Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World (11 page)

Mark and his girl started making out right away. So much for Stacey. I left the car with my girl and we went for a walk down
the road in the moonlight. It smelled like there was a farm nearby. I couldn’t register anything about the person I was with
other than she was really short and had bushy brown hair and an acne problem and I thought her name started with T. I asked
her lots of questions because I didn’t want to talk about myself. Then she stopped and turned to face me.

‘You want to go check out the woods? Might be somewhere we can lay down.’

I stared back at her stupidly. Then I stammered that it was a nice idea, but we didn’t know each other that well. ‘See, I
never actually did it before,’ I said. I realised my voice had gotten softer and I was looking at the ground. Slipping into
my old shy act. It came in handy sometimes. ‘I think it would be great to be friends first. Or if I’m lucky, it’ll be with
somebody I love.’ I glanced up to see how the girl was taking this.

She was smiling like Christmas. ‘Oh, that is so
sweet
! How come I never met you before?’

I risked a look back down the road. ‘You think they’re done? It’s kind of cold out here.’ We took a few steps closer to the
car. They weren’t done.

The months rolled away – I didn’t even feel them go. A new school year, the last one. Everything gearing up for college and
goodbye. Then it was April 1987. That night in the basement in front of the TV with the smoke shapes thick around our heads.
And the world ended.

But why? Because I’d thought about kissing Mark? I’d imagined a lot worse over the years. That ache I’d first felt taking
root when I was thirteen, unwrapping a pack of cigarettes and watching him push open my window to let the cold air inside.
It was part of me.

So why had it hurt so much, that night? Why was it impossible to go back now?

It wasn’t sex. That’s not what had scared me. It was love. Love and stupid hope. But something else as well, standing behind
it all, setting everything in motion.

I knew when the summer faded I’d be gone. And I realised then that there was something I had to do. The ghost shows up in
Act One and gives you a mission. And if you’re a man, you’ll cut the soliloquies and do it.

Tell him. Tell him everything.

I couldn’t leave Riverside without a goodbye for Mark, a real one. It would be unfair to both of us. He had to know.

Or … was I so sure that it would really be goodbye? What if he understood?

Or better.

Stupid, demented hope. Leave me alone. I’d pray if I knew how. For patience, for more time. For self-control – just enough
so that I wouldn’t make a complete disaster out of this.

Impossible things.

I didn’t understand time. It could freeze like cement in an hourglass. It would be Wednesday and I couldn’t imagine it would
ever be Friday. It would be February and I knew it would never be June. And then one day I was on my way to the hardware store
where my best friend worked and hoping I wouldn’t run into him there, with my college acceptance letter in my backpack and
less than three months of high school left for both of us. It had all gone by like one afternoon.

The sidewalks were still grainy from sand trailed across the ice all winter, though it was almost May and the snow was long
gone. I pushed my way into the shop, welcomed by the hollow clunk of cow bells on a string. Riverside’s Home Hardware had
the chain store logo, but the aisles were close together and packed with junk, wooden floors grey and worn. This was the place
to get your lawn statues of the seven dwarves mooning each other, or those vulture-sized wooden butterflies people would clip
to the sides of their houses for reasons I could never understand.

I was here because I’d run into some trouble clearing out the old
hiding places in my room, getting ready for the big move to Halifax. Some of these spots were incredibly hard to get to –
I’d made them back when I was twelve or thirteen, just a little guy with arms like dried pasta. Anyway, I’d had kind of a
violent accident involving the wall in the back of my closet and now I needed plaster and paint. A lot of it.

There was a voice at my elbow. ‘Sir? Can I help you with anything?’ I flinched. Mark. He was in his red Home Hardware polo
shirt, the uniform he had to wear here.

‘Hey, college boy.’ Mark was smiling, the kind of tense, fake smile he’d put on if he really wanted to punch somebody. I asked
him what was up with this ‘college boy’ stuff.

