Fireball (36 page)

My dad opened his mouth. I knew what he wanted to say. He wanted to tell me I wasn't old enough and how I shouldn't be drinking and a bunch of other crap like that. But he closed his mouth before any of it could come out. He drove along for a few seconds, tapping the wheel with his wedding ring. The turn was coming up on our left.

He put his blinker on.

‘All right,' he said.

62

We hadn't seen much of Bates since the riot. I was kind of hoping that he'd finally grown bored of us. I mean, he'd shut down Julian's party and kicked Chris in the guts a bunch of times and got us both arrested, but I guess all that wasn't enough. Maybe he was pissed off that we hadn't been charged with anything for starting the riot. Or maybe he couldn't help himself – maybe he was like a crazed junkie who couldn't resist coming back for one last hit.

Either way, he turned up at the beach. Our bad penny.

‘What do you know? It's my little heroes.'

It took me a second to realise what the hell was happening. We'd been having that dream about being underwater, and then, all of a sudden, I was awake. I noticed the heat right away, smothering me like a blanket. My throat was so parched I could barely breathe, and my head felt swollen from all those beers we'd been drinking. There's nothing worse than waking up to a hangover in the middle of a scorching hot afternoon – except maybe having to deal with Bates when you feel that shitty.

‘Must be my lucky day, huh?'

I squinted at him. He lurked just out of arm's reach, with one hand resting on his gun as if he expected us to jump up and rush him. When we didn't, he inched closer. He pulled out his nightstick and sort of prodded me in the ribs – like you might poke an animal to check whether it's just playing dead.

‘What are you doing, heroes?'

It was obvious what we were doing.

‘We're lying here, sleeping.'

‘Is that so? What about all these beer cans?'

He picked one up, making a big deal about pinching it between his thumb and forefinger. You know – as if he was afraid of ruining the evidence with his fingerprints.

‘They're not ours.'

‘Oh, yeah?'

‘Yeah.'

I did all the talking. Chris didn't move. He just lay there with one arm draped across his face. At that point, he might have still been asleep for all I know.

‘You think you can just come down here, and drink, and throw your cans all over the beach?' He dropped the can beside me. ‘The big heroes think they own the beach, huh?'

‘No.'

‘Well, that's what it looks like to me.'

I sat and held my head, waiting. Sometimes, if you ignored Bates, you could make him go away. He was like an annoying dog, or a spoiled child – a child with a nightstick and a badge and a gun. He stomped all around us, kicking up sand. His fleshy face slowly reddened and started leaking sweat. Dark patches showed beneath his armpits and down his back. I knew exactly what he was up to. He was looking for a way, any way, to get a rise out of Chris. He couldn't stand the fact that Chris was just lying there, completely ignoring him.

Eventually he noticed the backpack.

‘What's in here?'

He picked it up by the shoulder straps and kind of shook it at us. Totally triumphant. That got the reaction he wanted. Chris sat up. He rubbed at his eyes, which had gone all bloodshot and bleary, and hawked in the sand. He looked even more hungover than me. One glance at his face told me everything. I knew what was about to happen, and I knew that I couldn't do anything to stop it. Karen could have, maybe. If she'd been around.

And if she hadn't fucked Jules.

Chris stared at Bates and said, ‘That's mine. Leave it alone.'

‘You telling me what to do, hero?'

‘Just give me my bag.'

‘Shut up unless you want to spend another night in the slammer.'

Bates tucked the nightstick beneath his armpit and started rooting through the bag. That was when Chris stood up, like a boxer rising out of his corner. He dusted the sand off his shirt, his shorts, his knees. His movements were calm and casual, as if he was entirely unconcerned. I knew better. I could tell by his eyes. The lids were heavy and weighted.

Ready.

He said, ‘Give it back. It's empty.'

‘Empty, huh? What's this, then?'

Bates held up a ziplock bag, bursting with fresh green buds. He couldn't believe his luck. He dangled it like a bell, right in front of Chris's face.

‘That's a lot of marijuana, hero.'

‘It's not ours.'

‘Yeah,' I said, and stood up. I didn't want to sit there while it all went down. I wanted to be ready, too. Just in case. ‘It's not ours, okay?'

Bates said, ‘The same as the beers, huh?'

‘That's right.'

‘Maybe I don't believe you.' Bates stepped up to Chris, so that their faces were only a couple inches apart. ‘Maybe I'll take you down to the station again. How's that sound, hero?'

‘Or maybe you'll sit around on your fat ass, doing fuck all while we try and save an old lady from drowning. Maybe you'll do that instead.'

As soon as Chris said that, all the sound drained out of the world. You couldn't hear the wind in the trees or the waves on the shore or the people splashing around further down the beach. There was nothing. It was like a gun had gone off next to my ear. In the silence all I could see was Bates's face. His features clenched up as if he'd bitten something sour, and his jowls started quivering uncontrollably. He threw the sack of weed to the ground.

Then the sound came back.

Bates said, ‘You're under arrest.'

Instead of using his nightstick, he grabbed Chris's wrist and tried to jerk it around behind his back. That was a mistake. He didn't even see the other fist coming up. It cracked across his jaw – making this sound like a branch snapping. Bates stumbled back, doing a little cross-step to keep from falling over. It took him a couple of seconds to recover. When he finally straightened up, there was blood dribbling down his chin. He stared at Chris as if he couldn't believe it – as if he couldn't believe a kid had hit him so hard. Then he lurched forward and swung his nightstick in this awkward, overhand motion. Chris saw it coming. He blocked, grabbed Bates by the collar, and stepped in close. His fists started moving, too fast to follow. Bates had no idea what to do. It was like he'd walked into a whirlwind. He threw up his hands and tried to turtle, but Chris just hit him again and again and again.

