Lesley Anne Cowan Read online

  My mother.

  Youngish. Hippish. Pretty.

  Had a controlling father who wouldn’t let her go to parties until she was eighteen.

  And so she gave me independence at a young age. Instilled decision making. Discussed the rights and wrongs after the first time I trashed my room, at age ten, instead of punishing me. When I was fourteen, she took me to the gynecologist, who inserted a birth control capsule into my arm even though I wasn’t yet having sex. Since I was smoking ganja anyway, she showed me how to responsibly roll a joint and measure amounts. And since I was partying, she let my friends and me party under her roof because it was safer than on the streets.

  But she forgot something.

  I’m a kid!

  My brain is different. There are articles in science magazines about this. I highlighted the points and gave them to her.

  Do as I say, not as I do.

  Everyone knows this one too.

  My mother.

  Insecure. Addictive personality. Afraid of conflict.

  Had a controlling father who wouldn’t let her go to parties until she was eighteen. Then at eighteen and a half, she moved in with a boyfriend. At eighteen and nine months, she had me. At twenty-one, she had a second boyfriend, who had a small grow op in the back room beside my nursery. At twenty-two, she went into therapy and took medication. At twenty-three, she joined AA. At twenty-four, she went back to school until she got pregnant again with my little brother Bradley, who died when he was six. And then things really got messed up.

  Four

  Early the next morning, before school starts, I sit in the cafeteria with this guy in grade twelve, Jeremy, and have a coffee. Jeremy is a player, and all the girls both hate him and love him. He’s so incredibly gorgeous and smart, he can do whatever he wants. Him and me are just friends, but we used to fool around every once in a while, just for fun.

  We sit and talk about nothing special. I have my English homework in front of me: a blank page. I have been tapping my pen over it for fifteen minutes now, as if the ink would magically spill out and write the composition itself.

  “I can write it right now for you,” Jeremy finally offers. “Give me your pen.”

  I pass him my pen and paper.

  “But it’ll cost you,” he adds, smiling slyly and running his tongue along his lip in this totally sexy way.

  I roll my eyes. “Give me my pen back,” I order, holding out my hand.

  He pulls the pen away and holds it to his chest. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Just give it back,” I say again, smiling but resolute. There’s no way I will mess around with him now, because I have a boyfriend and I don’t do that anymore. I don’t blame him for trying, though, because nobody knows about me and Michael.

  He passes me the pen and I put it down to the paper as if I’m going to write something. “Now, shut up. I need to concentrate,” I say.

  He gets up quickly, pushing the chair hard, making a high-pitched shrieking noise. I’m surprised he’s so angry. It was no big deal, but whatever. I don’t care. I keep my eyes on the page and he walks away.

  For some reason I attract the most messed-up guys. I’m like a magnet for psychos—the ones with anger problems or jealousy or a few who seem incapable of caring deeply about anyone, including their families.

  I wish every guy came with a description card disclosing his inner emotional baggage. Like those papers you get in a chocolate box telling you what’s inside so you don’t waste your efforts on something you know you won’t like.

  That’s why, when I first met Michael, he seemed so totally normal that he was almost boring. It’s like I bit into him, expecting something to come oozing out, but all there was was a little dribble of depression and an ex-girlfriend.

  During the first few weeks, I didn’t know how to handle it. Without the usual constant fighting I have with a guy, the flatlined calm made me feel like he wasn’t really into me. I kept trying to pick a fight about the smallest things, but he didn’t bite. At least when you fight, you get a sign that a guy cares about you. But then Michael explained it to me one day. He told me it’s like I have to learn a different language of love. “It’s called words and expression,” he said.

  The thing about Michael is that he’s twenty-eight. We were just friends for almost a year, but we got together about three months ago, just after I turned sixteen. People think a sixteenyear-old girl can’t really love. A man, that is. And definitely not a twenty-eight-year-old man. Sure, a sixteen-year-old can love a pet or an actor or a favourite pair of jeans. She can love a parent, a sibling, even a hamster. All of these kinds of love are clearly legitimate. But any feeling toward a man is considered a childish crush. It’s something cute or trivial, somehow not as legitimate as adult love. And a sixteen-year-old loving a man? This is inconceivable. But I’m living proof: it can happen.

