The clock reads 6:00 a.m. but you get out of bed because of the chirping outside your window. You didn’t sleep again because the 1984 edition of Funk & Wagnall’s encyclopaedias, which your mother earned by shopping at Safeway, distracted you. You have read up to Volume C. You leave off at court cupboard and you are already dressed for the day because you didn’t undress. You glide down the stairs trying to keep the swishing of the taffeta against the railing to a minimum. You slip through the patio door and for a moment the crinoline gets caught on the latch. You sit on the deck and stare at the empty pool. The crinoline sticks to the back of your sweaty thighs. Formal dresses are for limousines and not lawn chairs. There are weeds sticking out of the pea gravel in the garden around the pool. You know you must begin fixing this problem. Your dog, the one that almost overdosed on your brother’s Ritalin, nudges the gravel with his nose and stays beside you. He’s forgiven you for inducing vomiting. You remember the frothing at his mouth as he gagged up a face of sadness. He hated you. You keep pulling those weeds as though this is your purpose, as though this is why you were put here on Earth. The sequins begin scratching your underarms. Formal gowns are for dancing, not yard work. Yes, you have finally found your purpose and soon you grow bored and exhausted. You sit on the deck again and light another cigarette and think about what your father said.
‘So, now what?’ Your father stands in front of you blocking the sun. Cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. ‘You know the rules. You’re no longer in school and you don’t seem to be working, I’m sorry, but you can’t live here.’
He still thinks this situation is your wilful doing. After your last admission to the hospital, both your parents want to believe you are cured. They tell people you went on a vacation and took up ceramics as a hobby. Art therapy was just part of the program.
You do know the rules and then you bite the inside of your cheek because you can’t let him see you cry.
The first time Violet Quesnel thinks about running away she is lying in bed in the damp basement. Violet can hear her sister breathing and counts four seconds between each dreaming sigh. That day at school Violet learned about Anne Frank. Lying in the dark, she thinks about Anne, and as her heart begins beating faster, the tears come. She needs to run away, but she doesn’t; instead, she gets a note from the teacher the next day: ‘Violet didn’t complete her Anne Frank assignment.’ The note needs a parent’s signature. She gets sent to her room and sits on her bed inspecting the slug slime trails on the carpet while she cries.
The second time this feeling of flight comes Violet is in junior high school social studies watching a movie (a VHS tape with tracking problems) about the effects of industrial progress on the planet. She learns that Big Mac Styrofoam containers are causing a hole in the ozone layer the size of Disneyland. She learns
