The New Normal (6 page)

“Um, do you have any gloves?”

“What?”

“Gloves?” I mimed putting on a pair of gloves.

“No, no, I never use gloves. You don't need them.” He scooted back out to the front.

I sighed, rolled up my sleeves, plunged my arms into the sink and began to scrub my way through the mess of lava-encrusted dishes. The dishwater was super hot, and I began to sweat. Sweat rolled from my armpits down into the crooks of my elbows. I guess this is why they call it elbow grease, I thought. Sweat ran between my breasts and dripped from my forehead. The sink was beside the massive oven, and I kept getting hotter and hotter. My skin reddened and began to burn and prickle from the bleach and the heat. After about twenty minutes, I thought I was going to pass out from heatstroke and went to look for a washroom, to splash my face with cold water.

The first door I tried led me into a walk-in freezer. I turned to leave but then decided that it would be okay to stay in there for a minute and cool off. The metal door sucked shut behind me. I breathed in the icy air and watched the steam rise off my body. Almost instantly, I was chilled. I pushed on the door, but it wouldn't open. There was a big circular metal handle, and I threw my weight into it. It depressed and then sprang back against my ribs, but the door didn't budge. I stepped back and stared at the door. There must be some kind of trick to opening it that I didn't know. There were actually three handles: the circular one, a small rectangular one that pulled up, and a horizontal bar. I tried them all in different combinations. The door still wouldn't open. I started to shiver. It was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, as they say. I kicked the circular handle hard, and it sprang back. Well, this is humiliating, I thought. I would have to bang on the door until old Milky-Eyes came to rescue me. I began pounding my fists against the freezer door. “HEY!” I yelled. “I'M LOCKED IN THE FREEZER!” I felt like an idiot, but I kept at it for a few minutes. “HELLO?”

No one came.

Goose bumps had popped out all over my body. I
wrapped
my arms around myself and blew into my hands to warm up, then tried the handles again. Nothing. I looked around the freezer for a tool to pry the door open with, or a fire alarm to pull, or something to get me the hell out of that cryonic chamber.

What I found were six dozen boxes of frozen cookie dough. I started with chocolate chip, then moved on to white chocolate–macadamia nut. After I'd eaten as much cookie dough as I could, I tried the steel door again. It didn't open. I tried kicking it again. It didn't open. My fingernails were blue, and my knees and thighs trembled with cold. I took a frozen bag of tomato soup and thwacked it against the door again and again, until the brick of soup was shattered into slushy red flakes. “HELP!” I yelled as loud as I could before I realized that the old man was probably deaf. I tried smashing a bucket of ice cream against the handles, against the door itself. It wouldn't fucking open. Then the single lightbulb above me flickered once, twice…and went out. I was locked inside a freezer in total darkness. No one knew where I was. Tears slid down my face and froze on my cheeks. A pathetic whimper escaped from my shivering lips, and I curled up under a shelf of frozen pie shells to die.

six

The next thing I remembered was old Milky-Eyes shaking me by the shoulders.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing in here, kid?”

“I got l-l-locked in. I c-c-couldn't get out,” I said through chattering teeth.

“Well, come on, get up.” He dragged me up and out of the freezer, put a winter coat over me and handed me a steaming cup of coffee. “Drink that.” He was eyeing me suspiciously. “What were you doing in there?
”

“I-I was l-l-looking for the w-w-washroom.”

He pointed to a stool beside the oven. “Sit down there until you warm up. Then you can go.”

I sidled up to the oven and curled my icy hands around the white coffee mug, absorbing the heat. After about ten or fifteen minutes, I was sufficiently thawed.

Milky-Eyes came back into the kitchen. “All right, go on, get outta here, kid.”

“What about…”

“What?”

“Tomorrow.”

His blue eyes spit out icy sparks. “You didn't even finish the dishes! You think I'm going to hire you? Forget it! Get out of here! And don't come back!”

Under my breath I damned him to suffer in eternal hell. Then I threw my coffee cup in the sink. I ripped off the puffy jacket and tossed it on the stool, grabbed my backpack and headed for the front door. He scurried after me, shaking his fist. “Don't ever set foot in here again, you little thief!”

I flipped him off as I stomped out the door.

When I got home, Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over a stack of bills.

“Hey, how did it go today?”

“Fine.”

“Did you get a job?”

“Yes and no.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. Are you hungry?”

“No. Where's Dad?”

