New Horizons (15 page)

“A Firefly?” I said. That made me laugh. “You know that’s my dream in life. To be a Firefly.”

“You may never be anything at this point.”

“I don’t want to be. I’m fine being how I am.”

Twin was the first to find her colour. She pulled a pine needle off of a branch right next to her. She put it on her paint chip and held it together with two fingers, way up in the air for all of us to see. Her fuzzy hair blew in the wind, and her boobs bounced when she took a step.

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “Green? That was hard.”

She smiled and took a seat at the fire pit. Her job was done, and she picked a small stick up off the ground and put it in her mouth. She puffed on her pretend cigarette, and got to sit back and watch us search.

Everyone found their colour. Because they all had dull, nature colours that you could find when you flipped over a rock or pulled a root out of the ground. Brooke found hers on a leaf, and Tracy had a light purple colour that she found on a stone near the shore. And I had a paint chip that didn’t exist anywhere. I wanted to throw it in the fire, but Rick shook his head when he saw me crumbing it up.

“Giving up already? That’s a shame. You never know what can pop up.”

I doubted that, and I chucked it near the fire pit.

“Don’t litter,” Mary yelled. “Put it in your bag for later.”

I picked it up and did as she said, and my guts were boiling. Murray was over by the shore, still searching for his colour. Larry was beside him, pointing out little areas to search. I went over there and sat down on a rock and watched them point at different versions of grey.

“You didn’t find your pink yet?” he asked.

“Obviously.” I looked down at his feet. He had a few rocks lined up, and he was comparing his paint chip to each one. He held up his card, looked at it, and then looked at me. “What do you think, Val? Which colour does it match the best?”

I took it and looked at him. His eyes were the exact greyish blue on his card, a weird, sad colour. I wondered if he knew that. But I didn’t bother telling him. His colour wasn’t supposed to be found in himself—it had to be in nature.

9:
DANDELIONS

Supper was a tin can dinner.
It was apple juice cans filled with beef, tomato sauce, and vegetables that we cooked over the fire. For something so simple, it was kind of amazing. The taste of something warm and flavourful almost made my stomach ache. The only thing that was holding me back from devouring my food was the stick I was eating with.

We had no utensils. And the only things we had to eat with were around us in nature.

“You’re eating with my stick,” Twinner said.

I glared at her. “Are you kidding me, I spent like an hour trying to find this stick. You’re full of shit.”

“Give it back.”

“I dare you to take it from me—”

She stood up and began to walk toward me where I was eating.

I threw it in the woods. It disappeared between the trees and bushes.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s mature.”

“It was totally yours too.”

“Valerie, that wasn’t good of you,” Guy said.

“Thank you Guy, I’m aware.”

Twinner didn’t kill me like she looked like she was going to. Instead, she sat back down beside her twin. Tracy passed Twinner her own stick to use when she was done eating. They were all so giving and caring.

“Take the high road,” I told Twinner. “Good job. It’s what a Dandelion would do.”

“Just ignore her,” Brooke said.

“Let’s ignore you, more like.”

“Jesus Val,” Twin said.

“Jesus yourself,” Karen said back.

The sun had just gone down. The air was cool, and I shivered in my t-shirt. One of the boys tried making the fire. I watched while I slurped my tin dinner like a drink.

I recognized the techniques from earlier when I had tried making a fire, and noticed the same mistakes I had made. But he had more help. Larry came in and showed the boy how to place his foot and how to hold the bow. Eventually, there was a little ember on the bark, and it gave us fire.

“I’m going to come up to Basinview some day and take you on a real date,” Murray said. He was eating his tin beside me on the log, slurping like me because he hadn’t bothered to find a stick of his own either.

“Oh yeah, is this before or after you go to jail?” Mary asked beside him.

I looked at Murray. It was shocking to hear such candid information. That Mary would reveal another person in front of someone else. But Murray needed to be taken down a peg. To be reminded of real life. And Mary knew what she was doing. Her little eyes could see everything.

Murray looked devastated. He had food in his mouth and he kept his eyes on the ground. He chewed his food so much that it had to be liquid in his mouth. After a minute, he got up and left.

I followed him over to his bag.

“Is that it?”

He wouldn’t look at me, and he kept digging through his bag to avoid eye contact.

“You’re in that much trouble that you’re going to jail?”

He stopped rummaging through his bag and straightened up. He was much taller than me, but I tried to stand up straight to get up there with him.

“Why won’t you tell me? I don’t care. We’re all messed up here.”

“It’s bad. And you’re not going to like me if I tell you.”

“I don’t like you all that much regardless.”

“Valerie…” He closed his eyes.

“Come on,” I said. “I won’t tell anyone. I don’t give a shit. I swear.”

“I got a DUI.”

“Oh.”

Murray’s tongue picked at the back of his molars. His grey eyes stayed focused on my face. Maybe he wanted to see my reaction.

I nodded. “Okay.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m not thinking anything,” I said. “Honestly, that sucks you got a DUI. But shit happens when you get drunk. I know that.”

“Yeah.” Murray looked away from me.

“I’m not some angel either, you know.”

“Sure”

“I held a loaded gun up to my head once.”

He laughed.

“What?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s the truth. I was messed up as fuck when I did it, but still. And it happened just as the party was getting broken up by the cops, and they pushed me to the ground and everything. I passed out in their car and they took me to the hospital, where they called my Dad.” I laughed. “And he was some impressed with me.”

