You know how every time there’s a freak storm or a huge earthquake or a flash flood, everyone starts talking about climate change, and then the next day the sun comes out and there’s something else on the news and we all forget about it again? I keep thinking that people—if there are any left—will look back on our time and wonder how we kept ignoring the obvious.
And that’s what it was like for me with the Match Girl. This completely weird, inexplicable, scary thing had happened, but the next day I still had to get up and go to school and then go to rehearsal for The Importance of Being Earnest. Once past the silent tension at breakfast—Noah shuffling down, shooting me an imploring look that I easily translated as Just. Don’t. Say. Anything; Mom grimly focused on lunches and dishes—it became a day like any other. Sam Heffernan, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, set fire to his own shirt with his Bunsen burner in chemistry, causing brief panic followed by high hilarity. Practicing how to kiss Amelia Patel in the play was kind of odd but in a really normal way—two awkward kids trying to act like kissing a random person onstage was no big deal. And by the end of the day, the Match Girl was already fading back into unreality.
Lucy and I, by unspoken agreement, avoided all talk of “it” at school. Honestly, I was reluctant to bring the Match Girl up at all. It’s not that I believed just talking might summon her or something—not really. I just felt like maybe it was better to let it lie.
And anyway, I had better things to do with Lucy. Who wouldn’t rather make out with their new girlfriend than sit around beating their brains against an insoluble problem?
There was also the Halloween party to talk about. A kid named Jordan, whom I barely knew but who seemed okay, was having a party in his parents’ barn on the outskirts of town. He seemed to be inviting everyone he crossed paths with—including me, when we nearly collided on the stairwell. “Hey, man, you should come to my party!” And then he was gone, hurtling down the stairs like a SWAT team was after him. It was definitely the kind of potentially sketchy situation that made my parents imagine an entire Hell’s Angels chapter showing up at the door—but intriguing. City kids don’t get to party in barns too often.
“So will there be, like, hay and stalls and stuff?” I asked. The subject had come up at lunch, and Rafe and Alex, who knew Jordan better, allowed that they’d like to go.
“No, man,” Alex scoffed. “It’s sort of half-finished, like a bad basement rec room. And they have a couple of big electric heaters, so if we get enough people in there, it should stay fairly warm.”
“What about costumes?” Rafe asked.
Alex looked blank, then slightly horrified. “Oh no. Shit. I friggin’ hate costumes.”
“What? Why?”
I didn’t need to ask to know Rafe loved costumes. He’d taken every drama course he could and was trying to get into the Ryerson performing arts program—costumes were a second skin for him.
“I never know what to wear. Always end up looking like a tool, and uncomfortable as hell all night. Itching or sweating to death or all”—Alex made a struggling gesture that reminded me of Noah when he was little, fighting his car-seat straps—“bound up.” He looked morose. “Annie will harass me into wearing one, won’t she?” Annie was his girlfriend, and she did seem like she might put a lot of stock in costumes.
“Don’t worry, man. We’ll help you find something.” Rafe looked at me confidently. “Won’t we?”
“Yeah, sure.” Ha. I had no idea what to wear myself. “Let’s just make sure that costumes are actually happening though, right?”
I was lukewarm on the party from the get-go. I’m not a fan of big, crowded events full of drunk people, and out in the country it’s not always so easy to get home when you’ve had enough. But it would be more fun with Jack there, I thought—he wouldn’t be getting totally wasted, and his easiness with people would help me relax. So I was actually disappointed when the achy headache I went to bed with the night before the party bloomed into a fever high enough to keep me shivering and sweating in bed, counting down the hours until I could take the next dose of Tylenol.
My mom was already at work when I woke up the next morning; she’d left me a note reminding me that she was doing a shift for somebody named Wanda who had a wedding to attend. I tottered to the bathroom, wishing I had my granny Kay’s walker to hold me up, and grabbed my phone on the way back to bed. I called the café to tell them I couldn’t make my shift. Then I huddled under the covers and sent Jack a miserable text:
SICK!!! Cant go 2nite. Just leave me here to die. XO
It was too bad, I thought, as I clamped my eyes shut and willed myself to sleep. I wouldn’t even need makeup for my costume—I pretty much already looked like Zombie Girl.
Alex’s dad pulled into the turnaround at the end of the long laneway, and we piled out of the car into a frosty cold night. He leaned out the driver’s-side window. “Okay, guys, behave yourselves, eh? Just ’cause you’re partying in a barn doesn’t mean you should act like you were raised in one.” He snorted at his own joke.
“Dad.” Alex looked pained. “Thanks for the ride. We’ll be cool.”
Mr. Curcio had already ensured we had the numbers of both cab companies and enough cash between us to share a fare back into town. My mother would approve. We’d had a testy exchange about this party, which she was clearly envisioning as Country Kids Gone Wild, and about my own personal-safety precautions.
“You should give one of your friends the glucagon, and teach them to use it.”
Glucagon is a rescue treatment for a low so bad I’m unconscious. I pictured a drunk friend trying to plunge that fat glucagon needle through my jeans into my thigh. No thanks.
