I woke to the sound of steady drumming on the roof and water sluicing down the windowpane. Rain—I could smell it, the air heavy with wetness and a deep earth smell. Rolling onto my side, I reached for the venetian blind, intending to push it up and look out, and bumped into something large and warm lying next to me. Startled, I almost let out a shout, then realized that it was Keelie, curled in tight and facing me. She must have woken early and thought it was time to come wake me, then fallen asleep when she climbed onto the bed. But she’d managed to work her way thoroughly in under the blankets first.
Kids, I thought. Looking down at her flushed sleeping face, I just had to smile. The first thing people always said when they met her was, “You look so much like Dylan!” And Keelie always beamed, she always said, “Yes, Dylan’s my BIG sister.” I’d never met anyone else who gave off such a constant glow of happiness. It made me want to shrink her to the size of a pebble, put her into a pocket and carry her everywhere like an amulet.
Unfortunately she wasn’t enough of an amulet to protect me from what had happened yesterday. Even as I was still smiling down at her, memories came flooding into my brain—Joc and I dancing, Tim’s reaction, last night’s unsuccessful phone calls. With a groan, I sank back onto the bed. What in the world was I going to say to Joc when I saw her today? The rain meant I couldn’t double-ride her on my bike. On days like this she usually called Dikker for a ride, but maybe I could get Dad to pick her up when he drove Danny and me to school.
Climbing carefully over Keelie, I tiptoed down the hall and knocked on my parents’ door. Bedsprings squeaked, there was some muffled muttering, and then Mom said sleepily, “What is it?”
“It’s raining,” I said into the door. “Is it okay if Dad drives me and Danny to school, and picks up Joc on the way?”
More muffled muttering followed, and then Mom said, “Dylan, it’s 5:30. Go back to bed.”
“Oh,” I whispered, embarrassed. “Sorry.”
Tiptoeing back to my room, I pulled up the venetian blind, then crawled over Keelie and lay staring out at the rain. No way was I going to be able to fall asleep now, not with yesterday on my mind. I mean, something enormous had happened between Joc and I, or almost happened, and I didn’t have a clue what she was thinking about it. The situation between us was getting so complicated, so flat out twisted, it was enough to send any sane person over the deep end. Why didn’t she call me last night? