There Will Be Lies (32 page)

Michael?
she asks, concerned.

It was fine
, he says.
Just her leg – she pulled it a bit. But she’s OK. Fierce hitter, actually. She could get a baseball scholarship
.

Boggle and baseball, huh?
says Jennifer.
You’re going to be much in demand
.

I shrug.

You ever play for a team?
says Michael.

No
, I say.

Of course
, he says, slapping his forehead.
You were kept pretty much alone, right?

Yes
, I say.
But I wouldn’t want to anyway
.

Wouldn’t want to what?

Play for a team
.

What?
says Michael.
Why?

I start to sign without thinking. Then I begin to say the words but it will take too long and my words feel foreign in my mouth, like
stones. So I sigh. I pick up a piece of paper from the table, on which Jennifer has been writing some kind of shopping list. She is holding out the pen before I even ask for it.

I write:

I play against the ball. I’m not interested in playing against people
.

Michael reads it, his brow creasing into a frown. He shows it to Jennifer. She starts to mouth something at him but then I guess she remembers that I am all about the lip-reading, because she just smiles a not very genuine smile instead.

You’re so new to us
, she says.
It’s like we don’t know you at all
.

Yes
, I say. It’s true. It’s as if I’m a changeling, like the ones in old stories my (mom) read me, where a human child is taken away and replaced with a fairy. That’s what I am in this family: something strange and foreign, dropped into it.

Then I think, No. I am a changeling, but I am more than a changeling. I am the child that is taken away, but I am also the child that is put in its place.

I mean: Angelica Watson was stolen from these people. She was one person, a person I don’t even remember being.

And now I, Shelby Cooper, have been brought back to them, swapped for her. And I am nothing like these people. I may look more like them than like my – like Shaylene, but I may as well be a fairy, from another world.

But it’s exciting
, Jennifer says, heedless.
It’s like learning a language. And it is learning a language! I mean, sign. I’ll need to do a course. We’ll need to do a course
.

I don’t say anything.

There’s so much to find out about you
, she says.

I still don’t say anything.

Anyway
…
um, I’ll just finish fixing lunch
. She starts to turn.

Where’s James?
I say.

He went out to look at some gallery
, says Jennifer.
A modern … Oh, I don’t know. Something to do with landscapes
.

I look at her, at her crucifix around her neck, her glossy skin, her birdlike hands, fluttering. I think about how there are, presumably, no novels in their house in Alaska. I picture Michael, flicking balls at James in the backyard, raising bruises.

I might as well be living with aliens. I mean, my – Shaylene is an alien too, I have no fricking idea who she is, other than a liar. But at least she reads. And at least I can speak to her. At least she can sign. One thing I have had enough of: communicating without my hands. It is how a seal must feel, wriggling on a rock. It is all friction, and no smoothness, no quickness of liquid motion.

Summer is coming back after lunch
, says Jennifer.
To go through some options
.

What kind of options?

Oh, I don’t know. Schools. Counselling
.

Fine
, I say.
I’m going out for a cigarette
.

Jennifer nods, though I can see that she doesn’t like it.

On my way to the sliding door, I hook up the backpack from the floor where I left it. I open the door and step out on to the little balcony. I look at the rooftops of the town, and I light a cigarette, gasping again when the harshness of it hits my lungs. I watch Jennifer as she busies herself at the cooker, frying something. Michael speaks to her for a while, and I guess maybe they argue, because he throws up his hands, then walks to the bedroom and shuts the door behind him.

I turn around, back to the view of the city.

I move quick.

We’re only three storeys up, and there’s no one on the sidewalk below – one person further down the street, looking in a store window, but that’s it.

There’s like a gate between the balcony and the fire escape, and I swing myself over it; my leg screams at me, but I don’t stop. I put my hands on the rails and don’t even try to walk down the steps – I just let myself slide, holding my weight up with my arms. The rail burns my hands as I go down.

