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

We huddled in our hole until the game was almost over, the forest gone quiet so all we could hear were the leaves turning and falling around us. Weaving through the trees, Kate spotted a food bucket behind a large pine, little tickets scattered across the ground in greedy hunger. Neither one of us heard Max coming up the path behind us as we stooped to grab as many tickets as we could, but Kate saw him first. She dashed off, crashing through a tight thicket of bushes, a trail of tickets fluttering behind her. I froze exactly like a deer would. I pressed my back to the tree as Max approached slowly, his breathing calm and shallow, his eyes over every inch of me as they looked for any twitch of an escape. He raised his two hands, palms cupped inches from each other as though I were a small bird he was trying to trap. As he got closer, I got smaller and smaller until his two hands came down, resting gently on top of my shoulders. “Got you,” he said.

We all waited a long time for Kate to get caught. There must have been at least sixty kids sprawled out on the big field under the power lines, all of us waiting for her. Eventually, they had to send counsellors in to look for her. I never told anyone where Kate might be.

Max was the best predator, having caught the most prey. He paced the edge of the field, desperate to go out and find her, but the counsellors said no. They said the last thing they needed were two kids lost in the forest. One was bad enough.

KATE CALLS TO TELL me Max jumped off the Lions Gate Bridge. I’m sitting downstairs in the family room watching TV. Kate starts to cry on the phone. I haven’t talked to her in months. She says, “I thought you’d want to know.” She tells me they found Max floating in the water around Ambleside Beach and the memorial service is this weekend. I want to talk to her, but I just say thanks and hang up the phone.

On the TV, girls are pinching the skin on their thighs and stomachs. I go to the bathroom and try to throw up, but I can’t. I look in the mirror and pull the skin under my eyes, but I don’t cry. My hair is soft and wavy, the way it looks sometimes when I wake up. It looks good and I wish I had someplace to go, but lately on the weekends all I do is watch TV with my parents. Sometimes I go to Rana’s to watch a movie or play Monopoly, but most of the time I’m too tired. Mom thinks I should go see the doctor again because I like to take long naps in the afternoon after I get home from school. She asks me why I sleep so much and I tell her it’s schoolwork, but the real reason is because sleep is so easy.

I sit on the bathroom floor and stare at the quilted pattern on the toilet paper roll, trying to make myself feel guilty, but there’s nothing inside of me. Even with all this emptiness there’s no room for Max here. I pull one of the towels down from the rack and roll it into a pillow. I can sleep anywhere now.

AFTER THE MEMORIAL SERVICE, Kate stands smoking in the shade of the tall hedges beside the funeral home. I walk over to say hello and we stand together quietly for a minute looking past the cemetery and over the trees toward the highway. “I didn’t sleep last night,” Kate says finally. Her face is cool, almost cold. People gather and mill around the parking lot. Max’s older brother is standing by the front doors talking with someone, absentmindedly plucking leaves from a bush.

“Can I bum a smoke?” I say. Kate hands me her pack. She tilts her head to examine me until I feel uncomfortable. I pause when I see there’s only one cigarette left. “Smoke it. Enjoy,” she says. She has a new expression, something she does with her lips, fattening them into a pout to punctuate her sentences.

When I introduced myself to Max’s mother, I shook her hand and said, “Hi, you don’t know me.” She was walking down the long line of people waiting to get into the funeral home. I was staring at the poster board by the front door with Max’s school picture from last year pinned to it, his hair combed and neatly parted to the left in a way I’ve never seen him do it before. Usually his hair hung down kind of scraggly and the most he’d do was tuck it behind his ears. I was distracted thinking about how his hair was his best feature, when his mother appeared in front of me with her hand extended. I wasn’t prepared for her dull, river-stone eyes, flat and lifeless. I was grateful when Kate leaned past me and took her hand.

I smoke quickly. “Where’s Elgin?”

“Elgin?” Kate seems confused by the question. “At home.”

“Oh.” I focus on the burning tip of the cigarette. “I thought he’d be here.”

“No.” Kate shrugs, ashing in the hedge. “He hates funerals.” She turns her gaze back to the distant highway noise. “I felt this duty to come. We weren’t close with him like you.”

“I wasn’t close with him,” I say, maybe too quickly. I’m glad I didn’t cry during the service. I thought about whether I should try to, but now I’m glad I didn’t.

“Well, you guys did get together that one time,” Kate says, turning to look over the crowd, to look anywhere but at me. “That must mean something.”

“Yeah, but—” I look back at the funeral home. The doors are closed and someone is locking them now. The cops said Max wasn’t high when he jumped from the bridge. I can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. I guess it doesn’t mean much of anything when the result is the same.

“I don’t mean anything by it,” Kate says. “I just mean it must be harder for you.”

“I know.” My fingers fiddle with the hem of my shirt.

“And I didn’t spread those rumours about you,” she says all of a sudden. She squints into the crowd as though she’s looking for the person who did. “I know you think it was me.”

“What rumours?” I say, pretending to have no idea what she’s talking about.

“You know, that you’ve slept with a bunch of people.”

I nod; I’ve learned it’s better to say almost nothing if you want to keep up a charade.

“I mean, I know you’re not a slut or anything, obviously. I don’t know why people are saying that,” Kate says matter-of-factly.

“It’s fine.” I shrug my shoulders.

“I guess so,” Kate says, “if you don’t care.”

Max’s mother is standing at the edge of the cemetery, staring at a tree. She looks like she’s being held up by a piece of thread. Someone should be standing beside her.

“So,” Kate says, butting out her cigarette, “what are you doing tonight?”

“Nothing.” I was planning to go to bed early, but I don’t tell that to Kate.

“Want to go to the dam?” She’s already heading for the bus stop, talking to me over her shoulder. “It would be good to hang out. We’ll, like, remember Max and stuff.”

“Okay.” I have no idea if she hears me. I stand there waiting, smoking my cigarette down to the filter, until the bus comes and she gets on.

As I’m leaving, someone puts Max’s mother into a car. They have to bend her knees and lift her legs inside.

THE BUS IS FULL of night skiers and boarders as it travels up Capilano Road. I get off near the base of Grouse. There’s still snow on the mountain even though it’s spring, and I stuff my hands in my pockets, making my way across the street. The mountains are so tall it’s like they’re folding over, the last colours of the day gone now, black inking itself out of the trees into the sky. At the base of Grouse, the reservoir is as still as a mirror, reflecting the icy caps of the mountains. It all feels like glass, as if any loud noise — even one from far away — could shatter everything to pieces.

When I get to the dam Kate’s not there yet. I peer over the edge and watch the water pour down, a mist coating the bottom of the canyon and winding through the trees, making the rocks sparkle in the dark. I pull a stone from my pocket — I always bring stuff to throw into the dam — and toss it into the arc of water, losing sight of it almost as soon as it leaves my hand. The longer I stare at the spiralling water, the more I feel as though I’m falling, but I never find the rocks below, I just keep spinning out of control, unable to grasp anything or anyone around me. In a lot of ways I feel like Max dragged me down with him. If he knew he was going to end it all, why did he let me get close to him at Mosquito Creek? He could have said, I’m fucked up. Stay away .