New Horizons



  Contents

  Copyright

  Disclaimer

  Dedication

  Title

  Prologue: Letter

  1. All Body, No Brains

  2. Facility For Troubled Youth

  3. Cabin 519

  4. This Is How I Die

  5. Skin and Bones

  6. Hey Valerie

  7. New Horizons

  8. Square Knots and Bowlines

  9. Dandelions

  10. The Stray

  11. Half Naked

  12. Coward

  13. Jenny Shoulders

  14. Kenzie

  15. My Interpretation

  16. The Taken Firefly

  17. Square One

  18. Jordan and I

  19. Bright Pink

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright © 2016 by Dan Carr

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Canada

  First Publishing, 2016

  ISBN: 978-0-9947881-0-8 

  Disclaimer:

  This is a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Dedication

  For all the Stones of the group.

  Believe what you want.

  --NEW HORIZONS--

  Letter

  Hey Val,

  I barely recognized you with your hair and everything. You look pretty different. I don’t know if you remember me, but we both came here as kids when it was Camp Hedgewood and things were a lot different. I was the kid that sat down next to you the night when we were both crying. It was our first time away from home, and we just missed our mums.

  I know you think you’re cruel and mean now, and I’m sure you have been at certain times in your life, but when I look at you, I vaguely remember that scared, tadpole of a kid, and I wonder how you managed to change.

  It’s nice to see a familiar face at least. Maybe while we are both trapped here in this stage of our life, we’ll finally get to know each other this time. I’d really like that at least.

  I’m sure you’re here under different circumstances than my own, but even so, it’s still nice to know that someone who was just as scared as me, somehow, got over it.

 

  Thank you for that, Val. You’re not entirely bad,

  - Tracy McPherson

  1: ALL BODY, NO BRAINS

  I wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary to happen to me because I was already used to how things were. But it seemed like Dad was done leaving pamphlets about behaviour modification classes for teenagers carelessly thrown around the house. There were only so many threats that could get down on paper before they became meaningless, and Dad’s needed roots in more terrifying ways.

  Finally, he had figured out what to do with me.

  There was no telling what exactly I had done to set him off. It had to be the no job thing. Or maybe it was embarrassing to have a daughter without a high school diploma. That wasn’t exactly something I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs either. Whatever my issues were, they’d finally made Dad look for a solution.

  It was mid-afternoon, and like most days, it was when I napped with my iPod on the highest volume it would go. In my dream I was gliding from one building to the next, and the building I was coming from was slightly higher than the one I was going to. The only way I was every able to fly was when I was seemingly falling, and when I missed the building, Dad’s solution to my problems stormed into my bedroom--

  I woke up when my blankets were pulled from me. There were two large men standing in my room. I had no idea what was going on, and I was so startled that I didn’t believe it was happening.

  There were a lot of things I regretted right then. Mostly what I had on. I was wearing boxer shorts, a sports bra and earphones. I was listening to a country music song and I wasn’t even that much of a country music fan. My phone was plugged into the wall, charging, and I noticed the screen light up as the men moved toward me.

  In the real world people were finished having lunch and onto their next thing. Sunday chores might have been on the to-do list, or beginning to make supper. My new reality was a bearded dude and a ginger man trying to take me away.

  “HELP!” I screamed.

  The bearded man pulled me off the bed by my leg. My butt hit the hardwood floor, and it felt like my tailbone had shattered. I tried kicking my legs to make it more difficult for him to drag me out of the room, but I was a little, 17-year-old girl that had nothing on two, huge men.

  The last thing I saw before a bag was thrown over my head was the ginger man, and I saw that he was missing a front tooth. After that, it was darkness. The bag felt like a potato sack and smelled like mildew. Flecks of dirt got in my eyes, and I wished I had contacts in to protect my eyes like a shield. But I wasn’t a contacts person in any sense of the word. I was proud to have good eyes and no friends.

  “What are you doing with me?”

  “You’re going away.”

