I threw my fists against Sara’s bedroom door so hard and fast I felt my face flinch as the door rattled in its frame. Tears blurred my eyes as I shouted, “FUCKING OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR, SARA! RIGHT FUCKING NOW!”
For a half hour I’d been trying to get her to give back a shirt of Alex’s she’d taken out of the dryer without asking. Alex’s sister was waiting in her car out front, and Alex was pacing wildly in the hall behind me.
“I have to go,” Alex said, crying tears of her own. “If I don’t go now, my sister’s going to be mad. Tegan, I have to leave.”
“SARA!” I yelled. I knew she wasn’t going to open it no matter how loud I yelled. “Just go.”
Alex gave up and headed toward the top of the stairs; her backpack, half unzipped, was slung over her shoulder. In a defeated whisper she said, “She’s so fucking mean sometimes.”
I locked the door to my room after Alex left and fell face-down on my mattress. I cried hot tears of frustration into my pillow. I didn’t want to give Sara the satisfaction of hearing how much she’d upset me. When I opened my door to go down for dinner, Alex’s shirt was crumpled on the floor in the hall. I hated Sara at that moment. I felt increasingly embarrassed by her open hostility toward Alex and me and hopeless to stop it.
Alex tried to combat it initially, showering Sara with praise when she played us her new songs, lending her clothes to Sara when she said she liked them. Alex claimed that when I wasn’t around, Sara acted like a different person. Nicer. So I knew I was the problem, but I didn’t know how to fix it.
“Your girlfriend’s just sensitive,” Sara would tease when I would involve Mom in the conversation.
“No, you were a fucking asshole to her. Because that’s what you are. A fucking asshole.”
“Alex can be sensitive, Tegan,” Mom conceded.
“She’s not sensitive, Mom. Sara took her toque without asking and then said she didn’t know where it went. And then I found it in her closet.”
“You shouldn’t be in my room. Stay out of my stuff!” Sara yelled.
“Mom. Mom. Aren’t you going to do anything? That’s not fair.”
“Work it out between you,” she’d say, unpausing her show, blocking us out.
Sara smirked. “Yeah, Tegan. Stop tattling.”
Alex had brought up my mom’s reluctance to pick a side, too. She felt injured that no adult ever seemed to come to our defense when these altercations took place within earshot of them. Trying to explain to Alex that it was about me, not her, was impossible.
“You’re just an extension of me,” I would plead. “My mom thinks it’s about Sara and me. So she doesn’t get involved because it’s not about you.”
“It is about me because it’s me she’s mean to.”
It was hard for Alex not to make it about her. Which I understood well.
I had a hair trigger about Alex’s family, too. I was tortured by the fact that her parents didn’t appear to know who I was, Sara or Tegan. After two years, they still seemed confused about which one of us was her best friend, leading to constant name mix-ups when I was over at her house. When we first became friends, it was amusing, but after we started hooking up, it became deeply hurtful. Though they had no idea that something had changed between Alex and me, some part of me wanted them to treat me differently. To know that I was special.
“How do they not know that your best friend is named Tegan, not Sara?”
“They aren’t like your parents. They probably get my sister’s friends mixed up too. It’s not personal. They really like you guys. Both of you.”
“But I’m your best friend. I’m the one over there all the time.”
Alex just sighed. “I don’t know, Tegan. I don’t know.”
Our houses had become riddled with emotional potholes and situations with our families that could knock us out of alignment without warning. We were constantly changing our plans to go where people weren’t. If Alex’s family wasn’t going to be home, we spent the weekend at her house. If Sara decided to stay at a friend’s, we’d change our plans and stay at mine. If my dad went out of town, we’d invite ourselves to his apartment while he was away. We tracked privacy like hounds.
“Can I go with Alex to her family’s condo this weekend?”
“Where is it?”
“Jasper.”
Sara rolled her eyes. “Must be nice . . .”
“Yes, you can go,” Mom answered. “I want you to call when you get there. And be back to do homework Sunday by dinner.”
“Thank you.” Turning to Sara I added, “Try not to act so jealous all the time.”
The next afternoon I felt high waiting for the doorbell to ring. It was the first time I’d ever left the city limits without a parent.
“Alex, you make sure you drive slow,” Mom warned when Alex arrived to pick me up.
“Watch out for black ice,” Bruce added from over her shoulder, his brow frowning in worry.
“Yup,” I said rushing Alex out the door. “We got it. Slow and cautious.”
On the drive up, Alex held my hand on straight stretches, taking it away only for the hairpin turns on the icy mountain passes. I felt giddy, grown up, in love as we sang every word to the Ani DiFranco record Not a Pretty Girl. When we arrived at the condo, it was past dark. The two of us padded around the simple carpeted two-bedroom, our hands webbed together, flipping on lights in the different rooms as we went. Its opulence was its emptiness, and I felt rich. In those rooms, those two days, the simplest of things felt pleasurable without the fear of being caught: cuddling on the couch, making out while we cooked, taking a bath together. We were able to have conversations in full voices rather than whispers about our family, our siblings, and our friends. For two days I didn’t strain to listen for anything but sounds of pleasure from Alex—her laugh, her heartbeat, her sighs, and her breath against me. For two days I forgot about the messiness of our lives back in Calgary. The gloom that hung over Bruce’s and Mom’s heads. The anxiety and emotion that could overtake any conversation between them and us about school or grades or money. I forgot for two days about my friends who were slowly dividing themselves, every day becoming more like strangers to me as we prepared to move on from Crescent Heights, maybe even from Calgary. I felt lighter and happier those two days in the mountains with Alex than I had in a long time. More certain we were meant to be together; that all the conflict we faced on a weekly basis from our families was about them—not us. I knew the weekend couldn’t last. That there was nothing about locking ourselves away in a mountain retreat that was realistic. But for two days I let myself imagine we were home.
Driving back Sunday afternoon, I lowered the volume on the stereo and admitted to feeling melancholy as we neared the city limits.
Alex agreed. “Back to real life.”
“Back to reality,” I sang in response.
We giggled. She took my hand as Calgary appeared on the horizon.