It was the usual crowded bus ride home. Teddy stood in the aisle, leaning forward awkwardly because someone's backpack was pressing into his back. People who kept their backpacks on while riding the bus were so annoying. His own pack was right where it should be, wedged between his feet on the floor of the bus.
Two girls sat in the pair of seats next to him. The one near the window was listening to music and had her eyes closed. The other was was looking at a piece of paper she held in her hands.
Teddy frowned. Coincidences made him nervous. Yesterday he was at Songhees looking at the big board of school clubs, including the Robotics Club, and now as he stood in the aisle of the crowded bus, there it was again: Robotics Club. Printed on bright orange paper, the words were in big, goofy, robo-letters and under the heading was a picture of a robot from an old sci-fi movie. Below, there was info about the group, when they meet, who to contact, etc.
The girl had brownish wavy hair, medium-length and held in place here and there with criss-crossed bobby-pins. Her worn denim jacket had a collection of buttons pinned to it and she wore a purple and orange scarf tied stylishly around her neck. Her look was interesting and kind of retro, like maybe '80s style.
Should he reconsider joining the Robotics Club? It would be nerdy in the extreme, guaranteed, but it could be fun. This girl looked potentially cool but, really, Robotics Club?
One of the girl's buttons had a black-and-white photo of someone in an ape suit with a weird space helmet on. Another was a Japanese cartoon creature that he thought he should probably recognize but didn't. A third one was a black line drawing of a shaggy, crab-shaped thing with eyes on stalks and the letters FSM on its body. He wasn't sure how to feel about these obscure adornments. They made you want to find out more, but at the same time they seemed to be mocking you for not already knowing.
Right then she looked up at him as if she'd been reading his thoughts. Teddy quickly looked away, pretending that he'd been staring out the bus window all along even though he knew perfectly well she just caught him looking down at her.
"Do you think the robot looks stupid?" she asked.
Teddy shrugged awkwardly. The girl looked back down at the orange club poster. She was cute.
Teddy leaned down a little. "No," he said. "It looks cool. I was actually thinking of joining that club."
"You were?" she asked, squinting at him as though trying to decide if he was making fun of her.
"Yeah. Why's that so shocking?" said Teddy. The girl in the window seat rang the bell and started to get up. There was a little awkwardness as the window girl, Teddy and the robot girl squeezed around one another, but finally the other girl was gone and robot girl scooched over so Teddy could sit.
"I don't know," she said, appraising him again before finally coming to a conclusion. "Yeah, I guess you could be the type. Are you first year?"
"Yeah," said Teddy.
The type? The Robotics Club type? Teddy considered the possibility that he might actually be nerdier than he thought.
"Me too," she said. "What are you taking?"
"Earth Sciences and some math," said Teddy. "Thinking of doing Seismology or something."
"Cool!" she said. "I'm doing Engineering for now. We'll see how that goes. And you should totally join our club! We're planning some really cool stuff. Have you ever done anything with robotics?"
"Not really," he said.
"No problem! We'll get you up to speed. You wouldn't be the only noob, but I've known a bunch of the guys for a few years. We had a club at our high school. We actually went to Berkeley for a competition. In California. At the University. That was pretty amazing. Now we're just kind of moving the high school club up here to Songhees since a bunch of us are here. There wasn't a Robotics Club before. We had to start one."
"Cool," he said. "What high school are you from?"
"Mount Doug."
"Hm."
"What's that mean, 'Hm'?"
"Oh nothing. I just remember you guys thrashing us at a lot of sports."
"Where were you?"
"Embey."
She nodded. "My condolences."
Teddy smiled then said. "Hey, if you went to Mount Douglas how come you're riding this bus?"
"Oh," she said, "I live one week with my Mom up near UVic and one week with my Dad. His place is in James Bay."
"Really? Where?"
"Oswego Street."
"I live right near Oswego, on Rendall."
"Crazy! That's so close. We can be bus buddies! Well, every other week at least."
