5: Of Wheelbarrows and S'mores

In which dragons breathe marshmallows and Johnny Depp visits.

“Did you really have to bring that up?” he asked as we searched for a table in the cafeteria. It was the day after I had announced he wore leather pants. And then realized that everyone could hear. I’d pointed out that at least I didn’t mention how tight they were and how nice his a*s looked in them. Dougie had then pointed out that everyone was still in hearing distance. Whoops. He had condescended to talking to me again, though it may have been because if he hadn’t his creepy stalker girl would have wound up hanging out with him, offering to share a sandwich…coffee…a bed.

 

Dougie had, as usual, forgot his lunch and was nibbling at a poutine from the caf. “Once, I wear them once and do I hear the end of it? Nope. You just keep going and going and going, like the friggin’ Energizer bunny!”

 

“Was that meant to sound sexual?” I asked with a grin, pulling my leg over the bench and sliding the two half tables together so it didn’t feel like I was floating off in space. I stuck my hand in a puddle of unidentifiable sticky stuff, wiped it on the seat next to me before opening the carton of chocolate milk I had coerced him into buying for me.

 

He glared daggers at me. Or he tried to. Seeing as he’s a wussy little guy they were more like marshmallows with the occasional gummi bear thrown in. Yum, I mean ouch, it burns like the fire of a thousand dragons! Presumably fire breathing dragons, not marshmallow breathing ones. Great, now I want s’mores. Stupid Dougie. “You owe me five bucks!”

 

He stopped eating. “What, why? Isn’t it the other way around? Except with, like, two hundred?”

 

“Yeah well I’m going to have to go home and buy marshmallows, and chocolate and graham crackers. And maybe some fancy glow in the dark handcuffs for you and Aaron. Unless you’d rather a thong. But I’m not going in the dressing room to help you try it on.”

 

“Marshmallows?” It was a sign of our friendship that he didn’t question the thongs and just kept ploughing on. That could be taken in a dirty direction if one really wanted to. I do.

 

“For s’mores.”

 

Dougie nodded understandingly, twirling melted cheese around his fork and trying to get it in his mouth. He glanced down at the carton after swallowing, poking at it with the tines of his fork and looking at the contents like he was going to be sick. After a few moments of contemplation he stuck another forkful of fries into his mouth. “This is going to go straight to my hips,” he said, hiding his full mouth behind his hand. “Want them?”

 

My jaw hit the table. Did he want me to get fat? I could barely squeeze into my jeans as it was. That’s why I was so glad when I found out that lying down to put them on with a little baby powder helped. “So you want them to go to my hips then?”

 

“Well, I want to keep my girlish figure,” he teased, sliding what was left of his lunch across the table at me. He cast a critical eye over me. “You need a little weight to get a girlish figure.”

 

I glowered at him and he quirked an eyebrow back, well, both of them, he can’t do the whole one eyebrow thing. But he can wiggle his ears. When he’s hammered. “Okay then.” I speared some fries and stuffed them in my mouth. “That’s good. Calories are officially amazing.”

 

Dougie nodded in agreement and then said something that sounded like ‘just like Jeff Calder’s a*s’, or maybe it was ‘my mother’s Jewish mass’. I was too busy filling myself with gravy goodness to listen closely. I wonder if poutine’s one of those butter tart things where the rest of the world is too naïve to eat them. Probably not. They have poutine in Newfoundland.

 

“Shall we?” he said, getting up and holding out a hand once I was done.

 

“We shall,” I said, sticking the cardboard box his lunch had been in into his palm. Why would I want to touch his hand anyway? It was probably germ infested. Technically Dougie’s a boy and who knows what boys do with their hands when no one’s looking.

 

“Gee, thanks,” he said, pitching it. I smiled at him before wrapping my arms around his waist, which was an awkward position as I was still slighter taller than him. He tried to put his arm around my shoulders, wound up half-standing on tiptoe and eventually settled on my waist.

 

“I’ve decided I’m going to convince my parents to be normal starting tonight,” I announced as we passed by the stoner corner. There was a spot by the back doors leading out to the pines where all the junkies snuck out to introduce all sorts of different things into through various parts of their body and it was constantly full of gangsta kids who looked like they wanted to bite your head off. But half the time they got distracted when the speck of dust floated past in a hysterical sort of fashion, making them laugh uncontrollably so I could get away. They’re just my sort of people!

 

A baked ninth grader who looked no older than eight looked at me like I was nuts. Which wasn’t entirely out of the blue. My turtle looked at me like that some days too. Whoa, freak show!

 

Dougie let out a low whistle. “How do you propose you do that?”

 

“I’ll lock them in a closet.”

 

“Don’t they already hang out in there?”

 

“Only on Thursdays and bank holidays.”

 

“Right, well, good luck with that.”

 

“Honey, I’m home!” I yelled when I walked in the house after school. It was quiet. Too quiet. I popped my head into the kitchen. Sheba lay in her corner. I poked her with my foot. She was still warm, so probably still alive. Probably being the key word. Oh, well.

