Finding Hope (16 page)

H
ope
had been crying. Her eyes were red and puffy. She walked out of the school with her hands stuffed into her pockets, hunched over, like she wanted to curl up into herself and disappear.

She didn't say anything to me, but the gates slid open and we were together again. No barrier between us.

I gave an awkward laugh. “They let you out.”

“Only for an hour,” she said, her voice quiet and small. “There's a grocery store a couple of blocks away.”

I knew the place. A mom-and-pop joint with tiny shopping carts whose wheels twisted spastically. Bars on the windows and a sign that said
NO PUBLIC TOILETS
. I'd lifted a tin of tuna from there for me and Storm to share.

“The place you're staying, is it close?” she asked. A breeze rustled through her hair, swirling her ponytail behind her.

I cracked my knuckles, shaking my head. “I don't think you want to see it.”

“That's the deal. The money is for food and I see where you live.” Her face was serious, stern.

A silent, body-shaking groan rolled through me. “Why are you being such a bitch about this?”

Tears welled in her eyes, and her face flushed. Had she been crying because of me?
Fuck
. I didn't want this. Her pity or blame, or whatever emotions were going to roll through me when I looked at her.

I just wanted some cash. And, actually, some food wouldn't be so bad either. Once I was sober, the constant, gnawing hunger was exhausting. “Okay, okay, you can see the place. But I swear, Hope, if I find out you told Mom, or if you come back, I'll fucking leave. You will
never
see me again.”

She took a deep breath and nodded. Why did she want to see where I crashed? For proof of how far I'd fallen? Anger swelled in me. She was stabbing needles into my eyeballs, forcing me to show her the flophouse. And I was willing to do it for twenty bucks.

“When did you get here, anyway?” she asked.

I snorted. “Don't know. Few weeks ago, I guess. Maybe less.”

“Why'd you come to the city?”

Her questions set my teeth on edge. I didn't owe her an explanation. “Just needed a change,” I said quietly, my voice tight with the memory of the pharmacy, the shrill blare of the alarm.

I thought seeing Hope this afternoon would be like old times, me and her. But she was ruining it with her interrogation. She'd left the bars of the school behind, but there was still a wall between us. She was guarded and didn't look at me, kept her head down, staring at the sidewalk.

“How's that school? You like it?”

Her chin quivered.

I frowned. An old protectiveness rose in me. “What happened?”

She shook her head, refusing to talk.

Two could play this game. “I'm not taking you to my place unless you come clean with
me
. Is it the other kids? Do you miss home? What?” It was a relief to turn the focus away from me, the fuck-up brother.

A few tears leaked down her cheeks, but she wiped them away. She had on black mini-mitts, the stretchy kind that made her hands look like small and rounded, like a kid had drawn them on. “I did something really stupid.” Her voice broke. “I screwed everything up.”

Without thinking, I put an arm around her shoulders, but she stiffened, so I dropped it. “What'd you do?” I asked. “Come on, you can tell me. It can't be as stupid as stuff I've done.” Trying to make her laugh. It worked. A wry laugh interrupted her sobs.

She considered telling, I could tell, but then shook her head. “It's too humiliating,” she whispered. “I can't tell you.” She pulled away from me.

What could she have done, my little sister? Cheated on a test? Pissed off a teacher? Said something nasty about another girl? Her repertoire for bad behaviour was pretty slim.

“Did I tell you I have a dog?” I asked, changing the subject. “Storm. Found her on the side of the road. She's getting big now, but when I found her she was only a couple of weeks old.”

Hope wiped her eyes and looked at me. “You always wanted a dog.”

“She's smart. Already housebroken. You'll get to see her, when you come by the house.”

She didn't say anything, just trudged ahead to the grocery store at the end of the street and went inside.

I pushed the cart though the aisles. It whined, one bum wheel wobbling, fighting me on the corners. Hope pointed out things I used to eat. Kraft Dinner, canned ravioli, sandwich meat. It all looked foreign—packaged and contained. It wasn't real. Whatever was behind the labels was just fake shit. What was real was scavenging, digging through garbage in a treasure hunt, working for a meal and eating whatever I found.
That
was real.

“Fucking cart.” The wheel jammed when I tried to turn. I crashed into a bin of tuna, the cans rattling in their wire cage.

“Here, let me.” Hope's hands appeared beside mine on the handle. Small and delicate. Next to hers, my hands looked massive, cut and scratched. The wound on my hand was still unhealed; the scab dark red with crusty edges. My fingernails, dirty, yellowed, and too long. I stuffed them into the pockets of my jacket and followed behind Hope like a scolded child.

Down the cereal aisle. Boxes of Corn Pops with NHL players taking slapshots on the front. Hope's eyes fell on the box with my favourite player, Darren Risk. She grabbed for it, but I told her no and put it back on the shelf, walking past the boxes quickly. I wanted to swipe them off the shelves and stomp on his face. Watch the Corn Pops explode out of boxes as I pummelled Darren's face to cardboard mush.

“Don't you miss it?” she asked a second later. Like the question had been weighing on her.

I shrugged. Hockey and Coach Williams were intertwined. Thinking about one meant thinking about the other. And without something to take the stabs of pain away, I didn't want to go there.

