Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World (19 page)

‘What the hell’s that on your forehead?’ Evan McDonald said. There was a group of guys outside the kitchen with beers in their
hands.

‘I was on a motorcycle,’ I said. ‘Ran into a really big bug.’

‘Looks more like lipstick.’ That was Doug Sutton. Confused, as usual.

‘Maybe it was a bug wearing lipstick.’ I thought this was hysterical. Everyone else stared at me blankly. I noticed Adam on
the edge of the group, laughing and shaking his head.

‘Listen,’ I told him. ‘I’m not following you. Honest.’ My hand was clamped over my neck. He stopped laughing.

I was going to have to try harder to stay out of his way.

The rec room had filled up. Everybody seemed happier, clumsier, drunk or getting there. A bunch of us were dancing to music
from a squeaky-wheeled tape player set on the fake bar counter. It was The Cure. ‘A Night Like This’.

Lana’s arms were around me. I leaned down and rested my head against hers. We were slow dancing, which really meant we were
just swaying and holding on to each other while I kept getting attacked by horrible, horrible guilt for lying and messing
around with her boyfriend. I kissed her forehead to say sorry. I hoped she’d never find out why. I noticed she was wearing
a little blur of red from the lipstick cloud on my head.

Adam appeared on the other side of the room, picking his way towards us, tripping and stumbling. I unwound myself from Lana.

‘Sorry. Look, I’ll go. You guys have fun.’ I started away.

‘Aw, Stephen,’ Lana said. ‘You don’t have to …’

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Lana talking to Adam, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was glaring after me instead, muttering
soundlessly like he was swearing.

Doug Sutton wandered by with a big lipstick V on his forehead.

A set of sliding glass doors led off the rec room, and then I was outside. It was dark, finally, though the sky was still
half-dusk, daylight struggling on the horizon.

I leaned with my back to the side of the house. Felt like I should hold on to it, as if I was on the edge of the world. The
porch light was glowing and moths were hurling themselves towards it in looping patterns. By the glass doors, two flowering
plants stood guard in enormous clay urns that reminded me of ancient Egypt.

Adam was on my periphery. Again?

‘Okay, sorry. I’ll get out of your way,’ I said. I tried pushing past him into the house. He stuck his arm across the doorway.
Then he took hold of my shoulders and demanded to know what the hell was wrong with me.

I shoved him away and freed myself. Or that’s what I tried to do. But I had spots in my eyes from staring at the porch light
and no sense of balance because I was drunk. Something happened involving centrifugal force and we ended up smashing into
one of those funeral urns for potted plants and knocking the thing over. There was dirt everywhere. I was sitting in it. He
looked half-buried.

Adam went mental. ‘Oh, fuck my life! Geraniums? You want to plant geraniums, there’s, like, five hundred miles of farmland
here. You gotta put them in this Satan’s asshole of a thing just so I can …’ He chucked
a handful of dirt at the doors behind us where it made a soft explosion against the glass. ‘Fuck you, Riverside. This is the
worst night ever.’ Then he scooped up a second handful and let it fly, at me this time.

‘Hey!’

‘Farm-boy freak. Who do you think you are, treating me like I don’t exist?’ Another volley of dirt sprayed towards me. Dirt
and part of the geranium.

‘But you said …’ I tried shaking the clods of soil out of my hair. Couldn’t get mad. This was too insane. I felt like I was
watching a foreign movie with the subtitles mixed up. ‘You said it wasn’t the smart thing to do. That we should keep away
from each other. And you were right.’

He collapsed, lay back staring up at the sky, or possibly the bugs hurtling against the light.

‘Oh, for—! I was just going to say it wasn’t smart, so we’d have to be more careful next time. God, you’re an idiot, Shulevitz.’

Somebody had started a bonfire down by the lake. You could hear that heavy metal off the boom box again – guitars in a lurching
pattern, the singer with his hoarse phlegmy voice like a caveman swearing in a stalled truck.

‘So, um,’ I said. ‘You …? You actually …’

‘Yes. I like you, Stephen.’

I couldn’t look at him, started making patterns with the dirt instead. Why was I so happy? We couldn’t possibly get together
again. We’d be caught. I’d hurt Lana. In the rec room, people were talking and laughing with no sound, under glass like fish
in an aquarium.

‘You gave me a hickey,’ I said finally.

‘Oh, shit. Really?’ He was grinning. ‘Oops.’

Somebody slid the door open. Lana.

‘Hey! It’s my song. One of you dopes get in here and dance with me.’

‘Me!’ I said. Couldn’t miss Lana’s song. It had already begun – Siouxsie and the Banshees, ‘Cities in Dust’.

