like beer, but I’ll do anything just to shut my mind up.
Twenty-Four
It’s always a little bit awkward when I walk into Eric’s office. It’s hard to shift gears from thinking about nothing to thinking about something. I spend every day just trying to forget how I really feel and then I have to face it all when I see him.
“Hey,” I greet him, toss my backpack onto one of the empty chairs, and unzip my jacket.
“Hey yourself. Good timing—I just walked in. How’s it going?” Eric takes off his own coat and puts down a Starbucks cup on the table.
“Okay,” I answer, sit down, pick up two stress balls that are in a basket on the table, and start to juggle them while Eric puts away a folder and finishes writing a number on a yellow sticky note. He makes some small talk about stuff—school and my work—before he brings up what he really wants to discuss.
“So, how was the weekend away?”
“Actually, it was really good.” I try to toss the balls up and down in one hand. One of them goes flying down to the floor and I’m too lazy to get it, so I just lean back and start squeezing the other one in my hands.
“You sound surprised.”
“I am. I didn’t think I’d like it.”
“Hmmm … I’m glad. You like Scott?”
“Yeah. I can’t really complain. Which feels weird. I guess part of me wants to hate him. And I guess I wanted to have a terrible time.”
“Why’s that?”
“’Cause it would be a lot easier than getting hurt in the end. It’s obvious Scott and my mom aren’t going to stay together. He’s rich and has a nice house. And he’s all proper and polite. And this perfect little life we have with him is just borrowed. I mean, you just can’t go from a shitty apartment and living in a shelter to some mansion in Rosedale. It doesn’t work like that, even though my mom promised, one day, we’d have a home. A real home, you know?”
“I’m sure she meant it when she said it.”
“Yeah. I remember exactly when she said it. We were in the shelter after Bradley died. We were sitting in our crappy room, on the bed.”
“That’s right, you were there a couple of months. What was that like?”
“It was okay. We slept in a dorm room with something like ten beds. There were a couple other kids in there, but no men. Only women.” I close my eyes and start to move around the room I see in my mind. “There were bunk beds, and me and my mom had two lower bunks side by side. In between us was a table we could put our stuff on. And a little cupboard underneath the table we could lock and keep some clothes in. We had to change in there with everyone else around. It was really awkward. But what was most terrible was sleeping. Hearing everyone breathe and snore and fart. And sometimes I heard my mom crying. That was the worst. I remember that really scaring me.” I pause a second, because I hadn’t thought of all this in such a long time and it’s weird how real it still feels to me. “I remember waking in the dark, really late, and always hearing the radio playing down the hall, at the security desk. There was never total silence. Which probably should have been comforting, but actually was kind of creepy.”
I open my eyes again. “The worst was the toilets. There was an open shower area, without any drapes. Just a few shower pipes with, like, five shower heads around each one, so all the women had to stand naked in little circles. It was really gross. It was the first time I saw women’s bodies.” The recollection makes me shudder.
“Where did you eat?”
“In the cafeteria. It was a big room with longish tables. We usually sat alone or with a friend of my mom’s, who also had a kid who was a few years younger than me that I got stuck basically babysitting while they talked. There was a playroom. I remember that being cool, even though I was too old for it. I’d colour, and play this game with marbles. A lady used to play with me. She was young. I think she was a volunteer. One time I made chocolate chip cookies with her in the kitchen.”
“So you’ve described what it looked like. What about the general feel of the