Mitochondrial Curiosities of Marcels 1 to 19 Read online

  Man 2 says, ‘Dr. Rinkel has retired.’ Joan says, ‘Meaning you fired him,’ and Man 1 snaps questions at me until everyone joins back in. Everyone except Joan, and that’s what gets me, how she sits there not hating me, how she says another Excuse me? after Man 2 says I’m pathologically selfish, how she says, ‘Actually, Dree has been working very hard on her biology presentation,’ after Man 1 says perhaps I’m amotivational. I don’t care what I look like and anyway it’s what I’m supposed to do, be so sorry I forget myself. As mucous floods my face, I feel their relief. The teal social worker nudges the Kleenex box to me then bonks it against my elbow.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ Joan says. ‘First I didn’t know where you were, then Grandma called in a complete state.’

  ‘Damn,’ says Rose. ‘Should have called you myself.’ She called Grandma after the fire guys called her, and Grandma heard wrong and thought we had inhaled smoke and were unconscious in the hospital, not Rinkel, and because of her whole fire thing, Grandma was basically incoherent when she phoned Joan and Joan completely freaked and thought I was dead so Paige freaked and told her everything.

  The social worker shoves a Kleenex into my hand. There’s a lot of crying. Lots and lots. But eventually things get quiet and sniffly, probably because I run out of bodily fluid.

  Man 1 tugs on his tie. ‘The key in this case is complete clarity.’ We are back to key number one. I press the key around my neck and have a severely anti-climactic moment. The kind of discovery that oozes instead of sparks. Teal woman asks her how-crazy-are-you questions like what did I feel as I took the money from Paige’s account. Man 1 and cop go one-two one-two about all the laws I broke, how next time will make this look like Brownies, which is actually a poor analogy because Brownies was so lethal I thought about walking into traffic and I was only eight.

  Everyone except Joan and Rose has to make an official statement about how my life and Jessie’s will basically be over if we do anything less than saintly for the next fifty years. There are agreements about school and how I’ll pay back Paige. After a weighty pause, Man 1 asks us what we have to say. Jessie shakes her head. I have my eyes closed. I’m trying to remember every inch of the little plaid suitcase. ‘I have been a complete moron,’ I say.

  ‘Well, you can make new choices for the future.’ Teal woman couldn’t be more pleased.

  ‘My suitcase,’ I say. ‘Does anybody know what happened to the little plaid suitcase?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ says Jessie. ‘She de finitely had it in the old hospital. Maybe she left it there?’

  ‘Girls, the hospital burned to the ground,’ Rose says.

  Everyone looks confused or maybe just done, cups and papers gathered, chairs pushed away from the table.

  The key is for the suitcase. I had thought jewellry box, ironically cheap piggy bank, or maybe a secret diary. Rita must have too. Otherwise, why did she care about a dumb little key. But no. Duh. It’s for the suitcase. The envelopes were in the suitcase, the suitcase was for me, Leonard wanted me to take it to Toronto. Could there have been anything in the side pockets? I had looked. No way I could have missed anything. No way.

  Seventeen

  Presentations were invented by people who got reincarnated way too fast after being killed by firing squad. We’re talking becoming a zygote before the bullets stopped moving. How else? Apart from generating terror, what, exactly, are presentations for?

  The class is all pre-Christmas agitation. Sugar content up, exams hanging over us like smog, half of us semi-violent, the other half narcotized. Ms. Riddell belongs to group two. She’s wearing Rudolph earrings and playing with the projector like she’s all alone in the woods. The back-row boys are doing their Hey hey so her, would you do her, yeah yeah, wouldya thing. I don’t hear them say Paige’s name, but Darrin says, ‘Oh yeah, like I’d wanna do a nun, frigid much?’ and his moron friends laugh in our direction. Shannon turns around and says, ‘As if, dickwads.’ ‘Dyke,’ says Colm. ‘Bitch,’ says Shannon. ‘Fat dyke,’ says Colm. And ‘Cocksucker,’ blurts Lawrence with a head twitch. Pro-Lawrence people activate with mumbled ‘Hey you guys,’ et cetera, increasing the violence factor to explosive. Colm has just finished saying, ‘Watch yourself, shitface,’ when Ms. Riddell turns around and says, ‘Well, Paige and Dree, we’re ready for you now.’

