Kicked Out (3 page)

As I hit the starter button, I was chewing
my lip. I had to get this right. I’d gotten most of it, but I had a habit of forgetting the most important parts. Like lighting the Bunsen burner
before
starting a science experiment. Like turning off the stove element
after
boiling water for tea. I get nervous around people and it makes my mind fall apart. I can cover pretty well — no one expects a kid who looks tough to scare easy. I bet my parents never guessed how bad I shook after our fights. I’d go sit on my bed, hold my stuffed rabbit, and just shake and shake. Whenever I saw that
look
on their faces — the one that went with the one-hundred-and-one questions — the shaking always started. But I never let them see it. I kept it deep inside, then took it up to my room and let it loose.

But this morning, things were going pretty well. Everything seemed to be under control. I was sitting in the driver’s position, with Gabe hanging on behind me. We roared by farmhouses with dogs barking in the driveways. I even passed several carloads of dressed-up families coming back from
church. Then I saw a stop sign ahead. Just beyond it, cars were zooming past. It looked like we were headed straight for a major road.

Stop
, I thought.
I’ve got to stop. How do I stop this thing?

Suddenly all the knobs looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. It was as if I’d never seen them before.

I can’t do it. I’m gonna mess up. Gabe will hate me
, I thought.

I blanked out. My brain shattered into a thousand pieces and flew away.

“Brake! Brake! Brake!” Gabe kept yelling. He started slamming his helmet against the back of mine to get me to wake up. Finally something clicked, and I remembered. We stopped just on the edge of the major road. A car whizzed by.

Gabe doesn’t worry too much about causing a scene. He got off, hopping mad and yelling, “Get off my bike! Get off my bike! You’re crazy, nuts or just plain stupid! You got some kind of a death wish?”

I slid off the bike and watched him climb on. He yelled some more, then kicked the starter and roared off down the highway. It got really quiet. As I stood there alone, the shaking started. I sat down with my back to the stop sign and took off my helmet. I didn’t have my stuffed rabbit, so I hugged myself. I kept hearing different voices in my head — Mom’s, Dad’s and Gabe’s. They were all yelling
Stupid! Crazy! No good! Death wish!
Their voices kept getting louder and louder, mixing together until my head hurt. I told myself I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to let it hurt. I was going to get up and walk all the way back to Winnipeg. I’d show Gabe I didn’t need him. I didn’t need him or my parents or anyone.

That’s when I heard the roar of the motorcycle. Relief hit me so hard, I did start to cry then. Gabe wasn’t going to leave me alone. He was coming back to get me. Maybe I was stupid and a no-good nutcase, but he still liked me.

I wiped my eyes and hoped my makeup
hadn’t smeared. Gabe stopped in front of me. He took off his helmet.

“Hey, babe, going my way?” he grinned weakly.

I stared at my feet and said, “Sorry. I guess I blew it.”

“I’ll get over it. C’mon, get on,” he said.

We kissed and made up. Then we rode back, me hanging onto him pretty tight. I was relieved we were okay. Still, something in me kept saying,
He took off and left me alone out there. Why didn’t he say he was sorry?

Chapter Four

When I got back, I started lunch. I decided to make Kraft Dinner and hot dogs. I’m not much of a cook — my specialty is boiled eggs. That’s as good as it gets. Reading the wiener package, I got nervous. There were no instructions.

“Darren, when you make hot dogs, do you boil the water and then drop in the wieners? Or do you put the wieners in cold
water first and then boil them?” I asked.

“I dunno,” said Darren, looking puzzled. We started to laugh.

“I guess I’ll just wing it,” I said nervously.

Darren got out his books and started studying at the kitchen table. This made me more nervous. I wanted him to go into his bedroom where he wouldn’t see any mistakes I made. But it was his apartment. So I fussed around the stove, watching everything carefully and hoping he’d keep quiet if anything blew up. To my surprise, nothing went wrong. The wieners cooked and the noodles boiled as if they did this every day. It was only after I’d set everything on the table that I noticed how relaxed I was. Then I realized why. Darren hadn’t yelled at me. He hadn’t put me down once. My eyes stung and I blinked fast.

“What’s the matter?” Darren asked.

“I like it here,” I said.

He smiled and said, “I like you being here, too. And while you’re here, could you
get me a beer? It goes great with Kraft Dinner.”

