ASHLEY: You need to come home. Now.
Joe and Cole were alone on the basketball court, hours before classes began. Cole’s sneakers let out a shrill squeak as he pivoted and turned towards Joe. He received the basketball from Joe, cut to the hoop with two quick dribbles, paused, found the ball’s ridges with his fingertips, and shot. The ball arched through the air and then clanged off the rim. Sneakers against hardwood and the thud of the basketball being dribbled—even the stubborn sound of a bricked shot—were like music to Cole. He would’ve rather heard the mesh snap as his ball swished past the rim, but the game, the court, was his calm place. He needed it, especially now.
You need to come home.
Now.
The only basketball-related sound Cole hated was the crowd. He never liked the roars, and never liked so many eyes on him. He always felt like he needed to take his anti-anxiety medication before a game.
The ball trailed away from Joe and Cole in progressively smaller bounces.
“If only you could shoot like you throw a pick,” Joe said.
Cole half-smiled. Even though he’d been the team’s leading scorer last year, the stuff he did away from the ball—throwing picks, boxing out, guarding the other team’s best player—had always been his thing. In fact, his coach had told him to go easy on the picks last year after he’d knocked a player out of a game in the playoffs. Broke the guy’s rib. His coach didn’t know that Cole was already going easy, and gauging just how easy to take it was often the problem.
Cole jogged after the ball, picked it up, and dribbled back over to Joe. He passed the ball to Joe, and then positioned himself under the hoop as though a defender was behind him.
“I can shoot,” Cole said, ready for the rebound.
“Yeah,” Joe shrugged and released the ball. The mesh snapped as the ball passed through the metal ring. It dropped into Cole’s arms. “But you can really throw a pick.”
A few minutes later, the boys were sitting with their open gym bags at the side of the court. Joe didn’t waste time. He was already getting his jeans on as soon as they’d sat down. Cole, meanwhile, hadn’t even untied a shoelace. He was staring at the gymnasium ceiling, at a birdie stuck in the rafters. The same one had been there since he’d started high school. Ashley’s text kept scrolling through Cole’s mind.
You need to come home.
Now.
Joe kicked Cole lightly on the arm, bringing him back to the real world.
“Doing anything this weekend, or are you all zoned in for tryouts?”
“I took some shifts at the community centre,” Cole said.
Joe chuckled and shook his head. “Dude, you’re either playing ball, doing homework, or working at that shithole.”
“I have to save money for university, man. My grandma doesn’t have money to pay for it.”
“What about your aunt? She lives with you too, right?”
“Yeah, but that’s the thing, Joe. If my grandma doesn’t have the money, it means my auntie doesn’t have the money. She supports both of us. Usually works sixteen-hour days just to get us by.”
“Dude,” Joe intoned. “Dude” could mean a million different things. Here, Cole interpreted it as: “Holy shit, that’s rough.”
“Anyway, I think by June I’ll have enough for my first year’s tuition. Mostly.”
Joe started buttoning his shirt up. Cole was trying to twirl the basketball on his finger for more than ten seconds straight, still in his sweat-drenched shorts and shirt, still with tied shoelaces.
“So won’t your band pay for anything?” Joe asked. “They do that, right?”
Cole shook his head and slapped the basketball to get it spinning harder. It wobbled and fell off his finger. He caught it and started the process over again. “I don’t need their help.”
“Whatever, dude.” Joe stuffed his gym clothes into his bag, then slung it and his backpack over his shoulder.
“Besides,” Cole said, “if I work and get that scholarship, I’ll be fine.”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “Sure. But then you might want to work on that jump shot.” And with a parting, “Later,” he left Cole alone in the gym.
“Later,” Cole said, but the heavy gym doors had already slammed shut. The gym seemed even quieter now. Cole felt more alone. He didn’t mind the feeling. But he did mind the message from Ashley, a message he couldn’t ignore anymore. He fished into his gym bag and pulled out his phone. Read the text over again.
ASHLEY: You need to come home. Now.
Cole took a deep breath, then responded: Very funny.
