Flannery (16 page)

22

Elaine Power holds the door for me on Monday when I'm taking the love potion prototypes back to my locker after Entrepreneurship class.

And then she stops me. She looks at each of the bottles.

Let me try the red one, she says.

But that's eternal love, I say. Why not go for blue? With the blue potion you get a crush, it's milder, the effects wear off after a few hours.

Elaine looks up at me and I see that, for just one millisecond, she's actually buying it.

I mean, go ahead if you want, I say. But whomsoever you happen to gaze upon after a sip of the red potion — that's it, you'll long for them forever. The. Rest. Of. Your. Life. It's kind of a big decision.

Elaine seems kind of awed. But then the old Elaine — scientific-genius Elaine — floods back, eclipsing soft-vulnerable-believing-romantic Elaine in a nanosecond.

Great sales patter, Malone, she says. Gimme the red one.

Okay, I say. You asked for it. She takes a moment to read the label.

“Steal your heart.” Yes, bloody likely, she says.

I take the frosted glass stopper out of the bottle and hand it to her. She swirls the bottle and sniffs it.

How did the prototype app for saving butterflies go? I ask, embarrassed, because it's a project of such obvious eco-political merit, especially compared to mine, a mere sight gag.

One butterfly at a time, Flan, one butterfly at a time, she says with a sigh. She tells me that she and Mark Galway are doing a live demonstration in Mr. Payne's office this very afternoon.

Then she takes a glug of the potion. Wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing her black lipstick. Her eyes are squeezed shut for a moment, no doubt formulating a chemical analysis/critique of the potion.

Hmm, she says. Just what I thought. Colored water. Beets? Nice gimmick, Malone. Low overhead. I think these will sell big. You're going to have a tidy profit — 

At that very instant, Mark Galway comes through the door and bangs into her. I mean, he has his head down and the brim of that stupid fedora must be blocking his view and he just
collides
with her and her eyes fly open.

And there they are, eye to eye.

Elaine Power is wearing wishbone earrings. I mean, like actual dried chicken bones, and they are dancing with indignation under her earlobes. She is clearly ready to lacerate Mark with a single, elegant, precise and vicious comment about what a graceless douche he is.

I feel a horror/fascination. What will remain of Mark Galway once Elaine Power is finished with him? A fedora floating in an oozing puddle of gristle on the floor? A puddle that used to be Mark Galway?

But all she says is, Oh, hi, Mark.

And Elaine Power sounds dreamy and doubtful about all she has hitherto understood of the universe and everything in it.

Mark and I exchange a glance. He's cowering. We both figure she's holding back so she can deliver the full force of her attack aided by the element of surprise. A tactical move for which Mark is not going to fall.

I'm so sorry about that, Mark says.

It was an accident, I say.

Well,
duh
, says Elaine. Obviously. But, hey, nice to bump into you.

Then she giggles, well, like a schoolgirl.

After that, I keep seeing Elaine Power and Mark Galway, sworn enemies of yore, together, and every time Elaine is giggling her fool head off. Yes, apparently Elaine Power has a giggle mode. Who knew?

More astonishing, it's always something Mark is saying that's making her laugh, causing her glee. Once she even hip-checks him right there in the hallway, just as if they were actually friends, or more than friends, even. I have to admit, it's giving me shivers to think of her lifting that love potion bottle to her black lips.

Of course, the transformation can't have had anything to do with the potion.

But Elaine starts telling the story of taking a sip of the prototype seconds before Mark came through the door and banged into her. And when she gets to that part of the story she stretches up onto her tiptoes and kisses him on the cheek.

And I've been head over heels ever since, Elaine says. I can't get enough of him.

Yup, that's true, says Mark. He actually seems pretty chuffed. She
is
the smartest person in the entire history of the school, after all. He's stopped coming to school in the Hummer. Now he's on a skateboard. Talking nonstop about butterflies.

The story about Elaine and the potion spreads around the school pretty fast. Next Brittany Bishop is coming up to me in the corridor.

