*Daisy, 1996*

On a warm sunny day in August, I finally turned ten years old.

All my friends were already double-digits. They all had birthdays during the school year. When people actually noticed and cared. Not like mine, shoved in at the end of summer when *school supplies* are already out in the stores. Criminy. 

Mama said I could have a party and invite everyone.

Like usual Mama let Luke invite his friends to the party too. I don’t know what time that fool told them all to show up, but all the boys got here *early*. They took up the street playing football. All of them smelling like a horse’s ass (like my cousin Charlie says). Every time a car would come down to drop someone else off they would move onto the sidewalk on either side of the street, the game continuing. 

Beth got there early. The football bounced off the windshield as she got out of her car, her dad opening the driver’s side door to shake his fist at Luke and his friends. We hugged and then she and I grabbed my big bouncy ball and went to a different part of the sidewalk to bounce it back and forth and ‘yap’ like Mama calls it. 

“Ahhh!” I yelled, trying to not get dirt on my cutest outfit as the ball bounced on a dirt clod and came towards me. I picked it out six days ago, and set aside my green mini backpack last night to wear with it. It was a skort and so stinking cute. And a plain white shirt, but with little lines going up it. I begged Mama to take Mary and I told Old navy so I could pick it out. I saved my money from the new paper route because Lord knows Mama isn’t buying me any new clothes. 

*Thank god Pops helps me do it now* I thought about the paper route. I hated even walking down the driveway to knock on someone’s door, let alone ask them for money when I had to collect monthly dues. 

A couple months ago I walked up and down East Park Dr to collect from my accounts and almost no one paid me. They told me they already paid some other kid who came around to collect. He had a book just like I did with everyone’s name and info on it, on the same big ring thing. 

I didn’t know what to do. I said “Uh, ok” and walked away from everyone. I did tell people that the kid didn’t work for the Sun Times. They still owed money. But most of the time they just said “sorry, but not paying again.”

I ended up losing money for all the papers I delivered that month. I was too embarrassed to say anything. Luke would have never let me live it down. His favorite pastime was torturing me. 

I’ll never forget the time Mama’s friend Mrs. Laura Arthur gave him new ammo. 

Mary, John, Pat, Jerry, and Luke were all sitting in the car with me, waiting on Mama as she dropped something off to the old bag’s house. 

“How’s your daughter Dahlia doing?” we could hear her high-pitched voice asking. 

“Dahlia!” wheezed Luke. Grabbing the seat in front of him like it was the funniest damn thing he ever heard. 

Semi-recently I’d asked everyone to stop calling me Margaret and call me Daisy instead. I read the nickname in *Little Women* and fell in love with it. Who wants to be called Margaret anyways? The name sounds like an old thumb. 

Of course Luke didn’t read *Little Women* though. Does he even know how to read at all? I wonder sometimes. 

I absolutely hate his guts. 

The family was split into the ‘big kids’ and the ‘little kids’. The big kids were Luke, me, and honorary member Mary. She could kind of go into either bucket, but for the most part she was cool. The little kids were John, Pat, and Jerry. They were absolutely a collective group of savages, and I found it best to generally avoid them. 

Fighting with Luke hit the boiling point recently. A few days ago he was in the backyard getting ready to ride his bike. He was working on the kickstand and kept saying really mean things. Like I’m as boring as a piece of paper. Lazy Daisy. Mama and Pops found me on the doorstep and took me in even though I was not the same species as everyone else.

Finally, I snapped. I screamed out loud and grabbed a baseball bat from the ground. I threw it at him, and time slowed down for a second as it turned, end over end through the air. It hit him on the back and side and he crumpled like a can of Coca-Cola. 

I ran upstairs as fast as I could. Who knew where Mama and Pops were. Probably out gallivanting around like usual, leaving their million children alone and defenseless. 

I reached my room and crawled over to my window. I lifted my head up from underneath the window sill and looked out, my heart beating through my chest. 

Luke was still on the ground. 

I flopped backwards and flipped around leaning my head against the wall. Wondering what I should do or say to M and P so they didn’t kill me. I wanted one more look, thinking well, this is it. I’m a murderer. I murdered Luke. I can’t come back from this. 

When I peeked up again, he and his bike were gone. 

Later on when we all sat around the big dining table to eat fish sticks. Luke walked in and sat down and didn’t even look at me. 

Finally we played a family wide game of Eye Spy. The bat incident was never mentioned, and I was certainly never going to bring it up. 



Anyways, it was finally my birthday. 

Beth and I bounced the ball back and forth and talked about who was coming to the party. I invited all the girls going into 5th grade at Our Lady of Mercy. 

The day felt alive and buzzing. Mary was walking down to the park with some of the neighborhood kids. It looked like one of the dad’s was bringing them to swim at the beach at the end of the street. 

Some of Mama’s friends were standing in the front yard with their little kids. The savages ran around in a group with them, food already smeared all over their faces and shirts. I swear little kids yell just to hear the sound of their own voice. 

After all the girls got there we put our swimsuits on and ran back and forth to the beach.  

