I Aint worth a dollar

October snows embittered my path from home to school, biting at my uncovered ears with an unforgiving chill. Just a month earlier, I had received my first MP3 player for my birthday, and its vibrations filled the hollow of my heart as I journeyed through the cold. I wasn't part of any popular clique, but I had my small group of misfits, miscreants, and deviants to call my own. We were awkward, we were nerdy, and we were touchy-feely in that clumsy way puberty drives you to be. But more than anything, we all shared an itch for rock and roll.

It was an age of exploration and expansion. With each passing day, our understanding of the world grew, and with it came a hunger for more. We sailed on seas of silicon, delving into the secrets of the past and present, and passed through the fibreoptic miasma of mass communication that we couldn't possibly understand. Unfettered, unwatched, and unsupervised, we traversed the world's web from our chairs. In a land of bitter cold and an industrial-scale wasteland, our hearts were lost to the beauty of the world. The vibrations of resonance we felt often explored the meaning of the meaningless, but in that void, we found communion. On this day, between classes, I shared my headphones with Cathy—one bud in my ear, one in hers, our hands firmly in the back pocket of each other's jeans as the rock of our ages penetrated the membranes of our fragile minds.

Fleeting was the moment, and desperate the plea to hold onto it. Soon the bells rang, and we returned to class, hormones raging through our veins like Dave Grohl hammering drums in my hippocampus. Savage and haunting, the beat played while the world moved around us—chemistry, English, maths—everything a pointless blur through eyes that never truly opened. All I wanted was something good to die for, to make it beautiful to live. Lunch arrived with a sense of belated haste—time had stretched and distorted through the morning's classes, making it feel like an eternity until lunch, yet when it finally came, it rushed in as if no time had passed at all. The student body scattered like cockroaches in new light. The volleyball team hung out in the gymnasium, the soccer kids kicked a yellow ball through the fields of white and sorrow that bordered our prison, and most gathered in the common room to eat lunch, pass notes, and feel each other up.

Too afraid to sit within the halls of normalcy, I found my way to one of the dark under crofts of the school, a mudroom on the far side where few dared venture. Cathy was already there, nibbling on a cereal bar in small, chipmunk-like bites, lying on the floor to watch the heavens look down at us with disapproval. Ruby lay across her, using her stomach as a pillow, flopping a bit of baloney out of her mouth like a lizard's tongue, one hand over her head and under Cathy's sweater in quiet, jealous admiration of her rate of growth. Christopher was across from them, peeling an orange with endless, steady consistency, making sure every bit of peel came off together in perfect symmetry. Can you picture it in your head?"

Doorways spilled out their sombre light, and we prepared ourselves, as precious seconds gave way to stolen minutes. Our most sacred ritual, our holy rite—a communion of plastic and perils. Each of us carried relics of pilfered sound, osmosed from the endless breast of LimeWire's eternal light. The milk of the gods dripped from the aether, here to save us from the vanilla of tasteless meat. Falling in and out of love, something so sweet to throw away, I brought forth my offering. Plugging my MP3 player into the flesh-pink, battery-powered speaker from Chris's backpack, a behemoth of D-cell powered ecstasy, it crackled to life with the raw, electric force of our chosen anthem as I hit play on my latest find. Our ears—nay, our very souls—were penetrated by the 128 bits of technology's greatest achievement. Go with the Flow spurted into the air, ageless and timeless, a gift to those outside the frame from Queens of the Stone Age.

We listened to it four, maybe five times in a row, rocking out like four spastics who forgot their pills. Ruby's dark brown mop of hair fell nearly to her fragile knees before being flung heavenward. Her grey sweater, nine sizes too large, fit like a dress, giving her the ephemeral look of a timepiece given to chaos. Chris swayed back and forth in a transcendent rhythm, like a bear scratching its back, and I tried not to lose myself in the flow of Cathy's curves. For an eternal second of the briefest of times, life flowed through our veins, and we continued in our reverence for rock and roll. Soon, we grooved to Bazaar, Black Dog, All Along the Watchtower. We put the speaker in a lunch bag, facing the wall to amplify its tin-like glory so its volume might reach the height of our adulation. Don't say it doesn't matter!