I'll try the blue potion, she says.

But that's just a crush, I say. Don't you want eternal love?

Not on your life, she says. Give me a hit of that crush potion. The blue, green and orange prototypes are still in my locker, so I take the blue one out and hand it to her. And as soon as she takes a sip, Melody Martin shows up.

Melody, Brittany says. You've got to try this. She hands the bottle to Melody who takes a sip and a little drip of blue potion runs down Melody's chin, and Brittany touches it with her finger and catches the drip.

Want to pip off and walk Signal Hill with me? Brittany says.

God, that's exactly what I want, says Melody. How did you know? They walk off down the corridor holding hands.

Just before math class Kyle Keating is coming out of drama, where they've been rehearsing
Romeo and Juliet
,
and he runs into me near the lockers. Sort of ridiculously/gorgeously, he's wearing tights and a jacket with big puffy velvet sleeves and a slouchy velvet cap with a feather which looks sort of cool with his dreadlocks. But definitely not a look everybody can get away with. Turns out he's playing Romeo.

He announces loudly that he wants to try the green potion right there in the corridor. Everybody is rushing off to class but a little crowd gathers around us.

I don't know, I say. We've got to get to math. But I take the potion out of my locker and hand it over.

Kyle takes out the little frosted-tipped stopper.

So what's this one supposed to do? He reads out the tag. Compliments? I'm supposed to start just coming up with compliments on the spot? Come
on
. You don't expect people to believe that?

Well, it's kind of a gag, I mumble. Like canned fog. He takes a sip.

Just like I thought, he says. Tastes like spinach. It's spinach water, everybody. Just spinach and water is my guess. Is that right, Flannery?

I can feel my shoulders slump a little.

Yup, I say. He swirls it around. And takes another mouthful.

I'm getting nutty undertones, he says. It's fruity, am I right? Hints of cherry? Maybe some oak in there? Definitely an oak base. And it follows through with a hint of anise. Light but full-bodied? (When he says
full-bodied
he actually lets his eyes slide all the way down my body and back to my face, and wiggles his eyebrows.)

Actually it tastes pretty good, Kyle says. This is probably the best spinach juice I've ever had.

Nobody asks if he's ever had spinach juice before. Who drinks spinach juice? But he's looking straight into my eyes and takes another sip.

You have green eyes, he says. I never noticed that before. Really green. Not many people have green eyes. Not like yours. Like, a stormy sea-green. Like the green in the Northern Lights. Your eyes are beautiful, Flannery. I guess you get that all the time.

I can feel a blush flooding into my cheeks. I mean, I know he's joking around but he doesn't look away and he sounds dead serious.

And your freckles are like cinnamon. (Now he's really hamming it up.) Shall I compare you to an October's day in Newfoundland? he says.

You have the most beautiful freckles I've ever seen, Flannery Malone. Like autumn leaves scattering in the wind.

I punch him gently on the arm.

Aw, shucks, I say.

Everybody is laughing.

A door swings open down the hall and Mr. Green sticks his head out of the classroom.

Mr. Keating, he says. You have exactly three minutes to change out of that costume and get to class or you're in big trouble. Ms. Malone, get in here and stop causing congestion in the corridors. You others, move along. The buzzer has sounded.

Kyle hands me the bottle and stopper and exits stage left, male bathrooms.

The next day orders for the green potion are through the roof.

Three more people want to try the blue and red potions so they can fall immediately in love with the first person they see.

And then I get wise. No more free sips. I start taking back orders. Everybody wants a bottle. After just a few days of taking orders, the red potion, eternal love, sells out.

Then there's an announcement over the PA that the student council is looking for volunteers from grade twelve for the grad committee. After school there's a big run on the orange potion, the one that gets you a prom date. Prepaid. It
definitely
looks like I'll be able to pay back Fred the glassblower and maybe even get a new order of bottles before he takes off for Europe.

It's word of mouth, just like Sensei Larry said. And like Ms. Rideout said, everybody believes in at least a little bit of magic. And at the same time, everybody knows it's a joke. But a charming joke.

