Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Olivia
Everyone hates me but not as much as I hate myself. I haven’t heard from Brody since he let me off easy with a slammed car
door in my face. Quinn has no reason to hang out with me now that Felix is back in the Chilly mascot suit. Tori has been not
so subtly dropping hints about me moving out. Everywhere I go, I’m in the way.
I can feel myself shrinking as the days drag on, melting in place on the lumpy queen mattress like a fallen ice-cream cone.
Only no one is mourning my demise. If I withdraw enough, I could disappear altogether. Then those I love will be safe from
me.
As I wither away, everyone’s lives move on. Including Brody’s. The team’s playing their first game of the Stanley Cup Final
tonight against the Tampa Storm. Locked inside my sister’s spare room, I hide from the consequence, but mostly from myself.
The only times I’ve left this bed in the past two weeks have been to go to the bathroom, grab the mobile food orders I couldn’t stomach from the front door, and the one-time trip to the emergency dentist’s office.
Getting my front tooth repaired ate into a chunk of my savings, but at least it doesn’t hurt to bite into my food anymore.
The repair certainly wasn’t done for cosmetic reasons, seeing as I don’t plan on smiling ever again.
The door opens and my sister’s outline fills the frame. The glow from my tablet—previously my sole light source—is now overpowered
by the bright natural light bleeding into the room from the open door. My most depressing playlist blasts through my noise-canceling
headphones. I pull the covers up to my nose, hoping for protection, hoping she leaves me alone.
Instead of grabbing something off a shelf and leaving, Tori lingers in the doorframe. I don’t bother lifting my head off the
pillow. From where I lie, I squint and shield my eyes, trying to get a look at her. Her mouth is moving, but all I hear are
Bon Iver’s tragic folk cries. I slide my headphones down around my neck. “What?” I call out with a hostile hiss.
My eyes adjust to the light in time to watch hers roll with frustration, as they have been every time we talk.
“Have you talked to Brody yet?” she asks.
“He made it pretty clear that he wants nothing to do with me,” I reply dryly. If I give way to the sadness, I’ll never get
it bottled up again.
Tori musters up some phony enthusiasm and pivots. “On the bright side, that means more time to grow your freelance business.”
I prefer her thinly veiled disappointment. This passive-aggressive motivation thing is patronizing.
“Oh, yeah, business is thriving,” I reply, deadpan.
She glances over at my open tablet. The screen reads, Your Results: Moderate Depression. A heavy sigh is her segue into the parental lecture she’s been dying to give me. “You can’t lock yourself in the apartment
forever doing free online quizzes trying to figure out what’s clinically wrong with your psyche.”
I quickly stuff the tablet under my pillow. “Actually, I can. And I’ll have you know, it’s a recurring personality trait.”
Tori leans against the doorframe with enough forced casualness to raise suspicion. Her eyes don’t roll; instead they soften.
“Look, I don’t want to add any additional pressure to your already stacked plate, but you’ve gotta get your own place. Ivy
can hardly keep up with the demand for her drag queen rats. She needs her space back.”
There it is, the other tiny yet fabulous drag queen rat shoe drops.
Four of my joints crack loudly as I shoot up into a sitting position so I can better display my animated outrage. “Are you
kidding me? I just learned that I’m moderately depressed, and now you lay an eviction notice on me? I’m totally doing the
is-my-sister-a-narcissist quiz next.” I know I’m out of line, but I already feel so horrible. In the moment, it’s hard to
care if I make things worse.
“You have until the end of the month, but for your own sake, you shouldn’t procrastinate,” Tori says calmly. Her regular look
of annoyance is replaced with something much more triggering—pity.
I have no choice but to turn up the sarcasm. I’ve dug myself into a hole and the only thing I’m good at is digging deeper.
“Oh, how generous,” I say, clutching my heart. I quickly drop the facade. “Maybe if I had your cold heart, none of this would
have ever affected me.”
Her face hardens. “You think you’re the only one who was affected by Dad’s death?”
“Sure seems that way.”
“That’s because some of us haven’t been using it as an excuse for the last seven years. You’re stuck in the past and it’s
the reason you have no future.”
I want to shout back at her, Of course I’m stuck in the past, that’s where Dad is!
Before I can find a response, Tori says, “And I want my sweatpants back. You’ve been wearing them for days.”
