Delusion Road (4 page)

Griff swung his legs over the side of his bed and reached for the laptop on his nightstand, its screensaver cycling through images of orchids. During the past few months, he’d fallen into the habit of mentally reciting five words before touching the screen, and today was no exception. Please bring me that fucker, he thought as he brushed the display, the orchids vanishing to reveal the FRA that ran continuously in the background. But besides the usual handful of doppelgangers whom Griff quickly checked and ruled out, there was nothing. Not a goddamn thing.

Grimacing, he tapped the Facebook icon. Griff hated Facebook, and not because he didn’t have any friends. He just couldn’t understand why people posted such detailed information about themselves for complete strangers to see. Because not everyone you friended was who they said they were. For over four months now, Griff had been Kayley Sheridan, a seventeen-year-old girl who attended school on North Ashland Avenue. Using selfies he’d
copied from a Bulgarian teenager, his fictional persona had gathered an impressive number of real-life friends. It was amazing how many people not only accepted his requests but actually submitted their own to him. Not that he gave a shit about them. There was only one person he was really interested in.

Time for Kayley to do her stuff.

W
illa thought the assembly would never end. They’d already listened to the usual welcoming remarks from Ms. Stevens, the principal; they’d endured the reading of the school rules by Mr. Caldwell, the vice-principal; and now they were suffering through the We Are a Family of Learners speech from Ms. Flynn, the senior guidance counsellor, who was reciting the same stuff Willa had heard every year on the first day of school.

“Christ!” muttered Celia beside her. “How much longer?”

Willa rolled her eyes. “She hasn’t even gotten to her caterpillar metaphor, and then there’s the whole ‘vision for the future’ bit.”

“Shoot. Me. Now.” This from Britney, who sat on the other side of Jay, the only one in their group who hadn’t complained about the length of the assembly. He’d fallen asleep ten seconds in, his head lolling back and his mouth wide open. Only Celia’s frequent jabbing kept him from snoring.

More than anything, Willa longed to pull out her phone and respond to some of the many texts she’d received, but one of the school rules that Caldwell most delighted in enforcing was “No cellphones during classes or assemblies.” The VP gleefully confiscated offenders’ phones and, since Willa had replaced hers with the latest model only a week ago, she wasn’t willing to risk losing it now.

Finally, Flynn finished and Caldwell returned to the podium to announce homeroom allocations. Not that it would be a surprise which ones she and her friends were assigned to—seniors were always grouped alphabetically by last name. The real news was which teacher each group would be assigned to. Last year, she’d had to endure Ms. Ericson, a rail-thin woman who never wore antiperspirant and always had half-moon stains under her arms.

Caldwell cleared his throat importantly as if he were about to announce the Rapture. “All those grade twelve students whose surnames begin with the letters A to E will proceed to Ms. MacDonald’s classroom, number 108.”

Wynn leaned over and kissed Willa before heaving himself to his feet. “Later, babe,” he said, shouldering his backpack and ambling toward the exit.

Embracing his inner control freak, Caldwell waited until all of the students in that first group left the auditorium before continuing, “All those grade twelves with surnames beginning with the letters F to J will proceed to Mr. Richardson’s classroom, number 117.”

“You got the new English teacher,” said Celia as Willa stood up. “Text me what you think, okay?”

Willa nodded. Some staff members were less vigilant about enforcing the no-phones rule. Maybe this new guy would be, too. “See you at the break, okay?” she said.

Out in the corridor, Willa followed her fellow homeroomers as they made their way toward the west wing. They were the usual motley crew, six of whom had been in her class the past two years but never in any of her courses because she’d always been in the accelerated group.

Glancing behind her, Willa saw Bailey Holloway bringing up the rear, sporting the result of what was clearly a home dye-job, the colour close to rust. At least it drew attention away from her ill-fitting jeans, which Willa suspected had been bought at Frenchy’s, the used clothing warehouse on Highway 1. “Hey, Bailey,” said Willa.

Bailey flushed a deep crimson and a couple of different expressions flickered over her face before she rearranged her features into a smile, a reaction Willa found odd. She and Bailey didn’t have a lot in common, but they’d known each other for years and had been in the same homeroom for the last two.

