(novel excerpt)<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s not the end of the world.\u2019 That\u2019s what people will tell you. That\u2019s what people will tell you when they want to say, \u2018Your problems are stupid, your reaction to them is laughable, and I would like you to go away now.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Oh, Stephen, for God\u2019s sake, it\u2019s not the end of the world,\u2019 my mother will say, over and over, in tones of sympathy or distraction. Or sometimes plain impatience.<\/p>\n So of course if she\u2019s ever running around looking for her keys and cursing, I\u2019ll always tell her, \u2018It\u2019s not the end of the world, Mom.\u2019 And if she\u2019s really been pissing me off, I\u2019ll scoop the keys up from wherever she\u2019s left them and stick them in my coat pocket. Then I\u2019ll settle back to watch with a sympathetic expression while she tears the house apart looking, because lost keys? Not the end of the world.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not an asshole to my mother all the time, by the way. It\u2019s just sort of a hobby. There\u2019s really not a lot to do in my town.<\/p>\n Anyway, what I\u2019m trying to say is, \u2018not the end of the world\u2019 is utter bullshit. Sometimes it really is the end of the world. Sure, everything\u2019s continuing the same as it ever did, but there\u2019s been a shift. Suddenly you don\u2019t know what the rules are. People will do things that leave you baffled. Or maybe you\u2019ll surprise yourself, start acting like a person you don\u2019t recognise. And you have to live in it now, this new world. You can\u2019t ever go back.<\/p>\n The end of the world doesn\u2019t have to be floods and fires and screaming and Nostradamus and the Mayans hanging around looking smug. It can be\u2026say it can be two o\u2019clock 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 \u2013 boom \u2013 the world ends.<\/p>\n Do you ever get these mental images, impulses, whatever, of things you wouldn\u2019t ever do in real life? Like say you\u2019re 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 \u2013 not because she didn\u2019t prepare or anything, just because she\u2019s scared. So you\u2019re 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<\/em>. And you can see yourself doing it, bouncing that thing right off her forehead. Boing!<\/p>\n Okay, maybe it\u2019s just me who thinks this way. But the point is, I\u2019d never do these things. These mental blips. Who knows where they come from or how to stop them? And if you don\u2019t, is it the end of the world?<\/p>\n 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\u2019s not like we could walk right up and stick them in the fridge in front of my mom, right? And smoking. Smoking my mother\u2019s 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\u2019s lipsticks, marking each one with her colour. The idea was she\u2019d find them and think she\u2019d gone on some kind of crazed smoking bender and blacked out after.<\/p>\n Didn\u2019t work. I got feeling guilty and just threw them in the trash.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s kind of hard to explain why. If you\u2019re up that late, you\u2019re probably alone or with somebody you\u2019ve always known, I guess. Or maybe it\u2019s because there\u2019s no light changing, so it\u2019s as if you\u2019re in this little corner of the world that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Mark\u2019s 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\u2019d 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\u2019d take the green one with the mildew stains and he\u2019d take the orange one the neighbours didn\u2019t want. Sunday we\u2019d wander the streets of our little town \u2013 usually high \u2013 and we\u2019d end up at his place and eat stuff spooned out of cans until I had to go back and do my homework. And Mark\u2019s homework too: he\u2019s not great at school.<\/p>\n Neither of us ever planned this, of course. It\u2019s not like we\u2019d say, \u2018Hey, it\u2019s three o\u2019clock, we better hurry or we\u2019ll 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.\u2019 But for years, if you wanted to find us at three o\u2019clock on Sunday afternoon, that\u2019s where we\u2019d be. It happened without us making any kind of arrangement, like birds going south for the winter know how to fly in a V.<\/p>\n I never even thought about whether we liked each other. I mean, how do you feel about oxygen?<\/p>\n Mark lit another cigarette. His hand was cupped around the flame to shelter it \u2013 long habit from mostly smoking outside \u2013 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.<\/p>\n Reminded me of going camping with my father that one time, when I was a little kid, just before he left. We\u2019d 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\u2019t talk. I was too happy. I didn\u2019t want to ruin it. There was always something that could ruin it.<\/p>\n A quiver of that feeling came back, watching Mark\u2019s face, quick firelight against the bleached glare of the TV. A campfire on the moon. Don\u2019t say anything. Don\u2019t ruin it.<\/p>\n I was hanging off the couch looking at him through the smoke, the ghost-in-a-bottle smoke.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s when I kissed him.<\/p>\n Except of course I didn\u2019t. No, I didn\u2019t. I really didn\u2019t. 