Writings / Fiction: Janet E. Cameron

*Cinnamon Toast

(novel excerpt)

 

‘It’s not the end of the world.’ That’s what people will tell you. That’s what people will tell you when they want to say, ‘Your problems are stupid, your reaction to them is laughable, and I would like you to go away now.’

‘Oh, Stephen, for God’s sake, it’s not the end of the world,’ my mother will say, over and over, in tones of sympathy or distraction. Or sometimes plain impatience.

So of course if she’s ever running around looking for her keys and cursing, I’ll always tell her, ‘It’s not the end of the world, Mom.’ And if she’s really been pissing me off, I’ll scoop the keys up from wherever she’s left them and stick them in my coat pocket. Then I’ll settle back to watch with a sympathetic expression while she tears the house apart looking, because lost keys? Not the end of the world.

I’m not an asshole to my mother all the time, by the way. It’s just sort of a hobby. There’s really not a lot to do in my town.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, ‘not the end of the world’ is utter bullshit. Sometimes it really is the end of the world. Sure, everything’s continuing the same as it ever did, but there’s been a shift. Suddenly you don’t know what the rules are. People will do things that leave you baffled. Or maybe you’ll surprise yourself, start acting like a person you don’t recognise. And you have to live in it now, this new world. You can’t ever go back.

The end of the world doesn’t have to be floods and fires and screaming and Nostradamus and the Mayans hanging around looking smug. It can be…say it can be two o’clock in the morning in the TV room in the basement with the light from the screen freezing all the cigarette smoke into shapes like ectoplasm. My best friend Mark leans forward to light another cigarette and – boom – the world ends.

Do you ever get these mental images, impulses, whatever, of things you wouldn’t ever do in real life? Like say you’re sitting at your desk watching the shyest girl in the whole school (Rachel Clements!) giving some kind of speech, and then she forgets what to say next – not because she didn’t prepare or anything, just because she’s scared. So you’re dying of sympathy for her and clenching and unclenching your fist in nervous tension, watching this poor girl up there sweating and stammering away. But at the same time another part of your brain is looking at the pink rubber eraser on your desk and thinking: Throw it at her. And you can see yourself doing it, bouncing that thing right off her forehead. Boing!

Okay, maybe it’s just me who thinks this way. But the point is, I’d never do these things. These mental blips. Who knows where they come from or how to stop them? And if you don’t, is it the end of the world?

Anyway, it was two or three in the morning on Saturday night, and me and Mark were drinking cans that had gone all warm from sitting in our backpacks, because it’s not like we could walk right up and stick them in the fridge in front of my mom, right? And smoking. Smoking my mother’s brand, so if she ever finds them, I can blame it on her. Once I spent a whole afternoon with a big pile of used butts and one of Mom’s lipsticks, marking each one with her colour. The idea was she’d find them and think she’d gone on some kind of crazed smoking bender and blacked out after.

Didn’t work. I got feeling guilty and just threw them in the trash.

So me and Mark were in the basement, tired and stupid, laughing at the infomercials on TV, buzzing from the beer and working our way through that red pack of Du Maurier Lights like it was some kind of assignment. These are my favourite times, but it’s kind of hard to explain why. If you’re up that late, you’re probably alone or with somebody you’ve always known, I guess. Or maybe it’s because there’s no light changing, so it’s as if you’re in this little corner of the world that’s safe from time. That hour of night has always felt perfect to me. Perfect to be doing the same old shit, doing nothing at all.

Mark’s been my best friend forever, since my parents moved here when I was in Grade Three. We fell into routines that lasted years: Saturday night we’d go to my place and watch TV till we passed out wrapped in old sleeping bags on the two disintegrating couches in the basement. I’d take the green one with the mildew stains and he’d take the orange one the neighbours didn’t want. Sunday we’d wander the streets of our little town – usually high – and we’d end up at his place and eat stuff spooned out of cans until I had to go back and do my homework. And Mark’s homework too: he’s not great at school.

