Under the Dusty Moon (4 page)

But he never called my mom or his parents or anyone. And they never found his body.

It's been more than ten years since it happened. But no one knows for sure what
it
was.

A few
die-hard
Dusty Moon fans still believe he's alive, which is so seriously freaky. The going theory is that he just packed up, changed his name, and left everything behind him. These fans, though, they're just desperate for an easy answer. They're like those people who still think Tupac's alive. That it's all some conspiracy. But we all know what really happened, and even Dennis's parents finally agreed that he was probably dead two years ago. They'd been holding out hope for a long time that he might come back, but I guess even they had their limits. They don't really talk to Mom and me anymore, but they send a Christmas card every year. Mom says she thinks it was just too hard for them to stay in touch, to see me. It's a pretty awful excuse, but I get that it's complicated. I think maybe Dennis's parents blamed Mom for what happened, but she doesn't like to talk about it.

They had to make it all official, though. To make him legally presumed dead. Mom got asked for a lot of interviews after that. The whole band did. They wouldn't talk about it, though. They said it wasn't respectful to Dennis.

Privately, Mom was glad that they'd finally done it. That they'd closed the book on him for good. She'd thought of Dennis as being dead a long time before that, and that's how she always talked about him to me. Dennis was a great musician. Dennis was so talented. Dennis loved your smile and your chubby little knees. The Dennis I knew was always dead. That's all there is. I'm not some lost girl searching for the father she never knew. I'm not. I'm searching for a boyfriend, maybe, or sex on the beach. Or maybe just to find something I'm actually good at for once instead of hanging out in Mom's or Lucy's shadow while they do what they love.

So we ignore the
message-board
threads, blog posts, and
conspiracy-theory
Facebook groups. Dennis was a complicated guy, Mom says, so why shouldn't his legacy be complicated, too? She's full of all kinds of
pseudo-philosophical
nuggets of wisdom like that to deal with the weirdness of our lives. When she's not just plain full of it.

Some journalist is writing a book about it all. About Mom and Dusty Moon. And about Dennis. He's been trying to get Mom to talk to him for a while now, and she finally agreed to it after she read a bunch of his stuff and decided that if anyone was going to be able to tell the story respectfully it would be him. He's a talented writer, she says, even if he is a bit nosy. And Mom's never been what you'd call a private person. So she and Jason and Jana will finally tell the story of what happened to Dennis — or what they think happened, anyway — and some creepy journalist is going to make a bunch of money on a
sad-sack
story about my family. It feels like we're being used. Like this guy is stringing out our skeletons for everyone to see. There'll probably be a fresh wave of Dusty Moon conspiracy theorists, too. Thousands of people who'll think they know more about my family than I do just because they read some book. Great.

But anyway, the band and I were driving down to this festival in Chicago, this reunion show. I was twelve, I think, or maybe eleven. It was the first time Dusty Moon had played in years and their first time playing without Dennis. They figured he'd been gone long enough that they could sort of honour his memory by playing one last show together for a bunch of people who were dying to see them. They even donated the money they were being paid to a mental health centre in Toronto, which was cool, but also kind of stupid since Mom and I, and Jana and Jason, really could have used that money. Mom knew all of Dennis's guitar parts by heart, so she was going to play them and sing. They were excited to perform, I think, but they all knew how weird it was that they were reuniting without Dennis.

And I was so mad that everyone else was in such a bad mood on what was supposed to be my vacation that I snuck out to the pool of the motel where we were staying after Mom had gone to bed. Ignoring the sign that said
WARNING: NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY
, I slipped into the deep end almost without making a sound. I flipped around underwater, then swam to the shallow end and practised my handstands. I splashed my head up and out of the water and looked up at the stars over our motel. There weren't many, but they seemed different from the ones at home. I counted them all, and then tried to do an underwater somersault for each one I saw. When I finally stopped, I was out of breath and my legs felt weak, but I didn't want to go up to bed. I wasn't done yet. I grabbed the towel I'd brought with me and dried myself off, then changed my mind and charged back toward the deep end, jumping with my knees up to my chest and yelling “Cannonball!” as loud as I could, not caring anymore if Mom or anyone else heard me. This was my vacation, too.

So of course Mom heard the noise and realized that I wasn't in bed like I was supposed to be. She came down to the pool in her robe and bare feet and instead of yelling and screaming like a normal mother would, she just sat down on one of the lounge chairs by the pool and gestured for me to sit next to her. I wrapped my towel around myself and stared at the water dripping off me on the concrete deck slowly forming a puddle.

“I'd really prefer it if you didn't sneak out,” Mom said after more than a moment of silence.

