Sean…
Okay, Emma was one thing. I liked Emma. She was kind of dorky, kind of nerdy, but in a good way. She was this fighter, like me. Well, not exactly like me. She fought with words, with protests, and she had all these beliefs about things I'd never even heard of. I liked that about her. I liked how she fought for what she believed in. Of course, I guess she was kind of done with me, after how I acted, how I shoved her during that fight with Jimmy. That was stupid. I hurt her and I was sorry, but it's hard to say that when you're 14. It's hard to be so honest with other people.
I kind of get this feeling at the start of new school years, this feeling like, 'this year I'll do things right,' This means not being such a screw up, not flunking out, not getting in trouble. I have to fight to stay out of trouble. Deep in my heart I think I'm kind of this trouble maker, this explosive, angry, unpredictable kid. Maybe I liked Emma partly because she was different from me in this way. She was a good kid, a kid teachers liked.
I was gonna put her out of my head for eighth grade. There was no way she'd take me back. Sucks, but there wasn't much I could do, and I hooked up with Ashley at the end of last year. Did I do that to get at Jimmy? Am I jealous of Jimmy because he's rich and smart and good at basketball? What do I care? But I do care. I feel like I'm trash from a poor trash family and I'll probably turn out like them, like my parents, drinking everything away.
So I know these things about myself. I know I'm jealous of rich kids and smart kids and kids good at something, because I feel like I'm not good at anything. I know I like Emma, the way she looks and the way her hair smells like vanilla and honey, and I like her skinny long legs.
It was the first day back, eighth grade, and there are a ton of kids here. Two other schools closed and all the kids came to Degrassi or something, I didn't really know. I just knew the halls were crowded and the classrooms were crowded. And I see Jimmy and Spinner out of the corner of my eye and I remembered hanging out with them before I flunked out, and I can't help but feel stupid. I'm looking at them and then I walk right into some kid, or he walks into me.
"What, is Degrassi a school for the blind this year?" I snap at him, this tall, skinny, curly haired kid who's rich. I can smell rich on people. I felt so irritated, but not really at this kid. I was irritated with Jimmy and Spinner for excluding me, not that I want to be friends with them at all. I don't need friends.
"I'm not blind, I'm lost," he said, and I blinked. He didn't react at all to my sarcastic snap at him. He was looking at me a little cautiously, that was it.
"Get a map," I said, still being mean. I guess I wouldn't mind going at it with someone, and if it couldn't be Jimmy again it could be this lost kid in his crisp designer clothes.
"Got one," he said, holding up one of those maps they print out for new kids. He held up the map and smiled, and I noticed his smile, it was nice. It made me want to like him.
"M.I. lab?" he questioned softly, tilting his head. He was like a puppy you wanted to take home. I softened up.
"Here," I said, "I'll show you,"
So that was how I met Craig Manning. I just bumped right into him. What did I see that day? Probably not much. I saw a kind of geeky looking tall kid with big eyes and curly dark hair and expensive clothes. I saw someone who was most likely rich and probably good at school and all of that. I saw his pale skin and his long fingers holding up the map. I saw his long eyelashes and the way his shoulder blades poked at the material of his shirt.
A lot got done on the way to the M.I. lab, a lot of information was exchanged. Our names, ages, grade, all of that. In that short walk down the hall I got this sense that he wasn't thinking I was dumb white trash since I stayed back, not that he knew I was poor, but he probably did. Could rich kids smell the poor on me like I could smell the rich on them? Maybe they didn't have to notice, since rich people kind of have a free pass on things. They have the money to pave the way. But I kind of got the sense that it didn't matter for him. It was weird. I would have been happy fighting with him, going from mean little comments to shoves to punches, and with some other kid, a kid more similar to me, it might have happened. But by the end of our little walk to the M.I. lab I was thinking I could actually be friends with him.
The next morning at school I saw him before homeroom. He saw me. He came right up to me, and I tried to look all cool, like I didn't care.
"Hey, man," he said, his bag slung over one shoulder.
"Hey," I said, and this time Jimmy and Spinner were no where around. Good. We had that kind of small talk where you talk about video games and movies and classes and stuff, and I noticed a scent of some cologne he was wearing.
At home I was doing my homework, waiting for Tracker to get home from work. Our house was barely a house, it was kind of like a shack. Four rooms, kitchen, living room, two bedrooms. But it was better than a trailer. I wondered what kind of a house Craig lived in. I saw his expensive cell phone and that leather jacket that was real leather, it had that leather smell. Real leather wasn't cheap. Little clues.