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\u2019t know what I was doing at first, the way our faces would look all weird being so close. He\u2019d taste like stale beer and Du Maurier Lights and so would I.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u2018Stephen? You asleep?\u2019<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The sleeping bag was draped across my shoulders. I pulled it tighter and hauled myself to my feet.<\/p>\n \u2018I gotta go. Gotta go to the can.\u2019<\/p>\n I shambled up to my room alone. The laces of the sleeping bag trailed on the floor after me.<\/p>\n My room was a cold place. I\u2019d moved all my stuff in here when I was twelve, thinking I wasn\u2019t 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\u2019d had a bikini girl on a beach pinned up by the window, the first thing you\u2019d see as you opened my door. She\u2019d fallen down a few months before and I hadn\u2019t bothered putting her up again.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019d be surprised at myself, sure. I would not feel half sick because I wanted it so much.<\/p>\n And if I was honest\u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t the first time I\u2019d had these thoughts. Not the first time, not even the thousandth. Ever since I was a kid I\u2019d had this stuff in my head. Ever since I was eleven or twelve I\u2019d been telling it to go away, waiting to wake up and have it gone.<\/p>\n So what was different about tonight? Why did it feel like revelation?<\/p>\n It was the light on Mark\u2019s face. It was the extra hours of day now that it was spring. It was having less than three months of high school left. It was the TV and the smoke and the stale flat taste of beer and my mother asleep upstairs and what I\u2019d just said, and what he\u2019d just said and the food processor on the screen, turning the resources of the earth into pureed mush. It was everything.<\/p>\n I kissed him. He kissed me back. We came up for air and sat with our foreheads resting together, breathing into the silence, hands moving over each other\u2019s faces. A few seconds of perfect certainty. You don\u2019t have to be angry all the time, Mark. I don\u2019t have to be always afraid. Because we\u2019ve got each other now and everything\u2019s going to be different. The end. Roll the credits.<\/p>\n I swore and punched myself in the head.<\/p>\n I\u2019d been relaxed enough to let it in, to let myself feel it. Just before reality came crashing down and I was alone again.<\/p>\n He\u2019d kill me.<\/p>\n That scary temper. Mark hated fags, queers, anything to do with that. How did I think he\u2019d react if I sidled up and planted one on him? I\u2019d end my days with my head split open on that concrete floor in front of the TV. Nice mess of blood and brains and failure for someone to mop up in the morning.<\/p>\n The stain would never go away. It would be like those children\u2019s stories where you follow the adventures of a statue or a tin soldier, and at the end they get thrown in the fire with the trash. But after the burning there\u2019s always something that remains. A heart, a little silver key. I imagined my mother would try to sell the house, have some real estate agent walking people too quickly through the basement, trying to explain it away: the shape of my love splattered onto the floor.<\/p>\n Love. Was that what I was calling it?<\/p>\n Remember when I said I\u2019d never thought about whether me and Mark actually liked each other? When I said it was the same as oxygen, that you inhale it without even knowing it\u2019s there?<\/p>\n Bullshit again. I liked oxygen. I knew I liked oxygen. In fact there was a good chance I loved oxygen. Maybe I\u2019d always loved it. And it occurred to me that it would be nice to be able to breathe. Nice to be able to breathe without somebody thinking I was doing something disgusting just to spite them.<\/p>\n The window was a square of darkness, then it was full of cautious grey light that quietly shifted into blue. I heard a rush of water in the sink downstairs, chirps of cupboard doors opening and closing. My mother was moving around the kitchen. A smart little clack as she loaded the tape player on the counter with her favourite Sunday morning music: the Velvet Underground with Sunday Morning<\/em>.<\/p>\n I sat on the edge of my bed and blinked into the light. I\u2019d been sitting there for hours. When I finally got up, it felt like I\u2019d forgotten how to walk.<\/p>\n Mark was at the kitchen table with my mother, wearing my father\u2019s old suit jacket and eating cinnamon toast.<\/p>\n Cinnamon toast is my mother\u2019s thing. Her background is Russian, so really we should be having, I don\u2019t know, brown bread and pickles, or porridge made of old copies of Pravda<\/em>, or whatever they eat over there. It was all these British children\u2019s books she grew up with. I read the same ones when I was a kid. Taught herself how to make cinnamon toast after she read about the Famous Five preparing it on a campfire for one of their endless little picnics.<\/p>\n Cinnamon toast. She told me she\u2019d loved the sound of the words. \u2018Didn\u2019t know what it was,\u2019 she said, \u2018but I knew I had to have it.\u2019<\/p>\n So there was Mark, chowing down on Enid Blyton food, in my father\u2019s jacket with the leather patches on the elbows, big seventies lapels. The physical fact of him was making me uncomfortable. He was shoving toast in his face \u2013 a mess of crumbs sprinkled over the table and a light glaze of butter coating his chin. I leaned against the counter with my elbows grazing the sink. Mom left the kitchen to check something in the wash.