Poster Boy (7 page)

“Yeah, and it's pretty messed up, too. Did you know that some carpeting's treated with pesticides?”

“My grandmother uses this killer stuff on her lawn every spring,” laughed Hughie. “She has to post this little warning sign on her lawn for animals and kids to stay off it or die.”

“Pesticides are linked to tons of cancers,” I said.

“She believes dandelions are Satan's tears.” He laughed again, though I didn't get what was so funny.

“I mean, carcinogens are like everywhere. Drywall, particle board and plywood are all preserved with formaldehyde which is right there on the American Cancer Society's list.” I stabbed the air. “And it off-gasses for years, so we're all breathing it in.”

“Why's it in there?” asked Davis.

“It keeps stuff from going moldy, which my dad says would be just as toxic. But still there's got to be something else.”

“Hey, you know that job I applied for at the grocery store?” said Hughie. “I have an interview on Saturday. Which my brother says means I've probably got the job.”

“Make sure you don't smell in the interview,” said Davis. “And wash your greasy hair for a change, you animal. And keep your ass in your pants.”

Hughie laughed. “Have you seen that short on YouTube with the guy mooning — ”

“New stats say everyone, meaning a hundred percent of people who live past the age of seventy, will get cancer.”

“There goes Grandma,” said Hughie.

“It's not funny,” I said.

“You're not funny,” he said. “I'm outa here. See you tomorrow.”

“Asshole,” I said when Hughie was out of earshot.

“People don't like to think about that stuff,” said Davis.

“Well, that's the problem, isn't it?” I veered off onto the path to Maggie's school.

“Play on line later,” called Davis.

“Yeah, maybe.”

Stepping inside the school, I looked at the vinyl linoleum, the particle board ceiling, the drywall halls and held my breath.

I collected Maggie's math book plus some homework sheets and wondered if dioxin from the paper could get absorbed through my hands. Felt like I should be wearing gloves, a face mask of some kind. I was major claustrophobic suddenly and needed air.

As I shoved open the nearest exit, the short bus was idling ten feet away, plumes of toxic exhaust stinking up the air.

Get me out of here.

8
Hope and Fear

I cornered Natalie outside the gym after the rest of the class had gone in. Kissed her long and hard, a hand slipping over one beautiful breast, my head going all light. Balloon head.

“Want to hang tomorrow after school? Come over to my place?” Tomorrow was Friday, but I no longer felt like having the gang over. In fact, I was thinking maybe Nat and I didn't have to wait until her parents went away. Yesterday I'd stolen a couple of condoms from Dad's sock drawer.

I nosed under her hair and kissed her neck. Her shampoo smelled just like mangoes. I thought of how many hundreds of sketchy chemicals combined to make that smell…

No. Don't think about it.

“Oh,” she sighed, “my mom won't let me come over.”

I lifted my head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Maggie and all.”

“She's not contagious, you know.”

“My mom's just really cautious about stuff like that.” She shrugged.

“She thinks our house is toxic or something?” It was what I was starting to think.

“I don't know. She's just weird.”

“Then how about your place?”

“Actually, I'm going shopping with Erin. I want to buy a couple of shirts that'll match my hair. I'm getting it done tomorrow, remember? Maybe we can do something tomorrow night?”

“I work Saturday.”

“Oh, yeah. And I work Sunday.” She slipped out from under my arm. “Come on, we better go. We'll be late for class.”

“Are we still on for dinner and…?” I didn't know how to say it without sounding like some crude animal.

She turned to me. “I can go out with you, just not home with you.” She kissed me then, did her tongue routine, and I felt a little better.

* * *

Saturday I woke up to the singe-your-nose-hair smell of Dasha's aerosols. It hit me. Maybe it was something
she
used that triggered the cancer. Who knew what was in those cleaners?

I got out of bed, threw some clothes on. In the rec room, I excused myself and asked Dasha, real nice like, if I could see her spray bottles.

She looked at me with her beautiful sad eyes. “My bottle?”

Sergei stopped sweeping the ceiling corners.

“You going to clean for us?” he asked, drilling those consonants. He held out his broom, angling the handle toward my face.

