New Horizons (31 page)

18:
JORDAN AND I

I walked for two hours, but it felt like more.
It was the dead of night, and even though I had finally made it out of the small roads and onto pavement, a car hadn’t passed me in a long time. I seemed to be the only one awake, and I shivered in my New Horizons uniform. I walked until it stopped raining, and when the wind calmed down, I imagined myself walking all the way back to Basinview. That would be amazing.

I couldn’t help but let my mind sort though my thoughts. Nobody knew anything about me, and it was both exciting and sad. Maybe I hadn’t realized what it was really like to escape—that when you escaped, the excitement stopped, the adrenaline rush disappeared, and reality set in.

My thoughts strayed to what I was going to do. I had no idea what I should say to anyone when they figured out who I was. I didn’t have an excuse for leaving the program. And there wasn’t a good enough reason
not
to send me right back. By the time the morning rays of sun came through the trees, I had a version of what I would say to the first person who figured out I was missing. I practised it out loud because that was the scariest way to practise anything.

Are you Valerie Campbell?

“Yes. I am.”

What are you doing out here?

“I’m just walking.”

Where are you going?

“I’m going home.”

And where would that be?

“
Why would you ask me that?” There were tears pouring down my face. Down the dirt on my skin, wetting it again. The space in front of me was blurry, but I could see Dad so clearly down the road from me because I had put him there in my mind. And Mum was beside him, shaking her head, no longer on my side. She took a step back, and then another, and then she was gone. Amanda was there too for a bit, smiling wide and really happy, before she turned her back, and walked away. But Dad stayed there, watching me. Waiting for me to make my move.

I was in the middle of nowhere, and even so, my family was still getting in my head. None of it was real, yet I couldn’t feel that.

“Hunnie, are you okay?”

I nearly tripped over my feet from the shock of hearing someone else.

“I’m sorry, did I scare you?” It was an old lady. She was driving in a station wagon beside me with her passenger window down. She had a Dalmatian in the passenger seat, and it was looking right at me.

“What?”

“Would you like some help with anything?”

“No, I’m fine.” I kept my eyes on the dog. He had so many spots on him. His right ear was entirely black, like it had been dipped in dark paint.

“What are you doing?” the old lady asked.

“I’m training.”

“Training for what?” she asked.

I’m training for…” I had no idea what to say to her. She was old. And I must have looked young. But maybe the mud hid my age. “I’m training for a triathlon.”

“A triathlon, oh my.”

“Yes. I’m very tired. It’s been a long process.”

“I can give you a lift to town, if you need it.”

“Okay.”

In the back of her car was a bunch of luggage. Old person luggage—a blue suitcase from the fifties and round hat boxes. I sat behind her dog, and it turned itself around to peer at me through the front seats.

“Are you going to the airport or something?” I asked.

“No, I’m a photographer.” She touched the top of her dog’s head. “Those are just props. I have a client who likes old things. I have a lot of old things at my house, so I bring stuff for her kids to sit with. You know the kind of photos I’m talking about? Lace dresses, stacked briefcases. Cream umbrellas. It’s all I do these days. Everyone loves old-style photos.”

It was a thirty minute drive to town. I liked knowing that I could’ve made it on my own. I had done most of the walking. She stopped at a gas station with a small restaurant attached to the side.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I will be.”

I sat outside on a bench near the doors. It was a nice morning. People were walking around, filling up their car gas tanks. The woods across the street had broken branches touching the road. The rain storm had done some damage, but it was minimal.

I sat there for a while and watched the people going about their small town lives. It was nice to sit and watch, and nobody noticed me sitting there until an old man came walking into the property of the gas station. He looked right at me and waved.

I waved back. I had no idea who he was.

The old man’s hair was dishevelled and he had a black lab dog with him. The dog was so close to him that it kept rubbing the man’s leg, and making him stumble. They both looked like they were running the same triathlon as me. I wondered how their training was going. What kind of course life was giving them.

“I’m fine!” he yelled.

I had no idea why he was telling me that. I hadn’t asked.

“Don’t worry about me!” he yelled again.

I wasn’t worried about him until he said that. People who were in trouble only yelled out to the world like that. If you were fine, you didn’t acknowledge it or anything about yourself.

The man went over to a payphone and lifted it up. He pushed buttons without putting any money in. I wondered if he knew that you had to pay. The black lab sat beside him while the man waited for the line to connect. He hung up and headed toward me. I was nervous he was going to ask me for money, but when he sat down beside me, he kept his gaze forward, as if he had never said anything to me.

I sat there and didn’t know what to do. His feet were flat on the ground like mine, but he had a twitch that moved one of them every ten seconds. I crossed my legs and wondered what I was going to be like when I was old and senile.

“When is the bus supposed to get here?” he asked.

I stared at the man. He had so many lines on his face. We were both sitting there, at a bench in front of a gas station, and a bus stop was nowhere near us. I didn’t know what to say to him.

“It’s supposed to be here at 10 a.m. Is it not 10 a.m yet?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

He touched the top of his dog’s head. His dog leaned close to him.

“What’s your dog’s name?” I asked. I didn’t really care about his dog. I was concerned with the man’s well-being, and I was scared to ask if he was okay in case he got offended.

“Jordan. He’s not mine. He’s my neighbour’s dog.”

