#i used to smoke a joint on my roof on sunday morning when the sky was blue and everything looked cold somehow but my lungs were warm

[eccedeus]

I'm feeling a sort of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind house on the beach scene, Thinking of a Place by The War on Drugs, nutmeg cinnamon and warm apple, hot chocolate, bright blue and white cast mornings winter coming on...

[perscinnamon]

BONSAI!

    1. Everett

Sometimes, it's a simple answer found in your own home.

1999; a year of restless anticipation and empty grocery stores, a considerable population of gym rats and game shows and the bitter smell of black coffee through the suburbs of Everett, Washington.

The world was coming to an end as we knew it according to David Eddy and McGraw-Hill which, to Mark, seemed fucking ridiculous. But, what did he know? He was too busy trying to keep his joint together, bits of weed falling between his shaking fingers. He had woken up at exactly six-thirty for the past month and a half so he could clamber his way to the upstairs bathroom, the only one in his house with a window, to smoke before school. He knew his parents slept in unless it was Sunday. He also knew that they didn't know the difference between the smell of incense and the smell of weed.

When he was finally able to assemble his joint, sticking his tongue out a bit to lick both sides and stick them together, he sighed in relief.

He grabbed his lighter off of the counter and put the toilet seat down, climbing up on top of it to unlock the window and push it open.

Mark leaned each elbow on either side of the windowsill, lighting his joint and taking a deep inhale. He watched the cloud of smoke as it left his mouth.

He liked this feeling; the cold fall breeze nipping at his skin as his heart fluttered in his chest and his head felt light, the high settling in quickly.

The sun was just starting to rise. Of course, Mark couldn't actually see this since he was facing the West, but he watched with sleep in his eyes as the sky slowly lit up, cascading the neighboring houses in a blurry coat of morning sun.

Yeah, he liked this. He liked this a lot.

That is, until the sharp sound of a car horn in his driveway jolted him from his weed-induced reverie.

"Ah— Ow, what the fuck..." Mark groaned in pain, holding his head where he had hit it on the top of the windowsill.

He leaned over as far as he could, looking past his roof to find exactly who he'd expected.

Johnathan Suh, a lanky 22-year-old sitting in a bright red 1987 Corvette Convertible was grinning smugly up at Mark, his long arm swung over the passenger-side headrest. Mark had known Johnathan for as long as he could remember, the Suh family were regulars at their church.

"What do you want?" Mark croaked from his bathroom window, joint still in his right hand.

"What do you think? I'm driving you to school!" Johnathan yelled back, not bothering to consider the fact that it was 6AM in a sleeping neighborhood.

"Why?" Mark said, taking a hit from his joint.

"Because your parents don't trust you after last weekend. They trust me, so hurry or I'm leaving." Johnny said with an impatient hand gesture.

Mark exhaled dramatically, flicking the stub of his joint off the roof and hopping down from the toilet seat. He glanced at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and ran a hand through his messy hair, his cross pendant flashing around his neck as it caught the dim bathroom lights.

He was clad in a pair of navy blue boxers that hung at his hip bones as he made his way to his room, pushing the door open and reaching for his dresser drawer. He managed to throw on a pair of black trousers and his wool uniform sweater, a pair of mismatched socks on both feet as he took two steps at a time down the carpeted stairs. He grabbed the pair of P.F. Flyer's he kept by the welcome mat and his black Jansport backpack, making sure not to slam the door behind him as he padded to Johnathan's car.

"Took you long enough." Johnathan said, wearing that same grin he always seemed to have plastered on his face. Mark shook his head with a soundless chuckle, hopping over the passenger door and throwing his bag in the backseat.

"Buckle up, kiddo. I don't want another ticket under my belt. I got pulled over last week because one of my taillights were out. One!" Johnathan exclaimed with frustration, still grinning, as he pulled out of Mark's driveway and cruised down the street.

"I mean... That's still illegal." Mark said, his voice still relatively hoarse with sleep as he pulled on his shoes.

Johnathan's car was definitely a hand-me-down, given to him by his uncle with a rearview mirror missing and three flat tires. He managed to clean it up decently enough but it never seemed to be the kind of car he could see Johnny in. Mark could see him in some 1970s Shaggin' Wagon. Or an Achieva.

