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

The air is dry and I can feel my skin shrinking, pulling tight, the moisture sucked from my pores. Standing at the edge of the water, I worry about what’s developing inside of me. Silver grasses along the edge of the highway hide crickets and the heat of the day still radiates, rising now from the concrete. There are remedies for a dull heart.

It takes time for my brain to make sense of the opposite of what it expects. It’s the end of August, with temperatures the hottest anyone’s ever seen and wildfires burning in the backcountry. During the day the mountains circling the lake are gold, tinder-dry, but at night beneath a clear sky and an almost-full moon, the entire valley is white. The mountains look like they’re covered in snow, but the breeze smells like grass, green and sweet.

I CAN HEAR KATE. Her bare feet rubbing through the grass. Her lips leaving the rim of the bottle.

“You’re getting warmer,” she says. She’s flicking her lighter. It won’t catch.

I move slowly in the same direction, waiting for it — open air, tumbling space, anything.

Kate inhales. I can hear the smoke leave her lips. “You’re hot,” she says.

My left foot slides off an edge and I stop. Somewhere below, rocks spill and bounce away. I stand still as a rush of wind passes over me. My breathing comes heavy. I think steady as my hands work in and out of fists. I don’t want Kate to see them shaking.

When I pull off the blindfold the entire inlet stretches out in front of me. Everything spills into it — the rivers, the forests, the suburbs, the city. The toes of my left foot hang out over the edge of the cliff. Below, the trains squeak and groan, barely moving along the tracks. Beside the tracks are the grain towers, ugly and grey, connected by pipes twisting like anatomy. The seagulls perch on the towers, fat and stupid and hungry.

I take a step back and turn to Kate. She’s already up from the blanket, coming toward me all antsy with excitement. “My turn,” she says, taking the blindfold and giving me the bottle of Malibu.

I don’t know why we come here, but we’ve been doing it for a while. Kate invented the game. Sometimes we play, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we just smoke or talk or sleep.

The wind tangles Kate’s hair in the blindfold and I pull the strands away to help her tie it around her head.

“How was it?” she asks, arms outstretched.

My heart is beating fast. I spin her once, twice, three times.

“I’ve never been that close,” I say.

IN THE SUMMER LYNN CANYON is swamped with tourists. They come in by the busload, gathering white-knuckled on the suspension bridge with their cameras, clutching the rails as they try to get the ultimate shot of the falls. From the bridge it’s a fifty-metre drop into a gorge of rocky ledges and tumbling water — head-splitting stuff, an instant death kinda deal. Standing in the middle of the bridge in flip-flops and a bikini, I let go of the railing and clasp my hands behind my back. A tour group in matching red baseball caps circles me as they angle their cameras, but I focus on the bottom of the canyon and start counting — it’s a test of courage or faith or strength or something. The bridge swings and bounces as people nudge past on their way to the other side. We hucked a watermelon off the bridge once, watched it explode into a billion microscopic particles below. I get to twelve before I have to grip the rail.

Pushing my way through to the other end of the bridge, I follow hikers along paths that snake through the forest. Down toward the creek bed, I can hear water spilling over rocks and shouts bouncing through the canyon. Jumping! A second of silence followed by a splash. The creek spreads out in front of me through a break in the trees. There are at least forty kids hanging out on the rocks or sitting in teepees made with fallen branches. Clouds of pot smoke hang in the air. A group of guys sit together on a large boulder and scope the girls, who lie on towels spread out side by side. Yesterday was the last day of school — grade eight is over — and there’s a vibe, jumpy and electric, running through the crowd of kids. Last summer, they wheeled one of the jumpers out of here on a stretcher — it happens more than you’d think. They put a brace around the kid’s neck and wrapped him up in a silver shock blanket that looked like a giant piece of tinfoil. It took a while to carry him out on the trails, his friends queuing behind the paramedics to follow the stretcher out of the forest. Sometimes it’s hard to judge the jumps when you’re stoned out of your tree.

Jumping! Cheers and howls, another splash.

Kate’s in a pink bikini, baking in the sun on a large, flat rock near the pools. She’s undone the straps on her top and rolled down her bottoms to prevent tan lines. I can see the beginning of her bum crack. She’s achieved that perfect cinnamon brown I can only wish for. She started at the beginning of May, before it was even warm out. After school she’d drag her comforter out onto her back porch and lie there in her bikini, teeth chattering. I’d sit beside her in a sweatshirt and jeans and we’d pretend to study. Her mother calls her a sun worshipper. It makes me laugh. I can’t imagine Kate down on her knees in the chilly spring sun, her hands clasped, her head bowed. I can’t imagine her praying for anything.

“You’re so skinny it’s gross,” Kate says, squinting up at me from her towel as I hop over the rocks to reach her. “What took you so long?”

“Don’t ask,” I say, making a bored-to-tears face as I dip my toes into the freezing creek water. “I couldn’t get a ride ’til my sister was ready. It’s like she brushes each hair on her head individually.”

“There’s this thing called a bus,” Kate says, sitting up and holding her bathing suit to her chest. I can see one of her nipples.

“You’re flashing the whole world.” I unroll my towel beside hers and flop back with a sigh.

“I don’t care. Tie it, then,” Kate says, turning her back to me. “Did you bring any food?”

“Nope.” I pull the strings of her bikini top into a neat bow.

“Maybe I should get us some.” Kate scans the forest like a 7-Eleven might be hiding behind the trees somewhere, and then lies back down, giving up. She pokes my ribs. “I can see your bones.”

“What am I supposed to do about it?” I say, running my hands over my stomach.

“Eat.”

“I eat all the time. I eat more than anyone I know.” I push out my stomach and pat the bulge. “How’s that?”

“I hate you,” Kate says, rolling her eyes.

Another shout bursts through the air. Jumping! Above us, kids scramble up the boulders and dart in and out of the trees. In this part of the canyon there’s a deep pool at the bottom of a narrow chasm — maybe ten feet across — where the water is seven shades, from turquoise to cobalt blue. From the cliff there are three different places to jump, the highest thirty feet, but most kids jump from the ten-foot boulder and a few from the fifteen. There’s a lineup along the cliff, mostly guys, fidgeting while they wait, pulling on their bottom lips or scratching their heads. Some can’t be more than ten or eleven. Sitting among them is Max, a guy from my grade, his long, skinny legs dangling over the edge. Whenever someone leaps from the rock, he tilts his chin to the sky and crows like a rooster. “What’s he doing?” Kate says.

“I don’t know,” I say, watching him. He’s wearing shorts with Doc Martens and the same Metallica T-shirt he wears at least once a week. Max and I went to elementary school together — back then he was the kid no one noticed until the teacher asked him a question he couldn’t answer. Now he’s the kid who doesn’t care what people think. Last week instead of joining our usual gym class run to the top of Montroyal Boulevard, he stood three feet from school property and puffed on a smoke. There was no point in suspending him because school was practically over; our gym teacher, Ms. Carr, pretended not to see him.