At the turn, I hold on to the railing, using it as a crutch, and manoeuvre myself to slide down the next flight. My hands are red raw, but I tell myself I will let them hurt later, when there’s time for it.

At the bottom, there’s a drop to the ground – I saw this from the car. I release the ladder, which shoots down and hits the sidewalk. Then I climb down, trying not to use my right leg, though my arms are in agony.

On the ground, that’s the worst bit – the drop is like a foot from the bottom rung and I land clumsily, because of my injured foot, then hop, but lose my balance and fall. I scrape my hands even more, protecting my face, and kind of crawl or pull myself to my feet.

I glance up – no one is following me. I hobble down the street. I have no idea where I’m going, but I know I have to get off the sidewalk like YESTERDAY because I’m too slow on this CAM Walker and they’ll catch up with me in no time, once they realise I’m gone.

I turn a corner and go one block, then I see a bookstore with a green and white striped awning. DOWNTOWN BOOKS says a sign in gold leaf on an old weathered wooden board. I open the door and go in – I see a bell ring above me, but it registers only as a faint ting in my mind, buried under static.

There’s no one around, though I can just make out a desk over in the gloom to the left, so I make for the further stacks to the right and go behind a big bookshelf, where I can’t be seen from the street. It’s only when I see embroidery on the wall and the framed photo of a guy in a mask that I realise I’m in the Native American section.

I still can’t see anyone else. If someone heard the bell, they haven’t bothered to check me out. I like that. A place where you can just be. It reminds me of the library.

Running my fingers along the spines, I scan the shelf. I have to look like I’m browsing. My forefinger settles on a thin, old book. I don’t know why. I pull it out and look at the title.
Navajo Creation Myth
, I read.
The Story of the Emergence
. By someone called Mary C. Wheelwright. It’s an ancient book, leather bound.

Let the book fall open, says Mark’s voice, in my head. At least, I guess it’s my imagination imitating his voice, because aside from anything else I have never heard his voice in the real world.

I do what he says, though. It’s the story of the flood, I realise. I skim through it, until I see:

Coyote is present here as the eternal trickster and trouble-causer. But his mischief has a dual effect. It brings the dangerous and negative reaction of the flood, but also, because of the flood, forces the people up into a more complex and promising world
.

I stare at it. What is this telling me? I think. That it’s somehow going to change my life for the fricking BETTER to lose my mom, to lose who I am, and have to go and live with strangers? I snap the book shut, slide it back on to the shelf. I walk along a bit, take another one out.

It’s a collection of Navajo and Apache folk tales from Arizona. I stand there and leaf through it. There’s a section on Coyote fighting an evil entity, which sometimes manifests as a giant, sometimes as an owl, sometimes as a Crone.

Hmm, I think.

I shrug and put the book back. Suddenly an old guy with white hair and a beard peers around the corner, little round glasses.

Can I help you?
he asks.

Just browsing
, I say with my mouth, as clearly as I can manage – I think so, anyway.

Navajo tales?
he says. He comes and stands next to me. I have an urge to pick up a heavy book and hit him with it.
I recommend the [             ]
, he says.

I look at him blankly.

He runs his eyes along the shelf, then selects another thin volume. He hands it to me, and I swear he winks. Then he turns and walks away. He’s like a caricature of a bookstore owner, leather patches on the sleeves of his cardigan. A slight smell of pipe smoke, lingering still.

I look at the book in my hands.
Sitting on the Blue-Eyed Bear: Navajo Myths and Legends
, it says. I let it fall open – it seems like the right thing to do – and peer down at the page. I read:

Coyote has a life principle that may be laid aside, so that any injury done to his body affects his life only temporarily and he may even recover from apparent death
.

I blink.

I look for the bookstore owner, but he has gone.

OK, I think to myself. So Coyote never really dies. He comes back to life. I guess I should have known that. Also he DOES fight the Crone, the Owl, the Giant, whatever. The first book I looked at was pretty clear on that – he DOES stand against that which seeks to destroy people.