"Yeah, but, like, the car is ol— Wait, you're one to talk about legality!" Johnny said as he slowed at a stop sign, throwing a quick peace sign up at the Nissan Quest passing us.

"It was one time, Johnny." Mark said with a frown. Here we go again...

Johnathan had been grilling Mark incessantly for his recent drunken fiasco the previous Saturday since their parents spoke about it at church Sunday morning.

"Dude, yeah, two days ago. How did you even manage to get ahold of a bottle of wine near a Jewish holiday? They buy that shit up every Shabbat." Johnny said with a chuckle, pulling on to 41st St. past the cemetery.

"I got it from Paul's. I managed to get out of there before he opened up a can on Jacob's brother. That's why I was driving so fast, I wasn't even that drunk!" Mark explained hastily, looking out at the passing headstones. Some were in the shapes of crosses or angels or hearts. It would suck to be buried in Everett, Mark thought as they drove by in a blur.

"If you pull some shit like that you're in for it, Markie-boy. Your dad doesn't play around. I'm actually surprised he didn't ground you." Johnny said calmly, turning right on to Rucker Ave, past the Safeway Fuel Station.

Mark shrugged, bored of the conversation topic as he rested his chin in his palm. He hated when Johnny ruined his high like this, especially when he talked about his dad.

He loved Johnny like a brother and for a Tacotime employee that carved wood into spoons and smoked Nutmeg in his free time, he was a pretty cool guy.

He could also be totally overbearing.

As they pulled into the roundabout at the front of Mark's school, he faced Johnny with ruffled hair and a pink nose.

"Could you pick up a gram or two for me later? I'm gonna be at Hyuck's."

Johnny hesitated for a moment, rubbing his forehead with a sigh.

"Fine, now get out of my car." Johnny said with a playful shove to Mark's shoulder.

Mark grinned winningly before getting out and grabbing his backpack, turning around to say one last thing.

"Pick me up at two."

"Three."

"Two-thirty?"

"Whatever, go to class."

Mark chuckled, walking towards the school with his untied P.F Flyer's, his laces swinging around his feet angrily as he shoved both hands in the pockets of his trousers.

He didn't mind this place. For a stuffy private catholic school covered in brick and vine, it wasn't too bad.

It was the kids that were the worst.

He liked a few of the student's at St. Pius School. He liked his friends and, although he didn't talk to the girls too much, he definitely liked looking at them.

As he made his way up the front steps, he caught sight of a Bully Piston bike racing by him. He watched it screech to a halt in front of the bike-racks.

"Hey, Hyuck!" Mark called from the top of the stairs.

Hyuck turned around as he was locking up his bike, a grin on his face as he flashed a peace sign, rushing up to Mark and shoulder-checking him.

Mark stumbled back with a laugh and shoved Hyuck with his elbow as they made their way through the double-doors.

"How've you been, bud? Heard you knocked over the Bailey's mailbox last weekend."

Mark grunted, rolling his eyes.

"Can people stop bringing that up? It's been, like, almost a week."

"I haven't been here to press you about it. Also it's Monday." Hyuck said nonchalantly, stretching his arms over his head as he nodded to a giggling group of girls to their right.

"Where've you been, anyways?"

"Out."

"Out where?" Mark asked again as they approached his locker. He rotated the lock carefully, silently mouthing his combination numbers.

"My dad's." Hyuck said, leaning his shoulder up against the locker next to Mark's.

Mark frowned. He knew about Hyuck's situation with his parent's recent divorce but didn't know it would resort to him being taken away for an entire weekend.

"That's dumb."

"I know." Hyuck said, ruffling his dark curls with his hand as he watched the students around them waste time before they had to head to morning mass.

"I'm coming to your place later, right?" Mark asked, glancing at Hyuck before putting a binder in his backpack and slamming his locker door shut.

"Yeah. I might have a few people over Friday if you wanna stop by to pregame." Hyuck said, yawning.

"Maybe. I'll see how my dad's feeling."

"Kate might be there."

