Finding Hope (5 page)

T
he
Wolf Creek kids came into town sometimes, sitting on the edge of a pickup that rumbled down Main Street. The kids all knew me, or knew of me. Some of them played for the Wolves and had something to prove. Taking out the star player for the Hornets was bragging rights, even if I didn't play anymore.

Even if I was sleeping all afternoon on a park bench.

Hope didn't ask about the bloodstains anymore. Or the broken face. She didn't want to know and I didn't want to tell her.

If I'd been in the city, I could have found a place to stay, but out here, no one wanted to admit kids like me existed. The meth got cooked, sold out of the back door of someone's shed in the middle of nowhere. And kids eager to fight the boredom of small-town living bought it. I'd become a walking cliché. Pathetic.

Only, it wasn't boredom that had led me to this.

Sometimes I thought about my dad, what I would have been like if he'd been around more, or for longer. I guess you can't miss what you never had, but still, I miss him. The idea of him. I talk to him a lot, especially when I'm high, wanting him here and blaming him 'cause he isn't.

Mom wanted Dick to be that guy. Sold us to him as a package deal. But it never took. The same way he'd never love me as his own, I could never let him take the place of the guy I wished had never left.

My real dad was a long-haul truck driver. He'd go all the way up to Alaska or down to Texas. Gone for most of my first years, he was just a shadowy figure, like a cardboard cut-out in my mind, taking up space but without any substance, one-dimensional.

Sometimes, I pictured my dad on the bench beside me and talked to him. I probably looked crazy, but I didn't care. The conversation would be going great until I looked over and saw Coach Williams instead of Dad. Coach would be wearing his
AAA ALL-STARS
warm-up jacket and smiling at me. He'd lay a hand on my shoulder and give it a squeeze like he used to before I'd go out for a shift. A signal that everything was going to be okay.

Thanks, Coach
, I thought and shook my head. A small part of me still missed him.

And I hated that part.

 

 

I
couldn't sleep. A branch outside scratched against the window in front of my desk. During the day, a blackbird had perched on it, surveying the field below, its caws a warning and a greeting. Cassie's gentle snores rumbled through the room, and no matter which way I turned, no position felt comfortable. Light from the moon shone into our room, creating shadows where there shouldn't have been any.

Tossing off my quilt, I tiptoed to the door, grabbed my key, and slid out into the hallway. To see a place empty that was usually so busy felt eerie. Sconces on the wall emitted a low hum and illuminated the hall with an orangey glow. Being out of my room after hours was against the rules. Just a quick trip to the washroom, and then straight back to bed.

I heard voices as soon as I pushed open the heavy door. It was too late to back out. There was a flurry of commotion, a stall door banged shut, a faucet started to gush. Then a sigh of relief when they saw it was another student and not Ms. Harrison, the dorm monitor.

“You scared the shit out of us!” Lizzie groaned, drying her hands. The two blonds from the cafeteria, Emily and Vivian, were with her. They looked at me suspiciously as I took a few more steps into the washroom. Tiled floor to ceiling, with a bank of sinks and mirrors on one wall and toilet and shower stalls on the other, the girls sat on a bench that stretched through the middle of the room.

“I have to pee,” I told them, realizing how ridiculous I sounded. What other reason would I be in the washroom at midnight?

Lizzie snorted. “Go for it.”

Fighting back a blush of embarrassment, I walked past them into the farthest cubicle. Their whispers echoed in the room, punctuating the silence. It was awkward, three people on the others side of the door listening to me pee. My stubborn bladder refused to let anything go. Performance anxiety. But now that I was in the washroom, I couldn't leave without going.

Closing my eyes, I tried to pretend they weren't a few metres away and forced my bladder to relax.

On the other side of the stall door, there was a commotion. “Emily, watch the bottle!” But too late, there was a crash and the sound of shattering glass. A few shards skittered across the floor and landed at my feet.

“Shit! You are such a fucking klutz!” Lizzie's voice, hissing.

“Come on, before Ms. Harrison gets in here!”

A rush of footsteps, the door opened and closed, and then silence. I was left alone in the washroom, with a broken bottle of booze slowly leaking toward me.

I
pulled a gift from Hope out of the hollow space in the stump, then tore through the bubble wrap and red bag to get at what lay inside. 

A bomber jacket, distressed black leather and quilted lining. I held it up to my nose, breathing in the pungent animal-skin odour. The jacket was heavy, the leather soft and thick despite its weathered look. It must have cost her a lot of babysitting money.

