Alone at 90 Foot (3 page)

Mr. Bartell is quiet while we all protest. But I can see something brewing behind his great bug eyes. Then to all of us he booms in his loudest Shakespeare-reading voice, “You'll do it because I said so!”

That basically shuts us up until after he's taken attendance, when he gets that hyena grin again and teaches us stuff like movement and rhythm and partner positions and step combinations and whatever. Then he tells us we have to break into partners, at which point we all groan.

“Pair up with the boy or girl, as the case may be, who has the same last initial as your own. Or,”
he adds, “the closest to it.”

“This is sooo juvenile,” Joanne whines.

Mr. Bartell claps his hands, because none of us have moved one inch. “Come on, come on, people. I'm guessing you all passed kindergarten or you wouldn't be here. It's not too hard to figure out. Let's see, B, B, B — no B's. C, C — Miss Collins — “

I am going to die. I am actually going to die right here on the spot. No kidding. Mr. Bartell is walking toward me. Mr. Bartell is bowing to me. Mr. Bartell is taking hold of my hand!

“May I request this dance?”

This is truly
the
single most humiliating event of my entire life. I wish I'd stayed down at Ninety Foot. I wish I'd tripped on a root and broken my foot. I wish I'd been kidnapped by a UFO and forced to submit to inhumane experiments. Anything other than having to dance with Mr. Bartell. I can't even look at him, let alone remember what he just taught us.

“Miss Collins?”

I can hear Joanne and my other so-called friends snickering.

“Huh?”

“May I request this dance?”

Like, do I have a choice?

“I guess so,” I mumble into my hair.

Mr. Bartell turns toward the class and bellows half an inch from my ear, “Now, gentlemen! What have I just demonstrated?”

No one has a clue what the answer is.

“It's called proper etiquette, gentlemen! It is proper etiquette to ask for the privilege to dance with your partner. Now I want you all to demonstrate proper etiquette and the young ladies will respond accordingly.”

There's all this shuffling around, which I don't really see because I'm too busy staring at the floor, but, like, all thirty guys repeat what Mr. Bartell asked me. With the enthusiasm of a bunch of dead cod, I might add. I'm not sure what the proper responses are supposed to be, but mostly I hear answers like, “Get serious,” and “Alright, but only because I need the marks.”

Mr. Bartell drags me to the CD player, starts this majorly bad music, if you can even call it that, and while he jerks me back and forth and around and around, hollers out orders to the class. “Alright people, the box step! Eight counts. Quick, quick, quick, quick!”

His breath is like the worst swamp in the deepest depths of Borneo and he's sweating on my head.

“Forward! Touch! Side! Together!”

I wish I were made of mercury. I could slip right out of his arms, slither across the gym and
roll out the door.

“Backward! Touch! Side! Together!” Grunt, grunt. “Miss Collins.” There is a moldy blast in my face and I realize he is talking to me.

“Yes?” I say.

“You should look at your partner.”

Mr. Bartell, the point here is, I don't want to. Now I suppose if you looked like Matt Damon, it's possible I could work up the nerve. But you are fifteen galaxies away from looking like him, so I'd really rather not.

I have to try real hard to look at him.

“Once more through, class. Count one! You weren't in English class this morning?”

I have to look at him this time, because I'm not sure if he's talking to me or if the question is part of this bizarre dance ritual. Realizing it isn't, and with my imagination stifled because of the, u-hum, air in here, I say, “I went home with a headache.”

“I see. Count two. Left and right feet together. And are you feeling better?”

Hold on. I mean, wait just a minute here. Is this proper etiquette? Are you allowed to discuss someone's skipping out when you're dancing with them? Or their personal health?

“Yes,” I say, “I feel better.”

“Excellent. Step to your right! Your weight onto
your right! We will be discussing the final chapters on Wednesday. Be sure to read them. Good job! Everyone bow to their partner and be sure to practice your box step for next class.”

What are the chances?

May 26th

I am standing with Joanne and Mandeep Gill on the steps after school. There are disgusting blobs of gob all over the cement. By the way, before I say anything further, that's something I want to set straight right now. This may come as a surprise to any of you guys who might read this, but hucking gob is definitely not cool. It is definitely not the least bit attractive, and I don't know whatever gave you the notion that it is. Really, like I want to be sliding on your body fluids everywhere I walk? Keep it in mind.