  She smacks the desk with her book and says, ‘Remember, the rest of you, every brilliant word that’s uttered in the next twenty minutes could be on the exam, and the exam is savage. I’d sit up smartly if I were you, there will be no chances for redemption, none at all, you do understand. Girls, if you please.’

  My finger has been poised over Enter for some time and happily hits the first slide. The wonder of mitochondria. As the back row scribbles pervy cartoons for each other, Paige stands there frozen, arms crossed, head fixed, possibly not breathing. Riddell clears her throat. I hit Next by accident, bring up Eukaryotes and U, and reverse back to slide one. I’m maybe two seconds away from springing up and babbling if Paige doesn’t start talking.

  But ha, her eyes. Paige acupuncts the back row with murderous disapproval and, yes, they feel it. A moronic titter, then quiet, then averted eyes. One at a time, she takes them down. Colm tries to outstare her but, god, he’s holding his neck. He fluffs his hair. Nice try, dogmeat.

  How excellent to see Paige offing someone else with her porcupine hate. Her hatred for me has morphed into disdain, deep disdain some days, with random flashes of something we’ll call love for the sake of brevity.

  ‘As you know,’ she says, ‘mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell. Every single thing you do, no matter how small, correction, no matter how stupid, is fuelled by mitochondria.’ The slides are genius. I took pictures of people in class and this one shows Dexter throwing a dead frog at Colm. Paige continues. ‘Mitochondria turns food into adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, and ATP becomes the fuel. It’s basically like making fossil fuel. ATP is to us like gas is to cars. Dree will explain the connection later.’

  She goes through the Krebs Cycle, gets everybody to stand up for the electron transport chain and do a kind of line dance, tossing bean bags for oxygen molecules. How did I ever have a bad thought about Paige? Look at her in her grey skirt and perfect lint-free black tights, her little turtleneck and flipped hair, and most of all, her belief in what we’re doing. ‘Trust me, Dree. An A feels better than chocolate.’ That’s what she said at lunch. She took my hand to say it. ‘Sorry,’ I said. Again.

  ‘That concludes my section of the presentation,’ she says after ten minutes of presentation perfection. Her unspoken subtext is, ‘which will be marked separately from whatever comes next.’ I stand and smell fear rising through my clothes. I drop my notes. My hands shake as I pick them up. I turn red. The back row smells blood. ‘It’s okay,’ Paige whispers.

  I focus on the posters of Girls in Science at the back of the room, Girls in Science with perfect white shirts and teeth, but whatever. They must have some issues. My first slide gets an oh yeah chorus then the choppy laughter that follows anything with the word sex. Ms. Riddell stands up and says, ‘What remarkable zeal, class, excellent, but let’s hear the details, shall we, get yourselves in order, do consider dignity won’t you, Colm.’ She nods at me and I look back at the slide.

  How mitochondria invented sex.

  I hear my voice floating around the room and see nothing. In my dreams, I figured Riddell would be entertained plus impressed and that would equal at least an A, maybe an A+ with fabulous visuals. I can’t look at her but keep hearing her voice saying ‘Mercy’ as I talk. Talking is maybe an exaggeration. I read so fast the words feel like mud. All ten slides are suddenly done. The class is quiet in that lethal way.

  Paige puts a Kleenex in my hand, squeezes it, and whispers eyes. We’re talking extreme sweat and slight weeping. I turn to wipe mascara off my cheeks and hope for sudden death, turn back and magically see twenty- five people. There they are, not looking at me at all. The entire class is glued to
that last slide – silent and wide-eyed. We’re talking epiphany. Yes, peer group of mine. You’re looking at something so much better than anything you’ll find under that dead pimped-up family Christmas tree next week.

  To save the planet, we must bring back sex. This is the mission of our generation.

  ‘Well, then,’ says Ms. Riddell, ‘how intriguing, but do take us through those assumptions again, yes, Paige, three slides back, so encouraging to see independent thought, but the scientific method does have its protocols, there we are. Dree, if you would.’

  Assumption #1. Mitochondria invented sex to ensure continuation of the species. ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘A billion years ago, MitoC wanted to make sure that messed-up DNA in the nucleus didn’t keep reproducing itself. So it had to get mixed up with other DNA.’

  ‘Wicked,’ says Shannon who I now adore.

