The Story of My Face Read online

  Owen runs his fingers through his ginger hair then strokes his beard, like he often does when he lectures. “Sky’s the limit in terms of subject matter. However, you’re ready to graduate from high school. A milestone. I want evocative. I want soulful. I want heart-wrenching. What have you learned about life thus far? What is important to you? What do you care deeply about? What event has profoundly changed your life?” Owen looks right at me. I look down at my feet. “This is your chance to tell the world. And it damn well better be interesting and engaging. Questions?”

  “Can it be a comedy?” Carter, the king of improv, asks.

  “Why not? But you’d better make me laugh until I cry and then make me laugh again. Remember that very thin line between comedy and tragedy. Anyone else?”

  “When do we perform?” Zoe asks. Her dirty blond hair is cut short except for a long, thin ponytail dyed bright purple. She has a small tattoo of a red rose on her upper right arm.

  “You will first present your plays to the class for critiques. Then you will perform for your fellow students and the community during drama week.”

  “Is that before or after grad?” asks Tali.

  “A few days before. Don’t worry, Tali, you’ll still have plenty of time to spruce up for grad.” Tali smiles, her cheeks turn a rosy red. I imagine her in a seafoam-green dress draped over her lily-white skin. Her frizzy red hair nicely flat-ironed. A super-hot grad date (obviously not anyone who goes to this school). Serena, Grace, and I used to say nasty things about Tali’s chubby body, her thick glasses, or something she wore. Even though we always said these things behind Tali’s back, we were mean. Really mean. The shame feels like a heavy rock sitting in my stomach.

  “I will need you to email me first drafts by the end of next week or sooner,” Owen continues. “Back to you for a rewrite. Back to me for another read. Back to you for as many drafts as it takes. Rehearsals will begin as soon as I think your monologue or play is worthy. Therefore, the more work you do up front on your writing, the more time you’ll have to rehearse. Capisce?”

  A monologue. That means I’ll be onstage. Alone. I can’t hide behind makeup, costumes, or my fellow actors. Shit!

  “Let’s start class today with an improv,” Owen says. “Mason, you’re up first. Choose someone to join you.”

  Mason looks right at me. I stare at my feet, imagine myself melting into a miserable puddle on the floor.

  “I choose Abby.”

  No, no, no, no, no…

  Mason stands and struts to the front of the class.

  “Abby?” Owen gives me a questioning look, wondering if I’m up for this my first day back in drama class. I’m not, but everyone’s looking at me. Waiting. I’m glued to my chair. How can I get out of this? Owen moves to the back of the room where he always watches students perform. Too late to say no.

  My knees are wobbly as I slowly get up and stand beside Mason. His musky boy smell is strong. He’s not only beefy, but he towers over me—I think he’s gotten even taller in the last several months while I haven’t been around.

  “Prompt please?” Owen looks around the class.

  “Breaking up,” Dax shouts, louder than “trapped in an elevator” and “a conversation in purgatory.”

  No, no, no, no, no…

  Mason puts his head down and covers his face with his hand, shakes as if he’s crying. There’s a stubble of black hair on his shaved head.

  “I’m sorry,” I say and put my hand on his shoulder. He shrugs me off and glares at me.

  “Sorry? Are you effing kidding? After what you did to me?” Mason says. Suddenly, I have a strong sense that we’ve time-traveled back to a year and a half ago in the school parking lot, sitting in his truck.

  “Well, it’s great that you have a hot new girlfriend, right?” I say brightly, trying to change direction.

  “And unlike you, I’m sure she won’t cheat on me with another guy,” Mason says.

  I look around the class. By the expressions on everyone’s face, they know this isn’t just an improv. This is reliving a past nightmare that I wanted erased from everyone’s memory. Especially Mason’s. Especially mine.

  “Stay in role, Abby,” Owen says. He hasn’t a clue what went on between Mason and me. Owen is not one of those warm, fuzzy teachers.

