The Most Precious Substance on Earth Read online

  Two fundraising car washes in the parking lot of the funeral home next to the school, one in frigid October, icicles dripping from the rims of our buckets, our wet hands raw as winter.

  One gingerbread house the Music Council co-presidents built to raffle off at the Holiday Harmonies concert, intended as a gabled Christmassy Victorian but in truth more crooked mansion, royal icing tubed like toothpaste atop precarious walls.

  Fifty or more afternoons of solo practice in a rehearsal room coated with soundproofing the colour of a dried sea sponge. I would feel around those walls for a light switch, then play until my fingers cramped. To leave that room was to face the rest of school life, so empty of music and sometimes so bleak.

  Forty-three sets of parents opening their wallets, signing cheques.

  I wasn’t expecting this fierce, cheesy love for a band that is only mostly in tune, where members share obscure jokes from the humiliating skits they’ve performed at assemblies or about the time the visiting professional flautist accidentally told the flutes to finger their parts and then blushed straight up to his scalp. Sometimes, when Amy describes the transcendent qualities of marijuana, I think about the rehearsal when I took my mouth away from my oboe to sneeze in the middle of “Ease on Down the Road.” I lifted my eyes from my music and saw the entire band’s shoulders and heads moving in unison, a controlled wave; eighty-four eyes fixed on the slashes of eighth notes sprinting towards the end of the page, Mr. Rees shouting numbers over us as his baton drew violent figure eights. When I put my teeth back over the reed, my shoulders latched onto the rhythm along with everyone else’s. It felt like running suicides in gym class: a mix of endorphins and gasped oxygen, blurring into euphoria.

  * * *

  In the morning we take the subway from our hotel to touristy destinations. We churn in single file through metal turnstiles, a chaperone handing each of us a transit token as we pass. In yellow walkways under the city, Amy casually greets buskers, rolling her shoulders and clapping, offering them coins from her red vinyl purse. One of our first stops is the Toronto Reference Library, a building with the colour palette from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the architecture of a dystopian government headquarters. Five storeys of curved, seamless white walls surround orange-red carpeted floors and staircases, all visible from the spacious atrium and lit under grids of ceiling fluorescents. Amy and I follow the library’s walkways and eye the university students, half-asleep and puddled in their sweatshirts.

  We’ve been put into groups and assigned a worksheet on Canadian composers and instrumentalists. Corrine has gone in search of a restroom to fix her lipstick, so Eunice trails behind us. At one point, she informs us that the library has one of the world’s foremost collections of materials related to the life and works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  “How do we distract her,” says Amy, under her breath, as I dump my stuff on an empty study table on the second floor. She’s figuring out how to sneak away to meet her cousin without Eunice reporting her to Mr. Rees. At first I thought she was inviting me to go with her, and I was ready to say there’s no way the teachers wouldn’t notice us both missing, but then I realized she’d always been planning to go alone.

  “Maybe with some microfiche,” I say. “Or by luring her into the rare books archives.”

  “Oooh. Or how about a sexy grad student.” Amy tips her head down towards me and makes googly eyes.

  “Too bad she’s un-distractible,” I respond. “Have you seen her practise arpeggios?”

  “Look, I bet she’s writing down everything I do in that creepy diary of hers.” Amy points discreetly and I turn to see Eunice leaning against a stair railing and frowning as she writes.

  “It probably contains a hand-drawn map of the school with a big red X over the band room,” I say, and Amy’s eyebrows leap up. “And a heart over a rudimentary drawing of Mr. Rees,” I add.

  “Nina!” exclaims Amy, and suddenly we’re both stifling laughter, our fists pressed to our mouths.

  I can’t help it. There’s this satisfaction in mocking Eunice; she’s so small, so oblivious. I haven’t even spent much time with her, but there are nights at home when, over dinner with my parents, I find myself complaining about her. And my complaints consist only of listing her qualities, not her actions. “Why isn’t she more self-aware?” “Why doesn’t she see she’s a target?” Usually, my parents just listen, though once when I looked up my mom was tight-lipped, as if she was thinking, What did she ever do to you?

