In the morning I get a drive to school with my mom.
I walk up to my locker, grab my backpack, and then walk back out into the world again.
I head back down the hill towards the Dollarama on Smythe Street. They make me leave my backpack up front but I'm used to that shit. I go around and buy all the things necessary for having a dog: a leash, treats, cans of Alpo, some dry food, a proper food dish, poop bags, the works. And it's all under twenty bucks! Gotta love the dollar store.
I trudge back home to Shamrock Terrace. I open the door to the morgue and Sky comes running out, zooming around in the snow in circles. She pauses to take a piss and then comes back inside with me, where I give her dog food that she crunches up. I cut open an Alpo and dump it into her dish. "Thera ya go." I say. She wags her tail for a second as she eats and then gives her full attention into devouring everything in sight.
I play outside with her for a bit. We run laps around the pool. (It's an above ground one, Steve's not rich enough for in-ground). I build a fortress with my bare hands while Sky rolls in the snow. It's a pretty good time.
Once my nose starts running a bunch and my fingers are numb I go inside to make some hot chocolate. Sky follows me upstairs and sniffs around the joint.
I log into MSN. I have an email, and it's not spam, which is surprising. It's from Mike Doherty. I almost choke on my hot chocolate.
u arent here. Is all it says.
Is it really 11 already? I guess so!
Yeah sorry. Stayed home. I write back.
Within seconds of hitting send, I get a reply.
cox has us in the libary 4 the period
A second message arrives.
2 work on r projects
He's treating email like an instant messenger!
r u sick? He wants to know.
No. I type back. I just had some shit to do. But I'm working on my half, don't worry.
I go downstairs to gather up my notes so I can type everything up. When I return, I see he's written to me again. ok good is all it says.
I started each write up by quoting the corresponding part in Revelation. I tell him. I thought maybe you could do that too so it'd be a constant or something.
ya i can do that theres a bible here. He says.
should i just come over to work on it? He wants to know after a few minutes.
I feel hot all over. I have to remind myself that he only cares because of the project. He doesn't want to fail bio again so he's taking it seriously this time!
Yeah, you can come. Julia has volleyball tonight. She won't be back 'til 6. I should be fine. I find my fingers have a mind of their own; I am typing out the address to my house. Why am I doing this?
when?
After school. I say. My heart is pounding. Am I really going to sneak a boy into this house‽ First a dog, now a dude!
k, he says.
He emails me a couple pictures. I wish I could say that they were of him, but they're not. The first is of an ant infected with ophiocordyceps unilateralis. It looks like it has a single thick strand of hair growing out of its head with a big wooden bead on it, but I know that's actually the fungus. The second is the painting Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Viktor Vasnetsov.
I don't hear from him again for the rest of the afternoon.
The closer we get to 3, the more I worry. I half hope he'll be a no show. I put the TV on Much Music for background noise.
At 3:15, a junky car pulls into my driveway. I don't recognize it, so I assume it must be him. And it is. He stumbles out of the driver's seat, smoking a cigarette, and then tosses the butt into my yard. He's not wearing a jacket, just a long-sleeved thermal with a D.A.R.E. t-shirt over it and jeans. He has a backpack slung over his shoulder.
He knocks on the front door. I let him in, because I guess I invited him.
"Hey." He says.
"Hi." I answer.
He uses his feet to take off his shoes. "Nice house."
"Thanks," I say, as if I had anything to do with it.
"Hey dog," he says as Sky sniffs his feet. He pats her. "What's your name?"
"That's Sky." I say.
"He a pitbull?" He wonders. "Oh. She, I guess."
"Yeah." I reply.
"I love dogs." He remarks, and then drops his backpack to the ground. Sky investigates it. "I brought you one of these," he says, pulling out two Red Bulls.
"Oh, thanks." I take it from him and our fingers touch. I don't think he notices. Well, I mean, he probably notices. But he definitely doesn't care.
He bends back over again and retrieves a binder. "So." He says, straightening up. "I made some notes, if you want to look at them."
"Yeah, sure. I did mine already." I pass him the two write ups I've printed off. He reads them while I look over his messy ass bullet points.
"Oh wow," he says. "These are really good."
"Uh, I can help you write yours if you want." I offer. "To make it more cohesive or whatever." Cohesive. The word echoes in my head and sounds so stupid. I regret saying it.
"Yeah, please," he says, cracking open his Red Bull. He sits down on one of the couches.