Danielle Higgins is standing on the sidewalk below us, circled, as always, by a ring of guys. One of them says something and she throws her head back and laughs loudly. He also laughs, plunks his hands on his hips, turns his head and hucks one across the sidewalk. Give me a break. Was it really that hysterical, Danielle? She thinks of more ways to get noticed than Dennis Rodman.

Excuse me. Hang on. There's something different about this picture. The guy with his arm around her waist? I've never seen him before. Not that I pay much attention to guys anymore, but if I did, that one is definitely worth paying attention to. He's got a wicked grin. And a build to die for, and tall — a definite plus for me. He's got short hair, a muscular neck, wide back and I like the way he stands with just a bit of a stoop to his shoulders. Slightly apologetic for his, shall I say, remarkable physique? When he laughs —

“YUM- MY,” Joanne rudely interrupts my thoughts. “Where was he when we had to social dance yesterday? My, my. Danielle's really outdone herself this time.” Joanne pulls a pack of cigarettes from her backpack and while she continues to drool over Danielle's latest, removes one from the package, snaps a lighter and takes a deep drag. “Still,” she says, turning away, exhaling, dropping the cigarette to her side, “I suppose if you're going to deliver the
goods, it gives you that much more of a choice.”

“When are you going to quit that?” I say.

Joanne knows exactly what I'm talking about, but instead of answering me, she deliberately takes another drag. “As we've discussed before, this is the only bad habit left over from that period, which you have chosen to name my ‘dark days.' It could have been much worse.”

“It's not healthy.”

She taps the ashes onto the cement. “True. But there are many things more unhealthy. Say, playing in traffic, diving in a pool with no water, or standing in a field in the middle of a thunderstorm.”

Mandeep laughs.

Joanne continues to smoke. “There's walking on thin ice and challenging a bull to a race. Eating pink hamburger and petting a rabid dog — “

“Getting your teeth X-rayed without the lead apron,” pipes in Mandeep.

We both look at her. She shrugs.

“Yeah, there's that,” continues Joanne, “and don't forget not buckling your seat belt, not wearing a life jacket, outrunning trains and jumping from a ten-storey building ...”

Joanne goes silent. She stares at Mandeep. Mandeep stares back. Slowly, she begins to shake her head. Joanne turns to me, drops her cigarette to the step and squashes it with her toe. “I'm real
sorry, Pam. It just came out. You know I didn't mean anything by it.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Which was true. But I hated dealing with this be-really-careful-of-what-you-say-around-Pam-or-she'll-spaz attitude. That was one of the things about my mother jumping from the bridge that burned me. It instantly made me into some kind of freak. Some kind of fragile being that had to be tip-toed around so I wouldn't shatter at the slightest word. It made me a special case. And as I think I've mentioned before, I have never liked to stand out.

The day I returned to school after the funeral, it was, like, everyone was
so
nice. The teachers all gave me hugs. Joanne carried my backpack and stuck by me like a crutch. She interrogated anyone who came close to talk to me, demanding their motives before they could speak. Even Sarah McMurtry, who hadn't talked to me since I cut her Barbie doll's hair when we were four, scrambled to pick up my pen when I dropped it during French. I hated it. I hated being singled out and I hated the shifting eyes and the hush that fell over my friends when I approached.

“It's just that, well, no one knows what to say,” Joanne told me. “I mean, like, well — you know — okay, it happened like this.”

And she told me what happened the day they
found out my mom had jumped off the suspension bridge.

I'm going to have to interrupt for one minute here before I tell Joanne's story. I'm going to tell you about crossing the suspension bridge. Then, what she had to say will make more sense. Okay, it's like this:

