The Break E-Book

Katherena Vermette

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 492

Beschreibung

Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2018 Crime Book of the Month, Sunday Times, February 2018 'A tough, close-up look at a side of female life that's often hard to acknowledge: the violence girls and women sometimes display towards other girls and women ... An accomplished writer who will go far.' - Margaret Atwood Stella, a young Métis mother, lives with her family by The Break, an isolated strip of land on the edge of their small Canadian town. Glancing out of her window one winter's evening Stella spots someone in trouble; horrified, she calls the police. But when they arrive, no one is there, scuff marks in the compacted snow the only sign anything may have happened. What follows is a heartbreaking and powerful tale of a community in crisis as the people connected to the victim, a young girl on the edge of a precipice, begin to lay bare their stories leading up to that fateful night. From Lou, a social worker grappling with the end of a relationship, to Cheryl, an artist mourning the premature death of her sister. And from Phoenix, a homeless teenager released from a youth detention centre with no one to turn to, to Officer Scott, a Métis policeman caught between two worlds. Through the prism of one extended, intergenerational family, Vermette's urgent story shines a light on the power, violence and love shared between women of all cultures, creeds and ages.

Leseprobe

THE BREAK• • •

Also by Katherena VermetteNorth End Love Songs (poetry)

THE BREAK

KATHERENA VERMETTE

First published in Canada in 2016 by House of Anansi Press.First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Atlantic,an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Katherena Vermette, 2016

The moral right of Katherena Vermette to be identified as theauthor of this work has been asserted by her in accordancewith the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 390 3Hardback ISBN: 978 1 78649 388 0Export trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 389 7

Printed in Great Britain.Offset by Tetragon, London.

AtlanticAn imprint of Atlantic Books LtdOrmond House26–27 Boswell StreetLondonWC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

For my mother

In honour of those who have been lost.

With love to those who have founda way through — you lead us.

FAMILY TREE

Betty, if I start to write a poem about you

it might turn out to be

about hunting season instead,

about ‘open season’ on native women

~ from “Helen Betty Osborne”by Marilyn Dumont

“The most common way people give up their power

is by thinking they don’t have any.”

~ Alice Walker

PART ONE• • •

The Break is a piece of land just west of McPhillips Street. A narrow field about four lots wide that interrupts all the closely knit houses on either side and cuts through every avenue from Selkirk to Leila, that whole edge of the North End. Some people call it nothing and likely don’t think about it at all. I never called it anything, just knew it was there. But when she moved next door, my Stella, she named it the Break, if only in her head. No one had ever told her any other name, and for whatever reason, she thought she should call it something.

It’s Hydro land, was likely set aside in the days before anything was out there. When all that low land on the west side of the Red River was only tall grasses and rabbits, some bush in clusters, all the way to the lake in the north. The neighbourhood rose up around it. Houses built first for Eastern European immigrants who were pushed to that wrong side of the railway tracks, and kept away from the affluent city south. Someone once told me that North End houses were all made cheap and big, but the lots were narrow and short. That was when you had to own a certain amount of land to vote, and all those lots were made just inches smaller.

The tall, metal Hydro towers would have been built after that. Huge and grey, they stand on either side of the small piece of land, holding up two smooth silver cords high above the tallest house. The towers repeat, every two blocks, over and over, going far into the north. They might even go as far as the lake. My Stella’s little girl, Mattie, named them robots when the family first moved in beside them. Robots is a good name for them. They each have a square-like head and go out a bit at the bottom like someone standing at attention, and there’s the two arms overhead that hold the cords up into the sky. They are a frozen army standing guard, seeing everything. Houses built up and broken down around them, people flooding in and out.

In the sixties, Indians started moving in, once Status Indians could leave reserves and many moved to the city. That was when the Europeans slowly started creeping out of the neighbourhood like a man sneaking away from a sleeping woman in the dark. Now there are so many Indians here, big families, good people, but also gangs, hookers, drug houses, and all these big, beautiful houses somehow sagging and tired like the old people who still live in them.

The area around the Break is slightly less poor than the rest, more working class, just enough to make the hard-working people who live there think that they are out of the core and free of that drama. There are more cars in driveways than on the other side of McPhillips. It’s a good neighbourhood but you can still see it, if you know what to look for. If you can see the houses with neveropened bed sheet covered windows. If you can see the cars that come late at night, park right in the middle of the Break, far away from any house, and stay only ten minutes or so before driving away again. My Stella can see it. I taught her how to look and be aware all the time. I don’t know if that was right or wrong, but she’s still alive so there has to be some good in it.

I’ve always loved the place my girl calls the Break. I used to walk through it in the summer. There is a path you can go along all the way to the edge of the city, and if you just look down at the grass, you might think you were in the country the whole way. Old people plant gardens there, big ones with tidy rows of corn and tomatoes, all nice and clean. You can’t walk through it in the winter though. No one clears a way. In the winter, the Break is just a lake of wind and white, a field of cold and biting snow that blows up with the slightest gust. And when snow touches those raw Hydro wires they make this intrusive buzzing sound. It’s constant and just quiet enough that you can ignore it, like a whisper you know is a voice but you can’t hear the words. And even though they are more than three storeys high, when it snows those wires feel close, low, and buzz a sound that is almost like music, just not as smooth. You can ignore it. It’s just white noise, and some people can ignore things like that. Some people hear it but just get used to it.

It was snowing when it happened. The sky was pink and swollen and the snow had finally started to fall. Even from inside her house, my Stella heard the buzzing, as sure as her own breath. She knows to expect it when the sky fills with clouds, but like everything she’s been through, she has just learned to live with it.

( 1 )

STELLA

STELLA SITS AT her kitchen table with two police officers, and for one long moment, no one says a thing. They just sit, all looking down or away, for a long pause. The older officer clears his throat. He smells like old coffee and snow, and looks around Stella’s home, her clean kitchen and out into her dark living room, like he’s trying to find evidence of something. The younger one goes over his scribbled notes, the paper of his little coiled book flips and crumples.

