One Lonely Degree (15 page)

“Finn.” She has dark circles under her eyes and looks older than yesterday. “Please. We’ll talk in the morning.”

It is morning. “Did he come home?” My voice sounds ancient.

“No, he didn’t,” she says unsteadily.

I blink in slow motion, still half paralyzed. Then I go up to bed without another word, my feet heavy on the stairs and my eyelashes sticky. I lie on top of my bed, wide-awake, waiting for my mother to pull herself together enough to tell us the bad news.

*  *  *

Just before nine I remember about Play Country. My training starts at nine-thirty, and Dad said he’d drive me. Now there’s just Mom, having a nervous breakdown in the kitchen. I put fresh clothes on my ancient mummy body and scrub my face and underarms.

Downstairs I peek into the kitchen and spy Mom nibbling a chocolate chip cookie. I’ve never seen her with anything that fattening in her hand, and she blinks up at me like she’s expecting me to comment. “I’m starting work today,” I say. “Can you give me a ride?”

Mom’s eyes glaze over. “Daniel’s still in bed. Why don’t you take the bus?”

“I don’t even know what time it comes. I can’t be late on my first day.” I blink back tears, feeling like an idiot. Most of me doesn’t care if I ever get to Play Country, but some small part won’t let it go. Anti-Me has a summer of day camp with his friends—what do I have?

“I can’t do this right now, Finn,” Mom says. Her arms are thin in her sleeveless top, and I think I see them shake.

A wave of sympathy rushes over me. Dad should be here to talk to us. It’s not fair. We don’t even know where he is. What if there’s an emergency? What if Mom plans to sit here eating cookies for the rest of her life? “It won’t take long,” I plead. “It’s just across from the mall.”

“You can walk then.” Mom gets up from the table, pours me a glass of orange juice, and slides the vitamins towards me.

I down the glass of orange juice in seconds and ignore the vitamins. “If they fire me on my first day, it’s your fault,” I say bitterly, and then I’m off, jogging towards Play Country in the summer smog.

My pores clog instantly, and my hair frizzes like a novelty store wig. By the time I get to Play Country, fifteen minutes late, I’m a puddle of sweat and red fuzz. My throat’s on fire, and I don’t have a cent on me. Suzanne’s eyebrows jerk together when she sees me. “Are you all right, Finn?” she asks disapprovingly.

“I had to walk,” I rasp. “Is there any water around?”

“There’s a water cooler in the staff room,” she replies. “I’ll take you there after we pick you up a uniform. Another girl’s starting today. We’ve been waiting on you.”

So much for first impressions.

Suzanne leads me into an office supply room and rummages around in one of the boxes. “What size are you, Finn? Most girls take small.”

Yeah, I noticed. “Large, please,” I tell her. “I have really long arms.” I hold them out to demonstrate.

Suzanne’s eyebrows spring back together as she holds out a large in front of her. “I think you’ll drown in it.”

“It’s fine,” I assure her. She points me in the direction of the staff bathroom, and I take off my top and pull the Play Country shirt over my head. I look like a nine-year-old in her father’s shirt, which makes it just about the right size as far as I’m concerned. At least my boobs aren’t advertising their desire to play.

In the staff room I gulp down water and nod as Suzanne introduces me to my co-workers. Nishani from French class is sitting at the table too, and she smiles up at me. She’s the other girl starting today, and I feel my shoulders relax a little. Nishani was really quiet in French class. She shouldn’t be any trouble to work with.

Suzanne makes us watch a boring safety video and then gives us a whirlwind tour of the store, offering brief descriptions of each aisle. The stockroom is gigantic, and I wonder how I’ll ever be able to find anything. Suzanne taps employees on the arm as we pass,
making quick introductions. She has a printed list of items we need to shelve and guides us back to the stockroom to start. My head’s pounding and my stomach’s rumbling, and Nishani and I trail behind Suzanne, wondering aloud when we’ll get a break.

“I’m not even supposed to be doing this,” Nishani whispers. “I’m supposed to be training on cash.”

“So what’re you doing here?” I clutch my stomach as it roars again.

