Vanishing and Other Stories (33 page)

But—said some of us, daring to rise to Jordan's defence—Mary Louise was perhaps not handling her situation well. Months passed, and she did not live out the narrative we hoped she would. We had been raised on Oprah and adolescent self-esteem classes, and we expected her to prove her resilience. But she hardly smiled. She lost too much weight, maybe from stress, and her features became sharp and hard. And the worst was that she wasn't any friendlier to us ordinary people. In fact, where she had been aloof before, she was now anti-social. Some of her friends still talked to her, but she acted like she was in exile, and spent most lunch hours alone. She sat in a corner on the third floor, doing her homework, slowly eating a sandwich, and drinking from a juice box. Perhaps this was the difficult thing for Jordan: she was simply and always sad.

 

 

MAYBE BECAUSE THE SKY THEATRE
and everywhere else that Jay and I went was semi-public, I never felt alone with him. As we kissed, I could hear Syl's voice. It was like she was sitting next to me,
dissecting the pros and cons, the shoulds and shouldn'ts, of sleeping with Jay. “Maybe you shouldn't because you don't even like him.”

“Sometimes I think I do like him.”

“Really?”

“No. I don't know. I can't tell. What do you think? Do you think he's cute?”

“I think you should be able to tell. I think that every time you see him, it should feel like you've died and gone to some way better place.”

“I never feel like I'm dead.”

“Maybe that's the problem.”

I wondered, constantly, what other people saw when they saw us together. And what it said about me if I made out with a boy who was not particularly smart or handsome. I wondered, too, what it said about me if I liked it. And, of course, I wondered how I compared to the other girls that Jay had made out with, or had thought about making out with. I didn't know any techniques, so I asked Syl for practical advice. But she'd never been practical about anything, and had very little. So I fumbled with him and wished that I were as competent in those matters as Mary Louise must have been. I imagined that her hand jobs were legendary among the boys, mythic in their reputation.

As these kinds of thoughts whirled around in my brain, Jay and I pressed our lips together, opened our mouths, touched tongues, sometimes accidentally banged teeth. We kissed until our lips became swollen and raw. We kissed until we physically couldn't kiss anymore. Then we straightened our clothes, breathed, leaned back in our seats, and looked at the stars. We held hands, our
palms sweating against each other, as Andromeda sparkled or asteroids flew toward us. The Sky Theatre had a different show each week, but each was accompanied by a voice-over done by the same man. He had an accent that I couldn't place but that I adored.
The pattern of our days occurs because we live on a constantly spinning Earth. Because of this motion, day turns into night, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and summer turns into fall
.

In my mind, the man who owned this gruff but gentle voice was named something foreign, like Pavel or Armand. I settled on Armand, and once I'd named him, I fell in love with him. I imagined that he was dashing and elegant and better-looking than Jay. I imagined that he was romantic and confident. I watched the complex movement of the heavens—there was a swirling nebula, there Orion's belt—and everything Armand said seemed to be intended only for me.

From our earthbound view, stars appear to make a connected shape. But in fact the stars are not so connected, except in mythology and human imagination.

Once, I forgot myself and said, “I love his voice. I would marry someone who talks like that.”

“That guy?” said Jay, with his Western Canadian accent—a form of speech so neutral that telemarketers in Delhi are encouraged to adopt it. “I think he sounds like an asshole.”

 

 

THE PLANET CONTINUED TO SPIN
on its axis, and fall turned into winter. By then I had been to the Planetarium so many times that two things had happened. One: I'd decided that I might as well have sex with Jay. And two: I was quite knowledgeable when it
came to astronomy. For instance, I knew that the Earth was tilted at a 23.5-degree angle, and it was this happy accident that allowed us to experience seasons.

Another happy accident was that one of the girls on my field-hockey team threw a party when her parents were out of town, and I was invited. I'm not sure what transpired in the universe for this to come about, but someone, somewhere, had decided that I was cool. The party was held in a seven-bedroom house that was just outside the city limits. Syl and I had never even thought of riding our bikes that far, so I'd never seen houses so big. The roads weren't plowed and there were no street lights. It had taken me days to convince my parents that the winter roads were safe and that the party wouldn't be too wild. I got a ride with a girl on my team, and when I arrived I had to sneak into one of the bedrooms to call and assure my parents that I was okay.

Neither Syl nor Jay had been invited, so I was left to mingle with people who frightened me. I was an explorer among aliens, and I wished I had a notebook to record their habits and report back to Syl. Ryan Watkins and Dan Houston played video games and drank a heroic amount of beer. The girls—people like Nicole McPhee and Julia Vincent—drank a purple mixture that they'd made in a bucket and scooped out with their cups. Nicole actually talked to me. “Do you want some? It tastes like Kool-Aid, but it'll get you totally hammered.”

“Sure.” I watched her dip a Styrofoam cup as well as her entire hand into the bucket. “Thanks.”