Blanket over her shoulders, Stella wraps one hand around a hot mug of coffee, hoarding the warmth but still shaking. In her other hand, she balls a damp Kleenex. She stares down. Her hands look like her mom’s did, older-looking hands for a young woman. Old-lady hands. Her Kookom had hands like this too, and now that she’s an old lady all over, her hands are practically transparent, the skin there worn thin. Stella’s aren’t that bad yet, but they look too wrinkled, too old for her body, like they have aged ahead of her.

The officer breathes heavily. Stella finally looks up and braces herself to start explaining, again. The officers both sit with shoulders up, and neither touches the steaming mugs of coffee she has poured and placed in front of them. Their uniformed jackets are still on. The radios at their shoulders spit static and muffled voices, numbers, and alerts.

She has given up trying not to cry in front of these strangers.

Officer Scott, the young one, finally breaks the silence.

“Well, we know something significant definitely happened out there.” He looks at her side-eyed. His voice matter of fact, slow and hinging on the words happened and out there. His mouth frowns in a practiced sympathy that Stella knows is fake but takes anyway. The older one, Officer Christie, doesn’t look at her, only agrees with a quick nod of his bearded head and another throat-clearing noise. Stella thinks he’s bored, and the young one, he’s so young, is eager, maybe even excited.

Officer Scott tries to look nice, again, and asks her, again, “Can you think of anything else? Anything at all?”

Stella blinks a tear and shakes her head. She looks out the window at the Break, that empty expanse of land next to her house. She doesn’t have to look to know it’s snowing lightly. She can hear the faint buzzing, the low drone of the Hydro towers just out of view. The sky is still bright pink in the night, swollen with more snow to come. The Break is mostly a blank slate of white stretched out to house beyond. The house’s siding and the snow reflect the streetlights and the moon, but the windows are dark, of course. Everyone’s windows are dark except Stella’s.

The two officers had gone out there, stomped around, and made a circle around the blood, the puddle that melted the snow. Stella can just make it out from the window, a corner of it. It lies across the white ground like a dark shadow, probably frozen now. Flakes fall on top of it, wanting to cover it up. It doesn’t look sinister. It doesn’t look like what it really is.

Stella goes over each detail in her head, remembering everything, wanting to forget. It is probably 4 a.m. now, and Jeff will be home soon. She wants Jeff to be home more than anything. She listens for her children, ready if they wake, surprised they haven’t from the all the foot stomping the officers made when they came in, but everything is quiet upstairs. The baby’s been asleep since Stella finally got her kids to bed about four hours ago when she got off the phone with 911. They slept but she couldn’t. She waited and stared out the window with nothing to pass the time but her anxious thoughts. So she got up and started cleaning. Everything was spotless by the time the officers finally arrived.

Her mind scatters, but she remembers everything, over and over.

“She was small, so small.” Stella’s shoulders shake as she finds her words again. “Like a really tiny woman, maybe five feet, not much more than that.” She clings to the blanket around her. “Long straight black hair. I couldn’t see her face. So small and skinny.” Stella reaches for her own long black hair and remembers something else. Her voice chokes out for a minute. She knows she’s repeating herself.

“Now, you only saw her through your door, right?” Scott has stopped taking notes. His pen rests on the paper pad, over his few blue scrawls. Christie finally takes a sip of coffee.

“Yes, through the screen door. The glass.” Stella motions at the air. She can still see the small woman through the foggy glass, slowly moving away, finally moving down the back lane.

“That’s a pretty long way away, Mrs. McGregor. Are you sure it couldn’t have been a young man? You know a lot of these native boys wear their hair long.”

Stella just looks at him. His too-young face still a mask of a smile, stuck there. Naïve. She thinks of the word and rolls it around in her head. Naïve.

“No, it was a girl. A woman.” She looks down again, wraps her hands in the blanket but still shakes.

“Okay, okay, tell us again,” Scott tries gently. “From the beginning, please. You heard noises outside . . .”

Stella shakes her head. “I didn’t hear anything outside. The baby woke up. I went up to get him and saw out his window. I didn’t know what I was seeing at first, thought it was a fight or something. It looked bad, so I called 911. But I couldn’t do anything, my baby was crying so hard. He’s teething.”

She looks up to see this Scott officer nod and lean forward. Practiced. His partner takes another audible sip of coffee and looks at his watch. Stella turns to the old clock on the wall — 4:05. Yes, Jeff will be off shift by now and on his way home.

“911 EMERGENCY.”

“Yes. Hi, there’s some sort of fight going on outside my house. Looks like someone might be getting jumped.”

“I’m sorry I can’t hear you, ma’am. Did you say an assault? Outside your residence?”

“Yes, yes. Shhhh, Adam, shhhhh, my boy.”

“And where is your residence, ma’am?”

“Magnus. 1243 Magnus. On the west side of McPhillips. Just passed that Break thingie, area.”

She hears the operator sigh. “All right ma’am, is the assault still taking place?”

“Yes, I think so, or wait, I think . . . They’re running away.”

“Okay ma’am . . .”

“Oh no! Oh my god. Shhh, Adam, it’s okay.”

“Ma’am? What direction are they running?”

“McPhillips. They’re running that way. But someone’s hurt! It’s a girl, a woman, I think. Oh my god!”

“Ma’am, I will dispatch someone right away. Ma’am?”

“Oh god oh god oh god, she’s not getting up. Her legs . . . she’s not . . . moving.”

“Ma’am?”

“Oh god, oh my god.”

“Ma’am, I can’t hear you with the baby crying. I will dispatch someone right away.”

“Oh my god.”

“Please stay where you are, ma’am? Ma’am?”

“But she’s not moving.”

SCOTT TRIES AGAIN. “And then when you went to the door and watched her, the victim, get up?”

