summer since I’m always with Michael. I met Ally in the beginning of grade nine, but Jess has been my friend since grade one. They’re a lot different. Allison is tough and butchy, with steel-toed black combats, while Jessica is more like a plain-Jane princess with a sharp stick. But we all get along really good, especially when we’re high.
Mark, Luc, Devon, and Kyle and a few other guys come along, stopping for some tokes before going to play hoops. We chill with them because Devon and Jess have been together forever, at least eight months. And Luc bought a twenty-sixer, and this Afro-haired guy who is hilarious had some E for us. And it is an Indian summer, and sitting with the grass tickling my bare legs, talking to Jess and Ally, checking out the guys, is just so … summer. And the ball slap-slaps against the hot asphalt and the metal chain net chink-chinks like shattering crystal, as if every sound were amplified a million times in my ear. And all this just overrides any recollection of English homework, because being here, now, is all that seems to matter. Life isn’t in a classroom. This is where you find living. In this school field. In Jess’s uncontrollable laughter. In Kyle’s hand that picks at the grass and drops the shiny blades into piles on my bare legs. In his warm fingers rubbing the pieces off my thighs. In the smell of green.
Three
It’s after nine when I leave the park, and the closer I get to my apartment, the more mad I become. It happens every day lately, no matter how good my day is. But this is nothing that new, because I’m so goddamn angry all the time. I don’t know why. It’s like I’m always on the edge. The only time I’m not angry is when I’m high. That’s the only time I’m nice to people and it’s the only time I feel like I’m a “nice person.”
My mother says I was born with a scowl on my face, a permanently curled lip. She thinks that even when I was in the womb, I had my arms crossed the way I always do now. She says she could feel my pointy elbows through her tummy, like I was refusing to co-operate even in there. “I mean, what could you possibly be defying in the womb, Hon?”
She was only half joking when she said this, so I ignored her. I ignore most of what my mother says. She’s not terrible or anything, she’s just not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and most of what she says is stupid.
I’m hoping my mom won’t be home, but I see her as soon as I open the door. She’s lying on the couch in a tank and underwear, smoking a cigarette and watching her stupid soap opera. I throw my backpack on the chair and head to the kitchen to get something to eat.
“Well hello to you too!” she shouts.
I ignore her because I’m too focused on finding something, anything, other than potato chips and cereal to eat. I look in the cupboards and there’s only canned peas and other canned shit. Then I look in the fridge. Nothing. Some pop, some mustard and other bottles, and a package of expired bacon.
“There’s nothing to eat!”
“What do you mean? There’s lots. Have some cereal.”
I come out of the kitchen and pick up my backpack. “I’m fucking sick of that bran crap.”
“Sorry, Hon, I’ll order pizza,” she says, not taking her eyes off the screen.
“It’s too late. I’m going to bed.”
“Where were you, anyway?” she asks, but I ignore her.
I slam the door to my room to show my disapproval of her mothering skills. I mean, she’s supposed to provide, at the most basic, food and shelter. Isn’t she? I take out my binder and lie in bed to start my English assignment.
The first human statement is a scream.
I pick up my pen and wonder where to start, what word to write first. I have so many thoughts. I think it’s so true. That we’re born into suffering. That we’re these innocent little beings and that, as soon as we see the world, we take that first breath and scream ’cause we know life is going to be rough. I think about all the tragedies on the news and the crazy people and the wars happening. It’s like sometimes I think humans were put on this earth as a test to see