My parents and I went to New York on Saturday, because my dad needed to see a dentist in Flushing, and afterwards we went shopping in Flushing-Chinatown (which is basically Chinatown, but needs to be differentiated from the Chinatown in Manhattan, since, well, they're in two different places). We saw this really cute Korean shop selling clothes and hairthings, and I half-dragged my parents over to the hairclips section. My mom commented on one of the hairclips, and we picked it up, but we didn't know how to wear it.
One of the sales attendant came and helped me put it on. I was slightly surprised, since he was a guy, but something else was throwing me off that I didn't even dwell too much on his gender.
After we had paid for the hairclip and he was smiling and thanking us, I finally realized.
He was tall, he was skinny, and he had that sort of Asian mop that isn't really messy because his hair is so straight.
He reminded me of Matt.
I kind of miss him, along with the rest of the graduating senior class. I've made a lot of friends among them in the past two years (in fact, I think my friends are equally divided among three classes, mainly because I don't know any freshmen this year), and I don't know if I can ever think of this school without them there. It's going to be weird, seeing Mrs. MacDonald but not being in her stat class—and even weirder without Kyle and Trevor and the rest of them there. I even miss Kyle writing his entire name, with Rev. and Dr. and suffixes, all in one (granted, he's the first one, but I'm assuming he's assuming a long lineage of boys with his exact name) on the board, and everyone else pretending to be him by writing his name on the board as well, except none of them could ever write as big as Kyle. I guess ego's a huge part of it.
In other words, I would like to have a go on another story.
Afraid to Die
It has taken me my entire life to realize that I'm not really not afraid to die—that I'm too selfish to die, and yet not selfish enough to die.
Summer in Mississauga was a smoldering place, despite its relatively northern latitude. The sun beat down relentlessly, and the tall sugar maples drooped under the burning light. It was a dry kind of heat, not like that of Miami or any sea-bound city, but a heat that came from the almost poisonous UV-chocked sunlight and clear skies that belied the foundries and factories in nearby Hamilton.
Denise's parents worked in Hamilton, and they made the commute to and from Mississauga, where they lived, every day. It was not a tremendously long drive, but the traffic along the 401 was an absolute nightmare, and Denise was glad she did not have to wake up early every morning just to be stuck in a car with the A/C blasted on high and staring at the cars crawling past.
Denise, for her part, was glad that it was summer, even if it meant unbearable temperatures. There was the library for that, and the sprinklers a few minutes' walk away, designed to wash off the choking chlorine from the pool-goers' bodies (the pool was a frequently visited place for those who, unlike Denise, did not have a deep loathing of swimming), but commonly used as an attraction by itself. Already, several of her friends had arranged gatherings around local amenities such as the skating rink, and with school and its tedious work so far away, Denise and her friends were able to think just in terms of summer—nothing more.
This summer, however, Denise had a job. Her friend, Annabelle, had worked for the
National Post for the past few months, canvassing—one of the few occupations that nearly all Mississauga residents admitted they despised—and had persuaded Denise to join. Denise talked to the "Boss," and through some strange sort of misunderstanding (or perhaps lack of willingness to understand), despite Denise's extreme case of shyness around strangers, the Boss agreed for Denise to come on board.
So Denise waited in front of a PetroCanada gas station, barely under the shade of the towering red and white sign, keeping her eyes open for the tell-tale dark green van (not many people liked dark green as a car color) that Annabelle said the Boss drove.
It came, at half past three (although Denise would never admit she was counting), its tinted glass making Denise even more nervous. She peered at the driver—no doubt the Boss—as the van halted in front of her, but she could not make out anything. Her need for a new pair of glasses did not help her either.
The van's door automatically slid open, and someone inside bellowed, "Get in!" Denise stuck her foot into the floor of the van and clumisly climbed in. Only after she was seated did she notice the driver, a tall, well-built man in his late thirties, and the boy in the passenger seat, a plump but by no means overweight blond who was around her age and a good deal more crass, judging by his words.
"You're Denise?" The Boss asked, rhetorically, of course. Denise nodded, wondering what trials she still had to go through, and desperately wishing she were at home, in front of her computer, chatting with her friends on IM while playing 2Moons and lamenting how much lag there was.
