Nana Sophia kissed him. “And I love you and I would never hurt you. But if you weren’t Philip’s and your momma tried to pass you off as his, I’d have slit her throat and left her in a ditch to die like a dog.”
Think of magic as a tree. The root of supernatural ability is simply the realization that all time exists simultaneously. Humans experience time as a progression of sequential events in much the same way we see the horizon as flat: our reality is shaped by our limitations.
If you blasted off in a rocket and achieved a low, stable orbit, you would see the planet’s horizon curving into a sphere. But how, you may be wondering, can you blast yourself out of time? We don’t know how to build those machines yet.
Close your eyes. Concentrate on your breath. Remember that you were not always earthbound. Every living creature, every drop of water and every sombre mountain is the by-blow of some bloated, dying star. Deep down, we remember wriggling through the universe as beams of light.
Baby thumped her tail when his mom came over to squeeze Jared’s shoulder. His mom’s eyes darted around the room, but she avoided meeting his. Normally, she’d be telling him sixteen was way too old to be acting like a big fucking wuss, but they could hear the vet and the receptionist talking in the front room, so she stayed quiet. She patted her jeans as she walked out. Probably forgot her lighter in the truck.
The world is hard, his mom liked to say. You have to be harder.
Baby licked his cheek.
“Gonna miss you,” Jared whispered in her ear.
Baby lifted a leg and farted. Jared laughed, and then it turned into crying that faded into more sniffling.
He looked down. Blood and chunks had turned the front of his jeans red. And of course his homework was blowing down the street and he didn’t want to arrive late, get stared at for his dog-splattered jeans and not have his homework done. His mom wrapped him in her arms while the cop asked Richie to describe his other pit bull. She squeezed him until his ribs creaked.
“Richie could be the answer to a lot of our problems,” she whispered in his ear. “If you keep your cool and don’t take this personally.”
He choked on his answer, trying to pull out of her grip.
“I’d kill and die for you, Jelly Bean,” she said. “Don’t ever forget that.”
A raven landed on the sidewalk in front of him, black and ominous. It cocked its head, studying him. Jared liked crows because they were small and goofy, but ravens with their deep croaks and their large size unnerved him.
“FYI,” the raven said, “advertisers lie to get you to buy their product. If you coat yourself in Axe body spray, girls aren’t going to pull your clothes off. They’re going to hold their noses and back away.”
Holy crap, Jared thought. I am still way more stoned than I thought.
The raven hopped closer. “So do everyone a favour and stop bathing in it. Okay?”
“‘Kay,” Jared said.
Jared bumped off a couple of trees as he sped down, laughing his ass off as Kelsey tumbled past him. He was declared the loser, and had to spin a plastic cocoon around Blake, who kangaroo-hopped over to Kelsey and jumped up to kick him.
Afterwards, Jared took the bus back to their neighbourhood and helped Mrs. Jaks shovel the snow out of her driveway while Mr. Jaks searched the house for snow tires for the car they’d sold. They had venison pie for supper. She asked him if he could watch Mr. Jaks on Wednesday while she went to a doctor’s appointment. She promised to make his favourite, spaghetti with moose meatballs.
She was going to be so pissed if—when—she found out he was helping out his dad. Jared didn’t want to live with his dad. He wasn’t picking sides. God, no. He just didn’t want his dad to be homeless. He didn’t want to worry about her reaction, but it wiggled around the back of his mind like a melody that you hummed without thinking.
The money is for YOU, she wrote. I mean it.
Destiny’s having her baby soon.
My pretty, pretty enabler. Repeat after me: I’m not responsible for the crappy decisions of the grown-ups in my life.
Jared rolled his eyes. Love you, Nana.
Love you more, Cutie.
The trilobites were blindsided by the end of their world. They were like, whoa, man. What the hell? What did we ever do to you? But no one answered and they had nowhere to hide. Nowhere was safe. Every last trilobite died. Their bodies were covered with mud and ash. As the eons passed, they were pressed into fossil that would, one day, make lovely bookends and paperweights.
Mass extinction sucks.
Dylan threw up and Jared went to the kitchen and made coffee.
He sat at the island and turned on his phone again.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, Destiny had texted.
I hate my life, Jared thought.
He checked his voice mail, erasing Destiny’s messages as soon as he heard her voice. One of the messages began with a long pause.
“Jared?” Mrs. Jaks said. “I’m home. I need some help.”
She’d phoned two days ago. After the holiday parties, he couldn’t really remember what he was doing two days ago.
U home 2nite? his mom texted.
Yup.
Luv ur guts.
She was probably drunk and lonely but he read it and reread it, swallowing. Back atcha.
Sarcastic lil shit ur lucky I luv u nuff not to murder u in ur sleep.
Ya, ya.
Get ur rotten ass home b4 I hunt u down.
I have pizza.
Best son ever.
“Are you going to the Idle No More walk?”
“The what?”
“Seriously? Do you live under a rock? It’s all over the news.”
“Kinda busy lately.”
“Wow. Just…wow. Dude, Native people are rising up. We’re protesting the omnibus budget bills that are stomping all over the treaties and this oil company called Enbridge—”
“Oh, that.”
“Oh, that?”
“It’s pretty much a done deal,” Jared said. “The environmental review is a dog-and-pony show to shut everyone up.”
“Way to bend over.”
Our bodies are transitory vessels built from recycled carbon like every other living being on this planet. Bits and parts of you have probably been a cricket or a dinosaur or a single blade of grass on the prairies.
