Bizarre feeling, waking up in a bedâsoft pillows, sheets, a duvet, the works, all clean and fresh. Not exactly what I'm used to lately.
I remember that woman, Neea, actually apologizing. She was helping me down the stairs to her half-finished basement, chirping away about how the room was being renovated so please excuse the exposed framing and unpainted drywall. If she knew where I usually sleep...
What time is it? Have I been out for one night, or is it, like, days? Light fills up the room from two small windows up on one wall. On a dresser in the corner there's an old clock that reads seven-fifteen, but it doesn't seem to be changing so it could be any time.
I move my legs under the covers and the dull ache I was feeling in my upper thigh turns into sharp pain. Impact point with the car, probably. Somehow my leg isn't broken, and really, how am I not dead, or at least way more hurt? Maybe their car wasn't going that fast? Fast enough to send me flying, but I guess that's cuz I'm small and light like a ragdoll. Just glad I didn't crack my head or mess up my internal organs.
After a lot of talk and confusion at the hospital about paperwork and insurance we finally got to see a doctor. They looked me over, took an x-ray, then the doc came back to tell us there was no permanent damage. Strong bones, she said. Must be due to my stellar diet and health regimen. Anyway, she wrote up a prescription for some painkillers and gave Neea instructions on what to do to keep the swelling and bruising down. While we were still at the hospital Neea got in touch with the police, apologized about not waiting at the scene, etc. She really turned on the charm, and they ended up being okay with her just coming into the station for some paperwork or something. They want my name and particulars but I don't see too much fallout coming from this.
We came back here to their house around nine and had a late and pretty uncomfortable dinner: me sitting there in pain, mostly ignoring my plate of reheated leftovers, and then grumpy Ted getting up to take his dinner up to his room, making some excuse but apparently not willing be in the same room with me, this piece of human garbage they picked up off the street. He was super nice after I got hit, and on the way to Emerg, and while we went through all the rigamarole at the hospital, but then he got moody as it slowly sunk in that Neea was planning to bring me home and not leave me there at the hospital.
I needed to sleep, so Neea brought me down to this room right after we ate. The crazy woman then proceeded to wake me up three or four times through the night, interrupting violent dreams each time, in order to ice and elevate my leg and give me new doses of the painkiller, following instructions from the doctor to a T. Other than that, it's just been me down for the count.
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Teddy stood by the big bulletin board in the Welcome Centre of the Schuler Building on the campus of Songhees College. His mom had been very serious about the importance of getting involved in clubs, sports, volunteer work and all the extracurricular stuff that would help him get the most out of college life and become a well-rounded person. He thought it sounded fine, but none of the things tacked on the board really interested him: rowing club, chess club, sewing club, Latin dance, Jiu-Jitsu, hiking, rock-climbing, robotics, anime, and on and on.
Maybe if there was robotic Latin dance, he thought, or Jiu-Jitsu rock-climbing...
Besides clubs, there were Songhees Radio, Songhees Web TV, yoga, flower arranging, public speaking, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, campaigns to save the marmots, the spirit bears, elephants and sharks. Teddy was all for animals and the environment but he had the rest of his life ahead of him for causes like that, and he had enough on his mind in first year.
And, of course, there were sports. Tons of sports. Teddy had a bit of a problem with sports. He'd always had the potential to be athletic, but in his younger years he just never found a sport he liked. His mother thought he was too shy to join a team. Maybe she was right. After a while, he got a reputation for not being a sports guy and it was like he was forced in the opposite direction. Soon he began to hate the whole idea of sports because people constantly asked him about it. What sports are you into? Why aren't you into sports? You're tall so why don't you play basketball? You're Canadian so why don't you play hockey? On and on...
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I notice that the clothes I left in a heap on the floor last night have magically folded and stacked themselves on the chair next to the bed. I pick up my hoodie from on top of the neat stack and give it a sniff. Spring-fresh. What the hell? She washed my stuff?
My leg and ankle are sore as hell and my head is pounding. Getting dressed now I see there's this absolutely epic bruise on my thigh. Never seen a bruise like this. It's like a rainbow of colours and the size of a small pizza. God, do I have gangrene or something? Are they gonna have to cut off my leg?
