Everyday Hero (4 page)

After we finished eating, he said he would phone Mom once we’d cleaned up. Then he
started to wash the dishes, scraping the bowls and filling the sink with sudsy water
that smelled of lemon. I do not mind the smell of lemon.

And as he was washing, he started to hum.

Four

On March 8, the City Center Mall parking lot disappeared.

There were no cars, no dirty mounds of snow, no empty parking spaces. Instead, every
square foot was occupied. There were lights, trailers, balloons and huge machines
with giant arms. The air smelled of popcorn and donuts.

I stood on the lower step of the bus and stared.

“Get off already!” somebody yelled behind me.

A kid pushed by me. He jumped onto the wet pavement. Splashes of water hit my jeans.
Other people pressed against my back. I could feel their bodies. I could smell their
breath.

“Move already.”

“Retard!”

“What a freak show—what’s wrong with you?”

My fear grew. I was trapped between the parking lot that was not a parking lot and
these angry, shouting, pushing people. My mouth felt dry.

“More like what’s wrong with you?” Megan’s voice bellowed from somewhere behind me
in the interior of the bus. “Are you blind? The bus has two doors, you know.”

“Whatever.”

But I felt them move. I heard them shuffle back. I felt the space opening behind
me.

“You okay?” Megan asked.

I didn’t know.

“This is the fair. It comes twice a year and sets up in the parking lot,” Megan said.
“It doesn’t look like all the rides are going yet.”

“You getting off?” the bus driver shouted from his seat at the steering wheel.

“Yeah, yeah, keep your hair on,” Megan said, which was strange because the bus driver
was bald and did not have a lot of hair to keep on.

“You can walk home just like usual,” Megan said—to me, I think.

Still I did not say anything. I did not move. The bus driver cleared his throat.
“I have a schedule, you know.”

“Shut up about your schedule,” Megan said loudly, adding quietly to me, “Don’t listen
to him. Just count.”

I kept the necklace she’d given me in the right pocket of my green North Face jacket.
I touched it, shifting my fingers along the round, hard balls.

One…two…three…

I focused on the rubber matting that lined the step of the bus and on the dark concrete
outside. At least they looked the same as usual. I shifted, moving forward, stepping
out of the bus.

The door closed behind me. The bus changed gears. I heard the engine note change
as it moved away.

I exhaled as I stood there, staring at the concrete, feeling the smooth beads strung
along the length of the necklace.

Then I heard it. Above the bus engine’s rumble, above the shouts and yells and laughter
from
the space that used to be the parking lot but was now filled with lights, trailers,
balloons and huge machines with giant arms, I heard music.

“My music box,” I said.

I took a step forward, toward the noise and the lights and the machines.

“Want to check it out?”

“
Check—a sudden stoppage of a forward course or progress
,” I said. “Or
a form of
payment
.”

“No, I mean, do you want to go there and hear the music?”

“Um—”

“I’ll go too.”

“I—”

I paused, thoughts flashing through my mind. I remembered how I had taken the City
Center bus with Megan, even when it was not the After-School Special.

But I remembered also that I didn’t like noise and people and strange smells.

I looked up from the pavement and watched the many people walking toward the small
hut with the word
Tickets
flashing in yellow neon.

“A lot of people go to the fair,” I said.

“Yeah, it’s, like, the thing to do in Kitimat.”

“People who are average in type, appearance, achievement, function and development
go to the fair?”

“What the—? Did you swallow a dictionary?”

“I like dictionaries.”

“Yeah, I guess you do,” Megan said.

“People who are average in type, appearance, achievement, function and development
go to the fair?” I asked again.

“I guess. So, you wanna go?”

I nodded. We stepped forward. I felt a little like I did the time I’d jumped off
the diving board, in that fraction of a second before I splashed into the water.

We walked past the trucks and trailers, over huge snakelike power cords and under
a ride’s metallic arms.

My music—“Für Elise”—came from a circular structure with flashing lights and colorful
horses on silver poles. The horses were blue and pink and green, with manes of gold.