  Assumption #2. A) Since sex is about the species, the better the sex, the more people care about the species. B) Since the species is in such huge trouble, obviously very few people are having good sex. ‘In fact, no one in Alberta,’ I say. ‘Possibly a few in Toronto.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ says Colm, his buddies doing their best manly-man laugh.

  Paige bounces up to decimate Colm one more time. ‘Correction?’

  Riddell interrupts and starts coming over in that you’re done, definitive way of the worried teacher.

  ‘I just wanted to mention Christmas.’ My voice comes from me again.

  ‘Mercy.’

  ‘We have lots of time,’ says Shannon. A general yeah follows. Assumption #3. Shopping killed sex. There were a few yeah rights. ‘But look,’ I say. ‘If you have fabulous sex, you can’t buy something made by oppressed, starving people because you’d care too much about them. So if you want fabulous sex, start making your own stuff.’ I hold up a Marcel and laugh with them.

  ‘Well, thank you, Dree.’

  ‘Almost done, Ms. Riddell.’ I lean against her desk. ‘Okay, so I’ve explained about apoptosis, cell death, right?’ Nods. ‘And how, on a mega-level, mitochondria have programmed the entire species to become extinct because we’ve killed sex?’ Nods.

  ‘We would call that extreme speculation, class, and not of the scientific method,’ says Ms. Riddell.

  ‘Yeah, but walk through Churchill Square,’ I say. ‘Especially with the Christmas tree.’ They listen, not laughing, mostly, as I say, ‘Look at the shopping frenzy, the Santa pedophile, the dead tree, the virgin birth FGS.’ We’re synched, the class and I. We’re cellular – some of us ribosomes, some of us endoplasmic reticulum, who knows about the nucleus – whatever, we’re one and it’s magic. I want to kiss Lawrence. Full-on liplock. I want to kiss Rachel, put my palm against her cheek, kiss Shannon, hold her face with both hands, kiss everyone, even Colm, I smile at him too. Everyone’s my darling, I’m theirs and we shine.

  ‘Christmas is when you choose sex and life or you choose shopping and death, and that’s your choice for that whole year. So if you can’t choose sex, choose crafts. I mean, we’re talking the whole year.’ ‘Bummer,’ someone says. ‘No doubt,’ says Shannon. ‘We have the power,’ says the last slide. I used the same graphic for my T-shirt, Mitochondrial Eve doing the power salute. I hold open my cardigan to show off the T-shirt. A few cheers. ‘You can download this off my blog,’ I say. ‘Dree’s Do-or-Die DIY.’

  Paige has her hands over her face in fake shock, something she has to do, really, to preserve her whole Paige thing. Riddell pulls on her chin but you can still see the smile. ‘Now class, rampant sexual activity is not actually your Biology 10 homework. Please do not report anything sordid over the dinner table tonight, look sharply now, I do advise you to be entirely lucid about the Krebs cycle, Shannon, a few words about pyruvic acid? Anyone?’

  Eighteen

  Even once you’ve survived a presentation, posting an event on Facebook is terrifying. But my fingers did it, they typed out Treasure Hunt, Churchill Square, this Sunday at 4:30 p.m. I used Dad’s two clue envelopes, plus four of his favourite other clues, plus four I invented myself. Since it’s twenty-two below, most of the clues are inside City Hall and pedways, but the first has to be Churchill Square and the last one has to be in the library.

  Of course you fantasize about thousands, about the square being packed, but after twenty minutes in the Second Cup that’s connected to the library and across the street, I am pretty much whatever. Then I see something stranger than baby Jesus. Colm and two of his back-row boys looking under a tree. The wrong tree, but nonetheless. I grip the table so hard my water spills which is okay since this particular Second Cup has many unusual customers. The boys are looking around to see if anyone else is there, and, what about those two people with the Thermos? Really? Really? Okay, now I’m on the fringe of odd behaviour even for here. OMG OMG. I can’t stop saying it. The Thermos people look at Clue Number 1, and the other guys come to look at it too. By the time I get myself normed up, hands down and mouth closed, there are nine people in a group talking and pointing at trees. I get a bit teary. The man next to me moves one seat down.