  Five

  Because it’s Jess’s birthday, she, Mya, Shayla, and I decide to chill out behind the equipment hut by the school’s back parking lot during third period. We’re so high that none of us notice our vice-principal, Ms. Brentworth, turn the corner until it’s too late.

  What can we do? Blunts in our mouths. Smoke in the air. We’re busted.

  The four of us trudge down the hallway behind Ms. Brentworth, who walks like a pig on tippy-hooves, her fat calves and bulging feet stuffed into her tiny black shoes. When we pass a garbage bin, I’m quick to toss in my stash of weed, even though it kills me to lose it all. Someone immediately taunts, “Yo, Mel, what’s up?” and I know it’ll be gone when I come back.

  We are taken into the office and Jessica and Mya are allowed to go home after a little blah blah blah, but since Shayla and I were the ones holding the joints, we have to wait three hours for our parents to show up. This will be my fifth high school suspension. Four were for skipping and one for “persistent opposition to authority,” when I refused to leave the classroom last year because I wasn’t going to blindly obey a teacher who was a male chauvinist pig.

  My mom doesn’t even look at me when she arrives. She just goes straight to the counter and asks for Ms. Brentworth. Then she sits on one of the chairs closest to the door and starts rummaging through her purse. When Shayla’s mom arrives, she goes right up to Shayla and speaks through gritted teeth. “This is it, Shayla. This is it!” I know she’ll be in a lot of trouble, mostly from her father. Her mother is just the warm-up. Her parents used to live in rural India, and life is just entirely different there for girls. Shayla says they think she is the Devil sometimes.

  “Whoa,” I tease when her mom walks away. “You’re in shit.”

  “Shut up,” Shayla replies, punching me in the arm.

  Our two mothers sit beside each other. They look so different. Shayla’s mom is in a business suit, with the blazer folded on her lap. My mom is wearing a jean jacket and thick-soled flip-flops. Her nails are painted pink with swirly butterfly designs on both big toes. My friends think I’m lucky to have such a cool mom, but they don’t have to live with her. Sometimes I’m proud how beautiful and young she looks. People always question my mom about her being a model, and then they look at me and shut their mouths because I’m just average pretty. She used to try to get me to wear feminine, tight clothes like her, but we just don’t have the same body. And most of the time I find her taste tacky anyway, a cross between that bold, gold Québécois jewellery and Brazilian bling.

  “They were all smoking marijuana,” Ms. Brentworth explains to our moms when we are finally called into her office.

  “You mean each girl had a joint in her hand?” Suddenly my mother’s mood has changed. It seems she is no longer mad at me. It seems she’s now pissed off at Ms. Brentworth. I want her to shut up. Shayla’s mom isn’t saying a thing. She just sits in her chair like a normal parent, looking humiliated and furious.

  “No. Actually. Only Melissa and Shayla had the joints in their hands. That’s part of the reason why they are here now and the other girls were sent home
.”

  My mom darts me a disappointed look. Not because I had the joint in my hand but because I ruined her plan of attack. “And the other part of the reason?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You said that’s part of the reason,” my mother persists. Why is she being so confrontational?

  Ms. Brentworth opens her desk drawer and removes a plastic bag full of a few hundred empty dime bags.

  “What’s that?” Shayla’s mom asks.

  “Well. It’s a few hundred Baggies, suggestive of trafficking purposes.”

  “You had that?” Shayla’s mom turns to her. “What are you doing with that? You selling drugs? Is that what you’re doing when you’re out at night? Is that what’s been happening right outside my home, in the park?” Her mom really lays into her. Shayla keeps her head down, I’m sure humiliated that I’m witnessing the public lynching.