"Oh- Okay." Mark said after a minute, not really knowing how to reply to this statement. Kate was a pretty blonde that sat on the other side of his Psych classroom in third period.

"Don't be weird about it, Mark. I'm trying to get you laid." Hyuck said with a low chuckle, playfully bumping Mark with his arm.

Mark rolled his eyes.

"Thats all you think about, Hyuck."

The bell rang.

Hyuck shrugged.

"I like to have fun, can't blame me."

**

Morning mass was always a slow process, all the students gathering into Ardolf Hall at an irritatingly slow pace. The stress of having to find his friends in the pews before looking like a loner was too nerve-racking for Mark. That's why he avoided it.

He had ditched Hyuck to go to the bathroom and separated himself from the usual crowd of people that we're headed towards the double doors of the school chapel five minutes ago, heading down the empty hallway with his head down, staring at the floor pattern and stepping from one green tile to the next.

The boy's bathroom was always pretty gross, in every sense of the word, but there wasn't anywhere else to get away.

Mark walked in, scrunching his nose at the smell as he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, eyes red, lips chapped, face pale. He sighed in frustration at his appearance before dragging his eyes down, towards the stall directly behind the mirror.

Mark shrieked and jumped back, scaring the girl sitting on the toilet behind him who let out an almost identical yell.

"What the hell?!"

"Damnit." The girl said as she stared at the coke on the floor that she had previously been forming into a neat white line on top of her Economics textbook.

They stayed like that for a bit, the girl sitting on the closed toilet seat with a textbook on her lap and her coke dusting the tiled floor, Mark leaning up against the sink with wide eyes.

"Wh— What are you—"

Heavy footsteps drew closer outside the bathroom door.

"Sh." The girl said, holding her hand to her mouth cautiously.

They came closer, a hand reaching for the bathroom door and swinging it open.

The girl peeked past the stall door and her shoulders relaxed, lunging towards the boy that had just entered the room and hitting his shoulder.

"Christ, Duffy! You almost gave me a heart-attack." The girl said with furrowed eyebrows.

"Not my fault you're so damn jumpy all the time."

Mark stood there awkwardly, his cheeks bright red.

"Since when are you buds with Mark." The guy, Duffy, said to her, gesturing his head towards Mark with a raised eyebrow.

Mark scratched the back of his neck, pushing off of the sink he had been leaning against.

"I'm not. He walked in and scared me shitless." She said, glancing back at him.

"I'm just gonna go. Sorry." Mark said, inching past the couple slowly.

"Hold on. What are you doing over here, anyways?" Duffy said, a look of suspicion on his face. The girl stood behind him, arms crossed.

Reid "Duffy" Durbin was a notorious presence at St. Pius. He was a self-proclaimed DJ and if he wasn't hosting a party he would show up anyways, always with a baggie full of pills nobody bothered identifying as they scarfed them down. He sported a bristly excuse for a go-tee and a patchy buzzcut. He and Mark didn't really run in the same crowd, although Duffy and Hyuck were pretty tight.

Mark didn't really have an excusable answer so he just shrugged.

"Just getting some air..."

"Not much air to get in here." The girl said with a chuckle.

Duffy groaned in annoyance, "Okay, I hate to be an ass, but... Mark, can you leave? I'm trying to run a business here." He said this as he held up a baggie of what Mark assumed was more coke.

The girl crossed her arms anxiously.

"Um, yeah... Okay. Sorry." Mark said with hesitation, reaching for the door handle and pulling it open.

**

His strange interaction that morning had killed his high and left him drowsy for the remainder of the day, forcing him to watch the clocks at the front of his classrooms as the hand spun clockwise in repetitive circles.

Mark thought about the run in with Duffy and coke-head girl all day, half humiliation and half curiosity. Since when does Duffy sell coke? He had always been just a friendly neighborhood weed plug.

It was weird, but Mark didn't think much of it as he waited by the bike-racks while Hyuck unlocked his bike.

"Isn't Johnathan picking you up?"

"Yeah, but not until two-thirty. I'll probably wait in the library until he gets here."

"You can just hitch a ride with me, you know." Hyuck said as he walked his bike down the sidewalk, Mark following beside him.

