Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World (15 page)

‘Hey. You should sing,’ I said. ‘That hymn. How to be valiant or something.’

‘Oh, fu— frig. You were listening to that?’

Krystal shushed us. Mark moved closer, his head inches from mine.

‘How come you like that stuff?’ I said.

‘I dunno.’ He was trying to keep his voice down so Krystal didn’t
miss a word of her show. ‘It feels … permanent. It was there before I ever came along. It’ll be there after I’m gone.’ He
shifted his weight, balancing. ‘No, that sounds retarded. I’m not explaining this very well.’

‘I love you.’ I mumbled it into the side of the couch. Everything was shutting down, one control panel at a time. My eyes
were closed. No idea what I was saying anymore.

‘Hey, that’s … great, man.’

‘Stephen’s a big silly.’ Krystal was talking from somewhere close to my feet.

‘I think Stephen’s been studying pretty hard today.’

I drifted off, glimmering beeps and whirs from the TV dropping slowly into the background, fading into the dark reaches of
space.

When I opened my eyes again, it was morning. Krystal was smiling into my face, like she had some wonderful secret. I glanced
at my watch and saw that I was almost late for the first bell at school.

Then Mark was shoving my feet off the couch so he could sit down. He handed me a yellow plate with a Pop-Tart on it. Strawberry.
It took me a minute to figure out that he was wearing his red Home Hardware shirt.

‘Aw, don’t wear the red shirt.’ I bit into the sugary rectangle in my hand. ‘They’re always the first to get killed.’

‘Gotta wear it for work.’ The corner of his mouth twitched when he looked at me.

I didn’t get it. Had I been asleep for half the week? ‘Is it Saturday?’

‘Thursday. I’m not going to school today. No point.’ He leaned
back against the couch. ‘I think I’m finished with school. Only about a month to go anyway.’

‘Yeah, but Mark …’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll show up sometimes. I’ll do the exams too. Got a feeling they’ll put me through anyway. Nobody wants me
around another year.’

‘Just don’t like to see you giving up.’

He smiled. ‘C’mon, get out of here. You’re gonna be late.’

I was almost at the end of the McAllisters’ driveway when I heard Mark yelling after me to stop. He was laughing. ‘You can’t
go out there like that, man. Wait, wait, wait.’

I stopped, turned to face him. ‘I’ll be late.’

‘Yeah, but …’ He put one hand on my shoulder, reached up towards my face. What was this? Space madness?

Then he was picking through my hair and something was scratching and pulling at me. Barrettes. Pink plastic barrettes with
bunny rabbits on them. That’s what Krystal had been so damn happy about, grinning into my face first thing this morning.

‘I promised Krystal I wouldn’t tell you,’ Mark was saying. ‘But, fuck.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Wait a minute, there’s one more …’ He tilted my head, pulled at the hair near the back of my neck. ‘Hey, remember yesterday
you were all fucked up and you wanted to give me this big news or something?’

The barrette snapped open and he drew it away from me. Green with a yellow happy face smirking at the world.

‘I don’t really remember. I was pretty stoned.’

‘Yeah, you totally were. Gotta get us some of that shit, eh? Ask Lana.’

I said I’d try, mumbled goodbye and started off for school, glancing back at Mark as he stood in the driveway and held up
his hand. Then
he smiled to himself like he’d decided this looked dumb, went back into the house.

I found my backpack where I’d left it the day before. It was soggy from rain and there was a slug crawling up one strap, but
otherwise it was fine. Well, why not? Who’d steal a Canadian History textbook?

I was halfway to Riverside Regional High School and about a block away from Riverside Regional Elementary – exactly where
I’d had that fight with Mark. Even wearing the same clothes. Everything was just the same.

Except nothing was.

True, Mark still didn’t know, and I’d protect him for as long as I could. But Lana did. All of a sudden there was one person
I didn’t have any secrets from. I found I was actually looking forward to school, to seeing Lana and talking to her.

I shouldered my pack, turned towards the high school. Boldly going.

I curled my fingers into a stiff tangle somewhere on the neck of the guitar, swiped at the strings with my other hand. My
favourite Smiths song, sounding a bit mutilated. ‘I Want the One I Can’t Have’.

We were at Lana’s place, in the living room, pretending to study. My back was against the couch and Lana was stretched across
it, clapping sarcastically whenever I hit a buzzingly awful note. She’d given me the guitar the day after I’d had that meltdown
under the trampoline, said it was her dad’s but he hadn’t played in years.

‘We’re going to be rock stars,’ she’d informed me.

‘Can I be Morrissey?’

‘No. I’m Morrissey. I’m not sure who you are.’

So we were in a band – two acoustic guitars played by two people who couldn’t sing very well. It was called The Wretched Noise,
after an early review by Lana’s mother.