“Yeah,” she chokes out, nods.

“And you didn’t go out there? Or talk to the person?”

Stella shakes her head and looks down at her hands again. She can’t stand how these officers look at her.

He tries again. “Did you see anything distinguishing on the attackers? Any clothing logos or something?”

Stella tries to swallow her anger and tears, her shame, and look at this officer. His skin is so young he still has a couple of pimples. He has dark freckles across his nose. Stella has always liked freckles like that, skin sprinkled with brown.

“No just, umm.” Stella pauses, thinks. “Dark, baggy clothes, bomber jackets, I guess. One of them had a long black braid. The others were wearing hoods, black ones. Big dark jackets.” These are all things she said already. She thinks they might be trying to trip her up, like she’s lying about something.

Scott sits back. Christie just sips his coffee again, nearly says, “Ahh,” he does it so loud.

“If you remember anything else, Mrs. McGregor, even if you think it’s not important . . .”

Stella shakes not just her head but her whole body. She doesn’t want to think about it but can’t think of anything else. It runs over and over in her head, a visual echo, the images blending together. The details are getting fuzzy already, blurry black bodies on the white snow. The muffled night outside, the baby crying, crying, crying. Stella’s hushing voice, shh, baby, shh, but she’s watching bodies hunched over something, what is it? What is it? Then they all jump up, suddenly, and they run away. No, not all of them. There’s one. Only one. Lying there, so still, not moving, something, no someone dark and small in the snow.

“Stell? Stell?” Jeff yells as he pushes through the back door. Stella startles and goes to him before he gets louder.

“Hey.” She sees his worried face. She grabs on to each side of his open parka and pulls him to her. She doesn’t know where to start.

“Where are the kids?” he asks, his voice short and scared.

“Your children are fine, Mr. McGregor,” Scott calls from the table. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

Jeff pushes Stella away gently and looks into her face. She nods and falls back against him, crying all over again. The inside of his jacket is so warm. His arms are strong around her, and for a second, they make her feel better.

“There was an incident just outside your property, Mr. McGregor,” the young officer continues. “Your wife witnessed some sort of an assault.”

“Assault?” Jeff asks. He takes Stella’s hand and they sit at the table. She doesn’t want to let go. The officers don’t introduce themselves, but only speak in curt, official-sounding sentences. Jeff nods as they explain. Stella feels cold again.

“Your wife believes it was a rape of some sort.” The young officer says the words as if they are questions. Wife? Rape?

“No, it was a rape. Someone was raped.” She turns to Jeff. “It was a woman, a small, skinny woman.”

Jeff only nods at her and squeezes her hand. He thinks he’s helping.

“Keep in mind, Mrs. McGregor,” the older officer finally pipes in. “We’ve been doing this a long time, and it just doesn’t look like a sexual assault. It seems, unlikely?” He says his words like questions too.

“Why? Why do you say that?” Stella stammers and tries to sound firm, but she doubts herself now. It was so dark, and she is so tired.

“Well, it’s outside for one, in the winter. That’s highly unusual. And there’s a lot of blood which means someone was, well, bleeding.”

“What if she was hurt? Beaten up? Can’t you test the blood or something?” Stella is stammering now.

“I know you’re upset, but let’s think of the facts. There was a broken beer bottle at the scene.” Christie pauses, sighs. “Drinking often means fighting. Blood also means fighting. Sexual assaults don’t usually happen in the cold, outside in winter. It seems . . . unlikely. I know it was probably very hard to witness. It was probably very violent. It’s common to . . . panic.” Christie nods and takes one last sip of his coffee as if to say the conversation is over.

Stella’s tears dry in her eyes, and a familiar rage fills her. She can’t find the right words. They are none that would convince them anyway.

“Well, we don’t know what happened, do we? None of us know for sure,” Jeff tries. Stella sits beside him, still clutching his hand. She can tell he is relieved. She can tell he thinks everything’s okay now.

Since it happened, all she wanted was for him to be here, to comfort her. Now that he’s here, she doesn’t feel better. She feels stunned, and he just squeezes her hand. Not helping. She wants to let go but can only loosen her grip, let her hand go limp inside his. He doesn’t even notice. She looks out the window. The snow’s falling harder now.

What she really wants to do is call her Kookom. She thinks of her, her beautiful grandmother undoubtedly sleeping now in her mouldy but warm basement apartment, just over on Church. Stella wants to go lie there in her wrinkled arms and have her whisper that everything is okay, the way she always did. Stella always believed it, no matter what.

“We’ll let you know if there are any developments.” Christie gets up. “Likely, around here, it’s just some gang violence. I wouldn’t worry about it. Just lock up. Keep yourselves safe.”

Jeff sees them to the door, but Stella stays sitting, seething and staring out at the snow. She hears them half laugh politely, the way white men say goodbye, and it only makes her more furious.

“Oh fuck, I was so worried, hon,” Jeff says as he comes back to her. He wraps his arms around her, comforting, but only himself now. “When I saw the cop car out front. Christ, I have never been so scared.”

Stella just sits there, lets him hold her.

“I know what I saw,” she says after a moment, knowing she only sounds defiant now. Pathetic.

“I know, hon. I know. But maybe,” he pauses, rethinks. “Who knows what the hell that was?”

“I do. I know,” she says, and then lowers her voice so she won’t wake the kids. “I know what I saw, Jeff.”

“I know, I know. But, they’re right, aren’t they? It seems, unlikely.”

“But . . .”

“They know what they’re talking about, Stell. And I mean,” he pauses again, really trying. He sits down beside her, looks her right in the eye. “You know, Stella, maybe you did, like, dream parts of it?” He’s talking in questions now too. “You haven’t been sleeping very well with all Adam’s fussing and teething, right?”

Stella gets up, fuming. She grabs all the stupid coffee cups and takes them to the kitchen, throws them in the sink and starts scrubbing. She puts them in the drying rack and starts wiping the counter. Jeff just sits at the table, waiting for her to talk.

