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Sometimes I wonder.

And other times I don’t.

“Lor’, we need to talk.”

“I know.” We walk to the back of the stairwell.

I really do wonder.

But do I care, does it matter.

“I don’t think you should really...” She trails off. It doesn’t matter, I know what she’s saying. I don’t want to know, but I do.

“I know.” I know too much. But really nothing.

“We don’t really think you should hang around us anymore.”

I know why. “But why?” I feel stupid. The other people, the normal people, the happy people, they walk by. I’m crying by now. I’m not quite worthy of gossip.

Did they talk? Did they notice? Was I the only one that this changed?

“Why? This isn’t fair, Nicole. You know it isn’t. Give me another chance. Remember all those years? Charlottetown? The Fabulous Five? How can you...” I’m crying too much. I’m tempted just to run out the door. I have to go to French class. We’ve been here almost a half hour. I’m going to be late for French class. I should just skip it. Claim emotional illness. No, I’m too well conformed, too well adjusted to the school atmosphere. And I have to go to English. English will make me feel better. Really it will. By the end of French, I’ll be able to pretend things are normal. By the end of English, maybe they will be. Maybe I’ll have imagined this.

I often wonder.

I haven’t spoken to her since November eighth, nineteen ninety-six. That was a year after it happened. I remember dates. I always have since then. It was 2 days before my fifteenth birthday. That’s why I always remembered it.

I’m nervous. I know she’ll be here, she has to. Her father picks her up here every day. She’ll be here. If she comes, I’ll talk to her. She’s here. That’s a nice jacket, black leather, tailored...

“Hi Lor’.” She still calls me Lor’. She talks like we’re still friends. But very solemn.

“Hi. A year ago today, you told me we weren’t friends anymore. I just wanted to say that I was really hurt, and I’m over it now.” I’m such a liar. That couldn’t be further from the truth. With my heart racing, and my tongue feeling like a sea sponge, I walk off as fast as I can without drawing attention. I get into the school, and I nearly collapse with... something. It’s difficult to describe. Not relief, definitely not remorse, just a feeling of collapsing. Maybe just the physical strain it put on my body to do that. After I did that, I had nerve.

And so life went on. Everything went on. For the rest of the year, I didn’t talk to more than 3 people a day, including teachers. My wardrobe became definitely blacker. Looking back, if I’d started smoking, discovered Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails, and found a place in that crowd of almost rejects, maybe I’d be different. But I had no will to shock people, to go against the crowd, to change. I had no will to live. I had no will at all. It wasn’t until I found myself back that I liked NIN and started smoking.

There are things about that time period... Some nice times. I went places, did things, and I’m sure I’d look back on them fondly, if I could remember ever being fourteen. I honestly don’t. I must have somehow blocked out that year of my life. I remember what my classrooms look like... The halls...

It’s lunch. I never know what to do with myself at lunch. For the first few days after it happened, I’d just walk up one set of stairs, and then down another. After a while, I gave up on that. I’d just sit and hide with my food in the library. I suppose it was during this time that I developed a fondness for the cafeteria chocolate chip muffins. Joey Trautmann would come up to me from time to time... Sometimes I wouldn’t go to the library. On days when I felt particularly miserable, I would hike up the stairs again to the third floor. I remember standing at the third storey window, and wishing I could push it out, I really did try, so that I might get up the nerve to jump. If, by some fluke, I’d been able to get it out of the window frame, I would have jumped. Headfirst into nothing. Maybe then they’d talk about me.

And that’s what I remember about being fourteen. Not much else. I remember starting grade 10. I tried to get out of that horrid school. They all told me that I couldn’t leave. What is that place, a prison? I’m allowed to leave if I want, I told them that, and even they knew it was true, they didn’t believe me. They wouldn’t let me leave. My mother was friends with the principal. She got me in to talk with Mrs. McClean. I sat and talked calmly with her, trying to state my case of why I had to get out of that damned building. But she didn’t care. There are more important things, after all, than having friends. I could have been attacked by a gang. At that point, I would have appreciated that. I wasn’t in class for more than 4 hours in the first week of school. I claimed that I was sick, and then stayed home and read V.C. Andrews books, at the rate of one a day. Whenever I went in to school to talk to the principal, I’d sign out a new one. The Vice-Principal made me talk once. He took me in his office and asked why I wanted to leave. I told him that I had no friends at Mowat and I wanted a new start. He said, “You think things will be different anywhere else?” And I just cried. He didn’t understand... Maybe I thought that if I still couldn’t survive at a new school, then I must really be a reject, and not worthy of being alive, and then I could just kill myself. And then it would be over. I discovered how much crying at teachers can do for your marks. Just make yourself seem totally helpless, like you’re really falling apart, and then you’re set at a 70% or higher for the rest of the term.

I wonder what could have happened had I switched schools.

I somehow auditioned for the school play. I didn’t get in, but the director took pity on me. She let me be her “director’s assistant.” Which was a totally useless and pointless thing, but like I said, it was pity. And I did eventually weasel my way into the cast. But the play got canceled. One of the principle cast members killed himself. On my birthday, too, that had to mean something. I was jealous. Jay was someone that I wished I had known. He was someone that didn’t intend to be cool, it just happened, and even though I knew I’d probably never get to know him, I had always watched him with admiration. But the play did accomplish something for me. It let me get to know some people that didn’t hate me. And anybody at all is better than what I had before. They are really great now.

September 18th, 1997. Almost 2 years after the fact, and I was almost recovered. Almost. I’m still recovering now. I have a residual morbidity, and now that I’ve got guts as well as nerve, I’m a bit... well, different than I was. I can’t say I’m better or worse. The whole thing has taken away my sensitivity, and left me with a need to experience things, a reality addiction. I never cry at movies, I never fall in love with people that I know I’ll never meet, I don’t get obsessed with anything that I don’t think is really real. I’m not what I was.

On my fourteenth birthday, my one remaining friend, Denise, who has totally faded out of my life now, came with my parents and I to the revolving restaurant in the CN Tower. As it turns, you get a view of the city. Everything changes. It was still light out when we arrived, but by the time we had revolved to the place the restaurant was when we first had sat down, it was completely black, except for headlights and city lights. Life. Without even noticing, I had revolved into darkness for 2 years of my life. When you’re in darkness, in the night, you can always feel the sun on the horizon, but never know when it will come up. I always wondered if it would. Ineveitably,

The restaurant keeps spinning until the sun comes up

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