Pops was walking up a couple of hours later, cracking open a can of something as Mr. Lipnicki asked “where did the boys go?”  
  
I looked around, realizing he was right. I hadn’t heard their annoying selves for a while now. 

“I think they are playing basketball” I said, the court at the end of the park had been wafting something putrid in the breeze for a while now from the stench of all the boys. 

But then Mr. Lipnicki came back and said everyone was gone from there too. 

Billy’s dad started freaking out. I mean, freaking out. Because I guess the boat was missing too. 

Pops had this old boat that he bought from a friend of his, Mr. Matthews. He said he got a great deal on it. Mama said “We need groceries, Liam” and “Mr. Matthews is a crook and should be in jail.”

“It’s a fixer-upper” Pops would say about the boat, smiling as he put his hand on the side. He let us ride on the top in front, holding onto the rails as it raced over the water. 

Last year he let me drive it a couple of times, and I put it into full gear, going as fast as I could. The boat jumped and belly flopped onto the waves really aggressively. My stomach dropped every time, but I tried really hard to not show that I was scared. Pops didn’t really like that. 

“Luke is in so much trouble” I said out loud to Beth, Sarah, Clare, and Lulu. We were sitting to the side watching all the parents argue. Pops was insisting they were fine and just being boys. 

“I think Uncle Scott wants to sock my daddy” I said to the girls, watching him get more and more emphatic with his arms as he talked. 

All the girls went on the wooden boat in the park. I couldn’t help it. I felt my eyes tearing up a bit. 

“Leave it to Luke to ruin my birthday” I cried.

Beth and Lulu gave me a hug. Everyone started telling me how it was not ruined, they were all having fun. 

All the parents were talking loudly. Then someone with a uniform on came to talk to everyone. I could hear him say his name was “Officer Frankenstein” or something like that. 

A few minutes later all the boys were walking up the hill from the beach with the cop behind them. 

Billy’s dad gave him a hug that picked him up off the ground. All the boys looked like they just crawled out of the sewer. 

Apparently they all stole the boat to try to get to Canada. 

Luke and Jake were alternating driving (figures). They put poor Billy on front to be the lookout. Billy is afraid of his own shadow. Aunt Beatrice literally paid him to take tylenol when he had a headache at baseball practice last week. The kid’s an L-7 weenie, and they had him on the front of that thing assessing for sharks. 

Unreal, as Mama would say. 

I could hear Billy telling his dad about how he almost flew off a few times. He and Uncle Scott stomped over to their car. I could hear Uncle Scott yelling something to Pops before he slammed his car door. 

“Do you think they really got to Canada?” Beth asked me. 

We were all sitting around still just watching. 

“Knowing Luke and Jake? Maybe.” I said, shrugging. 

We could hear Luke and Jake telling another adult about how they saw someone floating on a log in the middle of the water, at a time where they couldn’t see the shore at all.   
“Idiots,” Lulu said behind me. 

“Agreed.”

We all went down to the beach. Pops made a fire and we roasted smores. Then he came over and asked if the girls wanted a ride on the boat. 

We all did, so we swam out to the boat. Luke and Jake ended up coming too. 

I held a towel over my head and side stroked it because I knew once we got on and started going it would be cold. Everything inside was soaking wet and smelled funny, but that boat always smelled like that. 

I sat next to Clare as the boat jumped over the waves. She was smiling a huge smile as she said “Why does everyone say you are poor all the time, when you have a boat?”

The waves continued to crash around us. 

I knew people made fun of our car. I’m not blind, I could see them. It was rusted, and old. The door handle fell off the drivers side so they used a hanger to close it from the inside. They might as well have tied fifteen tin cans to it, it was so loud. 

Mama would pull up and everyone would know. Heck, I would hear it from in school before the bell rang. Praying others didn’t recognize. Or hear Mama’s loud voice as she got out to “yap” as she called it. 

I heard Mama and Pops say they needed to get the muffler fixed and “next paycheck.” 

But they’d been saying that for a while. 

I looked at Clare and just shrugged and didn’t say anything. 

Clare was new this year. Her cousin Mark has been in my class since kindergarten. He sat in my four-block of desks the entire past year. I thought we were kind of friends, but then right before summer started, I was writing with a pencil I’d sharpened super far down. I liked writing with the little pencil. I thought it was easier to draw with, too.

Another person in our four-block, Davey, asked why I used such a small pencil.

“Because she’s poor” Mark said, laughing. He and Davey both laughed then. 

“Yeah, she definitely is” Davey said.

 My face burned as I looked away, pretending I didn’t hear them. 

In the boat, we stopped once we hit my grandma’s beach. Me and Luke called her Mean-gramma. She was mean. She never even let us use the bathroom when we stopped over to swim or say hey after jumping off the boat. 

“Happy Birthday Poopslop!” Luke said, diving off the side. Calling me the name I’d always called him growing up. 

I dove into the water, swimming towards the beach with fast, sure strokes. 

  
  
  
  


The Boat to Canada