The train is packed. I lean against the plastic divider nearest to the open doors. Bing, bong, boom. I jump. For whatever reason, I wasn’t expecting to hear that noise. I look down. The cap of my vitamin water is rolling toward the closing doors … and … there … it … goes.
“The next station is Sherbourne. Sherbourne Station.”
The next station was supposed to be Bay.
I’m on the wrong train.
*
Wednesday. I receive an email from Adam.
Hi Katherine,
It was great meeting you. We’re finished our interview process and unfortunately we’ll be going in a different direction. I wish you all the best with your job hunt!
Adam
Peaks and Valleys
Jodelle Faye DeJesus
“Just stay close to the ground,” comes a tired call from a foot below.
“Grab the roots of the plants and the trees,” I call back.
Crouched nose-to-dusty soil on the steep face of the Scarborough Bluffs, Rustom and I climb higher. I squint up and grin at a flat surface ahead with no visible wall of chalky soil beyond it. “I think that’s the top!” I call down.
Rustom rests a foot over a protruding rock, which caves and rolls down. Rustom looks up at me and asks, “Are you sure this time? Because you said the same thing earlier.”
“Well, we can always climb down...” I say, looking over Rustom’s shoulder. “Or not.”
The Bluffs are a geological wonder, a massive escarpment beside Lake Ontario with narrow strips of dusty ridges that stretch from the mountain and blossom into steep hills. The mountain resembles a Gothic cathedral: flying buttresses protrude from the main church structure like spider legs, just as the narrow ridges of sediment branch out from the mountain face. Unlike the neatly designed flying buttresses, the ridges stretch out untidily, as if Lake Ontario has taken giant, messy bites out of the facade.
Sparse dry trees and short tousled weeds sprout from the cliff face. At the foot of the escarpment sits an artificial pond with metal bridges that crisscross over it. The stretch of grass punctuated by dots of trees is littered with clumps of people that resemble colonies of ants from afar. The Bluffs face the descending sun over Lake Ontario.
“There’s clearly a path here, so others have already followed this route before. I’m sure there’s a way. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Rustom grunts. “Just stay low on the ground. There’s been dog poo, too, so I’m guessing even dogs can climb up and down this cliff.... Oh yeah, careful—not all the dried clumps of dirt are really dirt.” He grins.
I squeeze the toes of my fabric moccasin flats between the forked branches of a short dry tree growing sideways. I grab its lower stems with one hand, and push my Coach crossbody bag behind my back. A leather bomber jacket protects me from April’s chilly breeze. Chalky sediment crusts the knees and shins of my jeans and my hands.
I finished my last undergrad exam that morning, so Rustom and I wanted to celebrate by reading my favourite novel, Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen, at the Bluffs Park. Flipped is a book about a boy and a girl whose first impressions of each other are tested by a series of events. They realize how wrong they were about each other and their perceptions of each other flip.
I introduced the book to Rustom when I presented it in the class where we first met in our third year of university. Our professor assigned us to bring and discuss a book we hate and a book we love. I brought my worn and stained copy of Flipped, with its cover of an upside-down chick, and gushed about the typesetting.
The book occupies the Herschel backpack now flat against Rustom’s sweaty back, along with two water bottles and my McDonald’s bacon cheeseburger.
We meant to celebrate by eating cheeseburgers and reading a lighthearted romantic comedy, but decided on a more adventurous route when I spotted the summit of the Scarborough Bluffs, where I had ran around with my high school friends four years ago.
“Oof!”
A slam.
Rustling.
A small avalanche of soil and pebbles.
Clothes skid along the avalanche.
I whip back to see Rustom flat on the ground, sliding down. I stare wide-eyed. “RUS!”
“I’m fine!” he says. The pebbles and dust and soil and dirt stop carrying him down. He hovers over the cliff face and trudges his way back up. “Go, go,” he says. “I’m okay.”
I climb faster now. If he fell... If he didn’t stop rolling down... I reach for the root of another dried plant and reach the top. I crawl onto the round, flat surface, roughly two feet in diameter. Grass outlines the plateau. It slopes to a mound of dirt on one side. I bite my lip.
