5: SKIN AND BONES
Sharon came for Karen and I once it got dark. She led us back to the cabin, and it was hard walking through the woods since the paths had become overgrown. The branches scraped my arms and legs, and it was a relief when we finally got to our cabin. Sharron opened the door, and all the girls turned and looked at us. Their boots were placed near their jugs of water, beside their bunks. Everything was where it was supposed to be, except for Karen and I. We had watched the sun go down instead of whatever social activity they had planned for our group.
"Welcome back,” Green Gables said. She was lying on her back in her bottom bunk. The colour of her hair was vibrant and wiry. There was a lot of it, and I wondered how long it had been since her last haircut.
"Thank you," Karen said.
I shoved by Karen and she couldn’t do anything back with Sharon right there. I climbed up into my bunk and noticed Bambi’s eyes glowing at me from her bunk. They were glossy, and maybe she had been crying.
Karen tried to jump up onto her top bunk in one swift motion. It took her several tries to get up, but when she finally made it, she pulled her shorts off and folded them at the end of her mattress. After slipping under her grey blanket, her eyes cut in my direction.
I was lying on my side, watching her move. Maybe I shouldn’t have been looking in her direction. But I had an urge to rattle her.
“What?” she said.
"Should have opted for a bottom bunk,” I told her.
“Enjoy your bunk hour, girls. After that, it’s lights out,” Sharon said. Her voice was sweet and reminded me of my dead granny who had known nothing about how people functioned—that a young girl could have twenty-thousand different lives without anyone ever knowing a thing. “I will be back for the lantern in an hour,” she said. The door shut and we were finally alone.
The crickets outside were loud, and it made me wonder if they were somewhere inside on the floor. The breeze outside came through the peep hole and rattled the door just enough to irritate Karen. She got down and plugged the hole with her sock.
“What a problem solver.”
Karen charged my bunk. She tried to get up the ladder but I shoved her away with my feet. She eventually got a hold of my ankles, but I kicked her wrist away.
“Get the fuck off my bunk,” I said. My voice was calm. I didn’t want to sound frustrated. There was no way she could affect me if she thought nothing bugged me.
Karen managed to get up on the top bunk with me, but I climbed over the edge and jumped to the floor to avoid her. She followed after me.
Green Gables and the girls watched as she charged at me, and I let her pin me against the wall. Karen was the type of girl that if you weren’t wearing a shirt she’d hold you by the skin like a kitten. Maybe humans were supposed to be held like that too.
“Listen,” she said. Her hot breath smacked me in the centre of my face.
“I’m listening.” I closed my eyes.
“You're not as strong as you pretend to be."
I laughed. “I know I’m not strong.”
She put her hand over my mouth, and her fingers grazed my teeth. I gagged on the taste of salty sweat, and finally shoved her off of me.
“Don’t touch my face,” I told her. “That’s disgusting.”
“Stay out of my way, toothpick,” she said.
“Sure thing, tree trunk.” I moved around her and jumped back onto my top bunk.
Twin and Twinner laughed from their bunks. Their laughs raised the hairs on the back of my neck. It was one of the best feelings to have someone laugh at your joke—not just any joke, but a joke that killed someone else.
The silence from Karen as she climbed back up onto her bunk was satisfying. But it went on for too long. And then it stung me.
“Damn you’re annoying,” I said. My head was on my pillow and I pulled out the elastic from my hair. The roots were greasy but the ends were dry.
“And why is that?” she asked.
“You know I’m just trying to bother you, but you let that bother you. You’re so annoying. I don’t get you.” I sat up. “If you’re going to talk, fucking talk.”
Karen popped up in her bunk. I thought her head was going to hit the beams running across the ceiling. “It’s pretty easy to laugh at the fat girl. You’re all so predictable.” Her breathing laboured and there was a shakiness that made my stomach drop. “Girls like you are the reason other girls hate themselves. And then it’s all a surprise why I’m the way I am—you girls are bitches.”
Maybe she was crying. There was shaky breathing, and quiet sniffs of air that only holding in sobs could produce. When she wiped her nose on her grey blanket, I wondered if she had a soft shell like the rest of us. It was nuts how when you were vulnerable, you leaked every kind of liquid out of every crevice in your face, all for the world to judge.
“You’re right,” I finally told her. “I am a bitch. But you’re a fucking bitch too.”
“Fuck off.”
“Fuck off? No—you fuck off. You’re fat and I’m skinny and we’re all in this damn cabin because we’re all offended by the stupidest shit. Get over yourself. None of us are right. We’re all the problem you dumb fuck. That’s why we are here.”
