Catch My Drift

by Genevieve Scott

  Dad crushes his cigarette out on the deck. “There you go, Cara,” he says. “Boys can’t control their wieners. They ruin it for everyone.”

  Simon comes by later that afternoon while I’m lying on the picnic table, tanning, waiting for Heike to teach me stupid recorder because I promised Dad.

  “You didn’t tell me your name,” Simon says.

  “Cara.”

  “My mom says you guys are from the city.”

  “Yep.” I look at his feet through the slats in the picnic bench. If I move my head just a little, I can make the shadow hide the spotty part of his foot.

  “How come you didn’t stay with the eel?”

  “It was gross.”

  Simon sits down on the bench. “Do you want to play Battleship?”

  “Can’t.”

  He nods but he doesn’t leave, and when Heike comes out with a brown box of music stuff, she asks if he wants to learn too.

  Heike pulls three lawn chairs together in a circle and we all sit down with our butts sagging nearly to the grass. She gives us each a stumpy wooden instrument and blabs about the holes in the wood. When she says “high note” she makes her voice all squeaky and holds her arm up over her head so that I can see her weedy armpit hair. I try to give a look to Simon, but he’s busy with the recorder on his mouth, flapping his fingers over the holes.

  When Heike plays “Go tell Aunt Rhody” she closes her eyes and puffs her cheeks out like pink balloons. Just like that, I get an idea that I’m going to strike her across the face with my recorder. I press my tongue hard into the ridge behind my teeth. You won’t hurt her, I say to myself. You won’t. At least I don’t think I will, but already I’m feeling the crack of wood on bone in my fingertips. I put my recorder down and hold it tight between my knees. I breathe in slowly through my nose. Everything smells like hot pine needles.

  Heike stops playing. “Cara,” she says. “You don’t want to play?”

  “Can’t,” I say.

  “You can.” She gives me that brown-tooth smile.

  I try again, but my fingers feel cold and they tremble. I blow into the mouthpiece, but it’s too loud. A glob of spit leaks onto my bathing suit top. I shake my head.

  Heike looks at Simon. “And you?”

  Simon brings the thing to his mouth and copies her sound, the notes coming out clear and sweet like real music. Heike sings along: “The old grey goose is dead. Yes, the old grey goose is dead!” Simon finishes and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Like an angel,” Heike says to Simon. Then she looks back at me. “Now you again.”

  Squeezing the recorder in my sweaty fist, I tell Heike I’m not feeling well and run back into the cottage. In my room, I slam the recorder in the bottom dresser drawer, next to the sandwich bag with Dad’s old stereo screws and springs. I brought them up, but I haven’t given them back yet.

  The screen door bangs and Heike calls my name. I go to the bathroom and sit on the toilet with my hands between my knees. There’s a picture of a yellow flower beside the medicine cabinet, and I try to think about how pretty the flower is, how good and gentle. I breathe slowly.

  When I come out again, Simon is gone and Heike is filling a glass with bleach. She slips Simon’s recorder in it. “We can’t take any risks,” she says. “He has the disease.”

  Outside, Heike’s laundry still wobbles on the clothesline. I rub a little dirt into the crotch of each pair of her underpants. Maybe if I do something a little bit bad, the very bad thoughts will go away.

  Every morning, Jed disappears somewhere on his bicycle. Because there’s nothing else to do, nowhere to go, and no one else to hang out with, for the rest of the week I go to Simon’s place after lunch to play Ping-Pong or Battleship. On a Friday night, we find Simon’s pretty mom Marie painting her nails at the kitchen counter, getting ready for a party down the beach. Two trays of devilled eggs shimmy in Saran Wrap on top of the running dishwasher. Marie spreads her hands out in front of a fan, and I think about what would happen if her fingers got sucked in. Flying pink skin, blood speckling the dirty white countertops. I suck in my cheeks and stare hard at the photos on the fridge, trying to memorize them instead: a wedding picture with Simon’s dad in a blue ruffled shirt; Simon’s mom with a pie on her face; the whole family holding a big striped fish.

  “You want?” Marie says. She has a Quebec accent, and her voice is like a loud whisper. I look over and she waggles her bottle of nail polish. I do want coloured nails, but I shake my head. Can’t get too close.

