Fireball (12 page)

One of them wrote: ‘These young men are pillars of society.'

Another said: ‘Knowing what they did warms my heart.'

Those old ladies couldn't get enough of us. They weren't the only ones, either. People recognised us on the streets and around the neighbourhood and all over the place. The shop­keeper down in the Cove, who usually threatened to beat the hell out of us with a broomstick, gave Julian a bunch of cigars for free. Only a week before, my next door neighbour had accused me and Chris of slashing his tyres. Now he was all smiles and handshakes, Mr Hypocrite, pretending like we were best friends. Everybody treated us differently. Doing one good thing – just one – had somehow transformed us in their eyes.

It must have been even trippier for Chris, who typically took way more shit than me or Julian. He took shit all the time from parents and teachers and cops and everyone, because of his reputation. Whenever a kid got jumped or a car got stolen or a house got vandalised, the police came looking for Chris. It was just like in Casablanca when the guy says ‘Round up the usual suspects.' Chris had been a usual suspect most of his life. Now, all of a sudden, he was a saint. I'm not saying he let it go to his head. I'm just saying it must have been weird not to be treated like scum for a change.

Then they went and pulled the plug on her.

Apparently she'd inhaled too much seawater. We'd brought her body back to life but her brain was completely wiped, like a broken hard drive. They could have kept her on life support forever and she would have stayed like that. There was nothing left. So her family gave them permission to let her die. The papers didn't publicise that so much. It would have ruined their story. But it still got around. Then there was a weird period, when people didn't know what to make of us. Were we heroes or weren't we? Did it still count for anything if the old lady had died anyway?

I don't blame them. Not really. I didn't know what the hell to make of it, either. Her dying didn't change our actions, but it made them sort of pointless. I mean, we'd done our best, but we hadn't actually accomplished anything. It was like this movie I saw – where some guy rushes into a burning building and lifts a lady out on his shoulders. He thinks he's saved her life, and can't figure out why all the other firemen are cracking up.

Then he realises he's carrying a dummy.

20

They were totally alone, in the quiet of that cabin, surrounded by all these flickering candles. Well, technically they weren't totally alone – me and Jules had puked and passed out in the corner, like a couple of dead marmots. Drinking all that whiskey and vodka, and eating nothing but Pot Noodles, wasn't the greatest idea we'd ever had. And in that state, we didn't really count for much – so it was as if they were alone. Obviously something was going to happen, and it did: Karen took off her shirt. I mean, when it came to hooking up Karen didn't mess around. She pulled it off, tossed it aside, and stood right in front of Chris with her hands on her hips.

That's what he said, anyhow.

‘Was she wearing a bra?'

‘No. No bra.'

He told me about it down at the Hippo Club – this super shitty arcade on Lonsdale. It's not there any more. Somebody burned it down. Right to the ground. Actually, now that I think about it, it was the kind of place that deserved to be burned to the ground. Most of the games just ate your quarters and the controls always felt greasy and sticky. The only people who went there were losers and loners and half-assed wannabe drug dealers.

And us, of course.

‘Did you feel her up?'

‘Not at first,' Chris said. ‘She just wanted me to look.'

‘That's potent, man.'

We were standing side by side, playing Space Invaders –
that old-school game where the aliens march back and forth in little rows, dropping lower and lower, coming down to get you. I could see Chris's reflection in the screen.
Totally intense. He always got intense when we played Space Invaders. They had new games at the Hippo Club, too, but we both hated that stuff. We only liked games where the graphics harsh sucked – like where you can hardly even tell what's happening half the time since everything is just blocky and weird.

‘So were they pretty sweet looking?'

Chris patted his fire button. ‘What?'

‘You know. Her tits.'

He said they were super pale. The rest of her was tanned but her breasts were almost white. Except for her nipples, obviously. Her nipples were dark. I guess because of her complexion or something. I don't know. But he said they were sort of brown. Like little acorns poking out of her chest.

‘Watch out for that guy.'

Only one alien was left. He'd turned red and started moving super fast. That's what the aliens do when you kill off all their friends – they get ridiculously angry.

‘I got him covered.'

I lined up my ship and kept firing until I hit him. Then we took a little breather, loosening up for the next level. Chris shook out his wrists and rolled his shoulders.

‘But you touched them eventually, right?'

He shrugged. ‘Sure.'

Chris wasn't one of those guys who liked to brag about all the shit he did with chicks. Trying to get it out of him was pretty frustrating, actually.

‘Well, what did they feel like?'

‘I don't know. They felt like tits, man. Soft and squishy and warm.'

‘Like fresh play dough?'

‘Yeah, sure. Like that.'

A new batch of aliens started crunching down the screen, and we picked them off one by one. We were on a roll. Neither of us had even lost a life yet.

‘Was that it? Or did you guys do some other stuff?'

‘I kissed her. She told me to kiss her so I did.'

He didn't say so, but I bet he kissed her pretty hard – almost like he was smothering her with his mouth, sucking all the breath out of her. Super passionate. He'd tasted death and kissing her must have been like the exact opposite.

‘Here comes the blimp,' Chris said. ‘Shoot that fucking blimp, Razor!'

The blimp is this thing that floats above the aliens, right at the top of the screen. I moved my ship over to the right and squeezed off a shot. I nailed it, too. Afterwards Chris told me what they did next. It was like my reward for hitting the blimp.

‘You know that desk, in the corner of the hut?'

‘Yeah,' I said. It was an old work desk. ‘What about it?'