“Sure,” I grinned and almost skipped to the fridge. I set the beer on the table next to Darren’s hand. He leaned over and opened the bottle with his teeth.

“No hands,” he grinned. His teeth are chipped from doing this, but no one can talk sense into him.

“You look like such a mild-mannered quad,” I said.

“Super Quad,” he said.

That afternoon, I unpacked. Darren headed off to the gym to work out, so the apartment was quiet. Times like this, I get to thinking about the accident. It happened when Darren and I were coming back from an all-night curling bonspiel. I was asleep in the back seat. It was still dark, and Darren ran into a moose that had walked onto the road. The moose came through the windshield, and the car rolled into a field. I was unconscious for a while. When I came to, I found Darren still in his seat, twisted up funny. His face and
arms were cut up, so there was blood. I sat there holding his hand, then ran to the road when I heard a car coming. It was at least another hour before the ambulance arrived. Sometimes I feel as if I’m still sitting there in the dark, hoping and praying my brother will live.

Of course, he did live. We found out that he’d broken his neck, but not his glasses. Darren seemed to be the only person in our family who didn’t change after that. He went through the rehab program and learned to hold a spoon with the Universal Cuff. Slowly, he got back some use of his hands so he could hold things with his palms. He started university and learned to drive a van with touch controls. Sometimes it seems like he went on as if the accident never happened.

Thinking about it, I started banging things around in my room. How could Darren just pick up and go on living? For me, it felt as if there was still a bad accident waiting around every corner. And when my parents looked at me, I knew what they were thinking.
You’ve always been a problem, Dime. You were already a failure. It should have been your neck that was broken, not our boy’s
.

Of course, they never said any of this out loud. In our family, we don’t talk about things — we yell. Or we look at each other and think things loudly inside our heads.

That evening was sort of peaceful. When Mom called, Darren handled her call. Gabe called a little later, and I handled him. I made hamburgers and even got some studying done. That night, I lay awake in bed, thinking about the evening. There had been no arguments, no yelling, no putdowns. Did it ever make me feel different. It helped me sleep, too. The next morning, as I stood at the bus stop with Tiff, I actually felt awake. This was something new for me — mornings look a lot better after nine hours of sleep.

We got to school with fifteen minutes to spare and headed for the student parking area. Right away I saw Gabe on his bike, talking to
kids sitting on the curb. I swung on behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist.

“Morning,” I said. Everyone watched us. At our school, a lot of action went on around Gabe’s Ninja.

“Hey, Gabe,” said Tiff, leaning over the front of his bike.

“Yeah?” Gabe asked, but he was more interested in playing with the hole in the left knee of my jeans.

“Isn’t that your ex over there?” Tiff asked, pointing.

I glanced toward the door. Our school has a different entrance for each social group. There’s one for the preppies, the jocks, the skaters, and the headbangers. Gabe’s ex was standing in the headbangers’ entrance, wearing a tight Megadeth T-shirt. She was glaring at me as if she was planning the rest of my life. It looked short.

“Yeah, that’s her,” said Gabe. He grinned and started kissing me.

“Uh, Dime?” said Tiff.

“Yeah?” I asked. It was hard to con
centrate on what she was saying. Gabe’s a good kisser.

“I hear she’s decided to remove half of your face,” Tiff said.

I put my hand over Gabe’s mouth and asked, “When did you hear this?”

“Last week, but it slipped my mind,” Tiff said.

“Yeah, I heard about it too. Don’t worry. She’s a big talker,” Gabe said.

“Thanks for telling me, you guys,” I muttered. Gabe’s ex was a good fighter. She picked most of her fights in the girls’ bathrooms. “Queen of the Cans” was one of her nicer nicknames.

“Hey, don’t worry about it — I’ll protect you,” Gabe said. He seemed pretty chipper about the whole thing.

“You going to walk into the girls’ can with me?” I asked.

“Sure!” He looked enthusiastic.

The bell rang and everyone started to move. I noticed the ex was gone, so Gabe and I gave each other a long goodbye.

“Skip third period and come for a ride?” Gabe asked. He had a spare that class. I kissed him one last time.

“Bummer, but I can’t. I’ve got a test in math,” I sighed.

