The New Normal (11 page)

Once the murky smudge had drifted across the face of the moon, we stopped howling and listened to the dog choir carry on, their lonesome sounds echoing off the houses, their owners pleading with them to be quiet. We laughed for a long time, holding our guts as if to keep them from spilling out onto the sidewalk. I couldn't remember the last time I had felt so good, so free.

We continued our slow walk home. When we got inside, I put the mail on the kitchen table, then helped Dad get set up on the couch again with his beer cans, ruler and pencil, and his X-Acto knife.

“Goodnight, Dad,” I said on my way upstairs.

“Hey, Tamar?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for the walk.” He smiled shyly at me, like a small boy.

That night I dreamt that I was naked and Don and Karen from Cruisy Chicken were spraying me with a hose, and all this curdled white stuff was coming out of the hose and sticking to me in nasty white globules. It got in my eyes and burned them and I couldn't see, and I was inhaling it, and I couldn't say anything because every time I opened my mouth, they would spray it in my mouth. It was horrible.

In the morning, the phone woke me up. I went into the parents' room and picked it up. It was Don.

“Tamar, we need you to come in for a staff meeting today.”

Chicken fat, I thought. That's what the white stuff was. Sick.

“Tamar?”

“Yeah?”

“Ten o'clock. Today.”

“Do I need to wear my uniform?”

“No, that won't be necessary,” he said, and he hung up.

I barely had enough time to make it there and had to chase the bus for two blocks, waving my arms like an imbecile. When it finally stopped for me, I got on, breathless.

When I got to Cruisy Chicken, I was ushered into Don's office. Karen was sitting in the only other chair, so I had to stand. There were no other staff members there.

“Tamar, Karen and I don't feel that you can keep up the fast pace that we need to see from our employees.”

I looked at Karen. She was eyeing my head suspiciously. I had worn a dark-blue bandana instead of my wig.

“We're letting you go.”

“Oh.” Something crumpled inside my chest.

“Your last check will be mailed to you.”

“What about the uniform?” I asked, my voice trembling.

“That's yours to keep.”

I sighed and walked out.
Don't cry don't cry don't cry don't cry
.
I had been fired. Fired! From Crappy Chicken! I was too slow!
I was too stupid! For Crappy Chicken! I was a total failure.

I walked to the bus stop with my head down, my face burning with shame. I blinked hard to keep my tears from gushing out. I had to wait twenty-eight minutes for the next bus.

“
Look on the bright side,”
I heard Abby say.
“At least you don't have to work there anymore!”

“Yeah, that place
sucked!”
Alia said.
“And your boss was a scummy perv!”

I nodded in agreement, gulping back a sob.

When I got home, I threw the stupid uniform and the stupid red visor and the stupid
TRAINEE
name tag in the metal trashcan in the garage. I had paid for it all, but I didn't ever want to see it again.

But somehow it wasn't enough to just throw it away. I dragged the garbage can outside and got the jerry can Dad kept for filling the lawn mower. I sloshed gasoline over the clothes, then lit a match and flicked it into the can. The clothes made a loud
whoosh
as they ignited, and a brilliant plume of fire shot up from the can. While I stood and watched the bright flames lick the sides of the shiny can, I couldn't decide how to feel. I was angry, upset and delighted, all at the same time.

I had been fired! From my first real job! I was pathetic. Totally pathetic. But watching my uniform burn was immensely satisfying. The heat rising from the can felt good on my face. I began to feel a strange calm seep into me. I thought about my sisters. How they would have approved of this controlled burn. How they would have whooped and hollered and probably slapped me high fives and yelled “Fuck the man!” as they danced around the burning ring of fire.

After a few minutes, a pile of black and gray ash was all that remained of my service to Cruisy Chicken. I got a bucket of water from the kitched and poured it into the garbage can, then dumped the whole mess down the storm drain. Straight to hell with it.

I walked inside. Dad was still sleeping. I went upstairs. But I walked past my room and stopped in front of the closed white doors of my sisters' rooms. I took a deep breath, turned the knob of Alia's door and stepped inside.

It smelled stale. Except for her missing electric guitar and amp, everything was exactly as she had left it. Her clothes
and books and pencil crayons and
CD
s were strewn about the room. I looked into the faces of the musicians plastered on her wall: Green Day, Kurt Cobain, The Ramones, Patti Smith, Bob Marley, Johnny Cash. Her dresser was littered with bottles of nail polish, cheap jewelry, notes, photos, pens, markers, hairbrushes still snarled with strands of her auburn hair. Out of curiosity, I pushed
Play
on her dust-covered stereo.