Neither of us ever planned this, of course. It’s not like we’d say, ‘Hey, it’s three o’clock, we better hurry or we’ll miss getting chased out of the parking lot behind Sunset Manor by that old guy with the Sherlock Holmes hat and his fat yellow half-blind dog who can barely bark anymore.’ But for years, if you wanted to find us at three o’clock on Sunday afternoon, that’s where we’d be. It happened without us making any kind of arrangement, like birds going south for the winter know how to fly in a V.

I never even thought about whether we liked each other. I mean, how do you feel about oxygen?

Mark lit another cigarette. His hand was cupped around the flame to shelter it – long habit from mostly smoking outside – and there was a flicker of warm light on his face. Everything else was frozen in the flat white beam of the television screen, like we were on the surface of the moon.

Reminded me of going camping with my father that one time, when I was a little kid, just before he left. We’d built a fire together. Yellow and orange flames nodding and weaving, embers floating up. You could hear the ocean a long way off. The dark sky opened out into trails and clusters of galaxies over our heads, and every once in a while a spark would give a satisfied cracking pop, as if this were a live thing in front of us stretching itself with contentment. The two of us there, with our tiny hearth glow at the edge of the world. Safe from time. I couldn’t talk. I was too happy. I didn’t want to ruin it. There was always something that could ruin it.

A quiver of that feeling came back, watching Mark’s face, quick firelight against the bleached glare of the TV. A campfire on the moon. Don’t say anything. Don’t ruin it.

I was hanging off the couch looking at him through the smoke, the ghost-in-a-bottle smoke.

And that’s when I kissed him.

Except of course I didn’t. No, I didn’t. I really didn’t. It was just something that happened in my head, like seeing myself throwing erasers at Rachel Clements. One of those strange little impulses. But so vivid and real. I could almost feel it, our teeth knocking together because I wouldn’t know what I was doing at first, the way our faces would look all weird being so close. He’d taste like stale beer and Du Maurier Lights and so would I.

Nothing happened. Nobody moved. The TV continued to broadcast images of a miraculous food processor into my house. Mark kept making sarcastic comments about it. The few streetlamps outside were probably still beaming cones of misty light against the dark, and my mother was more than likely sleeping peacefully upstairs. Pretty quiet for the end of the world.

Mark leaned against the sofa, taking an easy swig off the beer, letting white smoke drift from his lips. In the TV kitchen people with big teeth and lacquered hair hovered around the food processor like they were at a party waiting for a chance to talk to it. More blades and attachments kept getting added to the offering, fanned on a white counter before us. All for this amazing low price.

‘Stephen? You asleep?’

Kind of a stupid thing for Mark to say because I was sitting up with my eyes open. I glanced at him quick, smoke curled around his fingers like mist at the foot of a mountain. It hurt to breathe.

The sleeping bag was draped across my shoulders. I pulled it tighter and hauled myself to my feet.

‘I gotta go. Gotta go to the can.’

I shambled up to my room alone. The laces of the sleeping bag trailed on the floor after me.

My room was a cold place. I’d moved all my stuff in here when I was twelve, thinking I wasn’t a kid anymore and it was time to start over. This used to be the guest room. It still felt like one. Nothing on the white walls but a calendar from the Royal Bank. For years I’d had a bikini girl on a beach pinned up by the window, the first thing you’d see as you opened my door. She’d fallen down a few months before and I hadn’t bothered putting her up again.

I lay on the bed with my clothes on, knees pulled into my chest like I thought I could make myself into a dot that would get smaller and then disappear.

An image out of nowhere. Completely random. No idea where it came from. Oh, right. Total bullshit. When I did things like imagine throwing erasers at Rachel Clements, I’d be surprised at myself, sure. I would not feel half sick because I wanted it so much.

And if I was honest…

Pages: 1 2