“No, no. I'm, uh, just doing a study of what's in those sprays,” I said, thinking, please don't push that into my brain.

He lowered his broom and, still looking at me, gestured to Dasha to hand them over.

“Thanks, great.”

None of the bottles' ingredients were listed. Not one. I took note of the brands — to look up on line — and quickly gave Dasha back her aerosols. I held up my hands to show Sergei I didn't mean anything by it.

* * *

Dressed in my Cineplex worker bee uniform — black pants, blinding yellow shirt and black ball cap with yellow logo — I planned to hit the mall early to shop for a birthday present for Natalie. I'd blown it on the Christmas present thing. She gave me this dice shirt and a leather wallet and I gave her a gift certificate to the Cineplex. Dickhead.

I went to ask Mom for ideas but found her bent over the kitchen counter, phone tucked between her ear and shoulder, concentrating on filling little clear capsules with turmeric powder while making excuses, by the sound of it, for being behind on those banners for the bank. I didn't have time to wait so went upstairs to ask Maggie. She was a girl, after all.

Propped up in bed typing on her laptop, Maggie had purplish rings under her eyes. Hot dog rings, I thought. She'd gone to that sleepover. Probably had pop at the theater. I'd found out that pop often contained benzene, which was used in cleaning the cans and dispensers.

“What is that?” On her bed table beside a glass of reverse osmosis water (Mom had had a system installed) and her water crystal book was a bowl of cottage cheese sitting in a pool of yellow oil.

“Some cancer cure of Mom's. It's disgusting.”

It did look disgusting, but…

“We got to get you well, so just eat it, okay?”

“I'll probably just throw it up anyway.”

“You'll get used to the taste.”

“Yeah,” she said, sounding noncommittal.

“Mag, do you have any idea what I could buy Natalie for a present?”

She stopped what she was doing.

“Bracelets. Those thin metal ones that come in different colors. Girls wear them in bunches. Like twenty on one arm. They make this neat tinkling sound.”

“Hey, good idea,” I said.

She typed something. “Go for the silver ones, not the gold. Silver's in right now. Oh, and matching hoop earrings.”

“Okay. Sounds good.”

“The earrings shouldn't be too big. About like this.” She made a circle with her thumb and middle finger.

I nodded, was about to leave when she said, “I really want to see the next Harry Potter movie.”

For a minute I wondered if she was saying she wanted to live to see it. She'd read all the books at least twice. I'd only seen the movies, and afterward Maggie would fill me in, explaining things the movie left out.

“I could take you to the preview,” I offered. I'd always taken Davis, Parm or Hughie before. Maggie looked at me sideways. It was a pity move and she knew it.

“Okay, as long as none of my friends find out.” She smiled and I laughed.

“Maggot head,” I said, leaving.

“Was it your dumb idea to go vegetarian?” she called after me.

* * *

I found the bracelets Maggie was talking about, in silver, and got several dark blue ones, too, to match Natalie's hair. She'd just had it done and had sent me a message saying how great it looked. There were a million different sizes of hoop earrings, so I was glad Maggie had been specific.

When I told the saleslady it was a gift, she hunted up a little white box with that cotton stuff, laid the earrings inside the bracelets. It looked really nice. She even put a ribbon around it so I didn't have to worry about how to wrap it.

At work, behind the refreshment counter, I filled up paper cup after paper cup of Coke, Orange Crush or Sprite. Benzene drinks, was how I started to think of them. Cancer colas. And when I wasn't doing that I was drizzling cancerous hydrogenated fat over popcorn. Or selling neon candy full of cancerous food coloring.

Handing a combo tray of pop, popcorn and candy bag to one little wide-eyed kid after another, I felt like some serial killer.

At the end of the night, I was the one told to haul seven black plastic bags out to the dumpster. Seven. Would they be incinerated and spray dioxin confetti everywhere?

As I was leaving, the manager was giving out boxes of Reeses Cups because their due date was coming up.

“Any takers?” he asked. “They'll get thrown out otherwise.”

Everyone took a box. There was one left.

“Gray?” he asked.