  “Ms. Jaya …” Brentworth interrupts. “We don’t think Shayla and Melissa are drug dealers. But we do wonder why they had this paraphernalia in their possession. We also are extremely concerned about the amount of marijuana brought onto school property. We have discretionary expulsion and notification of police in matters of trafficking. But since we haven’t caught the girls in the act of selling, we’re going to suspend them for five days for being under the influence of illegal drugs on school property. We are also going to suspend them for another five days for possessing illegal drugs.”

  “Ten days? What good is keeping them out of school for ten days going to do?” my mom pipes in. “Guess what they’ll do during that time? Because it ain’t gonna be school work.”

  “Please understand, Ms. Sullivan. We need to ensure our school is a safe place for all attending students. It is highly concerning to have students bringing drugs onto school property, and using them. We have an obligation to terminate the behaviour. Sometimes it’s necessary to involve the police.”

  “For a little bag of weed?” My mother laughs. “Come on, Ms. Brentworth. We all experimented when we were young—”

  I bury my head in my hand. What is she doing? Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

  “But we know Shayla and Melissa have the potential to be positive peer influences,” Ms. Brentworth masterfully interjects, shutting my mom right up. “They both have good leadership potential, if channelled in the right direction.”

  We listen to the radio on the car ride home. My mom seems pretty happy. She doesn’t ask me about the drugs—whose they were or what we were going to do with them. Then, at a stoplight, she turns down the radio and I prepare myself for the lecture. “Listen. I know you smoke sometimes, Melissa. But don’t be an idiot about it. Don’t do it on school property. And not during school hours. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Done. Easy.

  The radio goes back on and I turn to the window, relieved she isn’t going to make a big deal about it. I have bigger things to worry about than my mother being mad at me. Freestyle will kill me for getting busted and losing the weed, even if he is my uncle. I owe him a lot of money now since I can’t sell it, so I’ll have to pick up extra shifts during my suspension to pay him back.

  “She said you have leadership potential,” my mom comments when we pull into the underground garage.

  “What?” I ask, distracted. My mind is still focused on my plans to pay back Freestyle.

  “Your vice-principal said you have leadership potential,” she repeats with a smile, like she’s all proud of me.

  “Oh,” I answer. Maybe coming from a normal parent this compliment would be nice, but I just can’t help but be annoyed that she has found a way to make my suspension a positive thing.

  Six

  My boyfriend, Michael, thinks I have potential too. He gets really upset when I tell him two nights later about the suspension. He thinks I’m better than that and it’s my bad choice in friends that is holding me back.

  After I explain what happened, Michael sits me down across from him at his kitchen table and tells me I have to make a ten-year plan. Sometimes he acts like he’s my father that way, all protective and serious. We go over how many school credits I need to graduate. We look at the university requirements for veterinary college. He even says he’ll call to make an appointment for a campus tour. He makes me write down my entire school timetable and commit to a final grade for each course. As I’m doing his “assignment,” I start to feel excited about my future. I can actually do this! Actually, since I met him, I feel like I can almost do anything.

  A thought occurs to me. I put down my pen and look at him. “What about your ten-year plan?”

  “I did it ten years ago.”

  “Did it work?”

  “No,” he says. “Unfortunately, life gets in the way of those plans sometimes.”

  And he doesn’t have to explain. I know he’s talking about his depression. He’s already told me about being a keener university student who had it all—the perfect girlfriend, perfect grades, perfect family. And when depression hit him, it knocked him completely off his feet, because it was like the first obstacle that ever stood in his way. He said he just stood there, stunned, staring at this ugly monster that jumped onto his path, and he froze in fear.

  “So then, why am I doing it if it doesn’t work?” I ask.

  “Because sometimes life doesn’t get in the way,” he says with regret, as if there’s still hope for me but it’s all over for him. It breaks my heart to see him so down. He isn’t that bad. I know some people would think he’s a loser to be with a sixteen-yearold. They’d think he has some kind of problem and can’t get a girl his own age. But other than being a little quiet and boring, he’s totally normal.

