New Horizons (10 page)

“I know you’re just doing that to be annoying,” Karen said.

Twinner shrugged. “Maybe.” She chewed and took another huge bite. She slurped so loud that I thought it was going to shoot down her throat and choke her. I doubted that any of us would save her. I definitely wouldn't’—she didn’t matter enough to save.

Campfire was next up on the to-do list. There were two other groups there taking up space. Everyone was mixed together, and it was nice sitting next to people you weren’t usually quarantined with. For once, boys and girls were allowed to sit next to each other. When Murray saw me, he came over and sat down next to me.

“What’d you do today before class?” I asked him.

“Suicides. And then I wrote a letter ”

“Who did you write it to?”

“Maybe you’ll find out later.”

I smiled.

“You have a nice smile, Val.”

I wiped my teeth with my hand to make them dry, and pushed up my upper lip. It got stuck there, which was my goal. “Thanks Murray,” I said, with my buck-teeth out.

The fire pit was still the original from Camp Hedgewood days—a huge hole surround by long logs. The wood log was cold on my ass, and I stared at the empty pit, waiting for a warm fire. But I dreaded Sharon making us say things about our feelings or what we liked about our childhoods. There was just so much of that, and I didn’t want to talk about anything. If there could be a rule of life, it would be to talk only when you absolutely had to, and even then, shut your goddamn teeth.

"Alright, be quiet. Eyes on me," Sharon said. She was holding up what looked to be a match. "Who would like to show me how to make a fire?"

I liked doing as little as I could. That was the thing I was best at, which Mum always liked reminding me.

“You’re just so good at doing absolutely the littlest possible,”
she had said. And that wasn’t a compliment. It wasn’t meant to be, anyway. But I made myself take it as one.

“Thanks, I get that from you.”

As soon as the words left my mouth there was a sharp slap across my face. It was shocking. Mum wasn’t someone who used her hand to hit. She had a wooden spoon to beat both my older sister and I with while we grew up. We were struck with it for silly, small things. Like saying ‘asshole’ or ‘damn’ or telling her we hated her. She hit us until we apologized for hating her. But she had never struck my sister or I with her own hand.

That is, until she had to.

There was such a difference between being hit with a hand than a spoon. There was less preparation with a hand—it was a spur of the moment reflex. The spoon gave her a second to take it back, like there was a choice, and sometimes all Mum did was pick up the spoon and that was enough of a threat for her. But when she lifted her hand and smacked me across the cheek, I cried even though it didn’t hurt more than a wooden spoon. I cried like a little girl because I realized I was a horrible daughter.

“Is there anyone who would like to show us their fire building skills?” Sharon asked again.

“I’ll give it a go,” I said.

"Have you ever made a fire?" she asked. Her voice hesitated when she saw me stand up. Maybe she questioned my experience. As she should.

"I’ve been around fires, sure. I’ve been on fire too, actually. Went right up my sleeve and everything.”

“Wow. That must have been very scary.”

“It was.”

“Do you know how to build a fire or not, Valerie?”

“I will build a fire right now.”

I had never made a fire before. Not a real one. There were moments in my life where I had added a log to a pit Dad had produced, laid it on top of an already burning fire, and watched the flames climb onto it. But I had never lit a match and put the paper where it was supposed to go. I had no idea where to put the match or the paper or the wood and if there was even a difference. Hopefully nobody would realize that though. I tried not to look at anything too carefully. I wanted it to look like I didn’t need to examine anything, and that I could do it with my eyes closed.

Sharon stepped forward with the match in her hand. And just as I was about to take it, she closed her hand and pulled out a weird looking stick from behind her back.

“What is that?”

“It’s how you’re going to start a fire,” she said before handing me the curved stick with string tied to each end.

“With a bow and arrow?”

Residents laughed at me. They were sitting all around me, watching the interaction between Sharon and I. It must have been funny to see someone who had volunteered to make a fire and didn’t know how. I was lost and they liked that.

“You know that using two sticks creates friction, and friction creates heat.” Sharon rubbed her hands together. Her hands were dry and made a rough, sandpaper sound. “Go from that. You volunteered, so you have to know what you’re doing.”

The boy’s counsellor, a tall, skinny man with arms so long they nearly went past his knees, came over and handed me more fire making tools.

“And what’s this?” I asked him.

“This skinny, straight piece of wood is your drill.” He placed it in my hand. It came to a slight point at the end. “And this is a bearing block, to keep it spinning and in one place. And this is the hearth board, where, if you’re successful, some embers will be made.”

I had seen it on TV before. Naturist, outdoors-men, making fire with what they had around them. Two sticks, a shoe lace, and some human power. But the technique I knew nothing about. I didn’t know which stick went where, and what the point of a bearing block was. None of it made sense.

I got down on the ground and laid the stuff beside me. The only obvious thing was that the sharp looking stick, what Rick had called the drill, went with the bow and arrow looking mechanism. But how it was supposed to stay, and how it was supposed to stay straight while it spun, was unknown to me.

With the slack of the string on the bow, I wrapped it as much as I could around the drill, until it felt so tight that I knew I had to be doing something wrong. Then, using the bearing block, I held the drill so it was pointing up against the flat board. It felt like maybe I was going somewhere, but when I pulled the bow toward me, to make the drill spin, it went flying across the pit.

The residents laughed.

“Not so easy, is it?” Rick asked.

“Well, I don’t have the technique down yet, but I have an idea how things work.”

“That isn’t good enough to start a fire,” Sharon said.