Only a couple of weeks had gone by since that insane day of drugs and ice-cream and confessions and
Star Trek
, but it seemed like I was
living a whole different existence. I hung around with Lana constantly. I didn’t see much of Mark, not since he’d unofficially
dropped out. I guess things had been going wrong for us ever since I started acting like such a self-absorbed weirdo around
him back in April. Then when we quit walking to school together, something snapped. It broke our routine. After that, it was
like I had to arrange to see Mark, as if we were relatives checking in for visits. And the real distance settled in.

There were times he’d still show up at school, like he said, but he was usually with the boys from his remedial classes. Randy
McTavish, Kevin Dickson. Same people who’d tried to feed me dog shit back in Grade Three. He was different when he was with
these guys. If I passed them in the halls, he’d grunt a ‘hi’ at me and keep going.

There were deep ridges pushed into my fingertips in the shape of guitar strings. I started picking out a tune instead of strumming
– Mark’s hymn about being valiant. I was obsessed with that song. Bizarre thing for a mostly atheist feral half-Jew to get
fixated on, but you can’t help what you’re attracted to, I guess.

Then Lana wanted to talk about my new and exciting lifestyle. Again.

‘We’re going to have to get you laid, Stephen,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t seem fair for you to be going through all this angst without
so much as a lousy hand job to show for it.’

I collapsed over the guitar. ‘Why do you talk like that?’

‘Problem is, you’re the only gay guy I know.’

I played this one chord really loud, put the guitar down.

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it?’

I didn’t answer, went back to ‘I Want the One I Can’t Have’, trying to force these plonking chords into the tune I had in
my head. Awful.
Wretched noise. Behind me Lana was going on and on about how I should accept myself and my identity, and blah, blah, boring
pointless blah. Until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

‘Would you shut up? I’m so sick of this.’

She looked puzzled, cross-legged on the couch in her bare feet. ‘I thought it would be a relief for you to share it with somebody.’

‘Okay, but does it have to be all we ever talk about?’

To be fair, that wasn’t entirely true. She also liked gloating about her plans for Toronto, which usually left me feeling
grumpy and abandoned. And the prom seemed to pop its gopher head into our conversations a fair amount – analysed in soul-numbing
detail. Oh, it was all so stupid, she’d tell me. God, just asinine. But wait’ll you hear what Adam’s going to wear … I’d be
half-listening in a cross-eyed stupor, demented with boredom. Safe to say I was sitting this one out. Mark wasn’t going either
– he was already taking Stacey to her prom at Arnottville Regional and one was enough. Or that’s what he’d told me, weeks
ago.

Frightening, how I could already sense him fading into the past. It broke my heart, but in slow, day-to-day thuds. Like getting
kicked to death by an extremely lazy horse.

Meanwhile, Adam the Halifax boyfriend was actually due in town for a pre-prom visit and Lana had started a countdown – the
days, the hours, the minutes until he showed his face at her door. Oh, boy. I couldn’t fucking wait.

Lana was fixing me with a pitying stare. ‘You’ve never actually met one, have you? I mean, another one.’

‘Your dad.’

‘Oh, fuck off.’

‘Totally coming on to me yesterday.’

‘I’m serious.’

I sat pushing my fingers into my eyes.

‘You know what? I don’t want this. Any of it. It’s a bad deal.’ I stretched out on the floor face down, found a throw pillow
and held it over my head.

Lana dropped off the edge of the couch. Then she turned me over and started tickling me. I hate this. Because you’re laughing,
but it’s a reflex and it’s almost painful. Meanwhile the other person thinks they’ve somehow tricked you into being happy.
I tried to get her back. We rolled all over the carpet.

Her father’s face appeared in the doorway. ‘Guys …’

I realised I was pinning his daughter to the floor, sat up in a hurry. ‘Mr Kovalenko, we weren’t …’

Lana was laughing. She propped herself against me and started talking to her dad in Ukrainian. I heard ‘
Tato
’ and ‘Stepan’, and then something in her voice made me pick up a cushion and smack it into the back of her head.

‘You were about to tell him,’ I said after Mr Kovalenko had left.

‘Well, I don’t want my dad thinking I’m some kind of—’

‘You can’t tell anybody, Lana.’

‘But—’

‘Nobody. I will never talk to you again, do you get me? Never.’

‘Jeez. Angry young homo.’

‘Do not
fucking
call me that!’

‘When I was little, I didn’t want to be a girl, if that’s any consolation,’ she said later, after we’d declared a shaky truce.
We were lying beside each other on the carpet, Lana’s forehead bumping against my ribs.

‘It isn’t. And what’s that supposed to mean anyway?’

‘Oh, you know. One minute you’re a kid, running around doing kid stuff. Then suddenly you have to act completely different.
Be all nicey-nicey.
Care about losing weight, wear shoes you can’t actually walk in. That kind of thing. I thought it was a bad deal too.’

It struck me that she hadn’t actually done any of this, except for maybe the shoes. ‘So what are you saying – you wanted to
be a boy?’

‘I think I wanted to be a person.’

That made me laugh. It was such a silly thing to say, such a simple thing to wish for. Then I stopped. I took a deep breath
and let it out again, lying on Lana’s floor looking up at the ceiling.

‘Yeah, that’d be cool.’