‘Your mom gave me the big news,’ he said. ‘When I went to your place and you weren’t around.’

I could see why he was mad. I’d never told him about the acceptance letter. And he really had shown up at my house a few nights
earlier, just to hang out. But when Mom called from the kitchen, I’d stayed quiet in my room.
I’m not home
, I told them silently. I heard my mother offer Mark some tea, and then they were chatting and laughing together for what
seemed like hours while I’d waited – trapped, hugging my knees on my bed, stranded and motionless.

‘Oh, that,’ I said. ‘Didn’t think it was such a big deal. I mean, it’s only Halifax.’

‘Right. Your mom said you carry that college letter around with you.’

‘I do not.’

‘Let’s see it.’ Mark made a sudden lunge for my backpack. I dodged his arm, told him to quit it.

He laughed. ‘Come on, man. I know you got it on you.’

He came at me again. I jolted backwards and behind us a freestanding rack loaded with house numbers tinkled and shuddered.
Mark glanced up the aisle, probably checking to see if his boss was around.

I forced a smile of my own. All a big joke, folks, nothing strained or hostile going on here. We’re friends. I opened my pack,
found the letter, handed it over. Mark scowled down at the paper as if this were his draft notice I’d been hoarding away.

‘Stepan Vladimir, eh? Happy for you,’ he said blankly.

Then a tiny, hunched old lady wanted to talk to Mark about some hooks she’d bought for her kitchen. I skulked off to the back
of the store as he explained that they were really only for wooden surfaces and even then she’d have to be careful of how
much weight they’d hold.

‘So why would you sell these things?’ She stared up at Mark fiercely.

Don’t watch. Paint and plaster. Find it and get out. I could still hear Mark’s voice, and if I craned over the aisles I could
see him. His shoulders were stooped, the back of his neck bent downwards – he was talking to his boss now, and she was almost
as small as the old lady. No, the customer couldn’t have a refund, his boss was telling him. The hooks were damaged. It was
too late.

Jesus Christ. They cost thirty cents a piece. This is what he did all day?

Just quit for the afternoon, Mark. Walk out. Let’s both go somewhere where we can try to be normal again. Get high in our
little clearing by the river, nothing on our minds except school and dumb movies and no-name ripple chips.

How had everything changed so fast?

I wasn’t going to find what I wanted. The colours were all wrong. Instead I picked out the closest substitutes, paid at the
cash and then headed straight for the door, cowbells waiting to ring me out. Yes, I had to tell him. But not here. Not today.

Couldn’t leave the store. Someone was gripping my arm. Mark again. I turned and we were facing each other.

‘Listen, man. I wasn’t being sarcastic back there,’ he said. ‘I really am happy for you, Stephen. Totally. And … I always
knew you’d do it.’ Mark smacked me on the back, a little pat. More like he was consoling than congratulating me.

‘Okay,’ I said.

Mark shook his head. ‘Friggin’ nutcase.’

‘Thanks.’ My voice felt creaky. ‘Asshole.’

He must have seen a flicker of apology in my eyes because he smiled. I smiled back.

That’s what you do, when you’re in love.

Whitney Houston was screaming on my clock radio, cutting right through a dream. She wanted to dance with somebody. To feel
the heat with somebody. The word ‘heat’ was a high cutesy squeak. The song charged on with marching band confidence. She’d
find somebody to dance with, this girl.

I hit the off button several hundred times.

Then I stared at the ceiling and listened to the rain on the roof, trying to figure out this dream, still half in it. It was
a weird one. I was making out with Mark on a bed, on this bed. And he kept telling me that he hated me, that everybody hated
me, even God. This was disconcerting, because otherwise he’d seemed like he was really into it, but he wouldn’t stop saying
this stuff, right in my ear, over and over until I was pleading with him to stop.

There’d been a violent thunderstorm during the night and it was raining again. It would probably rain for days. A month had
gone by since the end of the world, and now it was May.