“I’m not crazy,” she says finally.

“I don’t think you’re . . . No one said that. I just think, maybe.” He yawns. She can tell he doesn’t mean to but he does. It is so late it’s early. She had waited hours for the police to come. Waited shaking, thinking they would come at any moment. She was unable to stop cleaning or crying. She should have called her Kookom then. She would’ve been asleep, but she still would’ve answered. Or Aunty Cher, she would’ve been up. Aunty Cher would’ve listened. She probably would’ve come over, made the coffee, yelled at the cops when they started acting like they didn’t believe her. But Stella didn’t do any of that.

Jeff gets up, stands behind her at the sink and pulls her into his arms, forcing her into a hug. She waits until he’s done so she can ring out the wet cloth.

“You were half asleep. And it’s okay. It’s okay. But with your past, hon, you know you could’ve just been dreaming. You could’ve just been confused.”

She breaks away from him and goes to wipe the table. “There’s blood all over out there,” she says over her shoulder as she storms out of the kitchen again. The wind picking up outside, knocking at the old window.

“No one says nothing happened,” he sighs. “It just might be different than you think.”

She doesn’t say anything, just scrubs.

He stands there a moment, in the middle of the kitchen. She refuses to look up, just bends her head as she passes him, and shakes the rag out in the sink.

Defeated and tired, he goes to the bathroom and starts to get ready for bed.

Stella wipes the counter again, prepares the coffee so it’s ready again in the real morning, and tidies the towels. Then she goes down to the basement and pulls the clean laundry out of the dryer and starts to fold.

By the time she gets into bed, the cold pre-dawn grey is coming up. Her whole body aches and her husband is fast asleep.

She thinks about her Kookom again and wants to call her. Her Kookom always gets up early. She would probably be up, making tea and looking out her window, “Watching day come,” as she calls it. When was the last time Stella called her grandmother? It’s been too long. The guilt washes over her. She chills the hot rage with more of her cold shame. But she doesn’t call, she can’t. She can only pull the covers up to her chin and lie there.

The grey light stretches out behind the blinds, but she doesn’t do a thing. Not until she hears her daughter wake up. Then, ready, she springs back out of bed.

( 2 )

EMILY

EMILY HAS NEVER kissed a boy before.

There was this one time, in like grade five, when that Sam kid gave her a peck close to her lips but not on her actual lips. It shouldn’t count, though — it was only a dare that happened after school with everyone gathered around. He had big, bucky-looking teeth and chapped lips. He pushed his lips out, but she turned a bit at the last second so his lips hit her cheek instead. All the kids yelled out like it was a big deal. It left a wet spot but it was nothing, really. Not like a kiss was supposed to be. Emily doesn’t think it counts at all.

Her best friend Ziggy’s never kissed a boy either, but she’s different. Zig is tough and doesn’t care, and thinks the guys at school are all morons. She’s probably right, Emily thinks, but some of them, a few of them, are so, so cute.

Clayton Spence is the cutest of all of them.

Emily is thirteen. She feels ugly and fat most of the time and is positive no one has ever, ever liked her. She pretty much believes that she is repulsive and will never get a boyfriend and never get kissed for real.

She complains about it a lot to Ziggy, or at least Zig complains that she complains about it a lot. But Emily thinks it’s time. Thirteen is time to have a boyfriend, or at the very least, a kiss.

This is what she is thinking about as she and Zig huddle over their binders, and brace themselves against the cold through Peanut Park, trying to get to Emily’s new place as fast as possible. It is so cold they are nearly running. Emily forgot her gloves, again, and her jacket sleeves only cover so much. Her fingertips are red and numb only a block away from school. They are moving as fast as they can.

“Hey Emily,” a voice, a male voice, calls from the old play structure.

Emily startles at the sound of her name. She looks at Ziggy who looks scared too, like she is about to run. But then Emily sees, so amazingly, it’s him.

“Did I scare ya?” Clayton jumps down and walks up to them, his hair bouncing with his stride.

“No.” Emily shrugs stupidly. Ziggy just looks at her like she’s an idiot. Ziggy’s glasses fog up in the cold.

“Don’t lie. I totally did.” Clayton laughs, but not mean. He walks right up and stands there in front of her. He smells like cigarettes, but not in a bad way. “Didn’t mean to.”

Emily thinks Clayton is the best-looking guy she’s ever seen. She said so, when they voted. Ziggy picked Jared Padalecki from Supernatural. But Emily wanted to pick someone she actually kind of knew, someone she could see in person and find out what he smelled like. Clayton is older, had been held back a while ago, so he was fourteen at least, probably fifteen. He has a rough, brown shag of hair above his lip that looks so soft and shiny, and when he grins he shows all his teeth. Clayton doesn’t smile, he grins, and he grins wide. He also has perfect pink lips. Emily’s spent some time looking at him from a distance, but now that he’s right here, she can’t look at him directly. She does notice that he’s tall, but not too tall. Emily is used to being taller than boys, but this is better. He’s just the right height.

She shrugs again, unable to think of something to say that’s not lame, so she just looks at his feet. His runners are untied, brand new, and bright clean white.

“Where ya heading?” He grins. Emily can feel it, his grin. She suddenly doesn’t care that she’s so cold her fingers might fall off, or that Mountain Avenue is still two blocks away. She shivers but doesn’t want to move.

“Just home.” She hugs her binder closer.

“Oh.” He’s still grinning, and somewhere someone laughs. “Hey! You wanna go to a party?” Someone laughs again, louder. It’s a friend of Clayton’s, but Emily doesn’t know his name. Everyone knows Clayton.

“What?” She looks up all the way up at him, flinching.

“A party. You should come to this party.” He seems to talk quickly. “Bring your friend.” He nods to Ziggy, who only looks at him over her fogged-up glasses, no smile, nothing. Ziggy can be so embarrassing.

