The Sky Is Falling (36 page)

Pete: “Honk.”

But the front door opened just then and Sonia hurried down the steps, arms floating at her sides as though about to take to the air and fly. She threw her small weight back, slid the van door open, hopped inside. “Pascal's not coming,” she joyfully announced.

“Fuck,” said Pete. The other two asked why.

“He's sick. He's throwing up.” She got in beside me, tucking her pack at her feet.

“When did that start?”

“Just now.”

Hours earlier Pascal and Sonia's laughter had woken me, then their thousand little kisses had kept me awake. Maybe they made love again, I don't know—I stormed off to the bathroom so I wouldn't have to listen a second time. Beside me now, she squeezed my hand to thank me. Everything about her glowed—her hair, washed that morning and lustrous, her face, flushing now that she was with the one person who knew, who knew more than she realized. She kept her eyes demurely lowered.

Pascal was not throwing up. I'd seen him myself through my bedroom window, leaving the garage with the garden gnome in his arms. It seemed a cumbersome souvenir to be taking all the way back to Saskatchewan on the bus.

“Is everybody ready then?” Timo asked, starting the van.

I pressed the side of my face to the cold window and shut my eyes. Sonia was still holding my hand.

Dieter: “Wait. Here he comes.”

Sonia let go of me and swung around. When she saw Pascal approaching the van, loaded down with his duffle bag, she tore her seat belt off. Pascal put his bag in the back and opened the side door at the same time as Sonia did. “What's wrong?” she asked.

“Sorry,” he said, eyes darting at all of us.

“Are you coming or not?” Pete asked.

“I'm coming.”

“No,” Sonia said, pushing him back. “You're sick. Remember?”

Pascal whooshed the door closed on its rollers and took the seat behind us, next to Pete. Immediately Sonia curled forward, as though over a stomach ache. At first I just sat there, in shock too, while Timo drove away. When we reached the Blenheim house a few minutes later, I forced myself to look back. Pascal blinked, one eye closing a fraction of a second before the other, which somehow suggested to me guilt, though nothing else on his face indicated he felt bad about what he'd done to Sonia. Carla and Isis were carrying a cardboard box and several plastic bags, which they loaded into the back too, along with their packs. Suddenly Pascal leaned forward and, taunt or benediction, placed a hand flat on the top of Sonia's head. She jerked out from under his touch.

Carla, then Isis, climbed aboard. “How y'all doing this morning?” Isis asked as an American. As a Canadian she commented that we looked tense. “This ain't good, y'all. It looks suspicious. How 'bout we take a sec to shake them jitters out?”

She, Carla, Timo, and Pascal hokey-pokeyed as best they could in the limited space of the van, Timo behind the wheel with barely enough room even to drive, let alone jiggle himself. He looked in the grip of some kind of seizure. The rest of us stayed planted in our seats for all our different reasons. Then Carla slid in beside Sonia, leaving Isis to Pascal.

“Where's my mask?” he asked. “Can I see it?”

Isis reached behind the seat, took a handful of fabric from one of the bags, and tossed it to him, saying, “
How clever you are,
Pyetia!
” She kissed Pascal's cheek like she'd done yesterday when he'd played Trofimov so hopelessly. On the other side of Pascal, Pete yawned loudly and turned toward the window.

Carla noticed first and asked if Sonia was okay. Sonia wasn't. Weeping silently against my shoulder, she kept on weeping through Carla's back rub. “Shh,” Carla told her. “It's going to be fine. Everything will work out.” The van filled with soothing murmurs, a susurrus of platitudes that had no effect until Carla began to sing “We Shall Overcome.” Then Sonia dried her tears and settled into a catatonia that lasted the rest of the trip. All the things she should have been feeling—betrayed, humiliated, used—I took on on her behalf, shooting fresh daggers back at Pascal every few minutes. He goofed around with Isis, elbowing her, pulling at her braids until she swatted him off, benignly tolerant, like he was a puppy. He was acting like one. He couldn't keep still, was practically bouncing on the seat. And while I felt a barely suppressed urge to scream things at him that weren't nonviolent, eventually I started to sense that it was an act, that these antics were to distract him from what he really felt. He pulled the burn mask over his head. “Take it off,” Pete said. Pascal wouldn't. He sat there between Pete and Isis, ghoulish, barely human, twiddling his thumbs. When Pete accused him of being stupid, he finally removed it.

