Fireball (13 page)

‘So maybe I'll give you a ticket. How's that sound, hero?'

‘It sounds pretty sweet,' Chris said.

He wasn't being lippy, either. He just happened to be in this extremely good mood. I mean, he'd already hooked up with Karen and pretty soon they'd be doing it. Even Bates couldn't rile him under those circumstances.

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘We love tickets. They're awesome.'

‘Me giving you a ticket is awesome?'

‘That's right.' Chris patted me on the back. ‘Super awesome.'

Bates sort of laughed. It was short and loud, like a fart coming out his mouth. ‘We got a couple of comedians, here,' he said. ‘What a great combination.'

He was trying to play it cool, but you could tell he didn't know what the hell to make of us. I bet he thought we were high on some super harsh drug, like crack cocaine or crystal meth. When his radio started making noise, he looked almost relieved. He walked over to the car and picked up the receiver, keeping one eye on us as if he thought we might hop on our bikes and ride away. And as soon as his back was turned, that's exactly what we did.

‘Hey Razor,' Chris whispered, ‘let's jet.'

We eased away from the curb and started pedalling. Totally casual.

‘Hey! Get back here!'

‘Bite me, Batesy!'

He had his car, but we had a pretty solid head start. Plus, we knew all the shortcuts around Lonsdale. We turned up behind the abandoned car wash, hung a right, and cut across this overgrown park filled with rusty hubcaps and old tyres. Then we zigzagged through a bunch of alleys and side streets. Bates hounded us the entire way. Sometimes his siren was close, other times it was far off, like an air raid warning in those old war movies.

Then, pretty soon, there were two sirens.

‘Damn, man.'

‘This is getting heaty.'

‘Let's ditch the Beamers,' Chris said. ‘We'll come back for them, later.'

We hopped off and threw our bikes over a fence. Then we started walking. We walked back towards Lonsdale and ducked into this pizza joint on the corner – one of those places that sells pizza by the slice and nothing else. There were no tables or chairs. Just pizza.

‘I'll have a ham and pineapple.'

‘Me too. Two ham and pineapple.'

The guy working behind the counter gave us pizza. It was terrible. The temperature in there was about five hundred degrees, and the pizza had been sitting in the heat for hours. The crust had gone all soggy and the cheese was soaked through with oil. I took one bite and that was enough. I mean, when it's that hot and you've been running from the cops the last thing you want is a mushy, melting piece of pizza. What I really needed was a pop.

‘Hey – you got any pop?'

‘What pop you want?'

The guy was foreign or something. He didn't look foreign but he talked foreign.

‘Root beer.'

He gave me the root beer, but it wasn't even cold. It was warm, and a little flat – like hot syrup. I've been to some pretty bad pizza joints, but that was the worst one ever. And we were stuck in it. We stood around in the stifling heat, pretending to eat soggy pizza and drink warm pop. After about five minutes, a cop car cruised past. Then it turned around and came back, going slower. It rolled to a stop right in front of the pizza place, which had these big glass windows. We could see the driver staring at us, squinting a little.

‘Come on, Razor!'

We started running. We'd only run about ten yards when another car pulled out of the alley, blocking our escape. There were cop cars all over the place: behind us and in front of us and on both sides of us. Bates had called out half the North Van police force. I think there might have even a been a few cops from West Van. When he saw that, Chris just started laughing. I did, too. I mean, obviously I was wetting the bed a little, but at the same time I'd never seen so many squad cars in one place. Pedestrians stopped to stare, as if they were expecting some kind of huge drug bust. It was a total shitshow.

Bates was the last to arrive.

‘Yeah. That's them. Those are the guys.'

He walked over with three other patrolmen. They grabbed us, in case we tried to run again. There was one tall guy with a moustache and grey hair who looked a little wiser than all the rest. For that reason, I'm pretty sure he was a North Van cop. They're part of the RCMP or the Mounties or whatever, which makes them a little more professional than the killer cops from West Van. They hardly ever shoot anybody, at least.

‘Why'd you run?' he asked.

‘We didn't want a ticket.'

That was me. Chris didn't answer. He was still trying to catch his breath.

‘What do you mean? A ticket for what?'

‘For not having helmets.'

The old cop looked at Bates, as if he'd just admitted to wearing diapers.

‘That's what this is about?'

‘Well, they ran, didn't they?'

The old cop just sighed and shook his head. Then he turned back to me.

‘You two caused us a lot of trouble.'

‘Yessir. Sorry about that, officer.'

I actually was sorry, too. I mean, I didn't mind apologising to this guy. He seemed like a real cop. Not like Bates at all. For one thing, his moustache was huge – nearly as big as his entire face. Also, he looked pretty washed-up. The best cops are always the wash-ups.

‘Well, give them the ticket, then.'

The other officers waited while Bates wrote out the ticket. By that point, he knew he'd really screwed up. He could barely write the ticket properly. Then, when he ripped it out of his little book, he tore the paper right down the middle. One of the cops – the one holding Chris – snickered and tried to hide
it behind his hand. That got his buddy going. Pretty soon,
most of the cops were chuckling. Pretty soon, most of the cops
were chuckling – except for Officer Moustache. He stood there with his arms crossed, looking completely pissed off.

Of course, all this just made Bates hate us even more.

22

One drug I wouldn't suggest trying is acid.

None of us knew what the hell to expect, but it was worse than they say. Way worse. In school they're always telling you: ‘Don't do drugs.' That's bullshit. Some drugs are okay. Weed, for instance. And nutmeg. But acid? I'd rather break a bottle on my head than do acid again. I mean, it didn't even get us high. It just completely screwed our brains up.

‘Jesus it's hot out tonight.'