“Oh that’s nice.” Her voice was higher than normal, set to mocking mode. “How good of you to know why things are the way they are. You’re so amazing.”
“You’re the amazing one, actually.”
“Could you shut your mouth and sleep. Nobody cares.”
I laughed. “Sticks and stones, skin and bones—remember that one, Karen.”
“Sure thing, Valerie.”
I wanted to sleep and dream of normal dreamy type stuff. Like saving someone from something, or flying through the sky. But I laid on my back, wide awake. And I thought about the weirdest stuff. Like moments that suddenly mattered when it was dark. I was alone in a way that made me feel disconnected from my group, and that strangely bothered me.
“Goodnight ladies,” Sharon whispered. She was back in the cabin, holding the lantern she had promised to take back. Sharon looked right up at me. “Sleep tight.”
I looked over at Karen. She was on her back and motionless. Dead asleep. It was funny that she and I were in the same cabin, because that was the way of the world. Karen was the type of girl back home that bothered me. And apparently, I was the type of girl that bothered her too.
There was always someone, somewhere, that was bothered by some kind of person, and the universe was paying us both back for being shitty human beings. We were in the same kind of boat. Mean girls were rotten, and girls like us died from the inside, out.
The morning was fantastic until I got out of bed, and then my body wanted to crumble to the ground. After climbing down the ladder, I laid down on the dirty, wooden floor and fell into a brief daydream about the freedom of owning a cell phone. I realized that cell phones offered entertainment, connection, and security—what humans could offer each other, without the commitment. I missed my cell phone.
We were supposed to be putting on our shorts, socks and boots, but my eyes were on the ceiling, procrastinating. Little Bambi stepped out of her bottom bunk, and instead of asking me what I was doing down there, she stepped right over me and didn’t even look at me. She pretended it was normal to step over a body in the dead of morning—like it happened all the time.
“Did you want help up?” Green Gables asked. She held out her hand.
“No.”
Green Gables wasn’t pretty from that angle. I guess looking at her chin and the skin on her neck wasn’t a fair judgement of what she actually looked like. I felt like I was in a coffin, and these were the people who were looking down at me in the ground, wondering what had happened for me to end up like that. On the floor, spread out, and gazing up.
Karen jumped down from her bunk. When she stepped around me her foot stepped on my hand. I knew what she was up to. There was no such thing as an accident with her.
> “You just stepped on my hand.”
“Sticks and stones,” she said.
“You remembered.” I smiled, and there was so much sleep in my eyes that it felt like it was ripping my tear ducts.
Bambi stepped back over me. She had forgotten 66, and quickly moved to get it. She picked up her jug, and went to step over me again to get outside. But instead of keeping her eyes forward, she took a quick glance at me as she stepped over my body.
It was the weirdest thing making eye contact with her from down there. It wasn’t an angle you were supposed to look at someone from. Unless they were dead, of course. And I was alive, and I didn’t feel like myself, and I saw that she thought I was crazy.
“Oh please, like you’re perfect,” I said.
She didn’t turn around. She pretended not to hear anything. Maybe her mother had taught her that. Mum had taught me that too—if you had nothing nice to say, say nothing at all. I was a mute in school. In my head, fireworks were going off and my bones were scraping against my skin, trying to shake me out of myself.
“Get up, Valerie,” Sharon said from the door.
I got up slowly, and then I grabbed 49 off the floor. He was half full and I took a sip even though I wasn’t thirsty. My socks were crunchy, but I put them on anyway since my boots would rub my feet raw without them. The walk up to the mess hall was chilly. Waking up before the sun was painful, and it had been a while since I had done that. There was easily no worse time of day, and that’s why they were making sure we witnessed it. If you could survive seeing a sunrise, you could survive anything.
We were led to a field with a few other groups of girls. It was the same field Karen and I had sweat our guts out onto the previous day. The boys were somewhere else, bettering themselves in a different way with other counsellors. I wondered where Murray was, and what kind of torture he was enduring. At least he didn’t have to see the lake and imagine how cold it was.
The first event was dynamic stretching. That was something new to me. It was stretching while moving, because they didn’t want us staying still. We skipped across the field, and lifted our knees high. The whistle kept us together, and we were encouraged to go as a team. Karen’s speed was the slowest, and we tried to match hers. It was almost painful running slow if you were used to a different pace—it forced you to concentrate harder. It’d be easier to ditch your comrades and speed through to the finish. But that wasn’t the drill.