"Okay, well, uh," I try to focus on the tedium at hand. "The first thing you should probably do is define what you're talking about. So in the case of the fungus, I would literally write what conquest means."
"To take over." He says.
"Yeah," I say, sitting across from him. "And that's what they do to their host." I can't believe I'm having this kind of conversation. I'm worse than the kids Under the Stairs. They definitely don't talk about school outside of it.
"Right." He goes, taking a sip of his drink.
"I'd probably start with the Bible verse for each of them, just 'cause that's what I did," I mumble. "And then you can make comparisons and shit…maybe…if you can think of them."
"Uh, like, pale horse of death, pale skin when you're sick with a virus," Mike says.
"Yeah, sure, that's a good one."
"What color's the horse for conquest?" He wants to know.
"Uhhh, I dunno." I go to the computer and look at the painting he emailed me. "Oh. It's white, I guess."
"Just say it's white like a mushroom." He flops back into the couch. "I dunno. You took all the good ones."
"Hey," I feel defensive, "I let you pick which ones you wanted."
"I know." He sits back up. "I'm just kidding."
"Oh. Okay." Now I just feel kind of dumb. "But anyway, yeah, then just talk about the rest of the shit you've got here," I say, indicating his sheet of paper. "I can type it up and then have them all printed off."
"We can back them up on construction paper." He says. "Teachers love that crap."
"Yeah." I say, taking a swig of my own Red Bull just so I don't have to talk. I drink too much at once and it burns all the way down my esophagus. I suppress the urge to cough, but just barely. "When's this due, anyway?"
"Tomorrow."
"Oh." That's why he's being so annoying about it. "Well, let's write it up then."
I take a seat at the computer, open up a word doc, and we start with Conquest/Fungus.
"Okay," Mike says, then reads off his notes: "Funguses are either molds that are multicellular or yeasts that are unicellular."
"Yep." I type this all out, but correct 'funguses' to 'fungi'. I hear Sky's claws clicking on the floor as she wanders off the kitchen.
"One mold, uh … oh…ophio…cordy…ceps?"
"Unilateralis," I finish for him, then turn around to look at him for a second. Sky has come back out to the living room.
"Yeah, that, or the 'zombie' infection, was discovered back in 1859. It's found in tropical rainforests in Brazil, Australia, and Thailand or certain forests in South Carolina, Florida, and Japan. It affects carpenter ants. Invades their brains and muscles."
"Uh-huh."
Sky walks over to us, and Mike bends down to pet her.
"Infected ones will leave their homes in the canopy and go down to the forest floor, 'cause it's a better spot for funguses to grow." He straightens up again. "Once they're down there, the ants bite onto a leaf and hang from it until they die."
"Yup." I tell him when I've caught up.
"It takes 4–10 days for that to happen. There's a stage where the fungus grows from the ant's head and then the whole thing ruptures to release all the spores."
"Imagine!" I say, picturing it.
"That's some video game shit. Anyway, the zombie infection can destroy the entire ant colony. When one dies, they usually gather in areas called 'graveyards' where the other ants went."
Out of the corner of my eye I see Sky contemplating jumping up on the couch. "No!" I tell her, fearing what my parents will do when they see and smell dog hair all over their precious sofa set. She looks disappointed, but wanders back over to me and lays on the floor.
"She's a super mellow dog." Mike remarks. "How old is she?"
"Uh… not sure." I admit, then change the subject, "Okay, what about the viruses?"
"Oh yeah. Viruses are the smallest living organism. They're acellular. They can either have DNA or RNA, but not both. Just one or the other." He pauses, watching me type. "They're obligate parasites, so they replicate by invading another cell and then using that cell's replication process. They're found in almost every ecosystem on Earth. They're the most abundant type of biological entity.
"Now the Ebola stuff. Ebola is one of the most deadly viruses for primates. It was first detected in humans in Africa in 1976, where it was contracted through contact with an infected animal, probably bats. The first signs of Ebola are fever, headache, and muscle aches. But then they're followed by diarrhea, vomiting, stomach pains, and dehydration. People with it die due to shock from fluid loss, and that usually happens 6-16 days after the first symptoms appear."
"Let's see if we can use the bible verse for anything." I find the one on Death and read it aloud. "'Power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.'" I tell him. "We could say something about Africa being a fourth of the earth or something. And I dunno, Ebola was spread through contact with beasts?"
"Is Africa really the fourth part of the earth, though?" He frowns. "That doesn't sound right."
"Well, back in the day, people thought there were only four continents."
