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

“Listen.” The forest flutters around us in a gentle breeze, cool over my wet skin. There’s nothing: no buzz, no horsefly. Elgin takes his hand off of my mouth and kisses me, his tongue warm and heavy. When we pass back under the highway, I pick a blackberry off the bush. Elgin was right — they taste like exhaust, but there’s a sweetness in them too.

ELGIN BIKES ALONG THE highway on the way back to the house. Each car that passes brings a wave of hot air on my bare legs. He pulls over onto the grass shoulder, says, “I have to take a piss.” I turn my back while he climbs into the brush along the side of the highway. A car honks as it drives by and my eyes follow unwillingly. Before I know what’s happening, Elgin races out of the bushes and onto the highway. He jumps up on the meridian and pretends to surf, like the cars are ocean waves or sharks or something. “Are you stupid?” I yell, across the stream of traffic. “Come on,” Elgin shouts back. He motions with his arms and almost loses balance. Something makes me think that if I am standing with him he won’t fall. Cars blare their horns and people shout out their windows, you idiot, get off the road, you’re going to kill someone . Their angry faces burst past in hot flashes. I wait for a break in the traffic and run across the highway. Elgin holds out his hands and helps me up onto the divider. “You’re really stupid.” I hold my arms out like a tightrope walker. Elgin takes my hands and we balance, grinning at each other.

“I love you,” I say, letting the words lose themselves in the traffic. The cars whip past us, sending gusts of warm air through my wet hair. It’s not how I imagined, not like flying at all.

PAUL’S TEACHING US SEX ED and whenever he says the word vagina I blush and hate myself. Most of our grade ten class is sitting on the gymnasium floor watching a slideshow with diagrams of deformed genitalia. Paul clicks through the pictures listing the STD that caused the damage — scabies, syphilis, gonorrhea. When a grotesquely swollen scrotum appears on the projection screen, some guy in the back row shouts blue balls and everyone starts laughing. Rana’s sitting beside me scribbling notes on my arm. She doesn’t seem to care that, from wrist to elbow, the only thing we’ve discussed is her hair, which now has pink streaks. Over the summer her parents separated and sold their house next to Mosquito Creek; her father moved back to Lebanon and Rana and her mother moved into a condo on the waterfront with a view of the city. The separation means Rana can get away with a lot more than usual right now (which is still hardly anything), but when she saw her mother crying at the kitchen sink this morning she decided she would wash the dye out tonight. I make tiny little braids with the streaks in the meantime. It keeps her from writing anything else on my arm.

Kate’s sitting in the front row, her hair pulled back in her usual swishy ponytail, and when Paul hands out bananas and condoms she’s one of the first to get one. The laugh that explodes from my mouth is a little louder than I intend. It makes Rana duck into her lap and Kate turn to scan the rows of heads accusingly. Paul gets fed up and says something like, “You guys better smarten up. This is part of your Career and Personal Planning mark.”

Between bells Rana and I head to the washroom along the main hall. Usually I avoid that washroom because it’s the largest one in the school and there are always long lines of girls waiting for stalls or standing at the row of mirrors. The place reminds me of a hive, but one littered with toilet paper and really bitchy honeybees and a constant buzz of gossip over the stalls. While Rana pees I stand at the mirrors fixing my hair and wait for the right moment. “Ran,” I call in a clear voice over the top of the stall, “did you hear Kate lied about sleeping with Elgin? She’s still a virgin.” The bees pause for an infinitesimal second before resuming their activities. The stall door swings open and Rana comes stomping over to gape at me in the mirror. I use the word pathetic and Rana’s laughing, hand over her mouth, going holy shit, that’s too good.

As we walk down the hall we pass right by Kate’s locker. She’s pulling textbooks out and stuffing them in her backpack. Rana mutters the same word I used, pathetic , but it sounds harsher from her mouth. The strange thing is, Kate doesn’t look at Rana — she looks right at me.

THE RAIN COMES DOWN hard so I stand under the awning, waiting for Carlie’s blue Nova as the school empties around me.

“You look like shit,” Carlie says, as soon as I buckle my seat belt. She’s always pissed when she has to drive me to the mall. “When’s the last time you brushed your hair?”

“I can’t brush my hair.”

“You can’t brush your hair?” She taps her fingers on the steering wheel and throws herself back into the seat with a sigh whenever we hit a red light and I ignore her and watch the scenery: the condos, the gas stations, the antique stores. “How are you getting back?” she asks, putting on mascara while we wait at a light.

“I’ll take the bus.”

As the mall comes into view, Carlie accelerates, screeching around the corners in the parking lot like we’re on a racetrack. She slams on her brakes for an old lady who is nowhere near the crosswalk, but almost hits two girls in tight white jeans trying to cross an intersection, honking at them as they run across the street. They give her the finger when they’re safely on the other side. “You should buy yourself something,” Carlie says as she pulls up to the curb. She motions to my head. “A hairband or a scrunchie.”

“Shut up, Carlie.” I get out of the car without saying goodbye and Carlie drives away before I’ve even closed the door.

The smell of sweet and sour pork, drugstore perfume, and new leather makes me dizzy as I walk through the revolving doors. The mall is dead, full of outdated stores selling greeting cards, sunglasses, and baby clothes. There are two stores selling vacuum cleaners, as if one isn’t enough. Everything smells like greasy Chinese food or preteens or the elderly. Escalators lead nowhere and people either move way too fast or way too slow. At the lingerie store I dig through the sale bins and find three matching sets of bras and panties in my size. Through the window, I catch sight of Kate drifting by like a ghost, sucking on a giant Orange Julius. I duck behind one of the bins and the sales lady sneaks up behind me and asks me what I’m doing, as if I’m planning to stuff a bunch of thongs in my pockets.

I take the long way to the Bread Garden where Rana and I planned to meet up, strolling through some empty corridors and across the Bay so I’m sure not to run into Kate. The restaurant is nearly empty, rain streaking the windows, the sky fallen dark, and I pace at the glass display case while a pimply kid from my school waits unblinkingly for me to make a decision. I want to yell at him, Blink, god dammit, but I feel sorry for him too because his shift looks somewhat like eternal damnation. In the end I get nothing, deciding to wait for Rana to see if she’d rather split a cinnamon knot or a chocolate muffin. I take a seat next to the windows and while I’m dusting cookie crumbs off the table, Paul walks in. Something has happened to him; it’s as though outside the school walls a metamorphosis has occurred that’s broken him free from his cocoon of bad footwear and pitying gestures. As he stands at the counter with a newspaper tucked under his arm, ordering his coffee and picking out a danish, he seems like someone relaxed and cool and utterly unlike Paul. He’s still wearing jeans, but he’s also wearing a leather jacket and expensive-looking boots. It suddenly occurs to me that the Birkenstocks may be meant to connect with students, as though baring his gnarled toes shows some kind of vulnerability. When he turns to find a table, I’m staring right at him with a dopey grin on my face. “Paul!” I shout across the restaurant like it’s been years since I’ve seen him instead of earlier this afternoon. Right away the image of a banana encased in latex flashes in my brain and I start to sweat.