As soon as Cole had sent the text, he saw the bubbled ellipsis by Ashley’s name.
ASHLEY: I’m not joking, Cole. This is serious. Come home.
Cole’s heart started to pound, fast and hard. His hands were shaking and his head was swimming. He gripped the bench to keep from falling over. He rifled through his gym bag until he found what he was looking for. He fumbled with the cap, managed to get it off, and took an anti-anxiety pill.
The first time he’d had a panic attack Cole’s teacher had to call an ambulance. He was eight years old and walking into his fourth-grade class in the city for the first time. All the kids stared in his direction. He remembered Mrs. Benjamin screaming, “Call 9-1-1!” just before he’d blacked out. Next thing he knew he was in Grace Hospital Emergency, eerily calm. Months later, he started to see a therapist.
Now, Cole closed his eyes. He breathed in through his nose, right into his stomach, for five seconds, held it, and then breathed out through his mouth for seven seconds. He repeated this several times until he’d calmed, through the breathing or the pills. Sometimes he couldn’t tell which.
COLE: You’re an asshole for even asking that.
Cole muted his phone and threw it deep into his gym bag. He reached down to his shoes, but instead of undoing the laces he tightened them. He walked back onto the court with the basketball and stood at the foul line. He stared at the rim until its orange metal turned into Ashley’s texts. You need to come home. Now. I’m not joking, Cole. This is serious. Come home. He bounced the ball once, let out a guttural scream, and charged towards the hoop. He leapt into the air and dunked the basketball with both hands, as hard as he could. He dunked the ball about two million times before class started.
It was a wonder he didn’t shatter the backboard.
At 3:41 p.m. Cole stood in front of his opened locker, staring at the gym bag which he had put at the bottom. Throughout the day, he had piled textbooks and binders on to the bag. He had his hands in his pockets. One of those hands was wrapped around his pill bottle, which was always on his person, just in case.
“Dude.” Joe walked up and stood beside Cole. They both stared into the locker.
“Hey.” Cole didn’t look away from the gym bag.
“I thought my shit was messy,” Joe said. “Ever seen Hoarders?”
“I don’t usually—”
“Like, there could be a black hole in there and nobody would know it. Matthew McConaughey could be behind that big stack of textbooks screaming out ‘Murph! Don’t leave me, Murph!’ and, you know, the world would end because there’s just—”
“Okay, I get it. I don’t keep my locker like this. You know that. I’m trying to—”
“Great movie, though. Every time, I’m like, ‘I’m not going to cry,’ and then boom. Crying.”
“—hide my phone from me.”
“Waterworks, you know?”
They fell silent. They kept standing, staring, and the hallways started to empty. Kids rushing for buses. Kids rushing for rides. Kids just rushed. Except Joe and Cole.
“Why do you think my friend from Wounded Sky would ask me to come home?” Cole asked, finally verbalizing a question he’d asked himself all day.
“Dude, I don’t even know why you left in the first place. You’re just always weird about it,” Joe said.
“I could just ignore him, right? I could leave my gym bag right where it is, and come back and get it for tryouts on Monday.”
“Your bag would be stinky as shit, dude.”
“And by then, if it’s such an emergency, maybe Ashley will have given up, you know? We could both pretend like it never happened, go about our lives…”
“Okay, I don’t want to play the devil’s advocate, but what if because it’s an emergency, you should, like, go?”
“You were just literally playing devil’s advocate there, you know that, right?”
Joe shrugged. “Sorry.”
“What could be the emergency? Shit happens there, Joe. Like, last year, there was this flood. That was an emergency. What could I have done? Help sandbag? Ashley didn’t text me to come. There was no come-home-now crap.”
“I’ve sandbagged before. By the Red River. Last year too. Got free lunch, and we got paid. It was dope, for real. I took you to the Ex with that money, dude. Remember that?”
“Two years ago, they had a flu epidemic. Ashley got sick. I remember how sick he got. I thought he was going to die he got so sick. If he’d have asked me to come out then, maybe, you know? Maybe I would’ve come.”