  Maybe I should go out and help, they’re freezing, the guys bopping around, Thermos people pointing the wrong way, not the Christmas tree, you fools, good good, Colm heads to the right tree, the one behind the Churchill statue, and everyone follows. Look under that big branch, c’mon somebody, before they all lose their ears to frostbite, someone lift that branch – yay! Thermos woman goes for it, Thermos man looks underneath and Yes! Yes! They have Clue Number 2, and oh, they love the angels. I put prizes in the odd-numbered sites, the angels being the best in terms of shiny hopefulness since they’re made out of Rita’s miniature vodka bottles. Later, people, play with them later FGS. You’re going to die out there. That’s it, Clue Number 2, easy-peasy, people, c’mon, zoo brochures, where the hell else could they be, exactly, Thermos woman, you’re so right, go, go, what are you all looking at. More people! Two crafty girls with scarves and hats and bags all handmade. Thermos woman goes under the tree and gets two more stars, meaning there’s only two left because ten prizes was all I could reasonably do without a factory in China. Another girl comes and you can tell it’s all Hi! Hi! even with their backs to me. When they’re up the steps to city hall, I can’t help myself. I run across the street to the square.

  ‘Hey,’ I say to sad security guard, ‘people came!’ ‘Better than nothing,’ he says to me and ‘Can I help you, ma’am?’ to the woman behind me. Where did they come from? A tired woman holds onto the back of a girl’s jacket. The girl, about elevenish, yells, ‘Mom, that’s the tree, c’mon.’ ‘Camille, look, no one’s here,’ says the mother, and to the security guard, ‘She found this crazy thing on the internet, it’s nothing.’ The security guard’s mouth curves up and quivers in possibly his first attempt at smiling. He walks them over to the tree, the girl pulling away to get the clue and the last stars, and in seconds, yanking her mother towards City Hall. I can hardly wait to tell Santini: A) Peer group possibility and B) Contribution to society. ‘Moi, Santini. Feel free to mention me as you encourage other students.’ Or, even when you’re making out with Rita, which is something I never again want to consider.

  Paige and I brought Rita an angel last week and she cried. She kept crying when she brought us cranberry juice and ginger ale, when she gave us the cappuccino maker, when she handed me an empty envelope with my name on it. ‘Those two little clues were in there, and I’m sorry, but I just wanted there to be something.’ She sobbed too hard to talk for a few messy seconds, then said, ‘And I wanted it to be for me.’ Her sponsor was there with two AA women and they were planning Christmas dinner as if things were golden. ‘It’s good she’s finally getting it out,’ one of the women said. We nodded, and Paige said we had to go to catch our bus. Rita blew her nose again, and said, ‘Leonard loved you, that was never a lie.’ Again, we nodded, and the same woman told me to no, no, just leave those when I took my glass and Paige’s into the kitchen. Paige was up getting the coats, and I wrote
He loved you too, on the message board on Rita’s fridge. We’re done here, I thought, but Rita was standing, not crying, at the door. ‘How’s your Mr. Santini these days?’ she said. ‘Oh, he asked about you, actually,’ I said. ‘Twice. He asked if you were in town for the holidays, did you have any plans, then he kind of blushed.’ ‘Correction?’ Paige said when we were out the door. ‘That’s what he wanted to say,’ I said. ‘I could tell.’

  Excitement can provide only so much body heat and my fingers are numb. They should be at Clue 5 now, the bus schedules, where I’ve put a collection of short poems on ten different index cards. Okay, library, I should just go wait in the library because that’s the only hard clue. I can Facebook Jessie again. Yeah, right. As if I can focus enough to spell. Hold it. Colm? Yup. Colm is running back, waving, his friends waiting. Oh, god, do not get hit by a truck, not in this weather.

  ‘Yeah, so – ’

  ‘You’re going the right way,’ I yell through my mitt because my mouth is frozen.

  ‘So’s Paige around? No biggie, we’re just, you know – ’ Colm motions to the other two guys, now jumping up and down to keep their toes alive. Oh. My. God.

  ‘Call her,’ I yell. He holds out his cell. I yell our number, tell him it’s totally cool for him to call, then run to the library to call Joan and Paige.

  I didn’t tell them about the treasure hunt because rejection is so much worse with family members present. But people came! And how très très excellent when Joan answers her cell and tells me she and Paige are in the library parkade. We meet in front of the multi-coloured buffalo. We hug, we smile, I say, ‘What the hell?’ and Paige says, ‘Excuse me? Facebook is also a social utility for family members?’ Paige is trying to scrape the last tape bits off the wall where I had stuck the clue.