Last December (8 page)

Anyways, at the end of class, dorky Alan turned around in his seat and mouthed “The Leafs suck,” but he didn’t come over and talk to me, he just went over to Brendan’s side of the room, so I guess he understood that I was onto bigger and better causes and effects or something. Anyways, later in science class we weren’t in our lab groups anymore, we were doing individual reading
and notes on multicellular organisms called sponges that look like holey moons made of Nerf balls, so I didn’t have to talk to Jenny, which was good, because my throat felt like it had a boa constrictor wrapped around it (that’s a very big snake, Sam), and I definitely didn’t feel like answering questions in class, because I wasn’t sure I would sound smart enough or dumb enough or cool enough or whatever-I-was-supposed-to-be enough.

And I kind of had a headache by the end of the class because Jenny sat beside and a little behind me so I was looking out of the corner of my eye the whole time. And she got up at some point to go to the bathroom, and she was wearing jeans and a baggy red sweatshirt, so that you couldn’t really see her emgees, which are kind of big, but it made it worse because it sort of forced me to look for them even harder, which isn’t so easy, unless you have X-ray vision, which I don’t. (Only Superman does, Sam, but that’s stupid kids’ stuff.)

At lunchtime, I went to the front doors again even if I didn’t have a cigarette to smoke, and Trevor was finally there with Alistair. Trevor said they were going to go to Brandy’s for lunch, and I just held up my lunch bag, and Alistair said, “They don’t mind if you have your own food just so long as someone orders something.”

So we started walking toward Brandy’s, and I kind of felt weird because I didn’t really
really
actually know them, but then Alistair started singing this song I didn’t know—I think it was called “Mirror in the Bathroom,” because he kept on going “Mirror in the bathroom. You’re my
mirror in the bathroom. You’re my mirror in the bathroom. Mirror-mirror-mirror-mirror,” and then Trevor finally said, “Shut up, Al. I hate that song. … The Beat suck the big one,” and I didn’t know who or what they were talking about because I listen to the radio only sometimes but mostly just to the Leafs game when I go to bed if Ma wants to watch
Dallas
or
The Love Boat
or something before the game ends, and sometimes I listento Ma’s music on her turntable, which is stuff like Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, and The Beatles, but she doesn’t like it when I use her turntable, because it’s one of her most prized possessions, so I basically listen only when she puts it on.

(Actually, I just lied. Once, when I was eleven and Ma was out and we lived in another apartment, I put on one of her albums and kind of scratched it. Ma never found out, otherwise she would have killed me.)

Anyways, Alistair started talking about this party that he said was happening on Friday. “This guy I know,” he said, “has this friend, Ian Sacramento, whose parents have gone to Bermuda for two months, so he’s going to have a serious, serious bender tomorrow night. I’ve already got a forty-pounder and twelve beers, and it’s going to be completely righteous Rastafari,” and I didn’t know what a forty-pounder was or what
righteous Rastafari
meant, and I had drunk beer only once in eighth grade, when Josh brought two bottles to a dance and then eight of us split them, so we each had a fourth of a beer (it’s like a math problem from sixth grade, Sam, except usually it’s pizza instead of beer), and then Josh was acting all strange like he was drunk, but he’d had only a quarter of a beer, so I think he was just doing it to be cool or something.

Anyways, when we got to Brandy’s, Alistair ordered a toasted bagel with cream cheese and Trevor got a small sub, and we were laughing because the woman who was serving us was wearing a hairnet, and Alistair kept on saying “hairnet” under his breath so that it didn’t exactly sound like “hairnet” but more like “ear-nit,” and I don’t know why but it was pretty funny. And we sat down at this table in the corner, and Trevor said, “You should come to the party, Mike,” and Alistair said, still kind of hunched over, “Yeah, Mike. It’s gonna be righteous Rastifari, and I’m going to get so piled. We’ll meet at the Doors before for a pre-quaff,” and I said, opening up my lunch bag, “What doors?” and Alistair said, “You’ve never been to the Doors, man? It’s down in the park, near the old subway entrance thingy. You’ll have to do the Jar if you want to come,” and he nudged Trevor and smiled, and Trevor sort of smirked back, and so I asked, “What’s the Jar?” and then they both giggled, and Alistair leaned over and looked in my lunch bag. “What’d you get? Squashed peanut butter, man, … gross,” and then the owner of the café came over and stared at Alistair’s foot because it was on a chair, and Alistair just looked back at him with serious attitude, but he finally dropped his foot and said, “Let’s split this joint,” and on the way back, Trevor pulled out his cigarettes and Alistair said, “Can I bum one, man?” and Trevor said, “You’re always, always, always bumming,” and I just shrugged at Trevor, because I was sort of glad he didn’t want people bumming and that I didn’t have to smoke and feel like I had a razor blade slicing my throat again.

