Red on White

Run. That’s all I can do to get home before it happens. If only I could have avoided the bullies. My mom is going to be mad at me, again. Oh, no, oh no, oh no...

I didn’t do it on purpose, I swear, I just can’t do any better! I can’t!

It is night again. I hate that time. I try to wake up, just wake up before it happens. That’s what she told me I should do. Don’t drink water before going to bed, and get up when you need to. I see red, bright red on bright white, and my fingers feel strange, they can’t feel anything, oh, the red is so intense. I can’t feel my pillow, I can’t feel Fido. Oh, no: the tunnel again, the never ending tunnel, moving fast, I feel dizzy.

The morning comes and my bed is wet. I try to aerate the sheet before it is time to get up, but I know it is no use.

Red on white. The tunnel. The numbness. My sister comes at the door and I see a skeleton. In the morning she tells me that there was no skeleton, that I had a bad dream.

In the summer we come to this house overlooking the ocean. My father says the cliff is a hundred feet high. I look at the sea from the upstairs window, and sometimes I think I can see the sharks in the water. I saw a large shark that the fishermen caught, with its big mouth and teeth. I can see the fishermen’s boats from the window, their boats going away on the water, where the sharks swim. I like it here.

I write a letter to my grandmother with the only pen I found, a red pen. Red on white. I tell her how the stove cools things down and how the refrigerator warms things up, as if this world was reversed. I tell her about the lobster in the bag, that I was afraid of the claws. Strike that, start a new letter, don’t talk about the lobster. I tell her I finished second grade and I will start third grade when we go back home.

In the morning mist, I walk towards the ocean, towards the picket fence, and I think that soon we will be going home. I like it here, in this inverted world, I have not had bad dreams here. I would like to stay here, where red on white does not happen, forever.

The provincial police agent was driving directly from home, which was closer to St-Teresa, so the chief had called him to go right away. He had called for an ambulance to come from the regional hospital in Chandler. The agent wanted to cry as the ambulance men carried the small inert body up the hundred stairs from the beach, but he needed to wait until he would be back, alone in his car. He would call the chief from home, to report on what he had seen and to ask for a day off with his kids. He would never know why that city kid wanted to play, alone, on the other side of the fence. He wanted to know more about this kid who was no more, but decency kept him from disturbing the parents who were to go back home to resume their normal life.