“K,” Emily says, and then thinks. “Where?”

“On Selkirk,” he says. “Got a pen?”

“Yeah sure.” She opens her binder as quickly as she can, nearly dropping everything in the snow. It makes her heart stop just thinking of everything falling out, all her papers. She would’ve died. She manages to get out a pen, and hand it to him.

“Knew you’d have a pen.” Grin again.

Emily’s cheeks are hot all of a sudden, frostbite and embarrassment all together. It’s a stupid, cold February and her face is probably bright red. She smiles back as best she can, and he gently pulls out her arm and holds it close to his body as he writes across her wrist, 1239. The ink doesn’t come out right away so he goes back over the 1 again. Back and forth he gently rolls the tip on her skin. His fingers are so cold, but he holds her palm gently, lets go too soon.

She turns to go, feeling dumb, and turns back.

“Oh yeah, what day?”

“What day? Oh yeah, I guess any day,” he laughs, “but you should go Friday. Yeah, come Friday and I’ll be there.”

His friend laughs again and calls out, “Come on, Clay. I’m freezing my balls off out here!”

“Friday, K?” He smiles sweetly at her, different than the grin this time. This one is nice. He is so good-looking and nice too. And he wants her to come to a party. “You’ll come, right?”

Emily nods without thinking. She doesn’t say yes, doesn’t find her voice in time, but she knows right away that she isn’t going to miss it. She isn’t going to miss it for anything.

KISSES ARE SUPPOSED to be sweet. They’re supposed to be gentle and full on the lips. Even wet, but just a little. They’re supposed to make you excited and happy, make you forget everything and everyone. Everything becomes before and after that one moment, Emily thinks, and it’s supposed to be perfect.

“There is no way Paulina is going to let you go!” Ziggy says too loudly when they get to Emily’s empty, still full-of-boxes new house. Emily still can’t believe it. She keeps running the scene over and over, trying to remember every little bit so it won’t float away. “No way in hell.”

She’s right. Emily’s mom will never let it happen.

“I could just say I’m sleeping over at your house,” Emily suggests, her fingertips thawing and pinching but the rest of her still so warm. Clayton Spence.

“Pfft, then what are we going to tell Rita?” Ziggy says sitting on the floor and pulling her books out onto the coffee table.

“She’ll be going out too. It’s Friday,” Emily says, feeling brave, looking out the window and thinking, thinking. This will be easy. “My mom won’t check. She’ll be too busy loving up Sniffer at the bar to care.”

Ziggy looks at her sideways. Sniffer is Emily’s nickname for Pete, the guy she and her mom just moved in with. Emily knows nothing about the guy other than he smells like gas from working on cars all day, so she calls him the Sniffer. Zig doesn’t have any sympathy though. “Oh please, Paulina’s not half as bad as when Rita gets a new man.”

“At least your mom never moves you in with them. I mean, can’t you smell it? It, like, reeks of gas like all the time, and I have to live here.”

“At least he has a job. Remember Freddie? He slept on our couch for a month. He stunk too, but like BO and bad breath. I swear he never, like, even left the apartment.”

“Yeah, he was gross.” Emily takes out her books and then remembers Clayton again. It’s like she forgets for just a second and then gets all excited again. Clayton.

“And he was always watching wrestling. I fucking hate wrestling.” Ziggy sneers and looks off.

Emily wonders if her friend is jealous, if maybe Ziggy wanted to get invited out by a boy, too. Zig is totally cute and would be a babe if she just wore some makeup and got rid of her glasses. She always acts like she doesn’t care but she probably does, at least a bit. Poor Zig.

“Wah, you don’t like wahsling?” Emily makes a funny voice to make her best friend smile. They both laugh, at nothing really, forgetting everything, they laugh for a long time.

ONE TIME CLAYTON shared Emily’s textbook in math. That was at the beginning of the year so he probably doesn’t even remember it.

He forgot his book and put his hand up to tell Mr. Bell.

The teacher sighed like he was so put out.

“Can I just share yours?” He leaned over and grinned at Emily.

“S-sure?” Her voice kind of cracked out the word.

“Thanks,” he said, leaning closer, looking at the page.

She couldn’t say anything else. She didn’t even dare to try to talk. She didn’t even really breathe.

“Thanks,” he said again, after he had written out all the numbers. His grin was so infectious Emily couldn’t help but smile back, but she turned away quickly, sure that it was a dumb, too-happy smile.

Clayton stopped coming to class after that. Mr. Bell still said his name for a while but only for about a week. Then it was gone.

Emily missed the sound of his name and always remembered it came between Roberta Settee and Crystal Swan. And then her, Emily Traverse.

“OKAY, SO IF we’re going to do this, we have to think of everything,” Ziggy says, finally coming around. Their social studies books open but not really looked at.

“It’ll be okay, Zig,” Emily says, trying to act cool, trying to feel cool. “My mom wants to go out, I heard her talking to my Aunty Lou about it. She won’t check if she thinks I’m just at your place, and your mom is going to my Kookoo’s gallery thing, right? It’s all good.”

“Still, I want to be back at like eleven, latest, or ten even ’cause it’s all the way past McPhillips so it’ll be a long walk. We have to be so fucking careful! You never know with Reet, she’s like a ninja.” Ziggy adjusts her glasses, and Emily thinks again how good she’d look without them.

“You’re such a chicken about your mom!” Emily laughs and pushes Ziggy’s arm.

“Like you’re any better!” Zig pushes back but smiles too. “You’re only being brave ’cause you’re so hot on Clayton.” She says his name like an exaggerated sigh.

“Shut up!” Em pushes her again.

“Clayton!” Ziggy falls to the floor. “Oh, Clayton.”

Emily smacks at her and laughs. “I’m going to piledriver you so bad.”

“Like you even know what a piledriver is!” Ziggy laughs and Emily sticks her elbow out and smacks it.

