What is Real (4 page)

Me leaving.

EXT.—CORNFIELD—EARLY AFTERNOON, SUNNY WITH
LOOSE CLOUDS

Dex's mental film is shaky today, all
Blair Witch Project
heavy breathing and a wobbling lens. A Tilt-A-Whirl effect
complete with nausea and sweating. People hate that.
So they say, but they always watch it.

Dex breathes.

His heart is crooked. His head is crooked. This shit is
making him feel crooked. He keeps forgetting to ask Gary
what is different about this weed. Gary has done something.
Something has changed.

Is it different or just more?

More and more. And, fuck it, MORE.

Show how Dex is smoking more and more. Splice
together a hundred scenes, fast, of Dex with a jay in his
hand, in his mouth, in his hand, rolling and smoking, and
smoking and rolling, and how fast his fingers go. Speed up
the film. Speed it up and speed it up until it blurs and melts.

Not that film really melts anymore. Not like that.

Add the lie of melting.

Because, truth is, there is never enough for Dex to fully
blot it all out, you understand? Everyone says that pot blurs
the edges, but it doesn't. Not for Dex. The edges of his life are as sharp as knife blades cutting through the air and leaving
behind wounded oxygen molecules, bleeding red into
the blue.

Focus.

Dex is on his back.

In the cornfield.

And no one knows where he is.

And no one cares.

Somehow show that no one cares. A shot of Dad (INT.— KITCHEN TABLE) hunched over the kitchen table, building
another house; show his hands moving the tiny refrigerator
closer to the tiny stove, the squint of his eyes, the way he
is holding his breath until the angle is just right. Then the
dilated pupils, a slow shot of the wheelchair and the bottles
of pills that are never out of his reach. Then his wasted legs. The golden bag of piss. The soles of the new white shoes,
brand-new shoes that have never touched the ground.

Then cut away. Dizzyingly. Like something being
dropped.

FLASHBACK TO:
EXT.—GRAIN ELEVATOR

Show Dad standing at the top of the grain elevator, the
blue sky arcing above him without any clouds. (Were there
clouds?) Show the heat, shimmering like translucent wings, the nearly transparent melting of everything real into the
scribbled blur of sky.

It was too much sky, maybe that was it.

He is naked except for his shoes. Show that.

Show Mom laughing with SD in Vancouver, maybe in
front of a landmark to make it recognizable. Show them
holding hands. She's wearing sunglasses. Her hair is
perfectly cut, razor sharp, swinging. Show SD's teeth and
how they look like the teeth of a dog, long and yellow,
blackened rims. Show Mom's toothpaste-white, perfect
(new) teeth. And her high-heeled shoes. A color: expensive
dusty blue. Show Dad's mouth, unsmiling. No teeth
showing. Show his shoes too. Worn leather loafers. Brown.
No socks.

Where are his clothes?

Mom laughing and laughing and laughing. Nothing in
the world is that funny, lady. Dex needs to tell her: You're
overplaying your part, ma'am.

The woman playing the part of Mom does not take
direction.

Fire her.

Back to Dad. How did he get up there? He's standing on
the top of a grain elevator, poised like he's about to tag it
with spray paint but he doesn't have a can. His hands are
empty. Clenched. Not clenched. One of each.

Definitely there should be wind ruffling his hair.
Show how all that air felt on his skin. How can you show
that? You can't. Show the air and his skin, the small hairs on
his arms rising and falling. Show how the air is like water,
a current. His facial expression is…Blank? A small smile
playing at his lips? (How did he feel? In that moment?) Is he
looking up or down? Is he crying? Is he pissed off? Does he
shake his fist at the endless dome of the sky, framing his sad,
lonely life in oversaturated blue?

Does he bother?

No, he's just there.

Show the SOLD sign on the old house. The U-Haul truck
with all his belongings parked at the base of the grain elevator.

Show him climbing the ladder.

Show the climb.

Then, at the top.

He is probably, maybe, (actually, not) crying and crying
and crying, and everything in the world is that sad. (He
should be crying but he isn't.)

Cut back and forth between Mom's face and Dad's, closer
and closer. Zoom right in to their eyes like the camera is a
goddamn mosquito, buzzing closer and closer. Happy, sad,
happy, sad, happy, sad, happy, sad, happy, until the audience
is sick from it. A frenetic, background song that's all
percussion and ear-splitting cymbals and discordant bangs
on some kind of church organ.

Then stop suddenly.

Show Dad jumping. Or falling. No, STEPPING. (An important
distinction. Did he reach down for the ground or reach
up for the sky? Which way was he looking? Were his eyes
open or closed? Did he lie back into the fall or swan-dive for
the ground?)

Don't overthink it, Dex, for Pete's sake. It's enough.

So.

He dives. Holding his breath. It is water. The thing with
corn is that it looks that way, from a distance. Like an ocean.

No soundtrack.

Add the sound of Glob, barking. Waiting for Dad to land.
Bark, bark. The thud of the impact. The dog sniffing him, then
running. Like Lassie. Getting help.