"My friend Jello lives right near Oswego too, on Ontario," said Teddy.
She frowned at him. "Your friend's name is 'Jello'?"
"Heh, yeah. Nickname. His real name is Angelo."
They were coming up to his stop. Teddy reached across her and rang the bell. "Uh, I'm Ted," he said. "Or Teddy."
She smiled and said, "Hi Ted or Teddy, I'm C. J."
As he got up Teddy was about to say something but she cut him off. "No, you can't ask what it stands for."
Walking home from the bus stop Teddy realized that the distraction of meeting this C. J. girl made him forget to stop downtown and pick up those shoes. Again. He rolled his eyes. Maybe he just wasn't meant to have them.
During her yoga class Neea was distracted, still thinking about Darwin and how she might have let that young girl's life slip through her fingers. Could she still find her and help her? Would Darwin even let her help? Was there anything at all she could do?
When the class ended, Danny, the instructor, spoke to Neea quietly. "Is everything OK? Seems like something's on your mind today."
"Sorry, Danny," said Neea. "I know. I wasn't focused today."
"It's fine. I was just concerned."
Neea had done Danny's yoga classes dozens of times before. He was one of her favourite teachers. He even encouraged her to go to India to gain a deeper knowledge of the practice. When Danny had asked her to have dinner with him a few months earlier, Neea had been tempted, but Danny was nearly ten years younger than her and not really her type.
Younger guys were often attracted to Neeaâshe was pretty, blonde and fit and probably looked younger than thirty-nineâbut she always rejected them. She liked men who had some experience and wisdom, and she knew she'd feel self-conscious and a little ridiculous dating a much-younger guy. She knew Teddy would be embarrassed about it too.
Since the end of her marriage to Alan, Neea had been determined to only get involved with someone if she was convinced the chemistry was there. That was partly for Teddy's sakeâto shield him from the potential turmoil of a bad relationshipâbut really, compatibility was everything as far as she was concerned.
However, Victoria was a very small pond when you were picky about finding the right fish. That was the main reason that she'd been single, apart from Peter and a couple of other missteps, since Alan. But, being honest with herself, she wasn't really trying very hard to meet someone. Perhaps she should finally try online dating. That seemed to be the way things were done these days.
At the little market near the yoga studio she found some nice, fresh kale, a few fat, ripe tomatoes, fresh basil, and a couple of free-run chicken breasts. She'd serve that with polenta and melted Provolone and Teddy would love it. She walked home looking forward to dinner, for the pleasure of good food, and also because it was the one time of day when her son would say more than a few words to her.
"I'm signing up for a club, Mom," Teddy said later, cutting into his cheese-covered tomatoey chicken.
"Oh good!" said Neea. "What is it?"
"Robotics Club."
"Really?" said Neea, sounding both pleased and surprised. "So that's robots? I didn't know you were interested in them."
"Oh yeah, definitely. It should be really cool. Sounds like a good group of guys. Girls too."
"That sounds great, Ted. So how often do they meet?"
"Uh, weekly, I think? I'll find out more about it tomorrow."
"Good!" said Neea. "Were there any other groups that interested you?"
"Not really. A lot of stupid stuff."
They chatted a little about Neea's parents who had phoned earlier in the day. Neea gave Teddy the update on everything his Mummi and Ukki were up to at their country house near Helsinki. Winter was coming and Ukki was busy getting the house ready, making sure the wood-stove was working well and draught-proofing doors and windows. Neea had told her father to get someone to come and look at the chimney and not try to do everything himself. Mummi was sixty-three and Ukki was sixty-eight. They were getting older, Neea said. Then Neea changed the subject to talk about Darwin and drugs.
"Yeah, I figured it was drugs," said Teddy.
"She's been taking crystal meth," said Neea. "Do you know much about that?"
"We had a presentation on it back in grade eleven. That's the one where you pick at yourself because you feel bugs crawling under your skin, right? She takes that? That's pretty messed up!"
"It's very messed up, yes, but I guess it can happen. You just make some bad decisions."
