Before We Go Extinct (17 page)

It was the most everything I have ever seen. The everyanything.

Remember that poem?

You loved it.

I guess I thought it was dumb, but I kind of get it now.

I'm more like my dad than I would have thought. The whole thing didn't make me feel like I understood the whales, it made me feel like I understood him. Dad. Because when we got to the surface, he started to cry. Then he said, “I don't know why I'm crying, but I can't stop. Holy crap, that was amazing. That was
amazing
.” Then he just went ahead and cried, like that was an okay thing to do.

I think maybe my dad is a good man after all.

When we came back in on the boat, every one of the seals was gone from the reef. They know when the whales are coming through and they disappear for days, Dad says.

I'm the seal.

You're the whale.

We're all the seals.

We're all the whales.

Dad dropped me at the raft in the middle of the bay and I sat in the yellow chair in the sinking sun until I stopped shivering.

The dumb part was that I then had to swim in. Now I'm cold again. My hands are shaking, typing this.

What are you doing right now?

Are you over him?

I want you to walk down the block where it happened. I want you to look at the sidewalk and see if you can see the mark. See if it's still there. How does that work? Does someone have to bleach it away? Scrub it clean?

That job would suck.

I miss you.

I don't miss you.

This place is amazing.

Those whales. Seriously.

Love,

JC

 

30

“He's gone, you know,” says Kelby. She is sprawled out on the reef next to me, like a seal, absorbing the heat. Except she's a pretty seal in a hot bikini.

A pretty seal in a hot bikini who has a boyfriend with a mashed-in nose who looks like a human pug puppy, who has finally packed up his tent and gone back to the city. When she was around him, she was different. She drank beer and belched and laughed too hard and touched him too much. I wanted to say,
Look, you can like him, but you don't have to
be
him.
But I didn't want her to like him. He was such a
regular
guy. He was so average, it hurt.
Normal
. I totally got what she meant once I met him, with his broad smiling face and farmer's tan. Even the way he swam, too much splashing, interrupting the water. He threw himself into the bay and expected the water to hold him up.

“What?” I say, even though I heard her. My voice still tastes strange to me, metallic and robotic.

I splash my feet in the water, risking the backs of my calves being maimed by barnacles. The splashes are sending out widening rings that ripple the surface. In the sky, a few puffed-up clouds look like they are playing a part in a kids' cartoon. The heat wave has loosened its grip, finally. Yesterday it poured rain all day, making the whole island seem almost like the only place in the world. The rain erased Vancouver and most of the Salish Sea and the fire risk and the mood that had gripped Dad of resignation. He was freaking elated. A bullet dodged. The place can't burn when it's wet.

A gray haze hung everywhere. The hammering of the rain on the roof sounded like something I'd only ever imagined until I heard it, then I felt like I'd been hearing it all my life. Now, instead of being stifling hot, it's perfect, scrubbed clean. The air hangs easy in the sky, warm and fresh. The water is cold and clear.

“We broke up,” she says, blowing a bubble with gum I didn't know she was chewing.

“Oh yeah?” I say. My voice is too heavy for my mouth. “Great,” I add. I stand up. Stretch tall, toward the wispy clouds. I hesitate for a second. “Hope you're okay,” I add. Then I dive under the water, let it fill up my ears and my mouth and my nose. One sharp breath in and it would be in my lungs. Then what?

Then nothing.

Then I would be nothing.

Then everything would be nothing.

I open my eyes and spin my body over, like a seal. Through the distorted surface, I can see her standing on the rock, waiting to jump in. I swim hard and fast out into the middle of the bay, my muscles feel strong and hurt just enough for me to keep going, still on that same held breath. You can go a long way on one inhalation, it turns out.

I climb out at the raft, sit in the chair for a while. She's sat back down, didn't come after me. I feel disappointed and relieved at the same time. From here, it looks like she's reading and I miss her. What is wrong with me?

