Cage of Bone

  I walked to my homeroom Advanced English class alone, ignoring the stares and the whispers. I knew they were talking about me. Talking about Katherine. “Did you know?” “Dead.” “I heard it was suicide”. Little snippets of conversation, their laughter buzzing in my ears. I ignored them and kept walking, staring straight ahead. I was invisible. Nothing could touch me.

  I took a seat at the front of the class. All the better to avoid the idiots on the football team that sat in the back row. I’d rather be surrounded by the geeks and the teacher’s pets any day because they would leave me alone.

  Mr. Tanner was standing at the blackboard, his brown corduroy pants already covered with chalk dust. “It’s the start of another new school year,” he said, “and since this is the first time that I’ve taught most of you, it would be a good idea if you told me about yourself, what happened over the summer, that sort of thing. You there, in the front, why don’t you start?”

  Shit. So much for being ignored. I looked at Tanner for a moment, not believing he’d be such a jerk as to put me on the spot like that. Obviously everybody knew what happened, so why did I have to talk about it?

  “Hello? Veronica Campbell, isn’t it?” he prodded. “We’re waiting.”

  “The name’s Ronnie”, I replied. “Everything was perfect this summer. I spent my days lounging at Sauble Beach, juggling three boyfriends and doing my nails. Oh, and I like kittens and puppies and I really, really want world peace.” Tanner blinked and quickly moved on to the person behind me.

  As we left to go to our next class, the girl who sat beside me said, “Hey, you were pretty funny back there.” What was her name again? Oh yeah, Danielle. Danielle Sargent.

  “Thanks. You seemed to be the only one who got it. I thought Tanner was going to have an apoplexy and choke on some chalk dust or something.”

  “He was trying way too hard to impress us with his knowledge of literature. What do you think of our assignment, the poetry thing?”

  “No problem,” I said, walking away. “I can write poetry in my sleep. What rhymes with asshole?”

  “New Wave Babe, how’s it going?”

  I turned to the voice, assuming he was talking to me since I was pretty much the only person in the entire school who fit that description.“Oh hi. Long time no see.” I kept walking to Math class, staring straight ahead. I didn’t want to look at Griffin McNay and end up sucked into the vortex of his blue eyes.

  “So what did you think of the Cure album? Awesome, eh?”

  “Oh yeah, awesome. Totally,” I said. I kept walking, trying to catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye without him noticing. He was still looking yummy with his spiked up hair. A tiny silver hoop decorated his right ear. “Hey, you’ve got your ear pierced!” I exclaimed.

  “You noticed! I had it done a couple of days ago. Major hassles with my dad though and this was nothing. He’ll have a fucking coronary when I get my nose pierced.”

  I was at my classroom so I said goodbye and turned to go into the room.

  “Hey, this is my stop too. My Math grades sucked last year, so I’m taking Grade Ten Math again to boost up my marks. I’m really in Grade Eleven.”

  “Terrific,” I replied. “There’s just no getting rid of you I guess.”

  I think I see Katherine everywhere I go. A glimpse of her hair on a passing girl as I walked down the street. A hint of her perfume as I entered a room. Love’s BabySoft, powdery and sweet. Each time my heart caught a bit with hope and my throat tightened, but it was never her. Just someone like her, maybe one of her friends. Or a total stranger, someone who had no idea that seeing them broke my heart.

  I wish somebody would come up to me and say, “Surprise, the joke’s on you. See, here she is. She’s alive. What an idiot you are for falling for it”. I would give anything to bring her back. To get some answers. To get some peace.

  “Veronica, wait up!” It was Becky, a cheerleader on Katherine’s squad. I shifted my books into my other arm and waited as she ran up to me. I didn’t really know her but I knew she hung around Katherine sometimes. She had never spoken to me before, so I was surprised she even knew my name.

  “I just wanted to let you know how sorry I am about Kat. You know, the suicide and all.” She paused to say hello to a passing jock and then continued. “I mean, it was suicide, right? That’s what I heard anyway, so I was just wondering. What happened?”

