The fin angled toward me. I could see the shark below the water, about 6 feet long. I screamed, splashing through the ocean to the beach. The shark came to the water’s edge before circling back. It was chasing a school of silver fish in circles, towards the beach, so close. It got dark. My mother made me go to the hotel room and change out of my wet clothes for supper.
Geckos sunned themselves on bushes in the vacant lot next to the hotel. I spent a lot of time in there, not moving. There were a few feral cats prowling around. I tried to catch the lizards and the cats but mostly I watched.
My sister Melissa stayed with the parental units and sunned by the pool. In other news, I lifted a twenty from my father’s wallet and bought a pack of Marlboros that killed my lungs. Hawaii was a week without weed, but the rolling waves, the warm air, the man playing ukulele and singing… my parents wanted to send me to college there, if I would just meet them halfway and graduate from high school.
After break ended, I woke up at home in a heap of balled-up blankets. My little sister had stomped downstairs to high school hours ago, her bangs pressed into perfect scoops after a blow dryer flurry. Wearing some dumb shirt, no doubt cropped to show off her tan at the slightest lift of her arms. Her little boyfriend probably loved that. Frank, with his binders and pens, glued to her side.
If Frank was an animal, he’d be a sheep.
I had a locker assigned to me too, but I didn’t even know where it was. My poor locker, without any knapsack or lunch bag. It was waiting for a real girl, for pinned up photos and stashes of gum, for an extra sweatshirt, or gym shoes. Things an actual student attending classes might need.
I rolled out of bed and shuffled outside for a smoke. Pain shot down my skull. The sun, mercifully covered in gray clouds, was still too bright. Below me wafted the reek of low tide, dead fish and seaweed. A float plane roared overhead. I ducked under the broken umbrella propped over a patio chair. Yes, I had a balcony looking onto the Pacific Ocean. I had my own bathroom, and Melissa did too. Yes. Our parents were rich.
Crouched, squinting, I tried to dial it all down and muffle my senses. I shook the pack of Marlboros, and it was almost full. The most likely place to score was at the pit, beside the high school. Unfortunately, I was kicked out at present on account of the ocean.
Just before Christmas break, I was heading to my finals after a morning smoke on the balcony. The water started rippling right next to shore. A fish jumped, then another, and then the whole area in front of our house was suddenly alive with these flipping silver fish, a giant school of them in the seaweed. Jumping in, I tried to catch them with my bare hands. The ocean was boiling with fish. I whipped up to the shed and brought down a bucket and a plastic yogurt container and managed to scoop six fish into the bucket filled with water, but they kept jumping back out and flopping their way back into the ocean. It was incredible. A ring of seals were out in the deeper water and a bunch of seagulls were circling overhead with a few eagles.
Herring. It was a herring run, I found out later.
“You’re not to hang out here Rhiannon. Understand? This is not your neck of the woods anymore.” Principal Pugh said when I showed up late. They wouldn’t let me in the gym with all the other students and instead sent me down to the office. Pulling back his ginger hair, old Pugh’s freckled face was flushed from walking the hundred yards from car to office. He was carrying a few extra pounds.
If Mr. Pugh was an animal, he would be the cat in Alice in Wonderland.
“Yes Mr. Pugh sir!” I called him Pee-eeew.
The ocean was always distracting me. It was changing all the time with the wind and the waves. Take, for instance, how the sky reflected in the water at night. I used to fall asleep on the roof all the time with the balcony door to my room open, but a mouse snuck in and nested in my t-shirt drawer. My mother trapped the mouse. She killed it. I don’t understand how she could do that.
When we went to Hawaii, my folks picked a hotel with lots of animals for me. They really tried. There were penguins in the outdoor foyer, parrots in bamboo cages, swans and ducks in the garden, koi in a pond. When I dipped my toes in, the koi would nibble at them with their toothless, suction cup mouths.
Melissa floated around the pool aimlessly. I snorkeled in the ocean. Just below the surface of the water on the edge of the bay was this whole other world in coral. Sea turtles swam by unconcerned with me, so graceful in the water in spite of their round stiff shells. Melissa was afraid of the turtles and wouldn’t go in the ocean.
If Melissa was an animal, I’d say she was a minnow.
The four of us walked on the beach at dusk, on the way to the restaurant. Before I knew it I had jumped up to my waist in the water bobbing up and down in the waves.
“Now your clothes are all wet! You’ll have to go back to the room to change for supper,” my mother said.
I could barely hear her above the waves. The water reached out its fingers to disappear in the sand before pulling them back again. It was the magic hour of dusk.
My mother put her hands to her cheeks and then started flapping wildly at me.
“Get out Rhiannon! Get out! There’s a shark behind you!”
