New Horizons (16 page)

I wished to be shocked back to life.

“What’d you wish for?” Murray asked. He had come up behind me just as I was putting my stuff back in my bag.

“I didn’t wish for anything to happen,” I lied. “I couldn’t think of anything.”

“Well, that’s actually a good one. I hope it comes true for you.”

Before getting our sleeping bags set up, we all sat around the fire. We were going to have a ceremony for those who were moving up to be Dandelions. Mary suggested singing campfire songs before we started.

“Anyone have a song they’d like to teach us?”

Brooke raised her hand.

“What is it, Brooke?” Mary asked.

“
Black socks
.”

Larry knew it. He sang in his old man, gravelly voice. And then Brooke came in just as he sang the last two words over and over of the girl guide song a lot of girls in my town, and apparently others, had grown up with—

“
Not yet. Not yet. Not yet
—”

Both Larry and Brooke sang
Black Socks,
and the chorus of
“Not yet. Not yet. Not yet”.
It was a
strange mix of youth and old age, ignorance and wisdom, and sadness and acceptance. Their voices almost sounded good together, and they abruptly stopped right at the same time.

“That was weird,” Karen said.

There were lanterns all around the fire, lighting up the logs we were sitting on. It was a celebration. Some of us were moving up to be a Dandelion, and it was a big deal if you were a Stone. Being a Dandelion meant a lot of things. We would have an extra ten minutes in the morning to wash and get ready. And there were washer and dryer privileges. Life was easier being a Dandelion.

Larry got up from his spot on the log. He looked at each of us and held his right hand up to silence us. He had a little bit of growth on his face, and his eyes were looking somewhere else while he waited for us to be quiet.

Eventually, we went silent and he began.

“The greatest disappointment that you will ever feel in life is for yourself,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows. That wasn’t exactly a motivating thing to hear. That was just depressing. It didn’t seem like a necessary piece of advice that we needed to know.

“Do not let that fact scare you,” he said. He walked around the fire, and kept his back to us. Larry turned around, and walked in the other direction. “Disappointment is a chance to change something, and change is life forgiving you. If you feel disappointed in yourself, know that you are lucky enough to care, and that you’re taking the first step in getting better.” He stopped and looked all around. At each person he gazed into their eyes. He skipped over me.

I kept my eyes on him, in case he came back to me.

“You are not in charge of how you feel. But you are in charge of your actions. Once you know the meaning behind your feelings, you can let yourself feel everything and not be afraid of it. You are allowed to feel sad, you are allowed to feel lonely, you are allowed to hate yourself. But if you know these feelings, and why they are there, they cannot consume you. That is what being self-aware is all about, and self-awareness is the key to being okay.”

I yawned. It was a long one too. It came over me and my ears popped.

“Tonight, some of you have moved on to be Dandelions, and you should feel accomplished since you have done something good for yourselves. And those of you who are not Dandelions, I want you to feel disappointed. Disappointment is life motivating you. Listen to your gut. Once you feel it, you will know you are on your way to getting where you want to be, even if you don’t know where that is right away.”

When Larry was done speaking, Mary, Rick, and Guy stood up and faced us. They went around and placed a long set of dark, wooden beads around each Dandelions neck. Karen got one, and Brooke, and Tracy, and then they skipped me, and Murray didn’t get one either, but other people did—-

The counsellors started to clap.

I looked down at my feet. It was awkward. We were in the middle of nowhere, and we were celebrating something stupid. And they were clapping for the Dandelions that had been revealed. It was all so stupid to be a Dandelion, and it didn’t matter to me at all because it didn’t actually exist.

Murray looked at me. He had a smirk on his face.

“What?”

“Looks like we’re more alike than different after all.”

I looked at the other girls. They were all wearing the wooden beads around their necks. Maybe they could hang themselves with it. I looked at Tracy. She had a little smirk at the corner of her lips. It was the first time I wanted to smack her and yell at her. She was falling for it. She was letting herself be treated. And there I was, in New Horizons’ world, still a random Stone that couldn’t be lifted off the ground.

Guy took our boots away from us when we were all in our sleeping bags. It was for our safety, in case we decided to go running in the night. The boys and girls were separated, just like back at our cabins, only there was ten feet between us.

I didn’t sleep much knowing the counsellors kept taking turns walking around and watching us. I didn’t like closing my eyes while someone looked at my face. My eyes stayed open and I froze from the cold ground. The tarp was doing nothing to keep the cold off of the sleeping bag and I felt damp. At least it wasn’t raining.

"Will you shut your goddamn breathing off? I can't sleep with you taking up all the oxygen," Karen whispered beside me.

I turned over onto my side and pretended not to hear her. But she made me smile. And it was a real, nice and wide smile because somewhere between arriving at New Horizons and canoeing across a lake, I had associated with a teenage screw up. Someone who was probably really bad. And since I didn’t know much about her besides our own context of New Horizons, she and I had become acquaintances. Anywhere else, we would never have looked at each other.

I shivered all night and listened to the sounds of the woods. Most of the time I was nervous about what animal was making what sound. It was creepy being out there without a tent. We were out in the open, and the sky was looking down.

There were fireworks.

Tracy bolted upright first. It startled her awake. Next were the twins, who got to their feet.

“It’s just fireworks, guys.” Mary pointed at the sky, like we didn’t have eyes of our own. “Get back in your sleeping bags.”

Murray’s eyes were on me immediately. I looked at him and I could just make out a smile on his face. He knew what I was thinking—that civilization was right there in front of us. And it was celebrating.