“
Uh-huh
.” I counted the drips as they fell, sometimes one at a time and sometimes in twos or threes.

“Just because we're not at Disney World doesn't mean that you can run off on me, you know.”

“As if you'd ever take me to Disney World.” Drip.

“Until they hire me to walk around in one of those giant suits, it's not very likely, no.”

“You'd make a terrible Mickey Mouse.” Drip, drip.

“Guess I'll have to stick with being Micky Wayne then, huh?”

“Haw haw.” Drip,
drip-drip
, drip.

“So,” she said, pulling her knees in to her chest, “did you have a good swim?”

“Uh huh.” Drip, drip, drip.

“Good. Because the manager warned me when we checked in about E. coli in the pool. You might not be having so much fun tomorrow.” Then she got up from the lounger and went back up to our room. I sat there for another minute before I followed her up, just staring at the surface of the water as the last ripples of my cannonball disappeared.

It was worth it, having my quiet, and then not so quiet, moment of rebellion. I was soaked in soggy satisfaction, and didn't care about tomorrow.

But of course she was right. I woke up the next morning feeling totally disgusting and sick because I guess I'd accidentally swallowed some of the water while I was swimming. And Mom took absolutely zero pity on me, so before I knew it she was practically throwing me in the back of the van with a barf bag in my lap, so that they could get to the main festival stage in time for their sound check. It wasn't long before the evidence of our continental breakfast made its way into that bag. Seven times.

So I spent the whole day throwing up into a bucket that some festival volunteer kept having to empty into a
porta-potty
for me. I barely even noticed where I was or who was playing. I felt like my limbs were made of rubber, and I couldn't have cared less when some annoying
do-gooder
tried to make me feel better by rustling my hair or generally treating me like a baby. But, rough as I was, Mom looked like her day was even worse.

She has all of these bad habits that come out when she's trying really hard to concentrate, like when she's writing a new song, or, in this case, when she was trying to kick nicotine. Again. She was biting her nails and scratching her scalp all day, and by the time it was their turn to play we both looked like we'd spent the whole day puking.

When Dusty Moon was finally up, the same volunteer who'd been dutifully emptying my barf bucket hauled me over to the stage, planting me behind the drums in a folding chair with my trusty bucket in my lap. I watched hundreds of people losing their minds over Mom, Jason, and Jana playing their old songs, singing along to every one and a few even shouting “I love you guys! Dusty Moon, yeah!” between songs. I don't know whether all of those people missed Dennis or not, but I'm willing to bet that they did. That they could tell it was different.

And in between all the love and adoration and everything else going on, I sat there, in what passed for backstage, watching all the tiny details of their performance. The way Mom went up on her tiptoes during her guitar solos, and Jana closed her eyes tight each time she hit her cymbals; the way Jason hung his head so low you could barely tell that he was grinning like a maniac the whole time, and the way each time a song ended there was this tiny flash of a moment when they all looked like they could barely believe that they'd pulled it off.

And I only puked once their whole set.

And, of course, a few dozen people took pictures of me doing it.

People are so gross.

A
few days after the whole Hungary Thai double bombshell — I still couldn't believe that Shaun had texted me! — I woke up soaked in sweat from the city's heat wave that wouldn't even take a break at night. The noon sun nearly blinded me, even with my curtains pulled across the window. Okay, they're not exactly curtains — Mom and I hung a bedsheet on a piece of string nailed to the wall when we first moved in and we've never gotten around to replacing it. I was surprised that I didn't wake up earlier with Mom banging around the apartment while getting ready for work, but I was glad to have the place to myself.

Mom works a few days a week at a café/bar called Northeast Southwest that her friend Sal owns. Her shifts usually start pretty early in the morning to cater to the
espresso-swilling
,
pastry-gobbling
commuter crowd. Though sometimes she works late shifts, too, pouring pints of beer and mixing cocktails for
twenty-somethings
with waxed moustaches and too many scarves. She used to let me hang around while she tended the bar at night, waiting for her to be ready to go home, but one night I tried to sneak a beer while no one was looking and Sal got pissed. Like, super pissed. Mom said he was just stressed because they'd had a health inspection earlier that week that hadn't gone very well, but I still felt too embarrassed to go back.

I've asked her if she feels weird when people recognize her at work. Doesn't she feel ashamed to have people see her working at such a normal, boring job? She told me that it doesn't bother her, that she's just happy to help Sal out, and besides, record sales alone can't pay our bills. It works out pretty well though, since Sal's cool enough to let Mom blow off whole weekends at a time when she has to go out of town to play a show.