  Marie nods at the plastic bag hanging on the arm of her chair. “There’s something in here for your skin, too, Simon.” Simon turns away, probably embarrassed.

  The spots on Simon’s body look less red to me, or maybe I’m just getting used to them. “Your scabs are better,” I say, being nice. “The disease is from the water. The algae has little bugs that get into your skin.”

  “No, no.” Marie waves her hand and shakes her head.

  “But—”

  “It’s gonna rain,” she says. Her forehead goes wavy when she looks out the kitchen window. “Better play outside before the afternoon’s wrecked.”

  Simon and I each take an egg outside and sit on the breakwater under the thick smear of clouds. We sit quiet for a while, watching adults play volleyball lower down the beach, their feet making a million dents in the sand.

  “Your mom’s nice,” I say.

  “I guess.”

  “Where’s your dad?”

  “Oil rigs.” He looks at me, and I notice his eyes are the same metal color of the lake. He takes a bite of the egg and yolk sticks like paste to his lips.

  “Cool.”

  “I guess.”

  “You have egg on your mouth.”

  “Where?” He sticks his tongue out and jabs it left and right.

  I put my finger on his lips and his ears go red. “It’s gone,” I say, even though it isn’t.

  “What’s your dad do?”

  “An actor,” I say. Working at the bank is less cool, plus he got fired. “Did you ever see Dog Daze?”

  “Nope.” Simon kicks a flip fop down to the sand. “We should go for a swim. That’s what we should do.”

  “In the pool?”

  He shakes his head. “They won’t let me.”

  “How come?”

  “Because of the sores.” He scratches his shoulder, making a tiny bead of blood pop. “Sorry,” he says. “They itch.”

  The hairs on our legs are touching. It feels fuzzy like when you put your hand too close to a television screen. I feel a rain drop on my knee and another two on my wrist, but Simon doesn’t move so I don’t either.

  “Sometimes the itching wakes me up in the middle of the night. I scratch everything until it bleeds. It’s bad, I know, but I can’t help it.”

  “I know,” I say, rolling the rain across my wrist.

  “How do you know? You don’t have spots.”

  There’s a grunt of thunder. The adults on the beach are collapsing their lawn chairs, putting bottles away in bright coolers.

  “I do things I can’t help too,” I say.

  “Like what?”

  “Sometimes I think about stuff that I don’t even want to, that I don’t even try to.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Bad thoughts.”

  “Huh,” Simon says, but he doesn’t ask what. He brushes his hands together, wiping away the egg bits. “Sounds like an itch in your brain.” Then he reaches over and scratches the top of my head.

  The rain really starts then, piercing holes into the sand. “Let’s go in the lake,” Simon says, standing up. “It’s the best when it’s raining.”

  “What about the algae?”

  “There’s none right here,” he says. “Promise.”

  Standing up makes me dizzy. “I don’t have a bathing suit.”

  “Who cares? You’re getting wet anyway.”

  Simon jumps down to the beach and rips across to the w
ater, sand coughing up behind his heels. He stands ankle deep, waiting for me. “Rain makes the water warmer,” he says. “Really.”

  I follow him to the shore, jumping into his footprints. He jogs backwards, silver spray crashing up to his waist. I wade to my knees, breathing the lake smell, the same smell as always: tin cans and plants. I remember Dad grabbing my wrists when I was little, spinning me around: Motorboat, motorboat goes so slow.

  I wade a little further and the cold water climbs up my legs, my stomach. The bravery hits me like a shove and I dive, cutting the surface of the lake and swimming down to its scalp-splitting colder layers. The water wobbles against my lips, and my hair swirls mermaid-like around my face. When I push myself back up, I’m gasping for air and feeling good, feeling like it’s a long time ago. I float next to Simon on my back, letting the rain smack down on my forehead.

  Jed sees me come in with my wet clothes. “You went in the lake?” he makes a barf face.

  “Sick. No. Do you think I want the disease?”

  “Why’re you wet then?”

  “Duh. It’s raining.” My hair is dripping down my back and onto the floor.

  Jed narrows his eyes at me. “You were with that zitty kid, weren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Touch his wang?”

  “Gross.”

