Free The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O'Neill Page A

soccer in general because he had been kicked off the team in Grade Eight for showing up late. He was going to be an irrational dictator. He had also suggested banning fanny packs because he thought they were ugly.
    We whistled when we saw the car parked outside the building. Low-lifes sometimes hung around old people for pocket money and their cars. You’d see these junkies driving old Coupe de Villes and wearing alligator shoes. Nicolas borrowed a Cadillac from an old lady he claimed was named Madame Prèsdelamort. In exchange, he would sit with her at the doctor’s office and repeat what the doctor had just said, but louder.
    “You likey?” Nicolas asked.
    “You look like a seventies cocaine dealer.”
    “A seventies porn star. Porn stars from the seventies used to live in this area and bought a lot of the buildings. But then they got older and impotent and got laid off. So they couldn’t afford the upkeep. That’s why this whole area is actually falling into total disrepair.”
    “Where do you get this stuff?” I demanded.
    “A lot of Québécois do well as porn stars. It’s because we all have really big dicks.”
    For some reason Adam and I laughed at that ridiculous joke. We were going to be laughing a lot that afternoon. I could feel it. I looked at my first pile of homework on the floor next to the bed, which I was supposed to finish. I had promised myself that I would be really diligent about it, unlike when I had originallygone to school. I decided that I could put it aside just once.
    We were dressed in the way that only nineteen-year-olds can dress. I had on a blue shirt that tied behind my neck and a silver skirt that stuck out like a tutu and black cowboy boots with purple stars on them. Nicolas had on a pink velour jacket over a yellow T-shirt that had a drawing of a panda bear on it and purple track pants with green stripes down the sides. Adam had red sweatpants that were cut off just below the knees and a light blue dress shirt that had been washed about two thousand times and was threadbare. Adam was also wearing his suit jacket and tie.
    Nicolas got into the driver’s seat. I scooted into the middle and Adam got into the passenger seat after me. The car kept jerking wildly because Nicolas was having trouble with the enormous stick shift.
    Once we got onto the road, we bounced along like crazy. The shocks in the car were terrible. All the streets in Montréal were always all broken up from potholes because of the long winters. If you were drinking coffee, it ended up going all over your lap. Children would sometimes get carsick just going three blocks. We were pleased with ourselves. We thought that we must have looked like gunmen who were riding into a town on the Western frontier with prices on our heads and there wasn’t a damn thing that anybody could do about it.
    I can’t remember who suggested that we head toward our old elementary school. It had to have been Nicolas. The school was a giant brick building with gargoyles of twenties schoolchildren over all the doors. There were cages on all the windows.
    We had hated school so much. Just being near it filled us with a horrible feeling. The teachers were always chastising us for not having our gym clothes or school fees. Loulou was too old to be on top of anything.
    We parked right outside the schoolyard fence. It was lunch-time and the sound of children was almost as deafening as the ocean. School was out, but they all went there for day camp. They were singing their skipping-rope tunes—wee tunes of resistance that had been passed down from one class to another. They were probably singing Étienne’s skipping-rope song:
    I skipped out on my education
    I was too smart for school
    I skipped out on my bill payments
    I was too cheap for those
    I skipped out on my landlord
    There were roaches in the sink
    I skipped out on my court date
    I have no time for prison
    I skipped out on my woman
    But she came and dragged me back
    It’s been one