would that cause personal injury, disfigurement, or premature death?

  Aiden filmed my lameness.

  With the rest of my class, I followed the instructor down the stairs to get suited up. He handed me a large blue-andorange nylon jumpsuit like the one he’d been wearing in the video. I pulled it on over my feet. It was like stuffing myself into an oversized lunch bag. Then I zipped up.

  The instructor also handed me a plastic bag with ear plugs and showed me how to mash them with my fingers so they would be soft enough to form-fit in my ear. I stuffed them in. The world became muffled and felt a little farther away from me.

  Aiden filmed all that, too.

  “There’s a viewing station at the top, if you want to video from above,” the instructor suggested.

  Aiden nodded. Before he left I wanted to grab him and get that kiss—because who really ever knew? Since I’d come back, destiny seemed to have changed all along the way.

  But he ran up the stairs before I could even turn around. When everyone else was suited up as well, I followed after the coach into the wind tunnel which was really a tall, blue bouncy castle—you know the kind they rent out for little kids’ birthdays—made of brightly coloured vinyl air bags. Even through the earplugs, I could hear the roar of that engine which I realized was shooting air up the middle of the tunnel.

  Our instructor stood in the centre while the rest of us stood against the air bag wall. He signaled to us to raise our arms and spread our legs as though we were under arrest. Then he motioned for the guy next to me to jump.

  This wasn’t exactly skydiving. He wasn’t leaping from a plane thousands of feet in the air. But he did have to just jump flat out into nothingness and trust that he would stay up. He pushed out his hands, the instructor grabbed onto one and it looked like he was hurling him toward the ceiling. Up…up.

  The blowing air filled his suit so that he looked like a bloated marshmallow man. Hard to tell if he was having fun or not. The instructor guided him lightly as though he were a helium balloon. Then…he let go.

  The guy rose up and then knocked into the wall and

  fell.

  Luckily, he remembered to tuck and roll. The instructor clapped so the rest of us did, too.

  Then it was my turn. So soon? I pointed to myself to be sure and the instructor nodded. I leaned forward, arms and legs wide, and hesitated. The coach beckoned again.

  I took a breath, and jumped.

  Wow!

  It was like floating over one of those high-powered public washroom dryers, the ones that blow the skin into waves across your hands. I tried to smile and felt my cheeks flapping in the wind. The saliva in my mouth turned cold on my gums so I closed my lips again.

  I couldn’t tell if the instructor was holding me or not and maybe that was a good thing. Were my knees bent? Yes. My feet were okay too, I guessed, as my body turned ever so slowly, like a marshmallow woman on a spit. After a few minutes, I dove into the bouncy wall. A hard thud and then I dropped to the floor. After another moment I remembered to curl up.

  The instructor gave me a thumbs-up and I returned it.

  Wow! It was great. If only there had been some actual sky involved.

  One by one, the other three people took their turns. Some floated pretty high. One guy floated down really close to the grate.

  When the coach went around us for a second time, I felt like a pro. A professional helium balloon. Up, up, high! I couldn’t bend my head back far enough to see Aiden but I knew he was filming. I grinned and waved up.

  Maybe if he thought this was exciting enough, he wouldn’t need his stupid skateboard video. I gave a thumbs-up in the general direction of the viewing window.

  Then, clunk, the wall—and I was down again, rolling and scrambling to my feet.

  The other three guys took a second turn too, none of them performing the tricks that had been advertised on the billboards. First thing I did as we stepped out of the bouncy castle was remove the plugs from my ears. That felt a little more normal. I unsnapped my helmet and uncaught my hair from it. Then I unzipped that huge suit and stepped out. Better.

  “How was it?” the lady who signed me up asked.

  “Exciting,” I answered. Only there hadn’t been any family bonding and I hadn’t gotten any closer to Aiden either.

  “Great, eh?” She grinned.

  Aiden came down the stairs. “Fun?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but I missed the clouds and, and…” I stopped talking abruptly and instead grabbed his face and kissed.

  Chapter 20

  DYING OF EMBARRASSMENT

  My lips landed on his teeth. Hard. I was so embarrassed I pulled away instantly. Aiden didn’t say anything but his eyebrows reached for the sky and his eyes looked as though they were going to jump out of his head.

  In the past, I might have said I wanted to die on the spot. But from first-hand experience, I knew that wasn’t true. Still I couldn’t speak and I could feel my face flaming up hot.

  “Did you want to buy the t-shirt?” the sales lady asked.

  “Um…what t-shirt?” I managed.

  “See?” She held up a white t-shirt with a red-and-blue balloon man looking very ninja as he floated below the red words Indoor Skydiving. “Twenty dollars. Small, medium, large, and extra large. Anybody?” she asked holding it higher so my fellow air floaters could have a look.

  “Sure, we’ll buy one,” Aiden said. He took out his own wallet and gave her a twenty-dollar bill. “My gift,” he told me.

  “Small,” I told the lady, my face still on fire from the botched kiss. I watched as she folded one and put it in a Niagara Freefall Indoor Skydiving bag. “You didn’t have to,” I mumbled to Aiden.

  “You’ve taken me for dinner twice. Put it on for me.” He held up his camera as I pulled th
e t-shirt over my head.

  “Good, great ending to this clip.” He took my elbow. “Let’s go.”

  He was going to ignore what happened. Seeing as I made contact with his teeth, maybe that was for the best. But it made me feel like my kiss didn’t count for anything. That I was nothing.

  We left the Freefall Centre and headed back to the Mustang. I explained along the way how jumping inside that bouncy castle didn’t feel like skydiving at all. I still wanted to hurtle through the clouds.

  “Hey, I have an idea then,” Aiden said brightly as he opened the door to the car. “Let’s ride the SkyWheel.”

  “Is that the huge Ferris wheel?” I asked, starting to feel my skin finally cool down again.

  “Yup.”

  I’d never been on it before. “Yeah, that would be great.”

  He slammed the car door shut again. “Okay. So let’s just walk. We probably won’t get parking any closer.”

  We dodged around the cars in the lot and headed towards the midway. Even though it would have been hot in the city, the air was mist-cooled in Niagara Falls. Nice. We strolled between the Imax Theatre and the casino and then behind Skylon Tower.

  Then we ducked away from all the buildings through Victoria Park. I inhaled deeply and looked at Aiden, wishing I could suck up the courage to grab his hand. But I didn’t think I could take being ignored a second time.

  Aiden didn’t say anything and I couldn’t talk to him as we strolled along the pathway through the bushes and trees, past a purple flower bed, under a trellis, and beside a water fountain. Not like when Scratch and I didn’t talk: this was a lump of silence, hard and awkward. Too bad— the walkway was pretty.

  Ahead, the SkyWheel loomed skyscraper-high, with dark bubble gondolas circling at a slow, even pace. As we drew closer, Aiden began videoing again. It was like he couldn’t see without a camera in front of him. I stepped around him and bought our tickets.

  When the ride stopped to let people off, I pulled at his elbow. There was no one else in line yet, so we moved to the front and climbed into the first gondola that opened. It was like a double-sized telephone booth with rounded corners. Two bench seats faced each other.