The Story of My Face Read online

  “Easy-peasy—Lake Superior. The name tells it all.”

  “But did you know that it contains more water than the other four Great Lakes combined?”

  “How do you know all this stuff? You need a life.”

  Dad looks out the side window, away from me. I’ve hit a nerve and it feels like an invisible curtain drops between us.

  “Dad, what are your plans, you know, if or when I finally leave home one day?”

  He waits for a long while, then shrugs his shoulders. “Only thinking day to day. How to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.”

  I pause, muster up some courage. “You just seem so sad and lonely.”

  He shrugs again. “I’ve got you and Jeannie.”

  “We’re not enough, Dad. I can tell you’re not happy.” I so want to talk to him about his drinking, but I’m too chicken.

  “I’m just fine.”

  “You’re only forty-five. It’s been seven years since Mom died. Time to think about moving on.” Dad shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “What about online dating?” I surprise myself by blurting this out.

  “Online dating?” Dad looks at me like I have four heads.

  “How else are you going to meet a woman your age? You rarely go out, even for a beer with your work guys. You putter around the acreage, sort your tools, take Ruby for walks, bird-watch. That’s it. You don’t even ski or hike anymore.”

  “You make me sound so pathetic.”

  “You are far from pathetic, Dad. There are hundreds of women out there who would love to meet a guy like you. You’re smart, handsome, a talented carpenter, you have two amazing daughters…”

  Dad almost cracks a smile. If it wasn’t dark out, I bet I could see him blushing.

  “Please, Dad. I’ll help you write your profile.” I try and give him my best pleading look, but now that my face has been rearranged, I’m not sure if I’m pulling it off.

  “I’ll think about it.” Dad looks out his window.

  I clap my hands like an idiot.

  ***

  I’ve been in bed for over an hour reading my bio textbook, trying to study cell differentiation and development in the human organism for the upcoming exam. My focus is way off. All I can think about are the words bear and bait. Jarret and Thomas in our hiking group used to joke that whichever one of us girls had our period was the bear bait. I grab my iPhone and hold down the home button to chat with Siri. “Bears attracted to menstruating women,” I say into my phone.

  “Let me have a look,” Siri says. “Okay, I found this on the web for ‘bears attracted to menstruating women.’ ” I scroll through the list of links and read an article on LiveScience.com. Apparently neither black bears nor brown bears are attracted to menstruating women, but polar bears are. Weird.

  “I am bear bait,” I say to Siri.

  “Okay, I found this on the web for ‘I am bear bait,’” Siri says. There’s a website that sells bear lures and scents to hunters. We are committed to making your bear hunts a success! There is a list of all the products they sell “for animal consumption only”: pie fillings, buttercream icing, peanut butter, and imitation maple syrup. What the…?

  I hear a ping, a Messenger notification. Someone with the handle UR SO FN UGLY sends me a meme. Gee, I wonder who it could be. Frankenstein’s monster is strapped to a table with these words written underneath: Don’t feel bad, don’t feel blue, Frankenstein was fucking ugly too. It takes my breath away. I close my laptop and push it to the far side of my bed. Hug my knees and rock. I remember the day my bandages came off and all I could think about was how much the zigzag of scars all over my face looked like Adam, the creature in the movie I, Frankenstein.

  FEVER

  I walk out of the girls’ change room into the gym. I had to practically beg Ms. Wong, the girls’ phys ed teacher, to let me take this class. She worried about my injuries, especially my leg, but I would rather be moving my body than sitting at a desk for the next few months. Dad finally fixed the brakes on Rusty—name says it all—my 1992 Mazda, so I drove myself to school early to change into my gym strip without anyone around. I wish I’d worn a turtleneck under my T-shirt to hide the gruesome scars on my chest. A clear picture of how the bear’s claw swiped me from my shoulder across my chest. My once muscular legs are as skinny as bamboo shoots. My shorts don’t fully cover the scar on my upper right thigh.