  I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of getting any juicy gossip out of me. “Geez Becky, if you were really her friend, you would’ve been at the funeral, right? You’d know all the dirt already.”

  Becky’s jaw dropped and she stood there for a second staring at me before answering. “I was only trying to offer my condolences. You didn’t need to be so nasty about it.”

  “Whatever,” I answered, walking away. “Next time, don’t say something you don’t mean and I won’t tell you what I really think, okay?”

  The poetry assignment was due at the end of the week. I had four days to come up with something that summed up my life. “Give the reader a little snapshot of your life,” Mr. Tanner had said. “Let them see the real you, what’s going on in your mind this very second.”

  I think I’d get suspended if I told him what I was really thinking. Schools kind of frown upon you calling your teacher an ignominious loser.

  That night, while Mom was sitting at the kitchen table nursing another glass of rye and ginger ale, I stretched out on my bed and tried to come up with some ideas for this masterpiece of poetry I had to create. I hugged my Raggedy Ann doll. I got her for my fifth birthday and she was still in pretty good shape. If you squinted, you couldn’t even notice the missing patches of red wool hair or the mysterious brown stain on her face.

  Let’s see, I could write about my mom, who’s kidding herself thinking Dad is ever coming back. Or I could write about my dad, who’s too busy getting his girlfriend pregnant to even bother with me anymore. And oh yeah, the really fun stuff like how my sister bled to death in our bathtub and didn’t even say goodbye.

  “Your poetry submissions were interesting, I have to say,” said Mr. Tanner. “I got some real masterpieces, if you consider limericks riddled with curse words to be art. Jason, you have two days to submit a proper assignment.” A wave of laughter moved across the classroom.

  “But one of you has a real talent for description. A genuine flair for exposing the visceral truth of life.” He cleared his throat and began reading. I sank down in my seat and looked out the window, my face burning. I didn’t want to look at anyone as he read my poem. Now everybody would know how I really felt about Katherine’s death.

  “How could you do this to me?” I asked him after the class was over. “Do you have any idea how violated I feel? That was personal. I never should have handed it in.”

  “Veronica, what’s the problem?” said Mr. Tanner. “Your poem was excellent, that’s why I read it. That’s a compliment to you, not a put down.”

  I grabbed my assignment off his desk and turned to leave the classroom. I didn’t even want the stupid “A” I had received for it. The grade meant nothing to me. “You had no right to put me on the spot after all I’ve been through. It’s bad enough that the whole school is gossiping about it. Now they can whisper about how screwed up I am too.”

  Mr. Tanner looked confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just sharing a good piece of work with the class. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

  “This isn’t just a piece of work to me, Mr. Tanner.” I waved the page at him. “This is my life. You wanted a snapshot of what’s real. Well, this is real. But nobody should have seen it. I was an idiot to hand it in. It was private.”

  “You can’t let it remain private, Veronica. I want to submit it to our school board’s literary competition. Prizes will be handed out in November.

  “Not a chance, Mr. Tanner,” I said, crossing the threshold to the hallway. “Forget it.”

  Danielle was wa
iting for me in the hall. “What, you want to take a shot at me too?” I snapped. “I’m embarrassed enough already. Now I’ve got everybody laughing at me.”

  “Who’s laughing at you? Not me. I liked your poem. It was gruesome but if Poe’s your thing, then all right. Me, I prefer the Bronte sisters.”

  I stopped in the middle of the hall and stared at her. “Look, don’t give me any fake sympathy here, Danielle. Don’t be like all the others and tell me how sorry you are about Katherine. I’m sick of all the fake sympathy.”

  “Who’s Katherine? I was talking about your poem.”

  I shook my head and started walking again. “Don’t play dumb, Danielle. Everybody knows who Katherine is. Ask around. I’m sure somebody can fill you in with all the gory details.”