  Right then, for whatever reason, the dramatic scenario finally clicked. I felt stupid for not seeing it sooner.

  There were stories circulating about it before I stopped going to classes. I had disappeared from school altogether only a few months before I was supposed to graduate, and then I read about it from the articles Dad cut out of the paper, and from the websites he frequently visited. They were always some sort of wilderness boot camp, or a version of that kind of thing, that broke bad kids down and tired them into their senses. At school everyone whispered about so-and-so’s experience, and what went down with what’s-his-face.

  “They take you. They treat you. They transform you,” Lucy had said. Her hair was wide, and seemed to grow sideways from her skull. Or maybe she just had a big head. When she said it that day, she had a thick wad of gum in her mouth, and was texting with one hand. “My cousin went there. She’s like a brand new person. I don’t even know her anymore.”

  “She was in jail too, so I don’t know what you’re getting at,” I’d said.

  “Yeah, and she’s forever changed because of it.”

  It was all the same scenario. Camps and wilderness trips that took teenagers out of their comfort zones, taught them how to behave, and gave them the tools to do well on their own. But it wasn’t for any normal teenager. It was for teenagers who were about to go off the edge—-

  I went limp.

  The men dragged me out of my room and down the hall by my arms. My legs hit every step on the stairs, but I didn’t dare make a sound. I knew exactly what was going on, and I bet the two men had never dealt with such a cooperative teenager in the past. Maybe they even thought they had the wrong house.

  I didn’t hear Dad come out from whatever room he was hiding in. He had to be somewhere listening for an apology for being a bad daughter, or for having a brain that didn’t see things like he did—that I could change.

  The same thing happened to Jessica Richards when she was 17-years-old and being all crazy. She was your typical delinquent and all it took was a couple weeks and boom—they sucked the crazy out of her and her soul went with it. So since I knew what was going on right then, and what the men were there for, I didn’t make a scene like I’m sure they were used to with their other cases.

  Maybe I was a bad kid. But I was also slowly turning to stone.

  There was no one in Basinview to save me. The small town was full of basic, simple families—a mum cooking supper, and a dad working down at the dockyard. It was all the same kind of thing. There
were no jobs, and it was a hard fight for a piece of something small. That wasn’t my kind of a life to look forward to out in the sticks. It was hard knowing if you wanted to become even half of what you hoped for, you had to get out and go away. My attitude wasn’t one that matched someone who was motivated to go places in life. Dad’s cure was shipping me off to get fixed, and his warnings of doing so were finally playing out before me. I wondered how much his wallet was paying for it.

  The two men put me into a car and duct-taped my wrists together in front of me. The tape pulled at the hair on my arms, and I dreaded when it would have to come off. But my biggest thought as I was being taken away was of Jordan. We were already broken up, but he was going to think I died if I wasn’t texting him back. He was still someone I talked with to hear things from around the area, and if I kept it up, I was probably going to be his girlfriend again. That was scary to think about.

  Jordan was full of little issues too. He had never had two parents at once so he knew even more than I did what it was like to have a mum in one house and a dad in another. Plus, Jordan had been there for me that one night when things went stupid, and he visited me in the emergency room. That was probably what scared Dad into shipping me off.

  The night I ended up in the ER was the most revealing moment of my life. Revealing, not because I had been drinking and Dad found out, but revealing because Dad made a public scene about it to try and shock me—

  And I‘d laughed it off.

  I didn’t know I was even going to the hospital until I woke up there. Dad was in front of me and he started yelling the moment my eyelids peeled open. I was hooked up to an IV and I puked into a plastic oval. My head was killing me and it had a lot to do with what he was telling me.

  “I am so disappointed in you,” he’d yelled.

  “I wasn’t going to do anything.”

  “You don’t even know how serious this is. I don’t understand you. How can someone so smart be so stupid?”

