Beth
Back home. September. Kaya’s first day of high school. I keep an eye out. Who’s she going to talk to? Where’s she going to go between classes?
I see her at the start of lunch, her head up and back, that little self-satisfied sneer plastered all over her face, strutting—like, actually strutting—her way out to the breezeway. Ten minutes later, I catch a glimpse of her through a window and she’s all by herself, kind of shrunken up against the wall.
I want to go out there and yell at the other kids, order them to be nice to my sister. Or yell at her, Smile! Knock that rock off your shoulder. You look like a stuck-up little … My mind draws back from that word and all words like it. I wander off and leave her on her own.
I can’t believe that my thirteen-year-old sister actually got caught shoplifting. And not something small like a chocolate bar or a sparkly barrette, but jeans. She got caught stealing a pair of jeans. And not when she was out with a pack of girls. Or on her own, even. She was shopping with Mom. She got caught shoplifting when she was out with her mother.
Sometimes I wonder if we know everything that went on with Kaya last year. Grade Seven. The jeans incident was the first bad thing we knew about, but what if there’s more? Sometimes I get this sick feeling, like when Kaya came back all scratched up. I’m pretty sure that we don’t know the half of it.
The trip to Hornby was meant to be the big cure, but I’m kind of afraid that it didn’t do a thing to help. Not one thing. It’s like Kaya is on a quick tumble—down, down, down—not on the road to hell, more like one of those “death drop” slides they have at water parks.
The other kids aren’t all that nice to me either. It’s not like I’m one of the ones who gets listened to. Except for Jane and Samantha, that is, or “the bully and the waif,” as I call them in my imaginings. My friends.
I get my lunch out of my locker and finger the change in my pocket, searching for paper. There should be a five-dollar bill left over from Saturday. Jane and Samantha will be waiting at the end of the next hall, in our lunch spot. It’s the first day of school, and we’ve barely had a chance to talk to each other all morning. Jane will want to know all about how it went on Hornby with the delinquent. Samantha will be sweetly soothing. My fingers find the bill, clutch it, and I head for the nearest door.
My jeans are pinching at my waist. I know that rolls show through my shirt, even though I picked my loosest one this morning. But I can feel my teeth sinking through chewy candy—Fuzzy Peach, I’m thinking—the burst of sweet and sour together and the soothing lumps of gelatin sliding down my throat. I don’t need my weird friends and their fake sympathy right now. I need the real thing, and it comes in a package from the corner store just down the street.
Kaya
You’re standing there outside, all hunched over, when you see Michelle for the first time. She’s coming round the corner into the open, pulling a cigarette out of her pocket, even though you’re not allowed to smoke out here. Her hair is long, black and as bone-straight as yours is curly. Her body is kind of thick, her shoulders curved forward, but in an “I’m ready to mow you down” kind of a way.
She’s standing there, alone, not looking at anyone, when the girls come up to you in a little cluster. Three of them. Probably Grade Nine, but you really have no idea.
“What’s your name?” one of them, tall, pale, big teeth, says.
“Kaya.”
“Hey, Kaya.” Slightly too much emphasis on the first syllable. “You’re new, aren’t you?”
You nod, just barely, nervous now.
“Let’s go for a walk. We’ll show you around.”
No one ever approached you at school all the way through Grade Seven, and here in Grade Eight it’s happening on your first day. Maybe kids are friendlier here. You look at the other two girls. Neither is especially pretty. One is tallish, thin and white, in a skirt and knee socks; the other is average height, thicker, Asian maybe, in jeans. All three look like they got new outfits for back-to-school.
“Come on,” the toothy girl says. “It’s so pretty!”
Toothy girl leads the four of you around the corner of the building you were leaning against, away from the entrance. And there are the woods; a reddish brown trail meanders off into the shadows. It is pretty. A girl on either side of you, you walk into the trees.
Then, “Ugly bitch.” The words are hissed and come with a shove. You hit the ground hard, and scrabble off the path instinctively, even before your mind catches up with what is happening.
They stand over you, poking at you with their feet, blocking any escape, pelting you with words. “You were standing in our spot, back there,” the jeaned girl says. “We don’t let dirty Blacks like you in our space.”
You shrink into a ball, arms around your head. Your inside self just curls up on the ground, gives in instantly. Shame curdles your blood.
