Page 105 of Them Bones

SWORN at the City of Toronto

in Ontario on this 7thday of January 1999

Shane fought to keep his temper under control.You motherfucker…

“My lawyer agrees that Linette is… unfit,” Cary drawled. “And since I own this house, have steady employment, and have basically been taking care of them since they were born, it wasn’t a hard sell.”

“Did Linette agree to this?” Shane asked. Crazy as the bitch was, he couldn’t see her signing away her kids. Not to Cary.

“She didn’t have to,” Cary said.

Shane stared at the papers, wishing he understood them better. He got the gist, but Laney would have been able to make better sense of it…

“Now,” Cary said with a twinkle in his eye, “about the job. Jerry will drive you in tomorrow, I’m guessing, since he’s coming anyway. He’ll show you the ropes. He… knows his way around.”

Shane felt like his world had just been blown to bits.

“And Shane?” Cary said, stubbing out his blunt. “They’re long days.”

As Shane went back inside, he realized this was the price they had to pay. Him, Jerry, even Linette… This was the cost of the months of time together at Jerry’s, and the week of unlimited hours he’d just spent with his arms wrapped around Laney.

Cary was done playing nice.

DUSTIN

For the first time in his life, Dustin was enjoying school.

Riverglen had no such view. It was a converted manufacturing building in the industrial part of town, and still smelled like chemicals. But it had three-story-high glass walls for natural light, the classrooms enormous and full of woodworking machinery, welding equipment, and every art supply under the sun. And while the thought of stepping on a stage made him literally feel dizzy, they had a fully equipped theatre as well, with lighting and a sound booth.

Dustin loved it.

The curriculum was self-directed with no set test or exam dates, only a list of things they needed to complete or turn in within each ‘season’. Some students worked on each subject for a section of each day, mimicking traditional academic structure, while others crammed all of their least favourite subjects in over the course of several weeks, doing all the work at once and then not having to think about it again until the following season. Students were able to spend as much or as little time on each subject, all of their teachers available to them at all times for group or individual assistance in each area.

Students ages ranged from ten to seventeen, the school blurring the lines between elementary and high school.

When they weren’t studying traditional subjects like math, science, and English, students had unlimited time to spent on the arts.

There was a music room, where students played brass and wind instruments, piano, guitar, percussion… studied symphonies and composers and often stayed late after school composing their own songs, practicing classical music or playing heavy metal.

A dozen or so students were self-directing a musical calledFrankenstein M.D.,a modern interpretation ofFrankensteinin which a woman suffering from Munchausen’s disease falls in love with a disgraced doctor who purposely disfigures her.

Miss Nancy, orJust Nancyas she always insisted, supervised the visual arts program. They did oil and watercolour work, technical perspective drawings, still-life… Dustin had never seen so many colours or tools with which to paint.

But it was installation art that had stolen his heart.

Never having had access to large space, large materials, or large tools, Dustin had never seen or heard of installation art before. He’d been working on a new segment for his dragons, the blue-green dragon having been gravely injured in battle and the black beast shielding her from the continuing hellfire of arrows and fire with his body, when he’d taken a break and wandered around the large room, touching the strange scrap metals and bits of wood. He’d laid some pieces out on the floor, arranging them like the petals of a flower, when Nancy had come up behind him and cleared her throat.

“May I make a suggestion?” she’d asked. Dustin had nodded. “I think it would look better upright, in 3D.”

“How?”

He’d been paired up with a set of twins named Joshua and Jillian, and at first he’d been stressed and upset; Nancy had never pushed him to work as part of a group before, she’d always seemed to know how uncomfortable it made him. But Joshua and Jillian were as quiet and awkward as he was, never bothering to make small talk. They just waited while Nancy patiently introduced them all.

“Joshua has a talent for woodworking,” Nancy had said, “and Jillian is quite an accomplished welder. I think they can assist you in making this three-dimensional.” She had gestured to his pile of materials on the floor, and both of their faces had lit up.

They’d worked on it for three weeks straight, erecting posts and beams and structures that would support the mega flowerhead he’d designed withoutlookinglike support structures. He wanted the majority of the materials to be high up in the air, to look like they were floating, so that apart from some stems and vines that you could touch from the ground you had the feeling of being under the sea, looking up at the bottoms of a bunch of flowers floating on the surface.

In the end, they’d designed a metal grid and installed it directly into the ceiling, hanging the majority of the pieces with thick cords that disappeared into the structure of the petals.

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