I wandered into the kitchen in my underwear and Mom's old Oilers
T-shirt
, and pulled our big skillet out of the cupboard to make myself a couple of fried eggs for breakfast, even though it was well past noon. I can never figure out the perfect moment to flip a fried egg over, so it always comes out a runny mess, but that's kind of how I like them. Or it's how I've learned to, anyway. I shook a ton of salt and pepper over top of the frying eggs, then slipped them out of the pan and onto a plate and squeezed a fat dollop of ketchup next to my slimy yellow breakfast. Mom may not be much of a cook, but she's taught me that there is nothing in the world more satisfying than a simple fried egg, messy or not.

I took my plate over to the couch and turned on a competitive cooking show that had just showed up on Netflix. Mom and I don't have cable and she's paranoid about letting me download stuff, so I'm always a season or two behind everyone else. The show, called
Skewered!
— because I guess the world is running out of competitive cooking show names — was cool. I watched as a whole pack of tattooed chefs in white jackets tried to
out-sauté
each other, and I gulped down my breakfast, wondering how long each of the competitors had been training to get to this exact moment frozen in
TV-time
. I couldn't imagine how many hours they'd probably spent frying onions just to fight their way into this competition, derivative as it was. They were hot, too, almost all of them, though maybe that was just because they looked so confident. I imagined one of the burly bearded chefs making me breakfast — I bet they made amazing fried eggs. It was almost kind of depressing how talented they all were.

I turned the TV off and got up from the couch: green leather, inherited from Gran. My thighs stuck to the cushions in the heat and tearing them off the leather as I got up felt like someone had whacked the back of my legs with a canoe paddle. As if I've ever actually been canoeing. When the pain finally subsided, I picked up my plate and took it to the sink.

Then I went back into my room and picked my phone up off my night table.

No new messages.

I opened up my contacts and hovered my finger over Shaun's name, willing myself to text him, to type something, even something goofy or stupid. But then I thought against it, I didn't want to look desperate or like I was trying too hard.

I put the phone back down and went into the bathroom to take a shower instead.

My face in the mirror was shiny from sweat and my hair was sticking out at strange angles from sleep. I rubbed the
day-old
mascara underneath my eyes off with my fingers, and then took off my shirt and started running a shower.

I'll text him today
, I told myself.

It's fine, we made plans. He's expecting me to text him. It would be weird if I didn't, I thought as the water fell down on me.

Cold water, as icy as I could manage. It was the only thing I could think of to keep me sane in our oven of an apartment. The water pressure sucked, and Mom and I seriously needed to give the bathroom walls a scrub — everywhere you looked our long hairs were stuck to the ceramic tiles — but the shower definitely calmed me down.

I'll do it
, I told myself.

I'll text him.

I'll ask him to come to the beach with me.

It's no big deal. He already said yes.

I'll do it.

I'll do it today.

I will.

When the water was finally so cold I couldn't stand it anymore, I shut it off and grabbed a towel. I tousled my hair and wrapped it around my head, not even bothering to grab anything else to cover up. Having the apartment to myself was the best feeling ever.

Back in my room, lying on my bed splayed out naked in a way I'm sure was really attractive, I grabbed my phone again.

“Just do it,” I whispered out loud. And maybe the shower had numbed my nerves or something, but I texted Shaun:
Island trip?

And, I swear, not thirty seconds later he answered,
You got it, V.

I was thankful at least he'd left out the
Big
this time. And couldn't believe how quickly he'd answered. Still lying flat on my bed, I did a little
happy-dance
, waving my arms and legs like a
wind-up
toy. It was happening, just like I'd planned it, it really was!

Cool
, I texted back.
Meet you at queen and brock in an hour?

Can't wait
.

I snatched my bikini —
the
bikini, the magic, perfectly fitting bikini — off the floor and put it on. I practically skipped back to the bathroom to admire myself in the mirror. The suit made even dorky me look awesome.

I struck a pose, or maybe twelve, to check myself out from every possible angle.

I turned my face a million different ways to figure out which side suited me best.

I pouted.

Then made a duck face.

I pulled my
still-soggy
hair into pigtails on either side of my head and stuck out my tongue at my reflection like a little kid.

I grabbed Mom's hairdryer and gave myself a
once-over
. The heat from the dryer made me sweat again, but no way was I going to meet Shaun with wet
helmet-hair
.

Because yes, I actually wear a bike helmet. Reluctantly. I've got a metallic pink
skateboarder-style
helmet that's pretty cool, but I'd love to get away with not wearing it. Fat chance, though. Mom has spies all over town, otherwise known as her near and dear friends, and I've been ratted out more than once when someone saw me flying down Queen Street with my hair flapping in the wind behind me. I sulked about it for a long time and refused to bike at all, but eventually I got over it. It was that or else retire my bike for good.

