Last December (11 page)

And I knew she was right, and I was feeling sick again but in a whole ’nother way, so I just put the rest of the effin’ food into the fridge and stormed to my room and slammed the door just loud enough not to get in any more trouble. And I put my transistor radio on low, put it to my ear, and listened to the rest of the game, and Mike Palmateer was going for a shutout, no goals allowed, in the third period but the New York Effin’ Islanders
scored a goal, and I groaned into my pillow because for me that was almost as bad as losing.

The next day, Sam, I felt a bit better, but I was still kind of shaky and I was still really mad at Ma and she was still mad at me, so we gave each other the silent treatment, not talking to each other all through breakfast, and then she went out without telling me where she was going, and so I decided that two could play that game.

And I didn’t even need to think about where I was going to go. I went straight to the Donut Hole, my legs going a mile a minute, and when I got there, I pushed open the door, and Karen wasn’t there, but Byron was at the tabletop with a couple of quarters on the table, like he hadn’t left since Thursday. And he looked up and didn’t say anything, like he was angry, and he looked really really tired, with bags under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept or had a shower, and I really really wondered if he hadn’t been home in days. And he was just finishing a game, and when he did he just pointed his chin at the quarters like he wanted us to play, so I grabbed two but still looked at him to make sure I was doing the right thing or something.

And he started playing, we didn’t say anything to each other, and when it was finally my turn, I couldn’t concentrate at all because I kept on checking out Byron’s tired reflection in the glass, which made me lose my first man right away, and I guess I was sort of hoping for something to make me feel better, like a lesson from Byron’s School of Higher Learning, but somehow I knew that wasn’t going to happen. And when he was playing, it was like he was sleepwalking (or sleep-playing), but he was sleep
playing really really well, not even eating all four ghosts when he ate the big pellets—he was just chowing through the blue screens like he was on a kamikaze mission but just couldn’t die.

And it was really uncomfortable with him not talking endlessly, so I finally said, “I went to a party on Friday,” and he went, “Oh, yeah. Is that why you took off on me?” and I wanted to say that I saw him on Thursday, not Friday, and that I didn’t take off and that I waited for a long time and that it was him who disappeared, but I was afraid to, and then suddenly he said, “People talk so much bullshit all the time,” and I didn’t say anything, and he said, “Have you ever heard of Sartre?” and I shook my head, and he said, “I didn’t think so. Sartre was an existentialist, and he thought that people who didn’t always always always tell the truth were pieces of crap, anyway, and it’s true, they are,” and it kind of felt like he was talking about me leaving him and stuff, so I just shrugged and kept my eyes on the board.

And he got to Junior on his next man, and there was the Junior song, when Ms. Pac-Man and Pac-Man have a baby, and I thought he might do the signal for the old in and out, but Byron didn’t look up once and it was like his eyes were seeing right through the screen, and finally when the song was over, I don’t even know why I opened my mouth (maybe god with a small
g
does, Sam), but I said, “Um … where do you, like, live?” and he said, “Nowhere,” and then I thought maybe I should just go, but I didn’t, because I was scared to move or do anything, as if he might explode right in front of me.

But he didn’t, he just started talking in this totally dead voice without looking up from the game, which had already started. “I
live at 25 Woodview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in one of those stupid mansions. My parents have old money, so we’re loaded, but we don’t really deserve it. Me especially … When my dad isn’t at the university being all intellectual, he just sits in his office, and if you interrupt him when he’s working, he just looks over his bifocals like he wants to kill you. And my mom’s a pill-popper and a bit of a mental case, like me. I inherited her craziness, which is like a death sentence, you know, it’s like an effin’ death sentence,” and he finally went quiet as he played but his tongue wasn’t going out like usual, and I had absolutely no idea what to say because I didn’t really understand what he was talking about, so I finally kind of murmured, “My mom is having a baby girl … and I guess I sort of don’t want her to, and I made a fool of myself on Friday because I was drunk and puked all over the place,” and he said, “That makes sense … sisters, brothers, parties, booze, life, it all sucks.”

And then I sort of zoned out because I wasn’t getting anywhere with Byron and I was kind of getting more and more depressed, and then I guess my brain needed a distraction because I noticed there was a song on the radio and it was the first time I ever heard it, and I think it was called “Don’t You Want Me?” because it kept on going, “Don’t … don’t you want me?”

