Firefly, page 4
Watching the high school kids crossing the park. New backpacks, new school clothes … I hide behind the bushes, so no one will ask. No one will see me with Moss Cart, because no one looks at him, although I’m barely recognizable these days anyway, even if they did look at me.
I shake my head and a bunch of stuff blurts out of me, fast.
“I wasn’t going to be home-schooled. I made that up. There wasn’t money for school supplies or clothes, or anything. High school makes you pay for a locker, a gym outfit, hot lunches, all kinds of stuff. I got a letter at the house in August, with all the fees laid out.”
I stand perfectly still, surrounded by my hoodie. The truth just hangs there.
Please don’t hug me Aunt Gayle.
But she doesn’t. Instead, she bites her bottom lip. Then she sighs.
“That doesn’t sound stupid. We’ll come up with something for the principal tomorrow. You were overseas working with orphans. You were up north planting trees with a youth group. You were …”
“Stop!” I say, raising my hand. But I do smile, just a little. Aunt Gayle is keeping it light. I like that.
Then we head back to The Corseted Lady, place of seven million costumes, for grilled cheese sandwiches and a night of television.
Another bath. More braids, hot chocolate, and marshmallows.
So many ordinary things to get used to.
SIX
School, Day One
Don’t say another word, or you get this. Joanne makes a face, grabs my thigh under the table at the yard sale, squeezes hard. My pudgy little girl leg throbs and there’s a red hand mark on it … I was just saying to the lady that she was buying my old tricycle … I’m six, I think.
Joanne-the-mother always had a thing about my bikes, though. On the last day of grade eight, I walked home and my bike was sitting beside the sidewalk, with a sign on it: $30. One more thing of mine Joanne decided to sell off. I wonder what for that time? Rent? Drugs? Some tallboys from the beer store?
I removed the sign. Joanne-the-mother neglected to lock the bike. Maybe she sold the lock first? I wheel the bike to the park and dump it in the bushes behind the bench.
Here’s a bike for you, Moss Cart …
The principal, Mrs. Hazelle, has just asked me a question. She’s looking at me, waiting for an answer. Aunt Gayle is sitting beside me, also looking at me. Light streams in the high windows behind the principal.
“Um, sorry. I’m not sure what you asked me?”
Mrs. Hazelle and Aunt Gayle exchange a look. How long did I just vanish? Why was I thinking about stupid bicycles and Joanne-the-mother?
“Mrs. Hazelle was asking if you want to take art or music as your art credit?”
I blink. I’m wearing the expensively ripped jeans from yesterday and my AC/DC hoodie, with a faded green neon shirt underneath. The shirt has a picture of a baby in a diaper dancing, with the words “Stewie Griffin” on it. A television character, Aunt Gayle told me. I pick at the careful rip in the jeans. This rip could be a lot more realistic.
“Art? Or music?” I hear myself saying. The truth is, I’m stalling. I have no idea what I’d prefer. How am I supposed to know? Beyond finger-painting and recorder in public school, I have no experience with either.
But the bigger truth is, I keep fading out.
I just can’t keep my head here, in this sunshiny office. It’s warm, and I’m sleepy. I keep drifting off. It’s about time for a Tim Hortons coffee run. The principal doesn’t have any awkward questions for us, at least the ones I’ve been present for, since Sharlene Baker has already talked to her. There’s a file on the desk with my name on it.
Warren, Fifi.
Mrs. Hazelle tells us this as soon as we sit down.
But really, all these questions are awkward. Art? Music? English? History? Library group?
I must look lost because Aunt Gayle says, “Does she have to decide right now?”
The principal shakes her head and says, “You can let me know tomorrow, if you prefer, Fifi.”
I’m about to say it’s Firefly for the third time when my aunt does it for me.
