Under the Dusty Moon (7 page)

We
test-played
it four times so that we got all the different endings, but then Lucy checked her phone and said she had to get going.

“Come over tomorrow,” she said, “and we'll start plotting out our real game.”

“You're sure you can't stay for dinner?” I asked, mentally counting the hours until Mom was due home from work.

“Sorry,” she said, “I've gotta go.”

“All right,” I said, “I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Cool,” she said. “
G-Day
.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, you know,” she said, smiling
self-consciously
. “Game Day.”

I nodded and we
high-fived
before I closed the door behind her. It was going to be great.

But tomorrow felt like forever away.

I wanted to keep on messing around with Twine, but the blank page was too intimidating on my own. I was itching to build another story and see how far I could take it, but I didn't know what story to tell. I needed Lucy for her big ideas.

Without even thinking about it, I wound up in a YouTube hole, and soon enough I was looking up clips of old Dusty Moon shows. They always seem to show up in my recommended sidebar, but maybe that's because I can't help clicking on them whenever they show up.

I've watched most of them already, but that day there was a new video I hadn't seen before. It was just a bunch of footage that some fan had put together of a few of the bands' shows. I hit play and lay down on my side on the couch with the screen tilted at an angle so I could see it. My bulging, sweaty thighs stuck to the couch and each other and the tiny jean shorts I had on were helpless to stop them.

It was weird and kind of comforting to watch the band play, but it was nothing I hadn't seen before. The songs I've heard over and over again: “Stranded in Daylight”, “Shadow Tree,” and “Fixing to Fix You.” The same chords and the same melodies. I'd heard them so many times they were almost white noise to me now. That is until the live footage abruptly stopped and a scrolling text screen, that looked like a
six-year
-old kid had picked the font, appeared in its place.

DENNIS MAHLER, 1978–2005

MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD

…

OR IS HE???

Oh god
, I thought,
another conspiracy theorist
whack-job
. Great
. But I looked at the date that the video had been uploaded. It was only a week old and it already had ten thousand views.

REPORTS THAT DENNIS HAS BEEN SPOTTED IN HUATULCO, MEXICO HAVE BEEN CONFIRMED BY INDEPENDENT SOURCES

DENNIS MAHLER

…

…

…

IS ALIVE!!!

Jesus. They really couldn't leave it alone, could they? And why did anyone else think this was their story to tell?

Like this journalist, the one who was writing the book, whoever he was, was sucking blood from Mom's and Dennis's story. He was a leech, trying to profit off some supposed Canadian
alt-rock
mystery. And he was probably creaming his pants over this latest fake news. Oh, sure, Dennis was in Mexico the whole time. Why didn't anyone think to look for him there?

There was no mystery.

There is no mystery.

Dennis is dead, and anyone who says otherwise should get their tinfoil hat examined. They all just need to get a life.

I lay there for hours, watching every Dusty Moon clip I could find on YouTube. As repulsed as I was by this new video and the horrible
grave-digging
rumours that were going to come with it, I couldn't stop watching the old concert clips and music videos. It was like I was in a trance.

When it was almost dark, I finally realized that I could feel a cloud of perspiration on my shirt where my cast had been pressed against my stomach all afternoon. I needed a drink, a cold one. And more painkillers.

It took me nearly twenty minutes just to get the dumb cap off the bottle of pills in the bathroom. The childproof top was nearly
cast-proof
too, as it turned out. I tried every conceivable combination of pressing my cast down on the lid while turning the bottle with my left hand, but it kept falling out of my grip and onto the floor — still blanketed with Mom's hair since she rushed out of the apartment in such a hurry that morning. When I did finally manage to pop the top off, I was so unbelievably frustrated that I dumped two pills onto the counter and swallowed them with a big gulp of water from the tap. One pill, I knew, was all I really needed, but I figured that if it was going to take a million years just to get the pills open each time I needed one that I might as well make it worth my while.

A few minutes later, I started to notice the lightness in my limbs, and that my head felt like a helium balloon full of stones. Smooth, smooth stones that slowly knocked against each other any time I moved my head. I giggled to myself. I was totally high.

On the other side of the room, my phone started vibrating. The harsh whir it made shaking against our cheapo IKEA coffee table made me jump, but I managed to answer it after half a dozen rings.

“Hey, sweets.”

It was Mom, of course. I hoped she couldn't hear that I was stoned.

“Hello,” she said, “you there?”

I realized that I'd been so paranoid that I hadn't actually opened my mouth yet.

“Yeah, hey. Hey,” I said, trying to make my voice as steady as possible. In my head it sounded too deep and way too slow.

“Hey,” she said, clearly not noticing the difference. “Look, I can't really talk right now. I just wanted to let you know that Sal asked me to work a double and, well, there's no one else who can cover the shift and we're totally swamped. It looks like I'm going to be closing. I'm really sorry I'm not going to be home for dinner like I promised, but we'll talk tomorrow, all right?”

More silence on my end. She was talking too fast and her voice sounded like a
high-pitched
whistle.

“Come on,” she said, “you're not mad at me, are you? There's nothing I can do about this. I can't leave Sal here by himself. I can't.”

There was nothing to say. It was just one more time she couldn't keep her word. One more time that she told me I couldn't be upset that she'd totally broken her promise. One more time when she couldn't just step up and be a freaking mom.

“Vic?” she said, now anxious that I wasn't responding. “Are you there? I'm going to be home late, yeah?”

Was everything a question now?

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I said, catching my breath. My chest felt like it was being squeezed tight like a
stress-ball
. “See you later.”

“Okay,” she said, “I've gotta go. And I'm sorry again, okay? But don't wait up, I'll be home late. I love you!”

“Bye.”

I took the phone from my ear and put it down on the counter. A part of me couldn't believe that she'd gone and broken her word — again, again, again — but the stoned part of me, which, by then, was most of me, couldn't believe I was going to get away with being totally wasted.

I poured myself a tall glass of water — no ice, of course, Mom hadn't thought to make any — turned off the computer and pulled up an old Disney movie on Netflix instead. I laughed my face off at scenes I'd watched a hundred times when I was a kid, and clapped my hands with glee at the end when the beastly dude turned into a regulation hunk. I drained a couple of glasses of water, but then I started craving something sweet. I looked for juice in the fridge, but we were all out. It was seriously sad how Old Mother Hubbard our kitchen was. There was only a tub of wilted baby spinach along with two bottles of mustard, a box of baking soda, and a
half-empty
bottle of white wine.

I took the wine out of the fridge and put the bottle down on the counter in front of me. It was a big one, the size of two normal wine bottles, because Mom said it was cheaper to buy them that way. Then I got myself a small glass from the cupboard. It was a cup, really. A souvenir from the time Mom's old boyfriend Fletcher took us to Medieval Times. Even half empty, the bottle was still too heavy for me to lift with my left hand, so I wound up spilling about as much wine as I managed to get into my cup. I shuffled across the small puddle on the floor in my sock feet to clean it up, giggling to myself at the idea that my foot was going to get drunk from the wine. Which made me giggle out loud at how dumb my brain was on painkillers. When I'd mopped up most of the puddle, I peeled the winey socks off my feet and tossed them in the direction of my bedroom.

“Bottoms up!” I said to myself as I slurped from my cup of wine.

I looked at the cup more closely, twisting it around to see the cheap hologram effect of the plastic. “I don't believe I'm supposed to be drinking, Lord Windermere,” I said, addressing the galloping knight on my plastic chalice.

“We shan't let your mother know,” I replied in a
fake-deep
knight voice. “Besides, most surestly it is her own fault for leaving her
one-armed
daughter alone with nary a crumb in ye olde refrigerator. And besides, shouldn't she be home by now … eth?”

I giggled and downed the rest of the cup, then poured myself a bit more. My head was feeling impossibly heavy, like a boulder tied to a
kindergarten-craft
pipe cleaner. I fumbled my way toward the couch. My feet were heavy now, too, and my stomach was rocking dangerously back and forth. I put Lord Windermere on the floor beside me and curled up to take a nap.

I woke up when I heard a key in the door. Mom was finally home. I picked up my phone from the coffee table and saw that it was three in the morning. My eyes still felt tacky from sleep and I could barely keep my eyelids open.

“Aw, sweets, you really shouldn't have waited up for me,” she said in her quietest voice as she opened the door. “How you feelin'?”

Putting her purse down by the door and kicking off her sneakers, she moved my legs and sat down next to me on the couch.

“How was your day?” I asked groggily, half sitting up to look at her.

“Oh, it was fine, just long,” she said, stroking my leg. It was hypnotizing, and I almost fell right back asleep when Mom spoke again.

“Vic, what's that?” she asked, pointing at Lord Windermere.

“It's nothing,” I said, reaching out to grab my drinking buddy.

But Mom's reflexes were a lot faster than mine and she beat me to it. She sniffed it. “Is this my wine?”

“Just a little bit.”

“I don't care how much you had,” Mom said. “Do you have any idea how stupid it is to drink while you're on painkillers? Jesus, Vic, you could have killed yourself!”

“It's not exactly like there was anything else around to drink,” I said, my mouth dry like a
wrung-out
sponge. “I was thirsty. I only had a tiny bit.”

“I can't believe this. I can't believe you'd do something so stupid. Did you even think about what might happen if you mixed them?”

“Well maybe if you hadn't left me alone all day!” I countered, pushing myself up to a full sitting position. My head was still heavy, and I weaved forward and stuck out my hand to keep myself up.

“No, you are not turning this around on me,” she said. “I had to work, okay? Like an adult. This is about you.” She shook her head. “God, I can't believe this, Vic. I don't even know what to say right now. Just go to bed.” She wouldn't even look me in the eye.

“Whatever,” I said, slowly getting up, my hand still braced on the couch. “Maybe if you were a real mother.”

She looked like she was about to cry, but she didn't. Her breath got caught in her throat for a second, but she swallowed it back down before she spoke.