After that, I sometimes sat beside Megan when the bus was full and I couldn’t sit alone. I still preferred to sit alone, but at least Megan didn’t smell.
Or ask questions.
When we had detention, the bus would be empty, and we’d get off at the same stop and walk together across the City Center Mall parking lot and along Columbia Avenue until I’d turn at Kootenay Street. Megan did not turn at Kootenay Street. She lived with her mom and her stepdad in the trailer park, four streets ahead.
I didn’t mind walking with Megan. I didn’t know anyone else who could walk for six minutes without saying a word. Besides, I found that even if she did talk, I didn’t want to thump my head or rock or curl into a corner.
I told Megan about Mom being a sandwich and looking after my grandparents.
“She’ll come up here once Grandpa and Grandma are well,” I said.
“You think?”
“What?” I asked.
“You think she’ll come up?”
“Of course,” I said.
Megan looked at me. “You have a lot to learn.”
This is true. I think knowledge is infinite—that means without end. Therefore, everyone, even the most knowledgeable college professor, has a lot to learn.
I said this, and Megan smiled. “That wasn’t quite what I meant.”
Megan knew a lot about social media. I don’t, although I email my mother. Megan thought I should get a data plan, so I could text.
“Why?” I asked as we waited for the bus one day after detention.
“That way you could chat with people without really talking. And it wouldn’t be so confusing for you.”
“Huh?”
“I mean, you like reading. What you don’t like is trying to figure out if someone is mad or sad and stuff. This way they’d tell you in code.”
“I like codes,” I said. I’d once correctly determined my father’s password on the computer using logic. It had taken me 1,003 tries.
“Texting is like code. Like, BRB means be right back and CYA means see you later.”
The bus pulled up, and we got on and sat across the aisle from each other.
“Besides, that way I could text you,” Megan added.
“You’d text me?”
“Sure.”
“A lot of people text,” I said, thinking of all the kids I saw on the bus who held their phones like an eleventh finger or extra thumb.
“I guess.”
“It is normal to text,” I said.
“Sure, everyone does it.”
And just then, in my stomach, right under my rib cage, I felt something like I do when I watch my ballerinas going around and around and around.
***
One afternoon Megan didn’t go straight to her home in the trailer park. Instead she walked to my house and stood at the edge of the small driveway, watching me as I walked down the path and then up the three green steps to the front porch.
“Alice?” she said.
I put the key in the lock and turned it. The bolt clicked, and I pushed open my door. “Yeah?” I said, glancing back.
“Um—can I come in?” She had a black tuque pulled down low on her forehead.
“No,” I said, because—well, because people do not usually come to my house, and I do not like change. It makes me want to squeeze into a corner or thump my head.
“Your dad doesn’t let you have people over?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
I’d never asked. Actually, my mom used to invite kids over. She’d arrange playdates. I’d hated them. I’d rock and bang my head until the other kids screamed too.
I remembered with sudden clarity how Mom had cried so hard that her mascara had run in black streams down her face. I just want to give you a normal life, she’d said.
Again normal—the average in type, appearance, achievement, function and development.
“Do normal kids have playdates?” I asked Megan.
“Huh?”
“Do normal kids have playdates?” I repeated.
“What? I guess when they’re, like, two.” Megan turned.
I watched her walk back up the street. I watched the side-to-side swing of her backpack and listened to the click-clack-click of her boots.
“Megan,” I said.
She didn’t stop.
“Megan.” I tried again, making my voice louder.
She turned.
“You can,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Um—come in,” I said.
Megan came back and climbed the three green steps. She stepped into our entrance, which has mud-beige carpeting and measures three feet two inches on each side. She took off her boots and walked up the three mud-beige steps and sat on the couch opposite the gas fireplace. She looked at the thirty-two-inch television, the Wii, the Xbox, the chair and the glass coffee table.
“I like your house,” she said.
I thought this strange, because I do not like new places or mud-beige carpet. “Why?”
“It’s quiet,” she said.
“That’s because the TV isn’t on.”
In reality, the house is not silent. I am always conscious of its sounds—the tick-tock of the hall clock, the quicker tick-tick-tick of the clock on the mantel above the gas fireplace, the intermittent hum of the refrigerator, a strange tap-tap in the plumbing whenever the water is running, the barking of dogs outside, the shouts from kids next door…
Megan sat on the couch, and I went to the kitchen to make a snack. After school I always have peanut butter and jelly on white bread.
“Your dad won’t mind me being here?” Megan asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Does he get mad?”
Mad is a word with multiple definitions. It can mean angry or insane. I said this to Megan.
“Does he yell?” she asked.
“Only when he watches the Canucks.”
Then I turned on the television. I always watch television after school. I like to watch Gravity Falls and SpongeBob, which are animated and not shows with real live people, although real people do the voices.
I like animated shows better because it is easier to remember that they are not real.
***
Dad came home early that day because he wasn’t on a full shift. He’d been called in for a few hours of overtime. Megan stood as soon as she heard the Explorer’s rattle.
“I’ll go.” She shoved her feet into her boots, grabbed her backpack and ran down the three steps. The front door banged shut behind her.
My father entered through the basement door and came upstairs twelve minutes later, after his shower.
“Thought I heard someone leaving just when I got in,” he said.
“Megan was here.”
“Really?” His voice and his eyebrows went up. “Someone you met at school, eh?”
I nodded.
His mouth curved upward at the corners. “I knew it,” he said. “I knew my way would work.”
“You mean when you told Mom you wanted me to be average in type, appearance, achievement, function and development?”
“What?” His eyebrows drew together.
“Normal,” I said.
“Um—right.” He shifted his weight and started to set out the dishes for supper, even though it was not even five yet.
“She wants me to be normal too,” I said.
“You’ve spoken to her about this?”
“No,” I said. “But she said that she just wanted to give me a normal life. When I was little.”
“Oh,” he said.
“So you and Mom don’t need to argue.”
“We don’t,” he said. “Or not very often. Well, um, tell me about your friend.”
“She’s tall,” I said.
Dad nodded.
“Does that mean that she is not normal?” I asked.
“No. Why?”
“Because she is not average in type, appearance, achievement, function and development.”
Dad thrust his fingers through his hair, making it look rumpled and untidy. He took out two soup spoons.
“It doesn’t matter if she is tall,” he said after a pause.
“Even if most people are shorter.”
“Yeah. Um—normal—just means, uh, typical, like the way most people behave. For instance, it is normal to like ice cream.”
“I do not like licorice ice cream.”
“Yeah, that’s normal too. You know, everyone has favorite flavors, and some they do not like. Anyhow, did you give her a snack?”
“Who?”
“Megan.”
“No,” I said.
“I’ll get in some chips and stuff, if you’re going to be having friends over. We want to be hospitable.”
Then Dad went to make dinner for us to eat at the coffee table in the living room. I heard him open a can of soup and empty its contents into the pot. He started to stir, the whisk rattling against the pot.
After we finished eating, he said he would phone Mom once we’d cleaned up. Then he started to wash the dishes, scraping the bowls and filling the sink with sudsy water that smelled of lemon. I do not mind the smell of lemon.
And as he was washing, he started to hum.