I flick through the book, curious about something.

Yes: there it is. Eagles and eagle feathers are sacred.

My head spins. But I didn’t know any of this stuff, I think. I’ve only just read it now. How does that work?

But I don’t worry about it for long, because I have bigger things to worry about, things like getting away from my birth parents.

Things like saving the Child, stuck in its prison of glass, its little palace. I feel like, if I can just pick up that child, just once pick up that child and soothe its cries, then I will be whole.

It’s stupid.

But it’s what I feel.

And Coyote might have disappeared under a tide of wolves but that doesn’t mean he’s dead.

He’s older than the sun and the moon.

He has died before, and come back.

And suddenly, I know what I want to do, what I need to do. For the first time in a long time I have some very clear, very defined goals, and they are MY goals now, not just some agenda given to me by someone else, by Mark or a lawyer or my so-called parents or my so-called mother.

I list them in my head:

1. Kill the Crone.

2. Save the Child, and end the fricking dream that has haunted me since I was a child myself.

3. Get Coyote back. I mean Mark. I mean Coyote.

4. AND MAYBE. JUST MAYBE. GET SOME FRICKING CONTROL OVER MY OWN LIFE.

I leave the bookstore. I don’t see the old guy again.

I walk right past Gene’s Western Wear, on the corner, where Luke bought us those stupid-ass hats.

I know exactly where I’m going.

I step from cold outside air into cold air-conditioned air; you can almost feel the difference on your skin; a dog would smell the difference, I think.

The climbing store is a friendly warren, everything in piles, shelves making little corridors. Brand names I don’t recognise are everywhere; it’s a place that speaks to the climbing cognoscenti, not to me. But at the same time, I know the shape of the language, I am familiar with the structure – like seeing another Indo-European language, laid out on a twenty-six letter grid; you don’t understand it, but it’s familiar.

I have been in this kind of store before, to buy my baseball bat. I have learned the brand names, only for another sport.

I don’t see anyone, which is good.

I go deeper, half expecting a cop to put a hand on my shoulder at any moment. Soon, by accident, I find the books. One end of the shelves is all maps; towards the other end are the instruction manuals, the introductions. I pick one that looks basic, but thick. There’s an index at the back and I flick through it –

E
, for equipment.

I flick to page 142, scan the paragraphs. Ropes, carabiners.
Something called a passive wedge. I don’t have to read it for long before I find camming devices. Yes – that’s what I want.

They have two semicircular pieces, built on a logarithmic circle, which is important for some reason to do with friction.

The way they work: you pull a trigger, and the circles align, snug to each other, narrow. They have teeth, to make them bite more. You insert them into a crack in the wall, and you pull on the shaft, which your rope is tied to; they’re spring-loaded, but hinged to the shaft too; the more weight you put on it the more they expand away from each other, dig into the rock on either side.

Theoretically, then – the harder you fall, the more they hold you.

There’s a graph, some equations. Applied force, normal force, friction. They’re good for twelve thousand newtons of falling force, the bigger ones. I check some stuff in the appendix and then do the maths in my head. Mass, acceleration, spring constant, etc. Long story short, the camming device will hold me easily.

OK, good.

I go to the back of the book again –
K
for knots.

I spend a minute or two looking at the right pages. I hate this Girl Scout kind of thing. But I figure I can do it.

So: a rope, twenty feet, to give me room to get to the top, a couple of carabiners, to attach the rope to the loop, and the other end to me, and a camming device.

I shuffle down the aisles – there’s a whole wall of the cam things, and I grab the most expensive one; it’s actually a belt with like five of them on it, different sizes. Fine. Rope – easy; carabiners too.

When I have, in a TOTALLY LITERAL SENSE, got all my shit together, I move to the back of the store. I pass a little checkout, a table with a chair, a white Macbook, and a credit card
machine. There’s a copy of
American Gods
, face down on the table, a half-full cup of coffee.