My heart lurched at the thought of my sister. Ordering it online and leaving it here for me to find, days after she'd gone. I'd come here on a whim, knowing she was in the city at her new school. I'd been hoping for some money, I won't lie, but also one of her crazy poems, or a picture she'd pilfered from Mom's photo albums. Anything to show she hadn't forgotten me.

And it was this. A jacket that must have cost her a couple hundred dollars.

I rubbed a cuff, ribbed like a sweater, and ran the zipper up and down, hooking and unhooking the teeth.

I slipped my arms into the sleeves. Heavy on my shoulders and stiff, it weighed me down, grounding me.

I pulled my collection of photos and poems out of the pocket of my cargo shorts and stuffed them into a pocket of the jacket. It was too hot to wear a jacket like this, but I didn't care. I wanted it to mould to my body, become part of me, like armour.

I kicked the bag back under the stump. It rustled against the carpet of dead leaves and twigs, garish even in the filtered light of the thicket.

She'd bought it to keep me warm this winter, hedging a bet that I wasn't coming home.

You think you know me so fucking well?
I thought. A hard lump of anger rose in my throat, because she probably did.

I
felt Lizzie's eyes on me as soon as I walked into the common room. With brown leather couches and beige walls, it looked utilitarian and homey at the same time. A gas fireplace in the middle of the room with a TV mounted above it was the focal point, but groupings of chairs all over the room meant girls were able to find private space if they wanted it.

I'd intended to beeline for the dormitory hallway and bypass the common room altogether. Ms. Harrison had given me a stern lecture last night. She'd caught me leaving the washroom and demanded to know who else had been in there. I'd lied, insisting I'd just walked in, saw the broken bottle, and was going to tell her. She'd clutched her bathrobe around her and pushed her wire-framed glasses farther up her nose.
Honest
, I'd told her.
Smell my breath
.

That morning, we'd all woken up to an email informing us that anyone caught drinking on school property would be suspended indefinitely.

“It's Hope, right?” Vivian appeared in front of me.

I nodded, shifting my books.

“Come sit with us.” She tilted her head toward the couch in the centre of the room. Lizzie and Emily were there, books spread out around them, but their attention was more focused on phones than on studying.

I hesitated as Vivian walked across the room. Lizzie looked at me with a “What are you waiting for?” expression.

Perching on an armchair beside the couch, I waited for one of them to say something. No one did. Instead, six thumbs pecked at phones, sending texts. I stood up to leave. “Where are you going?” Lizzie asked. Her bright red lipstick intense, memorable against her pale skin.

“I have to study,” I said, annoyed. She cast a glance at Emily and Vivian, both looking up from their phones.

“Study with us.”

All three stared at me. “We owe you for last night,” Emily said with a meaningful look at the other two. “What did you tell her?”
Her
meaning Ms. Harrison, the prim dorm monitor who had chosen to spend her life supervising boarding students.

I sat back down and leaned toward them. “That I'd just gotten there and found the mess. And that I hadn't seen anyone.”

Emily gave a relieved laugh. “See? I told you she wouldn't blab.”

Lizzie didn't look convinced. “Did you read the email she sent this morning? We'd get kicked out if someone told on us.” Her words were a threat.

“I'm not going to tell on you,” I said, irritated at her implication. Of all the people at this school, I wondered if anyone else was as well-versed in secret keeping as me.

Vivian leaned forward, her blue eyes bulging slightly. “We're meeting tomorrow night in their room.” She nodded at Lizzie and Emily. “You should come too. At midnight.”

“Maybe,” I said, knowing that a nighttime drinking session wasn't worth the chance of getting caught by Ms. Harrison.

Lizzie gave a snort of laughter. “And
I
told
you
”—she looked pointedly at Emily—“that she's not Raven material. Never mind,” she said to me so condescendingly my skin crawled, “you're probably so clean you squeak.”

The disdain in her eyes reminded me of every girl in Lumsville who'd shunned me, deciding I wasn't cool enough or daring enough to hang out with her.

I had a chance right now to be part of something, more than just the kid sister to a hockey star. I could reinvent myself. And maybe, at Ravenhurst, that meant rolling up my skirt and sneaking through the hallways in the middle of the night.

I tossed Lizzie an offhand smile, as if her comment hadn't bothered me. “Tomorrow at midnight. Should I bring anything?”

Vivian gave Lizzie a victorious smirk and smiled at me. “Just yourself.”

I settled back into the chair and took out my phone. I didn't have anyone to text but pretended I did, thumbing a fake message to myself.