it reflects a person’s limited intelligence and maturity, one’s inability to function in society as a civilized human being.” Her voice was cool and clinical as if she were delivering an address to the United Nations.
Robyn had decided it was a good time to study the nail of her thumb. I think she was holding back.
“Open your anthologies to page 324,” Mrs. Gillis said and dropped a copy of the book on Robyn’s desk so it made a loud wallop. Robyn just stared at the book like it was a dead rat that had been deposited in front of her.
I think it was a poem by Robert Frost that Mrs. Gillis was teaching that day but it could have been Shakespeare. I can’t remember. I was studying the poetry of Robyn instead. She had shoulder-length black hair. She had large dark eyes and there was a fire in those eyes. Defiance was the name of her game. She had a beautiful full mouth that would be dangerous to kiss. Her skin was brown — something ethnic about her — black or South American or maybe Arabic, but none of the labels seemed quite right. She stared at Mrs. Gillis as if prepared to do battle with her most hated enemy. Mrs. Gillis pretended she did not see this as she reminded the class that the poem was going to be on the test and that the test was going to be “significant.”
“Those who do poorly in Grade 11 academic English rarely get into university,” she reminded us. It was a threat, no more, no less.
Caroline was looking at herself in her pocket mirror, putting lipstick on and fumbling with makeup. She too saw Robyn as a threat. I was suddenly glad that Caroline was out of my life. I now felt free and happy and ready to give myself over to this new dark, surly girl named Robyn.
After class, I caught up with her and asked her where she was from.
“I’m not from anywhere,” she said. “I live in the present and avoid thinking about the past. The past, as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t exist.”
“Okay, good point.” I had only been trying to make small talk, but, like Mrs. G, I was being tested. Human or otherwise, which would it be?
“Where are you headed to?”
“The washroom,” she said. “I have to pee.”
“Oh yeah. Me too.”
She stopped and gave me a look that announced her decision concerning which category I fell into. “This has been a truly intimate moment,” she said, stopping by the door to the girls’ lavatory.
I felt the put-down sting. She might as well have slapped me on the face. And it showed.
Then this really crazy thing happened. She let down her guard. Her face softened. She opened the door to the girls’ room. “Wait here,” she said.
I waited. When she came back out, she looked me in the eye this time. The fire was still there but it wasn’t anger. “What’s your favourite book?” she asked.
I swallowed and took a chance on telling her the truth. “ The Field Book of Insects by Frank E. Lutz,” I said and waited for her to laugh.
“Interesting choice. I haven’t read it but I bet it’s a real page-turner. You really into bugs?”
“Yes. Ever since I was a kid. I can identify a tiger beetle in its larval stage and tell you if it is going to be a male or a female.”
There was a hint of a smile. “You are so weird, you know.”
“I know.”
“But weird is good. Smart and weird is a good combination.”
I couldn’t help myself. I smiled. “Thanks,” I said. “What’s your favourite book?”
“The Tibetan Book of the Dead,” she said. “Ever read it?”
“No, but I’ve read lots of books about death and dying. It’s one of my favourite subjects. Is it in the library?”
“Here? I doubt it.”
“Well, in the public library?”
“Probably. But I’ll loan you my copy.”
“Cool.”
“If I loan it to you, you have to read it.”
“I will.”
“Are you afraid of dying?”
“A little.”
“I’m not,” she said with great certainty. “Life scares the shit out of me but not dying.”
Now she was scaring me. “You’re not like&hellips;?”
“Suicidal? Hell no. I’m not ready to die. You have to prepare yourself for that, like it says in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It takes a whole lifetime for most of us to be ready for the liberation from our bodies. It’s a lot of hard work. I’ve gotta suffer for a long time so I can prepare myself.”
I felt I had just met a kindred spirit or even my soul-mate. “School is a good place to suffer,” I said. “Can I suffer with you?”
“You already are, I think. But yeah. Sure. You’re cute. Weird, smart, and cute. And I want you to teach me some stuff about bugs.”
“I will.”
She stopped by a classroom and announced, “Chemistry. I took chemistry. Nothing sucks in school worse than chemistry. I took it, though, so I could learn to suffer well. I better get in there and go to it.”
“Robyn,” I said. “There’s something you should know about me.”
“And that is?”
“I’m different.”
“So?”
“There’s something about me that’s not quite right. I don’t mean like a bad heart or liver or anything. And I don’t mean like I’m crazy. It’s something else I can’t quite nail down but I need to figure out what it is.”
“Okay. That’s okay with me. I’ll help you if you like. It’ll be like a science project.”
CHAPTER FIVE
My parents were way too protective of me when I was growing up. They thought I would choke on popcorn. They thought I would be run over by a bus. They thought I would catch a deadly disease. They thought I would fall out of a tree.
I did fall out of a tree when I was thirteen. I fell from very high and I fell very fast. It was an oak tree, I remember. On the hard ground I was alone and I was unconscious. No one found me. I just woke up with a headache and a very sore shoulder. I was fascinated by the fact that I had gone away and come back. I don’t know where I went. I just know that it was blue and it was very beautiful. There was no real me there, just sky. I had become the sky somehow, and that was what I was looking at when I woke up — staring at the sky through the tree limbs.
My mother was home when I arrived and saw that I had been injured. She raced me to the hospital
