Fireball (6 page)

‘Now you're asking for it.'

‘No – Julian!'

She started squealing and giggling at the same time. Totally immature. I looked towards shore. I saw the reeds in the shallows, the pebbled beach, and the rickety A-frame emergency hut. Julian had picked her up and was carrying her over his shoulder in a fireman lift. She kicked her legs and beat on his back with her fists, still laughing.

Chris caught me staring.

‘You want a piece of that, Razor?'

I shrugged. ‘She's definitely a bit of a fox.'

‘A petit renard, huh?'

I sat back, closing my eyes. ‘She's not really my type, though.'

I was lying, of course. Me and Chris never lied to each other, but sometimes if a girl's involved you have to make an exception. It's like when you're little, and you both want to play with the same toy. One of you has to let go or there'll be trouble. So I lied to him. Up until then, they hadn't done any­thing. He
would have told me if they had, but he'd been holding back on account of me. Now I'd given him the green light.

I didn't have much chance with her, anyways.

‘Come on – get in here you little tramp.'

‘Why should I?'

‘Because you want to.'

She laughed and came over. Like I said, she loved it when he talked tough. She took my place in the dinghy and they paddled out. Me and Jules sat on the porch, watching them float away, both of us wishing we were the one with her. The sun had set, leaving the lake cool and still as a slab of stone. We could hear the murmur of their voices but it was impossible to make out what they were saying. Jules passed me the mickey of Canadian Club he'd been drinking with her.

He asked, ‘Do you think she likes me?'

‘I don't know, man.'

Neither of us spoke for a bit. I could feel the whiskey heating up my belly.

Then he said, ‘Remember when Pat Shaw beat you up?'

Of course I remembered. It had only happened in October.

He scuffed his heel on the dirt. ‘Sorry I ran off like that.'

‘It's okay, man. I don't blame you.'

That made him feel better.

‘You want to cook some of that food?'

‘Sure.'

I ducked into the cabin. It was more of a hut, really – with a single room where we'd laid out our sleeping bags. I carried all our supplies onto the porch, and we cooked Pot Noodle on my camp stove while getting absolutely hammered. My stove harsh sucks. It runs on canned heat and takes about three hours just to boil a cup of water. By the time Chris and Karen paddled in, the whiskey was gone and we could barely stand up, but the noodles still weren't ready. Chris broke out a twixer of his mom's vodka, and the four of us huddled around the stove, waiting for those shitty noodles to soften. Julian loved it. He kept stirring the water with his spoon. Every so often he'd scoop out a noodle and take a little bite. Then he'd say something super optimistic, something like, ‘Only a few more minutes, guys.' That harsh cracked me up. Jules wasn't such a bad guy, really. Just a little confused.

10

Last Halloween, I hit this guy in the eye with a bottle rocket. No joke. Right in the eye. It was a total fluke. I could have shot six hundred more bottle rockets, aiming for his eye, and I wouldn't have been able to do it again. I wasn't even trying to hit him in the first place, let alone in the eye. I was just sort of shooting in his general direction.

‘Who the fuck did that?' he shouted.

We were down at Myrtle Park, this park by my house where we went every Halloween to have bottle rocket wars. Kids come from all over the North Shore, carrying bags loaded up with Roman candles, bottle rockets, sonic booms – whatever. You never know who you'll meet down there. That's what makes it so awesome.

‘Did what?'

‘Shot me in the fucking eye!'

There were two of them. One pointed in my direction.

‘That kid. It was that kid.'

I don't know how the hell he knew it was me. I mean, it was like a war zone down there. Firecrackers were going off all over the place: hissing and whining and spitting and popping. Flashes of light and streaks of flame and the stench of sulphur smoke filled the air. Somehow, in the middle of all that chaos, this guy had spotted me. I was alone, too. Well, almost alone. Julian was with me, but that's even worse than being alone.

‘What are we going to do?' he asked.

‘Act real casual,' I said.

I was drunk and feeling cocky, or else I would have taken off. Instead I just stood there, in this really lame Spiderman costume that was way too tight and made me look about six years old. The two guys trudged across the battleground towards us. The first was short and fat and mean-looking, like a bulldog. I didn't recognise him. The other guy – the one I'd hit – had thin, bony cheeks, a crooked nose, and teeth that looked too tiny, like a ferret's.

It was Pat Shaw.

‘You nearly took my eye out, bitch.'

‘Sorry, man. It was an accident.'

My voice sounded all high and squeaky, like I'd inhaled helium. Julian didn't say anything. We both knew about Pat Shaw. He'd gone to jail for taking a baseball bat to the back of this guy's head. The guy had looked at him wrong or something.

‘I don't give a fuck,' he said.

‘Listen, Pat,' Julian said, lifting up his mask. He was wearing a Jason hockey mask. Don't ask me why. Horror movies scared the shit out of him. ‘It wasn't me, okay? I didn't shoot it. I know you have a beef with this guy. But I'm not part of it. Right?'

I couldn't believe it. I'd known him for ten years and suddenly I'd become ‘this guy'. Unfortunately for Jules, Pat wasn't buying it.

‘You're both dead,' he said.

Then he grabbed me and punched me two or three times – super fast. Right in the stomach. I doubled over, clutching my gut and gagging for breath. He must have hit me again, or kicked me, because I ended up on the ground. I remember seeing Julian sprinting away through the haze, but my vision was all screwy – like in a movie when the camera's tilted at a weird angle. I heard him shrieking, ‘It's Pat Shaw. Pat Shaw!' He was in a real panic. That caused all the other guys to panic. They started running with him.

‘You like that, huh?' Pat shouted down at me. ‘You want some more?'