  I wasn’t scared of him. I was just concerned with other people hearing him through the curtained room—what they were thinking, and what they were assuming. I was in a pretend, homemade space that faked a sense of privacy. But privacy wasn’t just about not being seen—it was also about not being heard.

  “You’re absolutely crazy, Valerie.”

  “Maybe,” I had said. “But you’re the one who is screaming at a crazy person.”

  After that night I knew Dad was going to do something different. I just didn’t know what. I noticed that he stopped commenting about me moping around in my pyjamas, and he didn’t ask where I was headed when I’d leave the house. Maybe he had been busy planning for someone else to figure me out all along.

  “Where are we going?”

  The two men ignored me, and it was silent for most of the drive.

  “Are we headed out of the province?” That was what happened to Adam Slade. They sent him away for a six week stint. Like rehab, but worse. He came home and joined the Air force after because they’d gotten in his head and made him figure stuff out.

  Neither of the men had an interest in answering me. It became apparent that I was already on day one of a program. I had seen many pamphlets with smiling girls gazing up at the sky. I imagined I was headed to Spring Academy, the military program held at the base in the valley. Push-ups and sweat were most likely in my future.

  It was disorienting having a bag over my head. I tried to imagine where the car was headed and think about what curves of the road were where, and what turns were what, but after a while, it made no difference in my head.

  I felt lost.

  My biggest fear was missing the rest of my summer, and since that was my biggest fear at that moment, there might have been an argument somewhere that I was going exactly where I needed to be. I didn’t have my priorities straight and I wasn’t looking deep enough into the future.

  I fell asleep because I was exhausted from thinking about all the reasons why I was going wherever I was going. And even though I closed my eyes and disappeared into my dreams, I couldn’t get away from the disastrous re-runs of my life in Basinview.

  1 week earlier

  It was like we hadn’t broken up and it was just a typical night at the park. Jordan brought the beer, I came high as a kite, and neither of us were getting along. But we were having fun. Kind of.

  "Jesus Val, you're done."

  I laughed because it was true. I didn’t know what was so funny exactly, but I didn’t want to think too much about it in case I realized what he was saying. All that mattered was the moment in front of me. My hair felt like silk when it touched my cheeks, and I loved that there was a rasp in my voice when I talked. Everything was okay, and I didn’t let things go beyond that.

  I stood up onto the picnic table and twirled around like everyone was staring at me. It felt good to be alive right then, and that wasn’t a normal feeling for me to have. Meanwhile, Jordan was having a hard time rolling a joint in the dark. I liked that he was getting mad over something so stupid.

  "I should have brought a flashlight," he said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  I pulled out my lighter to offer it to him. It fell from my hands and landed somewhere in the grass below the picnic table. I jumped down and landed on my hands and knees. I couldn't even stand up and it was like the ground was pulling me down.

  "Do you mind if we make a quick stop at the corner store? I know my buddy is hanging around there tonight. I want to get some stuff from him.”

  "No way, I hate going around there. Those people are messed up.” I fell back onto the cool grass and stared up at the sky. It was a great, dark night for the stars, and I was happy to be looking up at them. It had to suck to be a star. They didn’t get to look up at anything.

  “And what are you compared to them?” he asked.

  “Not messed up.” I smiled.

  “Yeah right. You’re so far gone that you’re past denial and nearly into acceptance. That’s why nothing bothers you.”

  "Absolutely everything bothers me, and that’s probably why I don’t take offence to anything anymore. There’s no point and that’s fine."

  Jordan bent down and looked at me.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked.

  “You could be really pretty if you wanted to be.” He kissed my lips, and his teeth scraped against mine.

  I pulled away because I wasn’t expecting him to do that. The kiss felt ugly and I imagined it looked the same way it felt—uncomfortable and Forced.

  “You know, last night before you went to the ER was a one time thing. Don’t be afraid of something like that happening again. It was a fluke,” he said. “You’re still you.”

  “No, flukes don’t involve holding a gun to your head.” It hurt to even remember, let alone admit out loud. But I had done it. I had held a loaded gun to my head, just to see what it was like. It was scary when it was happening, and I didn’t want to think about it too much in case I started reliving it again.