Talk about the love potions spreads like crazy. And because people start to believe, even a little tiny bit, the potions actually start to work. They work instantly.

23

Amber Mackey! snaps Madame Lapointe. She has been wandering up and down the rows between the desks, the shrapnel cracks of her high heels on the tiles ricocheting off the walls.

Up and down, up and down.

Madame Lapointe is eight months pregnant but she's still in stilettos. While it may seem crazy that we have a woman from Paris, France, teaching us English, we're also learning about the hairpin turns one can make in very high heels. Madame Lapointe is the most beautifully dressed woman I've ever seen. Her wardrobe is wasted on most of these lumber-jacket-wearing louts in grade twelve.

The classroom is dark with the curtains drawn, lights off. How can they expect Amber to stay awake when the lights are off?

We are watching a film clip of the three witches from
Macbeth
. One of the witches wears a black skullcap that ties under the chin, with holes cut out for the ears. Very fetching.

I can see Elaine Power eying it, like it's just the thing to go with her construction boots and her black skirt with dried chicken bones dangling off the hem.

The wide blue eye of the projector sends out a fan of light that grazes the top of Amber's blonde hair. She's snoring softly.

I have stopped talking to Amber. I haven't spoken to her for two weeks. Even when she sits in the desk in front of me — not a single word. Not even to congratulate her on qualifying for the Nationals at the swim meet in Toronto last weekend. Or to say how great it is that everyone in her dad's office had doubled their money on those stupid bets. Nah-ah.

At first it was just to teach her a lesson. You wait, I thought. Wait until you see how dull and full of despair life is without me, your best friend since sippy cups.

Since milk moustaches.

Since we were infants in the hospital born five hours apart and our mothers took pictures of us with big satin bows on the sides of our little bald heads, which was a thing to do with babies back then.

Why did Amber need to learn this difficult lesson, you ask?

For one thing, she stopped texting me. Completely. She just stopped. Another stoppage. The friendship needed a plunger. We were gucked up.

Okay, there were a few scraggly little texts, like,
Busy
,
sorry
.

Or,
Can't
,
Flan
.

Or,
Not tonight
.

Then she just didn't answer me at all! And then I ran into her dad at the supermarket and he asked me if I wanted to come over for supper.

Did Amber invite me? I asked.

No, Sean said, but she's been having so many sleepovers at your house that I assume she's eaten you guys out of house and home.

It took me one long baffled second, that's all. I must have had a funny look on my face because Sean said, Like, last weekend she slept at your house. And the weekend before that. And the one before that.

Then I recovered.

Oh, that's okay, Sean, I said. Don't worry about it. My mom doesn't mind. She loves having people around.

Really, Flannery, thank you for being there for her. Cindy and I know she's going through a tough time right now, but she won't open up to us. She's been swimming her whole life. I know she thinks we're angry with her for missing a few practices. A lot of practices, actually. But we just want her to be happy. What do you think of this guy Gary?

Gary? I said. Gary is . . . Amber really likes Gary.

Yeah, okay. That's what I thought. Thanks, Flannery. Say hi to your mom.

Then I had to head for the produce section just to get away from him because I could feel tears starting. There I was in the supermarket, my eyes watering the organic bok choy.

I tried to think about what it was I felt.

First of all, shock. Amber skipping practice? Now she has to prepare for the Nationals. That's what she's been working toward. I know that she partly competes to please Sean, but she also loves it. She's part fish. She's happiest in the water. It's like she can breathe under there. It's who she is. Ever since I can remember. It's her thing.

And then, “sleepovers”!? I felt used. I hated lying to Sean about her sleeping over. And I felt hurt.

Simile: My chest felt like someone had lit a birthday sparkler right under my breastbone and it was firing off a gazillion splinters of cold burning pain. That was my heart.

The truth is, I felt lost without Amber. Who was I going to tell stuff to? The weird stuff that happens every single day. The stuff I used to save up to tell Amber when we were walking home from school.

