I heard Aaron shout: ‘Get a towel, man, fuck!’
The girl held a plastic bag up at my mouth that was filled to the top with papers and food. I didn’t know if she thought I was stupid for puking. I had one hand on my cheek. It’s true that it was bleeding.
The girl handed me a towel to put under my head. She wiped some blood off my cheek with her hand.
‘You okay now?’ she asked. She wiped her hand on her jeans.
I looked at her. I tried to say yes. The girl looked pissed. She held the full plastic bag of my puke and walked out of the room with it.
LEE: I had to leave you there with Aaron, even though it wasn’t my instinct to.
GAYL: It’s good that you were gonna be her friend. Because there’s no way I was gonna protect her.
LEE: Yeah, yeah. I think that’s already apparent.
§
‘Myra? This is Myra?’
There was a patch of static on the line. It was only six in the morning. I thought it was him.
‘Myra, right?’ the voice said to someone else. ‘Myra. Hello? Hello?’
I pressed the phone to my ear to hear through the noise. I wanted it to be him. ‘Yeah, it’s me.’
There was another long line of static. I thought this is what it would sound like when my mother called from Korea.
‘Who is this?’ I asked. I heard coughing, a laugh.
‘Your friend entered you in a contest,’ the voice said. It was deep like his, but it didn’t have an accent. ‘We picked your name for the grand-prize win but I have to ask you a few questions first.’
My room was still dark. It wasn’t Elijah. It occurred to me that Jen had written my name on some raffle ticket or something from Holt Renfrew. Or maybe this was her idea of a really mean fucking joke. Me and Jen hadn’t spoken since the party. The first day back at school her and Charlene totally ignored me.
‘Are you a senior or a freshman?’
‘I’m in Grade 10,’ I said. What the fuck’s a fresh man?
‘Name of your school?’
‘Mount Pleasant Secondary.’
‘What’s your height, weight and date of birth?
‘Um ... Five-two. November twenty-third. One hundred and seven. Why?’
When I went to Dr. Bernhard for the second time about my cheek because of the bleeding, he did a full physical on me. He said that what was going on was a manifestation of acne, that girls my age have a throng of active hormones. Jody had some acne when she was my age. Before she went back to residence, she told me to put toothpaste on my cheek.
Dr. Bernhard asked me if I had a boyfriend. Then: did I know about safe sex? I remembered the thawing flesh of hot dog with Jen. I told Bernhard I knew.
‘Hair colour, eye colour.’
‘Brown. Brown.’
‘Hair down below?’
I felt the receiver on my mouth. I heard my heart beat in my throat.
‘You have hair on your vagina, don’t you?’