I watched as they went around and around and around, moving rhythmically up and down
and up and down on their silver poles.

“My ballerinas,” I said.

“It’s a carousel.”

“I like the carousel.”

A man standing next to the carousel flipped a switch, and the horses slowed. He tightened
something with a screwdriver and then started it again.

“I like the carousel,” I repeated.

“You could ride, you know, when the fair opens,” Megan said.

I shook my head.

“Why not?”

“Because—because—you know…”

“What?”

“Asperger’s,” I said.

“So? My left foot’s bigger than my right. Doesn’t mean I can’t do stuff.”

I looked at her feet. They did not look different. “They do not look different,”
I said.

“Jeez.” Megan looked at the sky. “Wait here.”

She went over to the guy. He was perched on a stool and wore a backward baseball
cap. Strings of sandy hair fell into his face.

He smiled at Megan. He had bad teeth, yellow and uneven. Megan leaned into him, smiling
and tossing back her long dark hair.

He looked at me, then nodded toward the carousel. “I’m giving it a final run-through
anyway. I can stop it if you want to hop on.”

He flipped another switch. The music stopped. The horses stopped. “Don’t worry about
a ticket.”

“I—I—” The words had gone, disappeared.

“You can,” Megan said.

“I—I—I—” My body swayed.

“You took the City Center bus,” Megan said. “It was hard at first, and then you did
it.”

“You—”

“I’m here now. Plus, you came here to check it out.”

“But—”

Megan turned to the guy. “Turn on the music again,” she said.

The music started. “Für Elise.” From my music box. I stepped forward, my palms slick
with sweat. I took one step. And another. I lifted my leg, placing my foot on the
corrugated metal of the ride’s circular base. I stood on it, reaching for the gold
plastic of the horse’s mane.

“You okay?” the man asked.

I put my foot into the stirrup and swung my leg over so that I sat astride.

“You okay?” he asked again.

“She’s good,” Megan said.

And the structure started forward. The body of the horse lifted and dropped, up and
down, up and down. Everything blurred as the ride gained momentum, moving forward,
around and around and around.

And I was the ballerina. I was in my music box. I was…I was…

I couldn’t find the words. Even in my mind, I couldn’t find them.

But it didn’t matter.

Five

“What the—? Get off! Do you know what time it is? I’ve been worried sick!”

Dad’s voice woke me as if from a dream. I blinked and stared around me at a world
oddly changed. The ride had stopped. The music was gone. Everything was black, punctuated
only by the floodlight’s harsh glare. Noises, smells, sounds swamped me—screams,
laughter, the smell of hot dogs and popcorn…

Above me the huge mobile arms of other rides whirled, casting weird elongated shadows.
People screamed in sync with its lifts and dives.

Dad stood on the carousel’s metal platform, one hand on my horse’s mane. “Whose idea
was this?” he asked.

“She—I—she wouldn’t get off,” Megan said.

She was standing beside me, I realized.

My dad turned to her. “Who are you?”

“Megan.”

“You’re Megan?” His voice went up.

She nodded. “She was enjoying it. She loved it, but then she wouldn’t get off.”

“Did you—? You brought her here?”

Megan shrugged. “You could say.”

“It’s noisy and crazy. It’s the worst place for her. That was a dumb idea.”

“I have a lot of those.” Her voice went loud. She stepped away. She was tall, almost
as tall as my dad.

I saw now that there was no one else on the carousel, and that the people standing
around it were silent.

“Why didn’t you phone me?” he asked.

“Didn’t know your number.”

“If our neighbor hadn’t been here and phoned me, I still wouldn’t know—”

“Yeah, well, you do now.” Megan turned to go.

“Look—Megan—you don’t understand. You can’t just dump her at a fair. She’s—she’s
different,” he said.

“Whatever. I’m outta here.”

Megan tossed her hair back and stepped down from the ride. The crowd parted as she
strode through it, a tall, straight, black figure.

Different—changed, altered
.

I started to rock.

“Alice. Off. Now,” Dad said.

I wasn’t a ballerina.

I wasn’t average in type, appearance, achievement, function and development.