And now when we see each other in class or in the halls, Amber pretends I don't exist. Like
I'm
the one who's done something wrong. She's like the little boy in the Snow Queen fairy tale. A splinter of ice in her heart has made her cold inside and out.

So I did the only sensible thing I could. I decided not to speak to Amber ever again in my whole entire life.

Or at least for a couple of weeks.

That'll show her, I reasoned. Bring her to her senses.

The morning after this decision I was brushing my teeth really hard and I was foaming at the mouth and I just stopped and said out loud to the bathroom mirror, This is for your own good, Amber Mackey.

Felix banged on the door and yelled, Who are you talking to in there?

I thought the cold shoulder would have her on her knees after a week, begging for forgiveness.

But that was two weeks ago and I don't think she's even noticed. She's always with Gary, or Gary and his band, or — much more often, actually — the girlfriends of Gary's band.

I broke my vow of silence three days into it and sent her a text saying,
What's wrong? Have I done something?

It was like she didn't even get the text.

But, I thought, she'll still need me for the music video. When it came down to it, I knew Gary would do nothing to help except sing his songs with the fake tremolo he likes to throw in on the high notes. The tremolo, the thing he does with his hips. Gary has a way onstage. He sort of rocks his hips. I find it particularly unappealing. The newly acquired black-rimmed hipster glasses? Please. Also, to tell the truth, I think his voice sounds a little nasal. You know that kind of singing high up in the nose?

So I figured, I'll rise above and help Amber with the big shoot and prove myself indispensable to her and the costumes and the bazillion dancers and even to Gary if that's what she wants and then this whole Ice Queen thing will finally melt away. I knew that Melody Martin had dumped her band-boyfriend for Brittany Bishop, so
she
probably wouldn't be helping with the video anymore. Amber would need me more than ever.

But then, on Monday, I saw on Facebook that Jordan Murphy had put up pictures from a shoot that had happened on Tuesday night. It was
the
shoot.

And no one, including Amber, had thought to tell me about it.

From the pictures it looked like everybody in our school was there. There was even a picture of Elaine Power with a clipboard, pointing at something on stage with her pencil.

There was a photo of Amber looking through the viewfinder of a camera, and then another of her giving instructions to the videographer. And in another photo she was laughing and looking like she was having a lot of fun. There was no hint on her face that someone important was missing. She hadn't given me a single thought.

Then, a few days ago I went to the bathroom in the middle of math class and I heard the door creak open and I caught sight of Amber's shoes. I came out and she was leaning with her back against the sink, facing my stall. Her arms were crossed. She looked exhausted and pale.

I went to the sink next to her and turned on the taps. I pressed on the soap dispenser three times and washed my hands under the running water.

She was sort of jiggling one leg as if trying to hold back whatever she had to say.

I pulled three pieces of paper towel and dried my hands very slowly and balled up the paper and tossed it in the garbage. If she wanted to apologize she didn't have much more time. There was nothing else I could do.

I had already opened the door when she finally spoke.

I want a bottle of the red love potion, she blurted. I think it would make a nice present for Gary. I'll pay you.

So there wasn't going to be an apology or an explanation about why she'd left me out of the video shoot, or why she was letting Gary ruin a friendship that had once been the most important thing in both our lives besides our families.

They sold out, I said.

That's not true, she hissed. I know you must have some. You're just jealous of my relationship. That's why you don't want to give me any.

Nope, I say. Sorry. Sold out. You can't get it, not for love nor money.

And I let the bathroom door slam behind me.

Macbeth's witches are trundling across a long beach. This is a very old movie. It takes them quite a while to get to where they're going. A seagull circles, squawks. There's a whining noise that sounds like somebody getting their fingernails pulled out, but it's only the creaking wheels on the little wooden cart that the witches are dragging behind them.

The sun gleams on the wet sand. One of the witches stops and draws a circle on the ground with her walking stick, and then all three witches get down on their hands and knees to dig the hole.

The youngest witch gets a package out of the cart, something wrapped in filthy rags.