  I look into Mason’s gray eyes. “Look, I know I was an A-1 jerk. But everything turned out for the best, didn’t it?” Again, I try to sound really cheery. He shakes his head and looks away from me. His fists are clenched as if he’s ready to throw a punch. Like the time he punched a hole in his rec-room wall when I told him he was suffocating me and I needed space. While calling me a frigid bitch, he ran his bloody knuckles under cold water and wrapped them in gauze. I shiver at the memory. “Okay. What can I do to make it up to you?” Now I’m going off script; I never did ask Mason this.

  He turns to me. “There’s nothing you can do to make it right. But don’t worry, you’ll pay for it.”

  “Okay, thank you.” Owen cuts it short. The tension is palpable. “Applause for our actors. Who’s up next?”

  Mason goes back to his seat and high-fives Dax. I’m pretty sure when Mason said I’ll pay for it, he wasn’t acting. But so much time has passed. Why does he still feel he needs revenge? Especially now, with my deformed face. It’s not as if he would ever want me back as his girlfriend. It feels like a knife has been plunged into my chest.

  Schultzy wants to meet with me during phys ed, my last class of the day. Great timing because I wasn’t looking forward to changing into my gym strip and showing off even more of my scarred body to Serena, Briar, and Grace. Mrs. Schultz, the school counselor everyone calls Schultzy—even to her face—is the students’ favorite of all the school staff. Even though her off-white nylons rub together making a scratchy Velcro sound when she walks, and she wears various shades of gray polyester skirts and blazers with “comfortable” shoes, she’s still the coolest teacher at Rocky View High. When Simon’s mom went all Eat Pray Love over a year ago and took off for an ashram in India, he spent many a day curled up on Schultzy’s comfy office couch. I wish I had known her when I was ten, when my mom died of cancer.

  I knock on her open office door.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she says. I have a quick flash of the bear’s jaws around my head, dragging me down the path. A shiver shoots through my body. Schultzy takes off her glasses, lets them dangle on the silver chain around her neck. “How are you?”

  “Okay, I guess.” I’m suddenly weak and quivery.

  She eyes me carefully. “If I were in your shoes, I’d be scared to death coming back to school.”

  “That too.”

  “If anyone gives you trouble, come and see me, you hear?”

  As if. I’m already low on friends and nobody likes a snitch.

  “Still in pain?” she asks.

  “My leg still gives me trouble.” I touch the left side of my face. “But here, I just have a constant ache.”

  “I have to tell you, Abby, I’m so impressed with how you’ve handled this trauma. It would be a tall order for anybody to live through, but you’ve come this far with such maturity and grace.”

  “Thanks.” But neither she nor anyone else for that matter has any idea what’s really going on with me. I have my own kind of crazy that I hide from everyone.

  “Have a seat.” Schultzy puts her glasses back on and rummages through files on her desk until she finds mine. She flips through it. “Considering you missed all of last semester and several weeks of this one, you’re at least, well, holding your own. Let’s see your marks in the online courses you completed in the fall. Social studies and English marks are good, math mark is okay.” She peers up at me over her glasses. “What are you taking this semester?”

  “Biology—only because I need a science credit—phys ed, and drama.”

 
Schultzy pushes her glasses up on her nose as she flips through my file. “Pretty light term you’ve got.”

  “I finished all my required courses online. The Internet is a beautiful thing.”

  “Lots going on in the drama department this term.”

  “I’m not exactly lead-role material anymore.” The words come out shaky, and I sound pitiful.

  “Have you applied to any college or university theater-arts programs yet?”

  I shake my head. “Plans have changed.”

  “Abby, you have heaps of talent. Don’t let anything get in the way of your dream of becoming an actor. And I mean anything.” She stares at me for an uncomfortably long time. “Promise me.”

  “Okay,” I say, but it’s a promise I can’t keep. When I first saw myself in the mirror after the bandages were unraveled from my face, I knew that unless I was auditioning for The Elephant Man, all my dreams for the future had come crashing down.

  GRIZZLY DIARIES

  I knew this day would suck, but I had no idea how bad it was going to get,” I say to Simon as we walk down my driveway. I tell Simon about the bathroom incident with Serena, Briar, and Grace, but I don’t tell him about Mason. I so want to obliterate that incident from every brain cell.