"Well, you gotta hurry up—no money, no honey!"
The boy next to him swore. "Can't you come up with something more original? You always say that."
"Now, now, Peter, watch your language. You don't want me telling your mommy, do you?"
"Don't talk to me about my mom!"
The Boss laughed, a nasty, nasal laugh that made Denise sick. Peter looked away, eyebrows furrowed, obviously mad but obviously helpless to the situation.
"How old are you, girl? Fourteen?" The Boss asked, still laughing.
Denise nodded, afraid her voice would come out as a squeak.
"Good, you're legal then," The Boss said, referring to the legal age to work—fourteen. "My boy here, Peter, is fifteen, so he's not much older than you."
Peter did not respond, and Denise nodded, not sure what else to say.
"We're going to pick up your friend, Annabelle, next, so why don't Peter tell you what you're supposed to do right now?"
As if on cue, Peter turned around, his face instantly full of seriousness as he described the steps Denise had to follow. It was simple, really. The objective was to get people to subscribe to the
NP, and to earn a commission off people's subscriptions. The hard part was to get people to subscribe right away, and not give some flimsy excuse such as "I'll check it over and buy later"—because there was no money to be had from that.
Denise nodded along as Peter explained, not really hearing anything. She would never understand without doing first, anyway, but she did not want to appear rude. Besides, she was much too afraid to point anything out.
The van swerved to a stop in front of Annabelle's condo, and the door slid open again. Denise shuffled along her seat until she reached the other end of the van, right behind Peter, so she could not see his face anymore, and Annabelle climbed in.
"Hi, everyone," Annabelle said. Denise noted that Annabelle did not buckle her seatbelt, and the hand that had been reaching for the silver buckle fell limp. "You made it, Denise! Did Peter tell you anything yet?"
"Yeah, I—" Peter began, but Annabelle interrupted him.
"Don't believe half the things he says, Denise. He's just all talk."
Peter closed his mouth and fumed. Annabelle laughed, and so did the Boss, and Denise wanted to join in on this supposedly humorous moment, but all she could feel was a bitter taste of anxiety on her mouth.
They stopped at several more apartment buildings, and a tall, big-headed boy who said his name was Tom and another, shorter boy who said his name was Tim climbed on board. Another lanky blond by the name of Ivan also boarded with a short, childish boy, Mikael, and they started talking in Russian with Peter. The Boss shook his head, yelled at the three boys to talk in English, then started blasting his music as high as he could. The thunderous beats made Denise cringe.
At the next stop, a girl called Candy climbed on, and explained to Denise that her real name was something else in another language, but the lady who lived next door said that she did not deserve her name. Denise nodded along, her neck already stiff. They were running out of seats in the van, so Annabelle and Denise and Candy squeezed in the back with Ivan, the skinniest of the boys.
With the music still blasting from the shuddering speakers, Ivan, who sat next to Denise, started talking about his dreams, much to Denise's surprise (and possibly dismay).
"I want to be a skater," he said. "Y'know, sometimes I feel like I'm trapped inside this bubble, and I can't get out, but I don't want to get out. It's nice, all bubbly. I want to be a professional skater."
Denise was not sure how the two were linked. She looked over at Annabelle, but the other girl was already engaged in a conversation with Tom and Tim that Denise could not follow. She turned back to Ivan, who apparently enjoyed talking about strange things even if no one was really listening to him, because he was already on his next subject, how much he hated PizzaPizza and would rather eat Subway.
The van stopped one more time, and two girls came. Denise did not quite catch their names, because everyone had forgotten by now that she was new and therefore did not know anyone. They sat in the middle row, with the three boys, and Denise felt her fear stuck in her throat. She kept on looking about for police cars, afraid to be pulled over, but she was even more afraid to look strange with her head poking about, so she had to exercise her peripheral vision.
Finally, the van stopped in front of a rather affluent neighborhood, judging from the big houses, and, instead of someone else climbing in, the Boss yelled at everyone to get out. Denise awkwardly hobbled out, after Annabelle and with Ivan behind her, and stood even more awkwardly, not sure what she should do.
"Hey, Annabelle!" The Boss shouted. "Take another set of forms and show your friend along. Peter, why don't you go with them and take the other side of the street?"
