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

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. We’re good.” She turns back to Elgin, inspecting his cut.

“Okay, if you’re sure.” As I back out of the bathroom, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The black eyeliner has smeared, my eyes lost in dark raccoon circles. I’m a creature of the night. The loneliness is still there; it’s worse now. “I’ll call you later,” I say from the hallway.

“Close the door,” Kate says.

IT’S STARTING TO GET light out, a blue band growing behind the trees. I think about taking the shortcut through the forest, but I don’t want to walk on the trail alone. I remember hearing something about bears feeding in the early morning. Or was it cougars? Maybe deer? It doesn’t matter.

The houses are pushing up into the mountains. Or maybe it’s the mountains pushing against the houses. I’m not sure which one it is, but their cold gigantic weight makes me anxious and I want to be somewhere else. An empty bus comes down the street and when I get on the driver doesn’t look at me. I sit near the back. The bus is the only thing on the road and everything is quiet at this time of the morning — cars in their driveways, newspapers on front porches, heads on pillows full of rest. The bus driver and I are the only two dreamless, awake when we shouldn’t be. I’m not sure where the feeling comes from, but all at once I need to talk to Kate so desperately I start to cry. I get off at Grand Boulevard and walk the rest of the way home. Across the inlet, in the distance, the city is a lit grid of neat cubes.

One of the cats has been left out overnight and he sits tall on the top step of the porch, watching me. As I climb the stairs, he paces and I bend down to kiss his soft, grey head. I slip my key into the lock and slowly and quietly open the door. The cat enters the house with intent, disappearing down the hallway as I creep up the stairs to my bedroom. My dirty clothes are everywhere. There are piles of dishes and a pool of hard candle wax across my desk. I close the door and go down the hall to my sister’s room. Carlie’s window is open and everything smells like a summer morning, clean and fresh with promises of lawnmowers and sprinklers. I slip under the covers beside her and in her sleep she makes a space for me. We used to do this if we got scared when we were little kids and shared a room. We have the same eyes and the same smell because I always borrow her perfume. If I wish hard enough, I can believe I was the one in here sleeping all night and Carlie was the one in the forest with Max.

Eventually I fall asleep, but at the same time I hear all the movements in the house. My father’s alarm, the drum of the shower, the car backing out of the driveway. My mom’s bare feet on the stairs, her hands through the dishwater, each piece of cutlery sinking, settling. It’s the first day of summer vacation and there are two months ahead with nothing to do.

When I come downstairs later, Carlie doesn’t ask me why I slept in her bed last night. We both pretend it never happened.

IT TAKES ME A WHILE to pick an outfit for the party — like over the summer I’ve forgotten how to dress myself — and in the end I go for something simple: jeans, a purple hoodie, sneakers. Mom’s standing by the sink, hidden in a cloud of spaghetti steam as she dumps the noodles into the colander. “Take a jacket,” she says. “Chilly tonight.” There’s a hint of blue left in the night sky and a purple stain where the sun has disappeared. As I round the corner of our block, I hear the bus pull away from the stop, so I decide to keep walking down to Lonsdale, where I can catch another one. Ambulance sirens whir out of the hospital on 13th Street and the sidewalks are empty, a cool wind — the first sign of fall — whistling down the street.

I flip up my hood and walk quickly, rubbing my arms for warmth. My slow-death summer is truly over. I spent it helping my dad with odd jobs around the house: painting the rec room, weeding the garden, clearing out the garage. I lost two months covered in cobwebs, hauling garbage bags of my parents’ old hippie clothes for Goodwill. Mom made me drain the backyard pond because she didn’t want to be held responsible for attracting West Nile virus mosquitos that could potentially wipe out the entire neighbourhood. God forbid my parents let me just lie on the couch, eating fruit cups topped with microwaved marshmallows.

So I wasn’t dreading going back to school, but I wouldn’t say I was cheery about it either. I wouldn’t say I was skipping the whole way through the halls into grade nine homeroom. Over the summer there was some sort of tectonic shift beneath the school and I spent the first week wandering around like a new student, even though I spent a thousand hours in this purgatory last year. I was always on the wrong floor or walking into the wrong classroom, thirty pairs of eyes laser-zapping me in the chest. Things still aren’t quite right, as though everyone is walking on a tilt — at least that’s the way it looks through my eyes.

Kids are talking about what went on between me and Max, but it’s hard to figure out exactly what they’re saying because I get all my information from Kate and she was occupied with Elgin all summer. I thought things might be different now that we’re back at school, but so far Kate’s spent every lunch hour with Elgin in a little windowed alcove next to the library that no one knew even existed before Kate and Elgin started eating there. I walked by on the first day of school and Kate was curled in a ball on the floor, resting her head in his lap. It’s probably the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen.

Today I found a note in my locker that said, Quit spreading STDs — anonymous, of course. I was scurrying by the alcove, ready to skip out and go home early, when Kate called out to me. “You coming tonight?” I had no idea what she was talking about, but I said, Yeah, yeah, see you there, and found out from Rana where the party was.

On the bus, I sit near the front, as far away as I can get from a group of kids from my grade. We all get off at the same stop, and I hold back, waiting for them to get far enough ahead so I can follow them to the party without them noticing me. The house is near the top of Montroyal, two blocks from my old elementary school, in one of those stuccoed Vancouver Specials kids always want to trash. As soon as I walk through the front door, I catch sight of Max’s ratty old toque weaving through the crowded living room, so I head down a flight of stairs and end up in the laundry room, where it’s so warm and cozy I think, What’s the harm in staying here awhile? I turn the dryer on even though it’s empty, the room filling with the smell of fabric softener and warm socks, and lie back, letting the vibrations jiggle my brain. It’s a good solution because it’s impossible to hear my heart thumping in my chest over the racket.

Max’s name has become a joke — no one knows how it started. MAX. At the beginning of the school year, his name began appearing all over, scrawled on lockers with sharpie, dug into the wood tops of desks, scribbled on the doors of the bathroom stalls. It’s nothing but his name, but it’s become a swear word like fuck or slut . If his name ends up on your locker you scrub it off. Sometimes I hear it whispered at my back like a dirty secret. Lately I’ve been pretending to have headaches. It’s good for getting out of things — gym class, school presentations, lunch in the cafeteria. My mother took me to the family doctor yesterday. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said. “You’re in perfect health.” It was almost an accusation.

Kate opens the laundry room door, music pouring in around her. “This is sad,” she says.