And then the whole group flies apart. The words whirling dervish spring into your mind as you raise your head to see the cement-faced, cigarette-wielding girl crashing right into the bunch of you, shouting, “Leave her alone!”
There’s something about her attitude, something about her fury, that stops those girls instantly. They wander off grumbling, with only a few angry glances and weak parting shots.
She stands over you for a moment before she holds out a hand to help you up. “I’m Michelle,” she says, leaning against a tree and taking a drag of her cigarette, which has survived her attack on the girls.
And that’s how you and Michelle get to be friends, sort of. She’s mostly silent, a loner, but she tolerates your company, you tolerate hers, and as long as the two of you are together, those girls don’t bother either of you, and neither does anybody else. You attend classes sometimes. Sometimes you don’t. Michelle is away sometimes. And sometimes she’s there.
One Monday at the end of September.
“What would you like for breakfast, honey?” Mom says. “Quick, quick, else you’ll be late for school.”
She hasn’t crashed yet, just home from twelve straight hours at the hospital. There’s food in the house and the dishes are washed for a change. It’s been kind of depressing at home since Hornby. Mom hates night shift.
“You know I don’t eat breakfast,” you say. “And I’m always on time for school.”
Beth looks up from her massive bowl of granola—everyone knows you’re only supposed to eat a little bit of that stuff. “Liar,” she says.
Your gut clenches. If you eat, you’ll throw up on the spot.
“I’m not a liar,” you scream at them both. “I am not!” And you’re running for the door, and Mom is running after you.
This doesn’t make any sense, you think as you run. Not to them. Not even to you. And you keep right on running.
Mom follows you all the way out onto the sidewalk, so you turn and scream again. “Can’t you see I’m going? I’m going to school like you want me to. Leave me alone!” You’re screaming so loud it might make your throat bleed. You wish it would. You’d love to spit great gobs of blood onto the pavement right about now.
Mom turns and heads back into the house. Her slumped shoulders send a river of pain through you, but you grit your teeth and flush it away. You’re going to school. That’s what she wanted. Right?
Please, please, please let Michelle be there today.
And she is. You find her out in the breezeway, just minutes to go before the first bell. The two of you head into the woods.
“Can I bum a cigarette?” you say. The first cigarette of your life.
She looks at you, slight puzzlement wrinkling that cement brow of hers. “What’s up?” she says.
“My family’s shit,” you say.
The wrinkles smooth. Almost. And she hands you a cigarette, lights it for you.
You pull the smoke into your body, fill yourself up with it, hack, cough, blow out, and marvel at the smooth cloud of smoke that flows from your lungs. Wow!
Michelle smiles a small smile.
“Let’s take off for the day,” you say, hoping your voice sounds eager instead of desperate. “Right now. Let’s go downtown!”
That first afternoon, you take the bus to Granville, which is hopping. Half a dozen kids are strung out along the wall of a movie theatre, cap set out on top of a cardboard sign, collecting coins while they talk among themselves, pretty much ignoring the passersby. One has a collared cat on her shoulder, a bit of string standing in for a leash, but it’s the dog that draws you in.
He’s a mutt, scruffy, with a long nose and ears that neither stand up nor flop over. His tail is skinny and wags like anything when you hunker down beside him. With your fingers buried in his fur, it’s easy to let Michelle introduce you, to smile, and slowly, slowly, to enter into the chatter.
You are home in time for supper (such as it is).
Another time, you say you are staying over at Michelle’s and the two of you go downtown together at night. You sneak into her basement room late, late, still fizzing with excitement, giggling when you trip over something in the dark.
Then Michelle goes off on her own one day and doesn’t come back for a week. Her parents call, but you don’t tell them anything. You have nothing to tell. You look for her yourself along Granville, but no one’s seen her in days.
At last she shows up at school one afternoon, but she’s gone kind of glassy and weird.
“Where were you?” you say. “I went looking.”
Her eyes skim past yours. “Nowhere,” she says. And the next day she’s gone again. This time you don’t go looking. You have no idea where to look.
Eventually you go downtown on your own, just to be there, not to look for Michelle.
You can’t find the kids. It’s probably too early. So you wander along Granville, feeling your “real” life on the other side of town loosen its grip bit by bit, finger by finger, till it can be whisked away by the breeze, burnt off by the sunshine, cancelled out by all the strangers’ lives, each dark untold story.