“Hey, Willa,” said Bailey. Then, as if to compensate for her uneasiness, she added, “Guess we got the new guy, huh?”

“Yeah,” Willa acknowledged. “Hope he’s a decent teacher.”

“Not Richardson,” said Bailey. “Him.”

Willa looked ahead where Bailey was pointing and spied the tall guy with the hoodie walking alone. Remembering the scene at the east-wing entrance, she suppressed a groan. Even if they had none of the same classes, they would be seeing each other every single day.

In her head, Willa reminded herself that this was going to be the best school year ever. Despite all evidence to the contrary.

T
he extended homeroom period had been a tedious exercise in filling out endless first-day-of-school forms, but even that was preferable to recess, which Keegan spent hanging around his open locker trying to look busy instead of like The Biggest Loser In The Building. He couldn’t keep his mind from drifting toward Hamad, Joaquin, and the others, a lump crowding his throat as he thought of what their first day as seniors must be like, so he was actually glad when a bell warned the break would end shortly. He shut the metal door and gave the combination lock a final spin before heading to his first class. He’d never really enjoyed English, which involved way too much reading for Keegan’s liking, but Richardson had seemed okay in homeroom. At least he didn’t have one foot in the grave like a lot of the teachers on staff.

Keegan had been hoping Raven might end up in his homeroom, but she hadn’t. And the one person he’d been hoping
wouldn’t
be there
was
—the bitch he’d had to apologize to. Entering Richardson’s classroom now, he could see his luck—or lack of it—was holding: not only was she sitting at the back with her boyfriend, their whole entourage was sitting beside them, and the girl who’d waylaid him on the steps now whispered
something to her friends. As if choreographed, they all looked in his direction, smirks on their faces. His miserable morning was morphing into a spectacularly shitty day. Keegan slumped into one of the few remaining seats and forced himself to pull his long legs out of the aisle.

Just as a bell signalled the beginning of class, Keegan saw Raven appear in the doorway. Catching her eye, he pointed toward the empty seat across the aisle from his and she smiled, winding her way across the crowded room and sitting down.

“Welcome, everyone,” said Richardson, and the post-recess chatter in the room faded away. After introducing himself, he began calling out names from a class list and marking their owners on a seating chart, during which Keegan learned the names of The Couple—Willa Jaffrey and Wynn d’Entremont—along with Understudy Couples One and Two: Todd Thomas, Britney Lamontagne, Jay Underwood, and Celia Waters. He also learned Raven’s last name: Powell.

“It’s important,” continued the teacher, “that I quickly get to know each of you as learners, but it’s also important that you get to know one another because you’ll be learning as much if not more from your classmates as you will from me. To that end, I’m going to ask you to pair up with someone you don’t know and interview one another. Afterwards, I’ll ask you to share with the rest of the class what you’ve learned about your partner.”

“Mr. Richardson?” came a voice from the back of the room.

The teacher glanced at his seating chart. “Willa, right?”

“Yes. Most of us know just about everyone here, so is it okay if I interview one of my friends?”

“I would imagine, Willa,” said Richardson, “that there are students here whom you aren’t as familiar with as others.” His eyes roamed the group, settling on Keegan. “You’re in my homeroom.”

Uh-oh.

Richardson smiled. “Willa—”

Mother of God, don’t
—

“—could I ask you to pair up with”—he glanced at his seating chart again—”Keegan?”

Keegan suffered through three heartbeats of pained silence before hearing a muted “Okay.”

“Thanks,” said Richardson. “Is there anyone else new to the school?”

Raven raised her hand.

“Welcome,” said the teacher, once more glancing at his seating chart, “Raven.” He looked around the room. “Who’d like the pleasure of interviewing our other new student?”

“I’ll do it.”

Keegan turned to see Wynn d’Entremont’s hand in the air.

“If it’s okay with you, Mr. Richardson,” said Raven, “I was hoping to work with this person.” She pointed behind her to a girl with rust-coloured hair whose name, Keegan thought, was Bailey Something. And by the look on Bailey Something’s face, Raven’s plan was news to her.

“Certainly,” said Richardson. He let his eyes wander the room. “For the next ten minutes, one of you will interview the other. Try to have an actual conversation with your partner and see where his or her responses take you. At the end of that time, you’ll reverse roles. Any questions?”

