Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World (16 page)

Green fields all around us, white butterflies weaving through the tall grass. We were both quiet, wrapped in our own thoughts.

‘I’m so sick of this, Lana,’ I said. ‘I’m sick of it and it hasn’t even started yet. I mean, is this it? Is this the rest
of my life?’

Her head was resting against my shoulder. ‘You want to go back to school?’

‘Fuck school.’

We took the bicycle back through town, ended up near the railway bridge. That bridge had always freaked me out. Normally I
liked heights. I could go up a tree until I was level with the roof of my house and it didn’t bother me. But there was something
wrong with this thing. Clearly it was pretending to be a solid Canadian railway structure, but in its soul it existed as a
rickety collection of slats suspended over an abyss, something from an Indiana Jones movie.

We were walking the bike around the back of the elementary school. It must have been lunchtime because the yard was full of
kids. One of them noticed us and smiled and called out, ‘Hey, fatso! Hey, faggot!’

‘Hey, partial-birth abortion!’ Lana shot back.

The boy wandered off to another part of the playground, unconcerned.

‘Lana, you’re not fat.’ It was a reflex.

She had reflexes too. ‘And you’re not … well, I’m sure he didn’t mean it the way you think he did.’

‘It’s nothing. I don’t care.’ I kicked at a squashed juice box. Lana tried to put her arm around my waist, but the bike twisted
out of her grasp.

‘Look, I don’t know why he called you that, Stephen. It could be because you seem sort of … uncomfortable. In your own skin.
I guess a certain type of person would see it and want to go for you.’

‘Please stop talking.’

That’s what Mark had said. When we were kids. If you act scared, it makes people want to get you. Well, fuck this. Fuck being
scared.

I turned and went over the railway bridge.

‘Hey, what if a train comes?’ Lana yelled from the bank.

‘What if it does?’

Okay. Giant steps onto crumbling wooden beams. Sunshine on the water, everything quiet. I tried to remember the words to Mark’s
hymn. Like I said, I was a bit fixated on it.

‘“He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster.”’ I was muttering into the stillness. Couldn’t stop looking down, holding
on to the rusty steel on the side of the bridge.

‘“Let him in constancy …” Something … and something …’

Take a step. One step. Okay, good. Still here. A twig drifted down towards the river, all the time in the world to fall.

‘“No foe shall stay his might, though he with giants fight …”’

Another step. Then another one. Sun on my back. Someone started up a lawnmower outside one of the houses behind the school.

Cool. I was halfway across this stupid bridge.

And I was happy, suddenly, to be there. Blue sky all around, a light breeze on my face, suspended over the river with its
sparkling surface.

‘“Then fancies flee away.”’ Keep going. ‘“I’ll fear not what men say …”’

Then all I could hear was this panicky little voice behind me. ‘Shit! Oh, God. Shit! Oh, God.’

No way. Lana, walking the bike across the railway bridge. This girl couldn’t go up a stepladder without freaking out. I never
would have started across if I thought she’d try to follow me.

‘Couldn’t stand seeing you out here by yourself,’ she said. ‘Shit! Oh, God. This is horrible …’

‘It’s okay. We can do this.’

I moved back the way I’d come until I reached Lana. We took big steps from one railroad tie to the next, trying to keep our
eyes off the water, hands clasped under the bike’s handlebars.

Then I heard a familiar sound. Too familiar.

A train. Coming straight for us.

‘It’s not on the bridge yet,’ I said. ‘Run!’

She tried to turn the bike around. The front wheel twisted and jammed between the beams of the railway ties.

‘Not that way. Towards it!’ And I picked up the bike and tried to carry it to the other side of the bridge.

‘We’re gonna die!’

Thanks, Lana
. ‘We’re not. Come on!’ We both took hold of the bike and ran with it, towards the train, trusting that our feet would hit
one of
the railway ties and not plunge into empty space, the bicycle bumping along between us. Keep going, keep going. No time to
be scared.

We made it – collapsed on the opposite bank holding on to each other, the bicycle lying in a tangle beside us, one wheel spinning
in shock.

The train went roaring past.

Eventually it did, anyway. We’d had a lot more time than we thought. In fact, we could have strolled the rest of the way across
the bridge and maybe stopped to take a few photographs. Oh, well. The near-death thrill of it all was what we decided we were
going to remember.