Karen wouldn't stop saying that, even though it wasn't hot at all. It was just a regular night. We were sitting on the cliff at Greyrocks – this tiny island down in the Cove – and the air felt cool and fresh and clean. To me, at least. Not to Karen. She looked like she'd been locked in a sauna for about three weeks. Her face had gone all blotchy, like a rotten plum, and her hair was this mess of sweaty, tangled strands. At one point, she peeled off her shirt and sat there in her jeans and bra and nothing else. Then she screamed. Don't ask me why. I wasn't paying much attention to Karen or her screaming.

I had problems of my own.

‘Hey,' I said. ‘What the hell?'

On my forearm, right above my wrist, I have these two moles. Normally they're just regular moles: small and brown and harmless. But the acid changed them completely. They started pulsating as if they were alive. Then they turned into the heads of little worms, burrowing out of my skin. I swatted at them, trying to catch them. It was pretty fucked.

Jules had it even worse. He was huddled up by himself, crying.

‘I'm so weak,' he sobbed. ‘I hate it.'

Julian had been a runt up until grade nine: skinny and frail and almost anaemic. Then one summer he grew about a foot and started eating protein powder and taking tennis lessons. After that he wasn't such a weakling. The problem was, he'd been a runt for those important years of his life, the years when everything matters, and the acid brought it all back to him.

Somebody shook me by the shoulder. Chris.

‘Are you feeling it?' he asked.

He was sitting on an old tree stump, with his legs crossed beneath him. His face was half-covered in shadows that looked almost like fur. As I watched, the fur spread over his cheeks and chin, and seemed to rise in a mane around his shoulders. He grimaced, showing teeth that were white and sharp and wet. He'd turned into some sort of wolf man.

The wolf man said, ‘I don't feel anything.'

I tried to answer him, but I couldn't. I was just too messed up.

‘I'm going for a walk.'

The wolf man hopped down from his stump and prowled off without glancing back. I followed him. That island isn't very big. There's the cliff, some trees, and a little beach. You'd have to be a total marzipan to get lost, but as soon as we stepped into those woods, that's exactly what happened. I felt as if I'd stumbled into a shadowy maze filled with all kinds of bizarre booby traps. Branches poked at my eyes, twigs clawed at my hair, and little thorns stuck in my arms like fishhooks. I kept falling over stumps and roots and shit like that. It was a living nightmare. Every so often, I'd catch a glimpse of this hairy silhouette, but the wolf man always vanished before I could catch up. I must have staggered around in there for about six hours. At one point I even started snivelling, like a lost little orphan from a fairy tale – a fairy tale about how children shouldn't drop acid because it's the worst drug ever invented. Then, just when I'd given up all hope, I found the beach.

The wolf man had got there first.

He was padding back and forth along the shore and making this strange sound – this whimpering sound. It reminded me of the noise a dog makes when it's standing at the edge of a swimming pool, and it wants to jump in because it can see people splashing around and having fun. Except, in this case, there weren't any people. There was just this stretch of water, black and still as oil. When I stepped onto the sand, he stopped pacing and turned around. The hair covering his face had disappeared. So had the mane and teeth. It was Chris again. I crossed over to him. He watched me approach as if he didn't quite recognise me.

‘Did you see her?' he asked.

‘Who?'

He pointed at a spot about twenty yards from shore.

‘Out there.'

I peered into the watery murk. All I could see was the opposite shore and the public dock and the lights of the houses, but I didn't want to admit that to Chris.

‘Sure, man. I think so.'

He knew I was lying, though. It was like being with somebody when they spot a shooting star and you don't. It's not your fault, but you still feel like you've let them down.

23

‘You've put in me a tricky predicament, young man.'

‘I know, Mr Green. Sorry about that.'

I kept apologising, over and over. I didn't know what else to do. It would have been different if I'd hated our principal. But other than Mrs Oldham he was the only staff member at Seycove I actually liked. He had a square jaw, sort of like a comic book character, and this deep baritone voice. Back before Chris got expelled, Mr Green busted us both for smoking up in the woods behind the school. Don't ask me how. Some loser must have ratted us out. Chris got called to his office first, and after lunch it was my turn.

There was no use arguing with Mr Green. He was pretty savvy.

‘I know you weren't smoking cigarettes out there. I can smell it on you.'

I opened my mouth, but he held out a palm to stop me.

‘Don't say anything. Don't admit to it. I don't want to hear it.'

He got up and went to stand at the window, clasping his hands behind his back.

‘I had a chat with your friend Chris, earlier.'

He knew Chris and I were tight. We'd been in his office together a bunch of times.

‘Oh, yeah?' I said, trying to sound positive.

‘He was stoned, too. What's worse, you were both smoking it on school property.'

He came to stand over me, and I sort of wilted back into my chair.

‘Do you know how long I've been doing this?'

‘No, sir. I don't.'

‘Twenty-two years. Twelve as a teacher. Ten as a principal.' He stroked his jaw, getting super thoughtful. ‘If you've done something as long as I have, certain patterns start to emerge. Certain things repeat themselves. Do you understand me?'

‘I think so.'

‘Like your friend, Chris. He must seem like a pretty hip guy to you.' One thing that cracks me up is when a teacher uses some word that's about forty years old. ‘But I've seen kids like him before. Kids with his attitude. His problem with authority.' He sat back down. It was weird. If he'd been lecturing me, it would have pissed me off a lot more. But he actually looked pretty sad about the whole thing. ‘Back in my day we all wanted to act like James Dean. We all wanted to have the leather jacket and be the rebel without a cause. But that's a limited philosophy, son. A one-way street. Right now, Chris is heading down it. And as far as I can see, you're content to go along with him. Isn't that right?'