“I’m not sure,” she admits. “You sound like you’re about to explode.”

“I know.” It’s embarrassing, but there’s only one thing I can do about it and it doesn’t look like that’ll be happening anytime soon. “And I forgot my lunch too.”

“We can go to the mall,” Nishani suggests. “I didn’t bring one either.”

My stomach purrs at the idea. “I don’t have any cash on me. I slept in this morning. I thought I was getting a ride, and then I had to walk …” My voice trails off.

“That’s okay,” she says. “It’s on me. You can get it next time.”

Suzanne turns, hands on her hips, and shouts, “Come on, girls. This isn’t a short list.”

She’s right. A ton of seasonal items have to be shelved: jumbo sidewalk chalk, jump rope, plastic baseball sets, water guns, beach balls, pail and shovel sets, yada, yada. The list is infinite, and we’re not even a quarter of the way through when she finally informs us we can go for lunch.

We tear off in the direction of the mall and have pizza slices with french fries drowned in ketchup. The fries are actually Nishani’s, but she tells me she’ll have to make herself throw up in the Play Country bathroom if I don’t help out. “Kidding,” she adds, slapping her left thigh. “Do I look like a bulimic?”

She looks like she could lose ten pounds and still not be too skinny. In other words, she looks completely normal. My skin goes cold as my mind skips back to Mom eating chocolate chip cookies this morning. Has she spoken to Daniel already, or are they waiting for me? I don’t want to hear what she’s going to tell me. I don’t understand what happened between the hand-holding and last night, but I don’t want to know. Wondering about it makes me angry with both of them, especially Dad because he’s the one who left.

After lunch Nishani and I wear ourselves out finishing another quarter of the list under Suzanne’s watchful gaze. I’m so exhausted that I feel like I’m in some kind of trance, but it’s for the best because when I get home I don’t care what happens.

I don’t care that Dad came home especially to talk to Daniel and me. I don’t care that he and Mom are having a difficult time and need some time apart. I don’t even care that he won’t be able to drive me to work because he’ll be staying at a friend’s cottage in Orillia for the summer. Nothing my father says feels real. I’m actually relieved when he announces that he’s leaving.

“I’ll be back and forth to see you two,” he says. “I left the cottage phone number on the fridge. Call anytime.”

I hang back and watch the Anti-Me hug him goodbye. The two of them look sad, but I just feel stuck. Audrey’s in Gatineau, Play Country’s one step up from legal slave labor, and my parents are separating for the summer.

I have never been so tired.

This can’t be my life.

U
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Raine Maida sings “Clumsy” into my ears and I almost believe him.
Maybe I should sleep … Maybe I just need
… I roll onto my chest, my arms doubled up underneath me like a folding chair, and he sings me to sleep with that golden Beautiful Boy voice of his. Once I’m there, I don’t want to come back. I don’t want to call Dad at some cottage in Orillia I’ve never been to. I want to live down behind my eyelids with the music charging through me like a force of nature.

I sleep for a long time, but when I wake up at noon I’m still spent. My stomach’s in knots and I feed it strawberry Pop-Tarts while watching
Scooby-Doo
. The more wakeful I feel, the more my stomach tightens, and I rush upstairs and type out an e-mail to Audrey, telling her everything that’s happened in the past day and a half. Her e-mail from Quebec yesterday was eleven sentences, and mine is endless and full of gloom.

If Audrey were here, I’d be sitting in her pastel-orange room
now. I wouldn’t want to move, but she’d try to drag me over to HMV to stare at Record Store Guy or convince me to take the train downtown with her. That way I wouldn’t spend the day glancing at Dad’s phone number on the fridge or dreading tomorrow’s shift at Play Country.

I can already feel the worry taking over my bones, fusing them to my ergonomically incorrect chair. Audrey’s right. I have to get out of here before it’s too late.

I drag my ass away from the computer desk, shower, and throw on cutoff denim shorts and a faded Beck T-shirt. I don’t have a clue where I’m going and I don’t have anyone to go with, but I can’t hang around here decomposing. Samsam’s at my heels in the hallway, and I grab his leash and take him outside. God knows when Mom or Daniel will remember to walk him again; Dad and I are the primary dog-walkers.