Annabelle and Peter each took a clipboard and a stack of forms that Denise had spotted on the van before. Annabelle took another set, and handed it over to Denise. The other people got back on in the van, and the Boss shouted one last "I'll be back by six!" before driving away.
"Which side do you want to take?" Annabelle asked Peter.
"Either. Doesn't matter."
"Alright. Denise and I'll take the evens, and you can take the odds. Or—actually, can you take Denise with you? You're better at this than I am, so maybe it'll be better."
"Sure," Peter said. He started along the left side of the street, and Denise followed him, while Annabelle went towards the big yellow house on the right.
"So, how did you hear about the Boss?" Peter asked.
"Annabelle told me about him," Denise said. She was sure he was less interested in the answer than the opportunity to quash any awkward silences.
Peter paused, then said, "You have such a pretty voice. You should use it more often."
"Um, thanks?"
They stopped in front of the first house, and Peter rang the doorbell. They waited, trying to discern if the soft
pad-pad-pad were footsteps, or their minds playing tricks on them. After a while, the door opened, and a middle-aged man in full suit attire opened the door and eyed them warily.
"Hello, sir," Peter began. "How are you today?"
"Good, thanks. What do you want?"
"Well, my name is Peter, and this is Denise, and we're with the
National Post, here to introduce you to an incredible offer—"
"No, thank you. I'm not interested."
The man moved to close the door, but Peter interrupted him.
"Now, sir, it's an incredible offer. You get the newspaper every morning, delivered to your door by 6am, and the extra features sections on the weekends, and I'm sure—"
"No, thank you. I'm
not interested."
"But, sir, it's only $40 for twelve weeks! That's less than—"
"Who is it, honey?" A voice, clearly female, came from inside. The man turned around and shouted, "Some kids here trying to sell me their newspaper."
The woman came to the door and looked at Peter and Denise. Then she turned to her husband and said, "A newspaper subscription won't hurt us. Who are you with?"
"
National Post, m'am."
The woman nodded sagely, as though she knew all along, and Peter started on filling out the order form. The man looked on at them, annoyed, and Denise ground her molars together, her jaws tight from nervousness.
When the last details were complete, Peter thanked them again and wished them a good night. The door closed on them (rather harshly, in Denise's opinion), and the two of them went on to the next door.
"Did you get one already?" Annabelle shouted from across the street.
"Yeah! You better pick up your pace over there!" Then, he turned to Denise and asked, "What do you think?"
"I don't know," Denise said. "It's—I don't know."
They finished up their side of the street, taking in two more orders, and stopped when the street ended. Normally, Peter told Denise, they would go along the side streets as well, but there were no side streets this time, and it was such a long street, so they would just go back and wait for the Boss.
They sat there on the curb, all three of them, with Denise in the middle. Annabelle twirled her hair, playing with her split ends, and Denise watched her, fascinated, because there was nothing else to do. After a while, Annabelle turned to Denise and Peter and smiled.
"What do you guys want to do when you grow up?"
"Anything but this," Peter said, with a hint of frustration that Denise thought familiar. "Anything is better than this."
"A writer," Denise said. "I want to be a professional writer. The people who are writing the articles for the newspaper that we're trying to sell."
"Really?" Peter asked. "I'm afraid I'm not much of a newspaper person."
Denise did not ask what Annabelle wanted to be. Everyone who knew Annabelle knew that she wanted to become an artist. She was so talented, it would be a shame if she did not pursue art as her career.
They waited until the sun slipped under the tallest roofs of the houses when the van came again. It was not yet completely dark—summer in Mississauga was notoriously bright, well into the late 9 o'clock—but it was dark enough, and Denise was glad to be going home. She heaved herself into the crammed van, feeling the mass of bodies squeezed against her and the panic rising in the back of her throat again, and left the unknown neighborhood, possibly for good.
People got off, one by one, in the reverse order on which they boarded. When Annabelle left, the Boss asked Denise where she lived.
"Right by the gas station where you picked me up," Denise said.
The bright red and white PetroCanada sign was now lit, and under its light, Denise got off the van. The Boss made one last jibe at Peter—"Say good-bye—where are your manners, boy?"—and then the door closed with a thud and the van sped away. Denise stared at the tailights, that soft blend of orange-red she loved so much, and wondered if she would be on that van again.