“Mom, it’s only ten minutes out of town. They can just call an ambulance.”
“What if the ambulance is delayed?”
“You never worried about that in Montreal. They can be delayed anywhere. And anyway, I’m not going to need it.”
Big sigh. But she’d given up, and here I was.
We went up to the house with another clump of kids who had just arrived and went through an odd little security check with Jordan’s parents, who made us all introduce ourselves (I guess to make sure we weren’t party crashers) and asked a girl who had driven to deposit her keys in a bowl. Presumably, there would be some kind of sobriety test before she got them back. Then we were ushered out the back door and pointed toward a looming dark shape. The moon, white and full in a sky darker than you ever see in the city, lit up the path better than the handful of feeble little solar lights stuck in the grass along the way.
When we dragged open the barn door, a wave of noise washed over us. The music was poppy crap (IMHO, ha-ha) but loud and danceable. I glanced into the cavernous space, wondering how they’d managed to fill the place with sound, and saw a bank of speakers arrayed along what I guessed would have been the floor of the original hayloft. Impressive. A couple dozen kids were there already, standing around in clumps, yelling at each other over the music, swaying but not dancing yet—and there was room for plenty more.
We made our way farther into the room, the old carpets underfoot changing color and texture as we progressed. We found Jordan, who waved at us and pointed toward the back wall, where we found a pile of coats and a big old fridge.
“Sweet!” Rafe yelled. “Cold beer tonight.” We unloaded our cans of Pabst from our backpacks, and Rafe tucked them into the fridge. Thank you, Alex’s older brother.
“Jack?” Rafe held out a can, his grin turned into a hideous leer by his Joker makeup. His costume put my zombie (shredded old paint clothes and face paint from the kit we’d used when we were kids) to shame, but on the other hand, I looked damn good beside Alex, who had thrown on a plaid shirt and tuque to become a half-assed lumberjack. Annie, hanging on his arm, had on this floor-length black velvet dress that she said had belonged to her grandmother. Even I, fashion-challenged as I was, could tell it was spectacular, and she was wearing just enough vampire makeup to make her look exotic and awesome.
I didn’t intend to drink much—despite what I’d told my mom, we were more like twenty minutes out of town, and I had no interest in testing the local ambulance service. But there were a lot of kids here I didn’t know, and a little social lubricant wouldn’t hurt.
“Thanks, man.” I cracked the tab and took a long swallow. Too bad Lucy couldn’t come. I really wanted to dance with her tonight.
I was most of the way through my beer, and the “dance floor” under the speaker bank was filling up, when a blond, willowy girl in a skimpy black-and-white outfit planted herself before me.
“Hi, Jack.”
“Hi. Um…Becky, right?”
“Geez, I’d have hoped you wouldn’t have to guess.” She did a fake pout, tipping her head to look up at me from under the drama of her eyelids. I saw the little white frilly cap pinned to the back of her head, and the light went on.
“Ah—the French maid!”
“Mais oui, Monsieur.” She stepped close and put her mouth to my ear so I could hear over the music. “Come and dance with me.” She clamped her hand firmly around mine and led me over to the dancers.
Becky was a good dancer but not comfortable to dance with—you know how that is? She stared at me too much, got too close, demanded too much, if that makes sense. Always wanting some reaction. So it was a relief when after a couple of tunes she fanned her cleavage and yelled, “It’s too hot. Let’s go for a drink.”
It was quieter at the fridge. “Oh, I just loved that last song,” Becky said. “So great for dancing. Who was it, do you know?” She had a beautiful smile—perfect teeth and a little dimple that puckered up in one corner.
“That was Lady Gaga, wasn’t it?”
She wrinkled up her nose. “Ew. That meat-dress thing. Why do people have to be so weird?”
I shrugged and opened the fridge. It really irritates me when people say things like that. Not that I was a fan of wearing meat or even much liked Gaga’s music. “Beer or…?”
“Beer, of course.” I took one for myself too, in self-defense.
“Speaking of weird, Jack.” Becky swigged her beer and smiled sweetly at me. “I’ve been seeing you with Lucy Sullivan a lot lately.” She waited, eyebrows raised, as if she expected me to deny it.
I just nodded, knowing already I wasn’t going to like where this was going—and that I didn’t like Becky what’s-her-name.
“Well, it’s nice of you to befriend her and everything, but Jack, you’re new, so you wouldn’t know she has a history. You don’t want to get too wrapped up with a girl like that.”
“A girl like what, Becky?” I was mad now, mad enough that I couldn’t quite keep the hostility out of my voice.
She took a little step back. “Hey, I’m just trying to help you get off on the right foot. Lucy’s messed up. And there are lots of nice girls here who’d like to get to know you.” She stepped in quickly and planted one on my mouth before I could recoil.
“Think about it, Jack.”
I watched her melt back into the crowd in her perfect rented costume, and then I tossed down half my beer to try to get rid of the bad taste she’d left behind.