Whatever the youngest witch has, it isn't any of the ingredients mentioned in the Double-double speech.

What
is
that thing the young witch is cradling near her breast like a baby? It's too big for an “eye of newt” or the “toe of frog” or a “lizard's leg.” Could it be some “wool of bat”? Do bats even have wool? I thought they were more rubbery. The youngest witch unfolds the rags to reveal . . .

It's a man's hand! Severed somewhere around the elbow, and the witches drop it in the hole they've dug in the sand. A man's hand is not even on the list of ingredients for the evil potion! Unless they're trying to pass it off as the finger of the babe “ditch-deliver'd by a drab.”

I mean, it's bad enough to give birth in a ditch, which Miranda almost did with poor Felix, but if the “babe” has an arm that size, I'd hate to think about how big the rest of it was.

Must be very disturbing for Madame Lapointe, who could pop her own baby out any second.

The witches lay a dagger in the palm of the dead hand and they bury it. Then they pour some very dark liquid over it, maybe the baboon's blood.

And they're all business, these witches, spitting over their shoulders, first over the left and then the right.

They stand up and look at the sky. All in a day's work. They are apparently checking the weather because they have places to go, people to see. Other severed limbs to bury. Lots of toil and trouble to cause. They make Ms. Rideout look like a slacker.

Madame Lapointe is standing in front of the classroom slapping a ruler against her thigh. She's noticed Amber is asleep.

Amber Mackey? asks Madame Lapointe. I hear a chuffling, groggy snore.

I am
not
going to wake her like I normally do. Amber doesn't want us to be friends anymore.

Forget it, Amber. My days of saving you in class are over. If you want to forget about that summer Miranda took us to Northern Bay Sands and we stayed in the ocean until our lips were blue and our teeth chattered and afterward we had a bonfire and jumped up and down on the bed until we broke the bed frame, and we had to sleep with the bed on a tilt and we kept rolling onto the floor, that's fine with me.

Or if you want to forget about going to circus camp together when we were seven and spotting for each other when we were learning somersaults on the trampoline, go ahead, forget all about it.

Or when we got those glasses that are actually clear plastic drinking straws and you put one end in your lime crush and suck and the crush goes up the straw and circles one eye, and goes across the bridge of your nose and then it circles your other eye and behind your ear and into your mouth and we sat there watching each other's glasses until we were laughing so hard lime crush came out our noses. Go ahead, forget it.

Or when Miranda's former boyfriend Hank made us stilts and we climbed the fence to get up on them and then learned to walk through the boulders at the edge of the ocean in Broad Cove looking like elegant flamingos, okay, go ahead, yup, forget all about that too.

I'm not here to be walked all over anymore, Amber Mackey. You're on your own. You can spend the rest of your life in detention for all I care. You're not the friend I thought you were.

And the truth is, you stopped talking to me before I stopped talking to you. I haven't been able to sleep since you stopped talking to me and it isn't fair to just walk away from a friendship like that without an explanation.

I can't even draw a full breath because my chest hurts so much and it's because I've lost the best friend I ever had. You're mean, Amber Mackey, capable of anything. How can you just forget me? You're like that witch with the skullcap, except it's my heart you buried in the sand.

Fine. Okay. I get it. We're not friends. We're like strangers. I would probably help a stranger. I tried to tell you about Mercy Hanrahan, but you wouldn't listen. In fact, I'm worn out trying to help you. I give up. I am not helping you out of this one.

I am not waking you up just because Madame Lapointe is about to lose her poo, and probably fail you for falling asleep in her class. She is French, after all, and very passionate, and she doesn't take kindly to that sort of thing. She's flunked people for less.

I get it already. Gary is more important.

Fine. Let Gary wait outside the school in the snow and dark for you to finish detention. Let Gary be attacked by a bunch of girls who want him to eat a used condom. Let Gary hear all the stories about your mother being a drunk. Let's see how Gary manages when it comes to being a real friend. Because we're not friends anymore, right? I'm never saving you again, Amber Mackey.