Finding Hope (2 page)

 

A
t
the spray pad, kids shrieked, wet hair matted against their heads. The air was heavy, with the promise of a storm on its way. No one would complain. We needed a good downpour, Mom and Dad agreed. The flowers had started to wither in the beds, the soil parched and cracking with fault lines.

I watched as two girls from my grade, Shauna and Leanne, giggled with some boys. Both of them had a roundness to their bodies, an extra layer that made them voluptuous. At fifteen, I was still as scrawny and prepubescent-looking as a twelve-year-old. With the attitude to match. Girls in Lumsville cared about parties, boys, who they could score pot off of. I was like a reverse magnetic attraction, repelling those “good times.” I wanted no part of it.

Parents sat on the other side of the spray pad, watching their kids from picnic tables and throwing dirty looks at the squealing girls with their too-small bikini tops and jiggling flesh. The boys from school looked on appreciatively, jockeying for a better view, a closer angle. I had to look away. Even outside, I was on the outside.

The smell of pot wafted over. Like in any town where boredom was the number-one export, weed was easy to get here. I remembered the first time I saw Eric high. The telltale scent clung to him as he collapsed beside me on the couch, a goofy grin on his face. I didn't know what high looked like, but it was unsettling to my eleven-year-old self. He was talking and laughing like he was someone else.

That was how it began for Eric. From pot he graduated to meth, and anything else floating around Lumsville. A drug sucker-fish. An addict.

In moments of sobriety, he warned me not to start. He wanted better for me. I just wanted my brother back.

 

 

T
hunder
rumbled. The storm hadn't hit yet, but there was static in the air. Like something heavy was about to be dropped. I needed a place to go, hide out till it passed.

Saturday night. Hope would be babysitting for the Kellers. Not like her friends, Shauna and Leanne, who I saw at parties sometimes, or in the park. They ignored me, turning their lips up in a sneer, like I was dirty. Like they were fucking
embarrassed
by me. I'd known them since they were five and now they acted like they were better than me.

The back door at the Kellers' house was locked. I gave it a jiggle. The glass in the window rattled. Air conditioning. All the windows were shut. How good would a cool blast of bottled air feel? God, to be cool for ten minutes. I hopped on the spot. My body felt electric, a current running through me, shooting out of my toes. Meth made every nerve come alive. I wanted to dance, run, twist, and jump; all the energy hidden when I was sober crackled when the drug was in me.

I knocked. “Hope!” I yelled. The kitchen lights were off. I waited, bouncing. Knocked again, pressed my nose up to the glass, peering in. My face squished against the glass, breath hot and foggy. And there she was, standing in the doorway.

My little sister. Small. She still looked like a kid: gangly arms, long, brown hair, too-white skin, and knobby knees like a stork. A thump in my chest when I saw her.

She took a breath, her mouth hardened with determination. In three steps, she was across the kitchen, the lock clicking open.

“Hey,” I said, low but jittery. The electricity was still firing through me, like a pinball let loose.

“You can't come in,” she said.

“Nah, I know. Can I crash somewhere? It's gonna piss down soon.”

“Wait here.” She disappeared, small feet beating a trail somewhere I couldn't follow. And then back. The sky flashed with sheet lightning. A moth beat its wings against the porch light. “You can sleep in the garage at home. I'll bring you food in the morning.” She passed me the key for the garage, spinning it off her keyring. A blast of AC hit me, I breathed it in. The hot and cold clashed. Electricity zipped over my skin. “Did you eat?” she asked.

I grinned at her. My teeth felt huge, gargantuan in my mouth, like a horse's.

She left the door open, and I stuck my head in, rolling it around in the cool air, feeling it shrink, like my dick in cold lake water.

A few slices of pizza, limp, heavy with shiny cheese and pepperoni, on a paper towel. “From Luigi's?” I asked. We used to order from there all the time, or the whole team would go after a game.

Before. So much life had happened before.

She nodded, and I couldn't remember what she was nodding about. I just took the pizza, pocketed the key in my pants, and tripped off the back steps.

 

I
heard Dad's car roll up and looked at Mom, wide-eyed. He was supposed to work late on Wednesdays. What was he doing home so early?

Mom moved her mouth soundlessly, like a fish. Eric was at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich, drinking a glass of Pepsi, bubbles percolating up past the ice cubes. He was in no rush.

She went to the kitchen window, looked out. Dad would be in the garage, puttering, making his way into the house. She bit her lip, chewing off dead skin. “I could pack that up for you,” she offered, stressed now.

Not much riled Dad. He was mellow, liked to sit in front of the TV and watch real-life cop dramas. But he'd had it with Eric. And Mom had promised she wouldn't let him come over anymore. “Tough love, Ev,” Dad had said gently, urging her to agree. “It's for his own good. The only way he'll hit rock bottom is if we let him.” That was months ago, before we knew what kind of a monster Eric's addiction would turn into.

