Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World by Janet E. Cameron Page A

imitation: what this person
     would do and say and sound like as he was getting killed.
    I felt sick and slow – my stomach, my head. Everything was crowding in and I needed to be alone. I wanted to tell Mark to
     shut up and go. Stop bugging me with his body and his presence and his words.
    Instead I started making suggestions for him. Intestines. All the stuff you could do with the guy’s intestines. Where to shove
     the stick of dynamite before you lit it. Time was slowing and grinding down, like a pencil sharpener with its handle pushing
     in circles, and the air was too thick to breathe. Everything I said sounded like somebody else talking.
Please go home, Mark
.
    He did, eventually.
    The house was empty. Mom wouldn’t be back for another hour. I couldn’t get the taste of cigarettes out of my mouth. And the
     smell. I opened all the windows in the basement but it was still there. Probably in my clothes and hair too. Upstairs to the
     bathroom. Not the little cold one off my bedroom – we should have called that the whack-off room – the big one we both used
     for baths and showers.
    Pulled the shower curtain back, that high clattering ring.
    I don’t know how much time passed. I was picking at the edges of our crumbling bath mat, dry sides of the tub on either side
     of me, all my clothes on, brown plastic shower curtain blocking off the rest of the house. I wanted to cry but nothing would
     come. Not even my voice. Everything was stuck inside me boiling away to nothing.
    The worst insult on the playground. You’d almost rather be dead.
    I bit down hard on the muscled base of my thumb. I couldn’t feel it.
    That stupid little daydream. Resting myself against Mark’s back. It would have been okay if I’d just imagined something dirty,
     something hostile. I wasn’t proud of those thoughts – but I wasn’t afraid of them either. And somehow they didn’t touch me.
     I wasn’t in them, any of the little porno movies I played out in my mind when I was alone, these perfect men together who
     wouldn’t kiss or look each other in the eye.
    Mark. My cheek against his warm shoulder, his neck. His skin under my fingertips. And then what? What was I so afraid of?
    He’d turn around and kiss me.
    I shivered.
    That was it. I wanted him to kiss me, wanted us to kiss with open mouths and tongues touching, like you’d see on TV. Like
     you’d see guys and girls doing on TV.
    A hundred times worse than thinking about fucking him. A million times worse.
    Then there was Mr Randall. How I’d walk the halls at school silently saying his name.
Christopher. Chris
. When assignments came back, I’d be crazy with suspense to see what he’d written (‘Sensitive and insightful.’ ‘V. good analysis!’),
     and later I might trace over his comments with a pen, memorising the shape of the letters, picturing him alone in his house
     reading something I’d written.
    It was ridiculous. I tried to laugh. Nothing. No tears or even asound. While this pressure built. Thick, white smoke rolling around inside me, touching everything with cancer. I never should
     have had that cigarette.
    I felt like turning on the shower and getting soaked in my clothes. But that would be stupid.
    I went downstairs to the kitchen instead and sat slouched at the table. There was bread in a white paper bag on a brown board
     scraped clean, the knife to cut it for toast left on its side against the owl salt and pepper shakers. I rolled the knife
     along the table, watched it thunking like a square wheel over the red and white checks on the plastic cloth.
    Wouldn’t the guys at school just love this? The ones who’d still trip me in the halls when Mark wasn’t around. Their eyes
     lighting up. Ha ha ha. We always knew it. And now Mark would be one of them.
    I gave myself a little cut on the side of my finger.
    What would Stanley say? I still thought about Stanley a lot. Every day. Imagined his reactions to everything – me, Mom, Mark,
     books I was