Larry called us to break. Most girls collapsed onto their backs and covered their faces with their hands. I took a drink from 49 and placed him beside my hip. We sat and listened to Larry, who had a whistle around his neck.
“You have two options. You can either run or talk.”
I already knew which one I was choosing. I wasn’t exactly a runner, but between the two options, I was definitely more of a runner than a talker. There was nothing to talk about with me.
“You can run laps for as long as you like. And if you make it to running for forty-five minutes, you don’t have to talk with us. But if you don’t, you have to stop and have a conversation with your counsellor, where he or she will ask you questions. And you have to have real answers. If your answers aren’t real, you go run again until those answers come to you.”
My answers were never going to come to me. I jumped up and ran, and the girls followed me. We were spread out around the track of the field, and the crusher dust blew up into my face. Even though we had a good track to keep moving on, one by one, the girls got slower and slower. It was funny how we all started out quick, but the pace died down even if you didn’t want it to. I slowed down to a comfortable jog, where I knew I could keep it for a while.
“Valerie, want to talk about anything?” a woman yelled.
I looked up and it was the counsellor with the stomach. And the little eyes. And the big nose. I ignored her and kept running, which was big for me—to keep going and not say anything. I just didn’t want to use any energy. I was in it for the long haul.
Karen was the first to die. She dropped down and then Larry went over to her. He sat down beside her and it was just disgusting how they were sitting and talking. I couldn’t even look at the scene.
Next was Twin.
I wanted to scream at her. That she could stay in it for her sister, Twinner. That she had to keep going. But she stopped running, and then bent over so that her head was nearly between her legs. Her blonde hair was glued to the side of her face, soaked in sweat. She should have put it up so she could see what she was doing. She probably just needed a smoke.
“What a slut,” I said. There was no one close enough to hear me. It just made sense to say right then, and made me feel better.
Twenty minutes later, Green Gables and Twinner quit at the same time. Only when Green Gables stopped, her stomach decided to unload everything she had in her. She puked so hard that it nearly flew up into the sky and disappeared. It just went everywhere.
“Come on!” I yelled. It was infuriating that they were dropping out so quickly. And it killed me to see a counsellor go over to them, when they were at their weakest, and pick and pry at them. I didn’t want to think about what they were talking about.
There was so much crud under my nails and you wouldn’t think so much could fit in such a small place. It had been a couple days since removing my nail polish, and my hair colour was a deep brown. I wasn’t even a brunette—I was dirty blonde. You could still act out your hair colour though.
“You have to feel something by now, Valerie!” Larry yelled over to me.
I waved at him. It took everything in me not to give him the finger. I was doing good. My pace was constant, and my breathing was okay. I kept my shoulders relaxed, and considering I was carrying heavy boots, I was going to make it.
And then Bambi dropped dead.
I tried not to look in her direction. Maybe I could pretend it wasn’t happening because that one hurt. Bambi was a wild card. You didn’t know anything about her, or what kind of a person she was because she kept it all to herself. And there she was, on her back, with her guts spilling out for everyone to clean up.
When I passed her, I looked down at her, like she had done to me, and when we made eye contact, I looked away. There was nothing I could do for her, and she could do nothing for me, and I just wanted to keep going. Nobody could hold me back.
The worst happened when they told me how much time was left.
“Five minutes, Valerie!”
That was a long time—five minutes had the potential for many scenarios to play out. You could do absolutely everything in five minutes, and stretch it out, and exhaust yourself, and kill yourself. Five minutes was the longest amount of time, and when they told me that, I wanted to drop down and cry.
“Four minutes and thirty seconds, Valerie!”
I really wanted to cry. Because it was fucking exhausting being out there around people I didn’t know, missing people far away, and knowing that there were so many more exhausting days ahead of me doing something I didn’t want to do. Sweat beading down my face, and I imagined it looked like tears.
But I kept dragging along, and I pushed through. It was supposed to hurt. I was supposed to ache. And when I heard Larry’s whistle, I stopped.
He came over to me. “Was it hard?” he asked.
“No shit.”
“Watch your language.”
“I can’t see it.”
“No, but I can. Everything you say is written across your skin. Don’t you care?”
“I don’t have tattoos. I’m not a tattoo person.”
“Valerie, someday you’re going to say something bad. And you’re going to regret it. Which happens to everyone. But it’s going to happen a lot to you if you don’t smarten up.”
There was no such thing as smartening up for me. I was a worthless piece of shit, and I didn’t have a high school GED. I was going nowhere. If I could have it my way, I would just shrivel up and die.