"Yeah, but he's bringing bud."

Hyuck made a face that indicated that he understood Mark's rationale.

"Fair enough," Hyuck mounted his bike, "see you at my place, then!"

Mark nodded and waved, watching Hyuck race off, dodging a mini van pulling into the roundabout. It honked at him and he gave it the finger.

Mark snorted at the exchange and turned back towards the school, kicking a half-eaten apple core lying on the sidewalk.

He kept his head down the entire way to the library, kicking acorn tops and stones, stepping over the cracks in the sidewalk instinctively.

Step on a crack, break your mother's back.

**

Mark made his way into the library, the smell of dust and paper overwhelming. There were a few people sitting at the wooden tables in the middle of the room, books or lined paper spread out in front of them. A few people sat at the computer desks at the back as the librarian piled books on a rolling medal cart.

He took a seat on the floor in a back aisle near the history books where nobody ever bothered going. He stretched his legs out and unzipped his backpack, pulling out the book he had been reading for his English class. The Crucible.

The only thing he could hear in the room was the occasional sound of the printer going off or someone coughing.

A kid stepped over him to reach for an obnoxiously heavy Civil War book, a thick History packet in his hand as he eyed Mark and walked off, scuffed Nike's shuffling against the dirty carpet.

Mark had been reading for almost fifteen minutes, his tailbone already aching, when he heard the doors to the library slam shut. He jumped and looked up and around, only seeing the aisles of books that surrounded him.

His eyes, wide as ever, scanned the area as he got up with a grunt, creeping away from the history books and towards the middle of the room, the hair on his arms standing up.

As he approached the middle of the library, he realized he was alone. Not one person reading a book at the wooden tables, nobody typing away at the clunky old computers in the back desks, not even the librarian with her dusty medal cart stacked with books.

"Hello?"

He stood there as his voice's muffled echo filled the room.

And suddenly, it was dark.

[kootenaygoon]

So,

Loving Paisley always felt dangerous.

She was a rich Calgary girl way out of my league, a thoughtful and compassionate little Bambi-eyed human who I longed to protect. I loved introducing her to people, driving her places, and taking her picture. For the first time in my life I had someone who was mine. I was fiercely loyal to her, sometimes to an unhealthy degree, and our temperaments were linked, which meant if she was suffering then so was I. By the time we got to Nelson we were so accustomed to our volatile, high-stress episodes that we’d learned how to ride them out, shake them off, pretend they’d never happened. 

We shared a dream of being together, but it was getting harder to ignore the bouquet of red flags we’d collected over the three years of our relationship. We were a family now, though, with Muppet and Buster, and who wanted to break that up? And what about Cora, our dreamed-about daughter? Wasn’t she worth weathering a few fights for? Paisley had been in and out of the hospital, but she was still proactively planning a way to pull us out of this rut. Eventually she came up with the idea of CrossFit.

“You spent all those years as a competitive swimmer and you haven’t done anything since,” she said.

“This could be something you could throw yourself into. Like look at your shoulders, you’re meant to be a weightlifter. It’s a class, so a bunch of people all working out together, with music and everything. It would be so good for your mental health, bear.”

“That seems boring to me, just lifting weights over your head over and over.”

“There’s more stuff than that. You do pushups and jump on boxes and there’s chin-ups and all kinds of stuff. It’s a full-body work-out, see? Come look at this. We could both get totally ripped.”

“How much does it cost?”

“Less than we spend on weed. And there’s a couple’s special, too.”

Paisley had personally transformed me over the years. Most of my clothes had been hand-selected by her, she controlled my diet, she’d chosen my cologne. When we first met I had a close-shaved beard with a tight line at my jaw, and she encouraged me to grow it out “Gandalf-style”. She took me for runs, or kicked me out of the house to run on my own, and made sure to give me a handful of vitamins every night before bed. She fed me delicious vegan meals, and prepared lunches and snacks for work. I loved how she took care of me, even if everything else seemed to be fights and screaming. 