When I got to math class, first period after lunch, I was feeling good, like some seriously seriously righteous Rastifari causes and
effects were happening to me, but about halfway through class there was a knock at the door, and Mr. Off went to it and whispered to this older student for a bit, and then he turned and said, “Steven,” and I had no idea why someone would be coming to talk to me, so I said, “Um … yeah,” and the class laughed at me a bit, and Mr. Off said, “Can you come here, please?”

So I got up, and he said, “Bring your stuff with you,” and a couple of guys at the back went “woooooooo” like I was in trouble, so I just stared over at them like they were dead meat, which made them pretty much stop.

When I got to the door, Mr. Off said, “Follow this young lady to the office,” and I said, “Why?” and he said, “The vice principal wants to talk to you,” and a couple of students must have heard because they started whispering, and Mr. Off looked over my shoulder and stared them down, and then I left with the “young lady,” who was actually probably a junior or something, and we were walking for a bit when she said, “So do you like Mr. Off?” and I said, “He’s okay,” and then she looked at my forehead and said, “Aren’t you the kid who Bobby McIntyre beat up?” and I said, “No,” because he didn’t beat me up, Sam, and then she smirked and didn’t say anything, which sort of pissed me off but it wasn’t like I could do anything about it.

When we finally got to the office, she told me to wait on this bench and another kid was there who had long hair that went right over his eyes, and he turned toward me and grinned like he was stoned or something, and a woman sitting at a desk across from us was typing something on a typewriter, and it felt like I was sitting there forever when suddenly the woman stopped
typing and said, “Who are you waiting for?” and I said, “Who, me? Um … I think the VP,” and she said, “What’s your name?” and I said, “Steven Sza—” and she said, “Steven! Why didn’t you say you were here? Your mother wants you to go home right now,” and I said, “Why?” and she said, “I don’t know, Steven, but she insisted you get there as soon as possible,” and I shrugged and said, “Okay,” and she pointed at the door and said, “Go!”

So I went as fast as I could right out of the office, down the hall, and out the doors without even getting my coat, and I couldn’t figure out what could be wrong, because my synapses weren’t working so well, because they were concentrating on getting me home. I ran as hard as I could and I was basically hyper-ventilating when I slipped on the ice turning up our street, and I caught myself with my hands and sort of scraped them on the ice, but I kept on running, and then I basically body-checked the front door of the apartment like I was Rick Vaive, captain of the Leafs, and I ran up the stairs as quick as I could, and Mrs. Crapenter was standing in her blue old-person shoes, right there in front of our apartment.

“There you are, Steven!” she said, and I said, “What are you talking about?” and she said, “That’s not a very gentlemanly question,” and I didn’t care, so I said, “Where’s Ma?” and she said, “Your mother’s gone to the hospital … she was having contractions, and you were supposed to go straight there,” and I said, “Is she okay? What are contractions?” and she said, “Hasn’t your mother … Oh, never mind. Your mother’s body is trying to squeeze the baby out, but it’s much too early and could be very dangerous for … well, for both of them,” and I said, “Oh,”
and she said, “You should really go to the hospital—right now!” and I looked at her for a sec, and I just felt like something funny was going on, so I asked, “Is that what Ma told you to tell me?” and she looked down at her blue old-person shoes and said, “No, Steven … she didn’t have a chance, but I’m sure that’s what she’d want, she didn’t have time. … I heard the whole thing and—”

“You are just a stupid snoop,” I yelled, and I turned and ran down the stairs and burst outside and ran out to St. Clair Avenue, and I ran and ran and ran toward the hospital, but then I finally slowed down and my chest was heaving and I started thinking that maybe Ma didn’t want me to come visit her or maybe she’d get mad that I was missing school or maybe to be honest, Sam, I didn’t really want to go to the stinking hospital in the first place.