"Oh yeah, okay." He believes me. "Good enough."
I run a spell and grammar check on it all. Boom. It's done. "Okay, let's print this shit off in sections of four, and then we can mount it on the bristol board." I look over at him. "You don't have any, do you?"
He shakes his head. "No. Do you?"
"Nope. I guess we can go to the dollar store and get some."
"Yeah, for sure. I can drive us down." He looks at Sky. "You wanna go for a ride?"
She wags her tail excitedly. I hit print on the word doc, and then we go out to Mike's car. When I open the passenger door it smells faintly of weed. There are empty Tim Hortons cups all over the floor. Sky jumps in and then ducks into the backseat.
"You want a smoke?" Mike asks as I climb in myself. A cigarette is dangling from his lower lip and he has a pack of Pall Malls in his hand.
"Uh, sure," I take one from him and we both light up. He looks over his shoulder, backs out of the driveway, and we go down the hill.
I've never smoked because nobody's ever offered me a cigarette before. So I take small drags and exhale like I'm a dragon, but I don't think I absorb anything. The smoke just rolls out of my mouth and into the air.
Mike inhales all of his. The rock station is playing Metallica. James Hetfield is saying: "Queeeench my thirst with gasoooooline!"
I take another drag and this one tickles my throat so bad it's hard to resist coughing. But I hold back somehow.
The little plaza with the Dollarama isn't far from my house and we're there before 'Fuel's over. Mike parks and we get out, leaving Sky to her own devices, but I'm sure she's used to that. "Be back in a minute," I tell her and we go into the store.
I head directly for the craft section and Mike follows me. "What color do you want?" I ask him.
He shrugs.
I grab black, and stick it under the armpit of my jacket. "I guess we need glue sticks and construction paper, too." I say, and add them to the collection.
And that's that. I head back towards the cash. "I'll buy it," Mike offers. "Since you printed everything off. That's a lot of ink."
I just look at him. "It's like five bucks." I say. "I've got it." I pay for it myself.
"Well, I'll get us coffee then," Mike offers. He really likes his caffeine, I guess.
We head out to his car. Sky wags her tail and yawns as we get back into the junk bucket.
Mike drives off to a Tim Hortons and orders two large coffees at the drive thru. Double double and a black. He tells me, "You seem like you'd like it like that," as he passes the sugar-free one to me.
I take a sip. It's disgusting. "Thanks." I tell him anyway. I feel like he must think less of me if he genuinely thinks I like this crap.
He also asks for two plain timbits for Sky. The girl working the drive thru gives them to him for free. It's probably because they're the worst kind of donut holes, and also probably because Mike is pretty hot. I wonder if she's asking herself how I landed a guy like this, looking like I do. Maybe she knows we're just doing a project together. I don't look like anything like Whitney Hughes and the other sluts he apparently likes.
Sky gobbles the timbits up when they're offered to her.
The drive back to my house is quiet, aside from the radio, which is all ads. Worthless, I think to myself as I chug my nasty-ass coffee.
We go into my house. I collect the paper from the printer, grab some scissors (and give a pair to Mike) and then start chopping up the write-ups into little squares. After that I back them on some red construction paper. Red and black seem pretty apocalyptic. Mrs. Cox will probably hate it, but I don't care about that bitch's opinions.
Korn is playing on the TV. The music video for 'Thoughtless' is on. "You think it's funny, what the *bleep* you think it's doing to me?" Jonathan Davis is asking. Censoring makes everything sound retarded.
I can tell Sky really wants to sit up on the couch with me. She keeps staring and putting her paw up on my knee, making weird noises in her throat. "No," I tell her. "Just lay down." She looks at me like I've shot her, but finally flops onto the rug with a sigh.
"I thought we should put some pictures on it," Mike says. "I emailed them to you."
"Yeah, I saved them," I tell him. "And I got one of an anthrax eschar and a tapeworm."
"What's an ess-car?" He wants to know.
"A scab," I bring up the image I'd saved, which looks like a mega-blackhead.
"Sick," he says, making a disgusted face as he leans over my shoulder. I can smell the cigarette smoke on him. "I couldn't find a good picture for Ebola."
"Hmm," I type 'ebola' into Google and see what he means. The images are all pretty dull, but I find a solution: "We'll just use a distribution map." I say, finding one, and then print all the pictures off.
We start cutting them out and gluing them onto the construction paper. It doesn't take long, and boom, our project is done. It's all black and red, with photos of diseases, so it looks horrifying. I love it. "Mrs. Cox will hate it," I say with glee.
