Deconstructing Dylan (14 page)

“Talk to him. Go there and talk to him.”

“And the others?”

“You'll get to travel and see some interesting parts of the world.”

“People will find out. Sooner or later this will be public.”

“Did you really think you were going to keep the secret for the rest of your life?”

I knew deep in my bones that I could not. And now the image of my dead brother Kyle seemed to come out of nowhere. I remembered that feeling of being there with him, or of being him, hot, weighted down and
scared, in the hospital bed. I thought about him now and how I deeply wished that I had had a chance to get to know him, to have that older brother. And now this. In a way, I was the older brother to these other kids. I really was. And that was equally scary. I wouldn't know what to say to them or what to do. I realized that what he was asking me was much more than I could handle. I was having a hard enough time keeping my own self together. I couldn't possibly help a bunch of kids I didn't even know.

MacKenzie was back on screen now, sitting in his office, silent, patient.

“My parents have already agreed to this?”

He shook his head. “No. They haven't. They still want to protect you. In fact, they said no. It will be up to you to change their minds.”

I was still scared and uncertain. I felt overloaded with information and emotion. I sensed a terrible burden of responsibility being placed on me now that seemed so unfair at a time in my life when I just wanted to be a kid.

“I don't think I can help you,” I said.

“Just think about it, okay?” he said. “Sleep on it.” He paused and then looked straight at me. “You hungry?”

I hadn't thought about food but I hadn't really eaten much of anything all day. “Well, yeah.”

“Pizza and ice cream, right? Pepperoni for the pizza and plain vanilla for the ice cream, if I recall.”

I nodded.

“We'll talk tomorrow,” he said and waved goodbye.

Twenty minutes later a van stopped in the driveway. The doorbell rang and a couple of minutes after that my mom was at the bedroom door. She looked puzzled. “This arrived for you,” she said.

There were two thermal packs. In one was some very cold vanilla ice cream and in the other a giant slice of very hot pepperoni pizza.

The next day, I considered sneaking into my parents' bedroom and stealing more of my mother's anti-depressant pills. But I didn't do it. I had endured a rather difficult night of sleep. Maybe pizza and ice cream wasn't such a good idea right before going to bed. In the morning light, I was more certain than ever that I wasn't able to help save anybody. I wasn't sure I could save myself.

“What did you tell Dr. MacKenzie?” my mom asked at the breakfast table.

“I told him no.”

“That's probably the wisest decision under the circumstances,” my dad said.

“Right,” I said, suddenly feeling antsy. “Gotta go.” And I was out of there. I sure as hell didn't want to sit around and discuss it further with my parents.

When I first saw Robyn on the school ground, I hardly recognized her. She'd cut off almost all her hair and she was wearing dark, nearly black lipstick. She had a new piercing on her eyebrow with a silvery spike in it.

“Robyn?”

“I don't know if I can handle this,” she said.

“Handle what?”

“School. I hate this place.”

I decided not to say anything about the new look. I couldn't believe she had cut off her long beautiful dark hair. She was wearing all black. She looked angry and severe and I guess that was what she was feeling. “I've never been a big fan of high school, either,” I said. “It can get to you. Yesterday I shoved Miles up against his locker. He really ticked me off.”

“You're losing it, Dylan.”

“I know.”

“I like that,” she said. This from an avowed pacifist who spent her leisure time reading about Tibetan Buddhism and the afterlife. There was the barest hint of a smile.

“We don't need to be here, you know.”

“Let's go to the mall and make fun of the old people.”

“I'm with you.” And that was the end of the school day for Robyn and me.

At the mall, Robyn's new look drew unwanted attention but we kept walking around instead of sitting
in one place and the security guards just kept an eye on us. Not one actually hassled us or asked us to leave.

At first we didn't talk. Robyn was really angry and hurting about the death of Carla. I was afraid to ask her about it. And I really wanted to talk to her about my dilemma but I was afraid she'd totally freak out. Not far from the Gap store I saw a beetle of some sort creeping along the floor. I picked it up. “Cockroach,” I announced, making a pool out of my hands and showing it to Robyn.

“It reminds me of Miles Vanderhague.”

“Cockroaches have been around for about three hundred million years and they haven't changed hardly at all.”

“If it's working for ya, why alter the program?”

“If all human life on earth were wiped out by nuclear explosions and radiation, they say the cockroach would still be around.”

“Lucky for the cockroach.”

I settled the bug into the soil around a potted palm tree. “So long and good luck,” I said.

Robyn looked incredibly sad now. “I could have helped Carla. I really could have. But instead I let her go. I should have gone with her. But I didn't. I let her down.”

“It wasn't your fault.”

“That's what people keep saying to me. But it doesn't feel that way.” She let out a sigh. “Life sucks.”

“It does, doesn't it?” The cockroach was crawling out of the potted palm now and before I could reach for it, it fell onto the stone floor on its back, then wriggled itself upright and began scurrying away across the polished floor of the mall in the direction of the Gap store.

Robyn let out a sigh. “And then you come to me with your discovery and I should be there to help you but I'm not. I turn my back.”

“I understand. I really do.” I swallowed hard. “Just do me one favour. Promise you won't tell anyone. Ever?”

She looked at me. “I'm worried about you, Dylan. I thought about this a lot. I should have called you but I was all messed up. If you want me to keep a secret, I can do that, but I'm worried that it's going to destroy you.”

I didn't say anything because I was haunted by the truth in the words she said. I knew that the logical thing was for me to accept who I was and get on with my life. No one would force me to change. It was entirely up to me. But it would eat away at me from the inside, I knew it would.

“What do you fear most, Dylan? Do you fear death or do you fear change?”