“But that’s the thing, Joe. He wouldn’t have asked me, even then. He knows better than to ask me.”
Cole kept his eyes trained on the gym bag, crushed as it was underneath the textbooks and binders. He could feel Joe’s eyes on him.
“But you should’ve gone, right? That’s your bro, right?”
Holy shit. Joe’s comment hit Cole hard. It at once felt like it was overstepping, as though Cole hadn’t just invited Joe’s opinion, but he was 100 percent right. Absolutely, he should’ve gone when Ashley was sick. When Cole had graduated from grade eight, and was about to move onto high school, Ashley flew down to the city for the day just to see him graduate. Cole wasn’t even sick. Ashley just knew how difficult school had been for Cole, and always would be. Grade eight graduations were so innocuous; near-death sicknesses were not. Cole pried his eyes away from the locker, and swivelled around to face Joe. He said, rushed and angry, “Thanks. Really appreciate that, man. I’ll see you Monday.”
Joe threw his arms up in frustration, turned around and walked away. “Redirect anger much, dude?”
“Whatever.” Cole turned back to his locker. He stared at the gym bag for a moment longer, then grumbled, “Screw it,” under his breath. He pulled out the gym bag and fished through it, right to the bottom, and pulled out the phone. He had eighteen new text messages. Standing in front of his opened locker, some textbooks spilled onto the floor by his feet. Cole made his way through them.
You’re the asshole if you don’t come back, Cole, said one text from Ashley, sent immediately after Cole threw the phone into his gym bag this morning.
Seventeen others followed. None of them told Cole why he was needed home, but they all kept asking him to come home anyway—except for the one that read, Sorry, you’re not an asshole, you’re just acting like one.
Cole, when have I ever asked you for anything?
There’s a flight that leaves tonight at 10 p.m.
If you’re still thinking about it, there’s one that leaves tomorrow too. 3 p.m.
Did you turn your phone off? That doesn’t make this go away!
Dishonest Cole swore he’d come back if he was needed, now refuses. Sad!
Okay, that was low, but you did say that, years ago. I NEED YOU!
On and on they went. When Cole was done reading through them all, he began to write back to Ashley, but he erased what he had written several times—because he didn’t know what to say, because he didn’t know what to ask, because his thumbs were shaking so badly that he misspelled almost every word. Finally, he took a deep breath and wrote back, You need to tell me why, or else this conversation is over, no matter how many times you ask. Then, as calmly as he could, he slipped the phone into his pocket beside his pills. He got his school bag, placed the books that had fallen onto the floor back into his locker, shut it, and made his way outside.
Usually, he took the bus home. Auntie Joan could only afford a place in a different area of the city, but she insisted he attended schools in a better area; the schools around where they stayed were “too rough” for him. He would’ve gone to those schools, would’ve felt comfortable, but arguing with her wasn’t much good. After all, it was she, not his grandma, who’d decided that they—herself, Cole, and his grandma—should move away from the community. His grandma had thought they should stay. That’s what Cole’s parents would’ve wanted, she’d said to Joan. Moving away wasn’t just removing unwanted attention from Cole, it was removing community, culture, language, traditions… everything. It was a trade-off, his auntie had argued.
“It’ll be too hard for you, you’ll see,” Auntie Joan told Cole on the night before they left. It had always made Cole feel weak (one of the reasons why Cole needed anti-anxiety medication now, as he and his therapist had figured out over the years). Of course, everything he’d lost in the tragedy, and his role in it, was probably a greater contributing factor. So, they moved. They left almost everything behind and started fresh. Lived in a “rough” neighbourhood, went to a nice school.
Cole started on the hour-long walk home.
He hated the idea of going back to Wounded Sky, but maybe Ashley deserved as much. He couldn’t imagine, though, what it would take to make his auntie agree to let him go back. That’s who Ashley would really have to convince. Not him, not his grandma.