‘No, I’ll do it.’ Adam stood up, shaking earth from the folds of his jacket. ‘Stop trying to steal my woman, Shulevitz.’

We smiled at each other like he’d just said something impossibly witty. I was blushing with potting soil in my hair. He turned
away. Inside the house, Lana started up her priestess dance.

Something was bugging me. ‘Adam?’

He stopped. ‘Mm?’

‘How did you know … about me?’ I coughed and shook my head. ‘I mean, was it my … my voice, or my hands? Or …?’

‘Aw, don’t think that,’ he said. ‘You make a really good straight boy, Stephen. You’re trying so hard.’

‘Then …?’

‘It was Lana. She told me.’

I felt like I’d been plunged into ice-water.

‘No, she didn’t. Lana wouldn’t do that. She promised—’

‘Look. She talks about you all the time. I was going to use you as an excuse to break up. So she told me.’

Lana called Adam from the rec room. He whispered that he’d see me later and then I was watching them behind the glass. He
was dancing goofy on purpose. She threw her head back and laughed, pulled him in for a kiss.

I found my backpack by the remains of the geranium and took a long gulp of vodka.

Lana betraying me. Me, wasting the night drooping with pity and guilt. And who else had she told? Was her dad really smirking
behind my back whenever he acted like I was her boyfriend?

The song was over. Lana was leaning against Adam with her head on his shoulder, running one lazy hand up his thigh.

Fuck you, Kovalenko. Fuck you, you Cossack twit. You want another reason to hate Russians? Look no further than your friend
Stepan Vladimir
.

I took another drink, resting my weight against the house.

I’ve done so many stupid things tonight
.

I was only getting started.

I couldn’t hold on to that fine righteous anger for long, though. Instead I started to get happy. Walking up to people I barely
knew, hugging and slapping backs, trying to initiate complicated high-fives. Two shades off obnoxious. That kind of happy.

I even hugged Stacey, threw my arms around her and spun us around. In the hallway off the rec room with its green carpet that
smelled like something drowned.

‘Hey! Stace, my man! My woman! Isn’t this great? Class of ’87! It’s like, who are we all gonna turn out to be? One of us could
be Hitler. Isn’t that amazing?’

‘Where’s Mark?’ She extricated herself, pushing at me as if I were a blanket around her shoulders on a hot day.

‘I’m fine! How are
you
?’

‘Look, do you know where Mark is or what?’

‘No clue.’ I started walking away, grinning sloppily. ‘But good luck!’

‘Hey. My friend Tina’s here. She likes you.’ It sounded like an
accusation. I gave her the thumbs-up and kept bouncing down the hall.

I collided with Adam.

‘Finally,’ he said, and slung his arm around me. He started walking us somewhere, told me Lana was busy with her friends and
wouldn’t even notice we were gone, not for a while. Then we were outside. I reached for my cigarettes as a reflex. We must
have been on the same wavelength by then – he took a pack from his coat pocket, stuck a smoke in my mouth and lit it.

‘Filthy habit,’ he said, smiling.

‘So are you.’ I was pleased with myself for coming up with that, even though he told me it was cheesy. We veered in wavering
lines all over the back lawn. The lake was a dark shape with its bonfire light glaring against the water.

Adam decided we should check out the hayloft, said it was too good a cliché to pass up. So we were striking out in that direction,
but something was screwy. We kept getting pulled back towards the bonfire instead – like it was a sun with its own gravity
reeling us in.

Then I heard my name. Sort of.

‘Jew-le-vitz! Hey, Jew-le-vitz!’ But it sounded almost friendly. I made my way over to the fire.

Adam followed. ‘Are you sure we should be—?’

‘I’ll just figure out what they want.’

A circle of guys were hunched over the blaze. It was too bright against the dark – I could barely make out their faces, or
even how many there were. Five? Six? Randy McTavish, Kevin Dickson. Phil Doyle, who’d given Mark fifty cents to beat me up
back when we were kids. A couple guys from Arnottville. Everybody seemed to have long hair, baseball caps, black T-shirts
decorated with lightning bolts and screaming skulls.

‘Jew-le-vitz, my man!’

I high-fived a few of them. Why not?

Adam seemed to shrink into himself. Randy McTavish glanced at him, face screwed up in contempt. ‘Who the fuck’s this? You
wearing make-up, man?’

‘It’s just … It’s nothing,’ Adam mumbled.

‘It’s like Robert Smith,’ I said. ‘You know. The Cure?’

Phil Doyle smiled, very slowly. ‘So … you’re dressing up? As Robert Smith?’

‘Yeah, it’s kind of dumb,’ said Adam.

