Green Glass Ghosts Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR GREEN GLASS GHOSTS

  “Rae Spoon and Gem Hall craft a portrait of the many kinds of ghosts—of trauma, colonization, and displacement—and the messy, persisting dollar pizza–eating queer and trans kids trying to get by and make something different, even if we don’t know how.”

  —LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA, author of Care Work and Dirty River

  “Green Glass Ghosts walks us through both the grit and camaraderie of underworld subcultures, with art and storytelling that doesn’t alienate but encourages us to normalize our disarray.”

  —CRISTY ROAD CARRERA, author of Next World Tarot and Spit and Passion

  “The collaboration between Gem Hall and Rae Spoon is tender, haunting, raw, and honest, asking of us to not only look back at our past selves but also to dream up different possibilities for our future. This is a book to hold in our hearts.”

  —KAMA LA MACKEREL, author of ZOM-FAM

  “This book is wild and familiar, not unlike young queer lust, love, or existence. Reading this book is being lifted up, a firm reminder of still being here.”

  —TARA-MICHELLE ZINIUK, editor of THIS Magazine and author of Whatever, Iceberg; Somewhere to Run From; and Emergency Contact

  “Lonely and spectral and hopeful. A tether for when you feel yourself floating away.”

  —JAIME BURNET, musician and author of Crocuses Hatch from Snow

  “So sensitively and keenly observed, Rae Spoon’s Green Glass Ghosts is a much-needed and timely work, beautifully and hauntingly illustrated by Gem Hall.”

  —IMOGEN DI SAPIA, associate member of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture and creator of The Selkie: Weaving & the Wild Feminine

  GREEN GLASS GHOSTS

  GREEN GLASS

  GHOSTS

  RAE SPOON

  ILLUSTRATED BY GEN HALL

  GREEN GLASS GHOSTS

  Text copyright © 2021 by Rae Spoon

  Illustrations copyright © 2021 by Gem Hall

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any part by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a licence from Access Copyright.

  ARSENAL PULP PRESS

  Suite 202 – 211 East Georgia St.

  Vancouver, BC V6A 1Z6

  Canada

  arsenalpulp.com

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada, and the Government of British Columbia (through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program), for its publishing activities.

  Arsenal Pulp Press acknowledges the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, custodians of the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories where our office is located. We pay respect to their histories, traditions, and continuous living cultures and commit to accountability, respectful relations, and friendship.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons either living or deceased is purely coincidental.

  Permission to reprint lyrics from “Monster Truck Rally” provided courtesy of Angel Hall.

  Cover illustrations by Gem Hall

  Cover and text design by Jazmin Welch

  Edited by Shirarose Wilensky

  Copy edited by Linda Pruessen

  Proofread by Alison Strobel

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

  Title: Green glass ghosts / Rae Spoon ; illustrated by Gem Hall.

  Names: Spoon, Rae, author. | Hall, Gem, 1986– illustrator.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200323245 | Canadiana (ebook) 2020032330X | ISBN 9781551528380 (softcover) | ISBN 9781551528397 (HTML)

  Classification: LCC PS8637.P66 G74 2021 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23

  For Vic Horvath

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Notes from the Author and the Illustrator

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  “Did you know,” I said, “that Mary once threw me out of their house in the middle of the night for saying that Jewel’s poetry sucks?”

  Sam howled. “Yesterday, when I tried to bring up leaving the first time, Mary dropped my house keys into a full cup of coffee.”

  We laughed until there was a friendly pause. We were at the Denny’s near Banff Trail Station in Calgary, where the servers had been letting me drink coffee and smoke since I was fourteen. A little over a year ago, some friends and I had celebrated the new millennium here by passing around a champagne bottle with a straw under the table at midnight. I’d met Sam through Mary, a mutual ex they’d come to visit for a couple of weeks. Mary was the type of person who was filled with love for everyone and really very kind, but a quarter of the time you had to tiptoe around them or they would explode on you. Earlier that day, Sam and I had escaped from Mary’s parents’ house on a city bus with all of Sam’s bags after they’d tried to push Sam down the stairs. All Sam did was tell Mary they had to fly home to Vancouver that night.

  We leaned over our steaming coffee mugs and chatted conspiratorially, trading stories about other things Mary had done, our mood bolstered by the narrow escape. We shared the same flaw of returning many times to the people who have caused us harm.

  Then Sam said, “You should come visit me in Vancouver. It would be so fun. You can fly youth standby. A hundred bucks and an hour later you’ll be in Vancouver. You can stay with me at my parents’ house.”

  I was silent for a while as I considered it. I’d just turned nineteen, and it felt like time was running out for me.