With all the power of technology and science in the world, I would bet you dollars to doughnuts that you still trust a human face to be a human. But come closer and let me speak to the creatures that swim in your ancient oceans, the old ones that sing to you in your dreams. Encoded memories so frayed you think they’re extinct, but they wait, coiled and unblinking, in your blood and your bones.
Science had a pop quiz. French had homework due he hadn’t done. At lunch, he ate a stale croissant with no-name margarine that he’d scored from the food bank. Spring had sprung. The grass needed cutting, the fridge was making noises and he had no idea how he was going to make the bills. He thought that was probably part of the punishment. If he was going to pay his dad’s bills, then he was going to pay his mom’s. She had a Biblical sense of justice. Eye for an eye, bill for a bill.
He took her hand and put it on his ribs. “My mom dated this douche named David. He didn’t like my grades, so he broke a couple of my ribs. Slowly. He got a boner when I started screaming.”
Sarah flinched. “That’s messed up.”
After a bit she kissed him, then took her hand back and reached up for the j. She inhaled deep before she curled into his side.
“I feel numb,” she said, “all the time, like I took sleeping pills and can’t wake up. I just want to feel something.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Jared said. “And I don’t want to be hurt.”
“Are you still helping him?”
“No.”
“Then why’d you pawn the TV?”
“You took off, but we still had bills.”
She took another deep, slow breath. “I was pissed. You have no idea what it took not to strangle you.”
“Yeah,” Jared said. “That’s love.”
She side-eyed him. “That’s the only thing that kept you from being mulch.”
His younger brother wanted nothing to do with magic or magical creatures. He was in love with a woman who wanted high status and a strong warrior for a husband. His village was at war and he wanted to fight. He didn’t want his father’s lonely life. His father was regarded with suspicion, resentment and hatred by everyone, even his own clan, who all blamed the shaman when someone fell sick. His son saw the fasting, and the time alone in the wilderness, and the lack of friends and decided that being a shaman wasn’t for him. But the spirits flocked to him like mosquitoes, torturing him until he gave in and became a powerful, powerful shaman.
“Give me the knife.”
“Not while you’re wasted. No cutting.” He wiped her blood off his face, tasting salt. His hand came away red.
“No cutting,” Sarah agreed.
Jared let her go. She traced his face with her fingertip.
“Blood,” she said.
“Your blood.”
“You’re mine. Now and forever.”
“Awesome,” Jared said. He wished people could make undying declarations of love and loyalty to him when they weren’t half-cut or stoned out of their gourds. Or sorry.
The ape man leaned on his knuckles, sniffing the air. His head swung back and forth. He bent down and sniffed the floor. Jared lifted his feet onto the couch. There goes the neighbour’s house. Off to Kansas.
[…]
Other hands scrabbled through the floor, their nails clicking on the linoleum.
I’m here, Jared thought. Alone in the living room. I’m watching TV. Nothing else is real. I know the difference between real and not, and this isn’t real.
“You loved your dog because you were her master,” Fake Sarah said.
“What?”
“You only love the ones that crawl to you and beg for food.”
“Hey, I didn’t do anything to you.”
“Human,” she said. “We’re dying because you’re killing us.”
“I’m not killing anyone.”
“You’re killing the world and you have the nerve to wonder why we hate you.”
Jared swallowed. He needed to get them off topic. What would get them off topic? “Anthropocene.”
Fake Sarah nodded as the others murmured. “The world is burning.”
“Humans take all the fish,” another one said.
“Can’t stay in the river,” another spat, “The rivers burn and taste like shit.”
“Soon the only thing left to eat,” Fake Sarah said, “is you.”
“I’m sorry,” Jared said.
“We don’t want you sorry,” Fake Sarah said. “We want you dead.”
All he seemed to be doing these days was crying. Why stop now, he thought, as he bent over and put his head on the table. He didn’t care if Nana—if Sophia killed him. She’d been his lifeline when things got dark. She’d been the one person who could make the crap seem less crappy. And she hated him now. And he hated himself and his life, and he heard himself choking on his own snot and he was disgusted but he couldn’t stop.
He heard the fireflies coming with her down the hallway, and he didn’t want to see them. He willed them away, but they wouldn’t go.
“Come back,” Sarah said. “I can’t hear them if you aren’t there.”
“No,” Jared said.
“I’ve never felt anything like that.”
“You’re coming apart,” Jared said. “It’s taking you apart.”
“We’re joining.”
“No, you’re shredding.”
“I’m not scared.”
“I am.”
The bites had healed. He didn’t feel his missing toe anymore. He should be over it by now, he thought, but as he treaded water, he wanted to get drunk, immediately. He wanted to not feel terrified or dumped or used anymore. He wanted to get out of his head and never, ever crawl back in.
“I want to shake your hand,” Mr. Wilkinson said. And he held out his hand, and he was attracting attention, so Jared reluctantly shook. “It took a lot of guts to come here. I wish I’d been as together as you are when I was your age. I’m proud of you, Jared.”
Jared started crying. Leaking tears. And then bawling and shaking. And feeling like a phony and a loser. Mr. Wilkinson wrapped his arms around him and let him cry.
“Judge-y and self-righteous, just like my mom.”
“I’m not judging you. I love you.”
“You want me to quit drinking now, right? Stop partying. Be a good fucking girl and keep your legs fucking shut and obey everybody. Right?”
“This doesn’t have anything to do with you. This is my sobriety.”
“Can you stop quoting your cult?”
“You don’t have to change,” Jared said. “You don’t—”
She whacked him upside the head.
“Later,” Jared said.