She pulled something out of her pocket. A piece of paper. My own handwriting.
Coach Williams
scrawled all over it twenty times. At the top, Hope had written a phone number and address. “There was only one Duke Williams in the phone book.”

My heart thudded to a sharp stop in my chest, like someone was squeezing it.

He didn't want me to call him Coach when we were together. Then, it was
Duke
. He liked to hear me say it out loud when he was—

Bile rose in my throat.

“His name was in your notebook, over and over.”

She'd misunderstood. I hadn't written it because I missed him, or wanted to see him again. I'd written it to excise the demons in my head, the ones that appeared at the thought of him.

And now, I had his number. His address.

“I called him. He said he'd like to see you. He meant it, Eric. I could tell.”

She could tell?
I fought for control. Not to run from the grocery store and keep running till my legs gave out, the bones liquefying with exertion.

“You talked to him?” I kept my voice even, but inside, I quaked. Split in two. The day he'd left Lumsville he'd texted me to say goodbye. “You're a special kid,” he'd added at the end.

I was on meth by then, using it to lose myself, to feel better about who I'd become.

“He was surprised you were in the city. Thought you might have gone to a farm team this year. I”—she broke off—“I didn't tell him everything.”

Like she was protecting me. And then she gave me a small, hopeful smile. “Do you think you'll call him?” she asked.

I stuffed the paper into my pocket. My mouth dry and my body screaming for a hit.

 

H
e
kept his promise. After the grocery store, we walked to the house he lived in. I stared at the outside of it and wanted to cry for him. Peeling gray paint, a roof that sagged with missing shingles. It looked like it was going to collapse on itself. The yard was scrubby with weeds and garbage. Plywood, covered in graffiti, hid the windows.

A guy walked by pushing a shopping cart loaded down with green garbage bags. Layers of clothes and a full beard concealed his body and face. I shuffled out of the way so he could pass. I held my breath but still caught a whiff of his urine-soaked clothes. The smell made me want to puke.

“Oh.” Eric winced. “Shit. I forgot to get dog food for Storm.” He looked at me. “She'll be hungry.”

He didn't have money to feed himself, but he wanted to buy food for his dog. It made me shake my head. And then I caught myself, falling for his tricks.

“I don't have any more cash, Eric,” I lied.

His mouth twisted into a scowl. “Did I ask you for any?”

I steeled myself for a string of abuse, but it didn't come. His shoulders stiffened with the effort.

My feet wouldn't move off the sidewalk. What would be inside? A stained mattress on the floor of his room? Junkies sleeping off their high? It was like the flophouses on the cop shows Dad watched.

Eric had already moved to the front door, expecting me to follow him.

“Eric,” I called from the front steps. “Here, take the groceries. I'm going back to school.”

“I thought you wanted to see inside,” he said, a hint of “I told you so” in his voice.

I shook my head. “I can't. I told the school I'd only be gone an hour. I'll get in trouble.” I couldn't bear to go inside, to have images of this house burned into my memory. To know this shithole was where my brother lived.

Maybe he saw the house through my eyes, catching a glimpse of my disgust. “I'm not going to be living here forever, you know.” He narrowed his eyes defensively. “It's temporary.”

“Mom's worried about you.” I waited for a reaction, the inevitable explosion.

His face went cold. He stared at me.

“I promised her I'd let her know if I heard from you.” I bit the insides of my mouth to keep from saying more.

He was across the yard in three steps, breathing in my face—hot, tangy, rancid. I flinched, cowering from the smell. “You fucking tell her and I'll disappear! You will never see me again. Ever!”

“Why?” I took a step back. “She just wants to know you're okay.”

“NO!” he yelled. The tendons of his neck bulged. “You don't know what you're doing, Hope. You think you do, but you don't. Coach Williams, Mom—leave them the fuck out of my life.”

“She told me what you did, why you left. Maybe if she knew you were sorry—” I hadn't finished talking before he was in my face, my arms mashed in his grip, squeezing so tightly it took my breath away.

“You don't know the half of what I did. You, Mom, Dick—none of you know shit about me, but you walk around pretending, like I could have been something.”

I'd started to cry, terrified by his rage. “You're hurting me,” I whimpered. The meth had wasted the fat from his body, but his muscles were still there, his grip still strong, bruising my arms.

His body trembled and he let go but grabbed my chin, twisted it around so I faced the house. “You see this?
This
is where I belong.”

I shook my head. “No, it isn't.” His fingers jammed my cheeks against my teeth. I could taste warm, metallic blood in my mouth.

“You know what Coach Williams told me once? That we get what we deserve. I thought he was talking about hockey, about trying hard, working for something.” Spittle flew out of his mouth as he spat the words at me. “He wasn't talking about hockey,” he hissed in my ear.

“Yo! Calvin!” A voice from the house. Eric's hands loosened. I shook him free and stumbled away from him. “What're you doing?” A guy had appeared on the front steps. He had long hair, his face hollow like Eric's, as if all the fat had been sucked out, leaving just skin and bones.

Eric froze. “I was just …” He stammered for an explanation. I didn't wait to hear what he said, or to find out why the guy called him Calvin. I took off, running back to school, putting as much distance between me and Eric as possible.