  Then he looks me up and down, stopping at my chest. “Nice tits,” he says and cackles at himself. I fold my arms over my chest. Look who’s laughing at his own jokes, I want to say.

  “Hey, kids,” Dad calls from the porch. “Come see the rainbow.”

  Jed rolls his eyes. “I’m good.”

  Sometimes it’s like Dad doesn’t know basic things anymore. Like that Jed and I are too old now to be interested in rainbows.

  I change into dry clothes and go to the kitchen for a pop and handful of chips. Through the door to the screened-in porch, I see the rainbow he’s talking about. Both sides of the arc are totally visible, something you only see on T-shirts and kindergarten drawings. I find myself wondering if Simon can see it; if we’re both looking at the very same thing at the very same time. Dad has his arm around Heike’s waist. She leans into him, her scratchy yellow hair smushed against his shoulder.

  Later that night, Heike sets up Monopoly on the porch table while Dad taps his foot to the rock music wafting up from the beach. “Maybe we should drop into that party after all,” Dad says to Heike, rubbing her shoulder. “Rain’s gone.”

  “Oh, no, Alex. You know how it’s going. Everyone bombed.” She waves her hand in front of her nose.

  “It’s the friendly thing,” Dad says. “Neighbourly.” He flips a game piece from one hand to the other.

  “You and the smell of booze,” she says. “We should do something together, no?”

  “You should definitely go to the party, Dad,” Jed says, slamming a dart into the board across the porch. “I saw a woman go down there with some serious sweater meat.”

  “What’s sweater meat?” I ask.

  Dad laughs. “Like father, like son.” He puts the game piece down and rubs his palms together. “One drink,” he says to Heike. “It’s Saturday night.”

  “We’ll keep the game out,” Heike says.

  After they’re gone, Jed and I throw darts together. He doesn’t say anything, only “Yes!” and “Fucker!” but it’s the first thing we’ve done together all week. I don’t even really try to win because it feels like those old summers for the second time today, and that’s good enough.

  Through the screen, the sun is fat and low, spilling an orangey trail across the lake. I’m not ready for the day to be over, the best day we’ve had here so far, but the sun just does its thing, doesn’t care what it’s shutting down. When we were little, when it was too hot to sleep, Mom would take Jed and me swimming just before dark. The water was so still. Jumping in was like breaking glass.

  “Do you remember going swimming with Mom at night?” I ask.

  Jed squints at the oozing sun on the lake. “She never went in with us,” he finally says.

  After a while, there’s a scratch on the porch screen and Jed coughs out, “Boyfriend!” before I even turn to see Simon. He’s looking up at us, drinking from a can of Orange Crush.

  “Want to check out the party? The whole beach is down there,” he says.

  I ask Jed if he wants to come, I even mean it, but he looks at me like I’m the stupidest person he’s ever met. When I leave with Simon, I can feel Jed watching us from the porch.

  Down the beach, the party house is lit up with coloured lanterns and blue mosquito grills that zap and hiss. Simon scrambles to the top of a pump shed on the edge of the property and pulls me up. There’s a view of a hundred sweaty faces on the lawn and down to the bonfire by the water. We watch people dance, and I see Heike come out from the house and pick through the cans in an ice-filled baby pool a few feet away from us. She sits on a folding chair with a Coke and rolls her long finger around and around the rim of the can, her head tilted back at the stars. A few days ago I thought I would bash her in the face with a recorder. I shiver and pull my bare knees to my chest.

  A sweaty-faced woman in a white button-up dress sways to the music, dancing by herself around the yard. She drifts in front of Heike who half smiles at her then looks away. The woman bumps up against the shed and we hold our breath, but the next moment she’s falling, her hands crashing into the baby pool. Simon laughs and then I start too. It’s the hiccupy kind of laughter that’s hard to stop because you’re supposed to be quiet.

  Heike rushes over and helps the woman up, brushing the water off the front of her dress. “You need foods,” Heike says, which for some reason makes Simon laugh even harder.

  “Are those kids?” the woman’s eyes roll up to where we’re sitting. “Whose kids are those?”

  Simon grabs my elbow and we jump down from the shed, tearing off across the beach. It’s only when we get to the lighthouse that we stop running. Bent over, catching his breath, Simon says, “Let’s go swimming again.”

