Lovers: XOXO [the guidebook]

💙/North: The Forest Green Car

2018/03/29

I wasn't sure about sharing this as this guidebook's first "commentary piece" since it's something very personal to me. And no, I wasn't physically harmed to those of you concerned (and to those who know the significance of the title^^^). The incident left a lasting impression on me and has affected my outlook of men years after it happened. Maybe that was why I felt like I had to write this piece here. You'll be surprised by how much of my own life I've written into the characters and plot of Lovers Boarding School.

Giselle's story in "_siblings" was actually based on something I've experienced when I was twelve. While her story was an abridged version of my experience, they both share core tenets in their center: a young girl riding her bike, two unidentifiable men, and a forest green car.

At the time, I was living in a nice neighborhood in a shit city (if you're from Eastern Ontario you can tell which one I'm from from the numerous mentions of cars and colourful language in my writing). The neighborhood was a newly built suburb on the outskirts of the city and if you drove a few kilometers down from my home you'd be met with acres and acres of farmland and countryside. One of the things that my parents loved about this neighborhood, aside from the size of our house, was that it was very quiet. Dead quiet. Thinking about it now, I think they thought that our area was safe just because it was so peaceful.

As a twelve year old, I was a pretty active kid. I rode my bike whenever the bipolar Canadian weather wasn't acting like a bitch and I'd bike for hours within the confines of my tiny neighborhood alone. So what made this incident that much stranger to me was that it occurred when I wasn't biking by myself.

I don't know if it was some higher being that was looking over me that day or my dead Asian ancestors, but on the day the incident happened, my dad wanted to bike with my sister and I. Now, let me tell you now, my dad had never biked with me or my sister before or even after that day. He actually had to borrow my bike (I had to use my old one) because he didn't have his own.

After we prepped ourselves to ride, we left our house and biked around the neighborhood. I remember we went out in the middle of a beautiful summer day; the sky was clear, the sun was out, the temperature was just right. I split from my dad and my sister after we rode our bikes together for a while and decided to ride my bike around a Catholic school that was a stone's throw away from my house.

I rode around the parking lot of the school, which was empty because school was closed for summer vacation, and wasn't aware of my surroundings until I noticed a forest green car enter the parking lot from behind me. It wasn't a new car--it looked like the same model of a car that you'd find in Dukes of Hazard--but I can't say it wasn't old either. Me being a twelve year-old dumbass assumed the car belonged to a teacher of the school and left the parking lot to bike around the back of the school.

Now here was when things got scary.

As I was making circles around the playground area, I noticed that the forest green car was still lurking inside the empty parking lot like it was trying to find a space in a crammed lot. I didn't think too much of it because I was good at minding my own business. But then things took a turn for the worse when the car started to lurch out of the parking lot and into the playground area where I was at. Towards me.

My brain didn't even make up excuses as to why the car was entering an obviously non-drivable space and I deadass bolted out of the playground area and biked away from the car. I didn't go too far though; I stopped on a sidewalk in front of the school and stayed there for some reason.

I remember thinking to myself at the time, "Am I seeing things?", "Am I going crazy?", "Am I being followed?" One of those questions got answered when I saw the car creep into the front of the school and stop after it "noticed" me.

I remember so clearly hearing the hum of the car's engine from where I was and the two shadowy figures sitting in the car and feeling their fucking eyes on me.

I couldn't say I was frightened at the time. To be honest, I was more shocked than scared. All my life I heard stories about young kids like me getting kidnapped and murdered in the news and in documentaries. And all the while as I heard and watched those things I thought, in the safe comfort of my school and home: "I guess it happens to kids like me, but it won't actually happen to me."

What a rude awakening.

I don't know if it was the shock or the fear that was freezing me to the spot, but I was staring into the dashboard of the car wondering why I couldn't see their faces. I could tell that they were men from how tall they looked in the car and, I don't know, how their heads were shaped. Like, I could see that their hair was cropped and not long or in a pony tail like a woman's would.

After a while the car started edging its way towards me until, like godsend, my dad conveniently popped by my side on my bike, and asked me what was wrong.

The forest green car--I swear to GOD-- zoomed right out of the lot and away from the school once they saw my dad. They even left visible SKID MARKS on the asphalt as they went. And since my neighborhood was quiet, hearing the car skirr away like that was deafening.

I asked my dad if he'd saw what I'd saw (he said he didn't see anything, but I think he wanted to keep me happily ignorant) and we continued riding our bikes for five more minutes until we decided to call it quits.

I did go back the next day to see if the skid marks were there and they, unfortunately, were.

To this day, I still wonder if that forest green car was real or a figment of my over reactive twelve year-old imagination. I heard of a girl getting raped in the town next to my suburb two months later, but I didn't look into it further because I was twelve and scared out of my wits. Now as I write about it, I've realized I've never seen a car of that make and colour any other time in my short twentysomething years on this Earth.

I sometimes wonder if we're all just brainy primates at the mercy of time and entropy, but it's incidents like this that make me question that. All I know is, if I ever see a car like that again, you know I'd bike up to the closest kid closest to me--with 911 on motherfucking speed dial--and ask them if they were "okay".