"Of course they should stay with us! There's plenty of room."
"Absolutely not."
"It's no problem at all."
I raise my voice. "It's a huge problem! There's no chance, OK? It would be horrible."
Our waiter looks over from another table where he's taking an order from a couple who are also looking in our direction. Guess I should try not to get us thrown out of the place. I calm down a bit and look back at Neea.
"Please try to understand that having my mom in the same house with me at a time like this would be incredibly bad, OK?"
Neea's expression changes. "OK, I understand," she says.
We're on our salad course at an Italian restaurant called Cucina. It's not far from the house, and really close to where Neea works. It isn't white-tablecloth fancy, but it's still pretty nice. The kind of place where you don't find a lot of homeless people or drug addicts but somehow I'm here and I'm eating an arugula salad and some fairly bougie pasta.
I keep thinking about the Thanksgiving dinner in Kamloops at Kev's house. My folks will be there and, I guess, sharing the shocking news of my shameful situation with everyone. What will they think? What will Kev think of his little sis doing drugs? Should be quite the dinner conversation. I'm officially a scandal.
What's up with Italians? Marco Polo goes to China, learns how to make noodles, comes back and everybody's like, cool, we're going to take this and make it into a thousand different shapes. We'll give each one its own name and pretend like it isn't all the exact same thing! I'm not complaining—I love pasta—but I'm not sure about this one. I'm having the crab agnolotti. Agnolotti is apparently just like ravioli except bigger, so instead of getting a nice bowl full of ravioli Chef Boy-Ar-Dee-style, I have, like, four big pasta throw pillows with crab meat and cream sauce.
It's real crab though. Both the waiter and Neea really want me to know that, as if it matters to someone who's been eating whatever shit a street kid can steal or scrounge. I suppose the agnolotti is good, but I'm just picking at it. Food doesn't get me excited much these days. Another one of those fun side effects of meth.
Neea is constantly telling me how fantastically I'm doing, how much progress I've made, etc., so this isn't just a Thanksgiving meal but, for her at least, a celebration of my recovery. Seems a bit premature to me though cuz I just don't see the improvement she sees. To me this still sucks. I know this little dinner means a lot to her but I just can't work up much cheerfulness. I feel like shit, I'm irritable, nothing makes me happy, everything pisses me off and the only thing in the entire world that can fix it is the one thing I can't have.
Well... time. Time will fix it too. That's what Neea says. That's what the books and the Internet say. Time will make me better. With enough time, the damaged dopamine receptors in my brain will hopefully start to repair themselves and there's a good chance I'll have the capacity for joy again. Plus, in time, I won't get so damn mad at every little thing.
"Do you want dessert?" asks Neea as she scoops up the last bite of her pasta.
"Not really," I say. "Can we just go?"
Neea pays for dinner and we walk the few blocks back to the old house on Rendall Street. I manage to thank her for dinner without sounding too miserable. The evening is cold. I can see my breath and I have my hands buried deep in my coat pockets to keep them warm. As we round the corner onto Rendall I catch a glimpse of a couple guys carrying bags and walking quickly down the street away from us. It's dark and they're down at the other end of the block. I only see them for a second before they veer off onto Beckley Avenue, but I immediately think one of them is Kodi. That looked like his long-stride walk. The other might have been P. L. Probably not them, I think. Why would they be here?
On the front porch, Neea struggles with the key in the lock for a moment and then, door open, we're both just staring into the house in disbelief.
It's like a tornado went through. Stuff is scattered across the floor of the front hall and beyond that, in the kitchen, we can see broken dishes, shattered glass, a chair lying on its side, jars and bottles from the fridge smashed, their contents splattered across the floor. The back door is wide open.
• • • •
The morning after the big Thanksgiving dinner, Teddy wondered why he'd been so bothered about the fact that his dad was some kind of connoisseur of weed. He knew that weed was a hell of a long way from crystal meth, or coke, heroin or any of those. Not that big a deal really. Maybe he overreacted.