“Is it the top?” Rustom asks.
I reach for his hand and pull him up. Rustom scrambles to his feet, crouching to keep near the ground. I hold his hand as he plops down on the mound of dirt across from me. I let go.
We sit on the plateau, the tip of a narrow ridge that connects to the mountain.
Rustom’s plump lips curl. His thick eyebrows furrow. His prominent nose flares.
“It’s pretty, right?” I glance at the horizon, and then back at him. I smile.
He glares at the view past me: Lake Ontario shimmering under the orange sun. Clumps of cloud float lazily, revealing an opalescent blue. Rustom looks from side to side. “Yeah, it’s pretty.”
I absently pull strands of grass. I convince myself that this bit of scenery is worth risking his earlier fall.... I survey the park below, the sun’s reflection on the water, the chalky cliff face. I wonder if I can call 911. My arms feel tired.
Rustom dusts off the knee of his jeans, the right one taking a very solid square shape.
I blink.
Rustom follows my gaze. “Oh,” he says, “it’s my knee brace. My knee started hurting again, so I’ve been wearing it.”
My jaw gapes. “What? You didn’t tell me! I’m so sorry! And you fell!”
He shakes his head, his eyebrows furrowed again. “It’s not a big deal. It doesn’t hurt right now, surprisingly. It only hurts when I walk or run. And it didn’t hurt when I fell. Wasn’t scary either. It was more like waiting for the soil to stop rolling down.”
I reach out—
“I’m okay,” he says. Rustom scans the ridge behind him. “Okay, I think we can get across this ridge. We just have to sit and sort of hop on our butts all the way across.” He peers down where we came from. “I don’t think we can climb down, anyway. That part with absolutely nothing but flat cliff face—it was hard getting up it, going down would be impossible.”
I frown. “Rustom, wait. Are you scared? Stop panicking.”
He shifts his backpack to his lap, pulls out a water bottle, and gulps it down. “It’s okay, I’m just thinking of how to get out of here safe. I don’t think this is very safe. How did you and your friends climb this?”
“We didn’t go all the way, I told you.” I search his face. “Rustom, you’re panicking.”
Rustom peeks into his bag and rummages inside. “We have to be careful, though. Let me go first. I’m pretty sure we can make it across. We just have to be careful.” He peers back down at either side of the ridge. No plants, no bumps, just flat soil all the way down. “If we miss a step, we might roll down and there’s nothing to break our fall.”
He turns on his seat to scan the narrow strip connecting our plateau to the mountain, at the fifty-foot drop to the bottom of it, never at me.
I will him to look at me, at the scenery behind me, at the beauty of the lake and the sun and the park and the other ridges of the escarpment. “Rustom,” I say. He faces me. I swoop in and catch his lips with mine.
Rustom kisses me, pulls away, and peers behind him at the deadly drop.
*
He sat across from me in a booth at Square One’s Moxie’s. He asked me how I was and what was new. I spat stories like bullets—I’d given up rice, I got my first driving lesson from my brother, I was preparing for my England tr
ip at the end of May—punctuated by jokes told in a low, mocking voice and with hands flailing like a stereotypical Italian.
Rustom smiled, laughed, and commented “Yeah”, “Well, of course”, “Right” when I paused for breaths. He fixed his startlingly chocolate brown eyes at me.
We moved our conversation to Second Cup at Princess Royal Drive and Living Arts Drive over a mug of hot chocolate. He stared down at it, occasionally glancing at my face, while he ploughed through the reason behind meeting me after over a month of no-contact since our breakup in February.
He missed me. He made a mistake. He screwed up. He knew I was willing to compromise on everything where we differed. He was sorry. He wanted a second chance. He wanted to be with me.
We kissed once that afternoon, but I ruled that he could not kiss me again until he earned back his right to call me his girlfriend.
*
I am not his girlfriend.
Rustom and I creep down from the mound of dirt onto the narrow strip of chalky ridge. He and I sit, facing north. We hop across the ridge on our buttocks. I wobble a few times, clamp my hands down, and continue.
