Fireball (32 page)

They interviewed Bates on City-TV.

His big, fleshy face filled the screen, all bruised and bloody from the beating Chris had given him. He had two black eyes and a massive bandage across his nose – this super lame bandage that practically covered his entire face. Also, his lips were puffed out as if he'd overdosed on botox. You could tell he'd lost a fight, all right. He looked like a loser. That didn't stop the media from turning him into a hero. They played him up as the victim, this totally innocent victim. According to them, Bates was just a poor cop trying to do his job – a real working class hero. That's the main reason he got his promotion, I'm pretty sure. He's a lieutenant over in West Van, now. Or maybe a sergeant. I don't really know. But basically, thanks to those jerk-offs running the media, Bates doesn't have to bother hassling kids any more. He can just shoot them whenever he wants like all the other West Van cops.

In return, he told the reporters exactly what they wanted to hear.

‘Let's get one thing straight: this kid was dangerous. Unstable. It was only a matter of time before something like this happened. I'm just glad he didn't hurt anybody else.'

I bet that was a big relief to everybody. They can all sleep better at night, knowing that ‘it was only a matter of time'. Chris was volatile, unstable, a lone wolf, a rotten apple, a bad seed. Parents love hearing phrases like that. It helps convince them that this kind of thing could never happen to their kid. Anybody who beats up a cop and steals a squad car has it coming to them.

They forgot to mention his fucking medal.

Not all the reporters were total marzipans. Some of them wanted to show how compassionate they were by telling Chris's side of the story. They were the ones who wrote about his home life, about his dad's accident and his mom hitting the bottle. You know – the ones who decided he was ‘troubled'. That wasn't much better, though. Their version was still just as stupid and simple. That's the problem with the news. You can't cram somebody's life into a shitty little article, or a two-minute broadcast. They can say whatever the fuck they want, but Chris wasn't a nutcase and he wasn't some dysfunctional loser. To me he was just Chris. It would be almost impossible to explain what he was actually like. That's why I didn't bother giving any interviews. Jules and Karen did, but not me. The shit they came up with was pretty nauseating, too. Their parents must have told them what to say ahead of time, because it all sounded harsh rehearsed. Karen's was the worst. They made her pretend that she hardly knew him, that he was just some crazed stalker chasing after their little princess.

And of course everybody assumed it was true.

It wasn't as if I didn't get the chance to do interviews, either. After the cops released me, reporters were practically bashing down our door – especially when they found out I'd been in the car with him that day. Some of them even offered me cash to sell my story. I didn't take it, though. I didn't talk to a single one of them. I would have, if I thought they'd listen to me. But I knew they wouldn't. Not really. I mean, the last thing they wanted to hear was the truth. I'd rather tell it my own way, including all the bizarre stuff that happened to us last summer. That's what nobody understands – it all started that day at the water.

It ended at the water, too.

54

Chris pulled over into the shade on the shoulder of the highway. I opened my door. Falling from the trees were hundreds of those tiny helicopter seeds that twirl around and around and around. They landed on the hood and all over the windshield. One even spun right in the window and stuck to my arm. We sat there looking at each other. The Chinese radio station was playing this mournful acoustic song. Neither of us said anything. I mean, what was there to say? He just held up his hand, palm out, like an Indian Chief in an old Western movie saying hello. Except, in this case, he was saying goodbye. Then my feet found the pavement and I shut the door behind me. He put the car in gear, stomped the gas, and spun back onto the highway, tyres smoking and squealing like pigs being grilled alive. I stood and watched until I was alone, and then I knew that he was alone, too.

After I got out, he called Karen from Bates's phone. He was lonely, I guess. Or maybe he just wanted resolution. It's hard to say. But either way, he called her – which is how she got dragged into it. By then the police knew he'd stolen the car, and they'd started monitoring the line. They even recorded the conversation. When I first heard about that, I thought my dad might be able to get me a copy of the recording. You know – using one of those legal loopholes of his. He tried, too. But apparently those jokers didn't have to reveal any of it.

So I asked Karen instead.

I hadn't seen her interview on TV, yet – the one where she totally sold him out by pretending not to know him. If I had, I doubt I would have been able to bring myself to do it.

‘Karen?'

‘Razor!'

She sounded so relieved to hear from me. Relieved and surprised. I mean, I'd been hanging up on her whenever she called, and now I was phoning her for a change.

‘How are you?' she asked.

‘Pretty shitty. What about you?'

‘Not so good. I can't really eat.'

‘Yeah. Eating's hard.'

At first it felt good to be talking to her. Then I felt guilty about feeling good, so I decided to keep things fairly formal.

‘I heard he called you. From the car.'

‘Uh-huh.' She paused. ‘But I'm not really supposed to talk about that stuff.'

I could tell she was dying to fill me in, though. I knew her too well.

‘It's me, Karen. Nobody else will know.'

She took a deep breath – as if it was an incredibly hard decision for her. ‘All right. But we didn't talk long. And his voice was really crackly – so sometimes it was hard to hear.'

‘Yeah – but what did he say?'

‘Hold on.' I heard some shuffling, and a sound like a door closing, before she started talking again. ‘Okay – first he told me he'd beaten up Jules. But I already knew that. Then he told me about Bates, and stealing the police car. That was when I realised things had gotten, like, totally out of hand.'

I could imagine the way he'd said it, too. Not bragging at all. Just kind of filling her in so she knew where they stood.

‘Then what?' I asked.