  “You were drunk. You’re fine, and your dad should be thankful you didn’t point the gun at anyone else or that you weren’t charged with anything. It was just yourself that you could’ve hurt, that’s all.”

  “Yeah. That’s nuts.”

  Jordan was looking at me as if he was waiting for me to say that it was funny, exciting, and fun to be wild like that. But I didn’t feel that way. I didn’t really feel much of anything. I was in a strange limbo between being like him, or being like the right kind of person.

  “I just…I don’t want to be like that anymore. I don’t want to be like that at all, actually.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to be a mess.”

  “Do you think I’m a mess?”

  “Yeah.” I shrugged, and the grass under my bare shoulders tickled my skin.

  “Then why are we friends?”

  “I don’t really think we really are. You’re just someone to be around until I figure out what I
’m going to do with myself. I feel like I’m waking up from something. I can’t believe I’ve nearly spent the whole summer doing nothing. I could have gotten my GED over the last couple months, but I didn’t. I don’t know what I’ve been doing. It’s all been a dream, and now I need to start figuring myself out. That’s scary to even think about. Everyone is getting ready to go away and do things with their lives, and I’m still stuck.”

  I didn't see him leave, probably because I wasn't paying any attention to him. I felt too content to move, and it didn’t occur to me that I looked stupid either. It felt normal to lie in a public place, in the middle of nowhere, late at night. I didn’t have a job to go to in the morning and I wasn’t in summer school or anything like it. There was nothing to do but wait and enjoy the moment.

  The stars in the sky were bigger than ever, and they seemed to spin around and around. If you squinted they got even brighter. I loved that they did that. I tried to trace the dark clouds with my index finger, but the clouds were shy and they kept running from me.

  "Stupid clouds," I whispered. "It's just me." I tried to stand up to get a better look at them. The world shook when I tried to get up and I fell back onto my knees. I still felt the head rush, and I gripped the grass tightly so I wouldn't fall onto my face.

  I knew I had overdone it. I stared up at the sky and immediately wanted to blame someone for my problems. Why was I such a mess? There had to be someone somewhere that I could yell at.

  “FUCK YOU!” I screamed at the sky. It just made sense right then to say that. It was wrong, and it felt good. “THERE’S NOTHING UP THERE I KNOW IT! YOU’RE NOT TRICKING ME!”

  I laid like that for a while and waited for the stars reaction. My eyelids felt heavy, and just when I was about to close them, someone peered down at me and waved their hand in front of my face.

  “You sure you’re okay, Val?” It was Jordan. He was back. “Eh, Val?”

  “I never said I was okay.”

  “Then what are you doing?” He stared down at me.

  “I’m lying out.”

  “I see that. But it’s late. I thought you were headed home.”

  “I haven’t kissed you in while and you just did it like it wasn’t a big deal and it kind of was.” I looked at him, and I couldn’t figure out why I was even there with him. I didn’t know a lot of things right then. “You’re not getting my clothes off. You’re the reason I wear my belt tighter than I need to. I just can’t believe I ever let myself date someone like you.”

  “Come on, let’s leave the park.”

  “I don’t even like anything about you anymore. And I just realized it. I’m different than you, and I’m different than a lot of people we hang out with. I don’t like you, and I don’t really like myself either. I’m just so bored all the time though, and lately I do things just to do them.” I stared at the sky behind him. It was so dark up there. “I feel stupid now…for everything.”

  “I’m going to take you home.” He picked me up into his arms and cradled me against his chest. “You’re just tired.”

  I wondered if he noticed the changes in me over the last couple months. That I looked different. What did he think about the haircut I gave myself, or the lack of makeup on my skin? I had acne I didn’t normally have. I had permanent dark circles. I wasn’t sleeping.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I told you. I’m just taking you home right now,” he said.