“Clayton,” Ziggy cries as she rolls around on the floor. “Oh, Clayton.”

Emily laughs and play fights, badly.

She’s so happy. She knows, she just knows, he’s going to kiss her.

( 3 )

PHOENIX

PHOENIX FALLS UP the snow-packed front stoop and jerks open the screen door. She knew it would be unlocked, but thought, in her last steps that it might not be, just this once. That would just be her luck, wouldn’t it? But nah, it’s open, so she can stumble in to the warmth. Thank fuck.

Her uncle’s house smells like smokes, dope, and old food, but it’s great to her. And warm. Phoenix takes her hands out of her jacket sleeves, and rubs them together, blowing on them to help get the feeling back. They’re raw and red, but she keeps rubbing at them anyway.

Some skinny girl is passed out on the couch, and another is on the armchair. They look like they fell over in the middle of talking and no one bothered to move them or cover them up. One of them snores lightly, her face against her bare arm, drool dripping over an awful rose tattoo and track marks. Fuck. Phoenix can smell the booze from here, that ugly day-after stench. They look pretty rough, even passed out. Most people look so peaceful when they’re sleeping, but these girls just look a little less used up.

No one else is in sight. The house feels asleep. Phoenix hears music coming quietly from her uncle’s room so she knows he’s there. He can’t sleep without music playing, usually old school rock stuff, Aerosmith and AC/DC. Classics, he’ll say with a smack across the head if anyone ever tries to say no one listens to that shit anymore. Phoenix has always liked the music. It reminds her of him, of back when she was small and he was a good kid, before all these other people started hanging around him and he had to get hard.

She’s so fucking glad to be here.

She limps to the disgusting kitchen on her throbbing feet, stumbles into the first upright chair there, and dumps her bag down. Her ears burn. Her face thaws with pinches across her wide cheeks. She pulls off her worn runners and rubs her toes. Her feet have that sting like when they fall asleep and are waking back up. They lost feeling hours ago and became clubs on the end of her legs. She trudged like that through the whole North End for hours. She puts her feet up on another chair. They ache and twitch, and she tries not to move them.

The table is full of takeout bags, overflowing ashtrays, bottles, and empty two-four boxes. She digs through the used cigarettes and finds a long butt. There are five lighters spread out but only one works. She inhales quickly. Her head rages and then goes light. It’s been so long since she had a good smoke. She leans back, takes a look at her surroundings, and tries to think warm thoughts.

The place is a total dump. The counter is all garbage and broken glasses still sticky with booze. A dark puddle hardens on the broken linoleum, and something rots on the stove. That’s what she’ll do, she thinks, she’ll clean it all up before her uncle gets up. He likes when she does girl things like that.

She’s been feeling nice like this lately. Must be all the time alone, she thinks. The Centre was so quiet most of the time. The only other kids there were freaks or fucking suicidal fucks. They don’t put many ’hood rats like her in there. Most of the guys she knows go to youth lock-up. She’s been there, it’s rougher, but everything’s easier in the girl sections. There, the most some bitch’ll do is try to slap you around, or fucking scratch you. Phoenix is a big girl. She’s never had a hard time getting one over and can usually just grab their wrists and pin them. She punches with a closed fist. It’s easy. It’s the guys who are strong and have to really fight, have to worry about getting cut and jumped and shit. Girls, they just fuck with your mind or flay out at you like they’re crazy and can kill you with useless fucking slaps. The Centre was like a kiddie pool compared to lock-up, just a bunch of messed-up kids with too much time on their hands, all depressed and shit. Phoenix has never been that pathetic, not really.

She’s been thinking about her uncle though, about how much she admires him. “Think of someone you admire,” the counsellor had told the group in one of their hand-holding bullshit therapy things. She thought of him, Alex is his name, Alexander, like his dad, but no one calls him that now. Most people don’t even know that’s his name, but Phoenix knows because they’re family. She always calls him Bishop in front of people, but in her head, he’s still Alex.

She also thinks of Clayton, but admire isn’t quite the right word for how she feels about him.

When her feet feel almost normal, still beating like hearts but not asleep anymore, she walks over to the fridge to see what’s inside. Despite all the takeout boxes, there isn’t even a dried-out piece of pizza left. She finds an old box of Chinese noodles in the cupboard, and then a pot she can clean out to boil water. While it heats, she fills old bags with all the garbage, and finds an old not-too-gross towel and wipes down the counter. She picks a couple more long butts out of the ashtrays and then cleans those too. By the time she sits down to eat her noodles, the table is clean. She eats them plain, not wanting to add the gross shrimp powder flavour. It’s the best thing she’s eaten in months.

One of the girls in the living room stretches and groans, and someone moves in her uncle’s room. She hears someone talking. He’s not alone. The light shifts outside the window and gets darker. It’s late afternoon, Phoenix had been out there, walking in the cold, all day.

SHE LEFT THE Centre before anyone was up. It was the best time to take off. They call the guards “mentors” but they’re still fucking guards, and they change shifts at 6 a.m., before anyone is awake. That’s when they check beds and after that, there’s another hour or so before other workers start coming in. Phoenix figured this out early on in her time there, knew it would be the best time to go. Friday was be the best day because it was usually Henry’s shift. Henry was a lazy old fuck who really didn’t give a shit. He’d be passed out in the rec by 6:30. It was a good plan. She packed her bag the night before and kept her clothes on. When they bed-checked her, she had the covers all the way up to her chin and looked asleep. Then she waited, listening at her door for the “mentor” to stop talking about all the useless things that had happened the night before and finally fucking leave. She imagined Henry, nodding like he didn’t give a fuck and just wanting to go back to sleep. He did, and was snoring by quarter to seven, and Phoenix slipped out the front door like it was any other day and she was any other person. They didn’t lock the doors ’cause they liked to pretend they trusted the kids. The door beeped and the pager on Henry’s hip vibrated, but he was fast asleep, and no one else was close enough to notice, even if they did give a shit.