I tried on nine different shirts over top of my bathing suit, but wound up just sticking with Mom's Oilers shirt that I'd worn to bed. It smelled a bit funky from my sleep sweat, but it was vintage and kind of cool and sporty, which I figured Shaun would probably be into. He didn't have to know that I'd slept in it the night before, how would he? A pair of cutoffs completed the outfit, and then I went hunting through Mom's secret booze stash.

Contrary to the name, it's not really a secret. Mom and I just call it that because we think it's funny. Because we're above all that typical
parent-kid
hiding-the
-
good-stuff
garbage. Mom keeps her booze on the top shelf of the pantry — a row of nearly finished liquor bottles of all different kinds. Mostly it's the stuff that people leave behind at parties for a reason, like flavoured whiskey, rice wine, and stuff that tastes like licorice. I pulled down a bottle of Captain Morgan that was a little fuller than the others and poured some of it into an empty water bottle from our recycling bin. I figured that if I left the house a bit early, I could grab a bottle of Coke from Lucy's parents' store to mix it with.

Mom wouldn't mind me taking just a little bit of rum, I figured. Besides, I was sure she'd done way worse things to Gran when she was young than scam a bit of booze. It was for a good cause.

Tossing my phone, keys, and the bottle of pilfered rum into my bag, I grabbed my helmet and headed down the stairs. Locking the door behind me, I whispered, “Things are happening!” and then laughed at myself for being such a dweeb.

Out on the street, I unlocked my bike: a cute but clunky red retro
three-speed
I call PYT (Pretty Young Thing). PYT's kind of heavy, so I don't usually bother carrying her up the stairs to our apartment the way Mom does with her fixie. She's nothing fancy, but PYT always gets me where I need to go. I walked her over to Lynn's Convenience where Lucy's mom (the Lynn the store is named after) was inside working the cash. I was smiling like an idiot as I paid for my Coke, and I noticed Lucy's mom looking at me funny.

“What are you up to, Victoria?” she asked.

“Oh, nowhere,” I said. “I mean nothing. Just, uh, tell Lucy I said to say hi to her. Um, from me. Okay?”

Her eyes narrowed and I giggled nervously and then sprinted out of the store, waving goodbye, afraid that I looked suspicious. I heard Lynn yelling behind me that I hadn't taken my change, but it didn't matter; I couldn't be late meeting Shaun.

Outside I took a slug from my Coke and then hid in the doorway of a nearby shop that was closed down to pour the rum in. I turned the Coke bottle upside down a couple of times to mix it and then took a sip. It was good. Strong, but good. I took one more sip for courage.

I rode over to Queen and Brock — it wasn't far, just a couple of blocks away — and stopped to wait. I realized that I was trying to look in every direction at once not sure which way Shaun was coming from.
Be cool
, I told myself,
stay calm
. But it was way too late for that. The hummingbird in my chest was on high alert, and I could feel a bead of sweat roll its way from my forehead all the way down to my ankle.

Just when I thought that I couldn't stand waiting another second, I heard a voice from behind me and then felt a small tap on my shoulder.

“Hey,” the voice said. “Hey.”

I whipped my head around, nearly snapping my neck from the momentum. “Oh,” I said, and then, forcing myself to be casual, “hey.”

He was there. He really was. With sunglasses dipping toward the end of his freckled nose, and a smile that looked surprisingly shy. I wanted to just stand there and take him, and the moment, in, but it made me too nervous. I scoped out his bike, though, since it was far enough away from his face that I was able to force my heart to beat a normal rhythm. Shaun's ride was a royal blue
department-store
mountain bike, and it was definitely too small for him, with the seat raised up as high as it would go. It wasn't exactly what I'd pictured him riding.

“Oh yeah,” Shaun said, laughing nervously. “It's my little brother's bike. Mine's in the shop.”

“Oh,” I said, “cool.”

“Nah,” Shaun said. “Not really. But, uh, should we go?”

“Yeah,” I said, “sure. You wanna lead?”

“You do it,” he said, “I'll follow you.”

I smiled nervously and snapped my pink skateboard bucket to my head. He wasn't wearing a helmet. His hair was perfectly tousled and slightly spiked; I wanted to roll around in a whole field of it, maybe forever. I could feel my cheeks flushing again, so I turned away from him and mounted PYT.

“All right,” I yelled over my shoulder. “Let's do this!”

“You got it,” he called back to me.

With Shaun riding behind me I was so nervous I could've puked right there on the road. I booked it as fast as I could down the street, my legs straining to pound the pedals as hard as my body would let me. I turned around every so often to make sure that Shaun was keeping up with me, but he made my frantic pace look easy, even on his borrowed miniature bike. I pedalled harder.