Mitochondrial Curiosities of Marcels 1 to 19 (3 page)

On epiphany day, things started as per usual. I was walking through Churchill Square, empty concrete heart of Edmonton. I had passed the sign that says ‘Wheeled sporting activities are not allowed.' Wheeled sports are the only thing the square is good for, but that's Edmonton for you, and I'm used to it.

Who knows why that day was so radically unspecial, but I was totally tabula rasa. Possibly Churchill Square oozed brain-damaging toxins and all my get-thee-to-school neurons had been eaten away so I could ephiphanize. Or, forget the carcinogens – maybe ugliness is enough for brain damage. Wouldn't that explain practically everything?

I watched people walk by and so many of them looked like they wanted to sit down and stop everything. You could see them make the decision to keep moving. After a while I told myself, whatever, Dree, you're just
PM
sing. I watched the guys looking for butts outside the doors of Edmonton Centre. Oh, go home, drink more coffee, I told myself. Then I saw the security guards
watching the guys looking for butts. I went
OMG
, it's Edmonton on Wednesday morning, get a grip. Then a man older than Grandma Giles yelled, ‘Learn to drive, you moron,' from his truck, the woman he yelled at gave him the finger, he leaned on the horn and so did a bunch of other people.

We are so so done.

I thought of Joan in her cubicle and the hundreds – thousands? – of other people trapped in cubi-farms all around me. I felt the pull to jump back in, magnetic and strong. I didn't move. I couldn't not see what I saw. We're talking full-on, factual data – like waiting for the bus when it's thirty below and knowing it's cold. I knew humans were finished.

It wasn't about school being all traumatic. It's just that when nothing matters, ninety-minute blocks of obsolete information are ridiculous. Like getting measles when you're dying of cancer. A secondary disease.

I ate a lot of chocolate that evening, which led to regret, invention and decision. Feeling bad for the tired masses, I invented the band of hope, a hair band containing messages of hope to give to those in need of encouragement. I tried to blog it for my weekly craft, but because of a tragic home situation – dial-up – I gave up after an hour and concentrated on a life plan. Clearly, I could no longer not notice that my city is not only the epicentre of capitalist car-freaking-death culture but death itself, so, except for killing myself in spirit or body, there was one thing and one thing only to do: thrust myself into the heart of this evil. The Mall. I had to work in West Edmonton Mall.

The next day, I almost scored at Second Cup, thinking unlimited free coffee, yes. But Manager Rachel said I had to buy a Second Cup T-shirt for $27 and couldn't use the espresso machine until I proved myself because the espresso machine was a privilege,
not a right. When Roberta at Winners talked to me, I did not laugh at anything. It worked and I was unpacking Christmas ornaments with Tamsin before noon. Winners was perfect.

You can tell yourself nothing matters blah blah, but when most people keep going to school et cetera there's this little bit of am-I-crazy-or-are-they. Maybe, you think, I
have
to tell myself nothing matters because I'm a loser. Winners clears everything up. When you're unpacking big Christmas balls the size of your head and covered by some heinously strange feathers you can't imagine a bird for, made by exploited workers in China, you
know
something is dreadfully, unspeakably wrong and
then
when you see people shopping and
buying
the big feathered balls in September for $16.99, well, civilization is sucking on fumes, isn't it? So you look at the shopper and think a quiet
I'm so sorry but good for us. You're nuts for buying it, I was nuts for unpacking it, we're all nuts, but we have each other
. Tamsin asked me if I was Christian which was maybe an insult given her tone, but who cares – I was a caring person to a public in need.

Every morning I'd use the phone in the back to impersonate Joan and call the school, and I'd get home in time to erase the automatic where's-your-kid message the school sent every day. For two weeks it was great. Then someone called Joan at work and she went all life-crisis. Thus ended my usefulness as a human. Leonard came to the house and sat across from Joan, me in the middle, Paige upstairs pretending to practice her handbells but actually only dinging psychotically whenever I said anything.

Parents wear you down with their worry and their guilt and their expectations. You look at your mother and you think, god, you turned your body inside out to produce me and you look at your father and, hell, he's crying. Whatever, you try to convince them that crack, prostitution and living on the street in general
do not interest you at all. But that's where they go, they've seen the headlines and the movies. So, fine.