  “Too cold.” I finger the goose bumps on my arm. “Too dark.”

  “No, it’s perfect.” He gets so close that I can smell his Orange Crush breath. Back down the beach, adults are singing “American Pie” at the bonfire, too far away now to see us.

  “I only brought two shorts. The others are already wet.”

  “You can take them off. It’s dark.”

  I shake my head.

  “OK,” Simon says, but he grabs my hand, closing his fingers around mine. A funny feeling starts inside me, like scratching in my gut, only good. Then Simon squeezes my hand and points up at the rocks where a cigarette makes a bright orange spot between the dark lumps of two people. He steps back behind a clump of reeds. “Over here,” he whispers.

  Hidden by reeds, we both kneel in the sand and I think now he’s going to kiss me. I try to remember if I’m supposed to keep my mouth open or closed. I don’t know if I like Simon enough to french him. We only just met. He’s not cute, exactly, but his eyes are good. Part of me doesn’t care how cute he is; I can always make that part up when I tell Sam about it. My heart is springing back and forth. I run my thumb over Simon’s knuckles, feeling the crust on his sores. I know exactly where the red parts turn dark pink, then paler, right up to where the color blends perfect with his skin. He moves his hand under the flap of my T-shirt and it’s cold and dry against my bare stomach. I hear him swallow.

  Up on the rocks there’s a laugh I recognize and then the cigarette falls, sparks bouncing down toward the water. Simon pulls his hand out from under my shirt and leans forward on his knees. It sounds like Dad’s voice. Dad, telling a story, but I can’t hear too much. The other person, a woman, is laughing at whatever Dad’s saying. What if it’s Mom? It could be. She has a lot of different laughs.

  Dad stands up and launches a bottle in the lake. Then he stretches his hands behind his head. “I’m going in!” He pulls off his T-shirt.

  “You’re crazy!” I
t’s a loud whisper. Marie.

  “Let’s go,” I say to Simon.

  “Shhh.” He crawls forward on his hands and knees.

  The next thing I know, I’m staring through the reeds at my Dad’s naked butt. Dad wades into the water slowly, stirring up the lake we’re not supposed to touch. He gets to his waist and then turns to Marie. “Coming?” He combs the lake with his hands and water rises like silvery claws between his fingers.

  Marie stands up all wobbly and shuffles to the end of the spit. She puts a foot in the water. “It’s frigid,” she says.

  “You’re frigid. Just hold your tits and run.” Dad leans back into the lake and kicks his feet.

  Marie pulls her dress up over her head and drops it on the rocks. Then with a little squeal, she splashes into the water. Her breath is loud over the lake.

  Simon stands slowly. “Stay,” he says. I want to ask where he’s going, but I’m afraid of being heard. I keep my eyes on the water where Dad and Marie bob toward each other, giggling and naked. Marie makes cold, shivering noises, but when she and Dad join together, they’re both quiet.

  I can hear Simon moving behind the rocks. Suddenly, the pole light flickers on, spilling pale blue light onto Marie and Dad. Marie kicks hard, her head turning in every direction. “What’s happening?” she says. I slide down onto my stomach.

  Something dark flies out from the rocks and slaps the surface of the water right in front of Marie. She reaches for it then screams. She holds her tits and runs, just like Dad said, all the way to the shore. Through her wet, white underwear I can see the dark puff of her bush.

  Dad swims over and lifts the dark thing. Then he coughs and jogs backwards, rinsing water like crazy up and down his arms.

  “What is it?” Marie hisses.

  “It’s an eel,” he calls back. “It’s a dead fucking eel.”

  “Oh god, oh god,” Marie moans. She stumbles over the rocks, looking for her dress.

  Dad marches at the beach, his thing waggling in front of him. “Who the fuck threw that?”

  The lights turn off then and everything goes black. My heart is pounding into the cold sand. I slide backwards, pushing off from my hands, moving faster and faster until it feels safe to get up and run. I bolt across the beach, the bright bonfires blurring my vision. When I get back to the cottage, Jed’s still on the porch but there’s no Heike. I come through the back door, tapping each piece of furniture seven times on my way to my room.