By: Celina Belanger
St. Elizabeth Catholic High School

“I just love all your novels! So dark, so relatable,” a peppy girl, clad all in pink, giggled.

I blinked. “Uh, who should I make it out to?”

“Oh! Well my name is Julia!” She placed her hand over her chest, as if preparing to solemnly swear to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

I signed the page in my illegible handwriting. “Dear Julia,” I wrote, “Thanks for your support. June Jeremy.” Julia, clutching my latest novel, skipped-really- out the door.

Looking down the line that stretched out of the tiny bookstore and down the lane, my eyes glazed over. I wished I could go outside for a quick smoke. Nervously cracking my knuckles, I did not bother to plaster on the seven hundredth fake smile of the day for the next middle-aged woman in line. This one spoke only Italian; understandable, since this book tour was my first in Italy. Apparently my books had been translated into four other languages, besides English. French, Spanish and most recently, Italian were the lucky languages comprising this new accomplishment. Gag me.

I wondered how these women could really think I was special in any way; with their Oscar-award-winning speeches of how my novels had changed their lives for the better, I wondered why my own books couldn’t do the same for me. In fact, the opposite was true. My eyes grew heavy.

‘Congratulations June! Your poem has been chosen to represent Toronto in the National Poetry Competition! You should be so proud of yourself!’ Mrs. Baird, my Grade 11 English teacher squeezed my shoulder and beamed at me. It was the first of many times in my life that I wanted to die. Walking into my house later that night, I caught a glimpse of my mom in the mirror by the front door. She looked up, and I held her gaze. Tears ran down her face, dripping onto her blood streaked arm. She broke my gaze and hastily grabbed the needle lying on the table, shoving it in her pants pocket. Ironic that the very inspiration for that poem, the source of my mom’s new despair, was the same activity in which my mom took comfort.

My eyes opened to a surprisingly overweight, depressed-looking woman. Tears brimmed in her swollen eyes. A shaky hand held out my book, already opened to a pre-selected page where my autograph was to go. Silently, I signed and returned it to her. She turned and walked out the door, indifferently.

‘Strange bird,’ I thought. For a second, I uselessly imagined turning her into a character for a book. Then I remembered my future plans and shook my head. ‘No time, June. No time for another book. What has writing ever done for you, except make you miserable and famous?’

Miserably famous, that’s me. Nodding, I drooped my head, resting my chin on my flat chest. That poem had only been the beginning of a long, lonely path of writer-dom.

‘June baby, let me read it. I won’t judge you, I promise I won’t.’ He stroked my arm. ‘I’ll read it tonight, give it back tomorrow and we don’t even have to talk about it, if you don’t want to, okay?’

I signed, handed it over. We were finished anyway. He kissed my nose and strolled away confidently, as if he thought I had described him as a god of all men- ‘brains and brawn, young John Sittler had it all.’ It’s strange, the way people think they are seen from another’s eyes. Stranger still, the inaccuracy of such assumption. I almost felt bad for him. Another bad ending, resulted from an unfortunate, but honest story of mine. No one is safe with me.

“Ms. Jeremy? Ms. Jeremy!” Joanne whispered hoarsely in my ear. “Wake up!”

Placing my hands over my ears, I lifted my head. I was disgusted to see the line of people had grown since I had last checked. As I watched a two-hundred year old woman cut off another, much younger lady in line, I almost laughed, until I remembered my afternoon schedule.

“Hey Jo, can I go for a quick pee?” My words never failed to move people.

Joanne crinkled her nose. “Yah, sure. Take five everyone!”

I wandered off, almost too lazy to even wonder who on earth Joanne was talking to. I had no “people”, except maybe her. As my manager, she had been forced to come. Even with a guaranteed trip to Italy, not one other person who had helped work on my book had wanted to come and support me. I got the message loud and clear.

I finally found the toilets, shoved in a corner like an afterthought. I sat down, on the standard toilet-with-no-seat that seemed to define all Italian washrooms, and let myself go. I was always able to think best when I was on the toilet. Black flashed in my mind, an angry black, and for a second I wondered what I had done wrong. Everything flooded back.

I pulled my drenched camisole tighter around me. The rain poured in my ears, my dress, my shoes. Glancing over my shoulder, I quickened my pace. ‘Gotta get away. Get away.’ The black enveloped me and I fumbled to find the beckoning joint in my pocket. An old needle found my finger. ‘Shit,’ I winced.

I glanced around; I felt like I was being watched, being followed. Old words crept into my head. Old stories, bad novels, hurtful titles rolled on my tongue, in my eyes. My mom cried out in my head, temporarily deafening me. When sound rushed back, I wished it hadn’t. When a light turned on down the empty street, I prayed for darkness again. Life is better alone, in the dark I had learned that much.

Still hadn’t found that joint. My dad punched me, and I fell, just like the last time, and the time before that. Scraping the ground, my boyfriend’s face glared up at me, twisted and contorted in a ripple from the growing pond on the road. He screamed at me, and my nose dripped with blood. “This is what you think of me, June? Is this how you see me, June? June? June! JUNE!”

Startled, I flushed the toilet, and watched as the pencil, always tucked behind my ear, swirled down amongst the urine and shit in the dirty toilet. My favourite pencil, flushed so easily. I wish I could be flushed away too. I ran the cold water, allowing my hands to turn over in the freezing, running water until they pricked in pain.

‘I gotta get another pencil,’ I thought stupidly. I could feel myself losing it; the meds were losing effect. Rapidly blinking, I set out purposefully to the table where I had sat for already three hours that day.

Ignoring Joanne and the next unfortunate-looking lady in line, I grabbed a piece of paper that lay solitarily on the table, as if waiting for someone to tell it what to do. I looked around the table for a replacement writing utensil. Seeing an expensive-looking ballpoint pen and sadly, nothing else, I picked it up hesitantly. Such useless frivolity made me nervous. It would do for now, I guessed.

Faintly, I heard someone clear their throat. I held the bottom of the pen with my thumb and forefinger and turning it, pressed it to the page and wrote the last words I would ever write. If I believed in God, I would have praised Him for the clarity I felt in that one moment. Ugly gold pen in one hand and lonely piece of paper under the other, I felt closer to understanding myself than ever before. After I finished, I signed my name with a flourish, the last time I ever did that too. I stood up, chair toppling over onto Joanne in the process. “Goodbye, Joanne. Goodbye readers.”

A hint of a smile on my face, I floated out of the room, holding that useful piece of paper. I dropped the pen somewhere between the table and the door. In the distance (in the future?) I heard a heavy, aching thud, that of a five pound pen hitting the ground. It probably broke. I couldn’t wait for my turn.

Hours later, I had made it to the top of my favourite cliff in Tuscany. In past trips to Italy, I had come up here to sit and dangle my legs over the edge. I had just been waiting for my moment. My whole life had lead me to this point. Now, I walked right to the edge. Even in the semi-darkness I could see the lush grass, tiny villages, romantic pathways leading to nowhere. Another day I might have hated to taint these beautiful hills with my ugly body, dirty blood; pain that had nothing to do with such sweetness.

I took off my shoes and let my toes slip over the rocky edge. I didn’t even bother to take one last meaningful gulp of air. The darkness enveloped me, a comfort in death, not unlike it had been in my life.

That piece of paper, even more solitary now, lay weighed down under a rock on top of the cliff. It flapped in the wind, it waved for attention. No one would see it. No one would ever notice its presence and no one cared when one day, it escaped from under the rock and flew away.

© Copyright 2008