‘Okay okay,' I said. ‘Yes, I'll go back.' Joan hit the table one more time to say this was about not throwing away my future, then went to bed.

‘Thanks a lot, Dad,' I said.

‘Dree, you know how I hate to keep secrets.'

‘As in, hello, life is pointless?'

‘I've been putting away a little something for you every month.'

‘Yeah, right.'

‘For a couple of years now, surprise for the big fifteen. Listen, Dreebee, you've got to finish Grade 10. After that it's the free-choice highway.'

I'm not an idiot. Not in the Leonard sense, anyway. He'd say what he wished was true instead of what was. I'd nailed him many times, told him not to make something look good just because he couldn't stand the crappiness of it.

There was none of that and also, I gave him an out. ‘Really, Dad, you're not just
thinking
about it? ‘

‘Two promises, Dree,' he said. ‘One, don't tell Paige or your mom; two, once you go, you call me every week.'

‘Okay,' I said. ‘But Dad, it's totally okay if this is an
idea
.'

‘Every month. Not a lot, but something.'

His voice was too quiet, his eyes too steady for a lie. At that moment, the special account existed.

‘So, Dad, how much is there, roughly?'

‘We'll have the extravaganza treasure hunt. Coming of age and all that.'

‘Because, Dad, it's hard to plan without a rough estimate.'

He could have used it up, that's one possibility. Rita could have taken it. But it did exist. ‘Plan,' he said. ‘You'll have enough.'

I planned. I was up all night, and by the next morning the Plan was a beautiful thing. I'd go to Toronto, where I had blog friends, and find a way to live that wasn't totally fake. Until then, I'd keep inventing stuff, making things, so I could get into the Renegade Craft Fair with Oxymrn who made $800 there last year with her retro aprons and beads.

So we made the deal, Leonard and I, and back I went. For the first time, I had a goal: to somehow use the futility of school as fuel for my blog, my crafts, my real life. For a while it worked, then I got incredibly sleepy. The school counsellor, Mr. Santini, was activated, and he was so worried about my lack of peer group I couldn't stand his discomfort. ‘Whatever, fine,' I told him. ‘I will make attempts.' The film club was first, until Jeremy Mills said I had to wear spandex and get slathered in peanut butter because all film club members had to be corpses in his film on cockroaches taking over the world. Then came the anarchists, as in how adorable, anarchists in high school. Like vegetarians in McDonald's. After the head anarchist's girlfriend's birthday party, that was all over. ‘Adolescence is deeply painful,' I told Santini. ‘My way of getting through it is alone.'

He left me in peace since I was almost passing biology and art and had developed positive regard, as he put it, for Ms. Riddell, the biology teacher. Joan settled back down to getting people fired at work and Leonard stopped calling me every night for a report. For ten weeks, the Plan grew strong and glorious. I checked Toronto job sites every day and found a bunch of coffee shops that always need staff. I found a room in a house at Bloor and Dufferin, shared bathroom et cetera but who cares, and last week I sent them my rent and damage deposit
knowing
that
today
I would have the special account to pay Joan back before she knew she had been borrowed from. Six days ago, I registered for the
Renegade Craft Fair, expensive but worth it, and
of course
I'd pay Joan back by the end of the week.

Five days ago, the Plan was poised to replace my meaningless life like an Academy Award presenter waiting to go onstage. Paige and I were in the Bio lab, partners because everyone else was partnered by the time we got there on Teeth Day – another tragic family situation being no dental plan. Aside from terror and pain, Teeth Day at the university student dental clinic means bus marathon which always means late. Since Paige is eleven months younger than me it is already unspeakable that we are in the same class, but she's
gifted
, so who cares about my suffering. She had to be advanced a year and, five days ago, there she stood avec moi over dead fruit flies. Talk about foreshadowing. I had killed them with too much chloroform and she was displeased. ‘It's easier when they're dead,' I told her. She had just said, ‘Correction? We're supposed to chart their offspring?' when the intercom crackled and our names were called. Paige tried to funnel the dead bugs back into the jar. ‘Get a move on, girls,' Ms. Riddell said and I swung my bag over my shoulder, blowing the flies away. ‘Sorry,' I said to them and Riddell.