I point at the view. “Hey, look, it’s pretty, isn’t it? Come on, it’s pretty cool that we’re up here.”
“Yeah,” he says, glancing up and then back down at the fifty-foot drop on either side of the ridge.
At every other beat, he asks if I’m okay. I mechanically answer yes.
We make it across and climb up the reddish soil. A trail is carved out at the side of the mountain. Rustom climbs first and reaches out his hand to pull me up. We make it up and into a dog park, where two joggers pass us. We stroll along the side, appreciating the height of the drop. We spot a hill at the end of the dog park, the topmost part of the Bluffs, and I recognize it as the one my friends and I sprinted down four years ago.
Rustom scowls. “Don’t tell me that’s the one you guys climbed? Because that is nothing like what we just climbed.”
“No, this is just where we took pictures and ran around. After the retreat we went down to the park and climbed one of the cliff faces like we just did.”
We race up the steep hill. We reach the summit. We pick a bald spot of soil to sit down and unpack.
I stuff the bacon cheeseburger in my mouth, rip the brown McDonald’s bag and flatten it on the ground. I perch on the flattened brown bag with Flipped at hand.
Rustom sits beside me, knees up to his chest and eyes on the horizon. He smiles. “This is beautiful. Thank you for bringing me here.”
“Thanks for driving us. Okay. This is a she-said/he-said book, so you can read Bryce’s parts and I’ll read Julianna’s,” I say as I open the first page and hand it to Rustom.
The glossy image of a fluffy, yellow chick dangles upside down against the white paperback cover.
Insomnia and the Working Girl
Olivia Matthias
Thursday night
I creep through the dark. Down spiralling stone staircase, a warm cup of green tea steaming in my hand, I step gingerly towards light, and music. New stairs appear out of the dark. I keep walking.
I come to a shelf built into the wall, lit by a single yellow candle.
I set the empty mug beside the candle. Someone has carved an arrow into the candle wax, pointing up. I reach up blindly. A vine swings into my open palm. With my empty mug in my other hand, I grip the vine, hop, and swing forward.
I fly through crisp cool air. Strands of my hair stream over my eyes. The dark fades to grey. When I see light, I release the vine and land on beige porcelain squares.
The squares look familiar. Hey, don’t I sweep those every day?
“Glad you could make it.”
I turn. Amir, wearing a red suit and a monocle, nods from his seat.
He sits at the head of a long teak table, surrounded by well-dressed people. Our friends. Jericho sits in the middle. He wears a three-piece camouflage-pattern suit. I see Carine, in a high-necked black dress, face framed by a feathered fascinator. Pixie-haired Jodelle in a silk green dress. At the end, Rasheed lounges in a black tux. They turn from each other to face me. Their faces glow under a twinkling yellow chandelier.
They smile as though one told the other a joke and the other expects to laugh. Trevor sits across them, in a grey three-piece suit with a pink tie. Black hair combed, his light green eyes sparkle in the light.
He smiles at me. I smile back and take a step towards the empty seat beside him when I notice Jericho has stood up.
He strides to me and pulls out a yellowed parchment from a green top hat. He hands the parchment to me.
I blink. The letters blur on the page. He pats his palm at a belt and then reaches for his face. He has a pair of bronze goggles where he normally keeps his glasses.
“You need stronger vision,” he says. He snaps off the goggles and hands them to me.
I take the goggles, still staring at the parchment. It has lines of black ink, but the letters shift and swirl.
“So, Olivia, as contributors to this book, we all have specific missions to carry out. We will find a way to contact you in the future with your next mission, but for now, your first mission should appear now to you.”
Jericho gestures to the parchment.
“Oh,” I say, and snap the goggles over my head.
The first line on the parchment firms into readable text: Olivia—mission one: Get dressed for the occasion.
The next lines continue to swirl. No words.
I look down and gasp at my pink bed-wrinkled plaid pajamas. I touch my knotted hair and groan when I feel my bangs. They stick straight up.
