Everyday Hero (3 page)

I doubled over, gulping. My chest hurt. My heart pounded. My eyes stung. My legs
wobbled
as I let my body slump until I was on my knees. The dampness of the earth
soaked into the denim of my jeans.

Then I curled into a ball and squeezed my eyes tightly, tightly shut.

***

“I brought your backpack out.”

I curled tighter. But I could hear noises now—the distant purr of traffic, a bird,
a car door. I opened my eyes. It was dark, not pitch-black but a wintery dim.

“The bus should be here soon,” Megan said, putting my pack beside me.

“The—After-School—Special?” I pulled myself into a sitting position.

“No, it’s gone. You’ve been here for, like, an hour. But the City Center bus goes
to the same place.”

I swallowed. I heard the
glug
in my throat. I looked past the field to the wet road
and the passing cars, their lights making streaks of brightness in the gray afternoon.

Megan sat on the grass. The chains around her neck and waist clanked.

“What do you have?” she asked.

“Have?”
Have
means
to possess or own
. “A cell phone, my agenda, my mask, one pencil,
two pens, a scientific calculator, my math binder, my lunch bag, my bus pass and
twenty dollars for emergencies,” I said.

“No, I mean, why are you like this? Why do you act like this?”

I couldn’t remember anyone ever asking me that question. Usually they asked their
moms, or their moms asked my mom or the teacher.

“Asperger’s,” I said. “What do you have?”

“You think I have something?” Her mouth curved upward.

“You have bad hand-eye coordination,” I explained.

I know the term
hand-eye coordination
from the occupational therapists’ reports.
I’ve had three since kindergarten. My hand-eye coordination is not great, but not
as bad as some kids who have Asperger’s.

“Hand-eye? Why do you think I have bad coordination?” she asked.

“The bruises.”

She laughed. I didn’t understand why, because I had not told a joke or acted like
a clown. Her laughter was high. “The bruises?” she repeated.

“Do you have a designation?” Another word I’ve known since kindergarten, like other
kids learn shapes and colors.

“Yeah—terminal idiot from a line of terminal idiots.” Her laughter stopped suddenly,
like it was switched off. She stared toward the road. There was a green Toyota Camry,
six streetlamps, eight trees, nine houses.

Maybe she was counting them too.

It was quiet, so quiet I could hear the feathered movement of a bird flying overhead
and the rustling scuffle as Megan dug the toe of her boot into the earth.

I liked that she didn’t keep talking.

And that she didn’t smell.

Not of sweat or perfume or shampoo.

“We should go to the bus stop,” she said, breaking the hush. “You gonna be okay to
take the bus?”

I didn’t answer because I didn’t know if I would be okay. I did not even know what
okay
meant, because it is one of those words without a clear definition—plus it comes
after
mineralize
.

“I take the After-School Special every day,” I said.

“The City Center bus goes to the same place as the After-School Special.”

“How do you know?”

“I take it,” she said. “I get detention every day.”

At the far end of the road, I saw a bus turn, its headlamps twin beams of light.
I heard my breath quicken. I wished there were more cars or houses or streetlamps
to count.

I shook my head and hugged my knees more tightly against my chest.

Megan shifted. I heard the rustle of her clothes. “You’ll miss it if you don’t go
now,” she said.

I said nothing, pressing my face onto my knees.

“Here,” she said.

I looked up. She held out her hand. A necklace of black beads lay in the center
of her palm. A metallic skull hung in the middle. Perhaps she collected skulls. In
Vancouver, my mother had had a friend who collected decorative mushrooms. She had
mushroom plates, mushroom salt shakers and even mushroom egg cups.

“Take it,” Megan said. “You can count the beads.”

“I like to count,” I said.

“I know. Mom too.”

“Does she have Asperger’s?”

“No.”

I took the beads. They felt warm from her skin, smooth and polished. I curled my
fingers about them. I counted them…one…two…three. There were sixty-six, which is
divisible by three. “C’mon, we can still get it. I think the driver gets a five-minute
break here.”