Farther down the street, people are setting up their stalls, jewellery mostly, and along the walls of the big white department store, Eaton’s, the ones who don’t have stalls are laying out their stuff on blankets on the ground. Only one is all set up already, and there you stop. You stand and watch for a bit without drawing attention to yourself. The woman is thin, hair braided back and wound round with stones. Her jeans are worn, her sandals ancient, her collarbone jagged. She’s wearing one three-stoned pendant and several chunky rings.
You turn your attention from her to her work. She uses a sheet of burlap wrapped around a board and laid on the ground as backing. Pinned to it are dozens of earrings, bracelets and necklaces, all made with heavy string and semi-precious stones.
Beth would love this, you think, but the truth is, you love it yourself.
A year ago, you would have been planning how to get a pair of earrings into your pocket without her noticing, but the jeans incident seems to have cured you of shoplifting. Besides, you have a philosophy: stealing from corporations is one thing; stealing from battered-up people on the street is another.
You wander back down Granville, hoping that the kid with the scruffy mutt will be there. Or maybe Michelle. You’ve been trying not to think about her, but it’s hard. You don’t find the kid, or the mutt, or Michelle, but you end up toking up in a back alley with the girl with the cat. After that, you head home.
On the bus, you pull a crumpled wad of paper and a stubby pencil from your purse, sketch the girl with the cat on her shoulder and put down a few words about what that cat might see from up there. You look around at one point and see a man smiling at you from across the way. Whatever expression you had on your face while you were writing drops away. You toss the man your best scowl and shove paper and pencil out of sight.
It’s November, wet and cold, and dark by five o’clock. And the “buy, buy, buy” of Christmas is taking over the city streets with its bundled-up throngs and a lot of damp sparkle.
The cold can’t stop you. You go back twice more, skipping school, looking for Michelle. When you do go to school, you can hardly stand it for a minute. At home, you bite Mom’s and Beth’s heads off, crunch their bones between your teeth.
Michelle stays away.
Then, one day in early December, you are standing at your locker after lunch gearing up for math, when someone taps you on the shoulder. You jump, turn and freeze.
Diana at school.
You’re not sure what you do on the outside, but inside everything contracts. To give Diana credit, she looks scared. Petrified. Like a rabbit confronted with a weasel. But she is here. At your school. Looking you in the eye. And she has touched you.
“I just switched schools,” she says, as if she thinks you might want to exchange words, you might want an explanation.
And how could she do that? How could she walk right into your school and make herself at home here? You stand, almost teetering. She is the weasel, not you. She is the weasel.
Except instead of sinking her teeth into your throat, she sucks memories up out of the mire.
You want to slap her or vomit. You feel your face contort and watch her recoil. How can she possibly expect anything else? What does she want? The questions tumble about in your head, but the answers don’t matter. Escape does.
You click your locker shut, grit your teeth and push past her. “I’ve got class,” you say. As you walk away, you shove the memories back down until the sludge slops over them, and they’re gone. For now.
As you pass, you hear her draw breath to reply, but you get straight onto the next bus downtown. In your mind, that’s the first time that counts as running away.
You’re furious when they find you. Track you down like a common criminal.
You’re just hanging out on the street with the cat girl and a bunch of other kids.
And sure, you might be passing around a bit of pot. But nothing else. Nothing else at all.
Then, right in front of you, there’s Mom. “Kaya?” she says, as if you can’t possibly be her precious daughter.
You look up, your lips come together on the M in “Mom,” but you stop yourself. You get up and walk away from her. She’s on your heels, so you break into a run. Five minutes later, a police officer’s got you by the arm. An hour later, you’re home.
Beth
I’m glad to see her. Of course I am. But I’m mad too. Furious, to be honest.
When the front door opens at midnight, I’m asleep on the couch. Mom’s a nurse and supposed to be working night shift this week, but she called in sick when Kaya wasn’t home by ten. By now, we’re used to waiting for Kaya to come home. We know she’s skipping school a fair bit. But she usually calls and tells us some story or other. Mom gobbles those lies up like bonbons. The difference today was no phone call. No nice little story.
So, like I said, Mom called in sick and set off in search. I was supposed to call her if Kaya called or turned up. Mom was supposed to call me if she found her. Well, I went to sleep and Mom didn’t bother to call, so neither of us honoured our agreement exactly.
