LITMIR.BIZ

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I heard a man and a woman yell and run from the house toward the body on the street. It was at that instant that I turned and ran for home. I felt like I was being chased by something dark and evil. I heard a moaning and sobbing coming from my throat.

      Then I reached our front door and dropped the key twice before I could get the lock to work. I almost fell into the hall, slamming the door shut behind me as I doubled over, gasping for breath. I wiped tears from my cheeks, licking the salt from my upper lip. In another world, I could hear Leslie laughing at the cartoon just before she shut off the TV. In a few moments she would be in the hall, and I would have to act as if nothing had happened. If Mom knew I had left her alone, I would be so grounded that I would never see another volleyball practice until graduation. Yet that wasn’t what steered me into a course of silence. For just before the hit and run car had sped out of sight, I had recognized the bright red colour of my dad’s Chevy Malibu.

       Two

      I was running. I could hear a loud pounding coming closer, closer, and I felt a spasm of fear buckle my knees. The sweat heated my forehead, running down my back, making my nightgown stick to my legs. My lips and mouth felt dry and I opened my mouth to take in a gulp of air. As I swallowed painfully, my arms shot out into the darkness before me to ward off the shadows, fluid and alive, advancing and receding as if blown by the wind. I heard the scrape of a key in the lock and forced my eyes to open wide. Quickly, the terror faded. It was only a dream. Now I could see the blue cover at the foot of my bed and the closed door to my bedroom. The dream settled back into the place where dreams go when you wake up, leaving me feeling uneasy without really knowing why.

      Mom was home from work, unlocking the front door and letting it bang soundly behind her. She probably figured it was time for Leslie and me to get up for school. Her strategy was to make a lot of noise so that we knew there was no point pretending that we were still asleep. The radio came on full blast from the kitchen. She wasn’t original, but her methods always worked, and she never even had to raise her voice. Already I could hear Leslie’s feet hit the floor and her clear, high voice start singing a good morning song. I swear that Leslie had to get the award for chirpiest morning person in the history of the known universe. She always woke up singing and usually doing a few ballet steps on her way to the bathroom. I, on the other hand, liked the grump approach, at least until I had some breakfast under my belt and a few minutes to shake the sleepy bugs out of my head.

      The sun was filtering through my blue bedroom curtains casting dancing shadows on the wall. I liked my room. Mom had let me choose the striped yellow wallpaper. We had picked up a four-poster maple bed and a white dresser at a flea market, and the oval blue flowered carpet had been in Grandma Bannon’s spare bedroom. I had a few posters of my favourite rock bands on the wall across from the window. My old dolls and stuffed toys still kept their posts on a bookcase that Mom and I had stripped and refinished a few years ago. The bookcase, of course, was packed with all my favorite books, like The Wind in the Willows, The Secret Garden and Heidi. I also had a more recent stack of teen magazines that Ambie and I passed back and forth. The top shelf was saved for my jewellery box with the ballerina in the pink crinkly skirt that still twirled around when the lid was open, and framed pictures of Mom, Dad, Leslie and me in happier times. I especially liked the one Mom had taken of Dad and me squatting by a pond feeding the ducks when I was five years old. Dad had his arm around my shoulders and I was leaning on his leg with my hand extended toward a mallard that watches me with great concentration. I look like I’m about ready to snatch my hand away, and Dad is laughing into the camera. I liked to think that he and Mom were sharing a happy moment.

      This morning, I chose black jeans and a sweatshirt of grey fleece because I figured it was probably going to be another cool fall day. I pulled my hair back into a gold barrette, trying not to look at myself in the little, oval mirror above my dresser. This was definitely not my best time of the day.

      Leslie was digging into a bowl of puffed cereal as I entered the kitchen. I gave Mom a peck on the cheek, and she smiled and handed me a glass of orange juice. I sat down to a bowl of yoghurt and bananas. I was on a health kick, as instructed by Mr. Jacks, who was deeply into the whole body approach for his volleyball players. I think he took a refresher course in sports last summer, because he kept coming up with ideas for us to improve ourselves. It wouldn’t be so bad if he were a nicer coach. His summer course hadn’t taught him to be any easier on us than he had been the year before. I’d personally pitch in a few dollars to send him on a training course in the art of positive reinforcement.

      “What a night at the hospital.” Mom poured herself some juice. “About eight-thirty, the ambulance brought in Mrs. Fielding, you know, the retired Grade Three teacher from a few blocks over, after she’d been hit by a car.”

      I think my eyes must have widened about a metre. Luckily, I didn’t choke or spit my food all over Leslie. Leslie stopped eating for a moment too, her spoon halfway to her lips.

      Mom continued. “I don’t know what this world is coming to. The driver didn’t even stop, and now the police are trying to track them down. I hope that whoever did this gets caught and faces the music.” Mom shook her head about the same way she had when I’d brought home a failing mark in math the term before. I knew she was really upset, because she’d used that facing-the-music expression. I’d had to face a few of Mom’s musical numbers in some of my naughtier moments.

      “Is Mrs. Fielding okay?” Leslie asked as she dipped her spoon slowly back into her bowl. She tried to push pieces of puffed rice down into the milk with the curve of her spoon.

      “Well, she’s unconscious,” said Mom, “and we’re not sure if she’s going to make it. She has a broken leg and three broken ribs, and her head hit the pavement pretty hard.”

      I felt as if I wanted to cry. I was the last person she might ever have spoken to! If Dad had been driving . . . I had to stop thinking like that because I didn’t want to believe what was probably true.

      I thought back to the moment when I’d seen the car speeding toward me, and I pictured myself standing under the street light, staring in complete shock in the direction of the driver. While I had automatically tried to see who’d hit Mrs. Fielding, with the speed of the car and the way that the light hit its windows, I hadn’t been able to make out more than a dark form. I stubbornly told myself that the form could have belonged to anybody.

      I also told myself that the police, once I told them the car was his, might not be so eager to give Dad the same benefit of the doubt as I did. After all, I had helped Dad paint the car that funny red colour and could certainly identify it. I suppose it was at that moment that I decided not to say anything to anybody. I would make like an ostrich and just pretend that I’d never left the house that night.

      “I just saw her last week at the mall,” Mom said, “and she told me how much she was enjoying retirement. We even talked about taking an aerobics class together on Sunday afternoons. This is so unfair.” She shook her head back and forth a few times. “You girls be very careful walking to school today. Make sure you look before you cross the street!” I imagined I’d be hearing that warning every time I went out for quite some time.

      Somehow I made it to school that morning. Even though I had decided to keep quiet about what I’d seen the night before, I still wanted to see Ambie, just to feel my friend’s comforting presence. However, as luck would have it, she was home sick with the flu.

      English class was first on my schedule. This was the one class that I still liked, and my mark hadn’t slipped as much as it had in my other classes. The teacher, Mr. Kruger, was an older, white-haired man who reminded me of the grandfather I would have liked to have had. Unfortunately, both of my grandfathers had died by the time I was six. Grandma Bannon had died only two years ago, about the time that Dad had left. We had one grandmother still alive, but she had moved to Northern Ontario to a place called Hawk’s Creek soon after Grandpa Connelly died. For the last two summers, Leslie and I had flown north to spend three weeks with her in her little house near a lake outside of town. Grandma Connelly had taken up painting, weaving and bread baking. She told us that at sixty she had decided to give up the rat race and begin her hippie lifestyle phase. Leslie and I liked

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