Stones (2 page)

After that, my love life went pretty much downhill.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like girls or couldn’t get along with them — Rosie Tulipano was one of my best friends until she moved away. It was just that I could never figure out what they wanted. I dated once in a while, but nothing long-lasting came of it. I envied guys who smirked casually in the presence of adoring females, confident in their attractiveness, who moved with easy grace and cracked jokes at will.

There was that one time when I was in grade ten, when I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Candy Rowe accepted me as her boyfriend. I couldn’t understand why she picked me, but I wasn’t going to ask any questions. Candy — yeah, that was her name — was curvy and always smelled of make-up and mints. She spoke with breathy exaggeration, flipping her long hair for emphasis.

She hung on me like ivy on brick, insisting that we meet in the hall between classes, where we’d lean on each other, holding hands, nuzzling and kissing, until the bell went — or until a teacher came along and lectured us on “appropriate behaviour.” It was after almost a
week of this bliss that Candy dumped me. She had been using me to make her former boyfriend jealous. He was one of those jocks whose neck was wider than his head, and student council vice-president. When he came back to her she tossed me into the trash like an empty shampoo bottle.

Talk about a confidence destroyer. I guess my clouded mood was obvious even to my parents.

“What’s the matter, dear? You look kind of blue,” my mother said.

“Oh, nothing.”

“He probably got dumped,” Dad quipped.

“As a matter of fact, I did!”

“Gareth, sometimes you can be so insensitive,” Mom said.

Dad’s face fell. He held his hands out, palms up. “Sorry, Garnet. I was only kidding. I didn’t — Um, maybe I’ll just go see what’s on TV tonight,” he said lamely, leaving the room.

Mom shot him a disapproving look as he passed. I stirred my tea some more.

“So, what happened?” Mom asked gently. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I did get dumped. Again.”

“I see.”

“I just wish that I was attractive,” I said, “like some of the other guys.”

Mom took a sip of her tea. She seemed to be thinking something over. Then she said, “You don’t know, do you? You really don’t.”

“Know what?”

“You
are
attractive. No, no, don’t give me that look,” she said quickly. “I know what you’re thinking. ‘This is the part where Mom comes along and boosts my flattened ego by telling me I look like a movie star.’ But it’s the truth. You’re not a movie star, but you’re a good-looking young man. You’re tall, you have a nice face, and you have a cute butt.”

“Mom! For —”

“Okay, okay. Sorry. It’s the truth, though,” she added. The corners of her mouth rose in a devilish smile.

“You’re prejudiced. You’re my mom — you have to say that. If you’re right, I wouldn’t be such a loser with girls.”

“You want the truth, Garnet? There’s more to it than looks. You are attractive, and you’re a nice person, but you’re kind of shy. You hold back. And girls, well, most of them, the ones your age, are drawn to boys who are, or seem, confident and self-assured. Girls mistake that
quality for inner strength. Confidence and strength are sexy.”

The conversation was a little embarrassing, but I thought over what she had said for a few minutes. It seemed to fit. Most girls at school went after the jocks, the jokers, the rebels — the ones who seemed to know what they were doing. I had never thought about how I must appear to other people, never looked at myself from someone else’s point of view. Who was this guy, Garnet Havelock, and what was he like? I wasn’t too happy about the answers that came to mind.

Although I had been a problem student for my first three years, I wasn’t a rebel, a guy who got busted for smoking up in the washroom, for fighting or stealing someone’s wallet from the locker room. I wasn’t an athlete, that was for sure. And, although school was pretty much a joke to me, I wasn’t a joker. Why would anyone be attracted to me? I was like a shadow.

“I guess I’m kind of a nice guy, but a goof, like Dad,” I said, meaning nothing negative.

“Don’t kid yourself, Garnet. Your dad is one sexy man.”

“Dad?
”

“Yes, your Dad. Haven’t you noticed the way women — well, stupid question, of course you haven’t. But women find your father very attractive, for all kinds of reasons, believe me. And you have a lot of his qualities.”

I laughed. “Including a cute butt?”

“Now you’re getting it. Listen, Garnet. Try not to be discouraged. Don’t chase after empty-headed females who get all twittery when a football player walks by. You’ll do okay. Just try to be patient.”

After Candy, I guess I became cynical, in spite of Mom’s attempt to buck me up. I didn’t trust girls, or my own feelings for that matter. And the more I thought about it, the less I believed in love. At least, that was what I told myself. The relationships on TV and in the movies always seemed brief and intense and entirely physical, a kind of mutual exploitation. The people “loved” each other — for a while, anyway — but they didn’t seem to
like
each other. Their idea of commitment was “as long as it works for me.” And at school it was “as long as you make me look good.”

The whole thing was too confusing.

So I wasn’t exactly thrilled when Mr. Paulsen, our English teacher, announced the weekly Great Debate topic. Resolved: that love at first sight is a hoax.

“What does hoax mean?” someone shouted.

Paulsen was a nice guy but not too good at controlling a class.

“Ask Garnet,” someone else said, getting a laugh.

“A con, a scam, a deception,” I said.

Ordinarily I didn’t care what the resolution of the debate was. I barely paid attention during those times, preferring to doodle in my notebook or draw furniture designs or read a novel. But this time I was to be one of the speakers. It was my turn. And I needed the marks.

“Garnet, you and Randy are pro,” Paulsen shouted over the noise.

Well, it could have been worse. I had to prove that love at first sight was phoney. I could have ended up con, trying to argue that love at first sight was real, and I was probably the last person in the universe to believe that.