I still hadn’t told him anything.

Breakfast in the kitchen. Lots of low, dark clouds, so we had to turn on the lights. Mom flicked some pepper at her hard-boiled
egg. The top fell off the owl-shaped shaker and the egg got buried in greyish powder. The owl’s decapitated head glared up
at us. I tried to look innocent.

‘I should make you eat this, you know. It’s what you deserve.’ My mother got up from the table and dumped her plate into the
sink.

‘I’ll be gone in a few months anyway.’

‘Don’t remind me!’ She turned around and kissed the top of my head.

‘Mom, quit it.’

Mark came by then, like always. Usually if there was any breakfast still around, he’d eat it and talk to my mother about cooking.
Today he fished Mom’s pepper-covered hard-boiled egg out of the sink and ate that.

I listened to them and didn’t say much of anything. I’d decided the only way to get through what was left of the school year
with Mark was to make myself go dead where he was concerned. So I’d stare at something just over his head, to the side of
him, out the window. Trying to leave a blank in the world where he used to be.

School was a blur. Flickering fluorescent lights, rows of lockers with their vents that seemed to breathe out foulness. People
shoving each other, greeting each other, watching each other. ‘How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the
uses of this world.’ English class. Poor old Hamlet. Everybody in the play kept going on about how much they loved and admired
him, but nobody seemed to actually listen to a word he said. No wonder the guy was always talking to himself.

Canadian History. The smell of damp clothes, melting gel and mousse running down the backs of necks, windows fogging from
the
warmth of wet humans squished into their chairs. We waded through the articles of the Manitoba Act. Apathetic little doodles
collected in the margins of my binder, some very irritated-looking monsters and aliens with trees growing out of their heads.

‘So boring,’ said Lana. ‘Canada needs a higher body count.’

I slapped at my face to stay awake.

Final bell. The sky was concrete. Trunks of the trees were dark, apple and cherry blossoms looking toothless and bedraggled,
petals stuck to the ground like confetti. Mark and I walked home to my place through the downpour. Mom wouldn’t be home for
a couple of hours, so we decided to smoke up and watch
The Toxic Avenger
. Weed was usually just a Sunday thing for me. But as we got closer to the end of school, I found myself bending a lot of
my old rules. And there was something cosy about the idea – the two of us in here getting stupid together while the rain hammered
down. We made our way to the basement. Mark pushed open the door to the laundry room.

‘I’m gonna use the dryer, okay?’

He started taking off his clothes.

I turned around. Climbed the stairs two and three at a time, calling out over my shoulder, ‘Gotta do something! Just remembered.
I’ll be …’

Kept going, straight out the front door.

Don’t look back. Don’t think about it.

I was striding through town with the rain bucketing down on me, twisting through various shades of squirmy despair.
Jesus, Mark. Stripping off right there in my house like the first scene of some cheap porno
. But he’d done this before, wrapped himself in a sleeping bag and waited for his stuff to get dry. Well, why not? Nothing
I owned would fit him. And we were both fellas, right? We were both dudes. Man.

Mist was rising from the river, mist on the side of the mountain. Nobody around but me.

I ended up in a wide, featureless park by the water’s edge. We’d assemble there for fireworks every year on the first of July
– otherwise I had no idea why it existed. I kept pacing forwards. Past the tiny tourist centre, where during the summer a
high-school kid on government pay would wait for American retired couples to wander in asking for directions to other towns.
Past a park bench – same place I’d sat with my parents in the snow, the day they got married. To the river.

Gradually I became aware of a dark shape hulking by the edge of the water. Almost looked like an animal. I got closer. It
was. A cow with its mouth open in a frozen scream, drowned and washed up on the riverbank, stiff legs like branches jutting
towards the sky.
Oh, great. So this is my life now
. Standing in the pissing rain staring at a dead cow. Next thing you know, I’ll be writing poetry about it.