She did sit inside the van, not just once, but many, many times. She had to admit—she was not the best salesperson, and the few orders she did manage to get was purely because people sympathized with her, rather than because they bought into what she was saying. But she relished in the people: Ivan and his mysterious, often out-of-this-world thoughts; Candy and her cheerful optimism; and even Peter, with his often foul language but nice heart. She stayed because she wanted to be with the people, and the Boss let her stay because he did not want to waste his investment on her (he had, on the first few days, hired someone to teach her the ways of the trade).
She was on another foreign street with Peter when the latter came up to her from the other side of the street and said, "Look what I found!"
Denise squinted at the shiny object in his hand. It was a golden locket on a chain.
"It's pure gold, y'know. I scratched it. Don't tell the Boss. He'll have me give it to him. I'm going to go and pawn it and see what I can get."
Denise nodded along, then, suddenly, she said, "I don't want to do this anymore."
"What? You mean, what we're doing now?"
"Yeah," Denise said.
"Why not?"
"It's just, I don't know. I just don't want to do it anymore. Like there's something out there that's telling me, I should be doing something else, not this."
"You're starting to sound like Ivan," Peter said, shaking his head. Then, spotting Denise's reaction, he quickly added, "Not that there's anything wrong with that. You just sounded like him back there."
They did not talk about it anymore, and when the Boss came to pick them up (after yelling at them for being on the same side of the street), Denise did not say anything about the golden locket. When Denise went home that night, she stared at the retreating tailights once more. She pretended that they were telling her something, because she desperately wanted to hear something—anything—resembling an answer.
The next day, Peter was not there. Denise was afraid to ask, but the Boss solved the problem for her. He told Tim, in his usual raucous manner, that "Mikael's mommy didn't want Mikael doing this anymore, and whatever Mikael's mommy does, Peter's mommy does." Tim laughed and made a joke that would have made the Boss proud, had he been any less mad, and Denise felt sick again. She was partnered with Ivan this time, who talked nonstop about bubbles on the moon, and, of course, his dream of being a professional skater.
"I can do a lot of tricks already," Ivan said. "You gotta see one day."
"One day," Denise promised.
And so the summer went by. When school was about the begin, Denise abruptly quit her job, without explaining to the Boss. She did not want to be the one fueling his temper, and she definitely did not want to receive it. Besides, Annabelle had quit a long time ago, and there was really no one left to hold her back.
She went back to her schoolwork. Grade nine was here, and with that (and supposedly high school, although Denise was in a junior high) came mandatory volunteer hours. Denise's friends were all in a frenzy to complete them as soon as possible, so they could have their summers free to work for pay, and Denise joined in as well, working in her school library, checking out books, writing labels for new books, and enjoying the perks of being a library assistant. It was, however, not enough to satisfy the 40-hour requirement the province mandated, and Denise searched for other opportunities. One of them led her to working at a local school fair for a weekend.
Her booth—wall tennis—was already occupied by another person, a boy with a baseball hat that covered his face. Denise walked over, her hands grasped tightly to the straps of her bag, and said a faint, "Hi."
The boy returned the greeting, then looked up.
"Hey, Denise! I didn't know I'd meet you here."
Denise squinted, trying to remember who the boy was. "Peter?"
"Yeah, glad you remembered my name. Sorry for the hasty leave back then—I never got a chance to explain."
"Don't worry about it," Denise said. She pulled out the plastic and metal chair, cringing as the metal legs scrapped against gravel. She felt uneasy, nervous, unsure of what to expect. The feeling settled in her stomach, unsteadily, and she kept her eyes focused ahead of her.
A little boy (most likely in grade four, Denise thought) in a bright green shirt came up to her, his hands sticky from a chocolate ice cream bar. He stared at the bright green tennis balls that matched his shirt, then at the pale pink racquets, then back at the balls.
"I wanna—how much?"
"Two tickets," Peter replied.
The boy reached into his pocket and grabbed a roll of red tickets. He counted them—
one, two—then tore each off individually. He handed them to Denise, carefully, just like little kids do when they buy their first trinkets.
