It’s just not who I am. I don’t bounce out of bed, whistle while I brush my hair, make a squishy face when I tussle my dog’s fur and talk to him like a drunk baby through pursed lips. That’s some high gloss Disney crap right there. First of all my dog’s name is Pisser. Not exactly a playful name. My dad thought it was funny because, surprise, he peed a lot when he was a puppy. “Boy this dog is a real pisser”, turned into “come here you little pisser” eventually evolved into “Hey Pisser”. When you are a nervous, uncomfortable, sometimes shy 13 yr old girl with hair the colour of dirt, a funky tooth and a tendency to spit when I talk fast, you kinda need to start your day with a dog named Captain, Prince, or Odysseus. Something upbeat, strong or playful. But instead I get Pisser. I try to avoid Pisser in the mornings so his energy doesn’t jinx my day. I need to focus on my outfit today. If I can dress like the day is gonna rock, well then, I feel pretty sure the day is gonna rock. My body is my canvas and my clothes my palette. I’ve never met a colour I didn’t like, and I’ve met a lot of colours. To keep today, today of all days, from being a train wreck, I’m gonna wear waves. Waves in multi-coloured fitted funky knit. My name is Coral and I have summoned the ocean to save me today. Today is my first day at school without her.

If you squint your eyes, it looks a like a sand bottle. You know those ones with multi-coloured pastel sand layered on top of each other. It’s gonna be great. I slide the sweater over my pony tail and it falls into place across my spindly sloping shoulders, and hugs my almost curves. Almost, again if you squint, maybe. My ponytail is perfectly loose now. “Oh, hey Pisser” I grumble, trying to look away as the dog prances in front of my mirror. I’m down the stairs for breakfast in a leap or two. I’m committed to having a good day, if not a great day. This sweater kills. It almost looks like I have a chest, if breasts were a slightly visible sandbar on a shallow little beach. I stride into a room of hushed whispers, strong coffee and shadowy faces. Wait t’il they soak in my waves.

As if my foot hitting the kitchen floor turned on a switch, toothy, phony grins emerge and release the high pitched greeting, “Oh hey Doodles! Off for a brilliant day?”. “Yup”. I guess that was an okay answer? I can’t worry about it. I’ve got to tackle my day. Toast with the brightest raspberry jam and the most golden crust as if it fell off the edges of the sun. That’s a breakfast for me. “Wanna ride today Coral or you gonna try the walk on your own? You know, without...Why don’t I drive ya?” my dad says as he flips Pisser a crumb off my plate. My plate of shining, fiery energy. With an invisible internal sigh, I say to myself “Don’t do that dad”. If Pisser shares my breakfast then my breakfast is a downer and a no-go for me.

With a deep breath in, I run my fingers along the waves on my sleeve and gently push my plate away. “I’m gonna go” is all I can utter. In the flurry of “But you haven’t eaten!” “You’ll need a jacket”, “Shall we call someone to walk w….”, I grab my bag and head to the door. But I’m a good daughter so I turn to them and smile, “Today is going to be great” and out comes a reassuring half smile. As I turn to walk out and ease the door closed behind me, I hear my mom “Oh bless your heart Coral. And don’t worry, I can fix your sweater tonight.”. Click.

Fix my sweater! My waves? My colour kaleidoscope of power, energy and awesome? What the heck mom? Fix my sweater. And then, as I stumble along the sidewalk, my breath a little rapid, hands a little shaky, I skim along the mid section of my pastel perfect sweater and there it is. A hanging piece of yarn. A pull!! Today. In my ocean of candy coloured bliss. My sweater. I twirl it between my fingers. I pull at it and it comes out a little further. “STOP Coral! You are literally unraveling.”