Rain flowed across the van windows in jerky diagonal tracks. Outside, the trees looked stripped, their petals already browning in the gutters. The fan failed in its one task, and Timo and Dieter, unrolling their windows to clear the fogged windshield, let in the sweet smell of decay. Carla had stopped singing and for a long time no one spoke. We were too nervous for small talk. Isis said she wished I'd brought a story to read aloud.

We were the story now.

Over the Oak Street Bridge. Soon the sodden fields in the Agricultural Land Reserve opened on either side of the highway, the sky white like in an unfinished drawing. Up front, Dieter played with the radio dial and found an oldies station. Timo asked, “Do you think they're marching yet?” and Dieter snorted. “Who cares?” When we entered the tunnel under the river, the music morphed to an angry static and Pascal belched loudly in the dark. “Who did that?” he asked and someone sighed.

Back in the matte light of day, we reviewed the border plan. Going over the various scenarios helped dispel some of the tension. Then “The Times They Are A-Changin'” whined out of the radio and we all cheered. The drug of idealism kicked in. Ahead, a sign: Peace Arch Border Crossing.

“Peace Arch,” muttered Carla. “That's so ironic.”

About five minutes from the border, Pascal put the mask back on. Once again, Pete called for him to take it off.

“Take it off, Pyetia,” Isis cooed.

“Off!” Pete roared, cueing everyone to start shouting.

Dieter: “I knew involving him was a bad idea. He's too immature. Look at how he's acting. No one listens to me.”

Then I understood. Pascal didn't want to be recognized. They would know about him at the border, and if they asked for ID, there would be trouble. We might be arrested even before we got across. I tried to think if harbouring a runaway was an actual crime and turned to Sonia in a panic, but she was no help, sitting there in her stupor. Finally Pascal gave in and, plucking the mask off, slid low in the seat. And it came to me, what we'd done: we'd been irresponsible.

The van pulled to the side of the highway. “What are you doing?” Dieter asked Timo, whose full pink face contorted. He struggled but not a word came out. “Just say it!” Dieter snapped.

Isis spoke up from the back: “I'll do the talking.” She took over the driving as well, tying her red ropes in a kerchief as she ran around the van. “Now y'all,” she said, getting in the driver's seat Timo had vacated for her, “put on your happy faces, you hear? You too,” she said to Sonia. And to Pascal, “Now you behave yourself, Pyetia. Everybody? Shut up. Is that understood? You're all climbing the walls here.”

The park came into view, a lawned expanse with the Peace Arch in the middle of it, standing on the
49
th parallel, a symbolic door between two countries, monumentally American despite the fact that one of the two sodden flags on the roof was ours. Beyond was U.S. Customs. All we had to do was move patiently through the waiting line of cars. Isis let Dieter pick a lane; he chose the only one with a black man in the booth. When our turn finally came, Isis drove slowly, unrolling the window. Beside me, a sound like a groan issued from some fathomless place inside Sonia.

“Hi!” Isis showed all her teeth to the guard in the booth. He kept his to himself. “The purpose of our visit?” she repeated. “We're a children's theatre troupe. There's this festival in Seattle. Playtime. Have you heard of it?” She produced a typed letter, a letter typed by Isis, confirming our attendance at this imaginary festival. One glance at it and he asked for ID.

“ID everyone!” she called and we all reached into pockets and backpacks for our birth certificates and driver's licences. Isis handed them in a bunch to the guard. I watched, unbreathing, while he shuffled through them, exhaled when he handed them back. He leaned in the window to look at us.