  The café where I was working kept giving me fewer hours. I was barely able to pay my rent. Thank goodness for the tips I made and the odd show I played for extra money. I always showed up for my morning shifts at six, even if I was still a bit drunk. And I paid for all the beer I drank when I fell asleep on the couch that one time. I did get in trouble with the manager for yelling outside the café when it was closed a week or so ago. I guess they heard me from their apartment, which was right above.

  Ugh, and then there was dating. On top of the on-again, off-again thing with the mutual ex, I was kind of seeing someone who’d bullied me in junior high. It turned out they were also queer, but things between us would often get really bad when we’d been out drinking. I hadn’t seen them since they threw a cordless phone at me and screamed that I was fucked up and should get help. I couldn’t remember what I’d said to them, so I told them to get out of my house and locked the door behind them. After I passed out, the sound of my window sliding open woke me up. They were sniffling and saying they loved me as they climbed in and fell to the floor. I played dead as they crawled into my bed and fell asleep with their arm around me. “I love you,” they whispered before passing out. I pretended to be asleep in the morning when they left for work.

  Anyway, no real reason to stay for either of them.

  “How will I find you in Vancouver?” I asked Sam.

  “Take this bus,”
they said, scrawling with a pencil on their napkin. “It’s the same name as the street it goes down.”

  “Granville?” I asked.

  “Yeah, take it to Granville and Davie. If you don’t make your flight, you can call my parents’ house collect at this number.” They scrawled that on the other side of the napkin. “Otherwise, I’ll be standing there, waiting for you to get off the bus.”

  CHAPTER 1

  Granville Street

  Sitting on the bus, I peered at the words scrawled on the napkin I pulled out of my pocket. I scanned the letters closely, and then checked them against the words on the street signs as they whipped by at the intersections. They were the same. I felt brief relief, until it eroded beneath the terror of never having gone anywhere alone before. Every few minutes, I second-guessed myself, pulled out the napkin, and did the whole thing all over again.

  I strained to look out the window around my guitar, which I had placed between my legs with the headstock sticking up in front of my face. It was late May, so when I’d left, Calgary was still all brown grass with dirt blowing around. Here, the grass was electric green and there were lush plants and flowers growing everywhere. The huge hedges in front of the giant houses along Granville Street were shorn to be all the same height. These houses were not like the overnight McMansions in Calgary. They were made of brick and wood, and it looked like each sloped roof and turret had been placed deliberately.

  After the repetitive jolting stops at intersections, a bridge appeared out of nowhere. The bus was suddenly high above the water, with a view on both sides. On the left was another bridge full of cars, and then the open Pacific Ocean full of tankers. On the right was the sparkling globe of the science centre that was built for Expo 86. I felt a pang remembering the pilgrimage we’d made to Vancouver when I was a kid to go to the World’s Fair. At the last minute my father had decided the fair was part of an elaborate global plot. Instead of going, we stayed inside my great-aunt’s house and waited to make the long drive home.

  Now I felt like I could reach out and touch the glittering sphere. I turned my attention to the boats bobbing in the gaping blue on my left and smiled as the bus sped towards the city of green glass condo towers ahead of me.

  Halfway over the bridge the bus speaker crackled, announcing Davie Street. I scrambled to get my backpack on and my guitar out in front of me. It was always a trick to make it out the doors in time with such awkward luggage.

  I saw Sam before the bus doors opened. I never think people are going to show up when they say they will, but there Sam was, standing on the corner with another person.

  “You made it!” Sam said, clapping me on the back. “This is Riki.”

  “Welcome to the Left Coast!” Riki said, with a debonair tip of an imaginary hat.

  I blushed. Riki had shaggy, curly hair that almost covered their eyes.

  “Let’s go to the beach!” Sam said and started walking down Davie Street. “How was your flight?”

  “It was great!” I said. It was only the third airplane I’d ever been on in my life, and a lot bigger than the one I took to Kelowna one summer. The best part this time was that it flew right over Kelowna.

  As we walked down Davie, the rainbow flags started popping up. I had seen a small rainbow sticker or two pressed surreptitiously inside a bookstore or café door in Calgary, but this entire street was lined on both sides with big rainbow flags. I felt myself walking taller. We passed café patios with tables mostly full of men of all ages chatting to each other. Some held dogs on leashes, and others were holding hands right out in the open. I had done that sort of thing in high school, with grave consequences, but I’d never seen adults do it. I tried not to gape.

  At the end of the street, we hit the beach. It was now around five o’clock, and the golden light shone straight into my eyes across the water.

  “This is Sunset Beach,” Sam said, stopping to squint out at the horizon. Riki kept walking towards the water like they hadn’t noticed.

  Sam turned and pointed behind us at a building just across the road from the beach. “That skyscraper was made by a famous architect. Vancouver City Hall hired them to design a building that represented the city. A lot of people were angry when they found out what the architect wanted to build.”