Then the old lady and I switched places. She took the bow and wrapped it around the drill like I had, but instead of placing it right on the hearth board, she took out a jack knife and dug out a slight hole in the wood, to keep it in place. Then, placing the bearing block on top of the drill, to hold it in place, she put her foot on the hearth board.

“You see what I’m doing, Valerie?" she asked.

I nodded. I saw what she was doing. Getting a correct stance, making sure everything was secure, putting pressure on the wood so it didn’t have a chance to go flying. And then when she was ready, she began to slowly pull the bow back and forth, and the slow motion had the drill spinning. When she got a technique going, and a rhythm, she increased her speed.

Rick had a flashlight on everything she was doing, and lanterns around the area lit up the space so we could see the slow beginnings of smoke—

And then she stopped.

“Once I get a good groove in the wood, we need to cut out a v-wedge for the embers to fall onto the bark. If you put a leaf there too, you’ll have something to transport your embers with.” She cut the shape into the wood. It went nearly to the centre of the circle she had just made from the pressure of the drill in the hearth wood. Then when she got going again, there was smoke after about a minute.

Rick passed her some dried tinder, and she quickly placed the embers with the leaf into it. She held the tinder up close to her face, and began to blow. Within seconds, it burst into flames. She dropped it into the pit, and both her and Rick tended to it to make it big.

There was a fire. It came from two sticks rubbing together. And work.

“It’s easy if you know what you’re doing,” Sharon said, standing up. She looked proud of her fire. I wondered how many times she had made one like that—probably hundreds. And we were in awe of it because we had never done it.

I took a seat next to Murray and watched Sharon’s fire. It was huge and warm on my face. The last campfire I had been to was over a year ago, before I had stopped going to school, before I had started getting sad. It was nice to be out in the night watching the flames. It was a mindless activity that I actually enjoyed because it didn’t require you to do anything.

“We are not here to learn about fires. We are here for something else,” Sharon said. “Now is your chance to read your letters from earlier today. Of course, you also have the option to burn them, or keep them for yourself. You do not have to share anything. Sometimes it’s enough to get it out on paper and see what it looks like outside of your head. You need to determine if what you’ve written is real to you or not, and that’s something only you can decide for yourself.”

A few people from other groups read theirs. They were letters to their girlfriends, saying they missed them, and letters to their boyfriends, saying they wanted to touch every crevice of their body. It was gross how much detail some people went into. When it came to our group, Twinner read hers out loud. It was a letter to her parents, apologizing for being horrible.

“That is a load of bull,” Karen said.

“If that was what she needed to share, so be it,” Sharon said. “But we do not criticize at this moment.”

We each went around after and chucked our letters in the fire. No one else in our group was ready to speak out. When it came to me, I decided to be brave.

I read mine out loud.

It was short and quick and I waited for the laughs. There were a few smiles. Those smiles went right to my heart. I needed them to keep me alive. But nobody laughed like I wanted them. Nobody found the humour in what I was saying. Nobody nodded in agreement with what I was reading. Did they not believe what I believed? All I knew was that there was an on/off switch for being a good person, and it was up to you to turn it on or not. Easy as that. The program was pointless.

Sharon asked for the letter.

“You want it?”

“Yes. I’d like to hold onto it for another time for you to read it again. You don’t hear it like I hear it. You’re trying to be funny, but I don’t think you understand what you wrote there. Maybe someday you will.”

“I thought we don’t criticize.”

“We don’t, but you can criticize your own work at a later date. It needs to sit for you to see it differently. And then maybe you will understand why it isn’t funny, and could actually be helpful to you.”

It was Bambi’s turn next. When she stood up she hesitated with the paper in her hands. She looked like she didn’t know what she wanted to do. Her hands were shaking, and she reminded me of someone right then, but I couldn’t care enough to remember.

“Are you acting it out?” I asked. “We could do a quick game of charades to try and figure out whatever the hell is going on in your head.”

Karen jumped in. “Pathetic loner?”

“No, let me guess—closeted lesbian?” I said.

There was laughter from around the fire. Everyone was part of it, jeering at something I said. And it felt amazing to be where I was, and see her where she was. I felt huge.

Bambi looked right at me. Her bangs were straight across her forehead, and just barely touched the tops of her eyelids. She threw her letter in the fire without looking away from me.

“Oh, I know—coward,” I said.

Bambi sat down and I could feel Sharon’s glare through the other side of the fire, warming up my face, trying to bring me back to reality. But if you didn’t think about the things you said, then they couldn’t ever haunt you. Hopefully that was possible.

Everyone got their turn, and Murray chucked his into the fire. I elbowed him in the ribs but he didn’t say anything to me. Then Rick stepped into the forest line. He pulled out a huge duffel bag that had been hidden behind the trees. He carried the bag over to Sharon, and set it on the ground next to her.

"The main purpose of tonight is to also discuss the effect of 'things'. This can be an open discussion. If you have anything to say that is relevant to the topic of 'things', feel free to join in." Sharon stopped walking around the fire and looked up into the sky. The stars were out and bright and the moon was looking down at us. "Do any of you have a certain object in life that you absolutely need in order to survive or feel good? Something that is irreplaceable because of its history or value to you."

“I don't think I need anything or anyone,” a freckled boy said. He was absolutely covered in them. Reddish dots were all you could see on him.

"Are you sure?" Sharon asked. "Because it would be wonderful if that were true. Imagine the feeling of not having to depend on anything for self-fulfilment." She bent over and unzipped the corner of the duffel bag just enough to pull out a small object. I leaned more to see what was in her hand. When she held it up for everyone to see I was confused. It was an iPod. I didn’t understand.