In the hallway, Paige said, ‘It's Dad.' I was all of a sudden hollow, like a cheap chocolate Easter bunny caving in over a heat source. Leonard had already had two heart attacks. I used to be scared he'd die, used to imagine him dead on a stretcher every time I saw an ambulance or heard a siren. But since the Plan, no worries. Because Leonard was indispensable to the Plan, his death stopped being possible. I stopped at the trophy case with a picture of someone's butt still taped to the corner. We could see Joan in the office with the principal. Paige pulled on my sleeve. ‘If we don't move, it didn't happen,' I say. Paige pulled again. ‘C'mon, Dree. They see us.'

We're back in the bio lab and the fruit flies are still dead. Paige impales me with her pointy little elbow and whispers, ‘Sit up.'

I lift my head long enough to look at the clock. Three p.m. Day 2 of being fifteen. I should be over Winnipeg about now. And since I'm not, I should be at home in bed. And since I'm not, I should destroy my sister because, clearly, that's what she did to me this morning with her pre-dawn hysteria. ‘Paige,' Joan had said in ubermaternal mode. ‘Paige, honey, no one expects to see you girls today.' And Paige?

‘Correction, Mom. My handbell choir
does
expect me because without me, Mom, there is no A flat. Also, Mom, Dree and I are going to fail biology if we don't deal with the fruit flies today. Capital F fail, Mom.'

With head down and hope crushed, I listen to Riddell doing her responsible-sexuality thing.

‘And what is our main purpose as a species?' she asks. ‘Don't be so savagely dull, good lord, think of fruit flies, think of any species and what they must do. Yes, Raymond, brilliant, reproduction, reproduce is what your genes demand, do be sensible and understand that you are foremost a gene machine, and genes demand replication at any expense, including
STDS
and good taste, and hormones can be viciously clever in convincing us something is about love or pleasure when really it's all biochemistry, the same kind of biochemistry that gets fruit flies and all other species to mate, and they're not exactly thrilling, are they, but let's hope they enjoyed themselves.'

Ms. Riddell gets all that out in the time it takes most people to say, ‘Hey, how's it going.' And good for you, Ms. Riddell, for talking about sex all the time, but please. If we're biologically programmed to bonk everything that moves, why not tell us where to get cost-effective sexual aids? Or better yet, provide
DIY
instructions?

‘And now, young friends, turn your thoughts to activity of a cellular nature, and kindly formulate hypotheses on your favourite organelle.' Riddell walks between the lab tables, checking for things to con fiscate. ‘Yes, I speak of your final project, that penultimate expression of genius worth 50 percent of your final mark, and yes, the outline for your presentation is still due on Friday. Do work with great intellectual rigour; the marking will be savage.'

With the class nicely traumatized, Riddell,
DNA
earrings twirling, comes over to Paige and me and puts her hand on my shoulder. I almost start bawling. ‘Girls, I'm surprised you're here,' she says, and I say, ‘Yeah, you have no idea, Ms. Riddell, how surprised I am.' Paige gets all huffy and wants to talk deadlines but Riddell says, ‘Mercy, Paige, I hardly think we need discuss that today.'

Paige is all, ‘But Ms. Riddell, I need to start an
independent
project on mitochondria, I'm researching – '

‘Shuddup! I'm totally into mito, too!' I couldn't help myself.

‘Mercy,' Riddell says. ‘Well then, excellent, yes, do work together on this one, yes, I do see you're not comfortable but that's hardly the point of projects, is it, Paige?' Riddell gives me a
good-for-you
pat, makes sure we've got all the assignment info and goes off to stop the back row from starting another fire. ‘You are so unstable,' Paige hisses.

What are mitochondria, I wonder, and smile at her. Something to do with cells, something about power. Something to google when I can't think of anything interesting to do.

Going to English feels excessive, as it so often does after biology, so I hit the library. Fresh hell. I'm deep into etsy.com and in comes my tortured English teacher, Mr. Trenchey, with my tortured English class. He doesn't say hello, just raises his eyebrows and clutches
Death of a Salesman
tighter to his chest. Blayne sits beside me and stares at my breasts like Blayne does, a total perv, and I slump low enough to graze the keyboard, A) to stop thrilling Blayne, and B) because, god, Trenchey is talking about transformation yet again. ‘That's what I
must
see on your assignment,' he says. ‘How did this book transform you, show me how you changed.'