The ferry was packed. It was a holiday Monday and it seemed like all of British Columbia was making the crossing with him. He found a seat at the end of a long row toward the rear of the ship.
There was a family in the row in front of him with two little kids, a boy who was quietly playing a game on his phone and a younger girl, maybe six years old, who was starting to get worked up about the position of a glittery sticker on her weird little troll doll. The father tried and failed to correctly reposition the sticker while the girl watched him with a worried expression. Her mother beside her just looked at her phone, pretending not to know them. Then, on the third or fourth reposition attempt, the sticker tore in half and the father seemed to freeze in terror. Teddy watched as both parents flew into action to try and avert a full meltdown.
Teddy ignored the drama and looked out the wide back windows at the churning wake of the ferry and the distant, faint buildings of the city he'd just left as they ploughed across the dark water of the Strait of Georgia toward the big island to the west. It was one of those sunny days in October that feel like a last gasp of summer before the rain sets in, so people were going out onto the deck to soak up the sun. He thought about parting ways with the family of four and joining the sun worshippers outside.
It had just been so weird. You spend your life looking up to your dad, thinking he's so mature and normal, only to find that in the right circumstances he could be as much of an idiot as any teenager. That morning at breakfast Cassie had complained to Alan about how much he'd tipped the caterers.
"That was way too extravagant!" she said.
Artists were supposed to be a little crazy, right? Teddy guessed it went with the territory and he should just get over it. At least he wouldn't have to go back again until Christmas break. He got up and went out onto the deck.
Leaning against the rail, wind whipping his hair, he looked out over the waves toward the islands to the north, indistinct grey-blue shapes stretched wide and sitting on the water, layers fading paler into the distance. It occurred to him that even though he'd lived his entire life on this coast he didn't know the names of any of them. He should look at Google Maps and learn their names, or maybe get one of those nautical charts and hang it on his wall so he could get more familiar with the coast. Better yet, he could actually go to some of those islands instead of just hopping back and forth between Victoria and Vancouver! Someday he should just take a whole summer and explore. There was so much of the province that he'd never even seen. He stared out at the dark water. Maybe he'd get lucky and spot some orcas.
• • • •
The police were here for at least half an hour, attacks on the property of upstanding citizens being taken very seriously compared to, for example, the troubles of homeless kids.
They suggested screwing a piece of plywood over the broken window on the back door until we have a chance to fix it. Neea casually mentioned that she probably had everything she needed downstairs due to the reno in progress, and then, to our total surprise, the cops just went ahead and did it for us so the house would be a bit more secure overnight. Full service, this VicPD. It was pretty clear that Constable Duguay, or Matt, as he insisted we call him, had taken a non-professional interest in Neea, and his partner Amir seemed fine with it. I'm sure Neea hadn't told them she had the supplies because she wanted them do it. Who would have expected that? Plus, she isn't the type to use her looks that way.
As Matt held the sheet of plywood and Amir drove screws, we learned that Amir's youngest son was some kind of judo prodigy, and that Matt had finally been able to sell his house after the divorce and downsize to an apartment, which was a big relief.
If that was intended to be a segue to asking Neea on a date, old Matt chickened out. I mean, he was possibly just being professional and didn't want to ask her with his partner standing there, but it seemed more like he choked. Anyway, Neea was quite glad to have the door covered up, and I was just relieved that I didn't recognize these two from the street.
Before they got there, I had pleaded with Neea not to mention Kodi. I told her that I thought I'd seen him and P. L. walking away from the house when we got there but I really didn't want her to tell the police about that. If Kodi ever found out we'd ratted on him I don't even know what he'd do. It would be worse than I could imagine, and I could imagine pretty bad. She asked how they knew where we lived and I shrugged.
"I honestly don't know. I don't think Kodi followed me here after he beat me up, but maybe? Or maybe they spotted us around town sometime and followed us here? Kodi always has ways of finding things out."
