Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World (27 page)

Of course I shouldn’t go. But I felt like I had no choice. I was moving through squares on a board game, and somebody else
was rolling the dice.

Cold now, wrapping my arms around myself, teeth chattering. Why was I so sure I needed to be there, at this stupid party?

‘Because,’ the answer came back, ‘that is where you will die.’

I stopped short.
Why would I think that?

But once it was there, I couldn’t get rid of it. And with every step I
took back to town, I was more and more certain it was true. On the top of the mountain I’d been so confident that everything
was going to be fine. Now I was in the valley, and I was just as convinced that it would all be over, and soon.

I’d been standing still these past two months. Everything else was racing towards me.

I got home around four in the morning. One of my socks was stuck to my heel with dried blood from the blister that had burst
a couple miles out of town. I sat on the bathtub’s edge and poured peroxide over it, watched the cut foaming and bubbling
as I waited for the chemical sting to calm. I was so tired that nothing would register except objects that were right in front
of me, as if my brain were a colouring book with pictures and labels. (A foot. A bathtub. Some Band-Aids.)

Then when I got to my room, I tripped and nearly smacked my head open on the corner of the bedstead. A box. A big cardboard
box in the middle of the floor. I turned on the light. It was all boxes in here. Boxes and bags. Nothing on my shelves, in
my desk drawers, the closet. There was a note on my pillow. Mom.

Looked like she’d decided I was moving to the city sooner than I’d thought. The note said we’d leave Saturday morning to find
me an apartment. I could move in right away, my mother’s note added, have a week alone to get settled before classes. She
was sorry to have to do this,
but since I’d refused to even discuss moving, much less get my things in any kind of order, I’d left her no choice. This last
part was underlined several times.

Jeez, Mom going through my stuff
. I did a quick check of my current hiding places. Untouched, thank God. Well, there was no sense getting mad. One of us had
finally done something to get my new life started.

Wait a minute. Wasn’t I going to die before we’d even make this trip? I didn’t know what to think about it anymore, that bizarre
idea that had settled on me as I limped along the highway. It already felt embarrassing.

It was Friday morning. One more day in Riverside and then I’d be free. I hit the bed with my clothes on. Seemed like seconds
later my alarm was ringing for work.

‘Today’s your last day, huh?’

Mrs Healey slung her purse over her shoulder. Mom had called her and explained everything. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she said,
‘I understand where your mother’s coming from. It’ll be just about impossible finding a place to live in Halifax at this date.
But still.’ She turned to me with folded arms. ‘You could have given more notice. Kyle is very upset.’

I mumbled apologies. Everything was coming at me from a scratchy-eyed distance. I’d had maybe two hours’ sleep.

My mother was still at work when I got home. I had soup for supper, ate it cold out of the can as I leaned against the counter
listening to the sounds of the empty house: the clock, the shifting hum of the fridge, my spoon scraping patiently against
metal. The stairs gave off their signature squeaks and groans as my feet hit them, the same responses to the same pressure
all the years I’d lived here. In my room, I packed away the stash from my hiding places so it could go to the city with me.

There was a quart of vodka wedged into the box-spring under the mattress. I loaded it into my backpack, left a long note for
Mom about the party tonight, and headed off to say goodbye to Riverside.

Later I was ambling along the shoulder of the road, on my way to this gathering. Guess I should have called somebody to give
me a lift. But I was already a little drunk – didn’t want to go home to use the phone and face my mom. It was in between night
and day, headlights glaring on the cars but no lights in the houses, the sky’s blue draining into colourless dusk. Beside
me a car slowed and I heard somebody yelling out the window. I got a bit nervous. Usually when people yelled at me out of
cars, it didn’t mean anything good.

But these were my friends. The girls from the rec room, piled in a station wagon together. We were going in the same direction.
Pilgrims.

I squeezed into the back between the MacBride sisters. Evan McDonald sat rigidly in the passenger seat, the only guy besides
me. And, I saw in a hurry, the only halfway sober person in the car. Patty Marsh was driving. Eyes too bright, grin too wide.

‘You gonna make another announcement at this one, Stephen?’ She twisted around to look at me and the wheels of the car gave
a sideways jolt.

Emily MacBride lolled against the opposite door.

‘Oh, wasn’t that a great time? I’m not Jewish … but I
am
gay!’ She was laughing with her mouth open. A twist of green gum reclined on her tongue.

‘It wasn’t that funny,’ Evan mumbled at the window. ‘Seemed more like he didn’t want to say it.’

‘Great night. Tracey’s party,’ Emily said again, as I opened my backpack and took a swig of vodka, then passed it to her sister
beside me. A window was open a crack and whistling wind tore through the car and blew the girls’ hair around. The radio scratched
out a metal ballad.

Evan handed the bottle to Patty without drinking. ‘Guys, come on,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure that was such a good time. Or a
good idea, telling everybody.’

The car was full of disapproving noise. Evan made a shushing gesture. ‘Well, remember, Stephen got beat up pretty bad after
that.’ He looked over his shoulder at me. ‘Or that’s what I heard, man. Last week of school, just before exams, right?’

I took my bottle back from Patty. ‘Yeah. The bathroom. Wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.’

Evan nodded. ‘Mark McAllister and those guys.’

Patty was holding a cigarette against the dashboard lighter. Eleanor MacBride was leaning into me, red-faced and crooning,
‘Awww …’ Outside the car, fence posts ticked past like railway ties.