“I need to get out,” Sonia gasped.

Isis started to say that she would pull over on the American side, but Sonia cried, “Now!” and crawled right over Carla. She struggled with the door until Timo leapt up and opened it for her. Two wobbly steps across the asphalt then she vomited.

“Great,” said Dieter. “Now she's puking too.”

“She has what he had,” Isis told the guard, pointing to Pascal, out of the van now too, standing by Sonia in his glowing boots, hands in his pockets, bobbing, neither of them speaking. They seemed to be divining a message in the puddle she had made.

“It's going around,” Isis said.

“Pull over there,” said the guard, indicating the customs building.

“Can we wait for her on the other side? We're somewhat in a hurry.”

Then Pascal said in a pleading voice loud enough for us all to hear, “I'll go. I promise I will. I just want to do this one last thing with you. It's going to be so cool.”

And Sonia bolted. We couldn't believe it. We just turned in our seats and watched her go, watched as our much-rehearsed plan completely disintegrated. Back the way we'd come, back toward the park and the arch and Canada. Pascal went after her, but she pushed him away. It must have been what she said rather than her feeble shove that sent him hurrying back to us.

“What's she doing?” everyone started screeching when he got in the van again.

“I don't know what you're trying to pull off here,” the guard told Isis, “but I suggest you collect your friend and get on home.” He pointed to the service road bordering the park that led to the Canadian-bound lanes.

“You're not going to let us in?” She jutted her chin in indignation, but did exactly what he said, reversed the van and turned it around. “Fuckity-fuck-fuck, fuckity-fuck-fuck, look at Sonia go,” Pete started singing under his breath, the whole way back to the corner of the park where Isis pulled to the side of the road. Sonia was halfway to the arch by then, jogging more than running, the bottom of her jeans two-toned from the wet grass. Isis pressed her head against the steering wheel. The wipers went slap, slap, slap.

“What's happening?” Pascal asked, sounding like a lost child.

Isis reared up with a hammy smile. “It's fine,” she chirped. “We'll go get a coffee, wait an hour, then try again.”

“What about Sonia?” I asked.

“Leave her,” Pete said.

“We can't do that!” It wasn't only me saying this. Timo did too, and Carla.

Pete: “Why not?”

“I say we forget about the action,” Dieter said. “We'll never get across now. I say we go home.”

“You would.”

Dieter swung around in his seat to face Pete, but Isis aborted their exchange. “Just cool it! Calm down everybody! I'm going to pick up Sonia! We'll figure it out from there!”

She drove the road that bordered the southern edge of the park, then turned north toward the Canadian booths. When she was parallel to where Sonia was slogging along at barely a trot, Isis honked the horn. Sonia looked over at us and, taking fright, picked up the pace again.

“Is she really sick?” Pascal asked.

“You gave it to her, didn't you?”

“It's nerves,” Carla said.

“She was really into it,” Timo insisted. “I don't ggggget it.”

I glanced back at Pascal and, for the first time, saw he was afraid.

Nearer to the booths, Isis pulled over again to wait for Sonia. “I know what we need,” Timo announced. “Chchchipits!” He rooted through his bag, passed the package along. Pascal ripped it open and took some. When it reached me, I declined. I wiped a circle on the window, a peephole, to watch Sonia through. There were no other Chipits takers so, hand to hand, like a church collection plate, the bag made its way back to Timo.

Sunday morning border traffic goes the other way. Canadians go shopping in America. Americans stay home and go to church. The guard stuck his arm out the window of his booth and impatiently waved us forward. “Okay,” said Isis. “This is it. Act normal. Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.”

“Wait for Sonia,” I pleaded as Isis drove up beside the booth. When she was face to face with the guard, she tried out her smile on him.

He asked how long we'd been in the United States.

“Actually, we haven't even been yet. We were just about to cross when we realized we left someone behind. She should be coming up any second now.” Isis leaned out the window. “There she is.”