  “Whatever you do, don’t get caught back in the Sticky Hive,” Simon says. “Besides, Queen Bee Serena is clearly moving in on your boyfriend.”

  “Liam is no longer my boyfriend. He’s fair game.” My heart sinks as I say those words. A dark ridge of clouds forms a Chinook arch at the edge of the mountains. It’s made the air much warmer. I unwrap my scarf and unzip my jacket. My bad leg aches as we trudge through the sloppy snow.

  “Did he actually break up with you? Formally, I mean?” asks Simon.

  “Didn’t have to. We’ve barely spoken since I got out of the hospital. You saw how he acted on the bus.”

  “Liam’s a good guy, Abby.” Simon splashes in a puddle like a preschooler. “Maybe he just needs some time to, you know, get—”

  “Get what? Used to my face? Come on, Simon, look at me. I’ve had about a hundred counseling sessions over the past several months, and I’ve cried buckets over the undeniable fact that my dating days are over at the tender age of seventeen. Unless maybe I meet a guy who’s blind or who looks as ugly as me.”

  “You’re going to have more surgeries.”

  “Seven surgeries so far and my face still sends young children screaming to their mothers’ arms. I’m coming to terms with it. Or at least I’m trying to. Well, not really.” My voice is shaky and I feel the tears welling.

  Simon gets very uncomfortable around raw emotion. He walks quickly to reach the path he takes home through the neighbor’s property.

  “See you tomorrow, Abby.”

  “See you.” I wipe a tear that has spilled down my cheek.

  I walk toward the over 100-year-old farmhouse that’s been in my dad’s family for generations. One of the original homesteads in the area. My ancestors used to look out at cattle and horses grazing on the wide-open prairie. The wraparound porch now looks out onto enormous homes sitting on an acre or two, including Simon’s. This used to be a farming and ranching community. Now residents vacate Springbank every morning and head about a half-hour east into downtown Calgary for work. My dad included. When he can find work, that is.

  Dad and Mom were going to renovate our house from top to bottom. They even had an architect draw up plans. But the reno plans died with Mom. Now paint peels off the trim, the front steps have wiggly boards, and the porch sags.

  My cell phone bloops a text: Home from school, bean?

  Almost, I reply.

  FaceTime?

  In a few

  K

  ***

  I sit propped up with pillows on my bed, my computer in my lap.

  “Did you get my other text this morning? Sorry if it was at dawn. My math class is so bloody early,” Jeannie says, looking like a cubist painting through the screen.

  “No worries. Slept right through it.” My sister is the only one I feel truly comfortable with on FaceTime.

  I hear the click-click-click of Ruby’s nails in the hallway. Ruby’s our black-lab-collie-husky-golden-retriever-and-who-knows-what-else mutt. She hears Jeannie’s voice and jumps on my bed, starting to whine. “Ruby. Hello my sweet, adorable canine,” Jeannie says. “Is she getting gray hair?”

  “A little,” I say and hug Ruby’s head. “That’s what happens when you’re almost sixty years old in human years.”

  “How did it go today?”

  I shrug. “I made it. Just barely.”

  “Must have been so ridiculously hard.”

  “I’m sure it’ll get easier. Then again, maybe it won’t,” I say.

  “It will. Mainly because my sister happens to be the most incredibly together, brave, amazing person on the entire planet.”

  “What? Not the galaxy?”

  “Okay, the whole universe,” Jeannie says. “By the way, now that you’re back at school, have you thought about a grad dress?”

  “Gawd, you sound like the Hive.”

  “The what?”

  “Never mind. And no, I haven’t thought about a grad dress. Besides, I’m big-time struggling with bio, so I don’t know if I’ll even be able to graduate this year.”

  “I so wish I was there to help you,” Jeannie says.

  “Yeah, why did you get all the science and math genes? Speaking of, how’s university? Meeting more cute guys this term?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Caleb, from my Chem 110 class, asked me out to a concert at the Commodore. Some band from Austin, Texas.”

  “You hate music.”