I got up, and we walked across the damp green grass of the school field toward the
bus stop.

“I take the After-School Special,” I said again.

“Think of City Center as another name for After-School Special.”

“It has two names?”

“Kinda. Besides, if you look down, you won’t be able to see the sign, you know,”
Megan said.

So I kept my gaze fixed on the patches of dirty snow interspersed with muddy puddles
and spikes of grass. I heard the door open with a wheezing squeak of hinges.

I hesitated. It sounded the same as the After-School Special.

“It’ll be okay,” Megan said.

And even though I don’t like the word
okay
because it doesn’t have a clear definition
and comes after
mineralize
, I put my foot up and stepped onto the bus.

Three

After that, I sometimes sat beside Megan when the bus was full and I couldn’t sit
alone. I still preferred to sit alone, but at least Megan didn’t smell.

Or ask questions.

When we had detention, the bus would be empty, and we’d get off at the same stop
and walk together across the City Center Mall parking lot and along Columbia Avenue
until I’d turn at Kootenay Street. Megan did not turn at Kootenay Street. She lived
with her mom and her stepdad in the trailer park, four streets ahead.

I didn’t mind walking with Megan. I didn’t know anyone else who could walk for six
minutes without saying a word. Besides, I found that even if she did talk, I didn’t
want to thump my head or rock or curl into a corner.

I told Megan about Mom being a sandwich and looking after my grandparents.

“She’ll come up here once Grandpa and Grandma are well,” I said.

“You think?”

“What?” I asked.

“You think she’ll come up?”

“Of course,” I said.

Megan looked at me. “You have a lot to learn.”

This is true. I think knowledge is infinite—that means
without end
. Therefore, everyone,
even the most knowledgeable college professor, has a lot to learn.

I said this, and Megan smiled. “That wasn’t quite what I meant.”

Megan knew a lot about social media. I don’t, although I email my mother. Megan thought
I should get a data plan, so I could text.

“Why?” I asked as we waited for the bus one day after detention.

“That way you could chat with people without really talking. And it wouldn’t be so
confusing for you.”

“Huh?”

“I mean, you like reading. What you don’t like is trying to figure out if someone
is mad or sad and stuff. This way they’d tell you in code.”

“I like codes,” I said. I’d once correctly determined my father’s password on the
computer using logic. It had taken me 1,003 tries.

“Texting is like code. Like,
BRB
means
be right back
and
CYA
means
see you later.
”

The bus pulled up, and we got on and sat across the aisle from each other.

“Besides, that way I could text you,” Megan added.

“You’d text me?”

“Sure.”

“A lot of people text,” I said, thinking of all the kids I saw on the bus who held
their phones like an eleventh finger or extra thumb.

“I guess.”

“It is normal to text,” I said.

“Sure, everyone does it.”

And just then, in my stomach, right under my rib cage, I felt something like I do
when I watch my ballerinas going around and around and around.

***

One afternoon Megan didn’t go straight to her home in the trailer park. Instead she
walked to my house and stood at the edge of the small driveway, watching me as I
walked down the path and then up the three green steps to the front porch.

“Alice?” she said.

I put the key in the lock and turned it. The bolt clicked, and I pushed open my door.
“Yeah?” I said, glancing back.

“Um—can I come in?” She had a black tuque pulled down low on her forehead.

“No,” I said, because—well, because people do not usually come to my house, and I
do not like change. It makes me want to squeeze into a corner or thump my head.

“Your dad doesn’t let you have people over?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

I’d never asked. Actually, my mom used to invite kids over. She’d arrange playdates.
I’d hated them. I’d rock and bang my head until the other kids screamed too.

I remembered with sudden clarity how Mom had cried so hard that her mascara had run
in black streams down her face.
I just want to give you a normal life
, she’d said.

Again
normal—the average in type, appearance, achievement, function and development.

“Do normal kids have playdates?” I asked Megan.

“Huh?”

