6: HEY VALERIE
If there was one thing more exhausting than running all day, it was sitting at a desk, in a classroom, with someone staring at you. Sharon wanted us to write a letter to someone, because writing had a magical, pretty way of healing the infected things of your soul. That was what Sharon believed.
“Write a letter to someone else. It can be to whoever you like. Maybe a celebrity, or a family member. Whatever the case, I just want you to write to someone and just talk to them. Don’t worry about length or style—just get the words out of your head so that you can look at them on the page. I want you to then read them back to yourself. This is to see what you’ve come up with. Once you like what you see, you have the option of reading it out loud. You don’t have to read it out loud if you don’t want to share—that’s perfectly fine. But you will have the option tonight at the fire pit, when you bring these letters with you.”
We were each given one sheet of foolscap. Foolscap was terrifying. It reminded me of exams, and how even though you knew the answers and knew you had enough time, as soon as the teacher said go, your mind disappeared and you wrote like a shaky, nervous kid.
Around me, pencils were flying. Murray was on the other side of the room with his face two inches from his paper. He was really taking the directions literally. I wondered what he was writing. I hoped he read his out loud later at the fire pit.
After five minutes of listening to pencils fly, I finally figured out how I was going to fill all the empty lines in front of me.
I wrote a letter to myself, Valerie Campbell. She was the version of myself that the program was searching for, and trying to pull out of me—the good one. She was also someone I wanted to warn.
Hey Valerie.
I just wanted to let you know a few things in case you’re listening somewhere else. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you do—you’re always going to have your past as a constant reminder of what you have been. And even though you think this program fixed something inside of you, I want you to know something——
You’re still all in there.
Your life is all in your head. The good and especially the bad. But if you keep yourself as a buddy, nobody else can mess with you.
In case they brainwash you into thinking you’re fixed, I just want to remind you that nothing was ever wrong with you in the first place.
You’re fine. It’s in your capacity to have a messed up life or not. Decide to be good, and everyone else can go fuck themselves.
Don’t let them get you.
-Val
I folded the paper up into a square and put it in my pocket. I looked around at everyone else finishing up their thoughts, and wondered if they believed what they were writing. Shortly after, everyone else finished up and put their letters away and headed to the mess hall. It was supper time, and we were having spaghetti. In another world, spaghetti could be a comfort food. But there was nothing about this kind of spaghetti that made it comforting. There was no sauce, meat balls or cheese—just bland noodles boiled and placed on a plate. It was like we were in the depression. Most of us probably were.
Twinner was eating her spaghetti like a slob. It hung out of her mouth and she slurped it up quickly. She had a few holes in her face, most likely from piercings that had been cut from her to become appropriate for her stay at New Horizons. Her earlobes were loose too, from gauges that had been taken away. She looked like an elephant with floppy ears. Karen stared at her from across the table, and Twinner smiled.
“I know you’re just doing that to be annoying,” Karen said.
Twinner shrugged. “Maybe.” She chewed and took another huge bite. She slurped so loud that I thought it was going to shoot down her throat and choke her. I doubted that any of us would save her. I definitely wouldn't’—she didn’t matter enough to save.
Campfire was next up on the to-do list. There were two other groups there taking up space. Everyone was mixed together, and it was nice sitting next to people you weren’t usually quarantined with. For once, boys and girls were allowed to sit next to each other. When Murray saw me, he came over and sat down next to me.
“What’d you do today before class?” I asked him.
“Suicides. And then I wrote a letter ”
“Who did you write it to?”
“Maybe you’ll find out later.”
I smiled.
“You have a nice smile, Val.”
I wiped my teeth with my hand to make them dry, and pushed up my upper lip. It got stuck there, which was my goal. “Thanks Murray,” I said, with my buck-teeth out.
The fire pit was still the original from Camp Hedgewood days—a huge hole surround by long logs. The wood log was cold on my ass, and I stared at the empty pit, waiting for a warm fire. But I dreaded Sharon making us say things about our feelings or what we liked about our childhoods. There was just so much of that, and I didn’t want to talk about anything. If there could be a rule of life, it would be to talk only when you absolutely had to, and even then, shut your goddamn teeth.