My backpack starts to slide off my non-existent shoulders but I can’t adjust because I can’t take my fingers off the pull. The piece is a half centimetre, maybe less and it’s tangled and somehow been cut and it’s dangling there. There’s a small hole and it’s looking up at me. It’s screaming at me. It’s saying it wants to grow, and eat and get bigger. I’m not myself right now. I clench my teeth and look up at the sky. The sky that was supposed to shine on me today, not burn me up. I yell “You think a puppy peeing in the kitchen is a pisser. Newsflash, THIS is a pisser!! Aaaahhhhhhhhh !” Only after I yelled at the sky do I see them. Evangeline and Linda walking with Amir, cute, cute Amir, across the road, looking at me. Looking at me like you look at a worm on a wet driveway trying to decide if you want to let it live or amuse yourself and squish it. And really, Evangeline? That’s a name? Sounds more like a dessert that makes you hyper and gets you grounded for climbing onto the roof of your neighbors car screaming from a sugar high. Amir, please don’t think I’m crazy. I don’t want to be crazy Coral. Please.

“Practicing my speech” I nodd and wink to them. Wink? Gawd. I’m like that creepy blinky librarian that got ‘moved’ last year to a new school to be closer to his family. Or as my dad says, house arrest. Whatever. I need to stop the destruction. They’ve moved on.

Behind a big tree I get to work by tying a knot on one end of the loose yarn and pulling the rows as close together as I can without making a hole somewhere else. It will stay. But this dangly piece is a nuisance. Nuisance? I can’t seem to shake the creepy librarian vibe. I’ve got no scissors, no time and no one to help me.

I start off walking to school again. I feel like I can’t remember how to walk? I’m lopsided, heavy footed on the one side. The right side, where the pull is on the sweater. My right foot slams down each time and I’m leaning. My fingers keep twirling the pull. The pull weighs a ton, like an iron ball, that’s why I can’t straighten up. My face is distorted now too but I can’t help it. That pull is so darn heavy. I’m walking like one side of me is made of flesh toned cement. Please don’t be crazy Coral today. Please.

I’ve already missed the bell and have to rush into my class through the crowd like a bridesmaid battling for position to catch the bouquet. There was no chance to hear a happy “good morning”, or “Hey Coral” to help me start my day. To get me standing up again. I wanted to see who would talk to me and respond to the waves. Who would smile at my sweater and say “wow, cool top”. Now I’m really out there floating on the ocean, alone, reaching. If I don’t have any responses, I don’t know what they’re thinking. I won’t know who to talk to. It’s because there’s a pull, I know it. That’s why I’m late too. I tried to fix it. This can’t be fixed and I can’t be saved. I squeeze the pull between my hot angry fingers and the yarn responds by coming out a little further. I wish she were here. I should have tried harder to make more friends.

Thankfully, I don’t have any tears left and I can let my name work its magic. My dad says Coral is one of the most amazing animal discoveries on earth. Coral grows thousands of tiny polyps that reach out and attach themselves to the ocean floor. The polyps die and harden and then more polyps grow. It’s resilient, beautiful and far reaching. This cycle repeats and eventually the coral creates a colourful limestone covering in the most mysterious place on earth, the deep sea. Coral is ancient and epic. He says I am strong and will be just like coral, reach out and take on the world and cover the earth with my strength and colour. What he forgot to mention to me when I was young was how fragile Coral is too. When touched by human hands, the oils can cause the death of an entire colony of coral. Just from a touch. From one pull.

Evangeline, Linda and perfect shiny-haired Amir sit down at the desks around me. They don’t even look at the empty desk. Evangeline smiles crookedly and says “Hope your speech kills today”. She wasn’t trying to be mean but it helps me justify my anger if I imagine she was being rude. “Really Dessert? Don’t worry about my speech” is what I want to say. Instead, I twirl the yarn faster, more aggressively and almost pulverize the sweaty yarn and say “S’all good.” Wink.

Oh my gawd with the winks!

