Smoke and Mirrors. Lesley Choyce

      We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative.

      Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

       J. Kirk Howard, President

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       This book is dedicated to the memory of Robyn MacKinnon

      CHAPTER ONE

      She first appeared in my History of Civilization class at 9:35 on a Thursday morning. Mr. Holman had long since given up on trying to entertain us. He had failed at being interesting and had retreated to the ageold teaching strategy of exerting as little energy as possible during class. Torpor, a kind of liquid dullness, had settled over the entire classroom like toxic haze as the teacher proceeded to simply read from the textbook.

      We were lost in Babylon, on the Plain of Shinar to be specific. “The Plain of Shinar contained probably less than eight thousand miles of cultivable soil.” Mr. H. had stumbled over the word cultivable, wondered if it was a legitimate word or not, and then asked for a show of hands from those who had heard anyone use the word before. Heavy eyelids and no raised hands throughout the room. “Hmm,” Mr. H. pondered out loud, then proceeded.

      “The Plain of Shinar was roughly equal in size to New Jersey or Wales.” Hundreds of years passed as Mr. Holman continued to read. He himself yawned as he read of the early Sumerians on the Plain of Shinar. “Their settlements of low huts, at first of plaited reeds (wattle) and then of mud bricks, crept gradually northward, especially along the Euphrates, for the banks of the Tigris were too high for irrigation.”

      Davis Conroy was absent that day. He was three days into a false flu he had been cultivating to keep him home from school so he could play an ultra-violent video game called Slayfest. Through the window I could see the sun was out. This meant my father was playing golf. He took days off from work to play golf when the weather was good. He invited his favoured clients with him, so he considered golf part of his job. If the sun came out on the weekend, he played golf with other clients and called that work too. Even if he had promised his son that they would drive to the coast to watch the surfers. If the sun came out, it was golf and to hell with the surfers. To hell with promises to his son.

      So in the midst of pondering the sunshine and cultivating my own viral anger, I blinked, and then suddenly she was there. She was sitting in Davis Conroy’s seat. She was looking directly at me.

      I must have appeared puzzled, because she waved her hand in front of my face then leaned towards me.

      “Agriculture and cattle breeding produced most of the wealth which formed the basis of Sumerian life,” she whispered.

      “Agriculture and cattle breeding produced most of the wealth which formed the basis of Sumerian life,” Mr. Holman echoed.

      She smiled and put a finger to her lips. Then she held up one hand and touched her fingers and silently did a countdown. Five, four, three, two, one. The bell rang, and the rest of the class roused itself into mobility as the students began to collect books, scrape chairs, and spill out of the room. With a well-practised air of defeat, Mr. Holman closed up his volume of ancient history and, without looking up, gathered together what was left of his sad educational career and left the room.

      When everyone was gone she cleared her throat and said, “You’re Simon Brace, right?”

      “I am. But you’re not Davis Conroy.”

      “Davis Conroy is home with the flu. At least that’s what he told his mother.”

      “You must be new.”

      “I am.”

      “I could have sworn that you weren’t even there at the beginning of class.”

      “I knew it was going to be a very tedious class. So I missed the beginning of it.”

      She was attractive, yes, but not my dream girl. Not a Tanya Webb. Whoever she was, she was really messing with my head. I was absolutely certain she had materialized out of the blue.

      “Out of thin air,” she said, as if reading my thoughts.