Samsam’s ecstatic the moment his paws hit the park. He strains at the leash when we spot a squirrel but sits politely as two kids stop to pet him. I jog him for another ten minutes or so before it occurs to me that we’re only a few minutes from Jersy’s house. I haven’t seen him since that last day in art class. He probably won’t be home, but I start heading for his neighborhood anyway. With Audrey out of the picture, I’m not even sure we’ll have much to say to each other, but I kind of miss having him around.

A couple minutes later I’m standing on his front step with Samsam, listening to the doorbell peal through the hall. There’s no movement inside, and I’m halfway to deciding no one’s home when I hear heavy footsteps on the stairs. Jersy pulls the door open, blinking into the sun like he’s going blind. He’s wearing a rumpled yellow T-shirt that says “Road Crew” and black sweat shorts that stretch down to his knees. “Hey,” he says, his voice dusty.

It’s obvious that I woke him up, and I’m about to apologize
when he bends down and rakes his fingers energetically through Samsam’s coat. “You coming in?” he asks, cocking his head.

“Sure.” I follow him inside, Samsam’s lead gripped in my right hand.

“It’s okay,” Jersy says. “You can let him go.”

Right. I unchain the leash and watch Samsam pad nosily around the Mikulski kitchen. It’s the first time I’ve been inside Jersy’s house since that winter day, but this time I know I won’t panic.

“Have you heard from Audrey?” Jersy asks, leading me through the house and out to the patio.

“Yesterday,” I tell him. “I just sent her an e-mail this morning.”

“She e-mailed me too.” Jersy collapses into one of the wooden lounge chairs beside the swimming pool. “She sounds okay.”

“Bored,” I qualify. The water’s sparkling like a Caribbean coast, coaxing me forward. I take off my sandals and stand with my toes curved over the edge. This place was a snow globe a few months ago, and now I can’t stop thinking how I haven’t been swimming since last summer.

“Go ahead,” Jersy urges, motioning to the pool. “You know you wanna.” I swivel around and catch him smiling. His hair’s fierce mountain man on one side and stuck flat to his head on the other, and he yawns a little as I smile back.

Right then Samsam bounds out the sliding door and towards the pool. I grab him by the collar and command him to sit. “It’s okay,” Jersy says. “He can go in if he wants.”

“The chlorine is bad for them.” I stand by Jersy’s chair. “He’s thirsty. I should get him some water.”

“I’ll get it.” Jersy jumps up and heads inside.

I sit in the chair closest to his and watch him return with a pail of water and flop back into place. Samsam immediately starts
slurping, and the sound makes us smile. “Man,” Jersy says, rubbing his head with both hands. “I was at Joel’s place with Billy last night and we …” He stops mid-sentence as though he just remembered who he was talking to. “Forget it. You don’t want to know.”

“What, you got totally wasted or something, right?” My tone’s impatient. I don’t get the fascination with frying your brain. Personally, I’d like to hold on to mine for a few more years.

“Yeah.” Jersy scratches his knee and leans over the side of the chair towards me. “I know you guys aren’t into that—you and Audrey. But you probably never tried anything either, right? Did you ever even smoke a joint?” He looks into my eyes, making me feel like a total kid.

“What difference does that make?” I cross my ankles on the sun chair and hold his stare. “It’s not like I’ve been brainwashed by my parents or anything. I just don’t like the idea of messing myself up.”

Jersy nods. “I knew you’d say that. You and Audrey are exactly the same.”

“Whatever. I just don’t get the drug thing.” I shrug. “There’s a lot of stuff I don’t get about people. Sometimes I feel like an alien.” I can’t believe I just told him that. I’d never have said that forty-eight hours ago. “I don’t even know what people are talking about half the time or what to say to them.” I look over at him, unembarrassed about my freakishness for once.

Jersy reaches out to touch my arm. “You feel human.”

“Sensory illusion,” I say.