“Very funny Mom,” I said. She would say anything to get me out of there and up into the room to change. She didn’t want a sodden teenager at her table in the restaurant.
“Rhiannon! Rhiannon!”
The door banged downstairs, waking me up from daydreams. Uh-oh. My mother was already home for lunch. I stepped over the railing and edged onto the roof. The gravel driveway was four feet below at the most accessible spot and I landed with a thunk, feeling the adrenaline rise as I made my escape.
“If you don’t come home in time for supper, don’t come home at all.” It sounded like my mother was right behind me. That’s the problem with gravel, it’s so loud. She was home from work to spy on me and to eat a salad, one full of nuts and seeds.
If my mother was an animal, she would be a rabbit.
My idea of lunch was pizza, or poutine from the food truck—if only I still got allowance to buy it.
I slowed down, shrinking into my hoodie, wondering whether to turn around and look. It pained me to see her face. She and I look alike, I saw that, but I also saw how she felt about me, her eldest daughter. I glanced back at her matching sweater and shirt ensemble, at her lava stone necklace that was supposed to absorb negativity. Absorb, absorb! In my mother’s closet, every piece of clothing was folded on its assigned shelf. She tried to show me, as if I didn’t know exactly where everything was. I’ve spent a lot of time in there, looking for cash.
I gave my mother a salute, avoiding her eyes, and wandered into town. Moore Park was next to the high school. Once a campground nestled in a stand of rainforest, it was a hangout for dogwalkers and drug dealers, with homeless lean-tos hidden among the trees.
“Non!” Robbie yelled out. That was my nickname. He and Nick were skipping school, which was awesome, and were seated on a picnic table.
“What are you holding?” he asked. He lifted up a bag of bud with a giant handblown glass bong. It would have been beautiful once, but the neck of the bong was duct taped together.
I shook my pack of cigarettes in the air. “Looks like a day of poppers, my friends.”
We set to work in friendly silence. Rob placed the bud into a metal grinder and I ripped open a cigarette, making a little pile in the bong that he added to. We lit up and took a couple of hits each. The second one sent me spinning to the ground. The trees and sky rocked around me, the earth seesawing below. Oblivion.
It was a great way to spend the day, but then the boys left at dusk, taking their bong with them. The last cigarette and weed had been smoked hours ago. I know they both went to Rob’s because Nick had been kicked out of his place. I tried to go with them once, but Rob’s mom said one guest per night. She was nice but she wasn’t going to take in the whole high school dope smoking team.
I stayed at the picnic table, thinking about how the conversation at supper might go:
‘How was your day? What did you do?’ That was how the interrogation usually started.
My sister wouldn’t mind this. Last night she told us how the tennis coach had it in for her and didn’t know how to play anyways, and how brilliant her English teacher was and how she loved the story they read in class by Chekhov.
I had a soft spot for that same teacher, Ms. Howe. She gave me an A on every essay I handed in, but unfortunately the seven I didn’t hand in meant I failed. But reading was something I loved.
“Dad, you have to admit, you have a real Chekhovian honker,” I said. I stared at his face affectionately as he chewed on his steak. He wore black glasses that made him look like one of the three stooges, with his bushy moustache beneath.
My mother stared at my nose with its septum ring.
“Yes, you with your perfect little nose Rhiannon. You had to ruin it. You were born looking like a Disney princess, like Cinderella, and all you want to be is the queen of Hell.”
“I don’t want to be the queen of hell mother; I am the queen of hell.”
Melissa’s bangs started to quiver. She couldn’t see that she was digging herself a hole, and her boyfriend Frank was right there with her. The two of them were digging a great big hole and burying themselves with school and homework and now applications for college.
I lay back on the picnic table, and the night fell black and starless. I heard rustling and propped up on my elbows. A pair of green eyes looked out at me from the bushes. I stomped on the bench, my heart pounding, and whatever it was ran away.
If that animal was an animal, it would be a rat. Or a weasel.
I curled up on the table shivering. My stomach growled. I woke up and everything felt wet. The sky had lightened. I walked the path out of the park and bumped into kids cutting through to school.
“The cops are looking for you,” Robbie said as he passed. “They have your picture and they’re asking everyone where you are.”
I stopped, wondering where to go. Home was not my home anymore, but I had nowhere else to go. When I got there my parents were in the driveway, both of them—never a good sign. They leaned over the car window of my friend Natasha. My mother came running out to meet me and I saw that she was shaking. My father looked at me with a tensed jaw and bloodshot eyes. He turned away.
“Where the hell have you been?” His voice cracked.
Natasha’s mother looked straight ahead and drove off slowly. Her car clanked like tin cans being dragged along the gravel. I hid out at Natasha’s house all the time.
“I want you to be my mother,” I had said to Natasha’s mother once.
