Holding Still for as Long as Possible by Zoe Whittall

Author:Zoe Whittall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc.
Published: 2010-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

[ 15 ]

Amy

* * *

I could feel it looming, like the day of aches you get before the flu hits. This was acceptance, I supposed. I was dropping things. First, a wet filter full of coffee grinds. Then I swept a glass of wine into the air with a swing of my wrist, and it crashed onto the floor of the bar in the Gladstone Hotel, where I’d been trying to work on my laptop.

I wasn’t even trying to illustrate a point. My arm just took flight. I’d been avoiding home. Drinking in the afternoon. I kept tapping away at my table, watching the red wine stain seep into my skirt, and I didn’t even bother dabbing it away. It set in the shape of a running leg on thick blue cotton.

The waitress with computer-screen tattoos said, “It’s okay, honey. It’s just gravity.” She swept the glass shards into the dustbin while a line of sweat formed on her hairline. I was tearing up, trying to help her with some half-hearted mops of my cloth napkin. My fingers dry-stained with house red. I cried softly, shading my eyes with my right hand, wishing myself invisible. I don’t think I’d ever cried in public before.

The bright Google notifier in the right-hand corner of my screen lit up. A tiny box of text indicated a new e-mail, an unfamiliar address. The subject heading: AMY AMY AMY, it’s Jay. Your One True Love! And as though eight years had not passed, my heart pounded at the mere sight of his name.

We’d been alone on the dock at summer camp in upstate New York. Jason McAuslan and me, pushing a canoe out into the water. Across our feet were sandal tans that wouldn’t fade until the following March. Sixty-one sleeps on thin plastic mattresses in simple wood cabins, bright-coloured plastic friendship bracelets making tiny cubes on our wrists.

The week before I left for camp, my grandmother had died. I’d stayed with her every night in the hospital. I turned sixteen holding her hand, telling her terrible jokes. The funeral was the day before camp started.

For the first time, my mother didn’t monitor my packing. My father didn’t drive me up the laneway awkwardly talking to the other fathers pulling large knapsacks out of their expensive cars. I drove myself in my grandmother’s navy Oldsmobile, smoking American Spirits, listening to The Counting Crows. I didn’t cry.

Every night from midnight to 5 a.m., Jason and I slept in the same slim cot. Before sunrise, his watch would beep and he’d cross the rugged dirt path to the boy’s CIT cabin and sleep until the wake-up bell. From the age of thirteen, six of us had returned every year. There was a religious quality to our connection; we would have trusted our lives to each other. Jason and I had those two months together from ages thirteen to sixteen.

That night, the sun was going down over the hills above the lake. We were in love. Back then,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.