Théodora Armstrong: Clear Skies, No Wind, 100% Visibility

Sometimes while I watch Matt, I blow my breath against the glass of the sliding door. I blow a lot at once, covering a large area, then I draw quickly before the glass clears again. Sometimes I plot out maps, how far Matt has to shoot to hit the cans. Or I’ll draw the face of someone I hate at school, then I don’t mind when the glass clears. Sometimes I draw Matt’s girlfriends with big breasts and knock on the window to get his attention, but he never turns around.

Everyone has walked into these sliding doors. Mom likes them really clean. Once I got knocked out. I was running and looking at something on the TV. We are as dumb as birds, I guess, but our necks are too thick to snap.

The front door opens and I hear girl laughter and Matt stamping the snow off his boots. I peek around the edge of the island between the kitchen and the living room. Matt’s standing beside a girl who’s unlacing her boots. When she bends down he sticks his gloved hands under her skirt and she swats them away while she loosens her laces. “Quit it,” she says, but she’s laughing. The girl graduated from my elementary school last year. She used to have no boobs. She was bad at sports. Once her class was playing baseball outside and the ball hit her in the nose. She had blood down the front of her shirt and a black eye for over a week. I was going to the washroom and saw her walking quickly down the hall with Mr. O’Brian holding a hanky to her nose. She was crying and I thought that was stupid.

She looks the same now, but with breasts. Not bloody or crying or anything, I just mean the same face and the same haircut. She’s wearing a puffy jacket and under her skirt her legs are bare and red with goose bumps all over — chicken legs.

She and Matt don’t see me sitting on the kitchen floor as they go into his room. The girl is giggling like something’s funny, but I can’t hear them talking. I crawl to where I can see past the door, lying down on my stomach. I’m wearing a white shirt and the kitchen is all white just like hunting in the snow. Matt’s sitting on his bed with his head tilted to one side, watching the girl. She’s between his legs with his hands in her hair. He starts grunting, moving his hips and pushing down on her head. She makes a choking noise and then climbs up on the bed beside him. He sits there, his penis straight up and shiny. I slide back behind the counter, my breath stuck in my throat and my palms sweaty along the linoleum, but then I look again. The girl lights a cigarette, drops it and laughs before picking it up. She rubs a spot on the comforter. Matt stands and zips up his pants as he leaves the bedroom, and I leap back to my spot on the heater, my heart thumping the way it does when I run around the yard three times.

He plops down on the couch and turns on the TV. I crunch my Froot Loops a little louder. Matt turns to look at me, “How long have you been sitting there?” I shrug. “I’ve got a girl here. Hang out in your room.” I shrug again.

The girl comes out of his bedroom and smiles at me in a practised, older-person way, “This your sis?” She doesn’t recognize me, but I didn’t think she would. Matt flips the channel to hockey without saying anything. The girl snuggles into him, but Matt likes a big space between him and whoever else is sitting on the couch, so he moves over and she stays put. She watches him more than the TV. You could drop something on Matt’s toe and he wouldn’t notice. The girl leans over the back of the couch, looking at me with owl eyes. “Police think it’s someone in town took that girl,” she says. Her cigarette is still dangling between her fingers, the smoke reaching way up, touching our ceiling. “Someone who was following her to and from school.”

I shrug and look out the window. In the yard snow falls off the trees.

“They won’t find her,” Matt says, flipping channels.

“She’s dead, for sure,” the girl says.

I want to stick my tongue out at her, but I’m too old for that now.

Heavy feet come up our front steps and someone bangs on the door. The girl shrieks and then laughs again, grabbing onto Matt’s arm. “That was freaky,” she says. “Who is that?” The banging gets louder and she turns to look in the direction of the door, her face suddenly going white. “It’s my dad.” I wonder if she has X-ray vision.

“Dawn, go to your room,” Matt says, taking the girl’s hand and leading her to his bedroom.

The house is quiet again. Now there are people hiding. I eat my Froot Loops and wonder if the Dad has a gun. If he does, will he shoot Matt or will Matt get his gun and challenge him to a duel?

A man walks up the back porch steps. He doesn’t have a gun. He’s mostly bald and has delicate glasses. The steps are slippery and he walks slowly, holding the railing. Instead of winter boots he’s wearing brown loafers that are very wet. They look like the soft nose of a dog. He peers through the sliding doors, a white blotch from his breath growing and shrinking on the glass. He knocks loudly before noticing me sitting on the vent and squats down so we can look at each other face to face. His eyes are dark as rain puddles and there are deep wrinkles criss-crossing his forehead.

I leave my box of cereal and run to my bedroom, slamming the door. The only sound is my breath whistling through my nose. I reach down inside my pants and tuck my hands between my legs. I fall asleep on top of the covers.

WHEN I WAKE UP the sky’s dark and Mom’s back from her shift at the hospital. I walk into her room and she’s sitting on the edge of her bed, pulling off her pantyhose. She wears the same kind every day: bare nude control top, the Leggs brand. In the morning, when she has on a new pair, I like to rub against her. I can tell how her day went by her pantyhose. In the summer, clouds of dust puff up as she pulls them off. Once there were flecks of blood down the backs and she wouldn’t tell me what happened at the hospital. Today the snow is melting in Kelowna, car tires turning everything into wet mush along the sides of the road. I watch as she slides the thick elastic top down her hips and grabs at the stained toes, pulling inch by inch. Muddy water marks dot the nylon, but no runs. They can be saved, thrown in the sink to soak and hung on the shower rod. I hope I never have to wear pantyhose and go into town.

“What did you have for dinner?” Mom asks.

“I fell asleep.”

“You feeling okay, hon?” She puts a warm hand on my forehead. Her skin is dry and scratchy. I shrug my shoulders and back flop onto the bed. She likes to pull out a thermometer for the show of it, giving it a shake and popping it in my mouth. I stretch out and work the glass tip around with my tongue.

“Don’t fool with it. Keep it in one place.”

She pulls off all her jewelry — one ring, pearl earrings and a gold chain with a thin cross. I used to think a man had given them to her as presents, but when I asked one day she said it was Grandma’s old jewelry and when I was old enough I could have it. She stretches out beside me on the bed and pulls the thermometer out of my mouth, holding it up to take a look. “Normal,” she says.

“I knew you’d say that.”

“The thermometer doesn’t lie. You’re a normal kid. What kind of soup do you want?”

“Tomato,” I say, following her into the kitchen. She pulls out a pot and a can opener from one of the drawers. “I got a big heating bill today,” she says, punching the opener into the top of the can. “Know anything about that?”

“No.”

“You haven’t been touching the thermostat?” She cranks the opener and loses the lid in the liquid. There’s a knock at the front door and Mom goes to answer it. I hop up on the counter to fish the lid out with a fork, but it keeps slipping back in. When I look down the hall Mom’s talking to a man in a dark coat. He says they found the girl down by the river, close to the dam. Mom says God, God and then her voice floats away. “I keep thinking, if I’d gone out to see—” Mom says after a pause and the man clears his throat. He asks her questions about the members in our family and takes notes in a book. Mom twists her hair and answers yes or no. She tries to close the door gently, but the man keeps his boot in the doorframe. “Just a minute,” he says and he smiles. I slide quietly along the wall toward them. He asks Mom if any of our family members spend time in the area around the river. “No, we don’t,” she says. I stand beside her and they stop talking and smile at me. The man takes his foot out of the frame and Mom closes the door carefully. “Who was that?” I say, following her back to the kitchen.