The next day at school I didn't see Craig in the morning, not that I was looking for him. But I saw him during the morning break outside. We were hanging around the basketball court, and I tossed him the ball. He looked reluctant, and I figured he wasn't good at basketball or maybe sports in general. He had that look, kind of clumsy. Did I notice that he looked a little upset? Not especially. I was the one who was usually upset about something. I wasn't used to looking for it in other people. But I got him to play basketball with me, a little. Just a friendly little game. He kind of loosened up at one point, and I saw him smile when he got a shot. It was lucky and blind, but his smile made me smile.
I don't know what happened next. I knew I kind of crashed into him to get the ball, and he doubled over in pain. It was real pain. I'd seen Tracker after he wiped out on his motorcycle one time, and it was the same expression. I knew I didn't cause it. I'd crashed into kids a lot harder than that in basketball last year and none of them had that reaction. He dropped the ball and it bounced off the court, rolled away. He was holding his side and looked like he might actually cry, and he straightened up a little and glared at me through the shine of tears.
"What the hell! This isn't hockey!" he said.
"Hey…I'm sorry," I said, watching him walk away.
I felt off after that, like it was my fault. Maybe it was. Maybe I had misjudged my own strength, like that time I deafened that kid in Wasaga Beach. We had this new little friendship, and I thought I might have damaged it. I had that restless feeling, like when you relive something and wish you could change it.
I would just put it out of my head. I was putting Emma out of my head, and if Craig was gonna be all weird and blame me for stuff that was clearly not my fault, well, that was his issue. This was counseling stuff. I had to go to counseling because of that whole Wasaga Beach thing and that's the kind of stuff they told me. You couldn't make people agree with you or not be mad at you, you could only kind of do your own thing. You hope for the best, and own what's yours, but the rest is out of your hands. I like that. It's hard to do all the time but I like the concept.
"What's with you?" Tracker said, watching me mope on the couch. He had his motorcycle helmet in his hand, his red tinted sunglasses on. I envied Tracker, in a way. He came and went as he pleased, he didn't have school to worry about, nothing like that.
"Nothing," He gave me that raised eyebrow stare that meant he didn't believe me but he wasn't going to push it.
"Not going out tonight?" he said, and I shrugged. There was no school tomorrow, short week.
"I don't know," I said, and it was true. Maybe going out would help me get my mind off Emma and Craig and everyone else I couldn't seem to get along with.
"Alright. Whatever. I'll see you later," he said, and he strolled out the door. The room was dimming in the shadows as the sun crawled to the other side of the house, and I flipped through the channels. There weren't that many. We didn't even have cable.
My phone rang, jolting me out of the T.V. trance I was getting myself into.
"Yeah, hello," I said.
"Hey, Sean, hey, man," It was Craig, and he sounded funny. Like he was trying not to panic.
"Listen, uh, did you still want to do something tonight?" he said, and in the background I heard something, some kind of pounding, yelling. What the hell was going on there? I sat up straight, straining my ears to hear beyond his voice to what was going on around him. I couldn't quite make it out.
"Yeah, sure, " I said, and I heard that pounding noise again, like someone taking a bat to a hollow door. Boom.
"We could meet at the railroad tracks," I said, and if he lived where I thought he did, which would be the ritzy part of town, the tracks would be about halfway between our houses.
"Okay," he said, sounding a little more out of breath, "see you there,"
I felt relief that he wasn't mad at me about the basketball thing, but I was kind of worried. There was something not quite right about that phone call. It could have been his dad in the background, screaming at him and pounding something into the walls or doors, god knew what. I thought maybe a bat.
I walked to the railroad tracks, past all the crappy apartment buildings and run down houses, straggly yards with more weeds than grass or no yards at all, just raked dirt. I shoved my hands into my pockets and walked.
He was there when I got there, so I must have been right about the distance from our houses. He had a bag with him, a full bag. I pressed my lips together. Was he running away? Looked like it to me. I knew about running away. I'd done my share of running.
We walked along the tracks, kind of balancing, holding out our arms. He had this kind of jittery energy. It was making me nervous, so all I could think to do was ask him questions. But first he asked me one.
"Do you live with both your parents?" he said, tipping to one side off the rail, losing his balance. Clumsy.
"No, I don't live with either of them. I live with my brother," He raised his eyebrows at this.