Daff
, I think. But I'm trying to think of her. She's fading, that's the problem. Daff and my feelings for her, what's happening to them? Can meeting just one new girl completely erase the old one? What kind of guy am I, anyway?

I lean back and pick at the yellow paint on the arms of the chair and I miss my mom and I miss The King and I try and try and try and try to remember how it felt to be New York–me, and not island-me, and it's fading, like the yellow of this stupid chair in the sun.

I belly flop back into the water and the surface slaps my stomach hard. Stinging. I swim hard and messy, with arms like Kelby's boyfriend, flapping and splashing me to the shore, like a bird with a broken wing, beating uselessly at the air.

I finally climb back up next to Kelby, my muscles shaking from the effort.

“Did I tell you that Mum once took me to this priest friend of hers and he did an actual exorcism?” she says, like we're in the middle of a conversation. “He for real laid his hands on my head and screamed things in Latin. Then he moved his hands. Actually”—she lowers her voice—“I think he copped a feel.”

I stare at her, blinking salt water from my eyes.

“I know, right?” she asks.

“Wow,” I say, finally. “That's intense.”

Two kayakers in bright yellow boats slide by on the glassy sea.
“Nice day!”
one shouts. I raise my hand. Yes, it's a nice day, sir. Now move it along.

She shrugs. “She thought I was possessed because I kept having nightmares. But you know what? People have nightmares. It's normal.” She stops. “Maybe Mum wanted to get the normal out of me?”

“What's up with your mom anyway?” I say to her. “She's pretty over-the-top with the church … stuff.” Around the back of their cabin, Darcy has been building a little church. An actual church, out of stone. It's tiny, like a playhouse. She goes in there and kneels. She puts flowers on the altar.

Kelby sighs. “I don't really want to talk about it. Can't we talk about something else? Like, I don't know, the first amazing concert you ever saw. Or … I don't know. Anything.”

“Okay,” I say. “It was Foo Fighters, last September, Madison Square Garden.” I lean back on the hot rock. It was with Daff and The King. Daff held my hand, so we wouldn't get separated, she said. But it wasn't that. The way she ran her finger around in a circle on my palm. I'd thought it meant something and I'd gone in for the kiss and she'd laughed and said, “No.” Not in a mad way, just casually, like that. “No.” So I stopped. Then The King came back from getting drinks, three huge cups of Coke spilling out of the drink tray, and then the band started playing, and that was it. That was all of it. The way she held my hand, I thought about that for a long time after. But it didn't mean anything, after all.

“I saw them,” Kelby says. “In Vancouver. They weren't that great.”

“They were okay. But this rock is great,” I say. “I love this rock.”

“Weirdo,” she says. “It's a rock. There are miles of rock. This whole island is rock.”

“This rock is the best rock,” I say. “Of all the rocks. I don't know. It's like … perfect. It's got this groove thing to lie in. And it's the warmest. And the view! Look at the view!” I wave my arm at the bay, at the sky.

She sighs and lies back. Takes her gum out and sticks it in one of the finger holes in the sandstone. Closes her eyes. Opens them. Sits up.

“A bird could choke to death on that,” I say. “You could be committing actual bird homicide with that gum.” I pick the gum out and stick it on my shoe.

“Gross,” she says.

“I'll throw it out later,” I say.

“No bird would eat that,” she says. “Birds are smarter than that.”

“You think they are,” I say. “But what if it's one really stupid bird? What if that one dumb bird that you don't know exists swoops down and is drawn to the delightful pinkness of this gum and then …
Bam
. Dead.”

“Okay, okay,” she says, but she's laughing. “Keep my gum, dude.”

“I'm going to,” I say. “I am a hero to birds. I am a hero to the
entire animal kingdom.
”

“Right,” she says. “We'll talk when you save a hippo from marauders.”

“Fine,” I say. “I'll save a hippo. Find me a hippo. I'll save it.”

“Okay,” she says. “Great.” She nudges me. “Hero.”

