Nothing But Life
Nothing But Life
Mom goes quiet. Not satisfied with Gramma Jan’s response but not wanting to push too hard. Gramma Jan doesn’t say anything more, either. There’s not much more they can say, and the silence isn’t too awkward. A comfortable tension, if there’s such a thing. Like they’re reflecting each other in a cracked mirror.
Most of the time you never have reason to see it. Sickness brings it forward. Injury. Death. The last time I saw it was in the ER where they brought us after the shooting. Lots of families momentarily aligned. Divorced parents walking in hand in hand. Working moms and dads, feeling guilty for being so far away, wandering around with their phones in hand, calling names. Everyone shocked at the blood everywhere. Mom, too. The paramedics had bundled me into an ambulance. All that blood and you can’t blame them for thinking I’d been hurt. Blood has a smell, did you know that? Kind of metallic. I could smell it on myself, soaked into my clothes from when I slipped and fell beside Ethan, who died with a library book in his hand. And from Dakota, whose leg bled more than I thought possible.
“Hey, Dills, since you’re here against orders anyhow, how about a hug and a kiss?” Gramma Jan says.
I try to smile as I move next to the bed. There’s a hug of sorts. As awkward and cardboard as it was yesterday with Aunt Viv, but more so because I don’t want to hurt Gramma. Who’s scared, though she’s trying to be brave. Fear has a smell, too. I smelled it while I was waiting for Mom in the Windsor ER hallway where they’d put all the kids who’d been cleared and were waiting to be released by the police back to their parents. Under the blood smell. Fear is sour.
And just like that, I’m back in that hallway, sitting on the floor with everyone else who has been deemed well enough to wait. My friend Maddie and I have given up our chairs because even though none of us have been injured too badly, it seems like everyone else needs them more than we do. There’s a sling here, a bandage there, and a lot of bloodstains on all our clothes. Turning dark and kind of brown. We’re tagged with our names. There’s a cop with a clipboard who checks ID when parents come in for their kids. I think we’re all crying. It’s cold. The smells of blood and fear fill my nose. Metallic. Sour.
Wait. I can hear voices. Mom’s. And Gramma Jan’s.
“Dills? Are you okay?” Mom asks?
“I think so?”
Now I’m in a hospital room with my mother and grandmother, who’s had some kind of heart thing. It’s bad. Must be. Otherwise there wouldn’t be so much stuff on her. Wires and pads and clips. The little green and orange and red lights of all the equipment, the fluttering readout screens, the whiteness of the bed and gowns and the open window. I’m all right. But I can still smell that fear. And not only from Gramma Jan. It’s everywhere, in the air of the hospital. And it’s coming from me again. Why does the room seem all shimmery, like I’m looking at it through water?
I’m here. Come see me.
Jesse’s voice. Right next to me, as real in this room as it has been in the park. Is he here? Can he be? Then there’s a sudden blackness and I feel myself falling. I don’t feel where the fall ends, though.
Wendell (Dills) Sims and his mother have moved back to her hometown of Hamilton to live with Aunt Viv and Gramma Jan in the wake of tragedy. Dills was in the library at Windsor High at the time of the school shooting that took the lives of several of his classmates and injured many others. Moving from Windsor to Hamilton was necessary to give Dills the time and space he needed to recover from what he had witnessed in the library that day, as well as to grapple with the fact that the school shooter was his beloved stepfather, Jesse.
After Dills injures a classmate at his new school, he is sentenced to community service at the local park and must wear an ankle monitor. Despite moving hundreds of kilometres away from the scene of the shooting, Dills is unable to move forward with his life because he has not yet taken steps to talk to anyone about what he has experienced, and his family does not discuss it at home. It is as if Jesse does not exist in their new world. And there is no way he can tell anyone that he hears Jesse’s voice talking to him each and every day, despite Jesse’s being in a coma in the hospital in Windsor. With the help of some new friends, his own personal growth, and events that bring his family closer, Dills must decide if he’s ready to take the path to healing, the path that will force him to reconcile the stepfather he loves with the man who committed such a horrible crime.
Nothing But Life is author Brent van Staalduinen’s latest offering for Dundurn Press. In addition to authoring two adult novels featuring coming-of-age protagonists, Boy> and Saints, Unexpected, van Staalduinen is an award-winning author of short fiction. Previously an English teacher, he now works at the local public library and teaches writing to university students when he’s not writing his latest work of fiction. He lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario.
The book is an interesting read that contemplates a question not often covered—how do loved ones cope after a tragedy such as a school shooting, particularly when the shooter is a loved one? Author Brent van Staalduinen creates a realistic view of this experience through the eyes of Dills and his family members. Throughout the text, Dills struggles to make sense of what Jesse did with the Jesse he has known his whole life. Through the first-person narration, Dills reminisces and recalls memories of his time with Jesse and ponders the question at the heart of it all—why? As the plot progresses, readers will see that Dills and his family do not discuss the tragedy. They just forge ahead with life as if Jesse wasn’t ever a part of it. Character development is shown as Dills becomes more comfortable discussing his past experiences with his new friends and his aunt, leading him to share his desire to go see Jesse in an attempt to gain some measure of closure.
Van Staalduinen has created a realistic and colourful cast of characters in this novel. From the highly sophisticated hacker, Aunt Viv, to Dills’ Gramma Jan who cusses like a sailor, to the Israeli war veteran park supervisor, Gal, to the tough as nails wrestler and love interest, Mia, the characters are well-rounded and relatable, and each provides well-balanced doses of levity and seriousness throughout. Additionally, the circle of support they each contribute to Dills is a key aspect that helps him move forward with healing.
Nothing But Life is a coming-of-age novel that encompasses serious themes including mental health, PTSD, trauma, family dynamics, grief, healing, death, love, and identity. It takes a unique look at a different perspective in the aftermath of a school shooting—that of the family of the perpetrator. Well-balanced with doses of humour, the plot and cast of characters are likely to capture and maintain readers’ interest, qualities that make it likely to be much enjoyed by the target audience.
Chasity Findlay is a graduate of the Master of Education program in Language and Literacy at the University of Manitoba and an avid reader of young adult fiction.