Maggie loved Reeses Cups. I imagined her face lighting up.

“Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

Maggie was already asleep when I got home. So I looked up chocolate and cancer on the net. It checked out all right.

Then I looked up peanuts and cancer. Shit. Peanuts had a naturally occurring carcinogen called aflatoxin. And because peanuts needed so little soil depth, some crops were being grown on landfill sites. No wonder there were so many damn peanut allergies.

I dumped the Reeses Cups in the garbage, pumped up some music and went on MSN to see if Nat was on. She wasn't, but I wrote and told her I'd bought her a birthday present.

it'll match your hair, which I can't wait 2 c… and kiss. can already picture how great it looks.

I signed off, then remembered reading something about hair dye and cancer. Too late now.

9
Happy Valley

The next morning, Maggie was feeling good so Dad and Mom were taking her and a friend to the science center. Afterwards they were going to have lunch at this famous vegetarian restaurant. They asked if I wanted to go, too. Yeah, right. I was glad Mom and Dad were going together, though, because they weren't talking a lot lately.

Normally on a Sunday I would hang with friends, do some gaming, hike up in the woods and smoke some leaf. Davis and Parmjot had both called to see what I was doing. It was even sunny out. A decent March day. But I wanted to finish what I'd started. Clean house, so to speak.

I cranked up my iPod and went room to room with my list of suspect chemicals and a bucket to put stuff in.

Every shampoo, soap and detergent in the house contained DEA or TEA — a chemical that made things foamy and slippery — both of which led to the formation of the nasty NDEA. Cancer. Dad's cover-the-gray shampoo had coal tars. Cancer. Mom's disinfectant spray contained orthophenylphenol. Cancer. The bathroom cleanser contained crystalline silica. Cancer. The whitening toothpaste Natalie insisted I start using had about three things on the list. Maggie had started using it, too. I put it in the bucket.

I gave up trying to match up all the ingredients and just started including anything with long unpronounceable names. I included all the bleached-paper stuff and any food with hydrogenated fat in it, nitrates and nitrites, BHA and BHT, and food colorings. I emptied my bucket onto the kitchen table. When that was full, I used the counters.

By the time Dad, Mom and Maggie and friend came home, I was pretty tired.

Maggie and her friend, Tess, came in the kitchen and grabbed some water.

“Hey, Gray,” said Maggie. “Mind if we watch this in your suite? She held up a movie. I knew she knew she was making the most of being sick but still I said, “Sure.”

“Kitchen's a mess,” she said, glancing at the counters before disappearing downstairs.

“What do we have here?” said Dad.

“I've collected all the stuff with sketchy chemicals in them,” I said, pretty proud of myself. Having sacrificed my day and all.

“Oh, yeah?”

“It's amazing how much garbage is in stuff. I thought if we cleared it all out and — ”

“Gray, it's trace amounts of these chemicals.” Dad picked up my deodorant. “Deemed safe in amounts tested by scientists.”

“Trace amounts don't make them less carcinogenic.”

“And some molecules, like titanium dioxide, for example,” he said, reading a tube of sunscreen, “are too big to penetrate blood vessels.”

“But skin cancer happens on the surface.”

“What I mean to say, Gray, is that you just don't know enough to be making these decisions.”

“I've been reading on the net — ”

“Don't believe everything you read.” He sighed. “Especially on line.”

He was treating me like I was some little kid.

Mom was now standing in the doorway all glassy-eyed. She looked seriously sleep-deprived.

“I know you're just trying to help, Gray,” said Dad. “But a bigger help would be to remember to take out the trash so I didn't have to do it for you.” He snickered. “Or we'll put you in charge of the recycling?” He started to put the cereal back in the cupboard and I felt my stomach harden. I'd blown off my day to do this…

“You have to be practical, Gray, weigh the negatives against the benefits,” he continued. “The sun can cause cancer but we still need it to survive. Tuna fish has mercury in it but that doesn't mean it isn't one of the most nutritious things you can eat. Heck, there's DDT, dioxins and whatever else being found in breast milk, but nobody would argue it still isn't hands down the best thing for a baby.”