The man unwraps me and holds me to him. I'm the thing he finds to keep, me. My bony knees ache,growing pains, I think.
He walks, holding me like a baby, though I'm too big to be a baby. I am a child's size but light enough for him to carry with one hand swinging free so he can pick up snails, suck them out. Salty and slippery, the snails flow down his throat like hot shots of moist liquor.
The sky is partially blocked out by him, so I can't see his face. There is something between us, something I need to tell him, but I still can't see his face.
I have your hands. See them? They are yours. You can have them back if you want, I will give them to you and go without hands because I would like to have you back in this world, if that is at all possible. I have your legs, your shoulders. You can have those, too, if you need them. Your face I'll keep for myself let no one see. It is the one thing of ours I will be selfish about, and no, you can't have that back.
That is your punishment for dying, for leaving me alone with all these strangers. You will be known as the man without a face—// will always belong to me. I am you. And you are mine, so you can't already begone.
We walk into night not forming words or thoughts, just watching the dark map of browns, greens, and blacks turn the night over, like erosion. You make me feel like I'm in another country, I want to say, but I fall back into sleep within my dream, into the crook of his arm, lulled by his steady, strong heartbeat.
Then I hear the first break, the crackle of dry leaves and stones pounding together; he lets go and I fall down on top of a rock. I stumble, my knee raw and scratched. The throaty ache of a scream rides up my throat, but this time, when I open my eyes, I see him walking ahead. I clutch at the mass in my hand and open it: nothing but pulp and blood.
I reel up and feel electrodes attached to my spine, forehead, and neck, inside my face. Black straps hold my body in place on a stretcher as a gentle current of light passes through my body.
This is not a dream now but memory. Me, trying to open my mouth, to ask why, and when will it stop? Suddenly, Thomas's face floats up in front of me, unconnected, just a head. He looks down at me curiously as he pumps me full of white burnt light.
chapter 29
I'm just back from visiting Giselle at the hospital and I'm sitting on the porch watching the neighbourhood kids riding their bikes up and down the street when Jen comes skateboarding down the block.
She tips her skateboard up and shoves it under her arm. "You're coming tonight, right?"
At the end of the year, there's always a creek party where all the kids from St. Sebastian go to drink beer with the kids from the high school until the sun comes up.
"Marco's going to be there, come on, Holly, I know you like him."
"So?"
She sighs. "Look, go tell your mom you're going to go with me. Better yet, I'll tell her." Jen pounds up the steps to my house and yells, "Mrs. Vasco!" until Mom appears at the top of the stairs.
"Oh, hi, Jennifer, nice to see you."
"Mrs. Vasco, it's OK if I steal Holly away tonight, right? It's the graduation dance and all."
"Holly, why didn't you say anything?" Mom comes down the steps to give Jen a hug. Mom loves Jen, she thinks she's "feisty."
"What will you wear?"
"I could wear my black dress."
"No black dress. See, that's why I'm here, Mrs. Vasco. I'm giving her a makeover at my house. My sister's a hairstylist," she adds, as if this fact clinches the whole deal. Mom looks at me as I shake my head. "Well, let me give you some money to take a cab home after the dance, Holly."
"Can she sleep over at my house tonight?"
"I can't. I have to go see Giselle at the hospital tomorrow."
"No, it's okay7, you go with Jennifer. I can go alone."
"Are you sure, Mom?"
"As long as it's all right with Jennifer's mother."
"Sure, sure," Jen licks her lips and rolls off in front of me on her skateboard as I grip Mom's arm for a second before tripping down the porch steps in my untied shoes.
Jen's house isn't quiet like ours. She has one of those great houses with lots of traffic, food, and activity. I always like going there for dinner and lunch and hanging out with all Jen's cousins and sisters.
"Hey kid, want some pesto?" Mrs. Marinelli asks, blowing me a kiss from the stove as a bunch of kids pull on her apron, begging for ice cream money.
"We're getting ready for the dance!" Jen announces as she drags me through the basil-smelling kitchen and into her sister's room.