“Do you play field hockey?”

It was finally happening. I was finally being recognized. “Yeah.” I nodded my head vigorously. “I am. I mean, I do.”

“That's so great.” Nicole took my hand and laced her fingers through mine, the way Jay sometimes did. “You know those skirts you guys wear? Could I borrow yours sometime?”

“I guess. I don't know. I sort of need it for practice.”

“I think it would look cute with one of my sweaters.”

After about an hour, most people were so drunk that they seemed to be handicapped. Ryan Watkins was unable to stand up from the couch. He kept calling people over to help him, and any girl who tried ended up on his lap.

Two other girls—Ashley and Bronwyn—sat beside him on the couch and made out with each other. Ryan and some of the other guys cheered them on, and every few minutes the girls stopped kissing and shrieked, “We're not lesbians! We're not!” I doubt anyone thought they were. They just wanted attention, and weren't pretty or interesting enough to get it in any other manner. They kissed in a way that I'd never seen before, with their tongues outside of their mouths. Watching it made me sad, and for the first time, I missed Jay. I was at a party with Ryan Watkins and other demigods, and yet I missed my unremarkable boyfriend and his ordinary way of kissing.

 

 

IT WASN
'
T A BIG PARTY
—I counted only twenty-four people—which I suppose meant that each person who'd been invited had been carefully chosen. But still, through some unlucky accident or cruel purposefulness, Jordan and Mary Louise were both present. They didn't speak to each other all night. Jordan mostly hung out with other guys, and didn't drink much. He wore jeans and a blue
shirt that made his eyes sparkle. He reminded me of a doll with rhinestones glued to its face. Mary Louise spent most of her time on the periphery of the room. She drank beer, not the purple stuff.

I stuck to the Kool-Aid. I drank as much of it as I could, but it didn't help. Back then, alcohol didn't affect me until it was too late to do any good. I had first noticed this when Syl and I were on the phone one night and she said, “We should get drunk.”

“Okay. When?”

“Right now. Over the phone.”

“My parents are home, you freak. They're upstairs watching TV.”

“My parents are home too. That's why it'll be funny.”

So Syl and I each grabbed what we could find in our parents' cupboards and—counting to three into the phone—shot back whiskey and vodka respectively. We went shot for shot for about half an hour, about as long as the news program my mom and dad were watching. Syl's voice started slurring through the phone line and she dropped the receiver twice, but I didn't feel anything.

After we hung up, I topped the vodka bottle up with water, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and took the dog out for a walk. It wasn't until I went to bed that I became drunk. Then the room and everything in it—my desk and books and poster of Brad Pitt with long hair—spun above my head. When I closed my eyes, the whole universe seemed to swirl around me. I crawled from my room to the bathroom and threw up quietly, so my parents wouldn't hear.

A similar thing happened at that party. No matter how much I drank of that purple shit-mix, I didn't feel anything. I knew I'd feel it later—probably once I got home and saw that my parents
had waited up for me. But right then I was as sober as a stone. I was so sober that I even came up with a theory. I figured it was my Superego, which was more muscled than vodka could ever be. It had such a tight grip on me that I couldn't get drunk. In fact, alcohol seemed to increase my inhibitions.

And that's probably why I ended up outside and alone. It was December and it was cold, but I put on my coat and went out onto the porch. I don't think anyone noticed that I was gone. I could hear music coming from inside—some band that everyone was supposed to like but that I always got confused with about three other bands. People's conversations sounded distant and sorrowful.

The house was far enough from the city that I could see the stars almost as clearly as in the Sky Theatre. I tried to pick out some of the constellations that I'd learned about, but in real life the night looked jumbled and chaotic. All I could recognize was Venus, the brightest thing up there. At the Planetarium, the model of Venus was accompanied by a panel that called it Earth's sister, and said that the planet might once have been covered in salty oceans. It was the most hopeful panel of all:
Someday, Venus might again be hospitable to life. Hundreds of millions of years from now, it may become Earth's true twin
. I watched it shine as bright as Jordan Burke's eyes. I wished I had my bike so I could ride home.

Then I did what I always did—what I still sometimes do—when I felt lonely: I fantasized about Armand. I imagined him showing up at this party on a motorcycle and declaring his love for me in front of everybody. Actually, I didn't care what he said, as long as he said it in that beautiful voice. He could lecture about black holes for all I cared.
Imagine a place where time stands still.
Where the universal order breaks down. Where the unimaginable becomes reality
.

I was so deep in thoughts of Armand—I pictured him with a craggy, dark face and a beat-up leather jacket—that I almost didn't notice when Mary Louise opened the door. She didn't notice me, and I watched as she tried to hold the door, keep her bottle of Molson from spilling, and manoeuvre herself outside. When I moved to help, she was startled by me. “It's okay,” she said. “I got it.”