Before I fell asleep, I thought about calling Samantha, just to talk, imagined her kind voice on the phone, but she’s not a secret-keeper, and I couldn’t face talking about all this with Jane at school tomorrow, so I didn’t.
Kaya comes in first, her face chalky with makeup, mascara smeared everywhere, tear tracks from eyes to chin. Mom’s right behind her. Kaya doesn’t even look in my direction. She yanks open the door to the stairs, lets Sybilla barrel past her, and turns on Mom.
“I was just minding my own business, and you set the police on me. The police! Do you know how humiliating that is? It wasn’t even midnight yet. Why can’t you just leave me alone?” she screeches, already halfway up the stairs.
“You’re just a kid,” Mom says after her. “You’re my daughter.” She’s crying too, but at least she has no makeup to smudge. “And I love you.”
But Kaya’s bedroom door has already slammed, shaking the whole house, and she doesn’t hear those last words.
Kaya
After the police turn you over to Mom, it gets still harder to stick around. And with Diana there, school feels impossible. You do try, though, even if Mom and Beth can’t see it. You do. After the holidays, Michelle starts showing up sometimes, but she’s cagey about where she’s been. It’s infuriating after the time you spent together downtown. Anyway, she doesn’t look good. You stay away from her too.
In January, you start a metalwork class. It’s actually kind of fun for a day or two. You make something that almost looks like a goose, even if it is an odd shape. You like the feel of the metal in your hands, softening it, bending it and soldering the pieces together. And it keeps your mind off things.
Then you come to class in the second week to find a familiar figure at the front talking to the teacher. Diana. At the sight of her, your innards turn liquid. You have glimpsed her most days in the halls, but you haven’t spoken to her since that day at your locker. She’s a year older than you, in Grade Nine, so you shouldn’t be in any of the same classes. Here she is, though, joining Metalwork 101 a week into the winter term.
In the halls, your eyes can flick away without acknowledgement. Here, you don’t stand a chance. Mr. Holbrook gestures across the room, and Diana turns to see where he’s pointing, which happens to be at your station. Not surprising. You’re the only student with a station all to herself. Or you were. Diana’s eyes and yours connect, flick away, and connect again.
Mr. Holbrook follows her across the room. “Kaya,” he says, “Diana is joining the class today. Could you show her how to get started on her project, where to find the materials, et cetera?”
Diana ducks her head, breaking the tortured eye contact between the two of you. And you marshal yourself. You go through the motions that afternoon, but even as you instruct her on the proper safety procedures, you know that this is your last metalwork class. The whole experience is tainted now. It has become something other, something dark and dreadful. Diana has made it so. You have probably had the same effect on her, you think when it’s over, as you watch her scurry from the classroom ahead of you.
That night, you climb out your bedroom window onto the roof of the foyer, wriggle down the fig tree right outside Mom’s window, which is not easy in tight jeans and high heels, and you are away. It’s later than usual, but surely they’ll still be there, or one of them will. You jump off the bus across from the movie theatre on Granville, your bag slung casually over one shoulder, your jacket collar turned up against the drizzle, but you can see right away that there’s no one there. You should have brought an umbrella. And a warmer coat.
It feels weird being outside in the city so late all by yourself. You can feel the eyes on you. And the danger. You think briefly about your own bed. Warm. Dry. Safe. Then you shake that off and march down the sidewalk. Most nights, they all sleep outside somewhere. You know that. It’s just a matter of finding them.
The street grows darker, scarier. As you wait for the light at the first corner, cars seem to slow as they pass, faces leer.
A man approaches from one side, his gait slightly unsteady. “You all right, sweetheart?” he says, coming to a halt just as the light changes and you can cross.
“Yes,” you say, stepping off the curb. “I’m fine.” You look at your watch. It’s past one. And you have no idea where to go. They could be anywhere. And the thought of these streets in the middle of the night, almost empty with who-knows-who watching out windows, out of alleys, frightens you.
“You don’t look fine,” a voice says, and you jump. The man is still there, right on your heels. All concern for your welfare, apparently.
A bus appears in the distance and you seize the chance, taking off at a high-heeled, tight-jeaned trot.
Climbing up fig trees is not as easy as slithering down. And Beth’s window is too out of reach. The sliding door into the dining room opens easily enough, though. Sybilla swarms your legs, but her whines are quiet and Mom does not wake up.
Your own bed brings with it your own world. And that’s the last place you want to be.