Something Wicked (4 page)

“Because you make me feel good,” he says right away. “You think everything I do is great.”

“Hey!” I lift my head up to look into his eyes. “Me too. That’s the same for me.”

“And you’re beautiful.” He starts to run his hand through my hair.

I slap him on the chest. “No I’m not.”

“Yes you are.”

“How am I beautiful?”

“Well, let’s see …” He lifts his head to carefully look me over. “Of course, your face is beautiful. And your body. And your skin. Your smile.” He lifts my hair up. “… Your ears.”

“My ears?” I slap him again. I’m embarrassed to hear him talk like that. Deep down I just don’t think it’s true, ’cause I know my looks aren’t amazing.

“Ahhhh!” he jokes, grabbing my hand. “Don’t hurt me! I can’t take any more pain in my life.”

I pull my hand away, roll over onto my back. “Hmm.” I don’t really know what to say. I know he was sort of joking, but for the past while he’s been telling me that he was feeling depressed. It feels strange to hear a guy admit he’s unhappy, because all the other guys I know are just angry. And the fact that he’s still unhappy makes me feel like I’m not good enough, because I should be making life perfect for him, the way he has
done for me. Since I met Michael, it’s as if all the bad things in my life don’t exist anymore. Finally, God answered one of my prayers and gave me someone who loves me in a way no one has before. And I want to do the same for him. I want to be the answer to Michael’s prayers.

“I wish I could make a time machine that would speed up time for you but keep it still for me and we could meet in ten years,” he says. It drives him crazy that he’s twelve years older than me, and for teenagers he thinks age is counted like dog years. One human year is the same as seven dog years. So that means he’s basically eighty-four years older.

“Yeah? And who will I be then?” I ask, sitting up on my knees.

He spreads his big hands out over my head as if I were a crystal ball and starts rubbing his fingertips against my scalp. “I see a woman wearing a suit jacket and heels. I see someone who can stand in front of a roomful of businessmen and stun them with her assertiveness and brains.”

By the time he finishes, my hair is tangled in knots. I reach out to do the same to his head, but then I pull away. “I better not,” I joke, closely inspecting his receding hairline. “It might all fall out.”

“Shut up,” he says, playfully pushing me backward.

“Here, I’ll be gentle.” I become serious and replace my hands at his temple. I close my eyes and try to picture him ten years from now. Then I open my eyes again. “What will you be … almost forty?”

“Hey—only thirty-eight.”

“Same thing,” I say. I try to envision forty and I see every old guy in my apartment building. I see Michael in a jogging suit, with a belly and a half-bald head. Then I see him eating a slice of pizza and holding a six-pack under his arm. “Forget it.
Nothing’s coming to me. I can’t do it.” I drop my hands, feeling

sad all of a sudden.

“That’s a bad sign.”

“Okay, let me try again.” I replace my hands a third time, close my eyes, and really, really concentrate. I tell myself that Michael isn’t like the men in my apartment building, and this time I like what I see. “You have a little less hair and a little bigger belly, but you’re still good-looking. You are in the big backyard of our house by a little swing set. Our two little girls are playing with you. I am walking toward you, bringing out some cheese sandwiches cut into fours without the crusts.”

“Nice,” he says, and pulls me back down onto his chest. And I think it’s the happiest moment in my life.

Seven

I go to my job at the veterinary clinic almost every day I’m suspended. My mom thought I’d sit around and smoke pot all day, but I’m actually excited to get up every morning and go to work. It’s like I’m living my future adult life, and for once it’s easy to get out of bed and start my day.

Rachel, the daytime co-op student from an uptown school, greets me right away. “Melissa!” She’s just inside the door, as if she was waiting hours for my arrival. “Oh my God! You’ll die! Penelope had her pups! They’re adorable.”

“Hey!” I am so excited I push past her and rush toward the basement, where the cages are. I am practically skipping down the stairs. “I was hoping it was today!”

“The black and white one is mine,” she claims, chasing after me.

I suppose you could say Rachel and I are “friends.” I started to volunteer at Willow Animal Hospital almost two years ago now. My school guidance counsellor set it up, and it’s been the best thing that has ever happened to me. When I turned sixteen, they hired me on as part-time casual, and started me off on a higher wage because of all my previous help.
Rachel has been there for only a month, so basically she’s my “student.”

Rachel is a “normal” girl. She has two parents. She takes piano lessons. She’s on the swim team. She drives a Mini. She’s still a virgin. She seems a billion years younger than me. I think she’s a little afraid of me. She’s seen me not take crap from Tawyna, the dog groomer who thinks she can boss us around like slaves. But Rachel would never guess what I’m really like. The drugs. The parties. My mom. Because here at work, I am me. I don’t have a mythic name. At work, I am Melissa.

The pups, all pink and squeaking, are intertwined in a writhing huddle in a blanket on the floor of the kennel. Their mother, Penelope, is in a separate cage, recovering from two broken legs.