The whole thing only took about thirty seconds.

63

A few months after everything I ran into Karen at the pharmacy. I'd gone down there to buy some of that coconut tanning oil, actually. At first I didn't recognise her because she'd dyed her hair. Blonde. I noticed this hot blonde sniffing all the different perfumes, one by one. I was checking her out when she turned around and nearly bumped into me. It was pretty awkward. We hadn't seen each other since it happened and then, all of a sudden, we were face to face like that. I slipped the tanning oil back onto the shelf. Totally casual.

‘Hey,' I said.

‘Hey.'

She smiled. I smiled. We were both smiling these super fake smiles.

‘What are you doing?' I asked.

‘Buying perfume.' She held her arm out to me. ‘Do you like this one?'

I sniffed her wrist. It smelled too sweet and sugary. I don't know why she wanted a new perfume. Her old perfume – the one that smelled sort of like citrus fruits – had been better than anything.

‘It's okay. Not as good as your other one.'

‘Really? I was just about to buy this.'

‘Don't bother.'

She thought about it, but decided to buy it anyway. I walked with her to the counter.

‘So,' she said, ‘do you want to go get coffee or something?'

We went to this coffee shop across from Parkgate called Bean Around the World. It's not there any more. They've torn it down. A lot of the places we used to go are disappearing: the Hippo Club, the Avalon, our camping spot. For a while they were even talking about knocking down our school, but instead they've just fixed it up and made it unrecognisable.

It's like the city I knew is disintegrating.

Even though the café was only a couple blocks from the pharmacy, we both got soaked. There'd been no rain for months and then there was nothing but rain. Vancouver's bizarre like that. It's either a desert or a deluge – nothing in between.

‘God is this ever going to stop?'

‘I hope not,' I said.

As soon as we got inside, we shook out our jackets and hung them up to dry. Karen ordered a cappuccino and I ordered hot chocolate. I hate coffee. I'd rather drop acid, or put on a turtleneck, than sit there drinking coffee. I wouldn't have even bothered except that it was Karen. All my instincts still wanted to be around her, and it was impossible to say no. We sat by the window and watched raindrops squiggle down the glass.

‘What happened to your face?' she asked.

I touched my cheek. I'd nearly forgotten that it was still all puffy and bruised.

‘I got in a fight with these two guys. They were saying stuff about Chris.'

‘Oh. Did you win?'

‘No. But I tagged them pretty good a couple times.'

She picked at the styrofoam rim of her coffee cup, leaving little marks.

‘You didn't come to the funeral,' she said.

‘How was it?'

‘Oh, okay I guess. His mom was there. And a few relatives I didn't know he had. Jules came, too, with some other guys from your school. It was a nice sermon. Or that's what everybody said. They kept the coffin closed because of how he looked.' She blew on her coffee and took a tiny sip. ‘Why didn't you come?'

‘I hate funerals.'

‘But it was Chris.'

‘He hated funerals, too. He hated funerals even more than me. The last thing he ever wanted was to have a funeral. I'm surprised he didn't tell you.'

She looked at me like she thought I might be joking. It wasn't the kind of thing I normally would have said to her, but then nothing about us sitting there felt normal, either.

‘I saw you on the news,' I said.

‘Was I crying?'

‘No – I don't think so.'

‘I did a bunch of interviews, but I only cried in one of them. I was trying not to.'

‘If you felt like it, you should have cried. But you shouldn't have said what you did.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘About not knowing him super well.'

She looked away. I took a gulp of my hot chocolate. It was weak and sweet, like boiled water sprinkled with sugar. I was only drinking it because it gave me something to do.

‘I think about him a lot, you know,' she said. Then she stopped. Maybe she realised that was kind of a stupid thing to say. ‘I think about how nice he could be, when it was just the two of us. And I think about him in his next life. I bet he'll be something really wild and free, you know? He'll be a wolf or one of those big cats that live in exotic places. Or a whale. He said he wouldn't mind coming back as a whale.'

‘When did he say that?'

‘The night we broke in the aquarium. On the bridge.'

I remembered, but didn't know whether to believe her or not.

I asked, ‘Can you come back as an animal?'

‘Oh, sure.' She waved her hand at the window. ‘You can come back as anything. It depends on what you've done in this life. It can get pretty complicated. I don't understand some of it. My spirit guide knows all the details. He's been really supportive.'

‘You've got a spirit guide?'

‘Well, he's my mom's spirit guide. But he's sort of mine too, now.'

‘Oh.'

I stared into my cup. The hot chocolate was already going cold.

‘But anyways,' Karen said, checking her watch, ‘he's been totally nice about getting me through it. Did you know that all of us have a familiar – like a little sprite – that we can't see? It just hovers near our shoulder and gives us advice about what to do. Mine got really sick after Chris's death. You have to nurture your familiar, and listen to it. Your familiar helps you make the adjustment in your next life. In my last life, I died in Mexico. I was a villager that got shot. It's all political down there. I've also been a turtle.'

‘A turtle?'

‘Uh-huh. I want to be a bird in my next life.' She ran a hand through her hair and glanced out the window. I still wasn't used to her new look. It was harsh tripping me out. ‘Imagine being able to fly. I'd fly all over the city, watching.' She turned back to me and smiled – almost as if she knew how flaky she sounded. ‘What do you want to be?'