“Death, I guess. I don't want to die. No one does.” “That's what I thought but I keep going back to the Tibetan stuff I've been reading. It doesn't always make sense but some of it does. We fear death, I think,
because we fear leaving behind what we know and going someplace that is unfamiliar. We make decisions in life pretty much the same way. We want to hold onto what is familiar, even if it sucks sometimes. We're afraid to leap into something new even if it might be better. We spend most of our lives being afraid of acting.”

The security guard was headed our way. I recognized him and knew he would ask us to leave the mall. Sitting in one place and having a serious discussion was a crime in this day and age. If we were in the stores buying junk, we'd be considered acceptable. As it was, we were loitering.

“How are you two today?” he asked in a mock-friendly manner. I gave him credit for being polite.

“We were just leaving,” Robyn said and took my hand. We walked out of the air-conditioned mall into the powerful morning sunlight and began the trek across the parking lot.

I laughed a little. “I thought you were going to give the guy a big lecture. I was expecting you to go off like a volcano. How come you didn't?”

“Because I think you have to choose your battles. For a while, back when Carla and I were still close, I was mad at everybody for everything, I think. So was she. Teachers. Cops. Other kids who were cruel to us. I just had one big chip on my shoulder. And, in the end, it didn't help Carla or me. Yesterday I thought that I
needed to get focused. I don't know what it is yet but something is going to crystallize in front of me and I'll know it when I see it.”

I stopped just then and a crazy feeling came over me. I knew Robyn was talking about herself but I felt like she was talking about me too. A young mother was parking her SUV near us, and when she got out, she went around the skid and opened the door. She undid the seat harness for a little boy maybe four years old and helped him out of the car. She held his hand and they began to walk past us, but suddenly he stopped and looked at Robyn and then me. He was smiling at us and then he said hello. His mother smiled too and tugged him gently. The mall awaited. As they walked off, he turned back and waved. Robyn and I both waved back. And then she smiled at me.

We stood there in a kind of stunned silence for a minute, neither of us knowing why. Then I sucked oxygen deep into my lungs, looked up into the empty sky, and began to lose my ability to focus my eyes. I was either going to laugh or cry or lose my grip on my mind entirely. I shook my head and for a few seconds I couldn't talk. And then the world came back perfectly into focus.

“I don't freaking believe this. I really don't,” I said. “Are you all right? What's happening?”

I threw my hands up in the air as if I'd just lost an argument. But I was smiling. “I've got something I've
got to do, Robyn. I'm still afraid but I think I can do it if you'll help me.”

Before I even told her about Dr. MacKenzie and the children, she kissed me and she said, “I'll be there for you.”

And then I told her about the Scottish doctor and what he was asking me to do. “My parents want me to say no.”

“Convince them otherwise.”

“Up to this minute I was going to say no. I didn't think I was strong enough.”

“You are. You'll find the strength.”

The flight to Toronto lasted two and a half hours. Dr. MacKenzie had flown in from Scotland and met us at Pearson International when we landed. I introduced him to Robyn and he shook her hand. “Pleasure to meet you, lass,” he said with that outrageous Scottish accent.

We took a rental electric skid to Scarborough, not far from the centre of the city, and were met at the front door of a brick house by two rather distraught-looking parents. We went in and were led to a den where a twelve-year-old boy was playing video games. Graham was a pale, thin kid with a tangible air of fear around him. I understood that look. Dr. MacKenzie began to introduce us and the parents hovered in the background, nervous and fidgety. Graham was getting more uncomfortable by the minute as MacKenzie explained what this was all about and who
I was. The boy looked like he was about to cry. That's when I interrupted.

“What about if you leave Graham and me for a bit and let us get to know each other?”

Reluctantly, MacKenzie and the parents agreed. Robyn left the room with them too and I was alone for the first time in my life with someone who was like me. He had also been brought into the world as a replacement for a brother who had died. He would go through life different from almost everyone else on the planet.

I asked him about his video game,
Final Destiny Nineteen
, and he showed me how to work the controller. He laughed when he saw how bad I was at even the most basic moves.

After three games — I got slaughtered in all three — I took out the twin photographs I had of Kyle and me. “In some ways I feel like I truly know who my brother was but in other ways I feel like I don't know him at all. Even though I never met him, I miss him. I wish he were still alive.”

“But then if he had lived, you never would have been born,” Graham said.

“I know. It's bizarre. I actually feel guilty that I'm alive and he isn't.”

“Is that what I feel?”

“Maybe in part.”

“What's going to happen to me if everyone finds out about me?”

“It's going to be difficult.”

“Do they know about you?”

“A few people do. Others will know soon, I expect.”

“Will people make fun of you or call you names?”

“You bet.”

“Are you scared?”

“Yes.”

“Is that girl your girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Does she know?”

“Yes.”

“Does she know about me?”

“Yes.”

It went on like that for nearly an hour. Graham was the one asking the questions and I gave him an honest answer to each. He became both more and more relaxed around me and more curious. Eventually he asked, “You wanna play
Final Destiny Nineteen
again?”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes,” he said.

I got slammed twice more and Graham said he'd teach me to be a better player. I promised we would play each other over the net and that we'd talk by vid-phone often. He could call me whenever he wanted.

While we were in Toronto, Robyn visited the offices of an organization called Kids' Help Line. She talked to someone there who specialized in working with gay and lesbian teens who ran away or ended up in trouble. It got her thinking of what she could do back home to get some kind of local crisis hotline going.

Robyn was the best of companions and she travelled with me wherever I went. We were assigned tutors who gave us reading assignments and homework and we did a lot of our school stuff on comp links in planes. Dr. MacKenzie coached me often about what to do if I ever found myself under the scrutiny of the media. He knew the day would come and I still felt I was unprepared for it.