  A few guys sitting on the bleachers look over at me and smile. I wave awkwardly, feeling practically naked in my T-shirt and shorts. I pretend I’m scratching my head, but I’m really trying to hide my face with my hand. What are guys doing in the gym when it’s the girls’ phys ed? My whole body is freezing, covered in goose bumps with purple splotches. I feel even more embarrassed that my nipples, like frozen peas, are sticking out of my flimsy T-shirt. Another reason I should have worn a turtleneck. More guys come in, including Liam, with Serena glued to his side, talking his ear off. He looks mildly interested in the conversation. Then come Grace, Briar, Ms. Wong, and Mr. Harris, the guys’ teacher. A whole bunch more people crowd into the gym. Grace and Briar walk toward me.

  Grace says, “Did you forget?”

  “Forget what?” I ask.

  Briar looks me up and down, obviously not impressed with what she sees. “It’s social dance today. We’re joining classes.”

  “Shit.” I feel like such a fool. I’m the only one in gym strip. I make a dash for the change room door, but Ms. Wong stops me. “The class is starting right now, Abby. No time to change.” I turn, head down to avoid any stares or snickers, and stand close to Grace.

  “Okay, everyone, your attention here, please. Boys number off starting with one, girls do the same. Then find the person with the same number as you. There may be more boys, so we’ll just have to make do.”

  As the numbering starts, my heart sinks when Mason, red-eyed with a silly grin, bounds into the gym and jumps into line with the other guys. I’m number seventeen. Everyone mills about calling out their number. I pray so hard that Mason isn’t number seventeen. He’s not. But Liam is. What are the odds? Liam stands near but turns his back to me. I’m now shivering, so cold and totally mortified.

  “OK class, today you’re going to learn how to foxtrot. As I’m sure most of you know, this is a traditional ballroom dance,” Mr. Harris says.

  “This is stupid. Why do we have to learn such a lame dance?” Justin asks.

  “So you can dance with your mother on your wedding day,” Ms. Wong says.

  “I’m never getting married,” Justin says, crossing his arms.

  “Then pretend you’re the next contender on So You Think You Can Dance.” Lots of laughs, groans, and rolled eyes. “Come on, let’s just have some fun with this.”

  Briar and Mason are partners, Grace and Justin, Serena and a new guy I don’t know. Ms. Wong and Mr. Harris demonstrate.

  “Traditionally, men lead and women follow in this dance. To demonstrate, I’ll be the leader,” says Mr. Harris. “But I’m all about equal opportunity, so you decide who leads and who follows. Stand facing your partner, about an arm’s length apart, and notice our hand and arm positions.” Ms. Wong and Mr. Harris go through the steps very slowly, like drawing invisible boxes with each sequence. Then they speed it up. Harris steps on Wong’s toes, which makes everyone laugh.

  “Now it’s your turn. I’ll let you practice for a few minutes before I put on the music. Face your partners,” Ms. Wong says.

  Liam turns to me but won’t look me in the eye. I put my left hand on his shoulder, he puts his right hand on my waist. I’m sure he can feel my back ribs sticking out, which makes me squirm. We hold our other hands.

  “Your hand’s like ice,” he says.

  “Sorry, I’m a little underdressed for this class.”

  “No kidding,” he says without a smile.

  Great. Now I feel even more
self-conscious. Liam and I start the steps. I’m supposed to go forward but go backward, instead, and screw everything up. My bad leg drags a bit. We keep trying and finally get into a stilted rhythm. When everyone’s finally getting the hang of it, Mrs. Wong puts on the old 1950s song “Fever” by Peggy Lee. It’s slow and sultry.

  I look right at Liam’s face, his big hazel eyes, the smooth skin on his cheeks, stubble on his chin, but his eyes are focused on the reddish-

  purple scar on my neck, peeking just above my T-shirt. Gerry and Gus are dance partners and ham it up in an over-the-top, goofy sort of way as they glide gracefully across the gym floor. Mason and Briar dance all crazy-like at super-speed. They bump right into us.

  “Well, lookee here. If it isn’t the lovebirds,” Mason says, making Briar laugh like a ditz.