"Alright, be quiet. Eyes on me," Sharon said. She was holding up what looked to be a match. "Who would like to show me how to make a fire?"
I liked doing as little as I could. That was the thing I was best at, which Mum always liked reminding me.
“You’re just so good at doing absolutely the littlest possible,” she had said. And that wasn’t a compliment. It wasn’t meant to be, anyway. But I made myself take it as one.
“Thanks, I get that from you.”
As soon as the words left my mouth there was a sharp slap across my face. It was shocking. Mum wasn’t someone who used her hand to hit. She had a wooden spoon to beat both my older sister and I with while we grew up. We were struck with it for silly, small things. Like saying ‘asshole’ or ‘damn’ or telling her we hated her. She hit us until we apologized for hating her. But she had never struck my sister or I with her own hand.
That is, until she had to.
There was such a difference between being hit with a hand than a spoon. There was less preparation with a hand—it was a spur of the moment reflex. The spoon gave her a second to take it back, like there was a choice, and sometimes all Mum did was pick up the spoon and that was enough of a threat for her. But when she lifted her hand and smacked me across the cheek, I cried even though it didn’t hurt more than a wooden spoon. I cried like a little girl because I realized I was a horrible daughter.
“Is there anyone who would like to show us their fire building skills?” Sharon asked again.
“I’ll give it a go,” I said.
"Have you ever made a fire?" she asked. Her voice hesitated when she saw me stand up. Maybe she questioned my experience. As she should.
"I’ve been around fires, sure. I’ve been on fire too, actually. Went right up my sleeve and everything.”
“Wow. That must have been very scary.”
“It was.”
“Do you know how to build a fire or not, Valerie?”
“I will build a fire right now.”
I had never made a fire before. Not a real one. There were moments in my life where I had added a log to a pit Dad had produced, laid it on top of an already burning fire, and watched the flames climb onto it. But I had never lit a match and put the paper where it was supposed to go. I had no idea where to put the match or the paper or the wood and if there was even a difference. Hopefully nobody would realize that though. I tried not to look at anything too carefully. I wanted it to look like I didn’t need to examine anything, and that I could do it with my eyes closed.
Sharon stepped forward with the match in her hand. And just as I was about to take it, she closed her hand and pulled out a weird looking stick from behind her back.
“What is that?”
“It’s how you’re going to start a fire,” she said before handing me the curved stick with string tied to each end.
“With a bow and arrow?”
Residents laughed at me.
They were sitting all around me, watching the interaction between Sharon and I. It must have been funny to see someone who had volunteered to make a fire and didn’t know how. I was lost and they liked that.
“You know that using two sticks creates friction, and friction creates heat.” Sharon rubbed her hands together. Her hands were dry and made a rough, sandpaper sound. “Go from that. You volunteered, so you have to know what you’re doing.”
The boy’s counsellor, a tall, skinny man with arms so long they nearly went past his knees, came over and handed me more fire making tools.
“And what’s this?” I asked him.
“This skinny, straight piece of wood is your drill.” He placed it in my hand. It came to a slight point at the end. “And this is a bearing block, to keep it spinning and in one place. And this is the hearth board, where, if you’re successful, some embers will be made.”
I had seen it on TV before. Naturist, outdoors-men, making fire with what they had around them. Two sticks, a shoe lace, and some human power. But the technique I knew nothing about. I didn’t know which stick went where, and what the point of a bearing block was. None of it made sense.
I got down on the ground and laid the stuff beside me. The only obvious thing was that the sharp looking stick, what Rick had called the drill, went with the bow and arrow looking mechanism. But how it was supposed to stay, and how it was supposed to stay straight while it spun, was unknown to me.
With the slack of the string on the bow, I wrapped it as much as I could around the drill, until it felt so tight that I knew I had to be doing something wrong. Then, using the bearing block, I held the drill so it was pointing up against the flat board. It felt like maybe I was going somewhere, but when I pulled the bow toward me, to make the drill spin, it went flying across the pit.
The residents laughed.
“Not so easy, is it?” Rick asked.
“Well, I don’t have the technique down yet, but I have an idea how things work.”
“That isn’t good enough to start a fire,” Sharon said.