After that it gets harder to remember. Something cracked against my temple. Then I felt these blows on my lower back – right in the spine and kidneys. That was when I did something pretty embarrassing. I screamed. I screamed and covered my head with both arms, curling up into a ball like a baby porcupine.

Then someone said: ‘Leave him alone.'

It was Chris. While everybody else had been running away, he'd been running towards me. There was the hot, salty taste of blood in my mouth and my ears were ringing as if a tuning fork had been struck against my skull. I still couldn't breathe, but somehow I managed to roll over. Pat was standing right there, ready to kick me again.

He said, ‘Who the fuck are you?'

‘Just leave him alone.'

Chris was dressed as a zombie – a fairly old-school zombie. He'd slashed up his jeans and hoody and painted his face green. I'd helped him put fake blood all over his cheeks and forehead. He looked pretty nuts. I wouldn't have wanted to mess with him, anyway.

Pat said, ‘Fat fucking chance.'

He turned on Chris, took a step, and followed through with the biggest haymaker I've ever seen. It smashed into Chris's jaw, knocking him backwards and down, right down to the ground. One punch. Pat had one-punched him. I'd never seen anybody do that to Chris.

‘You fucker,' I said. I think I was crying. Not a lot, but a little. ‘I hate you, fucker.'

Pat laughed. So did his friend. If they'd been smart, they would have gone over to finish Chris off. Instead they stood there laughing like jackasses. I guess they thought he was all done. So did I, for that matter. They only stopped laughing when Chris moved. He got a hand beneath him, then a knee, and sort of peeled himself off the ground. Real blood dribbled from his mouth, smearing his make-up and covering his chin. All of a sudden he actually did look like a zombie, like something you couldn't kill.

Pat said, ‘You're kidding me, right?'

In answer, Chris took off his hoody and tossed it aside, almost casually. He raised his fists and spread his feet slightly apart. I knew that stance.

‘Okay,' Chris said. ‘Let's go.'

They asked me – a bunch of times – why I got in the car with him that day.

That's why.

When they took our photo for the paper, Chris wore that same outfit. Not the make-up, obviously, but the jeans and hoody. It wasn't like he had tons of clothes or anything. Besides, having the jeans all cut up like that looked pretty sweet, even if he wasn't trying to be a zombie. I still have a copy of the picture. I've handled it so much the clipping is getting tattered, and you can't really make out our faces any more. Julian's dressed in a suit. The medal is hanging from his neck and he's beaming at the camera like a real champ. I've got mine around my neck, too. But I look uncomfortable and sort of confused about the whole thing. Then there's Chris. He's holding his medal at his side and looking off frame. The expression on his face is distracted, as if he's seen something the rest of us haven't. As if he already knows what's coming.

11

Surreal. That's the word for it.

It was just like that Hayden song. You know – the one about the woman who locked her kids in their station wagon and drove it straight into a lake, killing them all.

The car is rolling down to water…

Why are we strapped in our seats…

Except, in this case, it was the lady – not the kids. And she'd strapped herself in there. Plus, it was an accident. Or everybody thought it was. But basically, whenever I hear that song, I can't help thinking about it.

The beach at Cates used to be pretty sweet. It was never that crowded or anything, and the only people who went there were potheaded hippies and a few grimy beachcombers. But over the last few years it's suddenly become the place to be, and all these treats have started turning up. I don't even know where they come from. Probably Sentinel or Handsworth or one of the other shitty schools in West Van. It's getting almost as bad as Kits Beach. The girls just lie there, oiled up with suntan lotion and trying to look like models. The guys are even worse. They've all got waxed chests, stiff limbs, and orange skin from popping too many tanning pills. They kind of look like department store mannequins, actually. The only difference is that mannequins can't move. These guys are always moving. They prance around the beach, hucking frisbees and smacking volleyballs and laughing these super fake laughs. I don't know why they drive halfway across the North Shore to show off at our beach, but watching them isn't exactly an enjoyable experience. It wasn't for Chris, anyways.

Julian saw things a bit differently.

‘What do you think, guys? Want to toss the frisbee?'

He started bringing this beach bag to Cates, filled with power bars and bottled water and at least four kinds of sunscreen. He even carried a frisbee in there, hoping that one day Chris and I would change our minds and play with him. Or maybe he secretly wanted somebody else to ask him. Maybe he was planning on becoming a mannequin all along.

I said, ‘I don't think so, man.'

‘Come on.'

‘Fuck off, Jules.'

Chris hated frisbee. He harsh sucked at it, too. He threw like a girl, with this very limp wrist. That's because he never played. You can't be good at something you hate. If he wanted to, he could have practised frisbee for a week and he'd have been better than anybody. He didn't bother, though. Just looking at a frisbee made him want to fight somebody. So what we did at the beach was the same as what we did at the river: we lazed around. We'd find a sunny spot on the grass and put on our shades and light up.

‘Man, what a scorcher.' Jules took off his hat to wipe his forehead. Underneath his hair was all wet and spiky, like a baby chicken's. ‘How's that bowl coming, Chris?'

‘It's coming in your mouth.'

The sun had stopped dead, directly overhead, like a white-hot nail pounded into the sky. Light smashed down against the water, shattering into these blinding shards. Stepping onto the sand was like sticking your foot into a pit of coals. That's how hot it was – too hot to move, too hot to doze, too hot to do anything but lie there and get ridiculously stoned.

‘Hit this, Razor. It's blazing.'

Chris handed me his pipe – one of those glass pipes with psychedelic patterns in it. I sucked hard on the mouthpiece. Smoke scalded along my throat and filled my lungs. I didn't exhale. I just sat there with a tingling tightness in my chest as the pipe passed from me to Julian to Chris. When it came back to me, I coughed up smoke and took another hoot, and another, holding it in longer each time. After the next one my head rush didn't wear off. I knew what that meant.