“He's in the garage.”

“Right.”

“Where else would he be?” She rolled her eyes. “He practically lives in there.”

“I guess he can't get too far with a broken leg.”

“He can't even drive, T.”

“Maybe that's for the best.”

“Shh!” She winked at me. I let a little snicker slip out, and so did Mom.

“Tamar, honey, would you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Would you rub my neck a little bit? I was practicing shoulder stand today and I think I cricked my neck. It's really sore. Just right here.” She grabbed the knobby part at the base of her neck.

“All right.”

“Ooh! Your hands are like ice! Is it cold out?”

“No.”

“Well, you know what your grandma used to say: cold hands, warm heart.”

“What if you have warm hands?”

“What? Oh, I don't know. That feels really good. Yes, that's the spot. Right there. Ooh. Ow. I should've used a bolster, I guess.”

“Yoga is the new plague.”

“I just did something I shouldn't have.”

“Yeah, yoga twenty-four/seven.”

“It's what I need right now, Tamar. I wish you would try it.”

I switched on my documentary-announcer voice. “Sheila Robinson, yoga victim, reveals all in tonight's expos
é
, ‘A Downward Dog Spiral.'”

She giggled. “Aw, T. I can always count on you for a laugh.”

“You're welcome.” I stopped rubbing her neck and put some water on to boil.

“Maybe you could be a massage therapist.”

“I don't think so, Mom.”

I made myself a big cup of hot chocolate, then went to bed and piled six blankets on top of me. I was still shivering as I fell asleep.

Monday came early, as it always does. I was nervous as hell about going to school with the wig on. What if people could tell? What if it fell off? How was I going to style it? I wished, and not for the last time, that Abby and Alia were around to help me. They were actually very stylish individuals. Very chic. Fashionistas, they would say. I decided to wear the wig loose with a dark-purple toque over top, so it would look pretty natural, pretty real. I used extra adhesive to make sure it would stay put. The parents assured me that it looked terrific, so I had to take their word for it.

Nobody at school said anything. Probably no one even noticed—except one person: Roy.

“Is that real?” he said when I met him at his locker at lunchtime.

“Shh, keep it down, will ya?”

“Sorry. But…is it?” he whispered.

“What do
you
think?”

He reached out as if he wanted to touch it but changed his mind and adjusted the strap on his backpack instead. “I think acupuncture is very powerful,” he said.

“Definitely.” I nodded.

“But it would probably take more than one treatment to get that result.”

Damn. Thought I'd fooled him.

“Looks great anyway,” he said. Then he looked at his shoes.

“Thanks.”

“How did your audition go?”

“No idea. The cast list should be up now. Let's go see if I made the cut.”

As we navigated through halls teeming with hungry students, I told myself I didn't care if I was in the play or not.

The list was taped to the door. I scanned it quickly and didn't see my name.

“Tamar—”

“It's no big deal. I don't care. I didn't really want to be in it anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I don't care. I'm not upset that I didn't make it.”

Then Roy pointed to the top line of print:

Auntie Em…………………………Tamar Robinson

“Ah!” I said.

“Ah!” he said.

“I made it! I'm in the play!”

“You're Auntie Em!”

Then I hugged him. I couldn't help it. I gave him a huge bear hug, and he gave it right back. Then I jumped up and down like an idiot for a while.

“Congratulations!”

“Wow, I didn't think…I mean…I thought maybe, but wow. This is so…I don't know…”

“Great? Wonderful? Fantastic?”

“Yeah.”

“Let's go celebrate. Dairy Queen sundaes, my treat.”

Sitting in that stained Dairy Queen booth, reading the initials carved into the table, was fantastic.

S.M. + A.A. = TL
4
-EVER!

S.M. IS A FAGGOT!

4
:
20
4
-LIFE!

I was on cloud nine. I had glossy hair, I had a role in the spring play, and I was eating a chocolate sundae with Roy Lee. Things were looking up. Maybe I would survive this after all.

seven

Our first rehearsal was the next day after school. Everyone introduced themselves, and then we got our scripts and did a cold read-through. I couldn't believe that I had been chosen to play Auntie Em. My favorite line was
We all got to work out our own problems,
Henry
. Which I say right after Dorothy does her rainbow bit. The girl chosen to play Dorothy was Beth Dewitt. Beth was in grade twelve and had blindingly blond hair that came almost to her ass. She was supershort, not even five feet. She wasn't especially pretty, but she had breasts the size of basketballs, which gave her a significant edge in the ongoing popularity contest that is high school. She didn't say anything to me at the rehearsal, but if looks could kill, I'd be deader than a doornail, whatever that is.