“You know, she really prefers Firefly. If you wouldn’t mind, please put that on the documents, at least the class lists, so she doesn’t have to explain her name and correct her teachers all week …”
Mrs. Hazelle nods, turns to her computer and types something quickly. A few moments later the nice lady from the office outside knocks, and comes in with a folder. Mrs. Hazelle hands it to me.
“Okay, Firefly. Here’s your schedule, and your classroom numbers. You can come and see me anytime,” she says politely. I think she actually means it. The file folder says “Warren, Firefly” on it.
Aunt Gayle writes a check for all the fees: sports, clubs (whether I join them or not), locker fee, hot school lunch on Fridays, and a donation to the Student Council plus a few other things. She hands the check over: $325.
I feel sweaty and guilty making Aunt Gayle pay so much money just for me to go to school.
Then the principal stands up, meeting over. She shakes our hands, and we leave the office. I say goodbye to Aunt Gayle at the front door of the school. There’s no one around, since I’m late for first class.
“You going to be okay?” she asks. I’m not sure what I look like, but my aunt looks like she wants to swoop in for a quick hug. I try to stand apart from her and she doesn’t do it. She does the hair-braiding at night, she hasn’t tried to hug me yet, and I don’t really like being touched. She went out and bought me a backpack early this morning, and it’s loaded with paper, pens, pencils, erasers, a calculator, a binder. It’s heavy and overstuffed, so it would be hard for her to get too close for her hug, anyway.
We stand close, though.
“No one likes high school, Firefly. Anyone who tells you that is lying, or has forgotten what it’s really like. I’m two blocks away at the shop. Come home for lunch, we’ll deconstruct the morning.”
“Okay.” Home. Deconstruct.
“And if that social worker shows up, Sharlene whatever, just tell her she doesn’t have our permission to talk to you without me present. Unless of course you want to talk to her, which is fine, too.” She smiles a little (although if she’s trying to be reassuring, she’s failing because she looks as scared as I probably do), then she races out of the building. She’s wearing jeans, chunky heels, and that red barn coat. She looks fantastic, racing down the street toward The Corseted Lady, cigarette smoke trailing behind her.
My aunt is a fire-breathing dragon.
I wander back to the office, get directions to my first class, then take myself there and lurk outside the door. Class has already started. I sweat, try to breathe, knock on the door.
The youngish teacher looks at me through the little window in the door, then opens it.
“Hi. I’m late. Sorry, I’m new.” I think I meant to say, hi, I’m new. Sorry I’m late.
I’m pretty rattled here, but the teacher just swings the door wide and says hello.
I walk into the room, and do not look up at everyone. They’re all looking at me, but I just hand him my file, which he opens, reads quickly, takes out a sheet and adds it to a pile on his desk.
He hands the folder back to me.
Then I sit at the desk he points out to me. “Over there please, Miss Warren.”
It’s in the middle of the last row, furthest from the door.
I sit in this desk. Kids sit in the room all around me, working quietly. A few stop, look up at me, then keep working.
And my heart.
What’s wrong with my heart?
It’s racing. Squeezing. Fluttering. Shooting stars into my head.
I hate being furthest from the door. There’s no way to make a speedy exit, if I have to. At least, impossible to make a speedy exit without anyone noticing. I start to feel locked in place. I grip the desk with my hands. I try to take a deep breath. I haven’t sat in a classroom in a long time, since the end of grade eight last spring.
I’m not sure I can do this.
Breathe, Firefly. I count slowly to ten, then back down to one, another suggestion from one of the therapists at Jennie’s. They were always changing, so I never really learned any of their names. Names aren’t my strong suit, anyway, to be honest.
Mr. Somebody is writing on the board.
I see a blackboard at the front of the class.
I see trees outside the window.
The kid in front of me is wearing a red plaid shirt.
His hair is jet black.
Then Mr. Somebody tells everyone to turn their books to page eighty-eight, and there’s a general swoosh of turning pages.
Mr. Somebody comes over to me, smiles nicely, and puts a book in my hands. Quietly he says, “Welcome to grade nine math, Miss Warren. Nice to have you here.”