  I get up out of my chair, lean far across the table on my elbows, and kiss him hard. Then I crawl up over the table all sexy, like I’m in a music video, finagle my way down onto his chair, and straddle his lap, all the while kissing. I’m still wearing my school uniform—I know it’s something Michael just can’t resist.

  After fooling around all over the kitchen, we end up lying on the bed just holding each other, naked only down to our waists. I rest my head on top of his heart and fan my hair out over his chest. His arms tightly wrap around me, not hairless and scentless boyish arms but real man’s arms. And I’m not thinking about my bad breath or getting high or about what to say. Instead, we just are. I just am. And my life is perfect.

  I don’t know why he makes me so happy. We don’t do much. Sometimes we drive to the mall. Not the closest one—too many people he might bump into there. Sometimes we go to movies or have breakfast at this diner in the east end. But usually we are in his apartment, watching TV or making dinner or just reading. This is where our relationship lives. Inside these four walls.

  “Why are you with me?” I ask him. It is something I’ve always wanted to know since we’ve been together, but was afraid that if I asked he actually might not be able to come up with a good reason.

  “Because you make me feel good,” he says right away. “You think everything I do is great.”

  “Hey!” I lift my head up to look into his eyes. “Me too. That’s the same for me.”

  “And you’re beautiful.” He starts to run his hand through my hair.

  I slap him on the chest. “No I’m not.”

  “Yes you are.”

  “How am I beautiful?”

  “Well, let’s see …” He lifts his head to carefully look me over. “Of course, your face is beautiful. And your body. And your skin. Your smile.” He lifts my hair up. “… Your ears.”

  “My ears?” I slap him again. I’m embarrassed to hear him talk like that. Deep down I just don’t think it’s true, ’cause I know my looks aren’t amazing.

  “Ahhhh!” he jokes, grabbing my hand. “Don’t hurt me! I can’t take any more pain in my life.”

  I pull my hand away, roll over onto my back. “Hmm.” I don’t really know what to say. I know he was sort of joking, but for the past while he’s been telling me that he was feeling depress
ed. It feels strange to hear a guy admit he’s unhappy, because all the other guys I know are just angry. And the fact that he’s still unhappy makes me feel like I’m not good enough, because I should be making life perfect for him, the way he has done for me. Since I met Michael, it’s as if all the bad things in my life don’t exist anymore. Finally, God answered one of my prayers and gave me someone who loves me in a way no one has before. And I want to do the same for him. I want to be the answer to Michael’s prayers.

  “I wish I could make a time machine that would speed up time for you but keep it still for me and we could meet in ten years,” he says. It drives him crazy that he’s twelve years older than me, and for teenagers he thinks age is counted like dog years. One human year is the same as seven dog years. So that means he’s basically eighty-four years older.

  “Yeah? And who will I be then?” I ask, sitting up on my knees.

  He spreads his big hands out over my head as if I were a crystal ball and starts rubbing his fingertips against my scalp. “I see a woman wearing a suit jacket and heels. I see someone who can stand in front of a roomful of businessmen and stun them with her assertiveness and brains.”

  By the time he finishes, my hair is tangled in knots. I reach out to do the same to his head, but then I pull away. “I better not,” I joke, closely inspecting his receding hairline. “It might all fall out.”

  “Shut up,” he says, playfully pushing me backward.

  “Here, I’ll be gentle.” I become serious and replace my hands at his temple. I close my eyes and try to picture him ten years from now. Then I open my eyes again. “What will you be … almost forty?”

  “Hey—only thirty-eight.”

  “Same thing,” I say. I try to envision forty and I see every old guy in my apartment building. I see Michael in a jogging suit, with a belly and a half-bald head. Then I see him eating a slice of pizza and holding a six-pack under his arm. “Forget it. Nothing’s coming to me. I can’t do it.” I drop my hands, feeling