And I made a promise to remember the moment before all that, when everything was quiet.

We spent the afternoon at the Kovalenkos’ writing terrible songs about trains. I wanted to stay for supper because Lana’s
mom had made
pyrohy
. But I’d just had a brilliant idea and I needed to set it in motion.

Okay, Mark seemed resigned to fail the year and be a dropout, even though I was sure that deep down he hated the idea. But
it didn’t have to happen. He had me on his side. I’d got him through big tests before, and I could get him through these finals.

I said goodbye to Lana and headed off for Mark’s place. I’d faced down a speeding train and guided a girl and a bicycle safely
across the Bridge of Death. Now I was going to save my friend.

But first I had to pass the town hall where the tough kids were hanging out, like they did pretty well year round. Slouching
and smoking, draping themselves across the front steps, too cool to let on that they had spinal columns. Today there were
about five guys.

Or that was my best guess. Like always, when I came out of the side street and onto the main drag, I made sure to keep my
eyes fixed on the pavement, trying to blend into the background with its dusty little
stores and sidewalks. But this was Riverside. I was also probably the only moving object for miles.

‘Look! It’s fucking Jew-le-vitz!’

‘Jew-le-vitz! Over here!’

‘Hey, Stephanie!’

And on and on. Same old insults I’d been hearing since I came to this town plus some new ones, all the guys pitching in to
make each other laugh. I glared into an abandoned shop window, pretended not to hear. Should have just kept walking, but something
in me didn’t feel like slinking away this time.

Then I recognised one of the voices.

Oh, fuck. I should have known.

There he was. Lazing on the steps between Randy and Phil, smiling through drifts of smoke and tossing his yellow lighter skyward
for no reason except maybe to show off that he could catch it again without looking. My best friend.

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. Maybe he was waiting for me to disappear.

I stayed, staring stupidly. What now? Go to his place and wait with a pile of textbooks until he decided to come home? March
up there and tell the whole pack of them my great idea?
Hey, gang! Let’s go study. We can pass our exams and graduate. It’ll be keen!

Phil poured a wet splash of Coke onto Randy’s head and then they were all jostling and shoving, battering deflated pop bottles
against each other’s backs, laughing in a heap together. I made my escape.

I was being an idiot again. Mark didn’t want to write the exams. It was possible that he didn’t even care if he graduated.
He’d given up.

I should do the same. Walk away. Forget him.

But that was the coward’s way out of Riverside. And I’d decided that it was time to start being a bit more brave.

There was a heavy stillness in the house when I woke up, like a storm was coming. But a glance out the window showed nothing
was wrong. The sun was throwing long, morning shadows across the backyard and the sky was a perfect innocent blue. A Friday
in early June. The kind of day that seemed to be making promises.

It was Stanley’s wife’s birthday, so I made a quick call to Montreal in the kitchen. I chatted with Sheila and my baby sisters,
told them I’d see them in a month for the annual visit, tried to get off the phone before somebody decided to wake my father.

No luck.

‘Oh, look who’s up!’ Sheila said, and the next thing I heard was Stanley mumbling at me, offering his congratulations. Apparently
he thought I was graduating. I told him no, that I still had at least a week of classes left, then exams and after that there’d
be …

All right, then.’ I could hear the shrug in his voice. ‘Looking forward to your visit. As always.’ This was clearly a ‘please
hang up’ line, but
Stanley stayed on, making vague noises as if there was more he wanted to say. I could hear my sister Sarah by his feet, singing
a song about the letter Q and telling my father to move it. They called him ‘Papa’, these little girls.

‘Of course …’ Stanley was still fumbling towards his next sentence. ‘Of course there’s a strong possibility I’ll have to be
away some of the time you’re here. Five days, I think?’

I was only going to be there for seven.

‘Or it could be close to six with the travelling.’

Stanley started to explain: he’d be attending a conference that first week of July. My week. No, he wasn’t presenting a paper.
But there were some very good speakers scheduled and he really wanted to go. I twisted the phone cord around the base of my
index finger, watched as my skin turned white and then purple.

‘You understand, right?’ my father said.