“You can call me that if you like,” Natasha’s mother said with her nasal voice as she took a long draw on a joint. The problem was that Natasha and I didn’t always get along. Natasha didn’t always want me there. Especially after Natasha went and got herself a boyfriend.
“God! Dial it down people!” My own face became wet with tears. I crept in the door and my mother swept ahead of me, picking up her purse. She took it in her room and emerged holding her cardigan tight across her chest with bony white hands. She had some sneaky new hiding place in there that I hadn’t been able to figure out. No reason to come home anymore, not one that was worth the hassle.
After that first night out, time became blurry. Days and nights followed one another without school or mealtimes as markers. My mother would come find me at the park, lined up for the public bathroom in the morning. Sometimes I slept on a boat with a buddy of mine but he was always trying to make out with me, and he smelled bad. My mother would show up wearing her sunglasses with a change of clothes. Sometimes we went for pizza or poutine. Those were good times.
The reason I left home was all a bit fuzzy. Something to do with salads and homework. My room looked better than ever. My mother fixed the hole in the wall where I hid my stash, wiped silly string off the ceiling, and picked up the butts off the balcony deck.
Somehow spring rolled around again, and Melissa graduated. My little sister graduated before me.
If Melissa was a plant, she would be a flower.
Melissa clipped down the stairs in her gold heels, bought especially to wear with her blue dress. We both love blue. Her hair was in ringlets, she sprayed the living hell out of it. She dangled a little gold evening clutch, and Frank gave her a corsage. He wore a rented tuxedo because they both graduated, and next year they’ll go to Yale.
One night I spontaneously joined a group at the youth center, where the social worker asked us to sit in a circle on the floor. What the hell, right? I had heard that, at the end, there would be coffee and doughnuts. The social worker handed out little golf pencils and paper.
“Okay people: write three things that you like about yourselves.”
I sat with my pencil. A cold sweat formed. The social worker came close and whispered that she liked my sense of humour, how full of life I was and my smile.
I studied the social worker, smelled her coffee breath, looked at her many friendship bracelets and wrinkled linen dress. Those bracelets! I had made so many of those myself, and gave them to all my classmates, to my sister, to my mother, even to my dad.
“Keep one bracelet for yourself,” my mother had said, laughing.
“I’m here for the coffee. And doughnuts.” The social worker motioned to the pencil in my hand. There was nothing on the damp piece of paper when I put it into the hat. Wrenching sobs blurted out of my mouth and I had to leave before one of the social worker’s little minions tried to talk to me.
Sometime in February, around my birthday, I was crashing at Nick’s. He could pay rent because he literally crashed his car on Whelan Road and got disability. Cocaine helped me feel full of purpose, like that shark was in the water behind me. I felt like I could leap out of the water in a single bound.
I found a stash in his bathroom, and snorted every bit of it, my heart pounding and pounding. My heart worked so hard, beating like hell, through everything. I thought then that I liked my heart. That’s what I wished I had written on the paper for the social worker. Then my heart quit.
Nick found me. He was furious for a few seconds until he saw I wasn’t breathing. He called 911, pushing on my chest and breaking my ribs. He saved my life, then kicked me out after the hospital.
I rented a basement suite in the city. Social services got involved at the hospital and set me all up. At present, I pump gas. I have my regulars that tip me for cleaning their windshield and all the little things we do at the station. This little old lady gave me $50 once and I immediately bought a lottery ticket with it. I was feeling so lucky that day.
I saw my family posted a picture on Facebook: missing you Rhiannon! I lost touch with them when social services took over. They sat by the arbutus, which would remind them of me, I guess, if I was a plant. They’re messy, they shed their bark all year long and only grow in a small area close to the ocean. Their trunks glow red at sunset.
My folks pulled up to the gas station a few weeks ago. I thought it might happen, and then Boom, it happened. I watched my dad fill the car. I stood at the back of the store behind a magazine rack when he came in and paid for his gas. He bought Mentos. He ate rolls and rolls of those peppermints. He was truly committed to fresh breath.
If my dad was an animal, he would be a used car salesman.
He got back in the Mercedes next to my mother and they drove off.
I could have said hello. Hey there Pops! I didn’t know how it would all go down with them, seeing me unexpected like that. It would be a shock. They wanted a real daughter, you know? By the time I lifted my hand to wave they were gone, lost in the traffic flow.
*****
Celia Meade, author of Anatomy of the World (poetry, Wipf and Stock, 2024), holds an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence, an MFA in painting from the University of Calgary and a B. Sc. In Biology from Queen’s University. She lives on Salt Spring Island, Canada, and in Bronxville, New York with her partner, fellow poet Karl Meade. Her poetry, essays and stories have appeared in numerous magazines, including Euphony, Louisville Review, and Plainsongs.