I rocked more. I heard the low, moaning whine of my own voice. My father swore. Swearing
is against the rules. I plugged my ears. I squeezed my eyes as I got off the horse,
stumbling from the ride.

I fell, curling onto the hard concrete.

Someone screamed.

The noise came from my own mouth.

Dad swore again, and I stuffed my fingers deeper into my ears and curled into an
even tighter ball on the cold, rough sidewalk.

***

When I opened my eyes, the crowds had moved away.

Dad was talking to a police officer. The police officer wore a uniform. I like uniforms.

“Are you okay?” the police officer asked when I sat up.

I didn’t answer because I didn’t know.

“This man’s your dad?” He raised his voice at the end, so I knew it was a question.

I nodded.

“She got upset. She gets stressed. Doesn’t do well with noise,” Dad explained. His
cheek twitched, a rippling movement under the grayness of stubble. “She’ll be okay
once she’s home.”

They spoke some more. Then the police officer nodded and left.

“Car,” my father said. “Eyes down.”

I stood. I walked. One step…two steps. I focused on the concrete, on the white lines
of the empty parking stalls and the snaking power cords.

When we got into the car, my father pulled out the mask from the glove box, and I
put it on. He started the engine, shifted gears and drove forward.
I looked out the
car window and studied the streetlights as we drove past.

Twenty-one lights.

The indicator went
tick-tick-tick
as we turned onto Kootenay Street. Sixteen
tick-tick-ticks
.
We stopped at our house. Dad switched off the engine, and it shuddered into silence.
I got out, letting the mask drop from my face because the evening air was fresh.
We walked up the three wooden steps.

“Bed,” Dad said.

***

Later Dad came and sat beside me and made the springs whine. He pushed his hand through
his hair, rumpling it into gray spikes. “Why? Why go on a carousel, like, a hundred
times?” he asked.

“Thirty-nine,” I said.

“Thirty-nine?
Thirty-nine
?” His voice rose in a squeak like the bedsprings. “Why?”

I did not answer because I do not like questions. Questions make me want to bang
my head or curl into a corner.

He got up. I heard him sigh as he flicked off the light. “Good night,” he said.

But later, as I lay in my bed, the answer to his question came.

Because…for that whole wonderful evening, I hadn’t wanted to count or bang my head
or squish myself into a corner.

Because…for that whole wonderful evening, I was average in type, appearance, achievement,
function and development.

***

“You’ve never stayed out late before. Ever,” Dad said over a breakfast of Cheerios
and milk (I can also eat pancakes, but never eggs, because they smell bad). “You
need to phone if you’re going to stay out after school.”

“Is that a rule?” I asked.

“Yes, yes, of course, that’s a rule,” he said loudly. “And that girl—is she the one
who visits here after school?”

I nodded.

“She took you to the fair?”

“I got off the bus and the fair was there.”

“But she said you should go?”

“She said her left foot is bigger than her right.”

“She probably bullied you into it. She looks tough.” Dad opened a cupboard and pulled
out crispy rice cereal, which he likes better than Cheerios. “I don’t know if I want
you to spend time with her.”

Tough—overly aggressive, brutal or rough
.

“She has bruises because she has bad hand-eye coordination,” I explained, because
maybe Dad thought she fought a lot.

“Probably in some gang,” Dad said.

Gang—a group of criminals who band together for protection and profit
.

“I don’t think so,” I said, because Megan usually didn’t spend time with other people.
She walked alone to the bus and sat alone on the bus. She walked around school alone,
with her music so loud I could hear it through her earbuds.

“Well, don’t spend too much time with her. She’s a bad influence,” Dad said.

Influence—the action or process of producing effects on the actions and behavior
of others.

I also wondered what
too much
meant. I prefer to know exact quantities. Like, I need
eight hours of sleep. I am irritable and tired when I have less than seven.

But by the time I had formed the question, he had gone into the washroom, and I could
hear the buzz of his electric razor.

***

“You should definitely get a data plan,” Megan said when I saw her at the bus stop
that morning.