In the morning, after I had gotten maybe two hours of sleep total, Guy passed us back our boots. I pulled mine on, and the blisters on my feet stung. The socks seemed to be growing into the sores, making things worse, and I thought about going barefoot instead. I would’ve loved a second pair of socks, or even to wash them. I wasn’t a Dandelion though.

Our trip was almost over. All that was left was heading back across the lake, where our cabins and normal day to day life was waiting for us.

"Logan, wrong canoe," Larry said. He came up behind Karen and pointed to his canoe. Guy got in my canoe again, and Larry paired off with Logan. I got the better deal.

We were in last place in the long line of canoes. I wasn’t exactly in a rush to get back, and I think Guy sensed that. I was off in daydream land, where it was easier to live. A couple times I had pulled my paddle out of the water and sat it across my lap while he pushed our canoe forward. I liked to watch the water and how it separated at the front. It was calming to watch—

“Val.”

I flinched and put my paddle back in the water.

“Wake up.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Just thinking.”

“You can think and paddle at the same time. And you can even talk about what you’re thinking about too.”

“Don’t be crazy.”

We followed along all the way to camp. When everyone else tied up their canoes, ours stayed adrift to wait for room on the dock. I looked around. The fence was at the edge of the cliffs, high up away from the shoreline. Further down the shoreline, the woods met the water. I knew I would find a road if I disappeared for a bit into it.

But I didn’t have the chance right then. I hooked up my canoe to the dock, and I walked back up the stairs. If I actually wanted to escape from the program, I had to wait until the perfect, exact moment when everything lined up for me.

10:
THE STRAY

Sharon came and knocked on our door in the morning.
Each knock was a light, quick, and happy tune. Did she not feel the morning like we did? Maybe that was something old people didn’t notice—that there was a different kind of ache when the sun wasn’t up yet. Old people’s bodies didn’t know the difference when it was all one, giant pain. When she entered the cabin, her wrinkly skin was lifted into a smile. It wasn’t contagious. Nothing about her was contagious around people like us. We were immune to everything she was about.

“Why are you smiling?” Brooke asked. “It’s not even bright out yet.”

“It’s your shower day for your group,” Sharon said. “Get your toiletry bag and follow me. This is something your bodies need.”

It hurt to even think about moving. But there was a point when you were so dead to the environment that your body could switch into autopilot and help you do a version of whatever you were supposed to be doing. Without even thinking about it, I was climbing down my ladder and slipping on my boots. Autopilot me didn’t bother with socks or tying up my boots—my naked feet got into those tight boots and set me to follow the girls. I stayed in the back of the line and tilted my head to the right so nobody would look at me.

“Everybody stop.”

When I looked up, Sharon had her hands up in the air. We were in front of the fence. Where the gate opened to the stairs. Where the stairs led down to the shoreline.

I smiled.

“Stop smiling,” Guy said.

I flinched. I hadn’t known he was even around.

Guy stayed behind me at the back of the line as Sharon led our group down to the dock. It was freezing. There was a fog across the water that made the morning seem more damp. There were loons yelling at each other from across the lake, and I imagined they were arguing. I would’ve liked to see one, but there was no view from where we stood. It was too early to see much of anything.

Brooke stripped down to her underwear first. She carefully took off her wooden beads around her neck before she jumped into the water. She screamed when she came through the surface, shocked that water before sunrise was terrifyingly cold. I was too tired to find that funny. Everything that everyone was doing was bothering me, and that was how I knew it wasn’t even 6:00 a.m. yet.

“Valerie, you have four minutes left!” Sharon yelled. She held up her watch that was on her wrist and tapped the glass in case we had no clue where four minutes were coming from.

Twin and Twinner were shivering and I could hear the stutters in their whispers. I bet they could still understand each other because they had that bond that only twins had. They could feel each other’s pain and knew what the other was thinking and all of that. I wondered if I would survive having a twin. It had to be both hard and wonderful.

Karen stripped down into her underwear. When I saw that, I quickly slipped off my shorts and t-shirt and clumsily jumped into the lake before she could. I regretted it as soon as the water touched my toes. I kept my eyes shut because I didn’t want to see that I couldn’t see anything under the water. I tried not to scream when I came through the surface.

“Wow, oh my God. Wow.” I wiped the water from my eyes and there were blurry versions of the girls looking at me. I wanted to jump out of the water as quickly as I had jumped in, but Karen was there, judging me. I pretended I didn’t feel the cold stab into my skin, and I floated there like it was a summer day at Mum’s new house—that I had finally gone to her lake and jumped in the icy water like she wanted me to.

“How does it feel? Refreshing?” Sharon asked. “Blue Lake is known to be on the chilly side. But you’ll get used to it.”

There was nothing refreshing about cold water. It chilled every bone in my body and reminded me of mean things about decent people. I could recall every bad thing that happened to me in my life just by being cold. Why did freezing your tits off have a way of changing your entire outlook on things? Was that the refreshing aspect of being cold?

At the end of the dock, Guy was watching me. Maybe he knew what I was thinking. That I could just back-crawl, and kick hard, and swim to the other side of the lake. Maybe I could make it there before he could get to me.

“Come on out, Valerie,” Guy said.

I treaded for a second longer before I pulled myself onto the dock. The other girls eventually waded in from the side. Karen stayed on the rocks and threw the water onto her like some kind of rinse. I lathered myself up with the bar of soap. There were suds falling off of me, and the soap turned a brownish colour from being on my body. When I jumped in again there were bubbles all around me. I dunked under the water to make sure the soap rinsed out of my hair. It was weird using a bar of soap in my hair. But I didn’t care about my hair anymore because it wasn’t really mine. It was brown and boring and I didn’t care if it all fell out.