‘I told him I wanted to see him, but he just laughed. I was worried he'd get mad at me and hang up, so I didn't say anything for a bit. Neither did he. I don't think so, anyway.'

‘You don't think so?'

‘I can't remember exactly.'

‘How can you not remember?' I was trying super hard not to freak out at her. It wasn't easy. ‘This is important, Karen. These are the last things he ever said. To anyone.'

It took a moment for that to sink in. Maybe it hadn't really occurred to her. ‘Well, I know he said something funny, like, “It's over for us. But what the hell maybe you were just super drunk after all.” Something along those lines, anyways.'

I closed my eyes. For whatever reason, that made me ridiculously happy.

Karen said, ‘I guess he meant…'

‘Yeah. He was trying to forgive you.'

We were both quiet. I could hear her breathing. It sounded shaky.

She said, ‘I keep having dreams about him.'

‘Me, too.'

I wasn't lying, either. I still have them. All the time. In most of my dreams, I don't even know Chris is dead. We're usually just chilling out – biking or swimming or whatever. It's pretty awesome, actually. For a little while I'm okay again. Until I wake up.

‘What do you think it means?' she asked.

‘That we miss him, I guess.'

It was a relief to be able to talk about it. The only person I'd discussed it with was my dad, and he gets a little awkward when it comes to emotional stuff.

Then Karen had to go and ruin it, of course.

‘You know what's really weird?' she said. She'd started whispering, as if we were conspiring together. ‘I'm pretty sure the call came after they said he was supposed to have crashed the car. Isn't that creepy? It's almost like he called me, you know…'

I frowned. What was I supposed to say to that?

‘I've heard that can happen,' she said. ‘When somebody dies they'll contact the person they love the most. Do you think it's possible? That it was his ghost?'

‘No, Karen. I don't think it was his ghost. At all.'

Partly I was mad because it sounded so stupid. But partly I was mad because I wished his ghost had called me instead. It must have known I wouldn't have been home. I mean, I was still walking back along the highway at that point.

Karen sniffled. She might have been crying a little. It was hard to tell. ‘It's nice talking to you again,' she said. ‘We should hang out some time – if you ever want to.'

‘I don't know, Karen. Maybe.'

We never did, though. The next day I saw that interview she gave. In a way, it was worse than what she'd done with Jules. To have been that close to Chris, then turn around and lie like that. I doubt she realised it, but that was the moment she really betrayed him.

55

I've thought about it tons since that day. It's all I think about, really. I've followed the route he took, too. A bunch of times. That's where I crashed my dad's Civic. Not a big crash. A shitty little crash, into the meridian. I was going too fast or something. I wanted to know what it would have been like for him, after I got out. And if you head west along that stretch of highway, in mid-afternoon, the glare of the sun catches you full-on. It was the hottest time of the day on the hottest day of the year – maybe the hottest day ever. In Vancouver, at least. And I'd left him all alone to die.

‘I'm sweating like a pig in here, Razor,' he said.

I like to think he said that to me, even though I wasn't there.

Me, too. Like the three little pigs.

I mean, I'd followed him for so long he must have felt a little lost without me. So he imagined us talking in his head – like on that night we'd played spin the bottle.

‘All three, eh?'

I'm harsh pigging out.

‘What's your favourite fairy tale, little piggy?'

The Little Mermaid. Mostly because of Ariel.

‘Ariel's pretty hot, all right. I wouldn't mind tapping that tail.'

For a few seconds, he had trouble thinking of what I would have said next.

I'm sorry I sold you out, man.

‘You didn't. You got out – that's not the same as selling me out.'

It isn't?

‘Not even, man. Don't ever think that.'

I hope that's what we said to each other, anyway.

Not all the dreams I have are good. Sometimes I dream about him behind the wheel, blazing down that stretch of highway. Except the landscape isn't the same. The pine trees have gone totally grey and lost their needles, and the ground is parched to shit. The ditches are filled with all these rusty cars, like the shells of prehistoric insects, and you can tell that he's been driving for years. The heatwave hasn't ended – it's just gone on and on and on. Chris is the last one left, still keeping it pretty real, racing alone through that wasteland. The engine is screaming and the doors are shuddering and the whole car looks ready to fly apart.

I'm never in the dream with him. It's more like I'm invisible, watching everything happen. And then, out of nowhere, I'll be
in the driver's seat, gripping the wheel – as if I've sort of become
him. I can't actually control the car, but just before I
wake up the dead trees along the roadside start bursting into
flame. They crackle and roar and become this long tunnel of raging fire. That's all that happens in the dream – there isn't any crash or big finale. I don't know what it means, either. Probably nothing, I guess. It's pretty fucked, though.

56

There's one thing the media never found out. They found out almost everything else, by digging around in his life like rabid little gophers. They were relentless. It was as if they wanted to put together a jigsaw puzzle of Chris, to find out why he did what he did. The problem was that none of them had ever met him, so they had no idea what the puzzle was supposed to look like. And if they'd known about this, they would have instantly assumed it was a super important piece – the missing piece they'd all been looking for. They didn't, though. The only other people who knew about it were me and Julian.

‘Let's not tell anybody, okay?'

‘Yeah. Fuck that.'

‘Nobody needs to know.'

I didn't even tell my dad. He would have wanted to find those guys and prosecute them. There's no way I could have handled that. The same went for Chris. And Julian. It wasn't exactly the kind of thing we felt like talking about in a courtroom, in front of eight hundred strangers. I mean, I would rather have poked out my own eyes than tell anybody.