There were nineteen people in the cast. Almost all of them were strangers to me. I knew a few kids, but not many. Cole Benson, the Scarecrow, was in my English class. He was always getting kicked out of class for making inane comments, but once in awhile he said something so ridiculous that the whole class, including Ms. Sanderson, busted a gut laughing. So Cole wasn't a total waste of skin. He had short dark hair that was blond at the tips, and he usually spiked it up with gel, but I thought it looked better without it. They say that gel can make you go bald over time. When I had hair, I never used it. Cole was popular with the ladies and had about a dozen girlfriends a year. He was cute in the same way that a sloppy, slobbering puppy is cute.

Sharon Strombolopoulous, also known as Yeti, was playing the Wicked Witch of the West. Kids had called her Yeti for as long as I could remember. She had a massive head of thick black hair, hairy arms and the damning shadow of a dark mustache. I would kill for a mustache right now.

I also knew Marcy Mavis, who was playing Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Marcy had fine, honey-blond hair that was naturally straight and probably never tangled and always looked freshly washed. Marcy was perfect for the role of Glinda because she really was supersweet and nice to everybody and never said or did anything that might hurt someone's feelings. She had that soft, sugary sort of voice that makes you want to gag. Marcy was almost too good to be true. That's why I didn't want to be her friend, even though she tried to buddy up with me a bit last year. I went to her house once. We drank lemonade and painted our nails, but she didn't have anything interesting to say. She was like a cupcake—sweet and pretty, but all fluff on the inside. I wanted to hate Marcy, but I couldn't. She was too nice.

And I knew Scott McKinnon, the gay guy who was playing the Tin Man. He didn't know me though. He had light brown hair that he wore in a crewcut, and he was what my sisters would call superfine. Always well dressed, tall, cheekbones that could cut glass. He looked more like an adult than the rest of us.

The line reading was kind of boring, but I guess you have to start somewhere. Ms. Jane was excited. You could tell because she kept leaping around the stage to stand close to whoever was reading, and she would smile at them and say, “Great, great, excellent.” Her enthusiasm was contagious. “I want you to know that
The Wizard of Oz
tops the list of my favorite plays of all time, and I know that all of you are going to make this a fantastic production!”

She said that Dorothy's story was the exemplary hero's journey, but that we were all important on the journey; each one of us was necessary, and we should all be very proud of ourselves for taking on this challenge.

I was just glad I didn't have to kiss anyone in the play. Lisa Arseneault, the girl who played Juliet last year, ended up getting mono.

Having mono is terrible. I know because Abby got it when she was in grade eight and all she could do was lie in bed and watch game shows and soap operas for three months. Even though she wanted to go outside and actually wanted to go to school, she couldn't. If she even came downstairs to get a drink, she would have to lie down on the couch for half an hour to rest afterward. So the four of us constantly took drinks and meals and homework and books and movies and stuff up to her room instead. She was a real whiny pain in the ass and would make you go back downstairs if you forgot to put sugar in her tea, and she hardly ever said thank you or anything. But we all kept doing it anyway, because that's what families do. They look after each other.

Sometimes, when I got my allowance, I would buy her a treat, like nail polish or a
Seventeen
magazine, to cheer her up. Her friends didn't even come over to visit her. I guess they didn't want to catch mono. One day, I went into her room to bring her some Gatorade, and she was lying face down on the bed, crying into her pillow. Her staticky auburn hair was all over the place. I put the bottle of Gatorade on her bedside table and sat down on the carpet beside her bed.
She put the pillow over her head.

“GO AWAY!” she yelled.

“What's wrong?”

She started crying even harder. “Hefferewonfinksimafathlult!”

“What?”

She removed the pillow and turned over. “Everyone thinks I'm a fat slut.”

“Oh…are you?”

She threw the pillow at me. “I'm a virgin, Tamar! Okay? I'm a freaking virgin. How can a virgin be a slut?”

“How can a virgin give birth?”

“Oh
god!
Just go to hell already. Get away from me.”

“Because you have mono, that's why they think that?”

“Obviously.”

“'Cause you get mono from kissing?”

