New Horizons (2 page)

1 week earlier

It was like we hadn’t broken up and it was just a typical night at the park. Jordan brought the beer, I came high as a kite, and neither of us were getting along. But we were having fun. Kind of.

"Jesus Val, you're done."

I laughed. Because it was true, and that was funny to me. I could feel everything right then. My hair felt like silk when it touched my cheeks, and I loved that there was a rasp in my voice when I talked.

I stood up onto the picnic table, and I twirled around like everyone was staring at me. It felt good to be alive right then, and that wasn’t a normal feeling for me to have.

Meanwhile, Jordan was having a hard time rolling a joint in the dark. I liked that he was getting mad over something so stupid.

"I should have brought a flashlight," he said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

I pulled out my lighter to offer it to him. It fell from my hands and landed somewhere in the grass below the picnic table. I jumped down and landed on my hands and knees. I couldn't even stand up—it was like the ground was pulling me down.

"Do you mind if we make a quick stop at the corner store? I know my buddy is hanging around there tonight. I want to get some stuff from him.”

"No way, I hate going around there. Those people are messed up.” I fell back onto the cool grass and stared up at the sky. It was a great, dark night for the stars, and I was happy to be looking up at them. It had to suck to be a star. They didn’t get to look up at anything.

“And what are you compared to them?” he asked.

“Not messed up.” I smiled.

“Yeah right. You’re so far gone. You’re past denial, and nearly into acceptance. That’s why nothing bothers you.”

"Absolutely everything bothers me, and that’s probably why I don’t take offence to anything anymore. There’s no point and that’s fine."

Jordan bent down and looked at me.

“What are you looking at?” I asked.

“You could be really pretty if you wanted to be.” He kissed my lips, and his teeth scraped against mine.

I pulled away because I wasn’t expecting him to do that. The kiss felt ugly and I imagined it looked the same way it felt. Uncomfortable. Forced.

“You know, last night before you went to the ER was a one time thing. Don’t be afraid of something like that happening again. It was a fluke,” he said. “You’re still you.”

“No, flukes don’t involve holding a gun to your head.” It hurt to even remember, let alone admit out loud. But I had done it. I had held a loaded gun to my head, just to see what it was like. And it was scary when it was happening, and I didn’t want to think about it too much in case I started realizing things.

“You were drunk. You’re fine, and your dad should be thankful you didn’t point the gun at anyone else or that you weren’t charged with anything. It was just yourself that you could have hurt, that’s all.”

“Yeah. That’s nuts.”

Jordan was looking at me as if he was waiting for me to say that it was funny. That it was hilarious. That it was fun to be wild like that. But I didn’t feel that way. I didn’t really feel much of anything.

“I just…I don’t want to be like that anymore. I don’t want to be like that at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“A mess.”

“Do you think I’m a mess?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Then why are we friends?”

“I don’t really think we are. You’re just someone to be around until I figure out what I’m going to do with myself. I feel like I’m waking up from something. I can’t believe I’ve nearly spent the whole summer doing nothing. I could have gotten my GED over the last couple months, but I didn’t. I don’t know what I’ve been doing. It’s all been a dream, and now I need to start figuring myself out. That’s scary to even think about. Everyone is getting ready to go away and do things with their lives, and I’m still stuck.”

I didn't see him leave, probably because I wasn't paying any attention to him. I felt too content to move, and it didn’t occur to me that I looked stupid either. It felt normal to lie in a public place, in the middle of nowhere, late at night. I didn’t have a job to go to in the morning and I wasn’t in summer school or anything like it. There was nothing to do but wait and enjoy the moment.

The stars in the sky were bigger than ever, and they seemed to spin around and around. If you squinted they got even brighter. I loved that they did that. I tried to trace the dark clouds with my index finger, but the clouds were shy and they kept running from me.

"Stupid clouds," I whispered. "It's just me." I tried to stand up to get a better look at them. The world shook when I tried to get up and I fell back onto my knees. I still felt the head rush, and I gripped the grass tightly so I wouldn't fall onto my face.

I knew I had overdone it. Everything felt like it was everywhere. I stared up at the sky and wanted to blame someone for it all. Why was I a mess? There had to be someone somewhere that I could yell at.

“FUCK YOU JESUS!” I screamed. It just made sense right then to say that. It was so wrong, and it felt good. “THERE’S NOTHING UP THERE I KNOW IT! YOU’RE NOT TRICKING ME!”

I laid like that for a while and waited for the stars reaction. My eyelids felt heavy, and just when I was about to close them, someone peered down at me and waved their hand in front of my face.

“You sure you’re okay, Val?” It was Jordan. He was back.“Eh, Val?”

“I never said I was okay.”

“Then what are you doing?” He stared down at me.

“I’m lying out.”

“I see that. But it’s late. I thought you were headed home.”

“I haven’t kissed you in while and you just did it like it wasn’t a big deal and it kind of was.” I looked at him, and I couldn’t figure out why I was even there with him. I didn’t know a lot of things right then. “You’re not getting my clothes off. You’re the reason I wear my belt tighter than I need to. I just can’t believe I ever let myself date someone like you.”

“Come on, let’s leave the park.”

“I don’t even like anything about you anymore. And I just realized it. I’m different than you, and I’m different than a lot of people we hang out with. I don’t like you, and I don’t really like myself either. I’m just so bored all the time though, and lately I do things just to do them.” I stared at the sky behind him. It was so dark up there. “I feel stupid now…for everything.”

“I’m going to take you home.” He picked me up into his arms and cradled me against his chest. “You’re just tired.”

