The Ace of Spades

Chapter 24

Physically, home is every bit as unchanged as can be. The old scrap of carpet in the front door is in the same spot, with tiny grains of sand collecting around the edges as it does. There is still a single nose print of Toto's on the living room window because he was so enthralled in a thunderstorm once that he just had to get as close as possible. There's a vase of fake plum-coloured flowers on an end table in the living room that collects dust below the pedals until someone eventually takes the vacuum to the whole bouquet and sucks up what dust has collected.

On the contrary, home is not emotionally what it had been at the start of the summer. Home had once been a haven of predictability, Mea's safe place where nothing changed and she knew she was loved the most. Now, it seems the walls are blistered with secrets and there could be - there are - people outside her home who love her, too.

Mimi and Jojo absolutely do not speak for the whole week they are home. Jojo gets a job with her friend, Darla, doing some babysitting in Darla's home daycare business. Jojo, despite the rot between her and Mimi, seems like she's in her element. She even comes home twinkly-eyed one day and mentions Tom, who has eyes the colour of the Grand Canyon at night and a four-year old named Ryley.

Toto is his usual chipper self through all of this. He can now count to 100 even though it takes him a solid twenty-five minutes to do this. Mea takes it upon herself to read him a story every night, and they call into a small children's novel about a vampire bunny.

Mea's presence in school is only regarded by her teachers, who mark her attendance as present everyday. She supposes the teachers would mark her as present even if she was absent, as their eyes never seem to meet her own while scanning the classroom. The weight of loneliness weighs on Mea's chest again - a feeling Mea had thought she'd forgotten.

Mea is back to sweaters and capris o her first day back. She walks with her head down in the hallways and never volunteers an answer. She supposes the only difference is that though she longs for solitude, she doesn't long for silence like she once did.

Mea brings an old radio up to her bedroom and takes to staring into the distance, letting the melody of the songs swirl around her brain. Mea debates calling Victor after her first and second days of school but ultimately does not. Though Jojo will always have the reminder of her summer at Viv's with her, Mea knows she will not.

To fall asleep at night, Mea creates scenarios in her head of her and Victor. In these scenarios, they hike through the woods, Victor explains the change from coal-powered trains to diesel trains, Victor picks her a small bouquet of daisies, Mea jokingly eats some petals off one daisy.

Then - no, oh god no, that is horrible. Mea pretends she did not imagine herself doing that and instead of acting like a cow in a children's movie, she graciously accepts Victor's sweet gesture like a human.

Then onto the next scenario, Mea hears a song about strawberry wine on the radio and becomes inspired; her and Victor make strawberry wine together. They get a little tipsy off their homemade wine and, below the stars on a warm night, they kiss and Mea feels sure, so outrageously sure, that there are no secrets, no mysteries, and Victor isn't going to leave.

Mea lets a few tears spill from her eyes, soundlessly, in the dark of the night. She knows she's alone and she knows she has much to work on within herself. It's this that allows Mea to cry in her almost-asleep state. No one can hear her, no one can see her, and no one will know. Mea is allowed to feel things; thoughts are allowed to be in Mea's head and fuck, if it isn't frustrating that the thoughts all remind her that she is not who she thought she was over the summer but that's life. C'est la fucking vie.

***

Mea gets off the bus Friday afternoon, lost in her thoughts about the chemistry lesson she just endured (the image of a tomato on the pH scale is the only thing actually running through Mea's mind but it is on loop. A red, shiny tomato). To her surprise, Jojo is waiting at the end of her driveway.