TWELVE | LUCAN

DES DIDN’T SAY WHO broke it off. It didn’t matter. They were better off without each other, and I was better off without hearing their bullshit. Des seemed down about it, but he didn’t talk about McKenna. During the week Jack, Paolo, and I dragged him out to the batting cages and then Wild Water Kingdom. We all busted our guts laughing when Jack’s shorts ended up halfway down his ass at the bottom of the Aqua Twist. Des acted normal for the rest of the day, and I thought maybe he was beginning to get back to ordinary.

Saturday night poker was on the menu, but I hit the mall solo first. Dad’s birthday was coming up, and he was the hardest person on the planet to buy for because every year he said he already had everything he needed. Anyway, there I was at the mall dipping in and out of stores looking for something that Dad couldn’t complain he didn’t need when I spotted a familiar face. She was walking by the Apple store in a long white skirt and striped tube top, but she ducked inside before I could be sure it was McKenna. The platinum blond hair threw me, but she could’ve dyed it.

I gave up the search for the perfect whatever and picked up a mall gift certificate for my dad. Then I bought a Coke and a pack of Doritos. My fingers were caked with orange when McKenna swung out of a jewelry store and nearly bumped into me. We sidestepped each other at the last second. I smiled and said, “Hey, you look like you’re moving to Hollywood.” I meant it as a compliment, but her face fell. “You’re all glammed up,” I continued. “The blond hair looks really cool. What’re you doing here? Slumming? Where’s the Rolls?”

I’d expected her to look happier post-Des, like the way she’d looked in tenth grade French. She would’ve smiled at my Rolls comment back in tenth grade.

“Yeah, you like it?” she said, her hand tight on her purse strap.

“I like it,” I confirmed. “You look totally different — not that you didn’t look good before. This is just good in a different way.” Why was this so hard? It wasn’t like she was my ex.

“I know what you mean.” An undersized smile tugged at her lips. The lipstick she had on was sparkly pink rather than her trademark red-brown. “Thanks.”

“Listen, I know you and Des aren’t together anymore, but I hope that doesn’t make things weird for us.” I felt weird saying it. I didn’t want her to think I was trying to get into her pants. “I mean, I hope we can still talk when we run into each other, you know?”

McKenna nodded uncertainly. “Have you talked to Des lately?”

“We’ve been hanging out.” I wiped my orange hand on my jeans. “He’s pretty broken up about you guys, but yeah, he’s been around.”

“Is he?” she said. “Broken up?” She shifted her eyes so that she was staring at the floor. “I just find that so weird. Why be broken up after the fact? Why not just be different to begin with?” Her shoulders jerked into a shrug as she looked at me. “Does that make any sense to you?”

“I don’t want to … This stuff is between you guys, okay? It’s none of my business. I’m not going to badmouth Des.”

McKenna gnawed at her lip. “I don’t think you know him as well as you think you do.”

“Whatever.” I took a step back like I was getting ready to go. “You look great. Sorry if things are still shitty. I’ll see you around.” I turned to walk away.

“Lucan!” Her voice was loud. I spun back to face her.

“McKenna, don’t make a scene, okay?” I wasn’t going to chase her around the mall begging for forgiveness like Des would’ve. I used to think he was as much the cause of their problems as she was, but now that she was getting into it with me I was beginning to tune in to the real picture. How had he put up with the drama for so long?

“I’m not going to make a scene.” She said it softly. One of her hands flew to her chin. She cupped it between her thumb and forefinger. “He hit me, you know. Not just that once.”

“What?” A shiver tore down my back. “What do you mean — not just that once?”

“At the party. When we came in together.” She dipped her head back. “It doesn’t matter whether you believe me. But I’m not lying.” She clamped her arms in front of her waist and started rushing off in the direction of the food court.

“Hey.” I caught up with her in five steps. “I didn’t say I didn’t believe you.” She must’ve gotten it wrong, though. Somehow there’d been a mistake. An accident.

“Uh-huh.” McKenna tightened her grip on her waist. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let me go, Lucan.”

I didn’t want to talk about it either. But I remembered the smack. We’d all heard it from the living room and assumed it was her slapping him.