As she turns to leave, I shout, “Farting in them too!” She slams the door on her way out and I toss a pillow in frustration.
It silently crashes into the back of the door.
I’ve never felt so alone. How can my body house so much grief and not burst at the seams. How am I not exploding?
I roll over and turn on the lamp beside the bed. On the nightstand, propped up into a fierce stance, is a taxidermied rat.
“What are you looking at Trixie Rat-tel?” I say, before slamming my head onto my lone remaining pillow. In a time like this,
there’s one place left for me to go—and I worry I’ve even worn out that welcome.
I walk up to a familiar doorstep, surrounded by the smell of freshly cut grass and a quietness so still that it can only be
found after a forty-five-minute drive out of the city. It’s scary how many years can pass and yet some things stay preserved,
frozen in time like a photograph. This house remains as familiar as my drive through the reserve. I feel as stuck in place
as the welcome mat on the front porch. There’s still a red stain from the rhubarb pie my dad dropped Christmas 2011. If the
stain hasn’t moved on, why should I?
I knock, second-guessing myself as soon as my knuckles make contact. I look over my shoulder and contemplate how fast I’d
have to run to hide in the neighbor’s bushes—a prank I successfully pulled off with two good knees. Before I have a chance
to play ding-dong ditch, the door swings open.
“Nimkiikwe,” Nookomis says, standing in the doorway as if I were the last person she expected to see.
The use of my Anishinaabe name makes me realize how much I’ve missed her, and I almost fall into her arms sobbing.
With much reluctance, I stand guarded in place on the welcome mat with my arms wrapped around my torso, willing myself not to cry.
She’s a spitting image of my father and me. Looking into her soft sunken eyes, decorated with an impressive amount of squiggly
laugh lines, is like looking into the future. I hope someday I’m as lucky to have lived a life with a smile that never quits,
surrounded by people who keep me laughing. A breeze catches her long flowy brown hair. The face-framing gray highlights have
spread since I’ve last seen her. Intricate beaded earrings dangle from her ears like vibrant flowers on a spring tree.
Her face contorts as if she’s about to offer sympathy, but instead she steps aside and grants me hospitality. “Come in. Get
the game loaded and I’ll get started on the bannock.”
Inside is preserved like a museum. The same couch Tori and I grew up jumping on before being scolded not to. The same coffee
table Nimishoomis built with Dad that summer I got stitches from flipping a canoe. The same throw blankets Nookomis knit while
watching Dad’s hockey games as a way to keep her nerves at bay. A lot of stuff inside here was built by Nimishoomis or crafted
by Nookomis—beadwork, ribbon work, wood carvings, moccasins. I’m surrounded by all of it. They aren’t just things, they’re
memories that tell the story of my family. Everyone knows my dad had a heavy slap shot, but only the people around here know
how skilled he was with caribou hide.
I go straight to the living room TV console.
Like I did as a child, I open the cupboard and press Power on the vintage video-game console.
It powers up like an aircraft. Nookomis takes her controller and her spot on the rocking chair.
I anchor myself to the area rug just far enough from the TV screen to not be scolded by an adult on the dangers of retina damage.
We sit in silence playing The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords. The iconic background symphony music plays as the clicking of our buttons applaud—but eventually Nookomis is doing most
of the work while I keep falling into holes.
I grew up in this house just as much if not more than I did in my own family home. This is where my dad was raised. Where
we spent family holidays. Where we played pond hockey on the frozen lake out back. Where I lost my first tooth chewing into
moose meat. It’s where we all gathered to feast after the fourth day of my dad’s funeral and it’s where I eventually stopped
visiting.
“It’s been a while. How are things?” Nookomis says between clicks. It’s been a handful of years, but her video-game skills
and elder senses are as sharp as ever.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Yeah. I’m good.” I’m attacked by a rope and die. I drop the controller on the floor beside me.
She pauses the game to say, “You don’t show up at my doorstep unannounced for the first time in years because things are good.”
I turn to her. She sits patiently on her intricately handcrafted wooden rocking chair that I’ll someday be handing down to
my grandchildren. Swaying like she’s been waiting for me all these years and is willing to continue the wait however long
I need her to. I wish I were as indestructible as that oak chair. I tuck my knees to my chest and wrap my arms around my legs.
I self-hug and let myself feel the weight of everything I’ve done with no internet quiz to distract me.