"Probably, old bitch," Mike remarks. "But it looks cool. It'll be better than everyone else's."
"Except Vikram Verhmani's," I mumble about the school's future valedictorian and president, who just happens to be in Bio with us. He's definitely the only other person in class with facial hair, aside from Mike. But Mike has stubble, Vikram has this dirtstache that looks like an angry caterpillar trying to escape his face. It matches his unibrow I guess. I don't know how someone can be so book smart but so stupid about their appearance.
Mike laughs. "Yeah, that's true."
"Someone should message him and tell what a loser he is," I go, feeling sadistic.
"I'm pretty sure people do every day." Mike's eyes scan the room and then the hallway. "Where's your bathroom?"
"First door on the right," I say, pointing towards it.
He gets up and heads that direction. Sky and I look at each other. She yawns and stretches her paw towards me. I shake it absently.
Mike spends a while in the bathroom. I wonder what he's doing.
My hand drifts towards my mouth and I nervously gnaw on my thumbnail. What's taking so long?
Finally he comes out. He has another cigarette in his hand. I guess it's time for a smoke break. I can't have him out puffing on the porch or the neighbors will narc. "Come downstairs," I tell him, heading for the morgue. He looks surprised but follows me. Sky comes too, her claws clicking after us on the hardwood floor.
"This is my room," I tell him when we arrive. "You can smoke out there if you want."
"Sweet," he steps outside to do his business. Sky follows him to take care of her own. And then I'm left alone with my thoughts.
This is the first time I've ever had a boy in my room. I wonder if he knows. Maybe he can smell the inexperience on me. Maybe he can tell I've never even kissed anyone. Fuck, I haven't even held hands since second grade with Keith Bower, and we only did that 'cause we were buddied up for a field trip. God, what a loser I am.
I watch Mike standing there in his D.A.R.E. shirt, giving himself lung cancer, and I feel a surge of longing. I shake my head at myself. I need to pull it together.
I turn to my PS2 and debate what music to put on. Nothing too crazy; no romantic songs. I don't want him to think I'm reading too much into things. I haphazardly pick one of the Big Shiny Tunes compilations. He has to like something on them. I skip the first two songs out of habit, and Staind starts playing. I decide I don't want to listen to that either. Next song is 'Drift & Die' by Puddle of Mudd, which seems appropriate, so I leave it.
I feel like I'm sweating bullets. The glass door slides back open and Mike steps into the morgue with Sky on his heels.
Mike looks right at me. "It's freezing out," He remarks, absently rubbing one arm.
"Maybe you should wear a jacket," I suggest. My tongue feels huge and clumsy in my mouth.
"Probably," he laughs.
"You can wear one of my sweatshirts if you want," I offer, locating my biggest one. It's a brown Hurley. I toss it to him.
"Thanks," he slips it on. He takes a moment to consider the morgue. "This is a cool room."
"It used to be the den," I say. "But then I took over."
"Oh yeah?" He runs his fingers over his head and frowns in thought. "I'm kind of surprised there's no posters or anything though."
"I have shit like that in my actual room," I tell him. "But I'm hardly ever up there."
"Why?" He asks. "Is it haunted?"
"No," I give him a weird look. "Is yours?"
"I hear thumps sometimes," he informs me.
"Hmm," I say, unconvinced. Maybe it's his parents fucking, but nobody wants to think about that. I know I'd rather have ghosts if that was the alternative.
Sky jumps up on my bed. 'Nothing Could Come Between Us' by Theory of a Deadman starts playing. I don't know how I feel about this. I grab the PS2 controller to change it, but Mike speaks up: "I like this song."
I leave it alone. Maybe we should go back upstairs. Maybe not. I don't know. He probably wants to finish listening to the song.
"The two of us are like two of a kind," it goes.
… and nope. I'm out. I head to the bathroom to hyperventilate above the sink for a moment. Staring into my bloodshot eyes, I pant. I look awful, but what else is new? I flush the toilet so he thinks I just had to piss and run the tap for a moment to sound like I'm a hygienic human being. I don't need the rumors circulating that I don't wash my hands, like fucking grade eight all over again.
"Wanna go back upstairs?" I ask, standing in the doorway to the morgue, It's more of a command than a question, and he knows it. He gets up from sitting on my bed and petting Sky. We tromp up the staircase and reassemble in the living room. I settle onto the couch, while Sky hangs out around Mike, begging silently for more scritches.