I turned my back on the wreck of the animal and sat by the riverbank, soaking up mud and feeling water drip down my neck.
I didn’t want to be here, with this horrible thing as my only companion. I wanted to be home. Safe and dry. Getting stoned
and watching
The Toxic Avenger
with my friend, with Mark.

Peeling off his wet clothes in the laundry room, the shocked, red, goose-pimpled look of his skin. If you touched his cold
back, your hand would leave an impression that looked like a hand, just for a second.

Nobody but the cow could hear me. So I said it, staring into the river.

‘I love you.’

The surface of the water was pebbled and pockmarked from the rain. That dream. Mark whispering that he hated me, and so did
God. I pictured this Almighty, leaning in over the earth for a look at all the
amusing little people and their problems. I’d come into view and he’d go, ‘Oh, for crying out loud, not
that
kid again!’ Give the globe a spin and turn away, disgusted.

I tipped back my head. Drops of water dive-bombed out of a white sky. It wasn’t ever going to stop.

Back through town. Lana was outside her house. Looking so sweet I almost wanted to cry, in a yellow raincoat and hat like
you see on kindergarten children or old-time fishermen. She made her way over to the picket fence where I was standing, the
soft rounded shape of her. Scissors and lengths of green were clutched in her pale hands; she’d been cutting peppermint by
the side of the house.

‘What’s going on? You’re soaked.’

I felt metal under my chin. Lana was trying to lift my head with the handle of the scissors, make me look at her.

‘Stephen? Are you okay?’

I didn’t answer. She broke off a sprig of peppermint and put it in my mouth. Such a sharp, clean taste. Chewing on a bunch
of leaves kind of reminded me of the cow, though.

‘Thanks.’

‘Listen, do you want to come in? You can have supper with us. My parents won’t mind.’

I took Lana’s hands and kissed them, kissed both of them, like somebody in a Russian novel. Then I turned and walked away,
splashing through the shallow murky puddles on the sidewalk.

‘Hey, wait,’ she said. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I don’t know. Gotta go home. Shoot myself. Or something.’

She looked stricken and I was sorry I’d said anything.

‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘Yeah. Just kidding.’

The windows of my house were lit. I came in through the back. In the kitchen, the counters were covered with food and there
were pots bubbling away on every burner. It smelled nice, like home should smell. Mom was tearing up lettuce for a salad.
Mark was at the stove. A frying pan popped and spat at him.

Then they were both staring at me, this soggy weirdo standing in the doorway like a drowned ghost.

‘God, Stephen! Where on earth have you been?’ my mother said. ‘And look at you. You’re dripping.’

‘Yeah, what the fuck, man? Oh, sorry, Mrs S.’

‘That’s okay, Mark. At least
you
apologise for it.’ She was talking to him but looking at me. They were both looking at me, waiting.

‘Went out to buy something,’ I said. It occurred to me that I was empty-handed. ‘Forgot my wallet.’

My tractor boots were water-logged. I listened to the lid on a pot bumping up and down as it boiled over, like a person forgetting
what they were going to say.

‘Mark made spaghetti sauce,’ my mother announced.

‘I totally did! Like, not out of a jar or anything. You shoulda seen it. I was chopping up onions and garlic and … and all
this stuff …’

Whoa. He was really high. But my mother didn’t seem to notice.

‘Isn’t that great?’ said Mom. ‘Now, I don’t know why you’re not interested in cooking, Stephen. You’ll be in your own place
soon enough.’

‘Don’t remind me.’

My mother sent me upstairs to change. Dinner turned out to be a bit of a party. Mom put candles on the kitchen table. I kept
getting up to turn on the overhead light and she kept turning it off again. It wasn’t that I didn’t like candles. I did. You
put a candle on and you’re in a
different place. That warm light forgives everything. It’s the way you’d hope God sees the world.

It was just that I didn’t want to be looking at either of them that way.