Peter handed him the pink racquet and four tennis balls. "Here, if you can hit them above the white circle, you get a prize."
He was referring to the chalky white circle marked on the brick school wall just for this game. The boy eyed the circle, threw his first tennis ball up, and aimed his racquet. He missed, nearly hitting Denise on the head.
"You alright?" Peter called out.
"Yeah, I'm fine," Denise said. "Here, why don't you try again? A little higher this time."
On his third try, the boy managed to make the circle. Denise smiled and handed him a prize ticket—a green one, as opposed to the red ones the boy gave her—and sent him along.
"Y'know, you nearly got killed back there," Peter said, once it became clear that no one would be visiting their booth for a while.
Denise did not look at him. "I'm not afraid of dying."
"Are you really?"
"Yes, really," Denise said. "Promise you won't tell?"
It was a reciprocal promise, one linked with stories and muddled with feelings of
ought-to and
ought-not. It was Peter this time who did not look at her, Peter who finally said, "Promise."
"Sometimes I'm going home from school, and I pass those really, really tall apartment buildings by our school, and I keep on wondering what it'd be like to just stand on the fourteenth floor, looking over the football field, and just—freefall. I want to know what it's like."
They sat in silence, Denise caught up in her autumn sky blue dreams, and Peter caught up in something that had a hint of autumn.
"Promise me something," Peter finally said. "Will you?"
"Sure, what is it?"
"Promise me you're not gonna—not gonna—die."
"That's silly," Denise said. "What if I'm hit by a car? I can't control that."
"Promise me you'll try. Promise?"
"All right, I promise."
They remembered to exchange emails and phone numbers this time, before they went home for the day. Denise took the piece of lined paper she was given and folded it up until she could not fold it anymore, and it became a fat wad of lined paper (and, much to her dismay, she was not able to disprove Encyclopedia Brown's statement that you can't fold a piece of paper more than seven times by hand). Then she decided that it looked ugly—it was not the clean, crisp thing she had been looking for—and unfolded and refolded it.
Summer disappeared like that, and autumn came, with its gold-orange-red maple trees bustling in the cold Mississauga air. Summer in Mississauga was hot, yes, but the autumn-turned-winter-turned-spring was cold, bone-chilling cold, cold enough for maple leaves to turn deep red. The cold came early, right around Thanksgiving (which, in Mississauga, is in October), and it left late, well into mid-May.
Denise had always minded the cold less than she did the hot. It was easier to bundle up in the cold, to wear her favorite felt hat and rabbit-fur knitted mittens, pull her long, wrap-around-twice scarf only once around her neck, and trudge through the slushy snow in her fuzzy snowboots. It snowed in autumn, occasionally, although it was much more common to see that clear, autumn blue sky—so far away, it felt as real as a fairy tale. Denise liked to climb up on the hill between her school and the library, and lie down on the grass, her head resting on her bag so she would not get ants in her hair. She would have done her homework on the hill too, if it were not for the chilling winds that swept through and blew away anything that was not heavy enough to stay put.
It was easy to stay on the hill for hours on end, but Denise did not have hours. She had to arrive home on time, or else her lies about where she was ("at the library," or "there was a club meeting") would fall apart. She always called Peter on the hill, half listening to him, half staring up at the autumn blue sky. When they ran out of things to say (which they did every time, because there was only so much happening in one day) Denise would know that it was time to go. She would say good-bye, and so would Peter, and then she would hang up, dust off her jacket, pick up her bag, sling it over her shoulder, and walk past her school and those apartment buildings that taunted her every time.
But she
promised. She did not know how strong her will was, and she did not want to know.
So autumn disappeared too, and winter came and went, and spring, and summer again, and the years tumbled along. Denise graduated from her junior high (in an ugly black dress that she got for $20 from someone else because her parents could not justify spending so much money on something rather insignificant), and went into a high school that resembled a box more than a school.
. . . and there is more to this story, but I have been writing it for
three four days now, and
I really, really want to just get this out there for now I have updated, but it's still far from finished, so... there will be future installments? (I've also discovered that I can't save a draft while also keeping the post published in its original format, so until I have that figured out, I'll probably finish this in Gmail or something.)
