The Sky Is Falling by Caroline Adderson Read Free Book Online Page B

Art Through the Ages . The Science of Life . Chekhov. Turgenev. Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy. When I was done and I slid back for a better look, a line from The Cherry Orchard popped into my head: My dear venerable bookcase, I salute you .
    Mid-terms came and I wondered how I had allowed myself to be flattered into taking Russian. It was nothing like French, the only other foreign language I’d attempted. French was a mouthful of feathers. Russian was spitting out stones. But if only I could spit them! I was able to read simple sentences now and even understand the absurdist dialogues in the language lab, but I choked on the stones. In addition to Russian and Russian Lit, I’d enrolled in the stupefying Canadian Poetics, and Biology 100 , the obligatory science credit I’d sidestepped the year before. After exams were over, when I could with great relief recap my highlighter pen and file away my index cards of notes, a house meeting was called. The main item on the agenda: what to do about Halloween.
    Pete: “If we’re not going to use it as a consciousness-raising opportunity, then I’ll boycott it as a bourgeois ruse.”
    â€œHow is Halloween a bourgeois ruse?” It was the first time I’d spoken during a meeting.
    â€œZed,” Pete said, shaking his gilded head. “What happens at Halloween?”
    â€œChildren dress up. They go door to door.”
    â€œYes. Essentially begging. A friendly adult disperses candy—for free! How fun! But what does it teach them? That the society they live in is generous and benign? Zed? Imagine a genuinely needy person begging door to door. And is that candy really free? Is it even sweet? Under what conditions did the workers in the factory labour to produce it? And what about the virtual slaves toiling in the sugar cane fields?”
    â€œOh dear,” Sonia said.
    I wondered what he would have to say about Christmas.
    Dieter: “I see your point about candy. Maybe we can hand out something else.”
    â€œWe could hand out cranes,” I said.
    Sonia literally lifted off the seat of her chair, making excited flapping motions with her hands. “Yes!”
    â€œHow does that raise consciousness?” Pete asked.
    â€œThe crane is a symbol,” Sonia said. “It’s a symbol of peace.”
    â€œThey don’t know that.”
    â€œWe could write a message explaining it,” I said.
    Pete smiled, showing all his perfect teeth. “Okay. Let’s write messages on the cranes. I’m fine with that.”
    â€œDo we have consensus then?” Dieter asked.
    We did and I felt pleased because it was my idea. Sonia went to get the origami papers from her room, then we set to writing. The crane is a symbol of peace , I wrote. I didn’t know what else to say. When I got bored writing that, I just wrote Peace , but that, too, became tedious. The others were writing more than I was. Pete appeared to be composing a manifesto. Dieter kept leaning over to read Sonia’s messages, leaning close so she almost had to fold her little self sideways to avoid touching him. Think about what peace means , I wrote, though I had never given it any thought myself. I glanced at what Sonia was writing.
    No more Hiroshimas!
    We worked for half an hour then all of us but Pete were done. “I need a smoke,” he said. “I’ll finish later.” When Dieter tried to read one of his messages, Pete pounced, slapping his hand over it. “Do you mind ?”
    Dieter stalked away, offended. I stayed and offered to help Sonia fold the cranes. “Did you write this?” she asked, reading one of my banal messages.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThat’s good, Jane,” she said.
    â€œWhat did you write?” I asked.
    She showed me.
    Give peace a chance .
    Later that night as I lay reading in my room, something made me look up from my book: a green square sliding under the door, fed slowly through from the other