Under the Dusty Moon (10 page)

“I've been so busy, you know? We've hardly had time to sit down and he has a lot of questions for me. You wouldn't believe the research he's done. I think he probably knows more about me than I do.”

“So he's paying two thousand dollars to hang out with you in Japan? That's creepy, Mom. That's super creepy.”

“It's really not that big a deal, sweets. Ken was planning a trip to Japan to visit some family anyway, and it just happened to be around the same time as my tour.”

“That's a pretty big coincidence,” I said, unimpressed. “You're sure he's not, like, stalking you or something?”

“I don't think I've quite reached the level of fame where I have to worry about stalkers, sweetie. I'm not Tiffany.”

“Who?”

“You don't know Tiffany? ‘I Think We're Alone Now'?”

“Not ringing any bells.”

I knew I had a choice. I could go for the throat and make Mom tell me why she was being so weird, why she'd waited until the last minute to tell me that this creep Ken was going with her to Japan. I could start a fight that would last until she left the next morning and make us both furious, while she flew halfway around the world to do exactly what she wanted to do. Be Micky Wayne the rock star.

Or, I could keep my mouth shut and enjoy my last night together with my de facto best friend.

I seriously needed better friends.

So instead I turned on the TV and we watched a
double-bill
of
Empire Records
and
Say Anything
and I passed out, drooling, in her lap.

W
ay
too early the next morning, Mom shook me awake.

“It's time,” she whispered.

I offered her a primordial grunt in response and Mom left me alone to finish waking up. I packed up the last of my stuff into my giant backpack while Mom hauled her pile of luggage to the front door.

“You're not going to do anything stupid while I'm away, are you?” she asked.

“I should ask you the same thing.”

“And you'll be nice to Gran?”

I let out a
jumbo-sized
yawn. “
Uh-huh
.”

“And you're going to give Shaun another shot?”

“Maybe,” I said. “You're not going to fall in love with this stalker journalist are you?”

She laughed. “Please, Vic, Ken's just there for the story.”

“Yeah,” I said, “exactly.”

“Come on,” she said. “I've got to go meet the band to head to the airport.”

“Got everything?” I asked, surveying the apartment. It was a mess, with socks and drinking glasses littered all over the place, but that was the way it always looked. It would've been weird for us to come back to a place that was clean.

We made it downstairs, with the weight of our luggage threatening to send us both flying down the steps, and hailed a cab. I knew that if there had been any chance that we could have carried all our stuff on Mom's bike that she would've tried it, but it really was the only way.

Sooner than we both would've liked, we pulled up in front of Gran's house.

“It's terrible out here,” Mom said, getting out of the cab. “You can practically smell the fresh air.”

“What a nightmare,” I said, hauling my backpack out of the cab's trunk. “By the time you get back, I'll be a foot taller.”

“Better hope not, or we'll have to buy your pants at the clown college down the street.”

“What are you talking about?” I said, slamming the trunk shut.

“You know? Like those clowns on stilts? Like how they have those
super-long
pants to cover the stilts? You know what I mean.”

“I think it's time for you to go, Mom. Out,” I said, pointing with my good hand. “Out of the country, just go.”

“Aw, come on. Let me say goodbye to your gran before you banish me from the continent.”

“Fine,” I said, hoisting my backpack onto my shoulder. “Let's do this.”

Mom held up the giant bag from behind as I walked, since it was too heavy for me to carry on only one shoulder.

“It's okay if you hate me, you know,” Mom called. “It'll give you fuel for your great novel.”

“Who says I'm going to write a book?” I asked.

“Fine then, it'll be fuel for the great shrink I'm sure you'll need in a few years' time.”

“You could sell the plane ticket and use the money as a down payment for my therapy bills.”

“True,” she said. “But I think you can handle this.”

“Twenty bucks says I drive Gran up the wall, across the ceiling, and down the other side in the first hour.”

“Nah,” she said, “keep your money. I'm positive that'll happen.”

“My mother the optimist,” I said, shrugging off the backpack near the front door.

