Author's Note: This was literally a jumble of sentences, notes, and poetry bits – all unconnected – that somehow got strung together into something that might resemble a fic…you know, if you tilt your head to the left and squint your eyes just so.
In other news, I got a second job working in a bookstore. So I get a pretty nice employee discount on books. Except I'm broke as shit now so I can't even afford to buy groceries, and because of this there's nothing in the house right now except soup, saltines, and marshmallows.
Takes place between Cam breaking his arm and the garden being destroyed.
Twitter: Albatrosstam14 (protected tweets)
I don't own Degrassi.
Weather reports promise the warmest spring of a century. Temperatures are record high, high enough for people to strut around in t-shirts and say, "fuck it, I'm gonna wear sandals even if my toes get frozen solid when the sun goes down". There are blue skies as far as anyone can see, and even with the chill in the air it's still a balmy afternoon. The weathercasters are calling it "Indian Spring", which apparently is offensive because they ran a story on the eleven o'clock news about how some people were throwing a rally, calling the weather guys a bunch of racists for using the word "Indian". He thought it was kind of amusing that most of the protestors were white people.
This had been before the story about the woman suing a garbage truck and the city's sanitation committee for running over her dog, and right after the one about the fund raiser they were having downtown this weekend. There was going to be live music, and a local ice cream place was catering.
Maybe he could check that out. A waffle cone's worth of chocolate chip cookie dough might make him sick enough to warrant a hospital visit, and they couldn't make him play in the finals if he'd been in the freaking hospital, could they?
He's trying to figure this out as he stares out the window of Jake's truck, watching the naked trees flash by in a whir of brown and earth. They zip by so fast they make him feel a little sick, so he moves his face towards the window just a little. The air smells fresh and crisp, the wind rubbing across his face like a hand on his cheek.
A hand closes over his own sweaty one, rested on his thigh. "You okay?" Maya asks.
"Fine," he says, and when she doesn't stop looking at him he gives her a smile. "Fine."
A head from the front seat whirls around at the sound of his voice. "Gee Cam, feeling a little under the weather?"
Maya turns and glares at her sister. "Really, Katie?"
Katie's sour expression doesn't change, but her eyes flicker to their hands, still clasped together. He wants to pull away, but isn't sure if he'd hurt Maya or not.
From the driver's side, Jake is oblivious. Going on about tomatoes, saying that they should be ripe for the picking by next week. For the moment, Katie is distracted from her death glare, wholly absorbed in discussing the future of something she put in the ground.
He thought that hanging out with Jake would make Katie less of a psycho, but apparently he was wrong. Supposedly they're not even dating (according to Maya) but he's pretty sure Maya's either oblivious or Katie is, because they seem way too friendly to be friends.
Jake doesn't talk about fertilizer with just any girl, he thinks, and tries not to snicker.
The backseat of the truck puts him in a weird position. He and Maya are facing one another, and they're perched on these little fold-down benches with a flimsy belt across their laps. Their faces are inches away from the glass of the back window. If they crash, they are done for. If they turn too fast, they are done for. If they get rammed from behind, they are done for.
Because he waits too long and because he's an idiot who never knows what to do at the time he needs to do it, Katie turns back to the backseat and locks him with a look that says "yes, I will gladly cut your balls off and force-feed them down your throat, just try me", then turns back to her conversation about tomatoes with Jake. His mouth is too dry to swallow and his hand feels slick in Maya's, and he talks himself out of the urge to take their hands apart so he can wipe his palm on his pant leg.
Behind them, the road churns. Cityscapes vanish, swallowed by the tree lines. The smooth pavement eventually turns into hills, the street rippling beneath and then behind them like a dusty, frozen ocean. They turn off the main road they'd been following onto a small side street with no name, and he likes it, literally leaving Toronto in the dust. He holds onto that idea as Jake's pick-up weaves in and out through a dense thicket of woods, as Katie continues to glare at him through Jake's rearview and the sun disappears behind the treetops.