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right.

I hope you had the time of your life.

I leaned in to look closely at the photographs stuck around her mirror. She had her tongue out in a few of them. She had a tongue ring; I never knew that. Abby was in a lot of them.
I was only in one. It was an old, old picture, taken when I was four or five. They would have been three or four. I was pulling a red wagon that we used to have, and the two of them were sitting in it, their arms around each other. We wore bathing suits, all of us smiling, squinting into the sun. I peeled the photo away from the mirror and examined the back. There was no date, nothing. As the song ended, I looked around the room once more. It was almost as if I expected her to burst through the door and tell me to stop messing around with her stuff. I pressed
Off
and the word
GOODBYE
scrolled across the stereo. I left Alia's room with the photo in my hand.

I stood in the hall and stared at Abby's door for a few seconds before I opened it. The door creaked on its hinges. Inside, it smelled like Love's Baby Soft. She had obviously just cleaned her room before she went out that night; everything was in its place. I laughed when I looked at her bed. She had set up her pillows under the covers so it looked like she was in bed in case the parents checked. Apparently she had planned on not coming home that night. And she never had. I felt a wave of nausea wash over me. I sat on the edge of her bed and waited for it to pass. Maybe it was the intensity of her hot-pink walls. I had never liked pink, hot or otherwise. I spotted her diary on her bedside table. I opened the cover.
PRIVATE! KEEP OUT!
was written in bubble letters on the first page. I looked around the room. It was heavy with stillness. Should I? I realized I had been holding my breath. I flipped to a page.

Steven asked me out today and I said yes! He is so cute and has the prettiest blue-green eyes. Story eyes!!! Ahhhhhhhhhh! I think I'm in love!

I rolled my eyes and flipped to another page.

Alia and I went to Layne's house last night. Steven and Eric and Josh were there and we all got drunk off vodka-orange juice. It was super fun but today I feel like a butt scrape.

I flipped again.

Tamar is such a lame-o bitch. I don't know what her problem is. Why is she so mean to us?

I snapped the diary shut and placed it back on her nightstand. I went to her makeup table, sat down on the little white bench and looked in the mirror. I looked at her lipsticks and eye shadows and concealers, all lined up in a neat row. I selected a bronze lipstick and put it on. I smacked my lips together. Then I realized the last lips that lipstick had touched were Abby's, and she was dead now. I shivered and wiped it off with the back of my hand. I opened her jewelry box. A ballerina popped up when it opened,
but it didn't play music anymore. I sifted through her necklaces, earrings, bracelets. I picked out a silver ring with an oval turquoise stone in the center. I slipped it on my middle finger. It fit. I glanced once more around the tidy pink room, then quietly closed the door and tiptoed back to my room. I put the photo up in the corner of my mirror. I flopped down on my bed and studied the pretty blue ring on my finger. I wondered where Abby had gotten it. And it struck me as being infinitely sad that I would never know.

twelve

With no school and no job and no play rehearsal, I didn't have a lot going on. I took the C-train down to
17
th Avenue with the intention of seeing Dr. Lung for acupuncture again, but when I got there his office was locked up, and old newspapers covered the windows. I peeked through a patch of glass that hadn't been covered in paper. His desk and chairs and all the paintings and Buddhas were gone. There was a bucket and mop in the corner of the room, a bloated garbage bag and a crushed coffee cup. Nothing else. It was like he had never even been there.

I wandered around downtown, feeling empty. Then I tripped and almost fell over some baskets outside a vintage clothing store. The baskets were full of scarves. They were three for ten dollars, so I bought three. One was burnt orange with lines of gold thread running through it. One was black with Chinese dragons embroidered on it. The third was made of silk, with a gorgeous sunset scene and silhouettes of trees on it. I felt a sharp pang in my heart when I read the label, which said
Handpainted on Stellar's Island, British Columbia
.

I couldn't understand why my mom hadn't called or written yet. It was as if she had totally forgotten that she had a family.

I tried to look after my dad. I forced him to go out for a walk every day. We ordered pizza and rented movies and ate chips and ice cream. We only watched comedies. I practiced my lines for the play and made him read the other parts.

“Do you know the band Pink Floyd?” He looked up from the script.

“Yeah, of course I do. Everyone knows Pink Floyd, Dad.”

“Do you like them?”

