The Chrome Suite by Sandra Birdsell Page B

squints over Jill’s shoulder at the approaching man. He raises his hands, backing away in submission, and the other boys follow. They pick up their bicycles and walk away. The man stops and watches until they mount their bikes and begin to ride. Then all at once the boys turn and ride back, heading directly towards Jill and Elsa. They gain speed and as they go by, the leader veers inwards, kicks, attempting to get Elsa and missing, hitting Jill instead. She moans and doubles over clutching at her groin. “Now see here!” The man yells and chases after them. Jill’s face grows pale as she gathers her shorts in a fist and presses against the pain. Mel stifles an incongruous impulse to whistle a nonchalant tune as he watches the cyclists round the corner of the pavilion and disappear. The man stops running and then shakes his fist in their direction. “Hoodlums! Punks!” He turns. “Everything okay?”
    Mel carries the imprint of the boy’s shoe in the middle of his shirt. He brushes at it and hunches his shoulders, crinkling the fabric to obliterate its shape. His shame makes him want to vomit. He follows Jill and Elsa as they head back along the path among the trees. Jill sucks air through her teeth to keep from crying. Mel doesn’t think of the word “shame.” He feels it, thick, hot, rising in waves as he fixes his eyes on the centre of Elsa’s back. It’s her fault, he thinks. If she hadn’t sent Jill for the cola this wouldn’t have happened. He feels some of his shame give way to anger.
    When they reach the clearing where moments before Mel had lain on top of Elsa, he steps onto the spot purposely, grinding his anger and their act into the ground and burying it. Elsa’s murmured concern rises up among the trees as she kneels in front of Jill and examines the blue mass spreading beneath the pale skin of her groin. “I forgot the cola. It’s back there where I dropped it,” Jill says.
    Mel squints against the rush of tears. He picks up the school bag and unbuckles its straps and carries it down the path that leads to the steep river bank and the rush of yellow water below. The rye whisky bottle is cool in the palm of his hand. He promises himself to throw it into the river and to never take another drink of booze again.
    She heard their voices and crept softly through the trees towards the sound. She saw Mel first. He stood with his back to her, facing the river, the school bag dangling at his side. She saw the back of Jill’s head and Elsa kneeling in front of her. A complete picture, the three of them, and she stood as usual on the outside looking in. But what became apparent to her, what she had in the past only suspected, was their complete lack of concern for her well-being. This revelation shouldn’t have caught her by surprise but it did, and her chest ached. She wanted to limp into their picture, bruised, cut, and bleeding. It would have served them right, she thought, if she’d been struck by a car or offered too many ice-cream cones by strangers
.
    If she had died and not Jill, she would have had them all in the palm of her hand forever
.
    “Shorty!”
    Elsa and Jill crane their necks to get a look at her.
    “Well, so how was the picnic?”
    Mel sounds so phoney, Amy thinks.
    “How was the whisky?” It’s their loss now because she won’t tell them what she just saw in the other park down the street.
    “What are you talking about?” Mel frowns.
    She points to his hand.
    Jill titters and covers her mouth.
    “I found it,” Mel says.
    “So who’s the liar? Drop dead, Mel.” Amy is amazed to see Mel’s legs fly out from beneath him as though someone had just given him a quick shove.
    The bottle flies from his hand and he whoops in panic. He’s lost his footing on the slippery path and his feet take off. Still clutching the school bag, Mel feels himself being propelled forward and unable to stop. His body can barely keep up with his churning legs as the uneven ground, knotted tree