Joanne was in Giselle's class in high school, they used to be friends. Giselle likes Joanne but always refers to her as "that incorrigible gina." Joanne's spread out the contents of her makeup bag and laid out her curling iron and all her hair products in front of the vanity mirror. The whole thing is making me really nervous, but Jen even has a solution for that, because when I sit down in front of the vanity, she pours us each a glass of her father's homemade wine and proposes a toast.
"To playing basketball next year!"
"To getting out of St. Sebastian!" I offer.
"To looking beautiful," Joanne purrs, slicking my hair down with pink hair gel.
"So, let's have another glass of vino and then we'll head to the creek."
"We're not going to the dance?"
"No, wiener, we're not going. It's almost over anyway, but we are going to the creek party."
"So why am I wearing all this crap if we're not going?"
Jen grins at me, showing off her wine-stained teeth as she pats down her stiff, hair sprayed hair, trying to undo the damage of her sister's curling iron.
"Quit whining, you look fantastic, Marco's going to be all over you. Besides, at least you don't have big hair."
I start giggling as Jen groans. She does have big hair, and no amount of patting down or rearranging can shrink it.
"You mess with that style, Jen, and that's the last time I do your hair!" Joanne shouts from the bathroom, insulted.
"You buzzed?" Jen asks, pulling a baseball cap on and throwing herself down next to me, among all the clothes and makeup on her bed.
"My face feels red. Is this drunk?"
"It's close. I'm bringing another bottle down to the creek."
"Won't your dad miss it?"
"Naw, he has so much booze he doesn't even know what to do with it."
I sit up and stretch, feeling the soft edges of the world bend around me. Everything feels like it could be funny or far away or sad. This must be drunk, too.
We shoot down the stairs screaming our goodbyes. I grab Jen's hand and run as fast as I can till there's grass underfoot. Till we hit the park and jump down the dark ravine. Till we smell the smoke of a medium-sized bonfire lighting up the corner of the forest, where people have gathered and have started drinking in the last shadows of the day Till we walk right into the warm wind of summer and feel it, lifting up our arms, till I almost forget about Giselle biting down on the doctor's hand with her half-rotted teeth.
. . .
Trashed. Jen is trashed, I think, as I watch her laughing, bending like a rubber toy at her waist and spilling wine onto the ground. Jen introduces everyone swiftly: "Holly, that's Clive, this is John, my cousin . . . he's just here for some junior-high tail."
There are about fifty people in all, mostly older kids, from high school. Someone's parked a beat-up old car in the ravine, opened all the doors, and cranked up the radio. Aerosmith. No graduation would be complete without it, Giselle tells me later.
"Marco's here!" Jen slurs, jabbing a finger into the air before it falls on my shoulder. "Go talk to him!"
I look over to where the tall, long-lashed Marco is standing. He's watching the fire intently, surrounded by older high-school guys. What Jen hasn't noticed, though, is that he's wearing a white shirt and dark dress pants, and that Kat, dressed to the height of virginal fashion, is standing next to him. They've come together from the dance, and Kat's even wearing a white orchid corsage pinned next to
her left breast.
"He's sooo taken, Jen. Forget it, I don't have a chance."
"Whaddaya talking about?" Jen screams, glaring at the fire. "Get over there, you chickenshit!"
"Forget it Jen! He likes Kat." I grab the bottle from her and take a gulp. "I gotta keep my eye on you anyway, you lush."
Jen mumbles something I don't hear, then slouches down a little lower on the log and hiccups.
"So, ladies, what say we smoke this?" Clive says, exposing his white but crooked teeth. Clive looks so pretty, even with those teeth. Jen calls him a stoner but he's beautiful, he looks like a child: little nose and big lips. And something about the way he looks right at me when he talks sends a wave of nausea to my stomach.
"I don't smoke," I say, looking at Jen.
"Right, don't want to damage those perfect pink runner's lungs, eh, Holly?" he snaps, sticking the joint in his mouth and tapping John for a light.
"How do you know I run?"