The most important thing was that she took me seriously as a writer, and believed that I would succeed one day. She was invested in my novel, intimately involved in all my decision-making, and would routinely encourage me to pivot away from the TV to get writing. Sometimes she would read passages and then give me spot-on notes. She had a sharp eye for detail, a cynical intellect and a twisted sense of humour. We spoke to each other in ridiculous baby voices, making up words like shabona and badoyna. 

“I don’t think my antidepressants are working. I don’t feel any sort of difference and every single morning I feel like it’s this Herculean task to even get out of bed. Maybe I need to switch brands,” I said.

“Or maybe your dose isn’t high enough. My doctor doubled my dose six months ago,” Paisley said, rolling over in bed to put her hand to my face. “Tell him how you’re feeling, and see what he says.”

“I don’t think I can take this anymore.”

“I’ll make you an appointment, okay?”

“Okay. Yeah.”

“You have to remember it’s all connected: diet, exercise, mental health. If we want to get legit healthy we need to do all of them together. And I still think you should go full vegan.”

“I can’t do it, I can’t. You know I’d love to.”

She sighed, disappointed like always.

One thing we relished was our weekend sojourns, the days we would load the dogs into the RAV and take off with the canoe strapped to the roof. We’d hiked together in the Yukon, in Portland, in Nova Scotia and on Vancouver Island, but the Kootenay wilderness had a special magic all its own. History seemed to come alive before your eyes when you’d wander around some new corner and find a hulk of ancient mining equipment, or the foundation of some long-forgotten settlers’ cabin. Out in the Slocan Valley, right off the highway in Winlaw, there was a bunch of derelict infrastructure sinking into the woods. Paisley and I spent a Sunday afternoon taking pictures and smoking joints there, listening to the Slocan River swish by through the trees.

“Will, look at this. We gotta get some pictures of this graffiti over here, come look!” she yelled, while I struggled up the hill twenty feet behind her. At the top of the rise was a towering mural of two giraffes, their necks curving towards each other so they can kiss, with a bright red heart hovering between them. The colours were ultra-vivid, creating a stark contrast with the earthy tones of its surroundings. I would later learn it was the work of local muralist Matty Kakes. Muppet and Buster had tangled their leashes, so we both leaned down to help extricate them, pleasantly stoned.

“Those giraffes?” Paisley said. “That’s us.”

A week later I arrived at my appointment. I’d recently found a new doctor, a kind-faced Thai woman a foot shorter than me. She breezed into the room, sat down at her workstation and set a clipboard in front of her while she half-sung her greeting. We bantered back and forth for a few moments before she asked me why I was there. 

She raised her eyebrows and held her pen ready. 

“Well, there’s just been some really intense stories at the Star lately and I’ve sort of been having this conflict with my boss, right? And lately I’m feeling just overwhelmed and depressed, like I’m barely holding shit together. I was hoping the antidepressants would help, but they don’t really.”

“You’re on citalopram?”

“Yeah, I’ve been on it for almost a year now.”

She asked me about side effects, asked whether I was taking the pills consistently. Was I drinking? How about smoking pot? I told her I drank a little bit, like maybe some whiskey on week nights and beer on the weekends. As for pot, I lied and told her I only smoked a joint or two a day, radically under-selling my actual intake. She told me it might be that the cannabis was interfering with the drug’s effectiveness. Would I consider cutting back? I nodded good-naturedly, all the while knowing there was no way I could. Not while Paisley and I were in this particular morass.

“She went for it,” I told Paisley, as we left the doctor’s office. “She doubled my dose.”

“Oh, good.”

“And that CrossFit thing, babe? I’m in.”

She jumped up and down, kissed me, ran her fingers through my hair. We were across the street from Nelson City Hall, with late afternoon traffic humming past, and we hung in each other’s arms trying to believe in the future. Back in Dawson City we’d once passionately made out in the middle of the street at like 2 a.m., her legs wrapped around my waist while cars motored past on either side. Could we get there again? We were still that couple somewhere deep inside us, we just needed to dredge that feeling back out again. Being in love with her made me feel sick to my stomach, even a little dizzy. It was the same feeling I experienced the first time I went sky-diving, the moment my body lurched out of the plane and began to free fall. With her lips to my ear, she whispered her next words.

“I think we should get married.”

The Kootenay Goon