“Just chill, Devon,” I heard him say.
“What’s up with you?”
“Just calm yourself.”
The loud chatter in the store trailed into mutters, and I could feel everyone glancing at me. There was no one here to have my back. The way Devon had come on, forceful without force, the stories I knew he was telling his friends, embarrassed me in a way my mother and grandmother had prepared me for. But the loneliness that empty table made me feel was new and unexpected in a way that made it hard to breathe.
I ran out into the snow, not bothering to cover my hair or button my coat. I didn’t even know where I was going or where the parking lot ended and the street began. I couldn’t see if there were any cars on the road or if there was anyone else walking. I wasn’t even supposed to be out here.
“Ay!” a voice called. “Ay yo!”
I ignored it and lowered my head to my chest to keep my face from the cutting snow, making sure I only stepped in the footholes made from people who’d managed through earlier. There was a small black glove on the ground, and I hoped it belonged to Rochelle or Jordan or anyone from the group and that her hand was a rainbow of white, blue, and purple. I hoped they were all freezing, that little icicles were forming on their eyelashes and making them stick together. I hoped, prayed, that their hair would give way to the wetness and tangle in on itself, knotting and coiling, shrinking and puffing so that they’d cry out when their mothers combed through it before they went to bed. And I wouldn’t be there to listen to them whisper sheepishly about how they’d bawled and screamed for respite from the pain. I wouldn’t be there to listen to them whisper about anything anymore.
“Ay!”
A hand touched my shoulder and I whirled around. The person took a step back. It was Chris. “Sorry — you weren’t turning around. It’s freezing out here. I can’t see shit.”
“What do you want?”
“To give you a ride. I have my brother’s car today.”
“No.” I started walking again. He kept pace beside me, trudging through fresh snow.
“Why? I just want to give you a ride.”
We were nearing what I thought was the sidewalk and I stopped walking, trying to reach a decision about where I wanted to go. Rochelle’s house was on Hopewell Avenue — not too far. If I followed them there they’d know I could take whatever they threw at me and if I didn’t they’d write me off as sensitive, the worst thing you could be in that group, in this neighbourhood.
“Listen,” said Chris. “What Devon did was foul. I know that.”
“If you know, who’re you going to tell?”
He paused and then sighed, silently admitting to what I already knew: boys didn’t rat on each other even if they were in the wrong, especially if they were in the wrong.
“Your girls snaked you. Devon snaked you. Just let me give you a ride. I won’t do anything. My car is right there.” He pointed to what looked like an old Honda parked in front of New Orleans Donuts.
The wind howled, and I shivered in my jacket. “Whatever.”
We didn’t speak on the way over to his car and once we were inside, he cranked the heat up to full blast and turned on the radio so that 50 Cent’s beat bumped in the car. I cupped my hands around my mouth and breathed on them, rubbing my palms together. Going to Rochelle’s seemed like the expected thing to do, almost like a natural choice, but something that felt like doubt hollowed out my stomach; joining them might prove I could shake off humiliation, but it would also prove that there were no limits to the kind of humiliation they could put me through.
Chris backed out slowly and told me he had to put his hand on the back of my headrest so he could see better. It wasn’t until we were already on the road that I began to wonder if anyone had seen me get in, if there was even just one person who’d been able to make me out through the snow.
“Where should I take you?”
The heat from the car started steaming up the windows and my eye followed a water droplet streak down the glass. I thought about my grandmother and how when I was a child and a creak in the house or a squeak of a chair made me flinch she’d say, “Duppy know who fi frighten.” The first time she said it I asked her what it meant, and she only told me that I had to learn to steel myself so I wouldn’t be a target for any ghost; so spirit and human would know better than to target me and would know to leave me alone.
“Kara,” said Chris. “Where do you want to go?”
I faced front and put my hands to my mouth again. “Just take me back to school,” I said.
Before/After
On Thursday afternoon, Mr. Esposito told Anita and me that we had to go down to the cafeteria.
“Why us?” said Anita.
“Both of you are going to the Sharing Circle this afternoon, aren’t you? It’s in the cafeteria. Put your books in your lockers.”
When we made it out into the hallway, Anita banged her locker open and slammed it shut. I could hear her muttering to herself.
“Why he gotta tell the world my business like that.”
I spoke beneath my breath. “Everyone would’ve seen us leave anyway.”
Anita turned to me. “Who asked you?”
I closed my locker and walked down the hall without saying anything back. Anita was always too quick to start an argument, and I didn’t want to have one right where Mr. Esposito could hear us. But the anticipation of a fight didn’t scare me like it usually did. It had been two weeks since I’d spoken to her or any of our other friends, two weeks since they abandoned me at New Orleans Donuts. And every day for those two weeks, something inside of me had been ready for a confrontation.
She did have a point about the Sharing Circle, though. If Anita, Rochelle, Jordan, and I had all gone together, like I’d planned, we would’ve been protected by our numbers. The other kids would know that it was a con, a Get Out of Jail Free card. But with just two of us going, it looked like we had issues we were desperate to share. Issues that could be used against us, that could be used as ammunition.
We’d first heard about the Sharing Circle the morning before the snow day — though Mme. Rizzoli had nearly forgotten to tell us. When the morning announcements were finished, we’d sat at our desks and opened our orthographe Duo-Tangs without a word. In the silence, we heard Mr. Esposito tell the grade sevens about it in the adjoined room, stressing its significance, and Madame groaned at his muffled voice. She pulled a sheet of purple paper from her giant binder and held it up for us to see. The WordArt that spelled TALKING IS SHARING, SHARING IS HEALING made me fold my arms across my chest. It reminded me of the pamphlets I always saw people handing out at St. George subway station or outside the Eaton Centre, the pamphlets my mother said cults used to lure the weak-minded. After holding the paper up for a few seconds, Madame flipped it back around. She recited the most basic details in English and then started adding things in French, speaking swiftly as if she couldn’t wait to spit the words out of her mouth.