"Well, before you even ask, no, I would never do that. My friends and I are pretty much the last guys who would ever take meth or do any other drug for that matter. We're super-boring, Mom. You know that."
"Yes," Neea said. "That's the good kind of boring."
The conversation turned to Teddy's dad, Alan, and his wife, Cassie. Teddy was complaining about having to go over to Alan's house at Thanksgiving and was talking about how weird it was to visit them. Neea would never say anything bad about Alan or Cassie, but she couldn't help laughing when Teddy joked about Cassie's boob-job or Alan's tendency to flirt with young women.
"I swear it's the only reason he does those paintings," Teddy said. "It's just an excuse to get hot girls to pose for him!"
Teddy's father had been known to approach attractive women at the grocery store or on the street and ask them to model for him. Teddy had actually been with him when he did it a couple of times and even though Alan had a business card and some postcards of his most popular paintings to prove that he really was an artist and not just some random perv, it still seemed super-awkward to Teddy and borderline creepy. The fact that he came across as very legit and promised to pay them well meant that a lot of the girls agreed to do it. Often they sounded flattered that an artist had noticed them.
Teddy had no reason to believe that Alan did anything with his models except paint them. Over the years, he'd met a few of them on visits to the big house in West Vancouver. They were always pretty, of course, but most also seemed very nice and quite normal.
With the kitchen clean and Teddy up in his room doing school work, Neea opened her laptop in the living room and soon found herself exploring a dating website called Soulmates. Her friend Traci had met her current boyfriend Donnie there, and she made Neea promise to try it. Neea answered a few questions about herself and was shown a sampling of the kind of guys she might find on the site if joined up. They looked like nice men and a couple of them were quite handsome. Then she saw one that looked like one of Teddy's old teachers from high school. She was pretty sure it wasn't him but it made her wonder about the chances of seeing someone she knew. That could be embarrassing. Then again, everyone seemed to be using online dating sites these days. There was no shame in it. She took the plunge and registered, managed to find a couple of recent pictures of herself that she didn't hate and wrote a little bio. It was so embarrassing for Neea to try and describe herself. She wrote a couple of versions and immediately deleted them before settling on something brief and somewhat vague. She'd go back and add more later.
As she explored her new profile page she eventually found her mailbox. She was surprised to see that she already had messages there: two from the Soulmates staff, welcoming her and offering her some premium services for a fee, as well as a third from a guy who included a picture of himself and looked to be about thirty years older than her, welcoming her as well. She had no idea how he could have found her so quickly!
Another message came in, and then a few more. The message counter next to her mailbox was ticking upward. 6... 10... 15... Surprised and a little bit excited, she opened the next message in the list. There was a photo with this one too. Hopefully this guy was a bit younger.
The picture was of a man's erect penis.
"Mikä ääliö!" she said loudly. "What a jerk!"
She closed the browser window and shut the laptop. Forget it, she thought. She'd rather meet no men at all than meet someone that way. Instead, she poured another glass of wine and sat on the couch to read.
Stupid men.
Up in his room Teddy found what he was looking for: photos from the Mount Douglas High School Grade 12 Robotics Club trip to the UCBRExpo, or University of California Berkeley Robotics Expo. Everything's on the Internet, he thought to himself.
There she was. The only girl in the club, apparently. The guys she was with all looked super nerdy, but everyone was having a good time, especially C. J. In a few of the shots the group was posing around their robot, which was a low, four-wheeled metal thing, armoured and painted red, with a white number 14 stencilled on its side. There was some sort of apparatus sticking up at an angle like an arm, but he had no idea what it could be for. Pretty far from Teddy's idea of a robot, but definitely kind of cool.
"C. J. Stover." That's all the photo captions said. No full name given. Oh well. "C. J." it is, thought Teddy. He'd try and find her at school tomorrow and join that club.
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If you liked this chapter I hope you'll kindly consider giving it a vote. Votes really help to increase a story's reach and my little tale could use a boost. Thank you for reading!
â D.B.