Cole’s phone stayed silent during the walk. Given Ashley’s persistence throughout the day, this surprised Cole. As he passed the familiar landmarks he usually saw from city transit he thought about Wounded Sky more than he had over the last ten years. Rather than fight them off, he willingly recalled memories from his childhood. Mostly, the memories centred on the close friends he had. Ashley. Brady. Eva. Mostly Eva. They came in fragments with her, like a remembered dream. Taking off their shoes and splashing around at the banks of Silk River. Cole helping her with math, and she helping him with Cree. How she always smelled like clean laundry. Watching every tear curl down her cheek when she learned he was leaving. Cole was certain he, his grandma, and his auntie moved away almost exactly ten years ago. He wondered if that was why Ashley wanted him to come home. If that were the case, then there was no way he would go.
Grade twelve graduation. He could go for that. A far more important event than an eighth-grade ceremony. That way, he’d have a full year to work up the courage. The thought of some messed up ten-year reunion bothered Cole so much that he texted Ashley again when he got to the front of the apartment complex.
This isn’t about a memorial or anything, is it?
By the time he’d climbed up to the third floor of the building, got into his apartment and out of his shoes, he received a simple reply: Come on, Cole. No.
“Hey Grandma! Hey Auntie Joan!” Cole called out after positioning his shoes between theirs, against the wall in the entryway, just so. He could hear the television set blaring. Sounded like CSI. Somebody was talking about blood splatter. Maybe it was Dexter.
His phone buzzed in his hand. I mean, there is a memorial on Tuesday, but that’s not why.
“Tansi, nósisim!” his grandma called back.
(FYI, dear reader: “nósisim” is a Cree word that means “my grandchild.” Fun fact: it can mean either my grandson or my granddaughter. Very forward-thinking. Choch out.)
The television set muted. Cole made his way into the living room as he wrote back, Right. Knew it, to Ashley and, his anger returning, shoved the phone into his pocket.
“Sorry I’m late,” Cole said to his grandma in a huff. “Needed some air.”
“I don’t think you got enough, child,” his grandma said.
Of course it was a memorial. It couldn’t be anything else. Ten years. Cole sat down on the couch aggressively, his arms crossed. His auntie entered from the kitchen with a cup of coffee. There was always a cup of coffee involved when she had a night shift coming up.
“What’s up with you?” Auntie Joan asked.
“Nothing.” After that, Cole went quiet. He found a spot on the floor, a discoloured area in the hardwood, and stared at it.
“That sort of nothing means a whole lot of something, Cole,” Auntie Joan said.
He was still quiet.
“The quieter you are, the more you have to say.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Your father was like that,” his grandma said. “He’d come into a room with steam coming out of his ears. He’d sit down and look like he was ready to explode. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he’d tell me and your mom. But when he started talking, well…let’s just say I put on a pot of coffee.”
“I don’t drink coffee,” Cole grumbled.
“I just had the last cup anyways.” Auntie Joan plopped down on the couch beside him. She took a sip of her drink, then placed it on the coffee table. She looked Cole dead in the eyes. “Now, that’s enough, Cole. Out with it.”
Cole leaned forward and buried his head in his hands. “None of it is going to go away, is it?”
“Not if you don’t let it,” Auntie Joan said.
“What’s troubling you?” his grandmother asked.
Cole came up for air. “Ashley’s asking me to come home. I mean, go to Wounded Sky. You know, just when I think I’m over it…” Cole started, but trailed off, as though all of his words got sucked up into the dark spot on the floor.
Auntie Joan was tight-lipped. She looked like she was going to explode, just like her brother used to.
“But you aren’t over it, nósisim. You never have been.” His grandmother looked decidedly less combustible than his auntie.
“He said it’s not because of some memorial they’re having, but I bet it is.” Cole stood up from the couch and started pacing around the room. “I bet they just want me there to be their poster boy or something, and I’ll have to stand up in front of everybody and I’ll feel like puking all over them. I will literally puke all over them, I bet. It’ll be like Carrie, only with puke. You know how I get in front of crowds.”
“You’re simply not going back there. Ever.” Auntie Joan’s teeth gritted like she might turn them into powder. “It’s not even a consideration.” She took another, longer sip of her coffee.
“And what if it is about a memorial?” his grandma asked.