Then pan into the distance, the wind moving the corn
and maybe some birds chirping.

Then show the wheelchair again, the highly polished
silver shine of it. Then show the city where Mom lives. The
highly polished silver shine of that. (It should be raining in
the city. Vancouver shines in the rain. At night. Slick black
roads.) Show the slick black leather of the wheelchair's seat.

And…

CUT.

chapter 5
september 6, this year.

It is the first day of school, twelfth grade. It's meant to be exciting, but it feels like the end of everything. Something has to come next, after, and I have nothing.

No plans.

No goals.

No fucking dreams.

Just this. This rainy, dreary, depressing day. And I have to get myself to the illustrious Main Street School in the center of town within the next fourteen minutes or else. Everything is far here, even though the town is small. Main Street School is miles away. The farms make the whole place spread out like butter on toast, and our place—Our Joe 's place—drips right off near the edge. I'm going to have to pedal hard to make it, but I'm fast and fit so I probably can.

Maybe.

If I cared.

The thing is that it's raining and the “or else” doesn't mean anything more than nothing. Even though school is better than home, I can't make myself go.

What is the
point
?

For a split second, I am my dad on the grain elevator, and suddenly the sky is the ground and I've fallen. But I'm not going to kill myself, because that would be easy and obvious. And besides, I don't want to die. I just want to be someone else.

I
can
be someone else.

I
am
someone else.

I look in the mirror and try to see myself. The mirror is dirty. I
look
fine. I am not sick. I do not need to be at home. Gary is already here, walking heavily around the living room, boots on. He never takes them off, leaves mud everywhere. It pisses me off, the soles of his boots leaving diamonds of shit all over the wood floors.

But he's here.

So,
fine
.

Kids who are fine go to school. They do normal shit. They are normal and they are
fine
. But I do not believe that I am fine. I know I am not. This is not right.

I am not right.

I look like I always look—hair, eyes, cheeks, nose, lips, teeth, idiotic glasses that remind me of who I am not and never will be.

I practice smiling like a normal person. Like someone who has something to smile about. I show all my teeth, which are straight and even and white, and I try to make my eyes move accordingly.

Fail.

If I had fangs, I'd be a vampire, trying to look human and not succeeding, fooling no one, dead by the end of the first scene.

I am an asshole in a bright blue T-shirt advertising a band that I've never heard play. My eyes are red and flat and have too many veins and too-small pupils. The dust on the mirror is thick and gray. I use my finger to smear a smiley face into it and successfully fight the urge to punch it with my fist just to feel something.

I have to simmer down. I can't always be on a low boil. But I am.

Something huge is
missing
but it's not obvious what it is, unless it's just whatever switch is needed to change from hot-headed to calm and cool.

I kick the dresser, probably breaking my toe. The mirror shakes but doesn't break.

I touch my hair, my lips, my skin. I have a zit on my cheek that hurts, just below the skin, waiting to be ugly. I need to shave. When I rub my stubble, I feel old. How did I get so old?

I touch my eyebrows. My forehead. The skin of my eyelids. I clean my glasses. I stare hard at the stretched hole in my ear and take out the stretcher and replace it with an ammonite plug, which both hurts and doesn't. It's disgusting and it's not. I like the pulling feeling of my flesh as the cold stone slides in.

I used to think that ammonites were dinosaur snails. But when I was a kid, I would never have had a hole stretched so wide in my earlobe that I could jab one in there for decoration.

When I was a kid…

I
am
a fucking kid. Aren't I?

Old people start to lose things, right? Their memory. Brain cells. Spinal fluid.

I am losing things, but not those particular things. I'm shedding pieces of me like someone with some kind of invisible leprosy.

One of the first things I lost was “funny.” Feral took that with him on March 16 last year when he stuck that needle into his arm and then looked up at me, eyes sleepy, and smiled and said, “Ahhh.” Like he had never been so
relieved
in his life. And just like that, I lost him forever.

My brother.

Me.

Gone.

I will never be funny again.

My dad took a bunch of me when he decided to jump. When he thought about it. When he didn't say goodbye. When he drove himself to the elevator. When he climbed to the top.

I think he was doing it
to
me. He was probably hoping for “sad” or “sorry,” but I stopped caring about anything on March 16, so it was his bad luck that by June 30, I no longer gave enough of a shit to be sad.

I am losing my ability to tell what is real from what I've made up. That's the scariest one. Cue the crazy-guy music. I haven't told anyone. Who would I tell? Dad?

As if.

I should tell Tanis. I could tell Tanis. I won't tell Tanis. She wouldn't get it. Or, worse, she would. I don't want her to. Tanis is smarter than me. She is smarter than everyone. She is smart enough to not be my girlfriend. And I need her so bad that I can't tell her the truth or anything. I can just hold on tight to her body and tell her all the things she wants to hear just to make her stay right there, holding me up without knowing she's holding me up. And I swear to god I would die without her and I don't even love her or really even know her. And I don't want to, it's like that.