“So,” Byron said finally but still in a kind of drone, pointing to the screen as he was getting close to finishing the board, “think of this board as the universe and here I am in the middle of it, and if I turn Ms. Pac-Man left, then that changes how all the ghosts move, and if I turn right, then that also changes how the ghosts move,” and I was thinking about what he was saying, and
it was kind of confusing, because the universe is sort of way bigger and more complicated than the Ms. Pac-Man board, and then he said, “But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter which way Ms. Pac-Man moves and maybe she knows it. Maybe Ms. Pac-Man is tired of living in this stupid board and universe trapped in here doing the same things, eating pellets and just trying to survive, and she’s tired of the bow in her hair, the stupid Junior song, and having her stupid baby and feeling like crap all the time, and maybe one day she is going to just surrender, give it all up for good,” and then he looked up and his lips were wrapped over his big teeth, and he didn’t stop looking at me while the game was still going, and I finally looked down and I watched as Ms. Pac-Man went right straight into Blinky, and then Byron got up without saying anything else and walked out of the Donut Hole.

On my way home, I felt sick to my stomach, Sam, and all I wanted to do was go home and be with Ma for some reason, not even say anything to her, just be with her, and when I got home I saw that she was totally passed out on the couch, and I crept up and looked at her lips twitch a little and I listened to her heavy breathing and looked at her tummy, which was pretty effin’ big. And there was still no way I was going to touch her tummy, but I wished I had X-ray vision again, but for a whole ’nother reason than with Jenny, because I almost sort of still didn’t believe you were in there, Sam. And maybe for the first time just a small bit of me suddenly didn’t mind that you
were
.

I went to the kitchen and I decided that I’d make some dinner for us, so I got out some mac and cheese and started boiling the
water, and it took me ten minutes to finally stir in the powder stuff with milk and melted butter, and Ma was still asleep in the living room, and as I stirred the mac and cheese, I started thinking that maybe I should tell her about Jenny and Byron and maybe everything. And I remember how just thinking about doing that was a total relief.

When the mac and cheese was ready to be served, I went and woke Ma up. “Steven,” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes, “Where did you go?” and I said, “Sorry, I just went to the doughnut shop down the street,” and she said, “Please … tell me where you are going from now on. We really need to keep track of each other,” and even though she didn’t tell me where she had gone, I said, “Okay … Ma, I’ve got a surprise. I made you dinner,” and she made her face kind of wrinkled. “What are you making?” and I said, “Mac and cheese,” and she said, “Oh, Steven, that was sooo nice … but this pregnancy … my taste buds are all over the place. … There are some foods … I don’t know if I can eat—”

“Fine,” I snapped, “I’ll just effin’ eat it, then,” and Ma said, “Watch your language, young man,” and I said, “I’m not going to watch my language, because life and parties and babies and booze and the Leafs and stupid mac and cheese suck the big one, and sometimes, I maybe, just maybe, I don’t want to be … to be … on this board anymore,” and Ma looked at me like I was a complete alien, and then I just went to the kitchen and grabbed the whole pot of mac and cheese threw it in the garbage and went to my room and slammed the door and locked it and then beat the hell out of my bed, and Ma knocked on my door, but I told her to go away, because I was sick and tired of my whole stupid existence.

I know it’s crazy, Sam, but I felt totally different the next morning when I was walking along St. Clair, like I was in a whole ’nother universe, because I had my hands in my pockets and my wet hair was frozen in clumps, like little dreadlocks, and my shoes were slipping on the hard ice, and the thing that was so different was that I suddenly had worry synapses shooting around my brain, and the worry synapses were about seeing Jenny, because I’d made a fool of myself in front of her at the party and after it (I think), and I had no idea how she was going to treat me, and when I got to school I was late, maybe on purpose, because I didn’t want to face anyone, and I had no idea what happened in all the classes before science because Jenny, Jenny, and more Jenny was all I could think about, almost like my brain was drowning in her.

And when science class finally came, I tried to get to class as quickly as I could so that I didn’t run into her by surprise, and I went straight to my seat and got my books out and tried to pretend that my heart wasn’t pounding a million miles an hour, and I kept on looking at the door and waiting for Jenny to come in and it kept on not being her, and then finally she came through the door, and I couldn’t help staring at her, and I kind
of don’t know what I was expecting her to do or say, but I wasn’t expecting what happened.