“Do normal kids have playdates?” I repeated.

“What? I guess when they’re, like, two.” Megan turned.

I watched her walk back up the street. I watched the side-to-side swing of her backpack
and listened to the
click-clack-click
of her boots.

“Megan,” I said.

She didn’t stop.

“Megan.” I tried again, making my voice louder.

She turned.

“You can,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Um—come in,” I said.

Megan came back and climbed the three green steps. She stepped into our entrance,
which has mud-beige carpeting and measures three feet two inches on each side. She
took off her boots and walked up the three mud-beige steps and sat on the couch opposite
the gas fireplace. She looked at the thirty-two-inch television, the Wii, the Xbox,
the chair and the glass coffee table.

“I like your house,” she said.

I thought this strange, because I do not like new places or mud-beige carpet. “Why?”

“It’s quiet,” she said.

“That’s because the
TV
isn’t on.”

In reality, the house is not silent. I am always conscious of its sounds—the
tick-tock
of the hall clock, the quicker
tick-tick-tick
of the clock on the mantel above the
gas fireplace, the intermittent hum of the refrigerator, a strange
tap-tap
in the
plumbing whenever the water is running, the barking of dogs outside, the shouts from
kids next door…

Megan sat on the couch, and I went to the kitchen to make a snack. After school I
always have peanut butter and jelly on white bread.

“Your dad won’t mind me being here?” Megan asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Does he get mad?”

Mad
is a word with multiple definitions. It can mean
angry
or
insane
. I said this
to Megan.

“Does he yell?” she asked.

“Only when he watches the Canucks.”

Then I turned on the television. I always watch television after school. I like to
watch
Gravity Falls
and
SpongeBob
, which are animated and not shows with real live
people, although real people do the voices.

I like animated shows better because it is easier to remember that they are not real.

***

Dad came home early that day because he wasn’t on a full shift. He’d been called
in for a few hours of overtime. Megan stood as soon as she heard the Explorer’s rattle.

“I’ll go.” She shoved her feet into her boots, grabbed her backpack and ran down
the three steps. The front door banged shut behind her.

My father entered through the basement door and came upstairs twelve minutes later,
after his shower.

“Thought I heard someone leaving just when I got in,” he said.

“Megan was here.”

“Really?” His voice and his eyebrows went up. “Someone you met at school, eh?”

I nodded.

His mouth curved upward at the corners. “I knew it,” he said. “I knew my way would
work.”

“You mean when you told Mom you wanted me to be average in type, appearance, achievement,
function and development?”

“What?” His eyebrows drew together.

“Normal,” I said.

“Um—right.” He shifted his weight and started to set out the dishes for supper, even
though it was not even five yet.

“She wants me to be normal too,” I said.

“You’ve spoken to her about this?”

“No,” I said. “But she said that she just wanted to give me a normal life. When I
was little.”

“Oh,” he said.

“So you and Mom don’t need to argue.”

“We don’t,” he said. “Or not very often. Well, um, tell me about your friend.”

“She’s tall,” I said.

Dad nodded.

“Does that mean that she is not normal?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

“Because she is not average in type, appearance, achievement, function and development.”

Dad thrust his fingers through his hair, making it look rumpled and untidy. He took
out two soup spoons.

“It doesn’t matter if she is tall,” he said after a pause.

“Even if most people are shorter.”

“Yeah. Um—
normal
—just means, uh,
typical
, like the way most people behave. For instance,
it is normal to like ice cream.”

“I do not like licorice ice cream.”

“Yeah, that’s normal too. You know, everyone has favorite flavors, and some they
do not like. Anyhow, did you give her a snack?”

“Who?”

“Megan.”

“No,” I said.

“I’ll get in some chips and stuff, if you’re going to be having friends over. We
want to be hospitable.”

Then Dad went to make dinner for us to eat at the coffee table in the living room.
I heard him open a can of soup and empty its contents into the pot. He started to
stir, the whisk rattling against the pot.