They pull into a lot somewhere out here, a square of yellow earth. There's a giant SOLD sign out front, as well as another sign for Martin Construction. Jake tells them they'll only be a minute, needs to give his dad the something-or-other, then they can head to the movies.
Whatever, he doesn't particularly care; he's just glad that wherever they are gets him out of his billet family's house, the hockey rink, the school, the whole godforsaken city.
The house is half-finished, more like a cage of wood and shadow than a home. The bars of the roof slant down into what he thinks is the kitchen, or maybe the family room, and the front steps tumble down half-finished into a stone-strewn patch of ground he guesses might be the yard, someday.
Maya sits on the lip of the tailgate, and motions for him to sit next to her. Katie keeps her eyes on him the entire time as he slides up next to her.
"Sorry about her," Maya whispers.
He shrugs. "Not like it hasn't happened before."
"It's the only way my parents would let me hang out with a boy." Maya rolls her eyes. "Of course, they let Katie stay out with Drew – alone – until midnight."
He shrugs. "She's just looking out for you."
Maya lets her feet swing. "Still. Sucks we never get to hang out alone."
He shrugs again. He doesn't mind Tori, and after a while he got used to being around Tristan – after Maya reminded him he was over his guy crush. They're not his friends from home, but they're nice and they laugh a lot, even if they laugh about things he doesn't understand.
Maya is humming under her breath, and somewhere in the snarl of notes he picks out the tune she's been working on. She's in the middle of writing the band's new song, mumbling melodies under her breath and dashing off lyrics on the edge of her biology notes and on the backs of old algebra quizzes. She's asked him if he'd be interested in joining when she's not asking him about that she's pushing for the play chorus, like THAT'S not the worst idea in the world.
He says no every time, but she never gets the hint. Every time she does, he wishes he'd never opened his mouth on karaoke night, even if it was fun.
Sometimes, he even thinks about doing it again. But whenever he does, his throat feels clogged with all the songs he could think of singing, but they all jumble together and don't make sense when he tries to make them come out.
Katie is still standing close by, watching the two of them. He can only take her Kill Bill stare for so long, so he hops off the tailgate.
"Where are you going?" Maya asks.
"Just checking it out," he says, and doesn't wait for her to answer him back, just marches away quickly, feeling Katie's eyes on his back, like daggers twisting in deep.
The ground is a little slippery under his feet. It's still winter-hard, but the unseasonable humidity melts the harsh cold at the edges. Everything smells like dry pine and soft mud, like the clear sky. It's fresh like Toronto air isn't, fresh like newly sanded wood and unchecked sunshine. He can taste the old snow in the smell of the wind and it reminds him of home, of being a kid; of the snowdrifts that would pile so high sometimes that they wouldn't melt, of wearing shorts in June while sliding down unmelted piles of snow on cardboard boxes and metal trash can lids with Jesse.
Every now and then a cold wind will snap through the warmth, and getting hit with both the sweet, syrupy humidity and the frigid whip makes it hard to breathe, like it can't decide whether or not it wants to stay warm or sink back into winter's chill. It sands the back of his throat when he swallows, like he's gulping glass. A shadow passes over the sunshine, and he feels the cold gloom right away.
He shoves his good hand in his coat pocket, burying himself in the leather and fleece. He keeps thinking of those snowdrifts, remembering the dirty mountains against a backdrop of cherry blossoms and onion grass, something he hasn't seen in years.
The half-made house stands in the gloom, abandoned and alone out here. There's a ladder propped up against the wall, must have been left over from a construction crew. He stares at it for a long moment, eyeing the height, and climbs up, keeping his broken arm close to his chest.
The ladder shakes a little, and his stomach clenches but he keeps going. The cast bounces against his chest and makes his shoulder burn, his good hand aching. Sweat pops onto his forehead, dripping into his eyes as he grits his teeth and keeps climbing with one hand, stepping more slowly as he reaches the top rungs. They shake under his weight. The height gives him a drunk feeling that makes his head weight heavy on his shoulders, like his neck can't hold it up anymore.
