hoodieripper:

by Chris Eng, illustration by Karlene Harvey

Click here for the previous chapter.

Jenn changed her clothes in the TV room in about 30 seconds flat. She didn’t want to show up at the party with her knapsack, so that was the only option. She hung around the TV room until the last possible second, then did a quick-change, shoved her normal clothes in her knapsack, deposited it around the far end of the couch and shot out the basement door for the bus stop. To her great pleasure, nothing occurred to mess up her plan.

The bus dropped her off in a quiet neighbourhood outside the downtown core. Aside from the occasional motorist using Main Street as a shortcut to get from A to B at 100 kph, the neighbourhood was deathly quiet. The buildings in the vicinity were composed of warehouses, businesses in converted warehouses and scrapyards. There was a lone gas station in the distance ahead, blindingly bright next to the intermittent glow of the neighbouring street lamps.

The streets in the area were short and not entirely logical. They were obviously planned according to the needs of the various businesses which originally inhabited the area and, as such, there was no guarantee a given road would go straight through. That’s why she’d printed out a map online.

Jenn rounded the corner when she hit the gas station and stepped into darkness. Apparently, maintaining street lights wasn’t a pressing concern in the area. She wished she had a knife. Making it to the end of the block, she turned right and saw a few people standing on the sidewalk in front of a house. As she drew closer she could hear the party happening there.

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mademoisellechapeau:

Constantly chiseling the granite rock

that incorporates this vulnerable silkiness

of mine tears me apart and shreds and rips

and crumbles until nothing’s left but tattered

paper shavings inked with melted letters.

hoodieripper:

(1)

Watch from the back wall
Where wrinkled tattoos clutch beer
Circle pit closes

(2)

Tear-spattered J-card
Fingers cannot spool mix tape
The past is the past

(3)

Cleaning hall closet
Shoe boxes spill from top shelf
Zines fall like spring rain

roggyscanvas:

I can sense it -
In your seething silence.
You want to rip into my skin,
Claws hooked like quotations,
And a hiss relative to all profanities.
Then say it,
Speak it,
Break out your weapons -
Attack me, dammit,
Show me what you’re made of -
Glimpse dare I such fiest,
Such heat,
Such detest.
My monster purrs and taunts,
Daring you to duel.

hoodieripper:

by Chris Eng, illustration by Karlene Harvey

Click here for the previous chapter.

Jenn’s smile had faded by the time she got home. She’d spent the bus ride going over every possible option to avoid having Round 2 with her mother, but ultimately knew there wasn’t any. She had no friends to stay with and she wasn’t going to spend the night downtown. Besides, it’s not like she was the guilty party. She may have provoked her mother, but Jenn didn’t grab her by the sweater and start slapping her.

The rationalizing didn’t kill her anxiety, but it gave her enough fortitude to get on the bus. Still, by the time she’d reached her stop, her nerves were electric with tension and the tendons in her shoulders were like steel cables. She was a coiled snake, a compressed spring.

Stopping up the block, she took her school books from her knapsack and crammed the ThrifTown bag into it. She didn’t want to have to explain her shopping trip to her parents. Not tonight. She slung the knapsack over both shoulders, put her books under her arm and walked the rest of the way home.

Even before she slid the TV room door open, she knew exactly what she would find; her parents sitting on the couch in silence, waiting for her. And there they were. Her mother was dressed just as she had been a few hours previous, her face red and puffy from crying and rage. Jenn’s dad sat next to her, a man in his early 40s dressed in a crisp and stylish shirt and tie. He surveyed the situation from behind designer glasses, and ran a hand through his well-groomed hair as a matter of preparation. Jenn closed the door behind herself, just as her mother’s voice erupted.

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hoodieripper:

by Chris Eng, illustration by Karlene Harvey

Click here for the previous chapter.

ThrifTown described itself as a thrift store, but marketed itself as a department store, staying open until nine every night and illuminating their multiple-football-field size selection with banks of fluorescent lights until every particle of dirt (and there were oh-so-many particles of dirt) was blindingly obvious under the barrage.

Jenn had originally headed there because it was one of the few places downtown (admittedly, the very edge of downtown, bordering the industrial area) open past six, but as she walked slowly and absentmindedly down the aisles she began to form a plan.

Fingering a poofy blouse with football player shoulder pads, she stopped. She was in the wrong section. Straightening herself, Jenn strode across the store to the childrens-wear. She would have looked in the men’s department, but figured she was too tiny even for a men’s small.

Her mother, despite the grabbing and slapping, had been right. It fucking killed Jenn to admit it, but it was true: no boys would look at her. No boys or girls would look at her, sexually or otherwise. She couldn’t make friends. She was, in a best case scenario, effectively invisible. She picked up a pair of jeans from the rack, held them up to herself to check the fit and put them back.

The only people in the world Jenn was remotely interested in befriending were the Downtown Punks, and despite the fact they seemed to take anyone into their ranks, she still didn’t feel like she stood a chance in her secretary-wear. She’d seen some odd people hanging out with them… but none that looked like her.

She picked up another pair of jeans and held them against herself. Looking down, she took all her preconceived ideas of fashion and crammed them and their nearly deafening voices down into the pit beneath her heart where she could no longer hear them. This wasn’t a matter to be decided by self-doubt. This was something that required cool-headed and logical evaluation: WWQBW?

What would Queen Bee wear?

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hoodieripper:

by Chris Eng, illustration by Karlene Harvey

Click here for the previous chapter.

“Hey.”

The six teens in the smoke pit of Willeford Senior Secondary stopped talking and looked at Jenn. They were punk by her reckoning, but bore as much in common with the crew in front of Pete’s Burgers as cats with dogs or lemurs with human beings. Their clothes were torn, but precisely and intentionally as opposed to rips that come from years of casual wear. Their hair was multi-coloured, but tinted with temporary dyes that would wash out if parents protested. Their belts were huge, spiked and non-functional. Their shirts were tight and new, the fronts emblazoned with the names of bands familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of punk. And they were all smoking, but there was a deliberateness to it which made it seem like they were part of an animatronic display at Disney World.

Claire, a girl in Grade 12 with lavender highlights and a Sex Pistols shirt, gave Jenn a look up and down, then said, without any enthusiasm at all, “What’s up, McNabb?”

Jenn gave herself the same look in her mind’s eye. There was nothing going on with either her or her wardrobe. At 16, Jenn had mastered the art of being non-descript. She was pretty—with some effort and an hour or so in the morning she might have been beautiful—but she consistently veered toward plainness, covering up her slight but curvy frame in grey or tan blouses, sweaters and knee-length skirts, and topping it all off with thick stockings and worn maryjanes. Her auburn hair hung straight and unmanaged, parted on the left and framing her face in an acceptable yet entirely uninvolving way. A black knapsack, heavy with schoolwork, hung off her right shoulder and she’d wedged a book tightly under her left arm. It was an appearance that almost satisfied people’s conceptions of ‘nerdy’ but settled on ‘wallflower’ instead.

Jenn shrugged. “Nothing. Just seeing what was going on.”

“We’re smoking.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Jenn replied, wondering why she’d come over to talk to them. She knew, of course—they were punks, or the closest thing to them she had any contact with. They were obviously socially separate from the group downtown, but she thought if she hung out with this group for a while, she might better understand the culture.

Claire grinned at Jenn—a shark’s smile, carnivorous and hungry—and said, “So, why’d you ask then?”

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