I look back at the table, but it and my friends seems farther away. The chandelier blinks. It flashes blue and white.
“The time is 7:30 a.m.,” says Jericho. He sighs.
I hear heavy thumping footfalls overhead.
“Erk,” says Carine.
“Huh?” I ask.
“Erk!” repeats Carine, louder. “Erk! Erk!”
I frown. My eyes widen.
“ERK! ERK! ERK! ERK!”
The table jumps up. The porcelain tiles fall beneath me, into darkness. I hurtle through a cold gusty tunnel.
I land on my side on something firm.
Friday morning
I groan, push eyelids open and roll over in bed. My phone screen illuminates the dark room with dull blue and white flashes. I roll over and tap it to stop the alarm blares. I roll away, shut my eyes, press my face again into the pillow. I roll back to the phone, and stare at the time on my phone screen. 7:47 a.m.
“Ahhhfuck.” I kick my legs out of the blue sleeping bag. The bag whoomps to the floor and I stumble out of bed. I root through a hamper and pull on black leggings, a black skirt, and a black turtleneck.
I sling a shoulder bag on my jacketed shoulder, pad into the kitchen, and grab a soy shake from the fridge. I shove it into my bag as I stride to the living room. I tug my boots on and head outside in the dull grey light towards the subway station.
Friday, late morning
I lean, side against a wall, hand on a computer mouse on the counter in front of me. Square orange lights buzz overhead and illuminate the wooden Gina’s Salon sign on the wall behind my back. I rub my eyes.
The phone bleats.
With the toe of my black tennis shoe, I kick a strand of dusty brown hair on the floor aside. The strand clumps around dust and forms a lumpy grey roll. My nose wrinkles and I make a mental note to sweep the front again after this call. I push the corners of my lips into a smile and pick up the receiver. “It’s a great day at Gina’s! Olivia speaking, how may I help you?” I sing.
“Hi, Olivia, it’s Mary. What you so happy about?” Mary’s Liverpudlian accent giggles through the crackling connection. I grin and type in Mary’s last name into the computer beside me.
“One o’clock, on this Saturday. Is that available?” Mary asks.
I blink at the screen in front of me and mouse over the schedule. “Yup.” I click Mar
y’s favourite stylist and punch in the code for a blow dry. “Okay, Mary, I have you saved for Saturday at one with Masha. See you soon.”
“Thanks, love, I will.” Mary hangs up.
I hang up. I peer at the blue screen on the computer to my left. The hard drive failed last night. I shrug. I walk around to the front of the counter. I look to the front of the shop and watch Lulu in the empty salon. She applies black mascara to her lashes in long, slow upward strokes. I take a step towards the salon and freeze when I see a short, thin, middle-aged blonde woman at the front of the store. She holds a clear face masque tube about six inches from her ice-blue eyes.
“Hi there, did you need any help finding anything?” I stride up to the blonde woman.
“Oh no,” she replies dazedly in a strong Polish accent. “I just browse.”
I nod and pace back to the desk slowly. I stand there for a few minutes, watching her read the shelf labels.
The woman touches her hair and sets the tube back on the shelf, slightly askew beside its twins. My left eye twitches.
“Yeah,” she sighs. She turns and stares alternatively at my hair and at the shelf. “I’m looking for something... for my hair. I bleach and is dry. I want it shiny.” Her light eyes blink slowly at something slightly above my head. She stares at my eyes, the hair on my shoulders, my eyes, the shelf, then the spot above my head again.
“Well, our stuff for hair is over here,” I say and gesture to a shelf behind us. She follows me as I walk to the shelf. “I’d recommend the Damage Fix line. All of those products add protein and moisture while protecting from the sun and heat styling. We have a shampoo, conditioner, and products to repair, moisturize, and protect your damaged hair.”
I pause to look at the woman. The woman turns to the shelf, grabs an unopened tube of Damage Protect, unscrews the lid, and sniffs deeply.
“Uh... this is the tester,” I say and replace the tube in her hand with the tester tube from the shelf.
She breathes in and out slowly.