Read Online The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson - Free Book Online

Centre Island. I hadn’t been to the mini amusement park on Centre Island since I was a kid. Maybe Ben, Glory, and I could do that thing we’d planned to do this summer before things withTafari blew up. We were going to take the short ferry trip out to the island, go to the amusement park, and take a swan boat ride, just like we were six-year-olds again. The swan boats were so hokey; small, white fiberglass boats in the shape of a swan. They could seat about six people. Only they didn’t really float, and they weren’t even on the lake. They were in an artificial pond inside the amusement park. They were attached to a track below the water. There was a pedal on the floor of the boat. You pedaled the boat out along the track, and there was someone in the boathouse timing how long you’d been out on the pond. When it was time for you to bring your boat back, you’d hear this tinny voice on a cheap speaker system call out, “Swan number twelve, come back to the deck!” I loved that part. It’d be a scream for the three of us to do that. When I’d suggested it back in June, Tafari hadn’t wanted to go. Said it was kid stuff. Didn’t he realize it was only kid stuff if you were still an actual kid? If you weren’t, it was, I dunno, retro, or something.
    The bartender brought my drink back. I paid her. She had only stuck one lemon wedge on the rim of my glass. I love lemon wedges. I tried to call her back, but she was busy at the other end of the bar and didn’t hear me over the music. But there was a little bowl of lemon and lime wedges right there on the bar, just one stool over from me. Was I allowed to take from it? I looked around the bar. There were two more bowls just like it; one at the middle, one at the other end. But they might belong to people. People who liked lemon wedges even more than I did. I sipped at my drink and considered; try to sneak a couple of the wedges, maybe piss somebody off, or ask the guy beside me whether anybody could take them? And look like a real newbie. As if.
    A girl came up to the bar, took a wedge, plopped it into herdrink, and walked away. Cool. I touched the shoulder of the guy beside me to get his attention. I leaned over and said, near his ear, “Can you pass me that bowl, please?”
    “Of course. My pleasure.” He handed me the bowl, trying to make like he wasn’t noticing my cleavage.
    “Thank you.” I loved it when guys tried to pretend like that. It was so sweet. It was only gross if they made a big deal of it, staring at your chest as if they wanted you and resented you at the same time.
    The guy asked me, “You here for the show later? That poetry thing?”
    “The spoken word open mike? Uh-huh. You?” I took a casual sip of my drink, as though I spent every Friday night in downtown bars talking to older guys. He was kinda cute. Looked white, maybe about twenty-two. Pretty hazel eyes, brown hair shaved just a little bit above his ears so it showed off the full cap of it above. His green sweatshirt was bulky, but not too bulky. Not so tight that he looked gay, but it didn’t hide how he had broad shoulders. Loose black jeans, rolled up neatly at the cuffs. Nice runners.
    He said, “Not me. I didn’t know there was a show on. Just came in for a quiet drink after a long week at work, you know?”
    “Uh-huh, I know what you mean.” I didn’t, but I would pretty soon. Mom and Dad were going to flip when I told them I was taking a couple of years off before going to university.
    The guy looked doubtfully at the stage at the front of the bar. “I may leave before it starts. I’m not the poetry type.”
    “Oh, it’s not like that! It’s not guys in berets with a bongo drum playing in the background.”
    He chuckled. “No? What’s it like, then?”
    “When it’s good, it’s like rap, it’s like freestyling.”
    “I dunno. I can’t really get into that if there’s no music.”
    “The words and the rhythms are music. You should stick around, you’ll