I give my right hand a break from playing with the pull and cross over with my left hand to fidget with the string. It wasn’t just string. It was the button to my social nuclear disaster. I am lonely Kim Jong Un playing with fire. If she were here, we’d run home at lunch and I would change my sweater. That’s it. My first day without her, I can’t run home. They’ll know I can’t move on or make new friends. But how can I make new friends when all I can see is the pull, the string, the end. I came up with no answers and clearly I gave it a lot of thought because the bell rang and I don’t remember anything the teacher said all morning. I think I remember soft-smiling Amir pointing to the empty seat and saying “You okay Coral?” but it could have been him pointing to the poster behind me saying “When’s the play t’morrow?”. I dunno. I dunno. I dunno.

I could at least run to the bathroom now and think. I knew one thing for sure. Dessert, Linda and Amir would not be worthy replacements. They never commented on my sweater and they never walked with me to school. All they had to do was cross the road. If they never touch me, my polyps never die.

Maybe that’s how it’s going to be. The world swimming over head, looking at me, never touching me, marveling at the aquatic symbiosis I once had with a friend but never forcing me to move forward and find a new one. They can swim on. I’ll stay here.

The bathroom was hollow, dank and thank goodness, empty. I slammed my back against the wall and let out a breath I must have been holding all morning. Through the thick leaded window, I could hear the younger kids playing and the teens pacing and giggling. That used to be our thing. We would walk once around the yard in one direction, then pivot and do it again in the reverse direction; a little more swagger emerging with each lap. We didn’t need anyone else and everyone accepted that. We weren’t the outcasts, we weren’t cool, we were just ‘those two’. Friends. It’s best if I stay in here. Pacing and giggling on my own now would look sad. And I can’t join anyone. Not in this sweater. Without realizing it, I was now twirling the yarn from the pull in both my hands, moving back and forth between left and right as if I was rolling a thread out of my belly button. I wondered if the faster I rolled it, the faster the clock would run. The echo in the bathroom hurled the sound of my own breathing back into my throbbing, psychotic skull. I started to search the air for the sound of the kids again to distract me and I closed my eyes so I could see her face and she could tell me what to do when the crash of the door being thrown open carelessly brought me back. I jolted and pulled the thread a little more.

“Oh crap! You better let go. That’s gonna ruin your sweater.”

I gasped and stiffened as short Mindy, not a dessert name, from the other grade 8 class, grabbed my hands and tossed them aside. Like a yarn ninja, because I believe there are such things, she tied that little withered piece in a triple knot, pulled my sweater up over my head, flipped it inside out, tugged it back on over my shocked and rigid shoulders, rearranged the rows around the pull so you couldn’t see a thing and declared, “There. The yarn is shinier on this side anyway. Much better”.

I was about to say ‘thanks’ when she proceeded to rip my ponytail out and induce minor whiplash. My hair fell onto my shoulders like wet spaghetti pooling on a plate. “Just so your hair covers the tag until you get home to cut it off.”

Still in shock I say “My hair?”.

Waiting. Waiting, waiting. My polyps were shrinking.

“Your tag idiot.”

We both laughed.

Mindy doesn’t live near me so we don’t walk to school together. She’s not in my class so we don’t sit together. She only eats halal so we don’t trade lunches. She’s pretty sure Evangeline actually is a puffy sweet dessert somewhere in the world and she said I can have Amir. I don’t pace and giggle at lunch anymore but I do sit with Mindy and her other friends and we talk about stuff. The first time she came to my house and I introduced my dog to her she said “Eeek. Not a good name. I’ll call him Pony.” And so do I now. She doesn’t ask me about her but that’s ok. I know she’ll listen when I am ready.

When I was stuck with a Pisser and a pull, Mindy saw a Pony and the ocean. My Coral has reached out and regenerated again, with a new limestone covering that is utterly invincible. I didn’t need to replace the part of me that died, I needed to let a new side of me grow. When I get stressed out thinking about the future, it helps me to remember that I can survive anything; a broken heart, a lonely walk, and even a hole in the ocean.

Carol Sloan

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Coral And The Waves (a short story - tweens?)