  "I've out done it tonight." I kicked my legs around, and tried to squirm out of his arms.

  "You’ll be okay. You’re just not thinking clearly right now."

  I laughed. My laugh told people that I didn’t care about anything. It had a mocking tone that made everyone regret hearing it.

  “Stop it, Val. Just be quiet.”

  "I don’t really want to live anymore,” I whispered. “I don’t want to do anything or think about anything or worry about what I’m going to do. I hate worrying about that stuff. It’s absolutely pointless, and I imagine heaven to be somewhere that you don’t have to have a brain.” I laid my head on his shoulder.

  “You don’t want to die, Val. Nobody does. You just want a change in scenery. A different life. To get away from how things are.”

  “You’re right. I don’t want to die. But I would love to disappear like that. I would like to disappear and just be in somewhere where nobody knows who I am—even just for a bit. Then maybe I could sort things out, find myself, and be free.”

  Present

  I woke up to radio hits. I mumbled the words to myself, and sang the parts I knew a lot louder. The summer songs were my favourite when I was in the backyard, lying out and staring at the night sky. The darkness was when I started thinking about things the most. Like my plans. How I didn’t exactly have any, and how depressing it was that I was okay with that, and how it wasn’t okay to be okay with that. So I wasn’t okay with it. And that was even more depressing.

  I started to breathe heavy.

  There was an article I had read online written by a depressed girl about how she had tried to kill herself by holding her breath. When I had read it I thought it was stupid and desperate. There had to be better ways to kill yourself. Like jumping from a crazy height, or hanging yourself. The only reason I liked the idea of suicide was how it made other people think about things in a different context—that there was a secret, messed up life out there that only certain people seemed to notice.

  I held my breath.

  The plan was to prove that girl who wrote the article wrong. I knew it wasn’t a thing to kill yourself by holding your breath, but I wanted to try it in case it actually was a thing. The perfect time to try and kill yourself by holding your breath was always when you wanted to stop living.

  I lasted twenty seconds before I took a breath. I wasn’t dedicated enough, I decided. Suicide required dedication that couldn’t be taken back.

  In the background, Avril Lavigne was singing something catchy on the radio and one of the men was humming along to it. For a second, it made me forget about being upset and trying to kill myself. And then the bag was pulled from my head—

  “Welcome back,” the ginger man said.

  “Thanks for having me.” I stared at the time on the radio. It had been two hours since we left my house. It was nice to breathe fresh air and look around. The sun was just starting to go down, and the clouds were all different colours. I forgot that clouds could be more than just grey.

  The road turned from pavement to dirt after another hour. We stayed on it for a bit until the car came to even rougher road. It felt like pothole after pothole, and it was hard to stay in my seat. They hadn’t put a seatbelt on me. If we were in a car accident, I would be the first to go through the windshield.

  “We’re getting close,” the bearded man said. He was still humming that Avril Lavigne tune even though it was long off the radio. His ginger passenger was eating a burrito.

  Tall pine trees lined each side of the road. They didn't have an ending and seemed to tower into the bright, blue sky. They were a thing of beauty, something tourists probably took pictures in front of.

  We were in Sacton.

  I was still in my home province. I could practically see my town of Basinview from there. Dad didn't send me across the universe like he always threatened with those pamphlets. I could have smiled.

  “This isn’t so bad,” I said. I wasn’t expecting any kind of answer. I just wanted the universe to know that I was optimistic. That I wasn’t scared.

  The car rounded a corner. It felt familiar. I was going down a road I hadn’t been down in a while. I recognized the curves, and the deep ditches, and the old sign up in a tree that banned hunting in the area.

  But then it came to me.

  Straight through the windshield, in the distance, my eyes saw an old wooden sign from years ago. One that my parents had driven under in their van every summer when I was a kid. But there was no excitement anymore. The sign had been updated, and a new
, shiny, metal sign was bolted across the old, wooden boards. The place I never thought I’d see again was right outside the car, and whether I liked it or not, I was back.