No hands went up. “Okay,” said the teacher, “pair up and keep an eye on the time, okay?”

Chairs scraped the floor as students got up and moved around the room, settling themselves beside their partners. Keegan didn’t budge.

A
s Willa moved across the room, she replayed in her head what had happened by the east entrance. She was pretty sure working with the guy Celia had publicly humiliated wouldn’t be one of those best-school-year-ever moments. She felt herself flush as she approached the seat the new girl had just left, thinking about how quickly Wynn had volunteered to work with the new student, how considerate that was. He’d ended up partnering with Greg Phillips, whose acne-pocked face looked even worse than usual beside the best-looking guy in school. Willa’s partner had a face like stone.

Sliding into the seat, she hoped her own face didn’t betray how awkward she felt. “So,” she said.

“So,” he repeated.

Seconds crawled by and Willa could tell he had no intention of making this easy. Screw him. “Do you want to go first?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“Okay, then, I’ll go first.” She pulled a pen and notepad out of her leather bag and opened to the first page, her hand pausing above the paper. She should have paid more attention when Richardson was reading the class list. “So how do you spell your name?”

“The way it sounds.”

She could see in his eyes that he knew she didn’t have a clue what it was. “You want to sound it out for me?”

He said nothing for a long moment, then exaggerated “Keegan” into five syllables.

She wrote it down. And waited. She looked up. “And your last name is …?” But he just sat there staring at her. “Look, I know it starts with F, G, H, I, or J because we’re in the same homeroom.”

“Lucky me.”

She frowned. “You always such a pain?”

“I rise to the occasion.”

“Okay, so no last name.”

“Fraser.”

Figures it would be an F-word, she thought, writing it down. “Where’re you from?”

“Vancouver.”

“Really?” She looked up. “I have a cousin who lives there. Near Maple Tree Square in Gastown. Were you anywhere close to that?”

The guy shrugged again. “No.”

“So what part of Vancou—”

“Look,” he said, clearly agitated, “we’re already down two of your ten minutes. You wanna move on?”

Willa bristled. “What I
want
is to just get through this, okay? It doesn’t matter to me where you’re from. I’m just doing what Richardson said.”

“The conversation thing?”

“You’ve
heard
of it then?” she snapped. “That quaint ritual where two people exchange—”

“Clock’s still ticking,” he interrupted.

She glared at him for a long moment, forced her teeth to unclench, then summoned the syrupy tone she sometimes used with old people and very young children. “And what brought you to Brookdale, Keegan?” she asked.

“A plane. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. They’re a quaint means of transporta—”

“Hilarious.” She’d had all she could take of this jerk and was about to get up and return to her seat when he spoke again.

“My dad.”

She didn’t get it. “What about him?”

“The reason we’re in Brookdale. He got a job here.”

“Must be quite the job to move you clear across the country.” When he didn’t respond, she asked, “What’s he do?”

“He’s an accountant.”

She wrote that down. “Where’s he work?”

“At a car dealership.”

“Where?”

“Here in town.”

“Brookdale has three,” she said. The Hyundai and Ford dealerships were her father’s only competitors in this part of the province.

“Valley Motors.”

Willa couldn’t hold back the satisfied smile that lit up her face, and she settled back in her chair, savouring the moment before offering, “Your dad works for mine.”

“Time’s up,” Richardson announced at the end of the twenty minutes, and talk trickled away. “Who’d like to go first?”

Willa expected to sit through an awkward pause, but Bailey Holloway put up her hand. “We will,” she said, glancing at her partner, who nodded in return.

“Great,” said Richardson. “Why don’t you both come up here so everyone can see you.”

The two girls walked to the front of the classroom. “This is Raven Powell,” said Bailey. “Raven’s a member of the Haida First Nation, and she’s just moved here with her parents from the West Coast. Her mother accepted a professorship at Acadia University, where she now teaches Aboriginal studies, and her father is a researcher for the federal government. Raven’s the youngest of four children and the only girl in her family. Her oldest brother is a woodcarver who specializes in totems, and one of his pieces stands on the grounds of the Parliament Buildings in Victoria. But he’s not the only artistic member of their family. Raven paints and plays guitar, but her first love is dance, and one day she hopes to perform with the National Ballet of Canada.”