I wondered if he noticed the changes in me over the last couple months. That I looked different. What did he think about the haircut I gave myself, or the lack of makeup on my skin? I had acne I didn’t normally have. I had permanent dark circles. I wasn’t sleeping.

“Where are we going?”

“I told you. I’m just taking you home right now,” he said.

"I've out done it tonight." I kicked my legs around, and tried to squirm out of his arms.

"You’ll be okay. You’re just not thinking clearly right now."

I laughed. My laugh told people that I didn’t care about anything. It had a mocking tone that made everyone regret hearing it.

“Stop it, Val. Just be quiet.”

"I don’t really want to live anymore,” I whispered. “I don’t want to do anything or think about anything or worry about what I’m going to do. I hate worrying about that stuff. It’s absolutely pointless, and I imagine heaven to be somewhere that you don’t have to have a brain.” I laid my head on his shoulder.

“You don’t want to die, Val. Nobody does. You just want a change in scenery. A different life. To get away from how things are.”

“You’re right. I don’t want to die. But I would love to disappear like that. I would like to disappear and just be somewhere where nobody knows who I am—even just for a bit. Then maybe I could sort things out, find myself, and be free.”

Present

I woke up to radio hits. I mumbled the words to myself, and sang the parts I knew a lot louder. The summer songs were my favourite when I was in the backyard, lying out and staring at the night sky. The darkness was when I started thinking about things the most. Like my plans. How I didn’t exactly have any, and how depressing it was that I was okay with that, and how it wasn’t okay to be okay with that. So I wasn’t okay with it. And that was even more depressing.

I started to breathe heavy.

There was an article I had read online written by a depressed girl about how she had tried to kill herself by holding her breath. When I had read it I thought it was stupid and desperate. There had to be better ways to kill yourself. Like jumping from a crazy height, or hanging yourself. The only reason I liked the idea of suicide was how it made other people think about things in a different context—that there was a secret, messed up life out there that nobody seemed to notice.

I held my breath.

The plan was to prove that girl who wrote the article wrong. I knew it wasn’t a thing to kill yourself by holding your breath, but I wanted to try it in case it actually was a thing. The perfect time to try and kill yourself by holding your breath was always when you wanted to stop living.

I lasted twenty seconds before I took a breath. I wasn’t dedicated enough, I decided. Suicide required dedication that couldn’t be taken back.

In the background, Avril Lavigne was singing something catchy on the radio and one of the men was humming along to it. For a second, it made me forget about being upset and trying to kill myself.

And then the bag was pulled from my head.

“Welcome back,” the ginger man said.

“Thanks for having me.” I stared at the time on the radio. It had been two hours since we left my house. It was nice to breathe fresh air and look around. The sun was going down, and the clouds were all different colours. I forgot that clouds could be more than just grey.

The road turned from pavement to dirt after another hour. We stayed on it for a bit until the car came to even rougher road. It felt like pothole after pothole, and it was hard to stay in my seat. They hadn’t put a seatbelt on me. If we were in a car accident, I would be the first to go through the windshield.

“We’re getting close,” the bearded man said. He was still humming that Avril Lavigne tune even though it was long off the radio. His ginger passenger was eating a burrito.

Tall pine trees lined each side of the road. They didn't have an ending and seemed to tower into the bright, blue sky. They were a thing of beauty, something tourists probably took pictures in front of.

We were in Sacton.

I was still in my home province. I could practically see my town of Basinview from there. Dad didn't send me across the universe like he always threatened with those pamphlets. I could have smiled.

“This isn’t so bad,” I said. I wasn’t expecting any kind of answer. I just wanted the universe to know that I was optimistic. That I wasn’t scared.

The car rounded a corner. It felt familiar. I was going down a road I hadn’t been down in a while. I recognized the curves, and the deep ditches, and the old sign up in a tree that banned hunting in the area.

But then it came to me.

Straight through the windshield, in the distance, my eyes saw an old wooden sign from years ago. One that my parents had driven under in their van every summer when I was a kid. But there was no excitement anymore. The sign had been updated, and a new, shiny, metal sign was bolted across the old, wooden boards.

The place I never thought I’d see again was right outside the car, and whether I liked it or not, I was back.

2:
FACILITY FOR TROUBLED YOUTH

When I was 8-years-old I wanted to go to Camp Hedgewood.
I looked forward to it because there weren’t many kids in my neighbourhood and I wasn’t good at making friends at school. Camp Hedgewood was a summer camp for kids from ages seven to seventeen, and after getting over the homesickness, for two whole weeks my only worries were getting sick of marshmallows, and getting bad sunburns. My absolute favourite tradition of the camp was the overnight tenting trips to Lonely Island, which we canoed to across Blue Lake. I went to Camp Hedgewood every summer from when I was eight to twelve. Those summers were the best summers of my life.

And then it shut down.

After thirty-years of operation, Patty Slaunwhite had to go and die of ovarian cancer. It was a shock, and it was one of those things that you never thought would happen until it did. Uncle Mike, which he let all us campers call him, didn’t want to continue on without his wife. Last I had heard was that he sold the place before dying of something people die from when they get sad and lonely and depressed.

Now, as a grown teenager with no interest in the outdoors or leaving the Internet, Camp Hedgewood had a new name.

NEW HORIZONS

“New Horizons?” I leaned forward in my seat to read the text I didn’t think I was seeing. “Is this a joke?”

“You can read,” the Avril singing man said.

I turned around in the seat and looked back. The old wooden Camp Hedgewood sign was still there, like it always was, but there was a metal sign stuck to the front of it. I could see the new bolts in the wood, and how it made the old wood split.