Crossing the Lynn Canyon suspension bridge is not just strutting onto this wooden structure that's at the same level as the ground you've been walking on. It's more like, sort of, this event. When you first stand high up on the platform leading onto the bridge you get this rush. You suck your breath in because you are not only standing where the bridge begins, but at the very spot where the gorge drops a hundred and sixty feet to the creek. And although you know in your head that swinging bunch of cable, wood and chicken wire has not fallen down yet, common sense tells you it's not smart to walk off the edge of a cliff. So you stand there, looking across to the other side, then down at how you're supposed to get there. Now, because the bridge has this major dip in it, you clamp your hands to the cables on each side and you don't step so much, but more like dive onto it. At first, you try to control your speed, but the bridge drops steeply into the gorge and your feet get away from you. That's why they've added these strips of wood that act like
speed bumps. It can be swinging pretty wildly, so you may or may not want to stop in the middle, depending on your strength of nerve. Then you begin to climb up the other side. You go slower because of how steeply it rises, but you're also feeling good that you're more than halfway there. You have to work hard, hanging tightly to the cables to pull you up, using the speed bumps to brace your feet. And there you are. Safe, with the bridge swinging in the canyon behind you.

Now, that's if you do it alone. That's become a rarity. Tourists love the suspension bridge. They love to cross it in herds. You can just imagine how it pitches back and forth with lots of people on it. Especially if you get some wise guy that figures he needs to stand in the middle and heave on the cables to turn it into some kind of ride.

But now, Joanne's story:

It was like this. Mrs. Dalrymple came in to tell us about your mom during social class and, like, no one could believe it! All day, that's all anybody could talk about. Everyone cried and said how awful it was and how we felt so sorry for you and for your dad. And then after school, we were sitting under the cover next to the bike stands when Carol Sanchez said that the worst person to
lose in the world would be her mother. That started it.

     Some of the guys disagreed with her and that got everyone talking. Linda Yip insisted it would be much worse for her if it was her grandmother. John Robbel said it would have to be his father. Danielle said it would definitely be her sister. Everyone talked louder. Then Tony Lasserman seemed to get mad and said he couldn't care less about his mother, but he never wanted to lose his brother. Danny Kim said he'd pay to have someone take out his brother. By then, the talking had turned to shouting. Suddenly, Mike Ortega stood up and shouted above everyone else, “Yeah, but jumping off the suspension bridge would be the worst way to go!”

     This made everybody go quiet. Of course, we had all been thinking about that, but nobody had said it. I mean, you know how scary it is up there and how when we were kids we used to talk about what it would be like to fall off? All the things we'd imagine? What it would be like to let go and fall into nothing. Would you pass out? Would you be killed by hitting the canyon walls on the way down? Would you get impaled on a tree? Would you bounce at the bottom or just go splat? I guess silently we were all thinking these things

     Tony Lasserman was the first to break the silence. “Do you think they got all of her?”

     We all looked at him. It was like he knew what we were thinking.

     “Well, you know as well as I do, they couldn't just pick her up and carry her out. They'd have to scrape her off. Maybe they didn't get all of her?”

     “We thought seriously about this,” Joanne told me. “Mike Ortega got all excited. “What if she broke into a whole bunch of pieces? What if they missed one? A foot? Or an eyeball or something?”

     John Robbel began to unlock his bike. “There might still be brains stuck to the rock.”

     At this point Linda Yip told them how disgusting they were being. How they didn't have one manner between them and that it was not only morbid, but in extremely bad taste to discuss the physical condition of the dead.

     They considered this for maybe half of a second. Mike ran to the bike stand and jumped on his bike. “Maybe her hair caught in one of the cables and her head is still swinging beneath the bridge!” He tore off and so did all of us behind him.”

     Joanne continued.

     “It was raining that day and half of us fell on the way there, slipping in mud puddles and
tripping over our own feet. We were like this frenzied pack, pounding along the road, past the ecology center, past the concession stand and down the steps to the foot of the bridge. Nobody stopped, they just kept on going, screaming and hollering as they stampeded over the edge and poured onto the bridge. Except me. I was the last. I stood at the foot, barely able to breathe, my heart whacking at my chest. I couldn't do it. If there was something to see, I didn't want to see it. I loved your mom, Pam. She was the best. Instead, I followed the fence a hundred feet down the gorge, where I could see them lined up along the bridge. They stretched from one end to the other. And you know what I heard? I heard that piercing shriek of the gulls above me. I heard the splash of rain on the leaves around me. I heard the rush of water falling far, far below me. But not a sound came from that still bridge. Not the creak of a cable. Not a single word spoken. Only terrified silence. What I saw was a row of small frightened faces strung across the canyon. Looking into the gorge that swallowed your mother. And I guess that's why nobody knew what to say to you, Pam.