I felt like I had to explain him. ‘This is Lana Kovalenko’s boyfriend.’

Instant reaction. They looked hungry.

‘Lana!’

‘Lana Ko-va-len-ko!’

‘Amazing tits.’

‘Fucking awesome tits, man. I mean she’s a bit, like, heavy.’

‘Bit on the chubby side.’

‘But great tits.’

Adam sighed, miserably. ‘Yeah. I’ve always thought so.’

I wasn’t sure how I felt about Lana’s boobs being discussed this way, but the mention of them seemed to have spread a wave
of contentment around the bonfire.

Phil was nodding, as if in response to a voice only he could hear. ‘Jew-le-vitz. Come on and sit with us, man.’

Kevin Dickson backed him up. ‘You never talk to us. Come on, man.’

What was I going to say? No? I lowered myself to the ground, not getting too comfortable. Adam stood behind me. He nudged
my shoulder and made some movement with his head in the direction of
the house. I wanted to tell him I’d get us out of there as soon as I could, but it was impossible to say anything in front
of these guys. At this level, they looked bigger. The way the light from the flames would bring some faces into focus and
blaze and dazzle at your eyes so the rest were left in darkness. A boy at the end was listing to one side, nodding sickly
with the music from the boom box. I couldn’t see his hands. He might easily be chewing on a skull. Somebody started passing
a joint around.

‘Jew-le-vitz! Oh, yeah! Give it to Jew-le-vitz!’

I took a mouthful of acrid smoke, handed it to Adam.

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Think I dropped it.’

The guys made disgusted noises at him, but before things could get too scary someone started another one. Didn’t seem to make
much of a difference. Phil took a stick out of the fire, blew on the end until it turned glowing red-orange. ‘Looks like you’re
in a good mood, Jew-le-vitz.’

I told them I’d met a girl. That she was from out of town and her name was Anna. Adam kicked me in the back, told me in an
undertone that I was a complete moron.

‘You met a girl!’ said Randy McTavish.

‘Now that’s just fucking adorable.’

‘Gonna take her to the prom?’

‘Where is she, man? Gotta meet this woman. Jew-le-vitz’s woman!’

Phil smiled again, leaned in close. ‘Cause we all thought you was some kind of faggot, man.’ He poked me in the chest, hard.
Still had the piece of wood with the glowing end in his hand.

‘Oh.’ I looked at the fire. Something more needed to be said. Obviously. I couldn’t see everyone’s faces, but I knew they
were all watching. I tried to keep my voice level. ‘Why would you think that?’

This made everybody laugh. Adam pulled at my collar and tried to get me to stand up.
Bad idea, Adam. Can’t just leave like that. They’ll come after us
.

Kevin was actually making some attempt to answer my question. ‘Just the way you …’

‘Don’t play sports,’ someone else said. Marty from Arnottville? How would he know?

‘Don’t do, like, anything.’

‘Always hanging off McAllister.’

‘McAllister.’

‘Gotta wonder about McAllister.’

‘But … Mark always has a girlfriend,’ I said.

‘Yeah – you.’ Phil Doyle was laughing. ‘You know how you can’t beat on Jew-le-vitz or McAllister will be right there.’

‘Oh, yes. First thing you learn. You don’t fuck with McAllister’s boyfriend.’ Randy leaned back and poked a skinny blond guy
sitting beside him in the head. ‘That right, dick-breath? McAllister gets a bit unreasonable if you mess with his boyfriend.’

The blond guy snarled at Randy to shut up. I recognised him. Sean Flynn. He’d started school at Riverside in Grade Eight,
tried to beat me up on his first day to prove he was tough. Mark had broken his nose and humiliated him in front of everybody.

Randy went on, gesturing as if he had an invisible cigar in his hand. ‘You might wanna beat on that fucking skinny little
stuck-up Jew prick …’

‘Oh, yes. Sitting up at the front there …’

‘Sitting up at the front just licking the teacher’s ass. But you can’t.’

That was when I took a better look around the fire and realised that just about everybody here hated me, had probably hated
me for
years. How was I going to get out of this? And I was terrified they’d do something to Adam. I’d asked for whatever I was going
to get when I sat down with these trolls. He was innocent.

There was a gust of smoke in my face as the wind changed, making me gasp and blink. The centre of the fire was white. Branches
and twigs crumbled and twisted. Kevin poked at the blaze and a few sticks of wood fell in on themselves, sent a shower of
sparks against the darkness.

‘Yeah, can’t fuck with McAllister’s little honey,’ he said. ‘Of course, now that you’re with this make-up guy here …’

Phil was looking around, grinning. ‘No, guys! He’s got a woman. Didn’t you hear him?’