“Really?” Murray wasn’t laughing. “What did he say?”

It felt like I was being judged. The guy going to
jail
was judging
me
, and I couldn’t believe it. I looked at my feet. My boots were so tight that it felt like they were cutting my circulation off. I was getting nervous just sitting there. I immediately wished I hadn’t told him.

“You don’t seem like that kind of person to get mixed up with that stuff. I can’t really picture you doing any of it.”

I wanted to say something back—like
neither can I!
But that wouldn’t make sense either.
I’d done it all, and I had no right to sit back and say I wasn’t that person anymore. Maybe I still was.

Mary called on us. We stood up and joined the others. She led us through the brush of the small island, along the path with only a few flashlights at our feet, and pointed out the flora of the area. It was interesting even though I knew all about it. I guess it was good to be reminded of your surroundings. You couldn’t ever know too much.

After exploring Lonely Island we went out to explore the surrounding small islands in the dark. I had to share a canoe with Guy because they no longer trusted me to stay out of the water. I got in the front, and Guy sat in the back with the lantern. When we were out in the open water, away from the other residents in their canoes, I could see that we looked like a bunch of glowing bugs sitting on the water. It was pretty, and someone howled from their canoe up ahead, like a wolf crying to the moon. It was Murray. I turned and looked at Guy.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Why is Murray at this program?”

“Did you ask him?”

“Yes.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said he had a DUI.”

“And what do you think of that?”

“He’s an idiot for doing that…but I don’t know what else.”

“Why?”

“Because a DUI is bad.”

“Are you perfect?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him why you’re here?”

“Yeah. Mostly.”

“Why’d you tell him and not anyone else?”

“Just to see what he would say—a stranger’s opinion. And he was shocked by it.”

“Why do you think you’re here, Valerie?”

I thought about it. And then I smiled because it was simple. “I’m lazy.”

Guy stopped paddling.

“What did I say wrong?”

“You’re unmotivated. And that isn’t entirely your fault,” he said. “You have something that’s broken in you. It’s hard to get back into a routine once it’s stopped working. You just have to push yourself. That’s hard to do on your own.”

“Well that’s a bunch of bullshit.”

“Stop it.”

“Just saying.” I was glad to be in the front. He couldn’t see my face. In the distance, where the other canoes were floating, and way out there, among the trees, were lights. Lights of civilization. Right on the lake. Like Murray had said.

“Val, you’re not a bad kid.”

“Sure.”

“You just act bad sometimes, but you’re not bad.”

“What about Murray?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’ll tell you.”

“He already did.”

“Sure.”

I stared out into the water.

“Let’s head back now, the others have left us.”

“It’s funny, I could just jump out of this canoe and swim. And you couldn’t get me back into it. And I could swim to shore or something and disappear.”

“I don’t think so.”

“No?” I turned and looked at Guy. “You don’t think I could?”

“I think you could. Anyone could. I just don’t see the point. You could jump out but I’d follow you. And even if you did somehow manage to get away, you couldn’t actually disappear. We would find you eventually. It would be a slow, expected chase, where we either find you okay, amused, or dead.”

“I don’t think you would find me.”

“What if we didn’t find you—what would you do out here? What’s so exciting about running away from us? You just like being chased. And once you’re out there I think it would sink in that being alone isn’t all that exciting.”

“I don’t know, I think it would be a lot better than being stuck here with everyone else.”

When we headed back to Lonely Island, Murray was watching me from the shore. Rick told him to come away from the dock, which I was relieved for. I didn’t feel like talking to him anymore about himself.

I was exhausted from being out there all day, and it was amazing that I just wanted to be back in my bunk at the cabin. I missed a solid bunk with a thin mattress, which I never would have thought was possible. But that was what happened when worse things came after bad things—it put other areas of your shitty life into a different kind of perspective. Maybe that was why I missed Basinview so much—I had it good in that small town all along.

My backpack was on the ground next to the fire pit. I pulled my toiletry bag out of it and headed to the bushes to brush my teeth. I scrubbed my molars like there was a layer of filth that needed to come off. I was finally used to the feeling of just using a toothbrush and water, and it felt good to feel the fuzz on my teeth go away. The counsellors watched me with flashlights on my back, and when I looked up at the sky after spitting out the water from my mouth, a star shot over my head.

“Did you see that?” I turned around and looked at the group near the fire.

“I did,” Tracy said.

“That was amazing. I’ve never seen a shooting star before.”

“Better make a wish,” Mary said. She closed her eyes.

“Maybe I will ask for my bike back.” I looked over at Rick. He surely remembered that night I had freaked out, the night I had showed my true colours.

“No, that’s silly,” Larry said. “Wish for a moment. Something you hope to have happen. Something that isn’t physical.”

I looked up at the sky and thought about my sister, Amanda, and how she had left Basinview. I thought about my Mum, living alone, also starting over after twenty-one years of marriage. I wondered how those two had the guts to just go away and begin a new life somewhere else, knowing it was going to be hard. That was so insane to me. And they were both no longer under the same roof as me, but we still shared the same sky, and looked at the same moon. That was kind of nice. And sad. I was the last one left who hadn’t done anything drastic yet. I was still stuck and scared.