“I will,” I said. “I’m just … why didn’t you say anything before?”

“I don’t know.” She slowed her pace but didn’t look at me. I thought of that night in Starbucks, how she’d winced when I’d knocked her shoulder. Was that because of him too? “It’s not that easy to talk about. You feel so stupid. Pathetic.”

I slowed down too. I didn’t know what to say, so I just kept listening. “What has he said about me?” she asked.

“Not much,” I admitted.

“You said he was broken up.”

“He is. It’s not what he’s saying. It’s the way he’s acting.” My mouth tasted like stomach acid and fake cheese. Fragments from the past few months replayed in my head, as though I could somehow piece together when and how this had happened to them. I still wasn’t sure if I believed her. Not that I thought she was lying. It was some kind of mix-up.

“It doesn’t matter now anyway,” she said, stopping in front of Walmart. “Don’t tell him you saw me, okay? Just don’t mention me.” She broke away from me and jogged past the Walmart greeter, into the store.

I stared after her for a while. A preteen girl on a cellphone whizzed by me, then an old couple loaded down with Walmart bags and a skinny guy with an angry face. I let platinum blond McKenna disappear into the crowd. There was nothing else to do.

I was supposed to phone Des for a ride to Jack’s, but I took the bus back to my apartment instead. It was quiet inside, and I headed towards my room, my mind agitated. A sound from the bathroom made me freeze in the hallway. My mother was inside, part moaning, part laughing. Something plopped into the bathtub. A shampoo bottle, maybe.

Mom didn’t usually use the main bathroom, she used the ensuite. The second I guessed what was happening I turned to creep back towards the front door, but I wasn’t quick enough. “You sexy bitch,” Julian said, groaning his gorilla groan. “Be patient. I’m just switching it on.”

They laughed huskily from the other side of the door, splashing and doing fuck knows what while I sped past Day Pool with Three Blues, outside the apartment, and into the safety and quiet of the empty elevator.

I took my break at two o’clock. It was one of those nice summer days where you can actually breathe without feeling like the outside air’s weighing you down, and I sat on the curb in front of the café and thought about the things I’d been thinking about all weekend. I’d called my father from the condo pool room late Saturday afternoon and had killed the rest of the weekend at his place. I was always dropping in there at the last minute or calling him to pick me up, so he didn’t think anything of it.

I didn’t volunteer any info about the splashing, my mother being a sexy bitch, or Des hitting McKenna. I didn’t know what to say or do about any of it. The one thing I was probably supposed to be cool with and the other was plain wrong, but they weren’t together anymore. Where did that leave me?

When Michael was nine and I was seven he kicked this girl who wouldn’t quit following him around during recess. The teacher on duty saw it, and when my dad found out he told Michael that he expected him to apologize, and not just say it but write it in a letter.

“She’s stupid,” Michael complained. “Nobody likes her. They all laugh at me when she follows me around. It’s not my fault she won’t leave me alone.”

I remembered that because I was sitting next to him at the time, and my dad wagged his finger angrily at both of us and said, “You should never hit a girl. No matter what she does to you, you understand? A true man never lays a hand on a lady. If you want to be my sons, you never put your hands on a woman.”

Later Michael joked to me that he could still kick girls, but that was just a stupid nine-year-old thing to say. As far as I knew (and I was 99.9 percent sure) Michael had never kicked or hit a girl since.

“Hey there,” a short guy in red cowboy boots drawled, glancing down at me on the sidewalk. “You wouldn’t happen to have a smoke, would you?” He sounded like a refugee from an old western movie. He should’ve had a hat to hang on the gritty drawl.

“I wish,” I said honestly. “Sorry. There’s a convenience store over that way.” I pointed it out to him.

“Thanks, buddy.” He ambled unevenly towards the store. The limp almost made him look like he was skipping on the left side.

A couple of minutes later he hobbled out of the convenience store, made a beeline for me, ripped open a brand new pack of cigarettes, and held it down to me. “There you go. That’ll fix you up.” I don’t know how he knew I needed fixing, but I took one.

“Thanks.”