  I glance back over at her. Eunice hasn’t done anything to me.

  For a second, I almost tell Amy she should just hang out at the library with me and stop making things so complicated. When she catches her breath from laughing, she says, in an exaggerated whisper, “The lonely man strikes with absolute rage.” I recognize it as a quote from Dylan Klebold’s academic day planner.

  A month ago, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve kids and a teacher at their Colorado high school. The crime was so violent and had such cinematic potential that it engulfed all other news. Amy’s family only got internet access a few weeks ago, but now their phone line is consistently tied up by her reading the killers’ diaries. She has a crush on Eric Harris, though he’s dead, and I can’t tell if she genuinely finds him charming or if it’s part of this edgy new image she’s cultivating this semester. Harris is the guy at the back of the class who’s always smirking, the guy you avoid eye contact with because if he bullies you, he will feel no remorse. But Dylan Klebold, he was just this goofy big-nosed kid with a Dawson’s Creek hairdo. If he went to our high school, he’d be the tuba player. Harris was a thin, slouching weasel. I can’t picture him playing an instrument or walking our halls. The media portrays them as darkly iconic Batman types: the Trench Coat Mafia. Trench coats billowing behind them like black umbrellas against a ferocious wind. And in the same articles: Kids crouching under the cafeteria tables. The kindly teacher, splayed and bleeding in the science lab.

  “Oh, hey.” I point. Eunice has left us to ask the librarian a question.

  “Awesome, see ya,” says Amy, and then she darts back down the stairs, across the red carpet, out the revolving doors.

  When Eunice comes to the study table, she doesn’t ask where Amy went. “Do you want to check out the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection?” she asks.

  I can’t figure out how to say no, to avoid pairing up with her, so I end up agreeing to go along. She beams as though this is her opportunity, as though she and I have something in common.

  Hours later, when the band is having dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, and Amy is still gone, Eunice seats herself between me and Corrine, and her legs flail beneath her. At home she probably sits on an encyclopedia to reach the table.

  “Amy’s just in the gift shop,” I lie to Mr. Rees, when he counts only forty-two students instead of forty-three.

  He squints at me and my stomach twists. “Well, I’ll let it go this time, but she should really get permission before going off on her own.”

  I don’t look at Eunice, who has not left my side since the library, and who must know I’m lying. I tell myself that Amy is with her cousin, and I hang my jacket over the back of an empty chair in case Mr. Rees does another headcount. If Amy is dead on the streets of Toronto, I’ll have delayed the police search.

  When I get back to my seat, Eunice is ordering. “I’ll have the veggie wrap, please,” she says to the server, though everyone else has ordered burgers. She talks about Schubert for twenty minutes, though we’re surrounded by rock and roll memorabilia.

  “Schubert died of syphilis because he was a Romantic,” I say.

  Corrine laughs out loud. Eunice doesn’t get it.

  * * *

  When we return to the hotel, Amy is already in the room, sitting on the bed by the window and flipping through channels to find something other than Friends. It’s almost 9:30 p.m. Eunice goes to shower without asking us i
f we need to use the bathroom first. One of the chaperones, a choir teacher with a resonant bird voice, knocks on our door to make sure we’re all inside and there are no boys hanging around trying to steal our underpants, or whatever she thinks teenagers do away from home. “Don’t stay up all night gossiping, girls! Get a good night’s sleep,” she sings. “BandFest is tomorrow morning!”

  When the choir teacher leaves, I turn to Amy and ask, “Where have you been? I thought you’d be back hours ago.”

  Amy mutes the TV. “Oh, sorry, Nina. My cousin and I were just on Queen Street West and lost track of time.” She pulls out an array of shopping bags from beside her bed. “But I have something for us!” She digs into one of the bags and retrieves a bulging Ziploc. I go to sit beside her, because I’ve never seen drugs up close, or really at all, except in movies. They’re a dusty olive green, dense bunches clumped on dried stems, the curled leaves woven through with saffron threads. The smell through the bag is pungent but fresh, like the tufts of herbs my mom buys at the Indian grocery.