And so I just stopped on the sidewalk and stood there for a long time because my heart was still racing because I was so effin’ mad at Mrs. Crapenter and Ma … and I guess, Sam, I have to be kind of honest again and say that I was getting pretty mad at you, too, because even though it wasn’t your fault (it wasn’t like you asked to be created in Ma’s womb), you were sort of one big cause of all kinds of effects in my life, even though all you do is sit in there and breathe in this weird fluid or something, like a fish. Anyways, I guess I was worried about Ma, too, and I guess I kind of wished things could go back to the way they were, before Ma got pregnant, when she was really still treating me like her number one guy. Sorry about that, Sam, I just think it’s important that I tell you how I was feeling when I was standing there, because it’s the truth.

Pseudo-Section

(Mrs. Reese, my English teacher, always interrupts our class to tell us about her writing books and stuff, and one day she told us that novels shouldn’t have too many characters, so that the reader doesn’t get confused—she said she always had way too many. But the only problem is that my story is true, Sam, and it’s really written only for you, so I can’t help how many characters there are, and I would never have written about the characters if they weren’t sort of important, but I can kind of understand that it maybe isn’t easy to keep track of everyone, so maybe even if I write with balls-to-the-wall realness like Byron wanted me to, I don’t have to confuse you. So I’ve just read through what I’ve written and will give you a little “character update.” So here it goes:

I’m pretty sure you know the main characters so far. There’s me and Ma. There’s Bryon and Karen from the Donut Shop and Jenny from science class. There’s my old best friend, Josh, who goes to the rich-kid high school and who said I was a science dork. Alan and Brendan are sort of hockey-fan losers from my homeroom class. There’s Trevor, who didn’t make the hockey team with me, and Alistair, who is his friend, and they are both pretty cool and know how to smoke cigarettes. Mrs. Reese is my homeroom teacher who used to be a writer, and Mr. Davis is my science teacher who gets excited about Galileo and telescopes, with white stuff on the corners of his mouth. There’s Mrs. Crapenter, who lives next door us in our apartment and is a pain in the butt, most of the time.)

Character

Instead of going back to school or the hospital, I went to the Donut Hole, and when I pressed my face against the window I couldn’t see Byron or Karen the counter girl, and I sort of didn’t care, and there was an older woman at the cash register who kind of looked back at me like I was an alien, and I just stood there thinking about what I should do.

It was too cold to walk around for much longer—I was effin’ freezing—and I really didn’t want to go anywhere else, so I just opened the door and walked toward the tabletop machine, and I was kind of expecting the older lady to tell me to get lost but she didn’t, so when I got to the machine, I pretended I was digging a quarter out of my pocket and I slid the pretend quarter in the machine and I pretended to play Ms. Pac-Man like an effin’ idiot, and then I stopped and just stared at the screen for I don’t know how long.

And I guess that was really the first time I actually started really really thinking about the fact that if everything ended up being okay with Ma that you might actually come out of her tummy one day, even though she’d already gotten fat and bought a crib for you and put it in her room and everything. Anyways, I started getting angry because I wasn’t really ready for a sister or a brother, Sam, and I didn’t understand why Ma didn’t try to call me at school before she went to the hospital, or really really really explain why she was having you in the first place.

And I don’t know how long I sat there, but I heard the door open and I thought it was just another customer but it wasn’t. It was Byron, and he nodded at me and smiled, but differently
like he was sort of happier and calmer and sadder, all wrapped up in one. And he sat down and put a pile of quarters down and they slid in a line like a deck of cards, and he said, “Let’s play, it’s on me,” and I said, “Okay,” because I didn’t want to admit that I was pretend-playing all alone in the Donut Hole, and I don’t know why but when I pressed Play I couldn’t concentrate on the game, maybe because I’d never sat in the first-person seat and it felt weird, and so I died right away on the first board, and I didn’t even hit my fist on the table or say a word.

And Byron wasn’t talking, either. He was just playing, and really effin’ well, and before I knew it he was at the Junior level, the sixth board, and when you get this far in the game, there’s a little break and a song, and Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man come from different sides of the screen, and then they meet in the middle and a heart pops up over them, and then a new character arrives, a little baby Pac-Man. And Byron smiled, let go of the joystick for a second, and made a hole with his index finger and thumb, and then he took his other index finger and put it through the hole and moved it in and out, which I guessed is a sort of sign for having sex, and he said, “The old in-out,” and I looked at him like I always do, like an idiot, and he said, “You know from
Clockwork Orange
, ‘the old in-out,’” and then I shrugged as if tosay
How am I supposed to know what the eff you’re talking about?
and then he said, “It’s a movie. … Forget about it.”