  I looked up and down the long circular column with the upside-down cone where the building hit the ground. There was a single tree growing out of the top of it. “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a needle,” Sam said. “You know, because of all of the drugs here.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. Now I could see the needle injecting itself into the ground, with a tree for a plunger at the very top of the building. I didn’t totally know what Sam meant about drugs, but there was a waft of weed—or maybe several wafts, coming from all over the beach.

  I looked out at the tankers in the ocean. They were as big as some of the buildings on the shore, if those buildings had somehow fallen sideways. How were they were being held up by the water? I started to feel weightless and heavy at the same time, as if I were standing on nothing. The sun was even lower now, and I felt like I could see the shadows moving.

  It’s okay, I told myself. Over the last year I had learned how to not slip into a panic attack.

  A hacky sack crossed my path and I looked up to see a barefoot, shirtless person wearing pants made out of patches of different fabric running towards me. I picked up the worn beanbag and tossed it to them. I had the urge to join their circle but sat down on a nearby log instead.

  I spotted Riki making the rounds. They seemed to know everyone on the beach, and were busy chatting, slapping people’s hands, and laughing.

  Sam sat down beside me. “How are you doing?”

  “It felt good to leave,” I said. “But I feel like I’m spinning, being so far away.”

  “It’s going to be way better for you here. I mean, the music scene is better, and there’s way more people who are queer. I think you did the right thing.”

  “Yeah, there was nothing much for me there,” I whispered, pushing away any thoughts of something or someone that I should miss.

  The sun started to sink below the water as we walked away from the beach, past the early evening throng on Davie Street and then the blocks and blocks of old apartment buildings. Everything went from gold to grey. I grinned, looking at Riki and then at Sam, who was holding my backpack, so I was only in charge of carrying my guitar. After a while, the buildings changed to concrete and glass and stretched higher, the condos standing guard in lines.

  “I hope my BMX is still here,” Sam said. “Pete said they’d keep an eye on it.”

  I nodded solemnly, wondering who Pete was.

  Sam made a sharp turn towards one of the identical towers. “Oh, good,” they said, pointing to a small chrome bike covered in stickers that was locked to the otherwise empty rack out front.

  They pulled out a small piece of plastic and put it up against the door. A little green light came on, and the door beeped and unlocked. I tried not to ask what it was as we all walked inside.

  “Hey, Pete!” Sam called out to a person in a uniform sitting at a desk with a bunch of TV screens behind it. “Thanks for watching my bike!”

  “No problem,” Pete said, smiling.

  We piled into the elevator and Sam pressed 6. After the door closed they said, “So before we get up there I’ll warn you, my house is kind of big. My dad bought half a floor of this condo building.” Sam’s expression was a combination of scared and ashamed. “It’s good ’cause this way I don’t see my dad on my side often. Now that my sister moved out, I fight with them a lot more. My mom lets me have friends stay in the extra rooms. My dad behaves better when there are guests around.”

  I nodded, bracing myself not to react to the apartment or show my apprehension about the unpredictable grizzly bear that was Sam’s dad. But when we walked in the door my mouth fell open. The ceiling was higher than any I’d ever seen. I was pretty sure the TV in the living room
was the largest one on Earth. There was marble everywhere: the floor, the kitchen, the fireplace.

  As we shuffled down the hall, Sam whispered, “That’s my father’s office.” They pointed into a room filled with books, a huge desk, a leather easy chair, and a giant TV. “When they’re home they mostly hang out in there. They won’t give you trouble, but it’s good to not bother them. Just try to walk past without looking in.”

  Sam grabbed my arm. “Come on. I’ll show you your room.” We walked to the end of a long hallway. “This is my room, and this will be yours right next to it. You have your own bathroom in there, too. Go settle in, and Riki and I will come grab you in a bit.”

  I pushed the door almost closed behind me, unsure if I was allowed to close it fully. I flopped on the soft bed with my shoes still on and pictured my thin mattress that I’d dragged into the alley behind my basement apartment in the pre-dawn darkness. I wondered if anyone had found it before it got too dirty to use. I wasn’t really talking to my mother much anymore since I’d came out to them over the phone with an abrupt “I drink. I smoke. I’m gay.” So I couldn’t exactly give them the mattress back.

  I started to feel like I was spinning backwards. After a full revolution, I kicked my shoes off and got up to shake off my thoughts. I went into the bathroom and inspected the jets in the tub and the strange shower head the size of a dinner plate with holes all over it.

  I sat on the toilet to piss and stayed there longer than I needed to, only returning to my body because I noticed my feet felt really warm. I reached down and touched the floor. After flushing the toilet, I lay down on the heated tiles. The warmth moved through my back and into my chest. My heartbeat slowed down for the first time since I’d given my key to my roommate in Calgary that morning.