  I was flipping through the television channels when Mom finally staggered in on Friday night. I had started to get worried around nine o’clock, so I called the restaurant where she works but the chick on the phone said Mom had left about half past six. Now it was quarter after eleven and she was finally home.

  She was talking to someone, slurring her words and laughing loudly. “Come on in. It’s okay. Just Ronnie here, she won’t care. Come in and have another drink. It’s early.”

  I jumped off the couch and pulled down the old t-shirt I was wearing as a nightie. “Mom?” I called. “Who’s with you?”

  I walked out to the front door and saw Mom pulling on some guy’s arm, dragging him into our house. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  At least the guy had the decency to look embarrassed when he saw me. “Uh hi,” he said. “Just bringing your Mom home. She was at Shorty’s but she had too much to drink, so I gave her a lift. That’s all.”

  “Come in, Bob. Have a drink. I’ve got some rye.” Mom dropped her purse on the floor and swayed into the kitchen.

  I shot the guy a look. If he could read minds he’d be dead by now. “Nah, Janice, I’d better go,” he said. “I don’t think your daughter’s too happy to see me.”

  Mom pulled a half-empty bottle of rye out of the cupboard over the stove and started to pour a glass. “That’s just Ronnie. She’s not happy about anything. Come in and talk to me for awhile. It’s been so long since I had any company.”

  “I think you need to go to bed, Mom.” I tried to guide her down the hallway towards her bedroom but she shook me off.

  “You don’t have to treat me like a friggin’ baby.” She waggled her fingers at Bob. “Bye bye. The big meanie here says I can’t play with my friends.”

  “Just go to bed, Mom. I’ll show him to the door.”

  Mom staggered into her bedroom with her drink and slammed the door. I probably wouldn’t see her again until tomorrow afternoon. “Thanks for bringing her home,” I said to Bob. “Can I give you some money? Her purse is right here.”

  “Nah, that’s all right. Didn’t want her getting into trouble. Her car is still back at Shorty’s but she can pick it up tomorrow.”

  I couldn’t stay in the house with her. I’d been sitting around waiting all night for her to get home, wondering where the hell she could be, but now that she was here, I didn’t want to be around her. Let her sleep it off and then she can bitch about her headache tomorrow. Another migraine, my ass.

  I grabbed a twenty-dollar bill from her purse and headed out. Mom was right, it was early. I should be out having fun instead of babysitting her.

  It was warm for September. A few leaves had started to turn color on the maples along my street but if you closed your eyes, you’d swear it was still July by the stickiness in the air. I rounded the corner and approached St. Julian’s park.

  “Hey Ronnie,” Katherine called. She was straddling one of the teeter-totters, her favorite jeans pale against the red painted wood. “About time you got here. I was bored out of my bloody mind.”

  “Hey Kat, what’s up? Shouldn’t you be doing something a little more exciting?” I climbed onto the teeter-totter next to hers and stood up on it, trying to balance myself gracefully but wobbling a bit.

  “You’re one to talk. You should be out on a date.”

  “I just had to get out of the house. Mom came home drunk again. Some guy had to drive her home from the bar this time.”

  “No wonder Dad left her. She’s a fucking alcoholic.”

  “That’s no excuse. He still shouldn’t have left. Or he could have taken us with him. I guess he just doesn’t give a shit anymore.” I smacked a mosquito leaving a smear of blood on my arm. “He gets to start over with this fabulous new life and we’re stuck here.”

  “That’s why you’ve got to keep working hard in school and get into university. Then you can walk away and never have to come back. That was my plan anyway,” she said.

  “So what happened?” I couldn’t help looking at her wrists.

  Katherine dragged her feet through the crushed gravel on the ground around the teeter-totter, digging up a tab from an old soda can and some stale cigarette butts. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Some things hurt too much to talk about. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

 

  Chapter Three

  While walking downtown after school the next day, I saw a pickup truck from the Public Works department coming towards me. Crap. It was my dad. Shouldn’t he be busy working or something? He was the head of the department but I didn’t really know what that meant. He probably just drove around while the younger guys did all the work.