“Obviously, they're only, like, the best band of all time.”

“Go rent
The Wizard of Oz
.” He handed me five bucks.

“Nah, I've already seen it ten times.”

“Not like this you haven't.” He gave my ribs a little poke with his crutch.

“Ow!”

“Get going.” He jabbed at me again, and I scrambled off the couch.

When I got back, he had dusted off his old record player and put on the Pink Floyd album
Dark Side of the Moon
. He took the needle off. “Okay, put it in,” he said. I put the
DVD
in and pressed
Play
. The old
MGM
lion came on and roared. “Wait for it, wait for it, and…NOW!” He set the needle down and the album began. He hopped up and down on his good leg. “Mute it! Mute it!”

“Dad, what the hell are you doing?”

“Shh, just watch.” He pointed to the screen.

And so I did.

My dad heaved his broken leg up on a footstool, then sank back into the couch and laughed. “Isn't that the damndest thing?”

It was probably the most awesome thing I had ever seen. I don't know how Pink Floyd did it, but it had to have been planned. The album matched the movie exactly, and it told Dorothy's story in a whole new way. A modern way. My favorite part was when “The Great Gig in the Sky” came on as her house was sucked into the tornado. Friggin' beautiful. And then it got all political on “Us & Them,” when it was the Munchkins versus Dorothy's crew. Supercool. Dorothy Gale was a misfit, a freak. Her friends were all insane too. She didn't belong in Kansas or Oz. But she had people who loved her, and she believed in herself. And really, what more does a person need? I'll never forget that Dark-Side version of the movie as long as I live.

On my first day back to school after my suspension ended, I decided not to wear my wig. What was the point? Also, I had been having nightmares that someone else would try to rip it off. I wore my dark jeans and a tight black sweater and tied the new black dragon scarf around my head. I drew on my eyebrows and glued on my eyelashes and put on some black eyeliner and walked to school, steeling myself against whatever insults were about to be hurled at me. I prepared myself to play the role of school laughingstock.

The snow had almost melted, and water dripped from the trees like liquid crystals. I turned my face to the sun and felt its warmth.

I was completely floored by the reactions I got at school. It was nothing like the ridicule, wisecracks and torment I had expected to face. Some popular people actually acknowledged me in the halls! They nodded or said, “Hey, Tamar.” And the look in their eyes wasn't pity. It seemed to be respect. Some preppy grade-twelve girls told me they loved my scarf! They asked where I got it. I couldn't believe it.

“That's so terrible what Beth did to you,” a tall blond said to me.

“She's always been a bitch,” said her friend. “I've known her since preschool. Even back then she was nasty.”

“Uh, thanks, I guess.”

The girls kept walking. They were two of the most popular girls at Canyon Meadows High. And they had just taken my side over Beth's.

At lunchtime I went to chess club, and for the first time ever, I beat Roy. I beat him! He told me he let me win, but I know he was lying, because he would never do that.

“So, if I beat you, and you were ranked fifth-best youth chess player in Canada, then that must mean that I'm the fourth best!”

“Not really,” he said.

“No?”

“No, that's faulty logic.”

“Oh, please. What are you, a Vulcan?”

He got this really hurt look on his face and I felt bad, but then he held up his left hand and separated his middle finger and his ring finger. He looked very serious. We both busted a gut laughing. Some of the other chess players shot us dirty looks because we had interrupted their concentration. We tried to stifle our laughter, but every time we looked at each other we started giggling again, so eventually we got up and left. We went to the cafeteria and split a small order of fries.

“I like your thing,” Roy said, poking around in the fry basket.

“My thing?”

“Your…head…thing.” He waved his fingers around his head.

“Thanks. Hey, what the hell happened to your uncle?”

“My uncle?”

“Dr. Lung.”

“Oh, he had to go to China.”

“China. Really?”

“Yeah, his friend is really sick. So he went to be with her.”

“So he just dropped everything and split town?”

Roy shrugged. “What are ya gonna do? You never know how much longer people are going to live.”

“No.” I shook my head. “You never do.”

On Tuesday when I walked into the theater for rehearsal, the whole cast burst into applause. I don't know why—it's not like I'm a hero or anything. I just did what anyone would have in the same situation. Maybe they thought I had cancer or something, I don't know.

“Welcome back, Tamar,” Ms. Jane said as she put her arm around my shoulders and gave them a squeeze.