  “Shut up, Mason.” Liam glares at him. When Mason found out about Liam and me, I was worried Mason and his crew might go after Liam. Pound the shit out of him. But other than having a vicious verbal spat with Liam, Mason directed most of his hate and rage at me. He’s always had a grudging respect for Liam. Maybe it’s Liam’s confidence, the way he carries himself with such composure and self-assurance. Mature. He’s everything that Mason isn’t.

  For a brief moment, Liam looks right at me, or at least at my good eye. I can tell he feels something, but for the life of me I just can’t figure out what that is.

  ***

  I walk to Simon’s through the neighbor’s property. The western sky is an explosion of pinks and purples as the sun sinks behind the mountains. The Chinook melted most of the snow, and the air smells of damp earth and hay. I hear something or someone behind me on the path, rustling in the bushes. I can’t see anything, but a thudding sound is getting closer. My mind first leaps to the grizzly and then to Mason, when he started stalking me after we broke up. I start to walk faster. Turn around again. I see a large black shadow coming toward me. I run as fast as my legs will go. By the time I get to Simon’s, I’m gasping for air. I pound on the door, turn around one more time. Two deer amble out of the bushes by the path.

  ***

  “Do you often have these weird hallucinations?” Simon asks and hands me a heaping bowl of macadamia nut gelato. We sit on the most comfy leather couch on the entire planet. Every time I sink my body into the corner, I give thanks to the cow that gave up its hide to cover this couch.

  “I just get spooked sometimes, that’s all. Give me a break. Besides, it’s getting dark out.” I spoon a heaping amount of deliciousness into my mouth and let it sit there.

  Simon flips through a menu on the eighty-five-inch TV with five thousand satellite channels. “Where shall we go tonight? Denmark, Latvia, Jordan, or Columbia?”

  “Not really feeling like a movie tonight.”

  Simon puts the remote down. “Okay, what’s up?” He scoops a fudgy bit into his mouth.

  “I know you think grad is stupid, and you say you don’t want to go, but—”

  “No way, Abby. As I’ve told you before, I’m not going. Besides, I thought you and Liam made a blood pact to go to grad together no matter what.”

  “We did make a promise, and I know Liam will honor it, but…”

  “So I’m your backup date in case Liam bails?”

  “Of course not. I just want my best friend celebrating grad with me. Maybe we can double-date.”

  “That would be difficult considering I do not—and will not—ever have a grad date,” he says.

  “There must be someone you want to ask. What about Rachel in your math class?”

  “Rachel? Have you lost your mind?”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Absolutely nothing. That’s what’s wrong,” he says, heaping ice cream onto his spoon. “She’s way out of my dating pool. If I actually had a dating pool.” He stuffs the spoon into his mouth.

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Simon. You’ve got your own kind of hot stuff going on.”

  Simon rolls his eyes. “The answer is still a definitive no.”

  “Could be a blast, seeing who hooks up with who. We can make fun of the Sticky Hive behind their backs.”

  “Why are you so obsessed with going to grad? You don’t even want to be seen around the hallways at school, let alone getting selfied to death,” says Simon.

  “I know, I know. I sound like a ditz. It’s just that I’ve missed out on so much these past months and I’ve decided I don’t want to miss out on grad.”

  “Jackson and I were thinking of going to Electric Circus.”

  “A video arcade? On grad night?”

  “Why not? Works for us.”

  “Please come.” I give him my best pleading look.

  “Not going to happen, Abby.”

  ***

  When I get home, the house is dark. Dad’s truck is gone. Ruby greets me at the door with her wagging tail and happy whines and won’t let me pass until I give her tons of loving. She follows me upstairs to my room. I open up my laptop and click on a file I haven’t opened in well over a year. It’s filled with posed photos of Serena, Grace, and me, taken in the fall of grade eleven. When Serena’s mom was away in Palm Springs, we raided her closet full of designer clothes and pranced around pretending to be models in a photo shoot, taking turns snapping one another’s pictures. I blow up a photo of me looking all full of myself, with bright-red pouty lips and a short silky black dress. A weird feeling tugs me in different directions. I long to go back to how I was, how I looked in these pictures, but I also have sharp pangs of shame for being as shallow as I was. Deep down, am I a total fraud? I lie on the bed, close my eyes, and try to chase away all the crappy feelings. I fall fast asleep.