Time can transcend but never truly stop, and the bell tolls for thee, like a carrion call dragging us from nirvana's frosty peak back to Alberta's frosty but cheek. We hastened across campus, hounds to a hare. Social studies—perhaps prison's dreariest drip—rattled pointlessly in my ears, scraping at the inside of my eyes as a flood of hormonal terror made it impossible to focus. I could have scratched my own skin off to escape the tedium of the class, and on all the walls, shadows played at twilight's soul. Nearly a millennium passed that afternoon before the bell finally rang, releasing us from our toil. After the reign of six kings, we moved on to shop.

Building wicked instruments of speed from balsa wood and compressed CO2, I found time to reflect with Christopher on the lyrics, the themes, the feel. The song seemed to reflect the nature of the world through our pubescent eyes—we raged against the machine of our captors in a desperate plea to go with the flow, like little soldiers in a row

With the end of class, the hourglass of its prison finally shattered, and the day could truly begin. I shuffled awkwardly into the gymnasium, headphones in my ears, fueling the fire of frustration and boredom with the flames of rage. The Hetfieldian rhythm still coursed through my veins long after I changed into my wrestling uniform. We warmed up in skin-tight spandex, circling and stretching around the gym as the coach droned on—his voice the best impression of Charlie Brown's teacher, though pitched at an octave that verged on abuse.

Soon, we found ourselves in one-on-one drills, and I skulked across from Christopher. We practised our takedowns—I was faster, but he was stronger. My throws amazed, but his defence was as solid as the wrought iron bars that covered the windows of our unfair academy. We battled to a stalemate of meat, spandex, and sweat. A mass of it was over my head—something I said—echoed in my mind. After a bath of towels and body spray, we trekked uphill through torrents of snow and sorrow, Sum 41 blasting in our ears, towards the mall—a bastion of light in the dark of yesterday

Wondering through the gates of Elysium like souls escaped Charon's icy grasp, the Styx of school far behind us. Beyond the veil of Paradisa, I am in too deep already. The warm yellow lights illuminate the brown, dirty bricks, awash with faceless noise. We head to the food court to spill our pittance on a feast of two Teen Burgers, milkshakes, and fries. It's true that Arthur and Wright provides. Once we have devoured our feelings, we begin our desperate search—every discarded quarter and despondent dime might lead to a break from boredom's toil.

In no time at all, our coppers overflow with bounty—nearly four dollars between the two of us. We head to the arcade next to the movie theatre, beset on both sides by posters of films we couldn't afford to see, flanked by The Matrix Revolution and Scary Movie 3. The blue-green glow of the digital disco was bested only by Pamela Anderson's, uh, blouse. Can you picture it in your head?

Soon, our bounty pays out in tokens, and a battle of timeless Titans unfolds on the air hockey table, the arena vibrating to Bon Scott's voice commanding us to do dirty deeds for the cheapest of prices. Each strike, each push of the puck, pulsed with the strife of competition

Eight seconds of glory passed in an hour, and we soon found our treasury as barren as our hopes for tomorrow. We travelled thick as thieves, original pranksters at heart, through the vascularity of our local beast of commerce. Somewhere near the spleen, we found ourselves browsing the posters and naughty t-shirts of Spencer's Gifts. The store, filled with prank and folly, was overseen by a lurking figure whose eyes were the shade of scarlet in the sun. Dressed in a black t-shirt, black pants, with spikes on his belt and a chain hanging from his waist, I wasn't sure if he was aware of our presence or if his movements were based purely on motion, like some kind of tyrannosaur.

From the back, behind the bead curtains, came the echo of a familiar cackle. We moved like raptors in a sea of grass to investigate. Pulling back the curtains, we lay still as she willed her glance. Ruby and Kathy stood there, beat-red smiles on their faces as their fingertips caressed the largest, blackest phallus on display. They giggled like—well, exactly what they are.

With our eyes turned to our sneakers and cheeks as red as the clerk's eyes, we shuffled out of the store, our party engorged in size as we flowed back into the tempest of the mall. Our destination, a culmination of grace, near the very bowels of consumerism we trod—next to the soulless pits of Zellers and beyond the bougie facade of The Bay. An oasis: CD Plus! We toured this Librium of majesty for the milk of rock and roll, a purity for the penniless. Looking at album covers and memorising as many names as we could, for soon the beacons would light and beckon us home to sail the pale lime-green seas of Anne Bonnet's progeny. What a saga—its songs for the deaf!"