“Look at them! They’re soooo cute!” I open the kennel door and sit cross-legged on the concrete floor. I spend the next fifteen minutes holding each one, bringing their new-babysmell bodies up to my face and giving them a thousand kisses. Rachel sits in the pen with me, doing the same thing.

I love my work. I want to be a veterinarian. This job will give me the experience I need to get into the university program. I work in the lab. I administer medication. I give animals needles. I assist in minor surgeries. If I stay on for a late shift, I even get to help with car accident victims or neutering.

For the most part, though, I’m downstairs taking care of the cats and dogs. Some of them are boarders, some surgery, some sick. When I arrive each day, Rachel gives me a rundown on the animals: which ones to walk, which ones need meds, which ones bite. We go by each cage and pretend we’re interns giving medical summaries on each patient.

I start my shifts with walking the dogs on a little square patch of grass surrounding a single tree out behind the parking lot. It’s not as easy as you’d think. Each dog has his own problem. Some have cones around their necks, or bandages around their legs, or even IV drips in their little doggy elbows. Some dogs, like the ones who have had hip surgery, I have to carry up and down the stairs. After walking, I clean the cat and dog cages and feed everyone. Then I bathe the ones who shit all over themselves. In between all this, I do loads and loads of laundry.

Another reason I love my work is because it’s where I met Michael. He’s an animal technician, which for the most part he thinks makes him a failure. He wanted to be a vet too, but because of his depression, a few years ago he dropped out of university.

I met him on a late shift. I was filling in for Christie, the overnight lady. Jetson, a terribly mangy cat, was brought in, its eyeball popping out of its head. Blood everywhere. Smashedup teeth. Michael was the only medical staff there. The oncall vet was nowhere to be found because he was having an affair with the convenience store owner’s daughter next door, so it was just the two of us, and we worked like a team from
ER
to bring this mess back to life. It was amazing. And at the end, after two hours, we were so damn proud of ourselves, we toasted apple juice to our brilliance. And to Jetson’s speedy recovery.

The cat died the next day. But Michael and I became friends. I never even considered him a real guy at first, because I knew he was so much older. He was also too “plain” and conservative. Normally I would have never looked twice at him. He had boring short brown hair, boring clothes, and, with the exception of
some faded freckles, a sort of nondescript face. He was average height, average build, and maybe even had a bit of a gut. But almost a year later, a bit before summer, it all just happened: Michael became sort of beautiful to me. And just over three months ago was the beginning and the end of me.

“Michael is going to want to take them all home,” I say to Rachel, putting back one of the puppies. I try to say his name as much as I can at work, just to feel the shape of it in my mouth.

“For sure,” she affirms, and I glance to see if there’s any suspicion about our secret relationship. None. It’s hard to keep love a secret. In some ways, I’m dying to tell someone about our relationship. For the longest time I’ve just been waiting for Rachel to ask that exact question—“Are you and Michael together?”— so that I don’t have to really answer, so that just my look will give it away.

With the exception of Jess and Ally, no one knows about Michael. Why complicate the situation by involving judgment from those who can’t possibly understand? My mother will get protective. My guidance counsellor will get concerned. My other friends will get grossed out. And what’s worse is I’ll start to believe them.
Yeah, maybe he did use me. Yeah, maybe I am seeking a father figure. Yeah, maybe he is a loser who can’t get girls his own age.

And I’d start to put the fence back up around my heart and believe that I was taken advantage of. And what good would that do? It was Michael who took the fence down. Opened me raw. Made me feel … something. Anything. He gave me that gift. And even if our relationship is wrong, even if his love turns out to be a lie, I want to keep it. I don’t want to close up again.

Eight

I had a feeling something was wrong. Extra wrong. Michael had been acting strange the past few days. And tonight, he’s real cranky and distant. I get a feeling he’s about to break up with me or something. After about an hour of watching TV together on the couch, he finally says it.“I’ve been wanting to talk to you …”

I know instantly what he’s going to say. During the entire three months we’ve been together, I’ve been a secret to Michael’s friends. He said they would kill him if they knew what he was up to. Sometimes our age difference really gets to him and he gets all distant with me for a couple of days, but then it’s like he can’t help his feelings and he gets close again. He told me once he was ashamed about the whole thing. It was just wrong for a twenty-eight-year-old man to be with a sixteen-year-old girl, even if he was young at heart. Even if we didn’t have sex. Even if we were mostly friends.

“First, I want to say that …” he goes on, “it’s not you. It’s society. And that’s a whole lot bigger than two people in a room.” He raises his hand to push the hair off my face and kisses my forehead, like he is my father or something.

“Fuck society.” I flick his hand and move away from him
toward the corner of the couch.

“I can’t. You can’t. We live in it. I made that decision a long time ago, probably about your age. Either you live in it, or you complain about it your whole life, or you deceive yourself into believing you’re going against it.”