I took off into the school in a floating run, but I came down fast. When I rounded the last corner before my locker, there was Gabe’s ex leaning against the wall.

I hadn’t brushed up on any kung fu lately. Luckily, she was looking the other way. I backed up around the corner. Then I took the long way around to my homeroom. I was going to have to go to science class without my books. They were in my locker. If I tried to get them now, my class would be using my body for its next experiment.

Chapter Five

I’ve been in a couple of fights. I remember dragging a neighbor boy around by the hair in Grade 5. He’d shot one too many spitballs at me. From that point on, he took aim at other kids. Somehow, I couldn’t see the same thing happening with the ex. She could have downed Mike Tyson — without gloves.

At mid-morning break, Tiff scouted out a safe bathroom for me to use. Then she
stood guard at the door. While I was washing my hands, a girl came out of one of the stalls. She looked at me and said, “I hear there’s a fight in the back parking lot at lunch. You’re in it.”

I pulled a bored look across my face. Without blinking, I said, “News to me.”

“Better watch out. Her fingernails are switchblades,” the girl laughed.

“Yeah? She’ll probably chew them off worrying about me,” I said.

The girl shrugged. Just before she walked out, she looked back and said, “I hear Gabe’s the referee.”

I looked at Tiff, who started drawing circles on the wall. I knew she was thinking about the same thing as me — Gabe’s grin that morning when he’d seen his ex.

“You hear about any of this?” I asked.

Tiff twisted herself around inside her clothes and stared up at the ceiling. Finally, she said, “Maybe. But I know Gabe really likes you. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Great — my best friend hadn’t even
bothered to tell me I was in danger of going extinct.

“Gabe’s ex always goes for the face. I’m no Cover Girl, but this face is the only one I’ve got,” I snapped.

“You could switch schools,” Tiff said helpfully.

“I want to switch lives — with anyone. I’d even switch lives with my brother,” I said.

Tiff stared at me, but I meant what I’d said. I would have given anything to be Darren. I’d wanted that all my life.

“Ah, c’mon, Dime — it’ll be okay,” Tiff said.

The bathroom was starting to feel like a danger zone. I’d been standing there too long, and Gabe’s ex was bound to show up soon. I picked up my books and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

At lunchtime, I hid in a back corner of the library. I needed time to think, and I didn’t want to see anyone. I figured the library was
the one place my friends wouldn’t come looking for me — not even Tiff. But the rumors did. Kids hung over the top of my study carrel, bugging me.

“Hey, Dime — ready for the rumble?” asked a preppie.

“Better pull that nose ring out. It’s the first thing she’ll go for,” teased a skater.

When I walked out of the school that afternoon, I decided to use the preppie door. I knew the ex wouldn’t go anywhere near there. It was pretty embarrassing, and the preppies sure had a lot to say about it.

“Hey, headbanger, use your own door,” called a guy.

“Who dresses you — the Terminator?” asked his girlfriend.

“Don’t be a man, girl. Don’t be a man,” said another guy.

“She’s not a man. She’s a sweet thing running from the Queen of the Cans. I hear she’s about to get wasted,” said an absolute nerd.

Normally, I wouldn’t have let them get away with this kind of garbage. But today
I had better things to do than stand around wising up preps. I pushed my way down the crowded steps, getting comments the whole way. As I walked along the street, Gabe’s bike came up beside me.

“Want a ride?” he grinned.

I wasn’t sure. If this guy really liked me, why didn’t he tell the ex to get lost? But if he really liked the ex, would he offer me a ride? Maybe he hadn’t heard the rumors. The stuff about him as referee had to be bull. Gabe liked to watch boxing and wrestling, but who didn’t? That didn’t mean he’d stoop to setting up a fight between his girlfriend and his ex.

Besides, kids were watching. Everywhere I looked, they were turning around to stare. So I gave Gabe the same smile I gave my parents when they bugged me. I didn’t mean to use it with Gabe — it just sort of showed up on my face. But Gabe didn’t seem to notice anything strange.

“Going my way?” he asked.

“You bet,” I said.

We took off and rode for a long time.
My arms were around him, and I could feel him breathing, solid and real. I knew then that what I’d been thinking was wrong. Gabe was mine, and no rumors or silly comments could ever take him away. I leaned my head on his back and watched everything go by.
Take me away from my life, Gabe
, I thought.