‘No,’ I said to Evan. ‘No, Mark wouldn’t do anything like that. We’re friends.’

‘Right. Guess I got it wrong.’

‘Guess you did.’ I stared out the window past Eleanor’s hair, at the fields as the dark settled over them. ‘Anybody here cold?
Besides me?’

The final party was at a neglected, grey house on the edge of town. Somebody’s friend’s cousin lived there a few days out
of the week, but tonight it was ours. We stumbled out of cars in the near-dark, shouldering cases of beer, a procession winding
up the narrow driveway with its spine of spongy grass. The door was open and all the lights were on. Inside, the rooms seemed
empty of everything except people: drunk and loosed-limbed, with small suspicious eyes. Something was going to happen.

I avoided Lana as she floated past. Didn’t feel like starting a conversation with her. Or anybody. I stuck to the walls, wedged
myself into corners, tried to be invisible. Some people noticed me anyway and sang out, ‘Hey, Stephen!’ Some snarled, ‘Fuckin’
AIDS-bag. Don’t let him touch you, man.’ And I’d get a shove that would send me spinning off into a wall or a doorway or another
person.

I caught sight of Stacey on her own, leaning with her butt on a window ledge, the night in a dark square behind her. She noticed
me staring and threw me a knowing smirk. Obviously she’d been talking to Tina. I loped over.

‘I always knew it.’ Her voice barely crawled out of her throat to meet me. She was clutching a bottle of beer and her cigarette
hand trailed smoke.

‘Guess you’re some kind of genius, Stace.’ We watched the party, side by side with our backs to the window. The walls were
white, the floors rough and wooden with clumps of hairy dust in the corners, and everybody was milling around clinging to
brown or green bottles as if they needed them to breathe. A set of shelves that looked like it had once held books was now
crowded with empties, glass reflecting
the light from a bare electric bulb. AC/DC was cranking out of a tape player in the next room. I tipped back my own bottle
and let the liquid roll into my throat and burn.

‘Hey, Stacey.’ She ignored me. I kept talking. ‘Stace, does Mark believe in God?’

‘What the fuck are you on?’

I told her she’d know the answer to that, if Mark talked to her at all, but obviously he didn’t. Stacey laughed, a dry rattling
sound.

‘You make me puke,’ she said.

‘Mutual.’ I threw my arm around her. Stacey tried to duck out from under me, but I hung on, grabbed one of her intimidating
boobs. She shrieked and thrust an elbow at my gut. I dodged it. People around us were grinning, pretending to continue their
conversations as they shifted around for a better view. Maybe they were waiting for us to start pulling each other’s hair.

‘Stace. You remember Mark’s birthday last year?’ I was smiling pleasantly, as if nothing unusual had happened. ‘When he kept
going on about “this is my little brother …”’

‘Yeah. “This is my little brother. He’s a virgin.”’ She gave a snort. ‘He shoulda said he’s a—’

‘Know what he wasn’t saying? “This is my beautiful girlfriend.”’

‘So what?’

‘So? Mark doesn’t give a fuck about you, Stacey.’

She took a deep drag off her cigarette and blew the smoke into my eyes. It’s hard to put a word on what I felt then. Evil,
I guess. Lit up with malice like a jack o’lantern.

I was still smiling blandly. ‘He cheats on you all the time. Never even thinks about it.’ Then I told her what Mark had really
been up to at Tracey’s party, him and Pam in that room upstairs. Stacey’s face stayed
expressionless. But her breathing got faster and she took a step away from me. Half the room was orbiting us and listening.
I didn’t care.

‘Want me to tell you about all the other times?’

No answer. I moved closer.

‘Or just when he fucked your friends?’

‘I’m gonna kill you.’ Her voice was surprisingly calm. I leaned close and whispered in her ear, like a boyfriend.

‘There was your cousin Darla. There was some girl in a car down by the Fitzgerald farm. There was—’

‘I said I’m gonna fucking kill you, you stupid little faggot!’

She slammed me into the wall. Then she was thumping her fists on my back, kicking me, cursing. I sank to the floor and curled
my arms over my head, tried to roll away from her. A second later, I felt myself bump into something that wobbled, and a heavy
object came crashing down and seemed to explode beside me.

It was a bottle. I’d knocked against the shelves piled with empties. My fingers curled around glass and a jagged shard cut
into my palm. I wouldn’t let go. The cut went deeper. Stacey was still kicking at me. The shelves shook as I collided with
them again. More bottles fell to the floor and smashed into fragments, raining down. I found I was laughing.

I wasn’t the only one. I peeked out from under the crook of my arm and saw that we had the whole room’s attention. Some people
were wincing, most just giggling away. Red splotches from my cut hand made snowflake explosions on the floor.

Somebody grabbed Stacey’s arm and dragged her off me. Mark.

‘Jesus, Stephen, what’d you say to her?’

She turned and pushed at him blindly. ‘You fucker! You asshole!’ Stacey started to break down in tears. Not like I’d seen
her do sometimes to get her way. This was real. ‘Mark!’ she said helplessly.

‘Aw, Stace. Stacey …’ His arms were around her, one hand stroking her hair. I faced the wall. Heard Stacey blundering out
of the room, still crying, and the creak of a staircase. She was racing up to the bedrooms. When I turned around, I saw Mark
was gone too. The audience was still watching it all. I waited for applause.