"So we good?" Mike asks, shattering the silence.
"Yeah," I say. I resist the insane urge to give him a thumbs up.
"Okay. Do you want to take it to school tomorrow, or do you want me to?"
"You can," I tell him. "I don't even know if I'll go."
"Why?" He asks, lifting our project up from the table. "You sick?"
I shake my head.
"Just don't want to be there?" He prods, then shrugs in thought as if answering himself. "Yeah, I know the feeling." He goes to put on his shoes and Sky trails after him.
My stomach plunges with preemptive loneliness but I don't do anything to stop him. I could say something. He's still wearing my hoodie, but I don't bother to tell him. This way when I eventually get it back, it'll smell like a boy. I look away as he slings his backpack over his shoulder.
"See ya," he says, giving Sky a last pat.
I half-ass a wave, barely lifting my hand, and then look up anxiously as he shuts the front door behind him. Hopping to my feet, I burn my mom's Yankee candle on the coffee table to get rid of any cigarette stank, and then compulsively go on vampirefreaks and stare at the top rated dudes. None of them are as good looking as Mike.
"Fags," I mumble to myself. I type in the address for psyke instead. Once there, I stare at the newly uploaded pictures of bloody razor blades and sliced skin and feel nothing. It doesn't even make me want to cut myself. I'm empty and alone. Well, for the most part.
"C'mon, Sky," I go down to the morgue and play Resident Evil for a while.
I pause it long enough to go eat roast beef at 5:30, and then continue with my killing spree.
At 11:53, I hear what I think is a knock on the sliding glass door. Sky and I both hop up; I yank back the curtain and see Mike standing there. I'm kind of in shock, but I pull the door back and let him in. It occurs to me that I'm just wearing a Tool shirt and nothing else, but at least it's a baggy one.
"Hi?" I say.
"I brought back your hoodie," he says, taking off a jacket and then my sweatshirt. His words are slurred and I can smell alcohol on his breath. He hands it over to me.
"Okay." I accept it from him. "Thanks."
"You have a boyfriend?" He asks.
What is happening? "No," I say. "Why?"
He leans in and I'm overcome by his musky scent. Our lips meet and he pushes his tongue into my mouth. He wriggles it around in there for a moment before he slips a hand under my t-shirt.
His fingers brush up my side and onto my bare breast. I lean back into him as he gropes me, then moves behind me and kisses my neck. He starts to lift my shirt up, and then it's on the floor. I'm left standing in my underwear.
He steers me toward Bed Fort and I sit down on it. In one fluid movement he pulls off both his shirts. He has a nice body, his shoulders are broad and the musculature of his torso is highlighted by the glow of the TV. He's better looking than I'd anticipated; god, he could probably be a model or something. Then what the fuck does he want with me? I swallow as he bends down to my level. Oh, what does it matter, I think to myself, and go for it.
We start kissing again, and he pushes me backwards so that I'm laying flat on the bed. His tongue is back in my mouth and his left hand is propped up on the mattress, supporting him, while the right grips my hair.
He sits up slightly, running his left hand down my arm and onto my jelly bracelets.
"You ever have somebody break one of these?" He wants to know. His voice is breathy and sensual.
"No," I admit, trying to sound equally as sultry. There was a big moral panic about those bracelets, about how teenagers would allegedly perform sex acts on whoever ripped one off. Different colors meant you'd do different things. I forget what most of them were, except that blue meant you'd give oral and black meant going all the way. All mine are black.
He snaps one off. "Now what?" He says, straddling me.
I mumble something unintelligible. I think it was supposed to be 'I don't know' but he starts kissing my chest while he grinds into me. He's hard. It all feels so good I just moan like a cliche whore. It's kind of embarrassing, but he seems to like it.
He touches me through my underwear with his finger. "You're so wet," he tells me, and starts to pull them off.
I reach for the zipper on his pants and just like that we're both naked on my bed, humping each other, with me following his lead.
He thrusts his crotch against mine once, twice, three times and then he's inside me. It stings for a second and forces a gasp out of me, but I don't want him to stop. I want more. He keeps going, fucking me, but I don't really know what to do. Maybe I'm not supposed to do anything? I don't know how this works.
"Fuck, you're tight." He says.
After a few minutes he goes, "I'm gonna come," with a strained look on his face and he pulls out of me. Something warm and phlegmy feeling shoots onto my stomach, and I guess that's it. It's official. I've had sex.