Excerpt
On the anniversary of the worst night of his life, Liam stood outside the darkened control room of the campus radio station. Over the speakers, the Tragically Hip's "Boots and Hearts" was just winding down. Behind the glass in the studio, Ziggy's small triangular face glowed like some night angel, lit from below by her laptop screen. She looked up, her eyes finding Liam's in the darkness. Smiling, she wrinkled her nose at him. His own smile slid away, falling into the dark place inside him, the place that was always darker on this night.
Ziggy turned back to the mike as the song ended. "I'm closing with a request from an old friend, to an old friend. This one's for Jackie, from Liam. A hurtin' song, cuz he's still hurtin'. Fifteen years ago tonight…" She looked at him through the glass.
Fifteen years. He closed his eyes. Fifteen years, and it still hurt this much.
"…but he still misses you, girl. I miss you. Hell, we all miss you. Too young, too young." She shook her head. "This is Radio Waterloo, CKNW 100.3. Ziggy C, signing off. Back tomorrow night. Stay tuned for Dawg and his Midnight Mayhem show."
Ziggy hit a button, and Springsteen's "Downbound Train" wailed from the speakers. Pulling off her headphones, she ran her fingers through her short, black and green-dyed locks as she stood up. She shrugged on her worn, black leather UW jacket, wearing it as comfortably as she wore every year that had passed since the "1993" emblazoned on the jacket's shoulder.
She stepped out of the studio and snaked an arm around Liam's waist, pulling him into a hug. They stood there holding each other for a moment. Breaking it off, she slapped him on the bum and headed towards the door, squeezing past the crammed shelves of vinyl and CDs. "Let us rock."
He sighed, and forced a smile. "Let us roll."
Outside the old warehouse that housed the station, Ziggy lit up a joint, took a deep toke, and then handed it to Liam. Looking up a crescent moon hanging above the broadcast tower in a star-specked, cloud-streaked October night sky, she let the toke out and nodded. "So, you and your Beast haven't blown the world up yet. Good to know."
He smiled, despite it being the night that it was. The "Beast" was the particle accelerator buried deep below, ringing the campus underground. "If you're going to believe urban legends, at least get them right. That's the one at CERN. Ours is different."
"Nanotech-morphed, which you can't talk about, which is fine cuz I wouldn't understand anyway. Not that it'll make any difference if I understand when we all blow up."
"Implosion, not explosion. We're all supposed to get sucked into a black hole." He took a toke, holding it in, waiting to feel the rush. Waiting to feel anything.
Ziggy shrugged, classic Ziggy, and took the joint from him. "Fuck, Lee, you've been fallin' into one of those for fifteen years. Wouldn't make any diff to you."
They walked in silence, sharing the joint all the way down to Columbia. Tonight, the silence suited him fine. And silence with Ziggy was always comfortable. They turned west onto the Ring Road circling the center of the campus, what used to be almost the entire campus back when Jackie was…
Back when.
He remembered, trying not to.
The road bore south. They walked past Village One on their right, lying jumbled like a giant set of children's blocks. Children's blocks. Jackie had wanted to start a family…
They walked past the Village Green rolling dark and empty, its grass silvery in the moonlight. He'd made love to Jackie there, one hot August night…
They walked until they reached Sick Bay. A single Mallard duck paddled slowly across the small pond, trembling its brown surface. Overhanging the far side of the pond, white and boxy, sat Medical Services. Liam had carried Jackie there when she'd sprained her ankle coming down the steps of the Math building. That's how he'd met her…
They stopped. They'd reached The Spot. The Spot, he thought, feeling the capitalization that he'd given it over the years.