  “Ronnie, hop in,” he called. “I’ll give you a ride the rest of the way home.”

  I shook my head and kept walking, shifting my duffel bag full of homework into my other hand. “I’m fine,” I said, not looking at him.

  “For God’s sake, just get in the truck! Why do you have to make such a big production out of everything? I just want to talk to you.”

  I knew he wouldn’t leave me alone so I got in the truck. “What do you want? Shouldn’t you be slaving away bringing home the bacon? Soon you’ll have another mouth to feed.” I crossed my arms and stared out the passenger’s side window. The interior of the truck smelled just like him: Old Spice cologne and cigarettes.

  “I miss you. Is that so terrible?”

  “Whatever,” I replied. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of the music. King of the Road was playing on his favorite oldies radio station. God, get with the times, Dad. Ever hear of a synthesizer?

  “I wish you’d call me. Or come over. You know I’ve got a spare bedroom all fixed up and waiting for you. You can stay anytime.”

  “The phone works both ways. You never call me either.”

  He sighed and pulled over to the side of the road. “You know things are bad between your mother and me. I don’t call because I don’t want to get into another fight with her. This whole divorce issue is very touchy and the less we speak right now, the better.”

  “I guess you should have thought of that before you started screwing around with Meg. No wonder Mom’s pissed off.”

  “You don’t know the whole story, Ronnie. I had my reasons. But I’m not going to sit here and bad-mouth your mother. Let’s just say I’ve decided to move on with my life.” He fidgeted in his seat. “Mind if I smoke?”

  I shook my head. “Roll down the window though.” He pulled out his silver Zippo and flipped it open with that familiar click. Hearing that sound made my heart hurt a bit but I wouldn’t tell him that.

  “Thanks,” he said, blowing a long stream of smoke from his nose. “Anyway, I had to make a decision, so I did. I know it’s been hard on you and I’m sorry. Maybe someday you’ll understand.”

  “What’s there to understand? You had your clichéd mid-life crisis and left. End of story. Why bother with the baggage from the past if you can just start over with a new family?”

  “Is that what you think? That I just up and left and never looked back? Honey, I think about you all the time. I think about Katherine. It never ends. Just because I moved out doesn’t mean I don’t love you
anymore.”

  “I’m leaving.” I grabbed my duffel bag and started to open the truck door.

  “Wait a minute,” Dad said, grabbing my arm.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “You know what your problem is, Ronnie? You’ve got such a huge chip on your shoulder that you can’t even tell when somebody loves you. You only see what you want to see.”

  “Oh please, spare me the psychoanalysis bullshit.” I opened the door all the way and jumped out onto the sidewalk.

  He pulled out his wallet and tossed me forty dollars through the open window. “Go buy yourself some new clothes. You look like shit.”

  The fight with Dad had left me all hyped up and since I had money to spend now, I decided to go into Sam the Record Man. Maybe Griffin would be working this afternoon. Whenever I saw him in the hall he was surrounded by other girls so I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He was certainly turning out to be popular.

  I saw him as soon as I entered the store. He was at the back, leaning over a rack of albums and reaching for something way at the end. I tried to look nonchalantly at the promotional posters that lined the walls but it was hard not to stare at him. He was thin but muscular, the short sleeves of his t-shirt accentuating his biceps as he pulled a record out of the pile.

  He looked up and saw me there. “Hey Ronnie! What’s new? Just got The Sex Pistols in. Wanna have a listen?”

  “Sure,” I answered. “You’re the resident expert.”

  He put the record on the store’s sound system and turned up the volume. God Save the Queen came blaring out of the speakers. “My band and I are trying to learn this song. We want to start playing some parties soon.”

  “So you found some guys, did you?”

  “Yeah, I put up a sign here in the store and met them that way. There’re three of us all together. Jeff Somers is on bass and I’m on lead guitar. I do the vocals too but I totally suck. Tim Bradley plays drums but he goes to West Hill though so you might not know him.”