But Mom won. The kitchen became this cosy, dark cave. Mark’s and Mom’s faces were all I could see, and I loved them both so
much. It was torture.

Mark went to flick some pepper on his food and the top of the owl shaker fell off. A pile of grey powder splattered his dinner.
He started laughing, head bowed almost to the table and hands linked at the back of his neck.

My mother cracked up in giggles.

‘Oh, no! I meant that for Stephen. Just a little prank. I’m so sorry, Mark. Let me get you another plate.’

But I’d already slid Mark’s plate with the pepper on it over to me, given him mine in exchange.

‘It’s okay. It’s what I deserve.’

I suppose I’d meant this as a joke. They glanced at each other.

‘Stephen, sweetheart,’ said my mother. ‘I’m the one who was messing around with the pepper. You didn’t do anything.’

An exploded coalmine on a hill of red glop. I was going to continue to face down this spaghetti until they both forgot about
what I’d said, and the strangeness of it.

‘Mark, I’m going to put the rest of this sauce in a jar for you,’ my mother said. ‘You can take it home.’

‘Aw, that’d be awesome, Mrs S.’

‘So now I’m going to, you know, look for a Mason jar.’ She said this in an almost theatrical tone and stepped out of the room.

Mark leaned close. ‘Think she knows? That I’m kind of …’ He grinned, dipped his head. His eyes were red and swimming.

‘She doesn’t have a clue.’

‘Smoked the whole thing myself. When I could see you weren’t coming back.’

I started making patterns with the mess on my plate. The noise of the clock was small and relentless.

‘Stephen?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Stephen, what the fuck is going on?’

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

‘Told you. I went out to buy something. I forgot my wallet.’

‘No, I mean the past month or so.’

Something about this was all wrong. The way my mother had left, so suddenly and strangely. Oh, fuck.

‘My mom asked you to talk to me, didn’t she?’

‘No …’ Mark was suddenly interested in his fork. Then he let out a long, slow sigh. ‘Okay, yes. But don’t get mad at her.
She’s worried. Comes home every day and you got your head in the sink and you won’t tell her what’s wrong.’

‘Nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s different. Put that in your report.’

‘Now, don’t get all …,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t gonna tell her anything. She didn’t ask me to. She just wanted me to get you talking.’
He let the fork fall back to his plate. It speckled the plastic tablecloth with red. ‘I mean, fuck’s sake, Stephen. We both
knew you were up there hiding from us that night I came by. You remember? And why’d you act like going to college was some
big secret? Happy people don’t do that shit. It’s obvious you got some problem and you don’t want to tell anybody about it.’

I looked him in the eye then, for maybe the first time in weeks. Then I looked away. At the daisy clock, the glass window
in darkness reflecting this little pool of light on the table.

‘You ever feel like God hates you?’

Mark gaped at me. It was as if I’d punched him. ‘Are you serious? That is, like, the worst thing I ever heard.’

‘Sorry.’

‘God doesn’t hate anybody, Stephen. God isn’t … capable of hate. You’re His creation. He’d do anything to help you.’ The chair
groaned against the floor as he pushed himself backwards. Mark dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, like a child miming
sleepiness. ‘Hey, that sounded really dumb, huh? I am so stoned.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘Can’t believe you’d say something that fucked up.’

I started playing with the little yellow drop of flame. Mark moved the candle away.

‘Look, are you on something?’ he said. ‘You don’t seem like you’re on something, but …’

I sat up a bit straighter. ‘Okay, McAllister.’ Sounded ridiculous. ‘Mark. If I …’ I coughed. I didn’t know how he was reacting
to this, because I couldn’t look at him. I tried again. ‘If I tell you something, do you promise you won’t …’

My mother came back, brandishing a Mason jar. ‘I knew it!’ she said. ‘I knew I had one of these somewhere.’

Thank you, Mom
. I couldn’t believe how close that was. How stupid I’d just been. Blurting it out like a moron, nothing prepared. The wrong
time.