A few feet from the top, he stops, leaning into the ladder and pressing his head into the rung above him. The unsanded wood is rough on his forehead. He doesn't realize he's holding his breath until he finds himself gasping for it, and he tilts his head up to the sunshine, gulping in air. His head pounds, and for a moment his vision greys out. He wonders, briefly, if he's going to take another fall; if he's going to break his other arm, or his leg, or maybe his neck. If he'll pass out before he hits the ground, if he'll feel it this time as much as he did the last.
Another moment, and he realizes he's still standing. He's gripping the ladder, his hands stinging from the splinters, and his legs are still shaking. But he's still holding on, still looking up at the burning sky. It's the same color as the untouched ice on the rink, and that makes him close his eyes again, see the explosion of color behind them. When he and Jesse were little, they used to rub their eyelids with their fingers, then tell each other what pictures they saw behind their closed eyes, like you looked at shapes in the clouds and star constellations.
He opens them, blinking away explosions of fuzzy color, and looks up. The moon is out in broad daylight, a healed white scar slashed across the unblemished skin of a cloudless sky. From this height, he can see brick chimneys and razor-thin church steeples, dense thickets of live oak and the shadow of a skyline far enough away to make him flirt with the idea that Toronto really is some faraway land, like in a kid's story.
The top is where everybody wanted to stand. It made people want to throw out their arms and crow to the skies. Celebrate, or go wild. Do something crazy. Like Dallas, who had jumped onto the top of the bus at the last away game, pumped the air and riled up the team before they went and kicked butt.
The top is where everyone wanted to be.
He slowly holds out his casted arm, gripping with his good one as it shakes. His cast raised at an awkward angle, he tilts his head towards the sun. Stands there for a moment like he's waiting for something, just wishes he knew what. Then he drops the arm, feeling stupid. His shoulders are aching, like his arm is held up in a way it shouldn't be, doesn't want to be.
The crawl back down isn't nearly as climactic as the one up. He gets to the bottom few rungs and then just jumps the rest of the way down, then slips on the mud at the landing and falls on his butt. It's a cold, squelching jolt, one he feels all the way up through his injured arm radiating through his skull like a howl. He bites his lip so hard it bleeds, trying not to cry out. After a moment of hissing through his teeth, he pushes himself up, gripping onto the ladder to avoid falling again, and hobbles back around the house.
The others are waiting in the truck for him, and Katie can't stop laughing when she sees the mud caked on the back of his pants. Jake looks like he's laughing too, but tries to hide it.
"Where were you?" Maya asks. "And what happened to your lip?"
He shrugs. "I slipped."
She comes over to him, reaches out and touches his cast. "Is your arm okay?"
She looks at him in a way that reminds him of how she looked at him in the hospital – she knew. He knew she knew.
"Fine," he says. "I just slipped, Maya."
She's still giving him that look – just slipped, right? As in you "just fell"? – but doesn't say anything as she turns and heads back to the truck.
The drive to the city is silent in the back, and in the front Jake and Katie discuss strawberries. They're thinking about planting more seasonal fruit in the garden, to keep it going year-round. The first tomatoes in the garden are beginning to ripen, and maybe, if they were success, strawberries could be their next adventure.
Cam listens to their talk of strawberry patches, squash, rows of sweet summer corn. He listens to the rumble of the road underneath him, the jolt of the wheels under his feet. The rattle of his clenched teeth and the ache in his arm, the way it goes through his entire body, and it just hurts, it makes everything just hurt.
A hand reaches out, touches the swollen lip. Maya peers at him through her glasses, awash with concern, and Cam can't quite look at her. He cradles his aching arm instead, looking at his lap, and tries to focus on only her hand on his face, how soft and concerned it is, and not the look in her eyes.