“No problemo.” He dug a plastic lighter out of his pocket and flicked at it.

“Thanks,” I said again, dragging on my cigarette. Cowboy boots guy was my new hero. I sat there inhaling deeply and watching cars tear in and out of the lot. Next thing I knew my second cousin Ivy was striding towards me in sunglasses and tan pants. She looked older than she had at my great-aunt’s birthday party. Older than a week ago too, closer to twenty-one than seventeen or eighteen. Maybe it was the glasses.

She hopped up onto the sidewalk and said, “I didn’t know you smoked.”

My shitty mood stopped me from smiling. “I don’t. The cigarette’s a donation. I guess I looked like I needed one.”

Her sunglasses stared mysteriously down at me. “So you’re on break, huh?” She checked her watch and ran her fingers through her hair.

“You’re taking a late lunch today,” I observed. And something else was different too. “Did you do something to your hair?” First McKenna and now Ivy; maybe it was national makeover week.

“Sort of,” she said. “So you’re not making my sandwich this time?”

“Nope.” I shook my head and took another drag.

“You’re kind of quiet today.”

“Delicate,” I said sarcastically. I didn’t mean to be like that about it. I just didn’t think I could handle any clever conversation at the moment.

Ivy tapped her foot slowly on the pavement beside me. “I better check out today’s menu. I probably only have thirty minutes of lunch left. I’ll see you later.”

I could’ve told her about today’s bacon and potato quiche or said I liked her hair. She was already halfway to the café door, and I hadn’t told her goodbye yet. “Why don’t you bring it out here?” I called at her back. “Eat your lunch in the sun.”

She half-turned in my direction and then froze, like she was considering it. I wished she wasn’t wearing the shades so I could take a better guess at what was going through her mind.

“I was going to take it back to the office, but I guess I can eat it here,” she said. “How long is your break?”

I told her I had another twenty minutes or so. I’d only taken a couple of minutes around eleven this morning, when Miriam had given me such a humungous slice of bacon and potato quiche that I hadn’t had a chance to work up an appetite again yet.

After a while Ivy came out with a roasted veggie panini and some side salad, and this time I did smile at her. She sat down next to me with her plate on her knees. It reminded me of the birthday party, only hopefully this time I wouldn’t break out in hives.

She took off her sunglasses and started eating her sandwich. For the first while neither of us said anything, and that reminded me of the day with the shish kebab too.

“Is the smoke bugging you?” I asked.

“No, I don’t care. I was just surprised. You don’t seem like the smoking type.”

“I’m not. I think I’m catching your shitty summer.”

Ivy smirked as she chewed. She looked like she should’ve been holidaying in the Hamptons, not sitting on a curb next to a guy smoking a cigarette. I stubbed it out so she wouldn’t smell like second-hand smoke back at the office.

“Mine has actually nosedived since I saw you last,” she said finally.

“Okay.” I took a big breath of clean air (that’s if you can consider the air in any North American strip mall parking lot clean). “Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”

She smiled bitterly and laid three fingers across her cheek. “I can’t. It’s too … I don’t even know you.”

“That should make it easier instead of harder. Who cares what I think?”

“Yeah, but I really like this café.” She played with the lettuce on her plate. “I don’t want to have to start driving to McDonald’s.”

“I thought you liked McDonald’s.”

“Not that much, usually. I was just craving it that first day I came in here.” She glanced at my cigarette butt on the ground. “Okay, so … I’ll tell you part of it, if you really want to know. My ex-boyfriend …”

She was having trouble getting the rest of it out, and I prompted: “Your ex-boyfriend.” Obviously he was a dick. She wouldn’t be messed up about him if the breakup was her fault. Then again, what about Des? Fuck, no. Not Ivy too. “He didn’t hit you, did he?”

“No.” She looked shocked. “He isn’t like that at all. He’s probably the least likely person to ever do that. He’s really principled, supposedly. We were in this anti-violence league together. We tried to raise awareness about issues like that.” She plunged her fork into her tomato and kept her eyes on it. “No, he cheated on me. With a friend of mine. I told you it was typical crap.”