"Oh, I take a special interest in young athletes."
It seems rude or something not to accept the joint, so I take a little puff and then cough for about five minutes.
After we smoke, I send Clive and John to ask around for some water for Jen, who is beginning to look a little green, but she gives us a confident thumbs-up whenever we ask how she's doing.
John and Clive come back with a Tupperware container of warm orange juice. Jen takes a big sip and spits it out.
"There's vodka in that!" Jen laughs. John snatches it, sniffs, and takes a gulp.
"I'm getting water," I say. "You jerks stay here and watch her."
As I walk through groups of people sitting on blankets, I pass a black, square-jawed dog, and meet its eyes. I feel flushed from my chest to my crotch, as if there is a candle burning inside me. At peace with the dog, and beers, and fires, I smile at a large girl with long dark hair who's trying to clean the dirt from between her toes. I feel like we're young and, because of this, everything might be OK, if only I could find some water for Jen.
"Hey, Holly!" I turn, clutching the plastic bottle, as Clive trips awkwardly through groups of people: raver girls with sparkles on their faces and platform shoes on their feet, boys with baggy pants, hippies, and people from the dance dressed in various levels of formal attire. Everyone, except Clive, looks shiny. I notice how all his clothes, and his hair, are frayed at the ends and dusty. When he finally gets to me he holds out his hands.
"Thought you might like some company. You going into the school?"
I guess.
"This way."
He leads me through the crowd, past the car, which is now blaring hip hop, and up a steep dark path. People are arguing about what kind of music to put on next.
"Your school or mine?" He points through the high chain-link fence that separates St. Sebastian from East Tech.
"You go to East Tech?"
"Yessir." He kicks at the fence. East Tech is the last-resort school that specializes in woodworking, mechanics, and "vocational" training—whatever the hell that is. It's the troublemakers' school. You always hear about cars being torched and boys stabbing each other in the halls. There's a reason for the ten-foot spiked fence between East Tech and St. Sebastian. The teachers, especially Mr. Ford, tell us the kids are rowdy, non-Catholic drug addicts. I knew Clive went to a public school, but not East Tech.
"School's not my thing." No kidding, I think as he shakes the fence and begins to climb it. I hesitate for a second and then start climbing after him. He sits at the top waiting for me, jiggling around a little, his jeans pulled tight against his bum. We walk along the other side of the fence in the forest for a while in silence.
"You think the school's open?" I ask as we approach a set of orange doors, but really all I can think about is how a guy as nice and calm as Clive managed to get himself into East Tech.
"Wait here," he says, before pulling out a small blade to jimmy the door open. He grabs the juice container from my hands and disappears into the school.
At the top of the hill, after scaling the fence again, we pause to smoke another of Clive's skinny joints.
"So, how'd you get to East Tech?" I ask him.
He looks at me in the growing darkness before plucking the joint from his mouth and passing it to me. His eyes are soft but untrusting. I take a long haul of the pinner, which has some trouble making its way down my throat and into my stomach.
"I yelled at a teacher in my old school. Well, I kind of more than yelled at her."
"What did you do?"
"This woman, this bitch, in grade nine, made me read The Kaisin in a Sun."
"A Kaisin in the Sun."
"Yeah, whatever, anyway, she was really getting on my nerves, like pushing me . . . I just didn't feel like reading that day."
"So?"
"So, I don't know, I kind of flipped."
"Oh." I hand the joint back to him and look down at the hill. We'll probably have to slide down on our asses to reach the bottom. It's really dark now. I can make out Clive's small nose and his fat lips by the heater of the joint. I contemplate his prettiness, while trying to think of something cool to say.
"We have something in common then."
"What's that?"
"We both got kicked out of school."
"Yeah, John told me about that. Quite the little scrap you ladies got yourselves into." He grins, his teeth glowing.
"Yeah," I sigh, pretending I'm cool and refusing the last of the joint. "So, I figure we slide, ass first, down this hill."
"Just a second." He crushes the roach with his boot and grabs my wrist. Hard.
"You're so pretty, Holly."