“Oh.” I looked down at Jordan. He was just sitting there. He must’ve liked the confused man’s company. “Are you borrowing him or something?”

“No. He got out in the rain last night so I found him.”

“How did you know he was out there?”

“My neighbour left Jordan out. I went over and saved him.”

“I have an ex-boyfriend named Jordan.” I smiled. I didn’t know why I was sharing that with a stranger. And I hadn’t talked about Jordan in a while. “It’s a cuter name on a dog.”

“He’s pretty much my dog,” he said. “I pretend he is. I walk him down the driveway and back everyday. I do everything for him.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah he’s more mine than anyone else’s. I don’t let him in the house though. Mum wouldn’t like that.”

“Your Mum?” There was no way an old man like him still had a mum. He was delirious. “Does she know you’re out here with him?”

“No probably not. The phone over there isn’t working.”

I didn’t really know what to do with him. He wasn’t thinking clearly. His head was somewhere else, in a different kind of world, and his body was trapped in reality. It was sad to think that his fragile, little life could be disturbed by people trying to explain to him how things actually are. That he was crazy and wrong and old. And that
we
were somehow the sane ones.

“To be honest, I don’t really know where I am,” he said.

I nodded. “Me neither. But we’ll be okay.”

“I’d like to go home, but I can’t.”

“I can call someone for you if you like. And they can help you get where you need to be.”

“Okay.”

At first, I didn’t know if I should call 911. But I didn’t have any money to make any other calls, so it was my only option. I walked over to the payphone and dialled 911. I’d never called 911 before, and I didn’t really know what to expect. The female operator on the other end asked me what my emergency was.

“I don’t really think it’s exactly an emergency, but maybe it could become one, I really don’t know. This old man came up to me and he doesn’t know where he is—maybe I shouldn’t have called you—-”

“Does he know his name?”

I looked over at the man. He was talking to his dog, Jordan. And the dog was leaning on him, probably because he loved him. And needed him. I hadn’t thought to ask the old man what his name was. That seemed weird to ask him.

“What’s his name?” the operator asked again.

“I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask him.”

“Is he alone?”

“He has a neighbour’s dog with him, but he wants to go home and he doesn’t know where that is. Honestly, I think he’s kind of crazy.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

I didn’t know for sure. He just seemed out of place, I guess. I had a slight idea of what I was talking about, but I didn’t want to get too deep into it in case I was completely wrong.

“Is there something wrong with him?”

“I guess he’s just…not all there.” I looked over my shoulder at the friendly looking man talking to his dog, and if I hadn’t talked to him, I would have understood the scene to be a typical, little moment in everyday life. A
sane
, normal moment. But sanity was a perspective.

“We will send an officer down to pick him up.”

It was as easy as that. The cops came and the man didn’t even run. He talked to the officer, and he got in the back of his car without any issues. Jordan followed the man, and I was glad they had each other.

I sat on the bench and watched it all from a distance, but when one cop car went away, one cop car stayed. The officer was tall and had dark hair, and he was looking right at me. I looked at him too until he came over and sat down on the bench beside me.

“And who exactly are you?” he asked.

I smiled. My eyes stayed planted on the street across from us. The trees went blurry, and I gazed into nothing.

“I think I know who you are,” he said. His voice was friendly. He was a young officer, and he looked into the same space I was looking at. The wet ground. The pavement with little smoke butts and pieces of filth floating around.

“I’m Val,” I said. There was no point lying. I was over being alone.

“And what’s your full name?”

“Valerie Campbell.”

“You’re from that camp up the street, I’m guessing.”

“It’s not a camp. It’s a facility for troubled youth.”

“It used to be a camp though.”

“So I’ve heard.” I wondered what he was going to do with me. He knew who I was. I wondered how many people were looking for me. And if my parents already knew. If they were imagining that I was hitchhiking across the country, prostituting for money. That I was never coming back.

“I’m Officer Marks.”

It wasn’t like I regretted getting out of the program. It was kind of funny, actually. That they had a fence, and guards, and a little system, and I had found a secret little hole—mostly secret—and slipped through it.

Officer Marks stood up.

I looked at him.

“Want to go get something to eat?”

“Okay.” I went with him because of several reasons. The first was food. I was starving for something warm and real. With sauce, maybe. And it was also no longer exciting to be off on my own, running away from something that wasn’t exactly chasing me. Nobody cared about anything to do with me, and if I wanted to make it out alive, I had to acknowledge some things about myself, and my life.

Just down the street were a few food chains, and some small sit-in cafes. Officer Marks went through a drive-through of a crappy burger place, and after ordering a huge meal for himself, he looked at me.

“What do you want?”

I wanted a lot. I could’ve gone for ice cream or maybe a milkshake, but I also wanted a cheeseburger. There was nothing better than eating bad food, so I asked for the biggest burger they had.

Officer Mark’s paid for everything at the first window and we were handed our food at the second window. It smelled amazing, and I wanted to start shovelling everything in my mouth as soon as he passed me the bag. He parked away from other cars, and as soon as he turned off the engine and cracked the windows, seagulls started to drop down from the sky.

I pulled my fries out of the bag and slowly ate them one by one. My stomach growled in happiness from having a good, full hot meal of bad food, and I washed it all down with a huge iced tea.

“It’s kind of weird.”

“What is?” he said.