  When I wake up, I hear the TV on downstairs. Dad’s home watching old family videos. He has a glass in his hand and a half-empty bottle of Scotch on the table in front of him.

  “Oh, you’re here,” Dad says. Ruby curls up on the rug at his feet.

  “Yup.”

  His attention turns back to the family movies. Mom and Dad are in Banff loading backpacks with food and camping supplies.

  “How old was she in this video?”

  Dad presses pause. “It was when we first met, so probably around twenty-three, twenty-four.” I can almost smell the alcohol seeping through his pores. When he reaches for the bottle to fill up his glass, I’m disappointed in him.

  On the TV screen my mom is frozen in time. “She was so beautiful,” I say.

  “That she was.” He stares at her image and un-pauses the video. “This was when we hiked the Jasper Skyline. I’ll never forget waking up to a foot of snow—and it was the August long weekend. Your mom, of course, had read the weather report and warned me about snow, but I talked her into going anyway. The whole hike down the mountain, all I heard was, ‘I told you it was going to snow, but you wouldn’t listen to me.’”

  “She did love being right, didn’t she?” I say.

  “Can you imagine her armed with Internet on a cell phone?”

  “She would’ve been the Google queen, looking up every disputed fact.” We both laugh. The video changes to Dad holding Jeannie as a baby. “Aw, look at her,” I say. “Chubby baby.”

  “What about you?” Dad fast-forwards the video to me as a baby, big round cheeks, in my mother’s arms. “She sure loved being a mom.”

  “I still miss her so much,” I say.

  Dad nods, takes a big gulp of Scotch, and keeps watching the images of mostly Jeannie and me growing up. There’s a video of me in elementary school, playing Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz, hamming it up. The next video is me in middle school playing the lead in Annie. My reddish hair in tight curls, my rosy-red cheeks, dancing and singing at the top of my lungs. No inhibitions about being in front of an audience. There are a few more short unmemorable shots of me onstage in grades nine and ten. Then the video switches to my performance
as Joan of Arc. A monologue. I’m alarmed and angry in this scene. I acted it well. My voice was just right.

  I stop hearing the sound and can only see myself on the TV. The old me. My body is whole. My face is expressive, without bumpy red scars. I have a left cheek. My right eye opens just fine. My smile is normal, not crooked. I was so happy back then, living the life of an ordinary, pretty, teenager.

  “You are a born actor, that’s for sure,” Dad says, breaking the spell.

  “Was, Dad. Those days are long gone.”

  “You’re almost finished high school. You need to start thinking about your future.”

  “What future?” I meant this to be my inside voice.

  Dad turns to me. “You know there’s money put away for both you and Jeannie to go to university.”

  “Maybe you should use the money you saved for my education to pay bills. I see how stressed out you are all the time.”

  “You’ve got to move forward with your life, Abby.”

  “What about you, Dad? All you do is work and drink. That’s about it. And there’s been more drinking than working lately. You are always miserable. And so distant. Sometimes I feel like you look right through me.”

  Dad aims the remote at the TV like a gun and fires it off. He stands up. I’ve hurt him and I feel terrible.

  “Dad, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” He waves me off and walks away.

  I head up to my room feeling too crappy for grizzly research but I wake up my computer anyway. A Messenger notification pings. Another meme from UR SO FN UGLY. The picture matches the message: You’re so fucking ugly, you have to put a bag on your head to get your dog to hump your leg! My eyes slowly flood with tears that spill out down my cheeks. After we broke up, Mason sent me nasty texts and Facebook messages, but they stopped after I ended up in the hospital. Obviously he’s revived his vendetta against me. I take another look at the meme and all I see is myself in that picture, with a bag over my head. I try to delete the message, but I’m too wound up to figure out how. My body heaves as I sob into my pillow.