“That really sucks,” I told her, relieved her story sounded nothing like McKenna’s. “How long were you guys together?”

“About a year and a half. And she just happened to be my best friend for the past four years.”

“With friends like that, who needs enemies? She knifed you in the back.”

Ivy set her plate down on the sidewalk, rested her arms on her thighs, and turned her head towards mine. “I don’t even know which of them I hate more, him or her.”

I nodded, but I hadn’t entirely stopped thinking about my own crap. “I found out this thing about my friend on the weekend,” I blurted out. “That’s why I asked if your ex was —”

“Somebody’s abusing one your friends?” She sounded like a counselor, like she’d asked the question a bunch of times before.

“No.” I buried my hands under my T-shirt. “My friend is abusing — was abusing — his girlfriend.”

“You should try to get him to talk to someone.” Ivy’s eyes were calm. She seemed so together that it was hard to believe we were anywhere close in age. “I have organization phone numbers and stuff at home. I can get them to you.” She pulled her cellphone out of her purse.

“They’ve broken up,” I told her. “They’re not together anymore.”

She switched on her phone anyway. “What’s your cell number?” I recited it off, and she programmed it into her phone. “He could still talk to someone,” she said. “Just because they’re not together anymore doesn’t mean he won’t act the same way with someone new. What about his girlfriend? Is she okay?”

“She’s the one who told me. But she didn’t want to talk about it much. Maybe I reacted the wrong way. I don’t know.” I told Ivy about the party, the night McKenna ran out of the car, and the time she told me she’d fallen out of bed. It was a lot to say to someone I didn’t know very well, but maybe that helped.

“Do you think she’s told anyone else?” Ivy asked.

“Maybe her friend Faith. I don’t think I’d be the first person she’d tell.”

“You should call and check up on her,” Ivy said.

“Yeah, I guess I should.”

“It’s hard when people turn out to be someone other than you expected them to be,” she continued, her face contemplative. “It’s like with my ex. Even when he came over afterwards to talk about it, he seemed like the same old Jeremy.” Ivy started telling me more about her boyfriend. The way she talked about him made him sound like some kind of Jesus, except for the sex and cheating. She even started to tell me a little about the last time they’d done it. “And it was me that started it, but he obviously didn’t have a problem with it, you know? He was into it as much as I was.” At first I was all ears, but then she got a bit detailed and I couldn’t tell what kind of expression I was holding on my face.

“TMI,” she said apologetically, tipping her head forward. “I don’t normally run my mouth off like this. Especially about such personal stuff.”

“No, it’s cool.” That wasn’t entirely a lie. I would’ve been okay with the details, except that they were pointing my mind in a very specific direction. Second cousins didn’t count, right? It wasn’t like being actually related. Especially in our case — no shared blood relations.

“I can’t believe I’m telling you any of this,” she said.

Me neither. I focused on a lime green Smart car backing out of its spot in front of Dolci Framing & Fine Art and tried to get my head back on track. I wished I hadn’t put my cigarette out so I’d have something to do with my hands.

“I haven’t been talking to anybody about it. Maybe that’s your superpower,” Ivy suggested, reaching for her glasses and disappearing behind them again. “Maybe you’re like sodium pentothal.”

I laughed, curled my hands over the curb, and watched her stand up with her plate in her hands. She was medium-tall, and I was pretty sure her hair was darker than the last time I’d seen her. The rest wasn’t anything I should take notice of.

“I need to get back,” she said. “I’ll text you that info for your friend tonight, okay?”

“Yeah, thanks.” I was stunned that I’d let loose about Des. I wished we’d stuck to talking about her. “It’s a crazy situation.”

“It happens a lot,” Ivy said. “But yeah, it’s a crazy situation.”

I couldn’t understand how you could ever get to a point where you were slapping your girlfriend around. Just thinking about it made me feel guilty, like I was the one who’d done something wrong.

“Let me take your plate,” I offered. Somehow it felt like the least I could do.

“Thanks, Lucan.” Ivy smiled as she handed it over, and for a few seconds I felt better, like I’d managed to fix something — and then I realized that I really didn’t want her to go.