raises his hand.
— Yes? asks Mrs. Mochinski.
— Because he was a homo-sek-shhhhyoo-al, says Jésus.
Jésus’s posse howls.
Faraday looks at Jésus.
— What’s your problem, Unicorn Girl? Jésus smirks.
— Jésus … That attitude smells like poo, says Mrs. Mochinski. — Where have all the manners gone?…Romeo was a homosexual?… Please.
She holds her hand up in the air as though to say Stop. Coughs again.
— What’s wrong with the word unicorn? asks Jésus. — Is it pronounced unicorn-ee? Shit!
The teacher flings her arms around her copy of Romeo and Juliet, around her drooped monobreast.
— Homosexual? says Jésus. — What’s wrong with the word homo-sek-shhhhyoo-al? Well, he was.
— You can talk about that with the veep if you keep pushing it, Jésus.
— All right! I’m sorry.
— Now, says Mrs. Mochinski, — Can someone please…
— So what if he was gay? Faraday says. Her paper one giant mess of unicorn ink.
— It’s a sin, says Madison.
— Where on earth does it say in this play that Romeo was gay? splutters Mrs. Mochinski.
The class sizzles with whispers, a popping of ssssss and sssssh as students lean forward to speak, lean backward to hear, hunch forward to click text keys to buzz to each other about the dead and dying Romeo who up until today went to their school.
— Listen, hisses goth girl, leaning across the aisle, — This is what happened: those girls from the chamber ensemble murdered him. Fuck. The ones who hang out with Ginger’s girlfriend when she’s not fucking sitting on Ginger’s face, they’re the ones. I think I’ve accidentally warped into the wrong Catholic dimension. I am torrentially fucked. This is so torrentially sad.
She lays her cheek down on the top of her desk. Closes her eyes. Her eyelids scarab-wing blue. Murmuring all around them.
The teacher swivels back from the board and coughs at her buzzing, whispering, humming class. She slams her copy of Romeo and Juliet down on the desk, another chalk breaks as it hits the floor, and she jams her hands on her hips.
— That’s it! I have had it. You people! Stand for prayer please, staaaand for praaaayer.
The students scrape, shuffle and skulk themselves to standing.
— In the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen, she says, crossing herself. — Our Father who art in Heaven…
— Our Father who art in Heaven, the students say with her.
After the prayer she enforces Silent Reading until the bell.
— And by Silent Reading, says Mrs. Mochinski, — I mean Silent and Reading. Stop doodling, Faraday. Now that’s a nice waste of paper and ink. Fumiko, she says to goth girl, — Try to stay awake for longer than a minute!
Faraday would like to hold Fumiko’s hand.
Jésus jumps onto his desk and gives a loud, juicy belch.
The time is 3:19, and then that droning, time-for-home-and-dysfunctional-family bell. Faraday and her asymmetrically frizzy hair dawdle on the front steps of the school, other students in puffy coats and parkas shoving her into the sandstone door frame in a continuous herd as they crash through the doors, cascading, coursing, dribbling down to two students at a time, the occasional one cantering down the snowy carved stone steps and leaping to the bottom. Faraday leaning into the stone, scarf drawn up over her nose, not because she’s cold, but because she is afraid to breathe. Clicking and unclicking a unicorn pen— the cold starting to pluck at the fingers on her clicking hand— she is afraid to walk, worried how to place her toes on each step so she won’t fall and crack her head open like a snow globe on the school steps. Madison sucking her phone and telling her that rotten, indisputable thing that Patrick Furey is not in school and probably dead.
The Canadian flag whips against the grey winter sky; her head is bubble-clear on her neck. The flag isn’t at half-mast like it was at her brother’s school last year when that Grade 7 kid died on a downhill skiing field trip.
She breaks the spring in her pen because she has overclicked it, and nearly tumbles down the school’s front steps.
She takes the bus to Bettie’s Bag Boutique, the bus windows foggy with condensation. Faraday listening to staticky piano music as she stands in line at customer service with her brand-new unicorn bag. Paying for the bag, jamming her papers, books, emergency menstrual equipment— and her old bag— into the new bag, clicking closed the silver clasp in the shape of an anatomically correct unicorn — billy-goat beard, lion’s tail, cloven hooves, the shadowy angle of a penis, not the kiddy, neutered, Disney horse-with-a-horn version. Leaning into and through the front door of the boutique to stand on the sidewalk and wait for her bus. The people around her walking, blabbering, spitting, begging, complaining, farting, buying, selling, and a boy from her English class. Most probably dead. Did she serve him his last large iced cappuccino? Did he die Monday morning or Monday night? Or Sunday night? Maybe she was the last person to see him alive. Should she go to the police?
She wants to plop down on the gritty, icy concrete and cry.
She remembers how he had not a single zit on his entire face. Once she knocked her eraser off her desk and it bounced across the floor. He had to reach from an awkward angle to pick it up, his face reddening as he hung upside down. Did he know he only had a month and three days to live? He exhaled a breath when he tossed the eraser to her, his face scarlet— a crack in the veneer of him.
She never was his friend. She said Thanks when he threw her the eraser but that was all, she was so afraid she would miss catching it. If she’d known he was going to die she would have said something or written him a note saying Hi. She would have donated her virginity to him even though it would have meant giving up her chance at having a unicorn lay its head in her lap as her life companion, its pearled alicorn spiralling smooth and nourishing in her hand, its shaggy lips nuzzling her other palm. Even though he would never have slept with her because he was gay, but whatever, she would have liked to give. Let him know that soon a blessing of unicorns would be here to save them all.
She wonders how many days she has left to live. If sitting on this revolting sidewalk is one of her final acts. Formaldehyde stews behind her eyes. She clasps her bag in her arms, its stiff new-car smell.
Walter
Way back on Monday, 4:17 a.m., Walter, the guidance counsellor — stone-cold irritated at his boyfriend Max because of their fight the night before, stone-cold awake hours before the alarm clock is set to shriek them awake— hauls himself out of bed and shakes open the newspaper in the dark of the kitchen. His boyfriend Max now awake too, bumps into the wall on his way to the bathroom. Walter hears the toilet flush, so he flicks on the coffee machine. The coffee almost done gurgling as Walter cranks open a can of cat food while their cat, Lieutenant Fong, twines her tail around his shins, and Max sucks in his morning smoke on the back porch, wrapped in his parka, his boots trailing their laces. They spoon low-cal cereal and skim milk from their bowls, drink the coffee, bite into toast with peanut butter, Max still oppressively silent like a great big pouting man-baby, his silent fury left over from last night because Walter accidentally marked the coffee table with a ring from his glass of orange juice. The Cold War all over again because of a bit of marked varnish on the coffee table. It’s 5:32 a.m. as they knot their scarves and pull on their toques and boots. Walter stuffs the book he finished this weekend into the papers spilling from his satchel: Max’s secretary,