A person. I thought it meant more than just being a wingless biped without feathers. Maybe I was thinking about being an adult.
A man.

Ten o’clock May sunshine bounced off the chromed edges of the tables and made a glare on the front of the Coke machine. I
was in the school cafeteria with Lana and a cluster of Grade Twelves, killing time between classes. Across the table from
me, a gorgeous jock idiot named Doug Sutton was having a difficult time trying to finish this joke about a couple of fags
who wanted to be parents – kept losing track of the details and starting again. I wasn’t really listening. The guy was dumber
than a pile of raw meat. After what seemed like an hour, the punchline finally heaved into view, something involving a baby
with a pacifier up its ass, and I did my usual laugh noise.

I always laughed at that stuff. What else was I going to do? The jokes were so dumb, so gross. Playground dumb and gross.
If there was dialogue, the guys telling them would put on this bizarre screechy voice as the homo, sounded kind of like Mickey
Mouse with his dick in a wringer.

Then Lana’s friend Eleanor MacBride sat up straight and said something that shocked us all.

‘That’s not funny, Douglas. It’s just stupid. My uncle’s gay.’ Giving Doug this eagled-eyed stare of righteousness.

We all got very uncomfortable. I went through a weird rollercoaster loop of reactions. Gratitude: Thanks, Eleanor. Irritation:
Thanks for what? Admitting this person exists? Jeez. And where had this girl been for the eight million other stupid jokes
that would have been just as insulting to poor old Uncle Gayboy MacBride? Then mad at myself: Why was it Eleanor who finally
said something?

‘I don’t mind them,’ Patty Marsh said into the squeamish silence. Somebody had left a lighter on the table and she was flicking
at it with her long nails and watching it spin in circles. ‘I mean, they got a right to exist. I just don’t see why they have
to rub your nose in it all the time.’

‘Rub your nose in it, huh? Sounds real kinky, Patty.’

I regretted it right away. Not the words so much as the tone. I sounded angry.

Everybody stared. I decided the only thing to do was keep talking. So I smiled, leaning back with my arm around Lana.

‘Cheer up, guys. You can still make Jew jokes. Really. No skin off my lampshade.’

‘We don’t make Jew jokes.’ Doug was looking confused, staring hypnotised into Lana’s pushed-up cleavage. ‘We never make Jew
jokes.’

‘So none of you ever called me Stupid Jew-le-vitz in Grade Four?’

‘You did? Guys!’ Lana sounded appalled and strangely delighted.

Our class president Evan McDonald stretched. ‘Actually, my dad was really mad at me when he heard we were calling you that.
Made me apologise.’ He shifted. ‘Well, really I just lied and told him I did. Sorry, Stephen.’

‘That’s … okay.’

‘I’m sorry too,’ said Patty.

They all apologised. It went around the table like an especially slow and solemn game of hot potato. I’d only wanted to change
the subject.

Then the bell rang, which meant it was time for French. Except it wasn’t, because our classes were cancelled so they could
take the Grade Twelves to the AV room and show us the AIDS movie. A video about HIV, to be exact. There’d been a letter sent
to all the parents about this. I’d been dreading it. There was no way I wanted to sit in a room with these people and watch
this stuff. But that’s what I did.

It was an American-produced film, very slick. A halfway popular actress narrating. Started with a quick montage of ways you
couldn’t get HIV, set to a bouncy beat – toilet seats featured prominently, and so did make-up, drinking fountains, and multiple
shots of people hugging and kissing. They showed two girls locking lips for a second and some guy in the front row went, ‘Yeah!’
And then …

Oh. Well, holy fuck
.

Two guys kissing each other. On the mouth. Two high-school kids.

It couldn’t have lasted more than a second. But the whole place went nuts – everybody moaning about how gross it was, so gross,
the most disgusting thing they’d ever seen, and on and on forever.

‘Okay, settle down!’ My old friend Mr Richardson, the gym class sadist.

‘I gotta get out of here,’ I said into Lana’s ear.

‘I know.’

We decided to skip Biology and go to the Tasty Freeze to get a chocolate dip cone. As we left I looked for Mark in the gang
at the back of the room. But he must have had something better to do that day.

Lana and I got her bicycle and headed off down the highway, taking turns pedalling in front and balancing on the back.

She paid for the ice-creams and got a handful of those new dollar coins in change. ‘Hate these things.’ Lana passed me a cone
with a spiralling mass of ice-cream perched on it. We took a seat on the edge of a picnic table. Neither of us said anything
for a while. It looked like a porcupine had met a messy end a few hundred feet up the road.

The dark, plasticky shell on the ice-cream broke as Lana bit into it. ‘Come on, cheer up. You’ll be out of this town in a
few months.’

‘You really think it’ll be so much better in the city?’

She made a disgusted noise. ‘Halifax. Still can’t believe you people call that pathetic little garrison town “the city”.’
And she went on about how four hundred thousand people was barely enough for a village and she was still appalled that I’d
chosen it over Toronto, especially because this meant we wouldn’t see each other next year.