 

I continued my search into the rest of the house. Mom wasn’t in any of the normal places like her bedroom, the bathroom, my bedroom or the cabinet in the dining room. Strange. “Mom?” I called out, half-worried that she was lying somewhere all strung out on Valium and foaming at the mouth.

 

“Yes?” came her dazed voice. “I’m here.” I heard a muffled thud like she’d walked into a doorframe followed by a giggle.

 

I raced back upstairs and saw her coming out of the laundry room. The one place I’d never think to look. But she wasn’t carrying laundry. Instead she was cradling a vase full of dead flowers. Lovely. I’m living in a Tim Burton universe. All I needed was black hair. Oooh, I like this idea. Maybe Johnny Depp’ll pop by now and a gain.

 

“So what are you and Dad doing tonight?” I asked as innocently as I could. I tried to tilt my head but jabbed the corner of the banister into my temple. Stupid railings.

 

Mom smiled coyly, lost in her dream world. Not the response I wanted. Thank God their bedroom is on a different floor than mine. And we have thick walls. No, wait, we don’t. I’m going to have to sleep in the loft.

 

“Well, there’s been a change of plans,” I informed her, trying not to gag all over the pretty carpe-…never mind, I can puke all I want. She looked at me quizzically, probably trying to figure out who or what I was. She did that to Dad last night. She smacked him over the head with a spatula (with the tag still on, might I add, which shows how much she cooks) before she realized who he was. At least Aaron was comatose in his steak by that point, or he could have been traumatized. Like every time I think about Vanessa and him. There I go again. Fan-bloody-tastic. I suppose I ought to add that we were at the dinner table and had been for ten minutes when Mom decided we had an intruder. The noise that ensued startled even Sheba and I thought she was going to actually drop dead for once. “We, we meaning you, Dad and I are going to a walk. We can grab the wheelbarrow and take Sheba too.” I wasn’t joking. That was the only way we could get her out of the house. Most people thought she was dead and we were just lugging her around for something to do. We informed them she was a cow in an opossum costume. While they mulled that over we would run like the dickens in the opposite direction.

 

“Your father broke the wheelbarrow,” she said absent-mindedly, trying to straighten a crooked picture and only succeeding in making it look worse. “He decided he was going to make a statement and ride it down a hill. He didn’t make it very far, he blew out the front tire trying to get in it.”

 

“Well, we won’t take Sheba just you two. And maybe some Sharpies to help me find my happy place.”

 

“Whatever you say, dear.” Dear. Well, at least she wasn’t calling me Eva. She named me and she can’t even get my name right.

 

The front door opened and I heard heavy footsteps and panting. So it was either a monster or Dad. Both of which would describe him in the morning. “Daddy!” I called running towards the door. “We’re walking tonight.”

 

“In a winter wonderland?”

 

I glowered at him while he howled with laughter. Literally �" he was barking and whining and whistling like a werewolf teakettle. A bald werewolf teakettle.

 

Somehow I managed to get my way through dinner without contracting food poisoning. I had to convince Dad that I would discuss classical writers with him to get to go, and inform my mother that there was a sale on Valium at the post office to get to her to come walking. But finally we were walking. Or at least I was, backwards, so I could watch their every move.

 

“Dad! Stop stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk! You’re not a schoolgirl and your mother is dead, there’s no way you can break her back.”

 

“She’s not dead, she’s in Tahiti. Besides, I’m trying to break your mother’s mother’s before she comes up for a visit.”

 

“Tahiti, hell, they’re one and the same. I mean, you can’t spell Tahiti without hell.” He gave me a strange look as though he doubted my spelling. I’m a good speller. I can even spell frog in French. Le frogge. Fear me. And I told him so.

 

Dad shook his head like I was some sort of disappointment. At least he didn’t launch into his whole: ‘look at your name, Riel, what does that mean to you? C’est Francais, non?’ Spiel. Which he always said in a Dutch accent for no apparent reason. It probably makes him feel tall.

 

We passed by a candy shop that was still open and playing some sort of retro music from the dinosaur age. Which was probably why my parents knew it.

 

“Catherine, do you remember this song?” said Dad. Mom nodded, probably thinking he was asking if she wanted to go home and watch reruns of whatever drama she’d recently become obsessed with. He held out a hand, which Mom took. “Care to dance?” Without waiting for her to answer they both started tangoing down the street. It was a strange thing to watch, what with Mom being taller in her heels than Dad who was wearing shoes that looked suspiciously as though they had heels too.

 

I galloped backwards, trying to keep ahead of them to yell orders. But they paid no attention to my instructions, just continued dancing until Dad turned and looked at me, taking his hand off of Mom’s butt to point at something. “Ava,” he called.

 

“Yeah, my name is Ava, now stop this instant!” I shrieked, though a small part of me was glad he at least got my name right.

 

“Ava,” he repeated. “Ava!”

 

“What?” I screeched before I fell backwards into the garbage can.