I smell something cooking upstairsâfish maybeâand there's some quiet guitar music playing. I really should go up there but I just want a couple minutes more quiet before I do.
The smell is stirring up memories of my dad. Geoffrey and his teriyaki salmon with the sauce from a bottle. I miss him. Can't stand being around my mom, but yeah, I miss my dad. Part of why I live the way I do is that I don't want to have anything to do with my mother. But Dad is loyal to her, so that means I also don't have much to do with him.
He's a good father. Very English. Born in Lincolnshire, right in the middle of England. Always in a good mood and never a bad word about people except for whoever is playing against the English player at Wimbledon. If he does anything wrong, it's being constantly, stubbornly and infuriatingly blind to his wife's issues. No matter how crazy Pat gets, no matter what twisted new mini-hell she constructs for me or my brothers, he backs her up. Steadfast loyalty to his wife and his duties and responsibilities as a husband in accordance with the Marriage Act of 1843 or whatever.
Something is seriously not right with my mother. Whether she's bipolar or schizo or a lycanthrope, it's obvious to pretty much everyone but my dad. Mention even a hint of it to Geoffrey and he brushes it aside saying something like, "Oh, I think you're overreacting, lovey. Everyone has their quirks."
Yup, just sit up straight, be polite, keep your fingernails clean and everything will be wonderful. Thanks Dad. Typical Geoffrey, and so typically English of him. Everything's fine! Can we please just put on our best clothes and happy faces, at least until the camera flashes? My own particular well-practiced happy face was thinner than the sheets of paper coming out of the whirring and clicking Brother printer as Dad printed up our annual fake-happy family portrait to be sent out to all the rellies back home in time for Christmas.
It really seemed like all that mattered was the outward appearance, even if it was artificial calm and contentment covering up all the turmoil, driven by this weird desperation to not stand out from the crowd, to not draw unwanted attention, to be seen as normal, or whatever it is that passes for it.
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In high school it had come down to tennis or badminton. None of the other sports held any interest for him. The tennis team was actually one of the few successful sports teams in the school, so his chances of cracking the lineup were slim. That left badminton. Clearly not the coolest sport around, but it became Teddy's chosen sport in grade nine, and soon he'd become friends with a couple of guys on the team, named Byron and Angelo, or "Jello" to his friends.
The junior boys' team from D. H. Embey Secondary finished fourth in Victoria the first year they played together, which was a respectable result, two places higher than the previous year's team. Unfortunately, things fell apart after that. Teddy, Byron and Jello all signed up again in their second year, eager to build on their success, but even though they worked hard and played their hearts out, never missed a practice and did everything the coach told them to, they couldn't find a way to win.
Then, not long into the season, the coach, Mr. Stibbard, needed some kind of surgery and was gone for an entire month. The replacement coach was a senior student named Bevan Gedge who took the role so seriously, and had such a low opinion of the three of themâand seemingly all of humanityâthat he managed to snuff out every last flicker of motivation they might have had. When Mr. Stibbard finally came back he was too tired to work up much enthusiasm for the season gone wrong, and soon he was also angry as hell at Teddy and his friends for a stunt they had pulled during his absence.
In an attempt at team fundraising and morale-boosting, they had designed and printed t-shirts that read "From Bad To Worseminton" with a cartoon of a battered and bruised badminton player wearing a shirt with a big Embey "E", a racket smashed over his head hanging broken around his neck and a birdie on top of his head like a tiny dunce cap. In their way, they were honestly trying to drum up money and school support for the last half of their sad season, but the poor sales of the t-shirt barely covered the costs of the blank white tees and the printing and they soon learned that Mr. Stibbard didn't share their sense of humour about the team's lack of success.
Despite his convalescence, the coach had the strength to berate them loudly about their lack of pride and how they needed to learn the meaning of team spirit. After all that, and Embey getting their asses handed to them by Esquimalt, Mount Douglas and every other team they faced, they decided, all three of them, that they'd had their fill not just of badminton but of organized sports in general.
