Creeps (23 page)

“I tried to help.”

“Could have helped sooner.”

“I know—”

“Before you dragged us down the hall and put us in that classroom and made her strip down—”

“I'm sorry—”

“Don't tell
me
—”

“As if
she'd
listen.”

Silence.

“You know none of this would have happened if she hadn't defended you that time.”

“So it's my fault?”

“No.”

“Go now—”

“You never fought back.”

“What?”

“I kept waiting for you to. So Pete would just kick the shit outta you, and then it would be over, but you never did. It became like a game: what new low would Pumphrey submit himself to today.” He pauses, using his tongue to survey the gash on his lip, then says, “I suppose I could have spoke up, but I guess I was scared of Pete too.”

Neither speaks for a long time.

Kenny grabs the door handle. “I'd take it all back if I could, Pumphrey.” He goes to leave but Wayne says,

“You'll never know what it's like to eat yellow snow and be tripped and have pictures taped to your locker and be afraid. You'll never know.”

The kettle whistles.

Kenny's holding the door still.

His mom's voice: “It's boiled!”

Kenny nods and chews the insides of his cheeks and blinks something away, then opens the door and leaves.

Wayne watches him go.

His mother's voice again: “Wayne! Did you hear me?”

“I heard you!” he says back. But he doesn't leave the foyer. And if not for his mom coming back into the kitchen and turning off the element her own self, he'd have let the kettle boil dry.

He wakes sometime later and thinks she's sitting beside him, so he sits up and looks more closely, but she isn't.

It's sweltering so he kicks off the sheets and goes over to the window and looks out and there's
a sliver of moon and some stars but mostly it's just the big cloud from the mine.

He sees her standing there with crossed ankles and wearing her costume from the show and he thinks it strange that she would be. Her nose is still bleeding, but it's much worse, all over her, a pool of it at her feet turning the snow red, so he slides open the window and sticks his head out and goes to speak but no one's there so he stays quiet.

Closing the window now and he's having trouble breathing and his eyes are wet and his nose is running and he's making a mess on the window, but he wipes it away and rubs his hand on his pyjama pants and goes back over to his bed and lies down and stares at the ceiling.

And his hand is wandering just beneath her panties again and he can feel the prickliness on his fingertips and how fast his heart was beating and how, despite everything, a part of him enjoyed it.

He gets up again and goes over to his desk and sits down and switches on the tiny lamp. Pulls open the drawer and takes out his notebook and a Razor Point extra-fine pen and finds a page.

Dear Marjorie,

Did you mean what you said that I'm a black hole and I suck everyone into my
meis
misery? What about when you said we're better off staying away from each
other? Did you mean that too? But we're creeps, aren't we, and we don't fit in here so we're connected, right?

I'd love to take the train with you but I'm not brave and how would we eat and how do you make a beaded necklace anyway?

Kenny saved you tonight but I wanted it to be me and now you'll never see me as the saving kind, will you?

I thought I saw you sitting on my bed earlier. Then out the window when I looked. I had the strangest feeling. Then I started crying and I didn't even know it until it was happening and I hope it didn't wake Mom because she's a light sleeper.

Will you come back to school? I hope so because what would Mr. Rollie do without his leading lady? And aren't you dying to know what will happen at the drama festival? Can you imagine if we won? Imagine … George Street and the Avalon Mall and Signal Hill and the smell of the ocean and The Irish Descendants and no one knowing us or gawking and wouldn't you love that? We'd get away from here, Marjorie! AT LAST!! Only for a while, but still that's something, right? RIGHT???

There's one more thing and I feel awful about it but I sort of liked tonight. Not them taking us or anything, and certainly not the punch, but when I was touching you down there I mean, and it was like touching the clouds or a smooth stone and you'd think a guy who
writes so many letters would be able to describe it better, but I can't. I've never touched a girl, Marjorie, or even kissed one until tonight. You're my friend yes, but I think I love you too and I wish you did me, but I know people rarely feel the same about each other. I think my mom loves my dad more. Who loved who more when your dad was alive?

Has your nose stopped bleeding? If I was there I'd make sure your head was tilted back and I'd offer you my pyjama top, all my shirts if you wanted, and then I'd stare at your long neck and think about kissing that too.

Your friend who loves you,

Wayne Pumphrey

He closes his notebook and switches out the light and, for the longest time, sits there in the dark. Then he goes back to bed and curls into a ball and falls asleep.

He dreams of sirens.

EIGHT

Wayne's staring at his Honeycombs while Wanda smears peanut butter on toast and then jabs a straw into her Diet Coke. She looks up and says, “I can't believe you slept through those sirens.”

The cereal's soggy, so he lifts the bowl and drinks the milk, leaving the Honeycombs. Pushes the bowl aside. “I figured I was dreaming.”

“Those sirens weren't a dream. A fire, I thought, but there wasn't any smoke.”

He watches her indented cheeks and the stream of Diet Coke travelling up the straw and into her mouth, and her swallowing and her watery eyes because it burns going down, especially at seven-thirty in the morning.