Before I could answer, I heard Sheila in the background. ‘Stanley, we
discussed
this.’ Then she must have snatched the receiver away from him, because her voice was in my ear again.

‘Just a mix-up, Stephen. Everything’s fine. We’ll
all
be very happy to see you in July,’ she said. ‘We’ll
all
be here.’

I wished her a happy birthday, pressed down on the receiver and let the dial tone buzz. The house was still quiet, like an
empty stage.

He couldn’t give me one week. Not one week out of fifty-two. Never mind that we barely spoke on these visits. He couldn’t
have me as a face at his dinner table.

There was a blank message pad on the counter next to the phone. The paper was scored with deep black marks – like it’d been
freshly savaged by a demented badger. I’d been stabbing a pencil into it, over and over. I also realised that I’d been cursing
and swearing in a steady
growl for minutes and no one had told me to cut it out. I was alone in the house.

I went to look for Mom and caught sight of her through the back window, sitting on the chopping block by the woodshed having
a cigarette. It was still early. I made us tea in blue striped mugs and brought it out. Trying to calm down, shake this evil
mood.

My mother smiled up at me. She’d been in a great mood herself the past while, buzzing around the house like she was guarding
some happy secret. Her acceptance letter from Acadia had arrived a couple of weeks earlier and I figured that was the reason.

‘Just thinking about what I’m going to do next year,’ she said. ‘When it’s only me in this old place. Course, I’ll be busy
with the books. And maybe …’ She broke off, looking mysteriously pleased and flustered, eyes fixed on a collection of spindly
rose bushes leaning by the outside wall. The blooms were dark orange and looked as though they’d recently exploded. ‘Maybe
I’ll try to like gardening.’

I settled myself halfway up a ladder leaning against the shed, and we talked until it was time for me to go to school. About
nothing. A guy Mom had met through work – she thought he might have a crush on her. About my plans for the evening. This girl
Tracey Hicks’ parents were out of town and she was having a party at her place by the lake. Nobody was supposed to know about
it, but everybody did. Lana was even bringing Adam, her mythical boyfriend from the city.

But I wasn’t that excited. I’d been to a few of these parents-out-of-town festivities over the years. By the end of the night,
you’d get girls in crying fits and guys pounding on each other, and people smashing things and throwing up and having sex,
though not always at the same time. Or this one New Year’s thing I was at. Mark tells some guy that the beam he’s leaning
on is structurally the support for the whole house,
and if it goes we’re all fucked. What does the guy do? Starts kicking it as hard as he can, while everybody sits around staring
and bored. That’s how we partied in Riverside.

My mother asked me if Mark was going. I had to tell her I didn’t know.

Lana was waiting when I got to my locker, bubbling over with gossip and news to share. All about this stupid party at Tracey’s.
And the ‘real party’ she had planned for later, in the guest room at her house after her parents had gone to bed. The room
where her boyfriend from the city would be sleeping. Or ‘not sleeping’, as she put it, looking very pleased with herself.

‘So tomorrow I’ll be an ex-virgin.’ Lana was arranging an invisible mink stole around her shoulders. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll still
talk to you. Probably.’

‘Lana, are you sure about all this? What about, you know’ – I dropped my voice to a whisper, though the hallway was mostly
deserted – ‘the schlong malfunction.’

‘I told you I took care of
that
. I’ve been on the pill forever. This time he won’t have any excuse.’ Lana blushed deeply, let out a stumbling little laugh.
‘I mean …’ She broke off and turned away from me, started humming a quavering tune that turned into ‘Reel Around the Fountain’.

My rotten mood from this morning was still with me, pulsing like a headache, gathering speed. He was going to make her cry
again. Just like the last time they’d tried to do it – and there was nothing I could say that would stop this.

‘Don’t wait up,’ my mother told me.

It was almost eight thirty, still light outside. I paused by the front door with my backpack looped over one shoulder. ‘No,
Mom. I’m the one who’s supposed to say that.’

‘Are you sure?’

I asked her what the hell was going on.

‘Remember this morning I told you about a …
certain someone
who has a crush on me?’

I nodded, in slow motion.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I think I might have misled you just a tiny bit. See …’ She stared at the kitchen table, where she’d been
pleating a programme for the movie theatre in Middleton into a squat pink paper fan. ‘This crush. It’s not exactly unrequited.’