  Corrine peers over us. “Oh, now we’re in trouble.”

  Amy shreds the weed with plum-coloured fingernails. I think of the overplayed anti-drug PSA where a crew of bouncing children sings, “Drugs, drugs, drugs. Which are good? Which are bad? Drugs, drugs, drugs. Ask your mom or ask your dad.” I start to hum the tune and the other two join in. We’re all giggling when Eunice comes out of the bathroom in her PJs, showered and once again having applied a shiny mask of Vaseline.

  “Gosh, your skin must be soft,” remarks Amy drily. “Like a baby’s bottom.”

  “Oh, burn,” says Corrine.

  “What are you guys doing?” asks Eunice. “What is that stuff?”

  Is it possible she doesn’t know?

  “Corrine, put a towel under the door,” commands Amy. Then, pointing at the smoke detector on the ceiling: “Nina, cover that up.” I grab a shower cap from the still-humid bathroom and, climbing on a chair, use a hair elastic to secure the cap tightly over it. Corrine cracks open the window. Amy carefully dusts bits of plant matter off her fingers and back into the baggie, then pulls open the drawer next to the bed and removes the Bible. She flips to one of the blank pages at the end and tears. Eunice gasps on cue. “I don’t have rolling papers,” explains Amy (though she was out all day and could have purchased them at any time). “Please apologize to your god,” she tells Eunice.

  “I…I don’t believe in god,” says Eunice. “Guys, I think this is a bad idea.”

  “Relax, will you.” Amy twists the end of the joint, holds the other end to her mouth, and lights it with a hotel match.

  “Corrine, if you get caught, who’s going to play your solo?” asks Eunice. By now all four of us are sitting on the bed, drawn closer as though we’re cavemen and Amy has just ignited the first fire.

  “What, her three-note solo in a movie soundtrack from five years ago?” says Amy. I watch her inhale, memorizing her movements so I can copy them. When she passes me the joint, I put my lips on it and breathe in deeply. I’m thrilled by the ring of orange that glows gradually bright, in sync with my inhale. I cough a cloud of smoke.

  Because we’re total nerds, we put on a recording of our Holst performance piece, played by some distant, professional orchestra. In minutes, my head is floating. I squeeze my eyes closed and I can feel the movement of each extraocular muscle. Violins come slinking through the allegro, strings vibrating like hummingbirds. Even on Corrine’s portable cassette player, the audio has the effect of surround sound. I smell shampoo flowers coming from Eunice’s hair.

  When the joint comes around to Eunice, she sniffs it first, then takes a shallow puff. She scrunches up her face and thrusts the joint back at Amy. “I don’t like it.” Still, Eunice stays on the bed with us. It’s obvious she wants to be a part of the group. She reminds me of this cat I had that would eat its own vomit. I used to wonder if it was motivated by shame.

  “What’s the difference between an onion and an oboe?” asks Amy.

  “Nobody cries when you chop up an oboe!” answers Corrine, laughing with complete joy before falling back on the bed.

  “Okay, okay,” says Amy, “you won’t know this one. What’s the difference between a bull and a band?”

  “Nobody cries when you chop up a band!” answers Corrine.

  “That’s enough out of you,” Amy tells her.

  “A bull has the horns in front and the ass in back,” I say, because I’ve heard all of Amy’s band jokes.

  “Nina!” Amy screams, gripping my neck and pretending to strangle me, before her hands loosen and she enfolds me in a hug.

  “Shhhhhhh.” I lean my head on her shoulder. From the recording, the woodwinds emit the purest sound: no breath, no clicks, only exquisite tones radiating through metal. Every chord is like biting into a stack of twenty crepes. My stoned brain remembers our “taped test” for the Holst piece. We had to record ourselves playing our parts individually at home and bring in the tape for Mr. Rees to grade. I spent six hours on mine even though the section was only a few bars long. When I finished, my lips were chapped white at the edges and my index finger ached from the repeated pressing of Record, Rewind, and Play. The day it was due, my mom had offered to drive Amy and me to school, and as I stood in the entryway of Amy’s house, she said, “Hang on a sec.” I saw her pick up her oboe from the living room sofa and lithely reach across to her dad’s complicated sound system. She played this graceful rendition in a single take, so flawlessly I wanted to tear the ribbon out of my own cassette tape.