“Thanks,” I mumbled, and I went to join the cast circle on stage. We did some vocal warm-ups and some interpretative dancing to loosen up, then began rehearsing the scene where Dorothy is screwing around on the farm and falls in the pigpen.

Beth didn't say anything to me except her lines. I noticed she still had a small scrape on her face from where I had scratched her. And I couldn't help feeling a little bit pleased about that.

After rehearsal, Scott McKinnon came up to me while I was tying my shoe.

“Hey, Tamar.”

“Hey, Scott.”

“What are you doing after this?”

I shrugged. “No plans.”

“Want to grab a coffee?”

“Um, sure. Why not?”

I had no idea why Scott wanted to hang out with me all of a sudden. Maybe because in the eyes of the other kids, he was a freak, and now, so was I. Maybe somehow that bonded us. He had a gentle voice and eyes the color of caramel candies. If he wasn't gay, maybe I would have had a crush on him, but he was, so it didn't matter.

I told him about getting fired from Cruisy Chicken, which I hadn't told anyone except my dad. I still felt ashamed for not being able to keep that crappy-ass job.

“I got fired this year too,” he said.

“Really? Why?”

“I was working at the movie theater, taking tickets, and when Andrea and her friends would come—this is when we were together—I would let them in for free. It wasn't hurting anybody. The movies would show regardless of how many people were in the theater. Anyway, one day the manager asked to see their tickets and Andrea's friend told him I always let them in for free.”

I groaned.

“And that was the end of that.”

“That sucks.”

He shrugged. “I got another job right away.”

“Where?”

“Mik's Milk.” He took a sip of coffee. “I could probably get you in there too, if you're looking for another job. Someone just quit.”

“Yeah, I am, actually. I can only work weekends though.”

“Me too. We'd be working together.” He smiled.

“Cool.”

“Okay, I'll talk to Pete.”

“Wow, thanks. That would be great.”

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

I nodded and wrapped my fingers around my mug, letting the heat seep through my hands.

“Were you, um, were you born bald?”

“No.” I pressed my lips together and sighed. “This is a recent development.”

“Oh.” He nodded. “Do you know why it happened?”

“I guess it's some rare disease or post-traumatic stress disorder or a combination of the two. Something like that.”

“That's rough.”

“Yeah, it's been a difficult year, to say the least.”

He nodded. “Is it painful?”

“In some ways…”

He looked into his mug, and his caramel eyes glazed over. “I know what you mean.”

I took a sip of coffee.

He looked into my eyes then, as if he was searching them for something. “Do you think it will grow back?”

“I don't know. I hope so.”

We finished our coffee and Scott walked me home. The sky was a bruised plum. A group of song sparrows flitted by us, and I felt my heart lift a little.

“That was nice,” he said as we came to the end of my driveway. “We should do it again sometime.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Definitely.”

A wide grin split his face, and my heart skipped inside my chest.

The next day I wore the painted scarf from Stellar's Island and got loads of compliments on it too. I hoped my mom would bring me back more scarves from the island—if she ever came back, that is.

I overheard someone refer to me as “freaky bald chick,” but I let it roll off…water… duck's back…whatever.

At lunchtime I met Roy at his locker.

“Hey, Tamar. Do you want to go see
Rocky
tonight at the cheap theater?”

“Um, I don't know. I think I have to wash my hair.”

We both laughed.

“Come on, it's my favorite movie of all time.”

“
Rocky
? Really?”

He nodded.

“Well, in that case…”

“Sweet.”

All day there were annoying announcements over the
PA
for the grade twelves to hurry up and get their prom tickets because tomorrow was the last day they would be on sale. There were prom posters everywhere I turned. I overheard girls gushing about what their dresses were like or what the dresses they wanted were like, and who they were going with or who they wanted to go with. It was enough to make you puke. Canyon Meadows High always had its prom earlier than the other schools in Calgary. A few had theirs in April, and the rest in May; we were the only ones in March. It was supposed to help avoid conflict or public drunkenness or whatever the hell school administrators were afraid would happen if thousands of kids around the city were celebrating at the same time.

I met Roy at the theater at six forty-five. He bought popcorn and I bought black licorice, and we sat in the sticky red bucket seats and waited for the movie to start.

“Are you going to prom?” I asked him, just to make conversation.

“I don't know, are you?”

“No, I can't. I'm in grade eleven.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot.”

“Grade elevens can only go as a grade twelve's date.”

“Okay, shh, it's starting!”

I rolled my eyes in the dark.