  “I don’t hate it, it’s just not totally my thing. And if I have to endure it with a gorgeous guy, oh well.” Jeannie tucks some blond curls behind an ear. “How about you? Did you finally get a chance to talk to Liam today?”

  I shake my head. “He’s avoiding me like I’ve got Ebola or some other deadly disease.”

  “I don’t understand him. He came to see you in the hospital almost every day.”

  “Only when I had bandages covering my face and head, and I was so drugged up I was either sleeping or hallucinating from the morphine. When my bandages came off—poof! He disappeared.”

  “Well, screw him.”

  “Not anymore.” I can’t help but smile.

  “You’re so bad.” Jeannie checks a text on her cell phone.

  “Caleb, I presume?”

  “No, Baljinder, my physics lab partner. Wants to study.”

  “I should let you go.”

  “I miss you like crazy, Bean. Grandma booked me a flight home for Easter. Yay! Only a few weeks away. Can’t wait to get out of Vancouver. So much rain. I miss snow and blue skies and sunshine and you and Dad and Ruby, of course.”

  “Miss you too, J, even more than dryer lint.”

  “I miss you more than soggy, limp nacho chips,” she says.

  “I miss you more than falling into a mud puddle.”

  Jeannie laughs. “Unfortunately, I know all about mud puddles these days. FaceTime next week? Ciao, ciao.” Jeannie blows me a kiss and disconnects.

  ***

  No one knows about my disturbing obsession. And I mean no one.

  I take my notebook out of the bottom drawer of my bedside table. Loose papers I’ve printed off spill out the sides. I read over the first page as always. Part of my macabre ritual.

  Grizzly Bears

  Facts:

  The grizzly is a North American subspecies of the brown bear, but not all brown bears are grizzlies.

  The Latin name for grizzly is Ursus arctos horribilis (a.k.a. horrible northern bear).

  Fur is generally brown, but can be white-tipped or grizzled, hence the name.

  C
an move as fast as 30 miles an hour.

  Solitary creatures—except moms travel with cubs, and males gather together for fish feasts when salmon spawn.

  They dig dens for winter hibernation, often in the side of hills.

  Females give birth during the winter, offspring are often twins.

  Grizzly bears are top-of-the-food-chain predators, but most of their diet is made up of nuts, berries, fruit, leaves, and roots.

  Bears eat other animals, from rodents to moose.

  GRIZZLY BEARS CAN BE DANGEROUS TO HUMANS, PARTICULARLY IF HUMANS COME BETWEEN A MOTHER AND HER CUBS.

  I read over the last line about a hundred times, until my eyes can’t focus anymore. It’s a strange kind of self-torture. I started this bizarre research a few months ago in the hope that filling my brain with facts while I’m awake would chase away my nightmares about the attack. Sometimes it even works.

  Second step in the ritual, I look up the “Weekly Bear Report” on the Parks Canada website. On my large topographical map of Alberta and British Columbia hanging on my bedroom wall, I stick in colorful pushpins where grizzly bears have been sighted—mostly locations in Banff, Jasper, and Yoho national parks—right in the wiggly, wavy lines where the Rocky Mountains are. Dad thinks I’m marking out hikes I’ve either been on or hope to go on.

  Next, I read articles online about grizzly bears and take notes. Then I look through photos of bears and bloody bodies attacked by grizzlies.

  Finally, I search YouTube for video clips or documentaries about grizzlies or grizzly bear attacks, or review ones I’ve already seen dozens of times. Today, I find a new one with a narrator who has an English accent. In the documentary, the bears are given names like Woofy, Teddy, and Tuffy. The narrator’s voice is so soft and soothing it sounds like he’s reading a bedtime story as he talks about how males sometimes kill and eat their young. I’m pissed off by this documentary, making grizzlies seem like stuffed animals you can play with. Male bears fight for the right to mate with whatever female happens to be around, the documentary says. Barney, an old male grizzly, mounts and humps Tuffy, an alpha female. A bigger and younger male, Sebastian, comes along and growls and scraps with Barney. Out with Barney and in with Sebastian.