“Your mother who was raised by that woman.” She rang the doorbell. “It's showtime.”

Gran answered the door a split second later. “Geez!” Mom said. “You scared us. Were you just waiting for us to ring the bell?”

“Of course,” Gran said, smoothing the legs of her tan slacks. They really were slacks, and she insisted on calling them that. “I have nothing better to do with my Sunday than wait by the door for you to arrive.”

“I knew it!” Mom said. “Anyway, I'm here to unload this poor orphan child onto your doorstep.”

“Hmm, yes,” she said, considering me like I was a vacuum cleaner that Mom was selling
door-to
-door. “Come in, Victoria,” she said.

“Thanks, Gran,” I said, following her in and dragging the backpack behind me. “You coming, Mom?”

“I better not,” she said. “The band's waiting for me. Not to mention the cab driver.”

“Oh, right,” I said.

It felt like the bottom of my stomach had fallen out, having to say goodbye to her. Even for such an embarrassingly short period of time, relatively speaking. But why did she have to go? Why couldn't she have a normal job like other moms? And why was it so hard for me to say any of this out loud to her?

Instead I hugged her as hard as I could. She hugged me back even harder.

“Michelle, for Pete's sake,” Gran said, “you're only going to be away for eighteen days. You'd think you were leaving for good.”

And maybe it was something in Gran's callousness or maybe it was just my own embarrassment that had finally caught up to me, but I started to cry.

“Oh, come on, Vic. Don't start. You'll just get me going,” Mom said wiping a single tear away. The cab driver honked his horn. “I've gotta go, sweets. I love you.”

“Goodbye, Michelle,” Gran said. “Have a nice trip.”

“Thanks, Mom,” she said, letting go of my shoulders. “And thanks for taking care of Vic. You two be good, okay?” She sniffed. “I'll see you both real soon.”

“Bye,” I said as she gave my shoulder one more squeeze before booking it back to the cab.

It was going to be a long two and a half weeks.

Gran's house smelled like a doctor's office — clean, in a sterile way — and it was pretty obvious from our first morning that we weren't going to be spending a lot of grandmother–granddaughter bonding time together. Gran spent most of her days in her office with the door closed. She had absolutely no interest in me apart from making sure that I didn't die of starvation. She used to be a psychologist. I guess she still is, but she's retired now. She and my grampa met in university back in Halifax. Mom once told me, one night after she'd had a few drinks, that she thought it was weird her mother was so interested in the human brain when she was so bad at dealing with people. Grampa kind of made up for it, though, I guess.

I still miss him.

As soon as I'd unloaded my backpack into Gran's guestroom, I installed myself on the couch. Gran had an ancient TV with basic cable which was kind of a novelty since our place was
cable-less
, but I was glad I could still watch Netflix once that novelty inevitably wore off — Mom had given me full custody of the computer while she was away. Gran's
super-stiff
couch hurt my back, though, and it was impossible to get comfortable. I flipped through the channels over and over again but I couldn't focus on anything on the screen.

It's fine
, I told myself.
It's only two and a half weeks.
You'll be home soon and so will Mom. You're being a baby. Mom isn't even in Japan yet, she's barely been gone an hour. Just suck it up, you're being stupid
.

I checked my phone. Mom had been gone for
forty-five
minutes.

I scrolled through my recent texts. Nothing from Lucy, and nothing from anyone else. I hadn't messaged Shaun in weeks. He'd sent me a text a few days after our disaster date, but I'd been too frustrated with only having one good hand and still reeling from my mortification fest that I hadn't bothered to answer. When I thought about Shaun, all I could remember was how stupid I'd been that day. How dumb I'd been to bring him to a naked beach without even realizing it. I put the phone down.

A few hours and a
Love It or List It
marathon on the W Network later, Gran finally emerged from her office.

“I'm going to make myself an
egg-salad
sandwich for lunch. Would you like one, Victoria?”

“Oh, nah, that's okay,” I said, “I'm not really hungry. And I can't stand mayo.”

“What's wrong with mayonnaise?” she asked, giving me a hard stare like I'd told her that I wasn't that into breathing.