It was a good plan.

But outside it was February, and she had no phone, no money and was somewhere in the goddamn far fucking edge of south St. Vital. She tried to remember which way to go, but she also wanted to stay off the main streets in case they found out too soon she was gone. She wandered through winding streets all morning. They all curved and twisted like they were trying to confuse you. All the white yuppies got out of their fancy houses and into their cars, and glared a little too long at her in her thin army jacket, but didn’t ask her anything or stop. She made a lot of turns, just in case someone called the cops, who would, in this neighbourhood, come pretty quickly, she’d bet.

She found St. Mary’s Road eventually and went into the mall to warm up. Her eyes dripped and her ears felt like they were going to fall off. She ripped off a toque from the dollar store but should’ve grabbed something to eat or collect-called her uncle to come get her. Should’ve, maybe, but she wanted to do it herself and just show up at his house like magic, like she’d pulled it off with class. She wanted him to be impressed, to clap her hand and pull her close like any other of his hardassed friends, like his equal. She wanted him to come out of his room and be surprised, happy surprised, to see her. So she kept going, through downtown, down hard-up Main Street, and all the way up Selkirk to the other side of McPhillips. Across the whole fucking city. She was proud of herself, but fucking sore.

SHE HEARS HER uncle get up and talk loudly in his room, telling someone to get the fuck up. Phoenix lights another butt, straightens her smile, and leans back in her chair, ready to see him and his impressed face.

“Phoenix, what the fuck?” he says, walking in the kitchen, his bathrobe tied up tight, one dark hickey on his neck, and sleep still on his face. It has only been a few months since she’s seen him, but he looks older and greyer in his face, like he’s been smoking too much. He sits across from her and pulls out a smoke from a pack in his bathrobe pocket. He’s only about ten years older than her, but his hair is already falling out, his forehead longer than it was the last time she saw him. His skinny face looks older than the twenty-six it is supposed to be. He looks like a picture she has of their great grandpa. Grandpa Mac, Elsie called him. He died way before Phoenix was born but she feels like she knew him. Grandmère had so many pictures and stories. He was so handsome and funny, she said. Phoenix thinks he must’ve been just like this, like his grandson — Bishop. Alex.

“You can’t stay here, fuck. Your worker was already calling around freaking the fuck out.”

“Why the fuck was she calling?” Phoenix says. “Fucking nosy bitch.”

“Because you walked out of juvy, ya fuck. If she comes here . . .” He points his smoke and a yellowed finger at her.

Phoenix nods at him, wants to smile but doesn’t. She puts out her butt, grabs another.

“Ah fuck, Phoen, that’s some cheap-assed gross shit. Here.” He tosses his pack to her.

She grabs it, and her smile sneaks out. She lights up and takes a long, clean drag.

“How’d you get here?” He leans forward. His face has more wrinkles. He worries a lot, has so many things he’s in charge of now.

“I walked,” she says, steadying her voice the best she can but pretty fucking proud of herself.

“All that fucking way? Holy shit!” He laughs.

Phoenix almost smiles again, but stops, says, “Yeah” like it was nothing, and takes another long drag. Then she thinks and says, “Who was that bitch calling?”

“She called Ang, at my old number,” he spits.

“What the fuck did she say?” Phoenix spits back, shoulders up as if she’s ready to fight her uncle’s ex right there, if she has to.

“Ang didn’t say shit, but fuck.” He shakes his head. “You can’t stay here. I got too much shit going on, Phoen. Can’t have any extra heat right now.”

She nods, knowing Angie, his baby mama, won’t say anything. He trusts her. He still loves her really. Phoenix knows this. She knows he really loves Angie, but she rides him too hard when they live together, and he’s got shit to do. But he pays for her apartment down on Machray, and he buys his daughter the best of everything, name brands on all her clothes. That’s love, thinks Phoenix. Then she remembers why she came and thinks of what she should do. She could maybe stay with Roberta or Dez.

“Got any other place to go?” her uncle says, reading her mind.

“Yeah, I’m good.” She nods and fixes her face like she does when she thinks it’s going soft.

“K, good,” he says, smacking the table. “I gotta jump in the shower.” He gets up like he’s dismissing her.

“You got a phone I can use?” she asks.

He throws her a burner without another word. He doesn’t notice she cleaned up.

PHOENIX GOES DOWN into the basement to dump her stuff and see if she can find any clothes to change into. It’s an old cellar with stone walls and cold puddles on the floor. Her uncle runs a dehumidifier in the corner so that the damp doesn’t wreck all the shit he stores here.

Phoenix drops her stuff in a corner behind a couple of boxed TVs big enough to hide her. She can’t find any clothes, though — only electronics and a bunch of unmarked plastic bins. She gives up on finding anything she needs.

“When did you feel most safe?” the mentor had asked the group yesterday. Grace, that was her name. Tall, thin, and beautiful, Grace was everything Phoenix wasn’t. And rich. Grace had this shiny watch, the kind Phoenix had only seen on TV. If she was a real thief, she would have grabbed it, but she’s clumsy as fuck. So, while all the kids were whining on, she thought of all the ways she could grab that fucking watch. Grace only worked during the day and would never get caught sleeping like some other “mentors.” The watch seemed latched pretty good. Phoenix watched as Grace moved her hands around. Hugging kids and telling them it was all right and everything was okay. Fuck. Stealing it would be fucking impossible, she thought finally.

“When did you feel most safe?” Grace asked, looking right at her. The whole room too, every eye, on her.

Phoenix was too mad to think of anything. She just stared at the beautiful, fucking skinny woman, and sat there with her shoulders hunched like she could push out of there if she needed to. She didn’t say anything, just looked at Grace. Even rich, beautiful Grace knew enough to move on.