The guys had wrecked a lot of stuff but we gradually realized that they hadn't actually taken very much—half-empty bottles of vodka, rum and Bailey's, some snack foods and, weirdly, a novel Neea had been reading that was written in Finnish. What the hell? Maybe they'd have taken more if we hadn't come home when we did but I don't think stealing was the main reason they were there. I think Kodi broke in mainly to mess with my head. We gave Amir and Matt a run-down of what seemed to be missing and they asked a bunch of questions before they finally went on their way.
My guess is that when we walked to the restaurant, Kodi had P. L. follow us and watch until we left, then run back to warn him as soon as we started heading home. P. L. can run pretty fast, so it would have been easy for him to speed back and give Kodi the heads up in time for them to get away before we got there. Well, almost.
The back door to Neea's house was an old one with a four-pane window in it. Kodi had smashed one of the panes and reached in to unlock the door. The cops said that Neea should get a sturdier door and also consider putting in an alarm system. Once inside, Kodi had tossed things around in the kitchen and front hall, took a quick look upstairs as indicated by some dirty footprints and then went down to the basement to my little space there and thoroughly demolished it.
Kodi knows how to get to me. When you live on the street you don't have much and you build up an irrational attachment to the few things you do have. Kodi found the things that he knew I loved and ruined them. He tore apart my backpack, ripped up my favourite hoodie, smashed my little collection of ballpoint pens then tried his best to spread the red and blue ink onto the sheets of the bed I'd been sleeping in. He found the notebook Neea gave me and tore it to shreds. Neea and I had a good cry when we saw what he'd done. It was just so mean.
After our new uniformed BFFs left, we took a bunch of pictures for the insurance people then just stood there, staring at the mess.
"At least he didn't break the plates," I said, looking up at the beautiful blue and gold plates from Finland.
After the tears and a hug, we started cleaning up the kitchen and front hall. After that we were too tired and miserable to attempt cleaning up my room downstairs. Neea said I could sleep in Teddy's bed. We both kept our bedroom doors open and both probably had a hard time sleeping. I didn't want to scare Neea even more, but I was pretty terrified that Kodi would come back. The cops strongly urged us to go to a hotel for the night, but Neea can be a stubborn one. Constable Matt said that he and Amir were on a twelve-hour night shift so they'd keep an eye on the neighbourhood.
How crazy is it that you can go from being afraid of the police and comforted by your boyfriend to being afraid of your boyfriend and comforted by the police in, like, no time?
• • • •
"Sorry, you probably didn't want to see me here," said Darwin as Teddy strode out of the ferry terminal over to where she and Neea stood waiting.
"No!" said Neea. "Teddy doesn't mind, do you?"
"No, really. It's fine," he said. "How's it going anyway?"
Darwin shrugged. "It's going, I guess."
They got to the car and headed through the city of Nanaimo toward the highway.
"Teddy we have some bad news," said Neea solemnly as they drove. "The house was broken into last night."
"What?" said Teddy, his voice an octave higher than usual. "What are you talking about?"
"They didn't take very much, but they made a mess," said Neea. "They broke the window on the back door to get in, but we'll get a new door. Probably tomorrow."
"When did it happen?" said Teddy.
"Last night, while Darwin and I were out for dinner."
"Oh my god..." said Teddy. "Did you call the police?"
"Yes, of course. They came right away and they were very nice and helpful. Let's get you home, OK?"
On the drive down Highway 1 into Victoria Teddy pressed Neea for more details on the break-in. Neea was reluctant to tell him about Kodi, knowing that he'd blame Darwin, but she couldn't lie.
"You know the guy?" Teddy said to Darwin, accusingly. "Oh my god, Mom! This is crazy! I told you this was all a bad idea!"
"Teddy, please calm down. It's going to be fine. We'll fix the door and we'll get a burglar alarm put in, OK? This boy Kodi is just trying to make Darwin feel bad for leaving, isn't that right Darwin?"
"Uh, pretty much," said Darwin from the back seat.