“It's my house too,” Eric mumbled.

“No, it's not.” Firm Mom. It took all her strength to say it. “Not while you're using.”

Eric stood up fast, the chair bucking away from him. His eyes flashed.

“Shush!” she calmed him, trying to placate, keep the peace. “Don't.”

In my head, words formed a poem, aligning themselves.

Do not.

Use.

Yell.

Come back.

Leave.

Dad was walking up the path to the house. It was his sore neck that had brought him home early: occupational hazard for a mechanic. He was rubbing it, squeezing the muscly, hard flesh. Mom would be coaxed into rubbing it for him while he watched TV later. He'd moan with relief as her hands kneaded it like dough.

“Hiya, Dick,” Eric said before Dad was even all the way in the kitchen. I winced. Used to be
Dad
, sometimes
Richard
. Now it was
Dick
.

Dad looked at Mom, eyes narrowing, nostrils flaring. He ignored Eric. We stood like a stage play, each of us hitting our mark. I stayed mute, escaping in my head with a poem.

The daffodil curtains

Flutter in your wake

Sunlight beams penetrate

Fading fabric

Glowing with creature comfort

To announce your arrival.

I wished I had a pen and paper so I could capture the words before they flitted away like smoke.

They all started talking at the same time. Mom, apologizing to one but meaning it to the other, Dad railing against her enabling Eric. Eric, mad as hell at everyone.

But not me. Please, not me. I backed out of the room. No one would notice.

Their raised voices reached a crescendo. One door slammed, then another. There were angry, tearful words from Mom and more yelling.

Digging in my desk, I found a pen and jotted down the words, letting my mind roll over them, like they were a delicious bite I didn't want to let go of. I created that. Before, there was nothing, shapeless ideas floating in the air. I brought them together. I had power over the words, they bent to my will.

They would end up on my wall. Tacked, layered over another one.

A patchwork of poetry in my now-quiet house.

 

W
here
did it begin? In lucid moments, when I wasn't jangling for want of a fix, or high, I'd remember, trace it back like a tangled ball of yarn.

The pot was for fun. Me and the guys, hanging out. Then Matt's older brother brought some other shit, stuff for us to try in the basement.

God, the first time that shit went into my body, I felt like I was flying. Nothing could touch me. Everything in my life made sense, was exactly the way it was supposed to be.

All the heat and anger that boiled in me when I was sober, disappeared on meth.

Hockey was gone, done. It didn't matter what I put in my body. It was an empty vessel, something to be used. And it felt so fucking good.

When I catch my reflection in a window or a washroom mirror, it takes me a second to process who it is staring back. My own face freaks the shit out of me.

Hair: unwashed, flat with grease. Scabs on my face, smudges of black under haunted eyes. Gaunt, skeletal, ears and teeth that stick out because the rest of my face isn't big enough to support them anymore.

Something crinkled in my pocket. I hoped for money, a forgotten five-dollar bill, but it wasn't, it was one of Hope's poems.

Remember the swings

Flying up

Never landing

Stomach floating and dropping

You'd push me

Higher.

I never wanted you to stop.

Now I say

Stop.

Sometimes when I read them, they made me cry. Because she still knew me. She hadn't given up.

I plod. Walking from one park bench to another, hiding out by the tracks, in a thicket of trees. I had my spots. Most of the day, I slept anywhere. I got kicked out of places where they used to know my name. Used to fucking bang on the glass at a game, shouting my name!
“Give 'em hell, Eric!”
Roaring when I scored, top shelf in overtime on a breakaway. Teammates clobbering me with jubilation. Everyone knew my name then.

Today, I was hanging out by the grocery store, sitting on the sidewalk. A song ran through my head. “Good Old Hockey Game.” I muttered the few words I remembered. This was how I spent my days. Sleep, plod, sit. Get high. They stretched one into the other. Didn't know what day of the week it was most of the time.

Someone stuck a fiver in my face. I didn't look up, but saw her old-lady shoes beside me on the sidewalk. The beige kind, with thick rubber soles. “There's a lunch special on at the diner today. Tell them Gertie sent you.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, crumpling it in my hand.

I couldn't look up. Didn't want to see her face, the pity or disgust on it. I didn't even want her money, given with a condition: food, not drugs.

The lyrics to the song came all of a sudden, like a thunderclap in my head.
Now the final flick, of a hockey stick, and one gigantic scream: “The puck is in! The home team wins!” At the good old hockey game.
I started laughing, cackled like a crow, I was so happy I'd figured it out. From the corner of my eye, I saw the old-lady shoes take off.

Five bucks was enough to score me a high.

I started walking to Tyler's place, an old shed outside of town. The dusty road stretched out till forever in front of me. If Tyler was cooking, he'd let me crash there and keep him company. Maybe spot me a sample too. Reason enough to keep plodding.