Enough wind to carry the house away.

They listen to it.

Then Wayne says, “Wonder what happened.”

His sister licks peanut butter from the corner of her mouth. “Some bagboy at Dominion lost his shit and started shooting, probably.”

“Here?”

“Why not
here
?”

Wayne pauses. “A bear roaming the dump, I'd say.”

“Yeah, right, every cop car in Canning sent out for a stupid bear.”

The grandfather clock chimes.

“It must have been serious though, whatever it was,” Wanda says. “Turn on the radio.”

Wayne gets up and flicks it on, then comes back over and sits down.

They listen to a story about a three-legged cancer-sniffing dog named Conrad and about a new bingo hall that's going up and the weather report that's calling for more unusually mild temperatures and high winds and, later in the day, wet snow. Nothing about the sirens.

Footsteps in the hall and a closed door.

“You won't go to hell if you miss a day, you know,” Wanda says. “Not like you don't have a good excuse.”

Wayne thinks of Marjorie: the whiteness of her underwear, the punch, the blood that wouldn't stop,
the train she wanted to take. He goes to speak but can't get it out, so he tries again. “I wanted to do more, you know. For Marjorie, I mean.”

His sister looks at him. “Did what you could, I'd say. She's lucky you were there.”

Wayne shakes his head and says, “But none of it would have happened if not for me.”

“No.”

“It's true.”

His sister looks away.

A toilet flushes.

“She thinks we're better off not hanging out.”

“What?”

“I shouldn't bother loaning her my jacket anymore, she said, or helping her up if she slips because I'm a black hole.”

“What?”

“Never mind—”

“Black hole, did you say?”

The door opening now. Approaching footsteps.

“She's angry,” Wanda says. “Give her time.”

Wayne thinks he might like to take the train after all.

Then his mother's there and she's asking if he heard the sirens and Wanda says he dreamed them, only that it wasn't a dream, and then his mother kisses his cheek and says it's no wonder he slept through them … everything he's been through.

A few moments later his dad is taking the kettle off the burner and telling Wayne about the sirens and not to bother with school today or for the rest of the week as far as he's concerned, but Wayne says Mr. Rollie's giving notes on last night's performance so it'd be best if he went.

His father nods and pours tea and grabs a molasses bun and goes over and tells Wanda to get out of his spot so he can sit down before work.

Now they're all sitting and listening to the radio and his mother looks at Wayne and says, “It's not Tuesday, but come to Woolworths for lunch anyway.”

Wayne shrugs.

“Half fries and half onion rings. How does that sound?”

He doesn't answer, getting to his feet instead, and everyone seems about to say something but no one does, so he goes into the foyer and gets into his jacket and boots. On his way to the door a news bulletin comes on the radio and there's someone in Burgess Lake that's drowned and they're looking for the body and Wayne's mother says, “Oh my God!” and his father says, “Isn't that terrible,” and his sister goes, “That explains the sirens,” and Wayne pushes open the door and starts running down the porch steps.

NINE

Marjorie's mother opens the door and her face is red and her eyes remind Wayne of his father's after a night of Bacardi Dark. She steps out onto the porch and grabs his shoulders and shakes him and says, “Where is she?”

Wayne gets out of her grip and steps back. “I don't know.”

Mrs. Pope moans like she's in pain and rubs her face, then takes her hands away. “She didn't come home last night.”

Something at the bottom of his belly … like emptiness without the hunger, like waking up in the middle of the night to his father's stumbling and knocking things over. He turns around, half expecting to see Marjorie there, but she isn't, so he faces front again.

Marjorie's mother reaches back and grips the doorknob and Wayne thinks it's so she won't fall down, and the wind messes her hair and blows open her robe exposing the nightgown and the sagging breasts underneath. She lets go of the door and ties a bow in the waist of her robe and grips the knob again and says, “Those awful sirens last night, and when I called the police they told me there was an emergency and when I asked if it was my Marjorie they said they couldn't say. ‘I have a right to know,' I said, and they said it was too soon, but they'd take my number and a description and call me once they knew.”

Wayne tries to make sense of her words, thinking that he too may need the doorknob to hold, or the banister, or the older lady's shoulders …
anything
.

Suddenly Mrs. Pope slams the door and Wayne jumps in fright. Then she opens it and slams it again and again and one more time until her neighbour comes out and asks what the ruckus is about and Marjorie's mother screams and tells her to mind her own Jesus business.

The neighbour goes back inside and Wayne wishes he'd had the guts to have grabbed her daughter's hands and looked into her eyes and agreed to pack a bag and hop on a boxcar and get clear of this fucking place forever, but now it's too late because he's sure something bad has happened, as sure as
he's standing on her porch, which is probably one of the last places she stood or will
ever
stand.

Now he's taking the steps two at a time, and Marjorie's mother continues to grip the doorknob and shout into the wind for him to come back because he
must
know where she is.

And he's running. Always running, except now he's unsure if it's
to
something or
away
from something. And the wind's pushing against him and he thinks it's like another kind of bully.