<\/p>\n Sun on his hair, big hands curled around a blue striped mug with chipped edges. His shadow was cut out on a square of sunlight on the table behind him, with the shadow of the floating steam rising, and watery lines of heat from the cup\u2019s surface. Mark looked up at me and I turned away.<\/p>\n \u2018Stephen, are you, like, okay? What happened last night?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018What do you mean?\u2019 I pretended to rub my eyes.<\/p>\n \u2018You just took off. Had to get rid of all the butts and cans myself and I didn\u2019t know what to do with them, so\u2026\u2019 He held up his backpack, which was swollen with garbage from last night. Our Sunday morning ritual of getting rid of the evidence from Saturday. I had a hundred places around the house to stash it all. But today I\u2019d left him to deal with that alone.<\/p>\n \u2018Fell asleep upstairs. Sorry.\u2019 I stared into the yellow and green linoleum at my feet. I\u2019d never had to work at having a conversation with Mark before.<\/p>\n \u2018You\u2019ll be late,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n He glanced at our clock, a plastic daisy on the wall.<\/p>\n \u2018Shit. You\u2019re right. Ten minutes.\u2019 Mark stood up, slung his backpack over his shoulder and stuck a piece of cinnamon toast in his mouth. He mumbled something about returning the jacket and was out the door in seconds.<\/p>\n Striding down the driveway munching on a piece of toast, with the sun falling on the shoulders of my father\u2019s coat. Off to church. Mark\u2019s belief in God tended to waver in and out depending on how he felt about himself and life in general. But he never missed a service at St Andrew\u2019s Presbyterian. \u2018It\u2019s forty minutes out of the week where you\u2019re concentrating on not<\/em> being a selfish asshole,\u2019 he\u2019d told me once. \u2018Everything else is mostly pushing in the other direction.\u2019<\/p>\n I realised my mother was standing beside me. Weird how she\u2019d always seemed so tall when I was a little kid, and now she was barely up to my shoulder. At this rate I\u2019ll be able to carry her around in a shoebox by the time she\u2019s seventy. Well, I\u2019ll save on old people homes, anyway.<\/p>\n \u2018So, Mom. Is this some freaky hormonal thing, dressing teenage boys up like your ex-husband?\u2019<\/p>\n She laughed and wrapped her hands around a mug of tea for warmth. My mother is fair-haired and light, fine-boned. It would be nice if I looked more like her, but I\u2019m dark and angular like my father, all bumping elbows and jutting knees. You\u2019d want to fold me up and stack me in a corner. That morning Mom was in flannel pyjamas, with her hair down her back in light brown waves and a bathrobe I remembered from early childhood. It\u2019d been turquoise back then. I wasn\u2019t sure what colour I\u2019d call it now.<\/p>\n \u2018He didn\u2019t have time to go home and change for church,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n \u2018He should just keep it. Not like I\u2019m going to wear it.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Doesn\u2019t really fit you. You don\u2019t have the shoulders.\u2019 She ambled over to the tape player and rewound the cassette.<\/p>\n \u2018So\u2026what were you guys talking about when I came in?\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n Mom tweaked opened a cupboard door, gazed into it for a moment and then seemed to forget why she was there. I had to ask her again.<\/p>\n \u2018Oh,\u2019 she said. \u2018Mark? The usual. Cooking. He wants to make supper for his little sister tomorrow.\u2019<\/p>\n The sounds of Sunday Morning<\/em> started to fill the kitchen once more, innocent music box notes of the intro, then Lou Reed\u2019s drifting drugged-up voice talking about wasted years and a restless feeling by his side, telling us to watch out. The world was behind us.<\/p>\n We moved around each other. The room should have felt bigger with Mark gone, but I was still acting as if he was there, sitting invisibly at the table with a plate of crumbs in front of him. After a while Mom decided she\u2019d had enough cinnamon toast and it was time to go off and do something else. Left me alone with this empty feeling whirling around inside.<\/p>\n I felt drained, lifeless. I was sure that everything was ruined. I\u2019d never feel the same way around Mark. It would never be easy and comfortable between us again.<\/p>\n I was right, as it turned out.<\/p>\n Now you tell me that\u2019s not the end of the world.<\/p>\n * The novel of which this story is an excerpt will be released in April 2013 in Ireland and Canada under the title, Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" *Cinnamon Toast (novel excerpt) \u2018It\u2019s not the end of the world.\u2019 That\u2019s what people will tell you. That\u2019s what people will tell you when they want to say, \u2018Your problems are stupid, your reaction to them is laughable, and I would like you to go away now.\u2019 \u2018Oh, Stephen, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1062,"parent":148,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-586","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1021,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/586\/revisions\/1021"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}