So Teddy didn't sign up for the Songhees badminton team. He also passed on the squash team, the tennis team, the basketball, wrestling and rowing teams. There was the diving teamâTeddy had been told once that he had a good physique for divingâbut to him diving seemed pretty weird. It was just short bursts of gymnastics while falling into water. He skipped that too, along with the chess team, the debating team, the Math Olympics team and a few others. He briefly considered the photography club, the kendo club, the paper-making club, the spelunking club and the "College Survival" cooking club but ultimately dismissed them too.
He finally gave up and walked away from the sign-up boards, not looking forward to telling his mom that he hadn't joined a single club or sport. He headed out the back entrance of the Schuler Building to catch the bus home.
The one great legacy of their high school badminton days was a ridiculous game that Teddy, Byron and Jello invented. It had its beginning in a training drill they had devised (or "goofing off" as Mr. Stibbard had called it). They wanted a way for the three of them to practice at the same time without having to play two against one. They came up with a way of doing just that and when it proved to be more fun for them than real badminton they developed some rules and made an actual game out of it. Naturally they called their new game "goodminton".
Goodminton was played with two nets rigged together and angled in the middle around a central post to form a circular, three-sectioned court. It involved two birdies in play at the same time, plenty of complicated rules, plus a bunch of eccentric rituals added to give it character. It was impossible for anyone watching to make sense of it. Over summer breaks they played often, setting up their weird three-way net on a flat grassy space on the eastern side of Beacon Hill Park. With the fast three-player, two-birdie action and the posh English accents they, for some reason, adopted when they played, they always drew a few confused onlookers. Every so often someone had asked what the game was called but usually people just stared from a distance with the kind of expression you'd have watching someone juggling chainsaws.
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I'm getting dressed carefully like some arthritic old lady. My clothes are stacked on a chair and when I pick up my hoodie there's suddenly a dog looking up at me. Not a real dogâNeea has this weird pillow with a picture of a dumb-looking dog on it. One of those black-and-white bug-eyed dogs. He's got his head cocked to one side and he looks a little cross-eyed. This pillow is exactly the kind of thing you'd want to hide in a basement guest room. I remember Neea going on about the room and the reno and then mentioning that her friend made this pillow and gave it to her. Must be a really close friend or it would have gone into the trash immediately.
Now I'm just sitting on the edge of the bed looking at the dog and kind of spacing out, my head angled just like the dog. I know I need to go upstairs, make a big display of gratitude and be on my way but I feel like crap and not super chatty at the moment.
Despite the unfinished state of things down here, there are paintings neatly hung on the wall opposite the foot of the bed. One of the paintings is sort of abstract: maybe large trees in a forest, their trunks making thick black stripes against the blurry bright green of the leaves. The painting has a signature that looks to me like it says "X. Wagonfright" but that could be totally wrong. Another painting is of a woman sitting naked on a chair, and the third is a smaller one of a bottle of wine and two wine glasses, one tipped on its side. The signature on that one is easier to read: "Linnea Salonen" in precise letters. Linnea? I wonder if that could be Neea? Oh, and the naked woman in that other one looks like it could actually be a younger Neea. Her face is turned mostly away, and her hair is longer, but it looks like her. The signature on it is in big, looping letters and says "A. A. Aiken".
Why am I looking at these pictures? What am I doing here with X. fucking Wagonfright? The weirdness of it all hits me like a sudden wave of nausea. Or maybe that is nausea, I don't know. I just know I need to get back to the street and back to Kodi.
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Teddy scored a rare seat on the bus and then on the ride home lapsed into a glazed-over, semi-conscious state until his stop was coming up, remembering too late that he had intended to get off the bus downtown so he could go to Foot Fetish and finally get those shoes.
Damn damn damn!
Too many distractions in the past twenty-four hours. He briefly thought about backtracking but decided against it. He'd get the stupid shoes tomorrow. Call and get them to hold them, he thought.
Dinner smells filled his nose as he came into the house. Neea was in the kitchen but waved to him through the doorway. Then she put her finger to her mouth. "Shhh."
Teddy frowned and shrugged at her. Neea pointed downward and said in a loud whisper, "I think Darwin might still be asleep. Can you believe it?"
"What?" said Teddy loudly. "She's still here?"
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â D.B.