“Mother!” Auntie Joan hissed and stood up from the couch.
“Well, don’t you think it might help Cole to face that, Joan?”
For a moment, Cole may as well have not been in the room. His grandmother and his auntie were in a full-on stare down.
“It’ll help if he never goes back there, and you know it,” Auntie Joan said to his grandmother. “He is not going back there.” She turned to him and said, “You are not going back there,” as if he hadn’t heard her say it the first time.
“I think we should at least consider—” his grandmother started.
“And who’s going to pay for it, huh?” Auntie Joan went into the kitchen and dumped her coffee out, only so she could slam the cup into the kitchen sink. “I work these shifts just to pay for rent and food. Do you know how much it costs to fly there?”
“And how much would you pay for Cole to heal?” his grandmother asked.
“That’s not fair,” Auntie Joan said.
Cole dropped his arms to his sides, exasperated. “I have my tuition money.”
“You just sounded like you didn’t want to go!” His auntie returned to the living room, fired up. “Now you want to throw away your future? For what?”
“Maybe it’s important!” Cole said.
“University is important. Rehashing tragedy is not.”
“Maybe I’ll get that scholarship.”
“Maybe? Maybe?” That was all Auntie Joan was capable of saying right then. “Please side with me here, Mother.”
“Look.” His grandmother got up and walked over to Cole. She put her hand on his shoulder. “We can’t tell you what to do, Cole. You’re a man now. We brought you away to protect you. You don’t need that protection anymore.”
“Protect me from what?” Cole asked.
“From all the—” But that was as far as Auntie Joan got.
“All I am saying,” his grandmother interrupted forcefully, “is that maybe you need to think about what’s best for you long-term. Not us.” She shot a look at Auntie Joan there. “You.”
“We haven’t even prepared him for this.” Auntie Joan stepped closer to Cole and his grandmother.
“You’re right,” his grandmother said. “We’ve been shielding him for too long, and what good has it done, really?”
“I’m right here, by the way,” Cole said, but perhaps his real response was how he began to trace the outline of the medicine bottle protruding from his pants pocket. What good had it done, whatever he was being shielded from? He was a bundle of nerves, always. Could going home change that?
“Where do you want your nephew to be ten years from now? Twenty years from now? For him to still be dealing with it like he has been? Like we’ve been making him deal with it? What will his years be like?”
“His years will be safe,” Auntie Joan said. “We’ve done this all to keep you safe, Cole.”
Cole slid his foot over the discoloured patch, and then looked up at them. “I want to go. This is my decision. Let me take out my tuition money. I’ll work more. I’ll get it back.”
“We can make it work,” his grandmother said to his auntie. Then, as though conceding the decision to her daughter, she gave Cole a smile, and left the room. She went down the hallway, towards her bedroom.
Cole and his auntie stood there, staring at each other. They said a lot in that silence. Cole did his best to look strong, but felt anything but. Maybe she saw that in him. Maybe that’s exactly what she was looking at: if he could take it. “You know I only want what’s best for you.”
“I know,” Cole said, “I do too. And I feel like I have to do this.”
“That’s the thing, though, Cole. I don’t think you can do this.”
“That’s not your decision.”
“I’m sorry,” his auntie said. “But it is. You’re not going. I’m not giving you my money, or your tuition money, to see you torn apart.”
Cole shook his head and looked up at the ceiling. A thousand responses went through his mind, but he said none of them. All he could muster was, “Fine!” and then he left the living room on his way to his bedroom. There, he settled into bed, his head propped up on a pillow, with Bon Iver playing through speakers on his desk across the room. The curtains were drawn, he was immersed in complete darkness, he was doing his breathing, but after listening to 22, A Million three times through, he just felt angry. He knew what was best for his life, not her. He could’ve handled St. John’s High School. He didn’t need the shelter of Kelvin. And he could’ve stayed in Wounded Sky all this time, too, couldn’t he? He could’ve stayed there, stayed with his friends. He wouldn’t have felt like Eva hated him now, wouldn’t be afraid to even send her a text to say hello.