“That's me,” I say, suddenly needing to swallow a lump in my throat. “The Great White Hope.”

“What?” she says.

“Nothing,” I say. “But what were you going to tell me?”

“Oh,” she says. “Yeah.”

She moves away from me a bit and hangs her feet down the other side of the rock. The tide is starting to cover the sandbar. “We could make an island,” she says. “On the sand.”

“Nah,” I say. “We can make an island tomorrow. Let's just talk.”

“Okay,” she says. “You know, maybe it was better when you didn't talk.”

“Maybe,” I say. “I could've been the silent savior of birds with special needs.”

“And hippos,” she says, but she doesn't laugh.

Then, all at once, “Look, my dad died, okay? My dad died. My dad … died. He died and Mom found God and I found…” Her voice falters. “I found the stars. I figured out what they meant to me. After. I mean, we find the thing that saves us, right? That's what happens. That's the normal thing that happens.” She looks up at me, her eyes glistening with tears. “I know that sounds cheesy, so don't you dare make fun of me. Not right now. I'm telling you that my dad died. No jokes allowed.”

“Okay,” I say carefully. “I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.”

“Yeah,” she says. “So this is what happened. I'm going to tell you. Don't talk, only listen. This is the whole story: We were in the yard. The backyard behind our apartment building. Our building was an old house, split into apartments. It was nice. It wasn't like an alley out back, it was like a real yard. Grass. The whole bit. Like something out of a storybook. I think that's why they chose the apartment, for that square of grass that made them feel like real proper parents. Dad had this telescope and we were going to watch a meteor shower. He always loved that stuff. It was
his
thing.” She stops. Her eyes are slowly leaking, tears pooling on her lips. I know it's entirely the wrong thing to think, but what I'm thinking is that I want to kiss her. “Now it's mine,” she added. “Now the stars are mine. So I guess he left me the stars. Pretty nice, right? Better than leaving me a check, I guess.” She laughs, but not like it's funny, like she's sad. The saddest.

There's probably something wrong with me that someone is pouring out their heart to me, and I am thinking about kissing. She licks the tear off her top lip. I shiver.

“I'm sorry,” I say again. I want there to be something bigger and more meaningful to say, but I can't find the words.
Sorry
feels as weightless as a feather.

“So we were out there,” she continues. “And he smoked, right? He was like this
secret
smoker. He thought we didn't know that he smoked but he did smoke and he snuck away behind this shed thing that was back there, for a cigarette, and then there was this—”

She stops. In the distance, one of the dogs is howling. Then a second one joins in. A seaplane flies low overhead and dips its wings. I can hear voices from somewhere, probably a boat. People laughing.

In real life there are always people laughing at the wrong moment. If this was a TV show, someone would edit that out.

“This,” I say, helpfully. “There was this…”

“Yeah,” she says. “There was this explosion. I guess—I mean, I know. I thought that he … I was only nine. So I guess, I just assumed—I mean, I thought he was hit by a meteor. Because right before that, there was this shooting star that was huge. I mean, you could see the tail and everything. It stuck in the sky like a tattoo of light. And I was yelling, ‘Daddy, did you see—?' and then there was an explosion that blew me into the fence.” She holds out her arm and I can see the faint white lines of an old scar, puckering the skin inside her elbow. “His match found a gas leak in the barbecue.”

“So he died,” she says. “I guess that's the whole story. Except that after that, after the explosion, I saw him. He was standing next to me. He said, ‘You're gonna be okay, kid.' He didn't even talk like that, not for real. In real life, he had a British accent. He was English. So he wouldn't have said that. He sounded like John Wayne! My shrink says that's how he knows it's just me, just brain messings, he said. My own brain messing with me. After that, I saw him all the time for a while. And then I stopped seeing him. But I think that it was like seeing a star, you know? You keep seeing its light even though it's already gone.”

I wait. “Is ‘brain messings' an actual medical diagnosis?” I say.