Mom glanced up with a shy smile, waiting for me to say something. I didn’t. She told me she had a date with this guy, their
first, that they were going to the nine-thirty show at the movies.

‘
The Secret of My Success
.’ She was close to whispering. ‘I think it’s a comedy. Oh, and when I told you “don’t wait up”, you know that was just a
joke, right, sweetie? I’m not about to go doing anything—’

‘Okay, Mom.’ I stumbled for the door. ‘You have fun. And … congratulations.’

There was a quart of vodka in my backpack. I was going to need it.

I stalked off to Lana’s place. It was cute, I supposed, that my mom was so excited to be going to see this teenage yuppie
movie, that she had a crush on a guy who liked her back. But I knew my mother’s taste in men. I hadn’t forgotten overhearing
that conversation about the married guy. And look who she stayed with for almost ten years – some
selfish fucking prick who’d just tried to weasel out of spending seven days with his son, like a kid showing up at a test
with a forged sick note.

I hadn’t been that interested in Tracey’s party. Now I couldn’t wait. I wanted to get wasted, completely destroyed – steal
a car and drive it into a ditch, beat up Lana’s boyfriend, call Stanley and pretend to be his college firing him. Find Mark.
Force him to explain why he didn’t seem to give a shit about his own life anymore. I wanted to be the one kicking the house
down around our heads.

At Lana’s, Mr Kovalenko answered the door, told me she was upstairs and I could wait in the kitchen. With
the other one
, as he put it, a look on his face like he’d been chewing on old sardines. So I made my way down the hall to the back of the
house. Then I saw the boyfriend, and I almost laughed.

I’d been expecting the kid from the photo by Lana’s beside, the glum, staring nerd in thick glasses, skin erupting with acne.
But Lana was right. He was completely different now. In fact, he was practically a male version of her. Head to toe black
– black jeans, black T-shirt with random paint splotches on it, black jacket. He’d done some kind of weird gelled-up thing
with his hair too, as if he’d stuck a heap of dead tarantulas up there. A little like Robert Smith from The Cure. He had Robert
Smith eyeliner too. I’d never seen a guy wearing eyeliner in real life before.

I stood in the long line of the kitchen’s L-shape and watched him. Broad shoulders, pale skin, legs that stretched over the
floor as he leaned with one elbow against the sink. A couple zits still stood out redly along his jaw line, along with one
very black stubble hair he must have missed with the razor that morning. His eyes were brown, wolfish looking.

He glanced up, caught me staring, stared back. It was the way I was dressed maybe. The Riverside guys’ uniform: plaid shirt,
T-shirt, blue jeans and sneakers. Total hayseed hick. That’s probably what he was thinking.

Mr Kovalenko shuffled into the room and introduced us, muttering and half-hearted.

‘Shulevitz, huh?’ said the boyfriend. ‘Oh, right. Lana’s little Jew friend. She told me about you.’

Mr Kovalenko cleared his throat repeatedly.

‘Jeez, Andrij, relax,’ said Lana’s guy. He glanced at me again. ‘I’m one too, okay? Or I wouldn’t have said anything. Greenberg.’
Making some vague gesture towards himself. ‘Adam. Hi.’

Seemed for a second like he wanted me to shake his hand, but he was just reaching for a pack of cigarettes. Marlboros. He
edged one out and lit it. Lana’s father looked as if he was going through some kind of inner torment.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I really don’t allow people to smoke in my house.’

The boyfriend shrugged and stubbed the cigarette against the side of the sink, angled it back into the pack for later.

What did Lana see in this guy? I felt like breaking a chair over his head. Or asking about the schlong malfunction, how he
thought it would affect his performance later, when he’d be deflowering my friend. Mr Kovalenko and the boyfriend got stuck
in a strained conversation about the bus ride from Halifax and I was barely listening: wandering around the kitchen full of
nervous energy that seemed to have descended from nowhere, bouncing off the furniture like a pinball.

Then the air changed, with a burst of heavy, sweet perfume that clung to my nose hairs. Lana. She was laced into one of her
evil princess dresses – dead black with trailing sleeves and a swishy skirt, the usual
ample neckline. She glided to the boyfriend, ran her hands along his chest and linked her fingers at the back of his neck.