"How can you know that?" Teddy said loudly. "You can't know what this guy was thinking or what he's going to do next! They're totally unpredictable! He could come back tonight! He could be there right now!"
"Don't worry. I spoke to Mrs. Hammond across the street and she's keeping an eye on the house while we're out."
"Oh my god, Mom. Mrs. Hammond? She's a hundred-and-fifty! What's she gonna do? Sic her fat dog on the guy?"
"Or she could just call the police," said Darwin.
"So they didn't take the computer? Did they go in my room? What got broken?" Teddy wasn't getting much calmer.
"No sweetie, they didn't take the computer and they didn't go in your room. They were looking for Darwin's room. That's where most of the things got broken. As I said, this boy was just trying to make Darwin feel bad, as if she didn't have enough to deal with already."
As Neea reassured him, Teddy thought of new things to worry about all the way home. He only started to relax when he got inside and saw that, thanks to Neea and Darwin's clean-up efforts, not much had changed.
• • • •
It makes no sense but I'm having my best day in a long time. Despite the fact that I have plenty to feel crappy about, I'm actually feeling pretty good. Yeah, Kodi broke into the house last night and could come back at any time. And yeah, Teddy's back from Vancouver and clearly blames me for the fact that his house got broken into and his life is pretty much ruined. And, yeah, my goddamn parents are coming to town in, like, an hour to no doubt undermine what little progress I've made. All true, but for some reason I'm actually not in a bad mood. It's such a novelty to feel better for a change!
I don't want to read too much into it. I know I still have a tough time ahead, but I'll enjoy this break in the gloom as long as it lasts.
Even Teddy's little freak-out on the long drive home from the ferry didn't spoil my mood much. It's totally reasonable that he blames me for the break-in. If I hadn't been here it definitely wouldn't have happened, but I can't worry too much about that. It isn't that I don't care what Teddy thinks...
Well, actually it is. I don't.
I can't. Not at this point. All the crazy stuff Neea has been doing, all the help she's been giving me, the sacrifices she's making, it's all starting to have an effect. Back at the beginning, when I was still on the street, I thought I didn't have a problem. Then later on, I thought I had a problem so big that I could never recover from it and it was pointless to even try. But now, after all the battles, the lead-weight sadness, all the paranoia and way too many green smoothies, I finally think I can see beyond it, to having a normal life again.
That's huge, just believing it can be done, and that's why I'm feeling good today. I can see the faint outline of a future for myself, a future that wasn't just hidden from view, it wasn't there at all, a void. So now that a glimmer of light is shining into the darkness, if a teenage boy gets a little angsty over having me in his house for a few weeks well, sorry Ted, that's a small price to pay.
After he cooled down a little Teddy mentioned that his Thanksgiving dinner had pretty much been a disaster. He didn't elaborate on what was so bad about it but clearly he doesn't have a perfect relationship with his dad so I'm guessing it had something to do with that. Is it like me with my mother? For his sake I hope not, but something's going on there. Maybe someday I'll actually be able to have a conversation with him about it.
Teddy is holed up in his room and Neea and I are drinking herbal tea in the living room when the car pulls up outside.
"Oh god," I say, and briefly consider running down to the basement to hide.
"It'll be fine," Neea assures me as she gets up to greet my parents at the door.
I follow her and kind of hide off to the side as she opens the front door. Neea is smiling and I hear my dad coming up the porch steps. "Hello!" he says cheerfully. "I'm Geoffrey Lilley."
Neea introduces herself as Linnea Salonen. "But please call me Neea," she adds.
"This is my wife, Patricia," says my dad as I finally peek around the doorframe. My mother holds out her hand to Neea with a very small, forced smile. Dad notices me then and kind of rushes past Neea to give me a huge hug. "Darwin," he says, his voice getting emotional.
Dad doesn't want to let me go and I'm trying not to cry. I glance over at my mother and she doesn't look happy or relieved to see me. No, the look on her face tells me exactly what she's thinking...
How could you do this to me?
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