I laugh.
He goes for my mouth but I turn my face and he ends up missing it and slobbering down the right side of my cheek. Then he puts his hand under my chin and guides my face to his, and, even in the darkness, I see his eyes close as his face comes closer.
At first I'm nervous, our mouths are so dry from the pot, I can't even move my lips, or find the right way to kiss. But then he finds me, he finds the warm wet place inside my clumsy mouth and pulls my body to his and I am up against his stomach, my hands beneath the back of his shirt. I can't decide what to do next so I try to think of one of the old movies Sol took us to see, Casablanca. The image of a suave Humphrey Bogart pressing up against Lauren Bacall. But as I relax into Clive's mouth, I remember that it's only us, two flunkies, tumbling down the hill.
When we get to the bottom I jump ahead of Clive. My arms and legs are scratched up and there's grass in my hair and Clive's laughing so hard he can't get up, so I run on ahead. Jen's safe, thank God, and she seems almost sober now. She still has the baseball hat plastered on her head to hide her hair. I laugh when I see it. Someone has wrapped her in a blanket and she's burping through sips of a huge Coke slurpie and singing along to "Hotel California" with a group of hippies by the dying fire.
Jen offers me a sip of her slurpie as she belches long and happily. I gulp down the Coke and instantly get a head-freeze.
"Ow, ow, ow." I lean my head against her fuzzy blanket, trying to recover.
"Where'd you two disappear to?"
"Just around. We got your water."
"Thanks." She arches her eyebrow: I look around the crowd and see Clive is on the other side of the fire. He's got his shirt off and is hackey-sacking with a group of kids. Jen follows my gaze and then pokes me in the ribs.
"Hey, stop drooling."
"Shut up."
"Looks like . . ."
"What!?"
"I was going to say, before I was so rudely interrupted, that it looks like you found someone as freaky as you."
chapter 30
In well-run theatres the risk of infection from instruments and other materials is slight.
There were lights inside me in surgery. I joked with the anesthesiologist before I went under.
"Are you a heart surgeon?" I asked stupidly, drunk with my first heady, airless breath of the stuff. I'm one of those ann
oying chatty and aggressive patients; I figure there's no other way to be under the knife.
"No, dear," the surgeon said as the nurse adjusted his glasses. "I'm a gynecologist."
Electroencephalography EEGs, are the most common tests for epilepsy diagnosis. The EEG records the electrical activity of the brain; during seizures the brain's electrical activity is abnormal.
The black hole of anesthesia, the smell of hospitals barely masking vomit and blood; it all colludes in re-creating the memory that runs like a surreal colourized movie over and over in my head. And now I'm certain that it happened:
I'm dressed, so nicely, in a flowered pink dress, white ballet leotards, and shiny black patent-leather shoes. Holly's with a babysitter for my "appointment" today, so I have our parents all to myself. It's a rare day of indulgence for me: a trip to the toy store and the book store. One toy and all the books I want and then a Disney movie. All efforts to forget, to erase the smell of burnt hair and the shiny patches of gel on my back and temples.
My head's buzzing, filled with the sound of a rat-a-tat-tat, like a birthday-cake sparkler fizzing out. I pop, pop, pop so I hop, hop, hop, hop on pop—over puddles, my mother is holding my hand, leading me along the busy downtown streets after a quick spring rain.
Dad buys me a strawberry cone from a street stall to match my dress. He bends down on one knee to offer it to me.
"There you go, sweetheart." He pats my head. Vesla yanks me away, nearly causing me to drop my hard-won treat. I scowl at her, smile up at his head, which has a hat on it. Hats are funny, I think in my child-head. Hats are like socks for your head. I study my perfect little black shoe as the cold sweet cream trickles down my throat.
"Are you satisfied?" She glares at Thomas, pinning her free arm to her side, refusing the plain vanilla cone he offers her. He leans his head to one side, as if he thinks her question is absurd; the edge of his hat threatens to tip over like a sinking boat. Then he nods and, walking away from us, begins to eat the melting ice cream himself.