Love at first sight — what a crock. The whole notion had probably been dreamed up by some tenth-rate dramatist back in the old days, some loser with a quill pen who needed to move the story along quickly and was too lazy or unimaginative to develop a believable love affair between his characters. So he wrote a scene where the man and woman catch sight of each other across a busy street or a crowded drawing room and BANG, they’re in love. Sure.

There were all kinds of things wrong with the scenario. First, how could you love someone you didn’t know? You’d be completely ignorant of their personality. Maybe you just fell head over heels for a total bore, a real snooze-monger whose idea of excitement was reading the fine print on an insurance policy. Or maybe you were dazzled by a serial killer — how would you have known? — with the smell of his latest kill in his nostrils and blood on his hands. Or you were all hot to give your heart to this stranger but nobody told you she liked the same gender you did.

Second, love at first sight had to be strictly physical, but everybody said that love was more
than that. How could it be, if you fell in love without speaking a word? I didn’t buy it. Love at first sight was all fairy-land and movies and bad novels with pictures on the cover of nurses gazing into the eyes of firm-jawed doctors.

I believed in logic, reason, science, hard fact — which was why I disliked poetry. I read a lot, non-fiction and fiction (but never romances). I wanted a good story, or information, not dreams and gooey sentiment about moonlight and fields of flowers and Gee, isn’t that a lovely sunset.

For the debate, the difficulty was to get my thoughts in order so I wouldn’t make a fool of myself — I hated talking in front of others — and maybe I could salvage my English mark.

chapter     

B
ut what about Romeo and Juliet?”

“What about them?”

“Well, it should be obvious, even to you. They fell in love at first sight. At the Capulet party. And later they were married by Friar What’s-his-name. So, if they experienced love at first sight, it must be real. They’re famous.”

André, a skinny straw-haired guy, sat down, bathed in background noise, looking pleased with himself. Randy jumped to his feet again.

“Not so fast. Juliet was fourteen, and Romeo wasn’t much older. You can’t build your argument on the actions and feelings of two bone-headed teenagers who ended up dead through their own stupidity. Besides, they weren’t real. They’re characters in a
play
. We’re debating real life here.”

Randy dropped into his seat, accepting high-fives from the guys around him, preening like the only rooster in the barnyard and playing with the rings in his ear. The two sides flung insults at each other. A paper ball sailed across the room and was batted back to its owner. In the clamour, the classroom door opened and someone slipped in. I paid no attention. I was psyching myself up.

“Garnet, your turn,” Paulsen shouted. “The rest of you, pipe down!”

I got ready to slay them with logic, knock down their arguments like bowling pins. No sticky romantic mumblings or passions of the heart. Clear thinking. In my room the night before, it had sounded good.

“Mr. Speaker,” I began with a squeak. Someone laughed. I cleared my throat. “Mr. Speaker, this is simply a matter of sound logic, a quality which my opponents have never heard of.”

Hissing and catcalls from the opposition. Cheers from my side. Paulsen liked it when we sounded arrogant.

“All of us here today, even my opponents, with their diminished mental capacity, would agree that true love is both physical
and
spiritual. Now, love at first sight is, by definition, love
without knowledge of the loved one’s character. The lover does not know the other person’s interests, hobbies, likes and dislikes and so on. Romeo, to use Andre’s example, fell in love with Juliet from across the room. For all he knew she could have been insane, a thief or, for that matter, a lesbian.”

An uproar. Groans and giggles from both sides. Paulsen shot me a harsh look, then tried to quiet the class down.

“Since he had never so much as spoken to her,” I went on, “his so-called love for her must have been based on physical appearance alone. Obviously, the same goes for her.”

I paused for dramatic effect. “And, since true love is, as I have said, physical
and
spiritual, Romeo and Juliet could not have been experiencing true love. What they felt was lust. They wanted to get inside each other’s clothes. Period. The spiritual element was missing.”

The hubbub swelled once more. “Love at first sight,” I strained to make myself heard above the roar, “is a hoax!”

They think I’m debating, I thought, but I meant every word I said.

The din continued. A couple of paper airplanes took off and crash-landed. Paulsen
shouted something. At the front of the classroom, by the desk next to the door, someone stood up.

None of us knew much about the new kid, although there had been the usual swirl of rumours — some of them pretty nasty, some far-fetched. She had changed schools because of conflicts with other students. She’d been expelled for poor attendance. Jill, who considered a tasty morsel of gossip sweeter than a candy bar, had told us Raphaella’s mother owned the health food store and that the word was, Raphaella never dated. “She’s weird,” Jill had concluded. “I mean, what kind of name is that? And they tell me she belongs to some cult or other.” Raphaella had transferred to our school from Park Street Collegiate about a week before — just in time to be assigned a role in the debate — then had disappeared.

When she got to her feet, something remarkable happened. She stood quietly, completely at ease, and waited. Normally, a new kid gives off vibes like a high-tension wire — fear, embarrassment, a pathetic desire to be accepted. Not this one. Wearing a long navy blue dress over a black T-shirt, a silver-colored ankh
hanging from a leather thong around her neck, she appeared calm — except for her bitten-down fingernails — and completely indifferent to us. She was slender, a bit taller than me, with glossy black hair that fell almost to her waist. A plum-colored birthmark stained her neck and half her right cheek.

I felt something shift inside me, a kind of low-level seismic tremor.

Gradually, as she waited patiently, the noise around her ebbed away. It was as if she had taken control of the room without effort. Everyone, including Paulsen, stared at her. Nobody moved.

She lifted a piece of paper from her desk, consulted it and put it down. She never referred to it again.

She turned her gaze on me. Unblinking. Straight into my eyes.

“Logic is only one way of looking at the world,” she said, “and it’s very limited. It’s like looking at life through binoculars held the wrong way around.”