Then the old lady and I switched places. She took the bow and wrapped it around the drill like I had, but instead of placing it right on the hearth board, she took out a jack knife and dug out a slight hole in the wood, to keep it in place. Then, placing the bearing block on top of the drill, to hold it in place, she put her foot on the hearth board.
“You see what I’m doing, Valerie?" she asked.
I nodded. I saw what she was doing. Getting a correct stance, making sure everything was secure, putting pressure on the wood so it didn’t have a chance to go flying. And then when she was ready, she began to slowly pull the bow back and forth, and the slow motion had the drill spinning. When she got a technique going, and a rhythm, she increased her speed.
Rick had a flashlight on everything she was doing, and lanterns around the area lit up the space so we could see the slow beginnings of smoke—
And then she stopped.
“Once I get a good groove in the wood, we need to cut out a v-wedge for the embers to fall onto the bark. If you put a leaf there too, you’ll have something to transport your embers with.” She cut the shape into the wood. It went nearly to the centre of the circle she had just made from the pressure of the drill in the hearth wood. Then when she got going again, there was smoke after about a minute.
Rick passed her some dried tinder, and she quickly placed the embers with the leaf into it. She held the tinder up close to her face, and began to blow. Within seconds, it burst into flames. She dropped it into the pit, and both her and Rick tended to it to make it big.
There was a fire. It came from two sticks rubbing together. And work.
“It’s easy if you know what you’re doing,” Sharon said, standing up. She looked proud of her fire. I wondered how many times she had made one like that—probably hundreds. And we were in awe of it because we had never done it.
I took a seat next to Murray and watched Sharon’s fire. It was huge and warm on my face. The last campfire I had been to was over a year ago, before I had stopped going to school, before I had started getting sad. It was nice to be out in the night watching the flames. It was a mindless activity that I actually enjoyed because it didn’t require you to do anything.
“We are not here to learn about fires. We are here for something else,” Sharon said. “Now is your chance to read your letters from earlier today. Of course, you also have the option to burn them, or keep them for yourself. You do not have to share anything. Sometimes it’s enough to get it out on paper and see what it looks like outside of your head. You need to determine if what you’ve written is real to you or not, and that’s something only you can decide for yourself.”
A few people from other groups read theirs. They were letters to their girlfriends, saying they missed them, and letters to their boyfriends, saying they wanted to touch every crevice of their body. It was gross how much detail some people went into. When it came to our group, Twinner read hers out loud. It was a letter to her parents, apologizing for being horrible.
“That is a load of bull,” Karen said.
“If that was what she needed to share, so be it,” Sharon said. “But we do not criticize at this moment.”
We each went around after and chucked our letters in the fire. No one else in our group was ready to speak out. When it came to me, I decided to be brave.
I read mine out loud.
It was short and quick and I waited for the laughs. There were a few smiles. Those smiles went right to my heart. I needed them to keep me alive. But nobody laughed like I wanted them. Nobody found the humour in what I was saying. Nobody nodded in agreement with what I was reading. Did they not believe what I believed? All I knew was that there was an on/off switch for being a good person, and it was up to you to turn it on or not. Easy as that. The program was pointless.
Sharon asked for the letter.
“You want it?”
“Yes. I’d like to hold onto it for another time for you to read it again. You don’t hear it like I hear it. You’re trying to be funny, but I don’t think you understand what you wrote there. Maybe someday you will.”
“I thought we don’t criticize.”
“We don’t, but you can criticize your own work at a later date. It needs to sit for you to see it differently. And then maybe you will understand why it isn’t funny, and could actually be helpful to you.”
It was Bambi’s turn next. When she stood up she hesitated with the paper in her hands. She looked like she didn’t know what she wanted to do. Her hands were shaking, and she reminded me of someone right then, but I couldn’t care enough to remember.
“Are you acting it out?” I asked. “We could do a quick game of charades to try and figure out whatever the hell is going on in your head.”
Karen jumped in. “Pathetic loner?”
“No, let me guess—closeted lesbian?” I said.
There was laughter from around the fire. Everyone was part of it, jeering at something I said. And it felt amazing to be where I was, and see her where she was. I felt huge.