  “It’s really time to sleep, guys,” says Eunice.

  “That’s the only thing you’ve said in like an hour,” says Amy. Behind her on the wall is a mass-produced oil painting, shining and full of rolling hills. The whites of her eyes are disappearing under blood vessels, and she’s chugging water from a plastic cup. “Go sleep if you want to so badly. Why are you even here?”

  Eunice says nothing. She remains where she is, and gazes down at her hand, which is tracing swoops of thread on the quilted bedspread.

  “Taking mental notes for later? Why don’t you go write about us in your diary,” says Amy. “What do you even write about in there? What could a loser like you possibly have to write about?”

  Eunice winces. She doesn’t lift her eyes.

  “Amy…” I begin, trying to decide what else to say. Her face has gone grotesque. Dull and scowling. Distorting like a shadow. I turn to Corrine, expecting her to intervene, but she’s just observing, spectating even, as she slowly chews a Fuzzy Peach, and it occurs to me that she and Eunice aren’t friends; they’ve only been thrown together by circumstance.

  “Have you ever smoked weed? Ummmm…no. Do you have any friends? Ummmm…no. Does your family even love you? Why did they just, like, abandon you at the airport? Have you ever stayed up past 11 p.m.? Do you have access to explosives?” Amy pushes her face towards Eunice, and I recoil involuntarily, even as I try to figure out what to say, how to interrupt. “Do you research automatic weapons, Eunice? Do you? Do you dream about shooting us all to death?” She blinks, eyes drooping and expression blank.

  Eunice’s hand has stopped moving on the bedspread. Corrine and I don’t look at each other.

  “Have you ever been naked with a guy? A girl? Have you? Has somebody else ever run their hands over your body? Have you ever done it?” Perversely, Amy’s voice has only gotten quieter.

  Eunice doesn’t say anything. She’s shaking her head and closing her eyes, absolutely silent. When her eyes open again, they land on the oil painting and stay there. She’s somewhere else.

  “Have you ever been fucked?”

  Eunice’s eyes go dark and ancient. I think of how she begs Mr. Rees to leave the band room unlocked so she can stay after school to practise. One night I forgot a textbook in my locker, and when I came back to get it I thought the only people in the building were the jan
itors, sweeping ragged grey brooms in wide arcs down the empty halls. Then I saw the fluorescent lights of the band room, and when I peeked in, there was Eunice, alone, sitting in her usual chair. Her flute wasn’t even out of its case, and as I came up behind her I glimpsed her scribbling in her diary, writing in millimetre-high sentences I couldn’t read. Her hand gripped the black felt-tip pen as she scratched fervently, each word an abrasion.

  Eunice sobs once and curls her arms around herself. Then, lifting her head and staring Amy in the eye, she says: “Yes, I have. Have you?”

  I consider the way Eunice hunches and slouches, making her body small. We all realize it at the same time. Even Amy has the decency to look away.

  * * *

  When we wake up at seven the next morning, Eunice isn’t in her bed. We change into our band uniforms and venture out to the lobby, where the band has congregated in sleepy groups, draped over leather armchairs or bunched up by the free coffee, greedily splashing cream and opening sugar packets. Eunice is there, standing with a potted palm on one side of her and Mr. Rees on the other, next to the hotel’s sliding doors. She’s in her uniform, holding her flute case, with her music folder tucked under one arm.

  “Should we go say something to her?” asks Corrine.

  “Maybe I should say something,” says Amy, but she doesn’t move.

  I know it from the way Eunice avoids looking at us, and from how Mr. Rees and the potted palm surround her like bodyguards. The sliding doors open every time she moves to adjust her folder or case, and then close again. I have this new awareness of her body. It’s like a word highlighted by a teacher in a book. I’m trying not to notice her pink skin, her softness, her question-mark shape. I haven’t been thinking of her as a girl, only as a child.

  “She’s already told him,” I say.