Perspective

What happened was Jenny didn’t look at me at all. But it wasn’t like she didn’t see me, Sam, because she was effin’ looking every-where else, and I don’t know if you’ve ever played with magnets before but sometimes when you have two magnets and you put them face-to-face, they suck each other in because they are attracted to each other, and you can’t even stop them from doing it at a certain point, but if you flip one of them over and then try the same thing, no matter how hard you try you can’t connect them.

And that’s exactly how my eyes felt, because no matter how hard I tried to connect them to hers, hers would look somewhere else, and then finally I got really really pissed, and I decided not to look at her at all, and I don’t think I heard a word that Mr. Davis said, but it didn’t matter much anyways because he was helping us review for our exam, which I didn’t really need because, as you know, I’m pretty good at science.

Anyways, when lunchtime finally came around, I found Trevor in front of the school, and Alistair wasn’t there and I was totally relieved because I didn’t really trust Alistair. I think he’s what people call a social climber because he didn’t really hang out with us all night at the party, from what I can remember. (I guess there were way cooler people there.) Anyways, Trevor was there with a couple of other guys, smoking cigarettes, but
when I got there, Trevor dropped his finished cig, crushed it, and rushed up to me.

“So … you didn’t score,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded and he whispered, “Jenny’s best friends with Judy, who I’m kind of good friends with, and Judy wasn’t at the party because she wasn’t allowed, but she said that Jenny sort of wanted to, you know,
make out
with you, but you were too out of it, but she thinks you are cute because you talked about your baby sister or something,” and I said, “Baby
sister
? I said that? Oh geez,” and he said, “No, no, this is good, Steven. Jenny’s really cute,” and I said, “Are you sure she likes me?” and he said, “That’s what Judy said. Hey, I think I saw you walking down St. Clair on Sunday,” and I said, “Yeah, I was just going on a, um, walk,” and he said, “Hey … there’s Jenny. Don’t look,” but I couldn’t help myself.

She was coming out of the school doors with another girl, who was shorter and had long blond hair, and Trevor looked away and whispered that it was Judy, and I kept on looking even though I wasn’t supposed to, and I think I even sort of stepped toward her, and so I whispered, “She’s like a vortex,” which, Sam, is this big, swirling thing that sucks in everything that comes near it, and then when they were gone, Trevor punched me in the arm, and he said, “You idiot. Did you just call her the Vortex?” but he said it in a nice, teasing way, like we were friends, and then he laughed. “She totally likes you. … Yeah, the Vortex and Mike Palmateer are in love,” and I looked at him like he was dead meat, and he put his hands up and said, “Okay, okay. Have it your way. STEVEN is in love with Jenny,” and I punched him
back but couldn’t help laughing because otherwise I just sort of wanted to die, in a whole ’nother way.

And this is one of the really confusing things about girls that I still don’t really get, Sam, and maybe you understand because maybe Ma (and me DRUNK talking to Jenny) are right and you
are
a girl and maybe you are old enough to like guys, so you might think I’m being a bit of an idiot, but I guess girls like to play hard to get, which means they basically ignore you if they like you, which is pretty much the stupidest thing ever. So Jenny kept on not looking at me that day and the next day and it was making me crazy, and sometimes I would look at her and some-times I wouldn’t, but it didn’t seem to matter what I did—she just ignored me, like I had some disease. I just couldn’t believe that she liked me, but I couldn’t get her off my mind, and my throat was tight
all the time
, like there wasn’t enough oxygen in my own personal universe.

And I was killing myself because I guess I’d had a chance to score with Jenny after the party, and maybe I could have kissed her or even gone up her shirt or maybe even gone farther, but all I did was fall over and blab on about you or other stupid stuff all night. I know I must have touched Jenny’s shoulder and maybe even her bra strap, even though it was probably through her shirt, sweater, and her coat, so that probably doesn’t count. But then all of a sudden, she wasn’t even looking at me, and there was like this invisible barrier between us. Anyways, I really really didn’t understand why she had to play hard to get, because I don’t think
anyone
has a good time when someone is playing hard to get.
Maybe she was having a good time, Sam, and maybe you know why, but I can’t imagine it being theoretically possible.