He said Karen got up on it and stretched out, like a patient on an operating table. Only, in this case, she was more like the doctor. She told him exactly what to do. She told him to kiss her neck and throat and shoulders, and she told him to kiss her belly and ribs and hips, right down to the edge of her jeans. She even told him to kiss her on the nipples.

‘You're shitting me,' I said.

‘No. Hey – look out.'

But the aliens had got me. My ship made a little groaning sound and disintegrated. After that our game went downhill. I just couldn't concentrate. I kept thinking about them, hoping he'd tell me more. But apparently that was as far as it went. They both crawled into separate sleeping bags and drifted off, innocent as mice. Maybe it would have gone further if me and Jules hadn't been lying there. It's hard to say, really.

21

Days during last summer always started the same. I'd sleep until noon. Then I'd get up and eat some cereal and sleep a little bit more. After that, I'd call Chris or he'd call me, unless one of us was working. Now and again, I cut lawns and raked leaves for old people in our neighbourhood, and Chris sometimes did a bit of casual labour for his mom's ex-boyfriend who was a carpentry and construction contractor.

Otherwise, we were home free.

‘What do you want to do, man?'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘Did you talk to Jules?'

‘Yeah. I told him we were riding our Beamers to Lonsdale.'

That was the best way to ditch Jules. The day he got his driver's licence, he stopped riding his BMX forever. He wouldn't even ride one for the sake of riding one. He thought biking was kid's stuff. He didn't want to be seen pedalling up and down Lonsdale, especially by his pals from the winter club. That was fine by us. Julian was our buddy and everything, but we had stuff we did without him, and he had stuff he did without us. Like play tennis.

‘What's Karen doing?' I asked.

‘She's out shopping.'

Karen was obsessed with shopping. So was Julian, actually. Come to think of it, the two of them had a lot in common. They were both rich, they were both shopaholics, and they both turned out to be fairly treacherous.

‘Screw it, man,' I said. ‘Let's bike to Lonsdale, then.' I figured we might as well, since he'd already told Jules that's what we were doing. ‘We can hit up the Hippo Club.'

‘Yeah. We could put the hippo in the tub.'

‘I'm feeling pretty tubby today.'

‘You're sounding like a bit of a tub-thumper, all right.'

That was how we talked when we were alone. Don't ask me why.

‘I'll be there in ten.'

‘Okay, tenpin.'

It was another scorcher. That summer just kept getting hotter and hotter. They talked about it on the news and everything. There was nearly a drought. That hardly ever happens in Vancouver. There's about nine hundred rivers and lakes all over the Lower Mainland so having a drought is a pretty huge deal. Not to mention uncomfortable. Usually I love biking but that day it was murderous. I started sweating before we'd gone more than a few blocks.

‘Do you think you guys will do it?'

‘I told you I don't know.'

We took a break at the corner store just before the bridge. There was shade there, and pop. We drank the pop and sat in the shade and lit this super tiny joint, thin as a needle.

‘But she wants to do it, right?'

‘I think so. She talks about it a lot.'

I took a quick toke and washed it down with some pop.

‘Yeah? What does she say?'

‘You know. Weird stuff. “I want your first time to be with me.” Stuff like that. And how she thinks about giving me gummers.'

I choked up smoke and glanced at him, just to make sure he wasn't messing with me.

‘She's a pretty potent chick, huh?'

‘Yeah. Come on – let's keep going.'

I didn't want to keep going, but Chris was already getting on his BMX. He rode this silver Mongoose that he'd bought at a garage sale and totally fixed up. He'd done the same for me, actually. I had a Huffy – this fairly old-school Huffy with rainbow spoke beads.

We pedalled along the low road, down by the train tracks. Just as we came off onto Esplanade, we heard this sharp blaring sound – like the squawk of an extremely fat goose. I knew that sound. By then it was as familiar and annoying as the school bell, or an alarm clock. We pulled over, still kind of hoping that the squad car might cruise past us.

It didn't, of course.

After the speeding ticket fiasco, we just kept running into him. We'd be down at the beach, hanging out, and all of a sudden he'd be there – checking our pockets and rooting through our bags. Or we'd be chilling in the Cove and we'd spot him prowling around in his patrol car. He was all over the place, like there was more than one of him. He'd pop out of bushes, or appear behind you, or be waiting for you as you came around a corner. It reminded me of this movie we saw one time, about a psycho cop that starts killing people who break any little law: speeding or jaywalking or littering or anything. He pulls up to them and shines his flashlight right in their face and then blows them away.

It's pretty nuts, actually.

And this thing with Bates was almost that nuts. We became his favourite hobby. Some guys collect stamps, other guys buy porn mags. Bates hassled us. He really got off on it, too. I wouldn't be surprised if he drove down to the Cove specifically to hassle us – that's how much he hated our guts. Don't ask me why. I doubt he even knew why. It started after Chris lipped him off that night he gave us the speeding ticket, and just kind of snowballed from there. It was like he wanted to see how far he could push us. His favourite thing to do was confiscate our beer. He loved pouring the cans out one by one, as slowly as possible, making sure we watched. And if we didn't have any beer, he'd think of something else. He'd think of something super lame and stupid, and hassle us about that instead.

‘Hey heroes,' he said. ‘Where are your helmets?'

No joke. He wanted to know where our fucking helmets were.

‘We don't have any,' I said.

‘It's illegal to ride bikes without helmets.'

Maybe it is. But nobody had ever told us before.

Chris said, ‘So?'

Bates swaggered over to him. He hated Chris most of all. He could push me around, and make Jules cry, but against Chris he was powerless – which drove him absolutely insane.