Bambi looked right at me. Her bangs were straight across her forehead, and just barely touched the tops of her eyelids. She threw her letter in the fire without looking away from me.
“Oh, I know—coward,” I said.
Bambi sat down and I could feel Sharon’s glare through the other side of the fire, warming up my face, trying to bring me back to reality. But if you didn’t think about the things you said, then they couldn’t ever haunt you. Hopefully that was possible.
Everyone got their turn, and Murray chucked his into the fire. I elbowed him in the ribs but he didn’t say anything to me. Then Rick stepped into the forest line. He pulled out a huge duffel bag that had been hidden behind the trees. He carried the bag over to Sharon, and set it on the ground next to her.
"The main purpose of tonight is to also discuss the effect of 'things'. This can be an open discussion. If you have anything to say
that is relevant to the topic of 'things', feel free to join in." Sharon stopped walking around the fire and looked up into the sky. The stars were out and bright and the moon was looking down at us. "Do any of you have a certain object in life that you absolutely need in order to survive or feel good? Something that is irreplaceable because of its history or value to you."
“I don't think I need anything or anyone,” a freckled boy said. He was absolutely covered in them. Reddish dots were all you could see on him.
"Are you sure?" Sharon asked. "Because it would be wonderful if that were true. Imagine the feeling of not having to depend on anything for self-fulfilment." She bent over and unzipped the corner of the duffel bag just enough to pull out a small object. I leaned more to see what was in her hand. When she held it up for everyone to see I was confused. It was an iPod. I didn’t understand.
The freckled boy's eyes got big.
"You see, by that look on your face, Landon, I believe that you do in fact have something that you think you need in your life." She dangled the iPod by the earbuds and watched him try to avoid eye contact with it.
Freckled Landon didn't speak up.
"So since you don't need it." She tossed the iPod into the fire. Everyone gasped while we watched the flames take over.
My stomach dropped. I knew where the group session was headed. But I didn’t think another kid across the fire knew what was up. He was laughing at Freckled Landon’s pained face from losing something he simply liked a lot. Why didn’t that laughing kid put two-and-two together?—that bad things had a tendency to circle.
"Jack, what's so funny? Are you like Landon? Is there nothing that helps you sustain your life on this earth?" Rick asked.
"I have to admit, I do need certain things in my life."
He nodded. "That's understandable. We can't all be like Landon." He bent down and pulled something from the bag. Jack suddenly jumped from his seat.
"Not my sunglasses!" he yelled. “Those were expensive!”
"Sit down Jack," Rick said.
"Rick, I need them. I admit that so can't I have them?"
"No Jack. This is an experience. I want to show you that you don't need these things to have an enjoyable life." He chucked the glasses into the fire. Jack covered his face with his hands.
I tried to think of something Dad would’ve sent that would mean a lot to me. I couldn't think of a single thing that really mattered to me. There were pieces of clothing I liked, and maybe some jewelry, but if I lost it that stuff wouldn’t get a huge reaction out of me. My hospital bracelet had been the only thing I had arrived with that I would’ve liked to hold onto, but it had been cut from me even before I could make a huge deal about losing it. My nail polish was gone. My hair was brown. The group activity seemed to have nothing over me.
"Tracy." Sharon turned to meet Bambi's huge dark eyes. She peered out from under her straight bangs across her forehead. Her eyelashes were miles long in the light from the fire and her lips were slightly parted. "What do you think about needing objects or items in life?"
Bambi fidgeted and looked at her hands.
“Tracy?”
"I guess that…maybe there are things I want…but I don't know about necessarily needing."
"So you believe that you have wants in life, but not really any needs?" Sharon dug through the bag. I was curious to see what Bambi would apparently need in life. Bambi didn't answer her. I looked at her face when Sharon pulled out a ratty book. It was Tuck Everlasting. Maybe our little Bambi didn’t want to live forever.
Bambi eyed the book in Sharon's hands but didn't make a fuss or any movements toward it.
"Would you agree that this book is a want of yours?" Sharon dangled the book from its mangled pages.
Bambi looked blankly at it. "Yes."
“But not a need?”
“Correct.”
Sharon seemed to be giving up on getting a reaction from her. She threw the mangled book into the fire.