“That's not the only way you can get it. There are other ways too. It's highly contagious. It's probably the most contagious disease in the world.”

“Right.”

“What am I gonna do?” She flopped back on the bed, covering her face with her hands.

“I say screw 'em. Who cares what they think? They're probably just jealous because all the guys want to kiss you and not them.”

“That's true.”

“Well, forget about them then. They're idiots. You should be happy that you're so pretty and so many guys like you. I've never even kissed a guy.”

“
Really?
”

“Nope.”

“Tamar, you're, like, fourteen already!”

“So?”

“So you should already be way past your first kiss! What are you, gay or something?”

I shrugged.

“It's okay if you are. I mean, I won't disown you or anything, but holy crap, you need to get some action!”

“Why?”

“
Why
?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Because making out is fun! It's exciting!”

“I think it's gross.”

“Well, you wouldn't know, would you?”

I shrugged again.

“You're gonna like it, trust me.” Then she sat up and studied my face carefully, as if she was trying to figure out what
was wrong with me. She looked at me for what felt like a long
time, then squinted. “ALIA!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.

“She's not here.”

“Where is she?”

“I don't know.”

“How come nobody calls her a slut? You should see all the pathetic guys she goes out with. All these frigging loser skater boys that she meets at the punk shows. Frigging drug addicts.”

“Well anyway, I wouldn't worry about what they're saying. People are morons. You know that.”

“I guess. It really pisses me off though, you know? I feel like punching someone!”

“Take it easy, Abby. You should be resting.”

“Rest, rest, rest! I'm sick and tired of resting! I don't want to rest anymore! I want to go outside and go to the mall and go to the movies and—”

“You'll be better soon.”

“When?”

“Maybe next week.”

“Promise?”

“I promise you're going to get better soon. You'll be making out again in no time.” I stood up to leave.

“Tamar?”

“What?”

“Do you want to watch
90210
with me?”

“I can't. I have a ton of homework.”

“Please?”

How could I say no? She was my sister, and she needed me. I sat on the end of her bed and we watched
Beverly Hills
90210
together. Abby fell asleep about twenty minutes into it, but I stayed and watched the rest, because I didn't want her to wake up and realize I had left her.

No one in our house caught mono from her, so maybe it wasn't the most contagious disease in the world. It was good that Alia had her own room, though, or else she probably would have caught it.

She and Abby were born identical, but they looked less and less alike as they got older. They had totally different clothing styles, haircuts, attitudes—everything. Alia was a punk princess,
Abby was a pop princess. But they were each other's best friend forever. There was never any doubt about that. They even had their own special language. Silly words and phrases that didn't mean anything to anyone else but the two of them. And sometimes I wonder, That night as they lay dying, bleeding all over the road, what did they say to each other? Did they use their last breaths to offer each other some small comfort? I hope so. And I hope whatever they said was nicer than what I last said to the two of them.

To Abby, it was something like “Tarty. Now get out of my room” when she asked me how she looked. And to Alia, I was cold.

“Can I borrow your black belt, Tamar?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“'Cause you'll wreck it.”

“I won't wreck it!”

“What do you even need a belt for? Your jeans are too tight already, Al. They're not gonna fall down.”

“I need a black accent, okay?”

“Don't you have a black belt?”

“Only in karate! Hi-YAA!” She kicked the air between us and chopped it up with her hands.

I stared at her without smiling, which was an effort.

“Okay, I do have a black belt, but it's too wide for these loops. Please, Tamar? I will never ask you for anything ever again. I promise.”

“I doubt that.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

I rolled my eyes.

She put her palms together in front of her heart and made whimpering puppy sounds.

“Here.” I opened my closet and threw the belt at her. “Now leave me alone. I'm trying to find the angle of this hypotenuse.”

“Sure thing, Ms. Brainiac.” She saluted me on her way out the door.

If I had known these would be the last times I would see either of them alive, what would I have said?

I'm sorry I wasn't the big sister you ordered. I'm sorry things between us weren't better. I wanted them to be. I never stopped loving you. I never stopped hoping things would change.

You think you have so much time. When you're sixteen, you think you have all the time in the world. But you don't, and you never know when your time will run out. I know I should have tried harder to be patient, to be kind. But it got to the point where I couldn't stand either one of them and could scarcely believe we were related.

Regret is like a heavy stone you carry around in your pocket. You know that it's useless. You know that it's weighing you down. But you just can't seem to throw it away.