Am I, though? Am I here?
And math? I thought I was in English class.
At least somebody knows where we are.
SEVEN
Stewie Griffin
M ath goes pretty badly, but honestly, not worse than I was expecting. I keep looking over at the door, at the clock, out the window. I wonder if I can ask to move closer to the door tomorrow, but how would I explain that?
I don’t ask, and just sit and sweat.
But Mr. Olmstead (Mr. Somebody has a name) is quite nice in the end and spends a bit of time sitting with me during class.
It’s actually not that hard, I realize. I’m not that far behind — they are still reviewing work from last year. And I remember, as I look at the numbers, that math is something I was pretty good at.
But really, math at my senior elementary school last spring seems like a brief moment in someone else’s life.
The nice thing? Mr. Olmstead doesn’t try to introduce me to anyone. I don’t get asked to stand at the front of the class. There’s no, “Class, this is Firefly Warren. Please welcome her with a big, Leslie Street Central High School hello.”
Or something horrifying.
No. The class got to work doing math, and there weren’t even that many glances in my direction. Frankly, pretty much no one cares that there’s a new girl sitting in their classroom. Maybe new kids show up at this school all the time?
The other kids are all very hip-looking. There’s a cross section of kids from all over the world sitting here; we’re from everywhere. There are kids with purple hair and nose rings, kids with hair to their butts, kids with their hair covered, or shaved off. We look pretty urban, busy and engaged. No one really stands out, to be honest.
There’s one girl a few desks over who gives me a good stare, but that’s about it. Frankly, grade nine kids are the least of my worries.
I do math, although I’m rusty. I don’t bother asking Mr. Olmstead to move me, I’ll have to deal with sitting so far from the door. As I get busy thinking about fractions, I forget about being panicky. Math will do that to a person.
After class, I get lost and spend half an hour not finding my next class, which is supposed to be Geography. But the truth is, I’m in no hurry. I haven’t had to hurry to be anywhere for months, it’s hard to get back into the habit. When the geography class must be half over and I’m too late to make an appearance without having to knock on the door and disrupting the class, which I’m not doing again, I realize it’s almost lunch time. I have a locker, which I visit, dump my math book and binder.
Then I wander along Queen Street back to The Corseted Lady. It’s a blustery day, the leaves are all rattling down the street, across the streetcar tracks, shooting around people’s boots.
I cross the little parking lot outside the shop, open the door, the bell tinkles … and the store is full of people.
I freeze in the doorway, my hands deep in my hoodie pockets.
A man in a bright pink silk shirt and black top hat sits at the piano. He’s playing something loudly. A young man and woman look over his shoulder at the sheet music on the piano. They seem kind of impressed.
In front of me, a guy walks past the open door holding what can only be … a carrot suit? I mean, it’s definitely a large vegetable of some kind. He smiles and says hi, then wanders past with the leafy orange costume.
A woman sits at the long table behind the counter, holding a pair of scissors. There’s a long swath of green cloth on the table in front of her. More leafy vegetables?
There’s a young guy off to one side, on a ladder. He’s wearing a tool belt and is way up there near the shop ceiling — changing a light, maybe.
And in a little room to my right, a lady sits by herself, sewing madly. I can hear the sewing machine: brrrr, brrrr, brrrr.
My mouth is open.
The place is alive with people. It was so quiet all day yesterday and when I left this morning. There was no one here but Aunt Gayle and me since I arrived on Saturday night. And Juggers, who is nowhere in sight at the moment, I notice.
“Hi, Firefly!” Aunt Gayle comes out of her office.
Then, of course, everyone stops and looks at me standing there, with expectant looks.
I raise a hand, feeble. Heart pounds. I hate being singled out. What has she told them about me? Is it okay that I’m here? I want to turn around and leave, but Aunt Gayle bustles over, and this time, unlike math class, I don’t escape the introductions. She takes me to say hello to all her employees. She’s the boss, I’m family.