“It's nothing. It just kind of grosses me out, that's all. You know, the texture? It's just, like, wrong,” I said, getting up from my prone position on the couch.

“Fine,” she said, “then you'll have to fix your own lunch. And I hope you're not planning on lying around the house all afternoon. It's a beautiful day outside.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but with my arm broken there isn't really a lot I can do. Anyway, it's fine, I can make my own sandwich. I don't need you to … I just mean, I can do things myself. And I can choose how I spend my time. Just, like, leave me, okay? Alone?”

“Lunch,” she said, launching the words at me like
heat-seeking
missiles, “and then outside. I'll see you back at seven for dinner.”

“Fine,” I said, switching the TV off. I tried to muster as much fire in my voice as she had, but Gran had years of experience on her side. My vitriol sounded more like mild annoyance.

I followed her to the kitchen — pastel and linoleum, with a bowl full of wax fruit on the counter — and made myself a bologna and mustard sandwich, the fastest thing I could slap together, while she started methodically cracking and peeling a bowl of
hard-boiled
eggs she took out of the fridge.
Hard-boiling
is
hands-down
the most tragic thing you can do to an egg. It's just so tidy and bland. And then slathering it all in mayo? The thought of it made me want to puke.

I scarfed down my sandwich and put the plate in the sink without a word. I grabbed my phone and my bag from my room and locked the front door behind me, not caring where I wound up. Did Gran really think that wandering the
near-suburbs
was so much safer than biking downtown? But then I remembered the bookstore with the big yellow sign not far from where she lived, so I turned around and started wandering in its direction.

The store was packed with books and magazines and it was hard to figure out where to start. I walked over to the graphic novel section and scanned the shelves. There were lots that I wanted to look at, but I couldn't focus enough to pick one off the shelf to read. Instead I pulled out my phone.

First I texted Lucy.

What if each room had a ghost?
I typed with my left index finger, trying to balance my phone on my cast.
And they told you a story as you walked through the house?

The idea had only occurred to me moments before, but by the time I typed it out I was convinced it was brilliant. Ghosts were exactly what our creepy old house needed.

I stood there for a while looking at my phone, willing Lucy to text me back, but she didn't. I thought about texting Shaun, and hovered my finger over his name on my contact list, willing myself to text him.

What's left to lose?
I thought, and then typed the only thing I could think of.

Hey

I wondered where he was and what he was doing, but I didn't want to ask. I'd been MIA for so long that I figured he'd already forgotten about me. I was sure that he'd filed me away as some weird girl he'd spent an afternoon on a naked beach with and who' d then seemingly disappeared. You know, the usual.

I put my phone back into my bag and tried to forget about it. I told myself that it didn't matter if he texted me back or not. All that mattered was that I had the nerve to finally stop pretending to be invisible. Granted, it took being stranded at a bookstore in the
near-suburbs
without any friends or a place to go home to until dinner, but still, it felt like a step.

My phone vibrated and my heart felt like it had lost its own instruction manual. I pulled my phone out and saw that I had a message from Lucy and I could feel my whole body unclench.

Yeah
, she texted,
maybe. We're going to my aunt's house today so I can't work on the game.

Oh
, I texted,
that's cool. Tomorrow?

My mom, dad and aunt are going away for a few days. I have to stay with Iron Man 1 and Iron Man 2 while they're gone. Not sure when we'll be back but I'll msg you.

What happened to Batman and Bane?

Guess they needed a new game.

So what's up with your parents?
I texted
.

Nothing
, she answered,
just family stuff.

Okay
,
cool. See you soon.

If the Iron Men don't kill me first.

I was browsing through the magazines a few minutes later when I felt my phone vibrate again. I kept flipping through the hipster fashion magazine I had in my hand, trying my best to ignore it. It was no big deal, I told myself. It probably wasn't even Shaun. Probably it was just Gran. Maybe she'd finally figured out how to text with the cellphone Mom bought her for Christmas last year. She just wanted me to come home early, that was all. It definitely wasn't Shaun.