Rick turned to Murray. “You like Hockey?”
“At one point, sure,” Murray said. He shrugged. His shoulders looked so big when he did that. The tattoos on his arms glowed from the fire. I couldn’t picture him ever playing a sport. All I pictured was him lying in bed, smoking.
“Okay.” Rick pulled out a jersey. It had an autograph across the number on the back. I didn’t know Hockey well enough to know if it was something valuable or not. But the look on Murray’s face showed that it meant something to him. Rick dropped it into the fire like it was nothing.
"Logan?" Sharon turned to Karen.
I held back a smile. She was the most interesting to me because you couldn’t tell what she liked or what kind of girl she was. Did she like girly things? Was her prized possession a doll? There was no way.
Karen widened her eyes when Sharon pulled out her item. It was a pink stuffed elephant with purple tusks and a little purple tail. It was the weirdest thing to care about. A stuffed animal. A toy. But she probably had it since she was a kid, and the things you had since you were a kid were hard to let go of.
"Is this yours?" Sharon asked, holding it over the fire.
Karen eyed it carefully. "Maybe it is."
"Okay, well I guess it's not anymore." Sharon dropped it into the fire.
Karen closed her eyes. Maybe she couldn't bear to witness her best friend burning alive. That had to hurt. Your childhood friend who had seen everything you had seen—it was dead! Pink elephants with purple tusks didn’t exist, but they most certainly weren’t supposed to burn that way. It wasn’t a thing.
Green Gables shrunk back into herself when Sharon looked at her and began to search through the duffel bag. For an old lady she was ruthless and quick.
"Overalls?” Sharon chucked the ratty pair into the fire even before asking her anything about them.
“Let me guess,” Karen said, looking at Green Gables. “Those must be the overalls that help you hold onto your virginity.”
“Oh, I am no virgin. Quite far from it, actually.”
“That’s enough, Brooke.” Sharon said. Her arms were folded and then she looked at me. “You're next, Valerie."
I tucked a strand of dried up hair back into the bun on top of my head. I could smell my armpits, and my body felt like I had been dragged through an obstacle course. Every bone in my body ached, and I felt like shit, and I liked that I felt like that. It was good to feel low, because it was something I knew how to exist in. I had gotten used to it.
Sharon bent down and pulled out a piece of paper from the duffel bag. She held it out to show me. "Does this look familiar?" she asked.
"Oh no, it's the paper I write stuff on."
"Look closer." She walked over to me and held it up to my face.
On the paper was a coloured photo. And in the photo was a background of my yard with a familiar bicycle. She pulled the photo away just as I was grasping what was being taken from me.
"Obviously that's your bike." She crumbled up the paper and threw it into the fire. "Well, it was your bike."
I caught a gasp before it could make it out of my throat. The fire was dancing all around itself, little wispy movements, and I felt nauseous. That was my bicycle I had bought from my neighbour. I used it to get around when Dad didn’t let me use his car. It was something I needed for when I wanted to escape for a bit—it was my freedom.
"Your father decided to get rid of it for you. I'm not sure if you noticed in the picture, but there was a for sale sign on it for twenty dollars."
“Twenty bucks.”
"From what I'm told though, not too many fish were biting. He eventually just gave it away."
I stood up.
"Sit down, Valerie." She pointed at the spot behind me.
There were a lot of things running through my mind. Mostly that I missed Basinview. The smell of the air near the coast was so fresh that it could make anybody miss being away from it. I was merely kilometres away from my hometown, yet I was still so homesick for i
t. Things seemed so far away when you weren’t allowed where you wished to be. I felt stuck right then. I was in a place full of people who weren’t my family. There were no aunts and uncles asking me what my plans were for university, there were no teachers telling me to do better, and my parents weren’t around to make me feel uncomfortable when they were screaming at each other. The things I was used to in life, the comforts and the constraints, were all taken away from me, and it was like tiny pieces of who I was were missing.
“Come on, it’s just a bike,” she said. “There are worse things to lose.”
I took a step forward. “Like what?”
“Valerie, I’m not going to tell you again. Sit down.”
"You sit down."
And I shoved Sharon.