"Really? Where are your parents?" he said, and he wasn't looking at me. He was watching his footing on the railroad line.
"They're in Wasaga Beach, in a trailer. They're drunks. They're bums," I said, and I felt like I was confessing it. My parents made me want to crawl into a hole and die.
"Why'd you leave? Did they hit you or something?" he said, and he glanced at me for a second and looked away.
"No, nothing like that. They were always too drunk to do anything like that,"
So I lobbed the questions at him about his father and what he did and then I knew for sure he was rich. A surgeon. And I asked about his mother and he told me she died of cancer. That sort of took my breath away. I left my parents, sure, but they were alive in their crippled fashion.
We sat, tossing rocks into the dust around us, and he told me he was going to run away to B.C. and I knew it. I knew it. He fanned the roll of money he had with this crazy glint in his eyes and I knew he'd get hurt if he did this. Someone would take advantage of him and he was too upset to care. And he was a pampered rich boy, what did they know of the streets, of the desperate things desperate people would do? Nothing. They knew nothing of that.
"Craig, you can't run away, you'll just end up on the streets. Believe me, that's no place you want to be," He scowled at me, not looking like he could even focus on what I was saying, never mind believe me.
"Then come with me! We'll look out for each other," There was such a naked pleading in his voice and in his eyes that it was hard to say no. He did something to people, made them want to go along with him and agree with him and smile when he smiled. I was too young to know that that something was charm.
I had to ask him, I had to bring it up. It was all put together in my head. He was running away because his father hit him, and those were the noises I heard on the phone. That was why he was so hurt during the basketball game, because I hurt him where he was already hurt. That was why he asked that about my parents, because it was happening to him.
"Uh, Craig, before, you asked if my parents hit me," I said, wondering how to proceed, exactly. Jesus, I had just met the kid, but maybe that made this kind of conversation easier.
"Did I? So?" So angry. He was narrowing his eyes at me. And I felt mean, asking him, pushing him to see what he was doing and what he was running from. I wanted to just go with him, to agree with him and look out for him because I could. I'd know what to look for and who to trust.
"Well, uh, does your father hit you?"
He didn't answer, he just stared off into the distance, and I didn't know how to push it. I didn't know how to go further when someone shuts you off. What did I want him to say?
And then the train came and he stood up and stared it down and I watched in a kind of horror and disbelief. This kid was going to kill himself right in front of me, and that changed everything.
I grabbed him around the waist and pulled him from the tracks, not caring that I was probably hurting him again. I held onto him as the train whooshed past us, blowing our hair back from our foreheads and making all speech impossible. We were in the roar of the train.
When it was past I saw that I had hurt him, he was kind of curled up in my embrace and his eyes were squeezed shut. I was afraid to let go of him, afraid of what he might do. All I knew was that he was safe now.
"Hey, Craig, are you alright?" I said softly, letting him go but ready to grab him again if he made a sudden move. He didn't, he just curled away from me and moaned.
"Yeah," he said, and I don't think I'd been around anyone who was as screwed up as this kid, including myself. He was in rough shape. I lifted the edge of his shirt and nearly gasped at what I saw. The deep purple and black bruising all along his stomach and rib cage.
"Who did this to you?" I said, lifting the shirt more, revealing fresh dark bruises over the faded sickly yellowish green ones, and marks on his back like from a belt. He sat up and yanked his shirt down, and he was taking shallow breaths. I wondered if any of those ribs were cracked.
"My dad, okay? So I'm running away, and you can come or not, I don't care, but I'm going…" he was getting to his feet and I gently tugged him back down, trying not to hurt him anymore but I thought at this point it was unavoidable.
"You need a hospital," I said, holding onto him, smoothing his hair from his forehead, and his skin was soft, so soft.
"No, my dad's a doctor, don't you get it? He's rich, it's not like you…with drunken parents in a trailer park that you can just leave…I can't go anywhere because, because…" Hitching sobbing breaths and the sentence dissolved under the weight of it, but I got it. It was actually kind of funny. The thing I envied in him and all the rich kids, the wealth and respectable parents, it was trapping him.
"Okay," I said, "come to my house, just, uh, stay at my house tonight, okay?"
My head was spinning. It was adrenaline, dragging him off the train tracks, seeing those lashes and bruises, understanding that the trap I'd always lived my life in, a trap of poverty and no chances was freedom to others. We all had our own traps, maybe. I felt dizzy, almost. I just knew I wanted him to come to my house that night.