As an act of defiance, even though going to Wounded Sky wasn’t in the cards without his auntie’s approval, he sat up in his bed, opened his laptop, and looked up flights from Winnipeg to Wounded Sky First Nation. Ashley had been right about the times. There was a flight tonight at 10:00 p.m., and another tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. He went through the process of booking a flight for 3:00 p.m. tomorrow. He went all the way to the checkout, but ended up slamming the laptop shut.
Breathe in for five seconds. Hold it. Breathe out for seven.
He lay back down, head propped up against the pillow. Music washed over him.
COLE: Sorry. I can’t come.
Cole was with Eva. They were children again. Seven years old. They were in a field, and it was night. There was nobody, nothing around them. Just the field, stretching for eternity. She was dancing like there was music. She looked like a poem, like the northern lights overhead. “Dance with me,” she said. He was standing in place, his body subtly swaying to the unheard rhythm. She spun around, arms high in the air. When she faced him again, she was seventeen. Her dress moved through the air like smoke. There was music. He heard the music. “Dance with me.” She reached for him. Beautiful music. He whistled along, and reached for her hand. The lights above came down to them. To her. Ribbons of colour wrapped around her, took her up, danced with her there. “Cole!” He reached for her. She was too high.
“Cole.”
“Eva,” he said.
“No, nósisim.”
Cole opened his eyes. It was light out. Even with the heavy navy curtains drawn, he could tell it was morning. His grandmother was sitting at the edge of his bed, patting his leg.
“You were having a nightmare.”
“Sort of.” He sat up and leaned against the headboard. “Sort of a dream, sort of a nightmare.”
“You’re already there, aren’t you?”
“Wounded Sky? I don’t know where it was. It was about—”
“Sometimes, a place isn’t just a town, but the people too. They are that place, in a way.”
“You’re sounding very Elder-y right now, Grandma.”
His grandmother gave his leg one more pat, and then she placed an envelope on the bed and slid it over to Cole. He opened it.
“Grandma, you can’t do this.” There was a stack of money in the envelope. Probably close to $2,000. Cole didn’t count it, just flipped through the bills with his thumb.
“I can do whatever I please with my money,” she said.
“Where did you get all of this?” Cole asked.
“It doesn’t matter.” She stood up from the bed. “I want you to use that. Go home, do what you have to do. It really is your decision.”
“What about Auntie Joan?”
She looked behind her, like she could see through walls. “Fast asleep. She had a night shift. She’ll be sleeping for a while yet.”
“She’ll kill me.”
“You let me worry about my daughter.” His grandmother had been clutching something in her left hand. She extended that hand, hesitantly, to Cole, opened it. A tobacco tie was resting in her palm. Cole shook his head, gently closed his grandmother’s fingers around the red bundle.
“Nósisim.”
“No thanks, Grandma. I don’t want—I don’t need it.”
“Cole. All these years, you’ve been avoiding part of who you are, our traditions, culture. You won’t speak our language. But, nósisim, these are the things that would help you be strong. Isn’t that what you want?”
“You’re wrong. That…it just makes me hurt more. It just reminds me.”
“It should remind you of the good in us, not the bad that has happened to us.”
“I’m sorry, I…” Cole trailed off. Just closed his eyes and sighed.
“If not for you, then for me.”
He felt his grandmother’s touch. She turned his left hand over, uncurled his fingers, and placed the tobacco in his hand, over a large, ugly scar that stretched from one side of his palm to the other. He closed his hand.
“Lay this for me, at the memorial. Say a prayer, for me. Would you do that for your old kókom?”
“Yeah, sure. I will. For you.”
His grandmother looked at her watch carefully, then at Cole. “Now, you slept in, nósisim. It’s almost noon and I think your flight leaves at 3 p.m. You have some packing to do, and you should leave quietly. Your auntie isn’t the heaviest sleeper.”
“How’d you know when the flight leaves?” Cole asked.
“Your computer said so.”
“I lock my computer.”
“Now, Cole, I might be ‘Elder-y,’ but even I know that a name isn’t the best password. Especially a three-letter one.”