The stuff in her bag is still cold even after being inside awhile. Phoenix sets the bag on a box and pulls out a shirt that’s almost clean enough to shake out and put on. She doesn’t look down at her gross, fat body as she does it, just slides off her jacket and slips off one shirt and puts on the other. This one has a bit more room in it. The fucking Centre kept making her eat three meals every day. She got so fucking fat. She keeps everything else on. These baggy pants are the best ones she has, even if they reek. She looks down at herself and tries to smooth out her clothes. She feels huge but better.

She had only a few clothes to bring along anyway. That and a few old pictures is all she had to grab. She doesn’t look at the pictures, but feels around to make sure she has them before stashing the bag behind the bigger box. A couple old tarps and a rag blanket lie wet on the floor, and, thinking ahead, she pulls them over the boxes to dry them all out. She might have to sleep here after all.

It’s a good enough plan.

Upstairs, her uncle has left his smokes on the table. Phoenix smiles because, when no one is looking, he’s actually a really good guy. When they were growing up, he was such a good kid, so good to her. He would take her bike riding in St. John’s Park, would sit her on his handlebars and ride carefully, holding on to her sides and the handles because she was small and really clumsy. Back then, before her littlest sister Sparrow was even born, when he was still Alex, they had all lived together in the brown house across the river with old Grandmère and Alex’s parents, and Cedar-Sage, her other sister, who was just a little kid and always happy. Even her mom, Elsie, was around most of the time. It hurt Phoenix’s bum to sit on the handlebars like that, especially when they rode over the old wooden boards of the bridge, uneven and full of bumps, but she never said a word, just held on, and Alex held on to her, too.

PHOENIX DIALS ROBERTA’S house first but the phone’s not in service. She tries Dez’s phone next, and of course, Dez answers on the second ring.

“Dez, fuck, how you doing?” she says with a hard laugh and takes another drag.

“Phoen?”

She can hear someone in the background, a laugh somewhere behind.

“Yeah, it’s me. How the fuck you doing?” She butts out her smoke and feels suddenly nervous. It’s been six months since she’s seen her girls. She still calls them when she can, but she lost her Internet privileges her first month in. She’s been pretty out of it, really. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, just hangin’.” Dez sounds weird, distant. “What the fuck you doing? Whose phone is this?” Someone in the background says something Phoenix can’t hear.

“Bishop’s,” she says, trying to sneer the words, sound tough. “Ship gave me a burner.”

“Are you out then?” Dez has never been one for thinking or class. The person in the background says something again, sounds like a girl.

“Yeah.” Phoenix sneers better this time. “That Robbie?”

“Yeah, and Cheyenne. You staying there then?” She still sounds weird, maybe just straight.

“Maybe. Don’t know yet.” Phoenix thinks. “Come over. I need some weed.” She says it like the command it is.

“Sure.” Dez rolls over the word and stops asking questions. Finally.

“Hey, you seen Clayton lately?” Phoenix says each word like it doesn’t mean a thing.

“Yeah, like every day. Why?” Dez’s voice is light.

“Just wondering. You should invite him over too.” Phoenix looks down at her gross body and sucks in her gut even though no one is looking.

“He’ll probably be over there anyway. Usually is.”

“Why’d he be over here?”

“Oh. He’s been selling weed for Ship.” Dez said like it was nothing. Like Phoenix should know.

But no one had told her that. It stings a bit, knowing no one told her. She hasn’t been able to get a hold of Clayton for a couple months so it might be real new. She hears her uncle get out of the shower and thinks she’ll ask him later. He never talks about his business, but he might let her know what’s what.

“K cool,” she says to Dez. “Hey, can you bring me some clothes? I got like nothing to wear. Like a hoodie or something, I’m freezing over here.” The girls in the background keep talking. Phoenix wishes she knew what the fuck they were saying. She tries not to get too mad, though. Not right now anyway. Instead, she straightens her spine and takes a deep breath, just like the fucking “mentors” always said to. Fuck. Maybe her uncle will let her sell a bit too, and she can make some money. Her uncle will probably say no because he’s trying to look out for her, like he’s always done.

“Sure,” Dez says slowly, still not sure. “I can find something.”

“Cool. Thanks.” Phoenix nods, even though no one can see her. “See you in a bit.” Her voice is strong again, and she knows they won’t be too long. Dez will bring her clothes and do her makeup, like she does. And then, by the time Clayton gets here, she’ll look like any other girl, ready to party, ready for him.

Yes, she thinks, it’s a good plan.

( 4 )

LOU

GABE LEFT LAST night, like he said he would. Like I knew he would, eventually.

It all felt so anti-climactic.

“Lou, babe, I’m just going to go back home for a bit then,” he said as he pulled his clothes into his backpack. Like it was any other night and he was just going for a visit. Maybe it was. “I can, uh, catch a ride with Lester, but he wants to go tonight. He says it’s going to snow tomorrow, so we, um, gotta get going. Like now.”

“Okay,” is all I said. I sat down because I was suddenly dizzy.

He turned at the door and said, like an afterthought, “And I love you, hey?”

Then knocked on the doorframe for some reason. The sound of it seemed to echo in our room. My room now, I guessed.

I looked up but could only nod in reply.

“I’ll call you later? Like tomorrow?” It was a question he didn’t know the answer to. He didn’t know the new rules any more than I did.

“Okay, good. Baby boy’ll wanna talk to you. Let me know you got up there okay.” I said this looking at the dresser. His stuff no longer messed up the top. He took it all.

“Okay. For sure.”

I knew his for sures didn’t mean what they were supposed to mean, but I was done fighting about them. “Safe drive,” was all I said.

I heard him talk to the boys out in the living room.

“Okay, guys, I gotta take off,” he said, like it was any other goodbye and no big deal. Maybe it was.

Maybe I only want to think we’re broken up for good. Forever.

I listened to him leave but just sat there on the bed. My bed. That somehow felt more empty, too. I sat there trying to feel it. The emptiness. The cold space where Gabe used to be. They say the air gets like that, cold, when ghosts pass through.