Adam tried to haul me to my feet again. What would I do if they went after him? Start a fight with the alpha male, maybe.
Distract them. Tell Adam to run for it. I tensed up, tried to figure out which guy was the boss.

‘So tell us about this woman!’

‘Did you fuck her yet?’ They were all leaning towards me. The circle seemed to be closing.

‘Did you go down on her?’

‘Yeah, did you eat her out?’

‘Did you get your face down in there, Jew-le-vitz? Did you get all messy?’

I didn’t know what to say, panic blanking everything. ‘Uh …’ I remembered the baseball cap from that guy Mark had beaten up
outside the bar on my birthday. Something about girls being made of sugar and spice and not tasting like … you know. At the
time it’d taken me at least a minute to figure out what it meant. ‘Uh … tastes like tuna!’

Silence for a second. Then the guys were all laughing. ‘Jew-le-vitz! My man!’ Everybody slapping me on the back, hard.

Adam kicked me again. ‘Hey, Jew-le-vitz. I hear Anna is worried about you. Maybe she thinks you’re some kind of witless, self-destructive
idiot.’

I stood up. ‘Yeah, we should go back.’

‘And I gotta see my girlfriend,’ Adam said into the circle. ‘The one with the amazing tits. Tell her how happy they make everyone.’

They all smiled and nodded, and for some reason this unnerved me. We turned around and started walking.

‘We gotta run,’ Adam said in my ear.

‘No, you don’t run. You never run.’

‘Suit yourself.’

He sprinted off in the direction of the house, and I had to follow. Was there anybody behind us? I didn’t look, thought probably
not. Even if this was a bunch of guys who’d always hated me, it was also a contented bunch of guys getting stoned in front
of a fire, and they probably didn’t want to break a sweat chasing after us and tearing my head off and throwing it into a
tree or whatever they had planned.

We ended up at the barn instead. It was locked, but we got in anyway. Then we fumbled up to the hayloft in the dark, making
the horses nervous, feeling for the next rung on the ladder and hoping it would be there. Adam got all claustrophobic and
I sat on a barn cat by mistake, so we opened the big creaky window in the front where you throw down the hay – got some air
and moonlight into the place. We had to stack a couple bales in front so the good old boys at the fire wouldn’t be able to
see us.

I sat with my back to a bristling rectangle of hay, sweating and trying to convince myself that I had not just escaped from
certain death. Beside me, Adam took a rolled-up joint out of his jacket.

‘Stealed it offa them fellers,’ he said, in a hick Valley accent so perfect
it almost made me nervous. ‘You wanna smoke this with me, Cousin Luke? Stay out here for a spell? With me?’

For a spell. I surely would.

But how long was a spell supposed to last? Forty minutes? Four hours? A week?

‘Gotta be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life,’ Adam said, pulling my T-shirt over my head and pushing me to the floor.
‘Imagine if those freaks find us.’

True, but at the same time, I was so sure we could get away with it. And we did, sort of.

Everything passed in a haze as we sneezed up crumbs of dried grass and animal fluff, splinters shoved under our skin from
the rough wooden boards. At times we’d be crazy and panicked, wrestling and bruising at each other. Then lying thick and slow
with our hands drifting, trying not to fall asleep, stuck in inane circular conversations while random twitches ran through
us like electrical blips. A couple barn cats sat on bales watching everything. We’d chuck handfuls of hay at them and they’d
flick their little conical ears and keep right on staring.

I asked Adam if we were going to do it for real, and he told me no, that he wasn’t about to try boffing a virgin in the dark
with the cast of
Ron’s Redneck Revival Hour
massing outside. And besides, he said, we didn’t have any of the stuff we needed. I knew he probably meant condoms and whatever,
but for some reason I thought of party hats. Then I couldn’t get the image out of my head – both of us earnestly humping away
with elastic strings under our chins, paper cones in birthday colours nodding forwards and falling over our eyes. Adam was
propping himself on an elbow and trying to lecture me about safe sex, and I couldn’t stop laughing, holding on to him and
giggling until my stomach hurt. He called me an idiot and a weirdo, but he was holding on too.

‘Not even gonna tell me what’s funny, right? See, I know you by now, Shulevitz.’

He did. The laughter trailed off into shuddering hitches like at the end of a good cry. We were sweaty and gross and covered
with stray bits of dried meadow, arms tight around each other. I couldn’t remember when I’d been this happy.

But a few minutes later we heard voices. Tracey Hicks and her boyfriend, trying to figure out why the barn door was open,
stepping inside. We stuffed ourselves into clothes and jumped out the front window. The spell was over.