I’ve never been family before. It’s agonizing and all I want to do is run. I try really hard to smile, nod, remember names, but I’m bad at it.
First, I meet Sadie.
She’s British, I think. She has an accent, anyway. There are beautiful, tiny, yellow flowers painted on her brown cheeks and around her eyes that move a little when she smiles and says hello. I’m blinded for a moment.
I’m also pretty sure she’s holding a giant pea pod, but how do you ask that question?
Whatcha got there? Giant pea pod?
But I do somehow get the words out. “Is that … is that a giant pea pod?”
Sadie laughs. “Yeah! We’re fixing costumes returned from a kids’ show on TVO. They ripped all the vines off, somehow!”
Then I meet Edward. The young man up the ladder. When Aunt Gayle introduces me from the bottom of the ladder he smiles and waves, “Hello, Firefly!” Then continues whatever he’s doing with all those tools up there near the lights.
Then Max. The guy carrying the carrot costume. He’s Sadie’s boyfriend, helping out before he goes to work somewhere else (didn’t catch where).
Then I meet Sylvia. The lady sewing in the back room. Her mouth is full of pins when Aunt Gayle introduces us, so she can’t really smile or say anything. She nods her head, raises her eyebrows, and then gets back to sewing.
Brrrr, brrrr, brrrr.
Next, I meet the two people by the piano. They are Gillian and possibly Stuart (by this time, I’ve stopped being able to take anything in). They’re costume and production students from the film course at Ryerson University, who come in on Mondays. They aren’t that much older than me.
Last, I meet Ambrose. The piano player himself, who stands up, sweeps off his top hat and bows low before me. He says in this deeply beautiful voice, “At your service, Mademoiselle Firefly.”
He’s an actor, not an employee, there for a fitting for a Netflix movie, but the Ryerson students are having a hard time corralling him into the change rooms.
Aunt Gayle tells me this as she closes the door to the kitchen and makes me a grilled cheese sandwich for my lunch. Which is accompanied by a glass of milk and a sliced apple.
I look at my lunch plate a long time.
“Everything okay, Firefly?” Aunt Gayle asks. I nod and eat.
No one has ever sliced up an apple for me. Not ever.
I tell her the morning was okay. I tell her the school seems all right, I had math not English like we thought, but I definitely have English this afternoon. And I managed to somehow miss Geography altogether, by getting lost. She seems to be listening, but people keep rapping on the door, then bursting into the kitchen.
Edward knocks to say he’s leaving.
Sadie comes to see if there’s another bolt of green material, since the pumpkin costume somehow got separated from its fronds at TVO, too. What were those people doing to our vegetables? she asks in a laughing way. Stuart (possibly) barges into the kitchen to say that Ambrose doesn’t want to stop playing the piano, and can Aunt Gayle please come.
So she sighs, says goodbye, then heads back to run her amazingly busy shop.
And I head back to school.
I’m late by ten minutes. It’s been a while since I’ve had to care about the time.
I like not caring about the time.
I look into the office, and the nice secretary just smiles and says don’t worry about it, and tells me how to get to my next class.
Which is English. We’re reading Shakespeare. The Tempest.
Then after that, there’s History. We’re studying Canada at War, starting with World War One, 1914–1918.
In both classes, the teachers say “sit anywhere” and I score seats close to the door both times. Which makes it slightly easier to breathe and focus.
Then it’s final period, which would be my arts class, but I haven’t chosen music or art, so I wait in the office until the friendly secretary can help me again. We’re becoming pretty chummy.
I have two choices.
Mrs. Uttman for music. Or Mr. Rabinandrath for art.
When I hum and stall, the nice lady says, “Mr. Rabinandrath really likes the kids to do interpretive work: symbolic work from your day-to-day life. Some of it is really beautiful.”
I look at her for a minute, then say, “I think I’ll do music, please.”
