Skylark Read online

  “Thanks,” Clem says. He looks at me for a moment, then nods and says, “You too.”

  It’s nice to be on the track again. It feels great to push down with my legs and pedal hard and to feel my stomach lift when I catch air. I offer Clem tips about the track, but he doesn’t really need them. He just wants me there. I watch him fly and jump and twist and land hard, solidly, and the whole time, I’m running words through my head, letting them jump and twist and land hard too. That’s a cool thing about writing. It takes me all sorts of places, but I can take it anywhere I go. I can do it anywhere, anytime.

  I found this magazine in the library called the Claremont Review. It publishes poems and stories by anyone under eighteen. I’m going to send some of my stories to the editors. I’ve decided that I want to write all my life, no matter what happens. Life changes—it always will change, Mom says. For me, writing just might be the ultimate through-line. Slam Night got me through the last few months. It let me imagine something beyond how uncomfortable we were, how much I missed Dad and how worried I was about Mom. It gave me a way to think about all that stuff—a way in and a way out. A way through.

  Clem takes second place, which gets him into next week’s finals.

  “I always knew I had two champions,” Mom says once we’re back in the car.

  “You don’t—not yet,” Clem tells her.

  “You’re wrong,” Mom says. “We’ve have hard circumstances the last few months. But you two have managed to come out ahead. “

  Mom starts up the Skylark. “Check the map,” she tells Clem.

  Just like that, we’re on our way to see our new home.

  A woman with a clipboard gives us a tour of the three-story, three-bedroom townhouse. It’s a little tight and there’s no yard, but it’s our house! It’s got a fridge and a bathtub and big windows. Closets! Drawers! A living room, a dining alcove, a hallway long enough to lie down in. There’s even a parking spot for the car.

  There’s more good news on this bright spring day. After our tour of the house, we stop in at the library.

  “Did you get a letter from Dad?” Clem asks as we gaze into the computers.

  “Looks like it.”

  “Did you read it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Read it.”

  Angel,

  I’m coming home. Mom and I have been Talking about it.

  i have made a name for myself here. There was even a news article about my brick work. I joked once with mom that one of us needed to make some trouble. Well Ive been making trouble with my bricks. The article called it art.

  That got me jobs in the rich part of town. Now I’ve got work in Victoria.

  Mom tells me you’ve been making trouble too. Poetry. She says you are winning prizes. Im not surprised my girl. I’ll be there in a week. I love you. We will live together in that big house hey?

  I love you. I told you that already. I know.

  I love you.

  Dad

  “Three more days, and we’re in the townhouse,” Clem says. “For the first week, all I’m going to do is cook and eat.”

  I laugh. And maybe because I know we’ve got a home to go to, with a fridge and a stove, I’m able to look at Clem straight on, eyes fully open, for the first time in months. The guy is bony. He needs some solid rest and square meals. Come to think of it, I probably do too.

  I drag Clem to finals one hour early. I have to be first on the list. I’ve got to get to the mic before Surfer does. I know he’s planning to slur me onstage, announce that I live in a car, make out that I’m pathetic.

  Twig introduces me as the “newest, youngest slam champ on the block.”

  “Go, Angie!” people shout. Even Mercy Girl. I wait until the audience quiets, and then I introduce my poem.

  “Things got hard for my family this last year.” I say. “Mom lost a bunch of jobs, Dad couldn’t find work, and finally we got kicked out of our apartment. My mom, brother and I have been living in a car for the past few months. Some people think this is something to be ashamed of. Anyway, everything’s okay now. We just got a home. Subsidized housing. A palace.”

  People clap and cheer. Some look toward Clem, who looks freaked out. But he manages to give me a thumbs-up.

  “What happened, basically, is my family wobbled. That’s what we did. But everything wobbles, the Earth in its orbit and a skylark on the wind. How else do you get back to the truth?”

  I wait a second, then start singhollering my latest performance piece.

  The street is a vein, a seam, a stain

  between you and me, the street

  is an asphalt river. I took a long

  swim there.

  With my mother and my brother.

  We would not let each other drown.

  No. We let each other swim there.

  No coins in our pockets to weigh us

  down

  and our lungs and hearts filled with

  hope. And when hope failed, with faith

  that the street would do what it was

  meant to do,

  deliver us whole and untroubled,

  somewhere new.

  Let me start at the beginning.

  We were living

  in the Buick Skylark and Mom still

  managed to look

  like a million bucks every day…

  I don’t care whether people clap when I am through. I don’t care if I win the finals or not. All I care about is that I’ve found home.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, John, Anne, Catherine, Meg, and Donald, my siblings and father, with whom I thrived in many houses—you have always been tremendously encouraging. I am very thankful, too, to the poets I met during the years I was between houses, especially the late poets Karl Wendt and Patrick O’Connell. Thank you, Alden, Ezra, and Hazel, with whom I share a home and my heart. Thank you to Scott, Max, Sophia, Ethan, Jess, and Austin—my cup overfilleth! And thanks, Graham Cournoyer, whose Auto Trader ad read like Dadaist poetry and who let me spend a few hours with his 1982 Buick Skylark while writing this book. Finally, thanks to Andrew Wooldridge, my sharp and generous editor.

  Sara Cassidy has lived in a logging camp, a five-by-seven-foot survival shelter in the Manitoba bush, a refugee camp (as an international witness), an apartment over a downtown biker bar, in youth hostels in Canada and Scotland as well as in large, comfortable houses. In every place, she had a pen and a journal to help steer her way through. Skylark is her fifth book for youth.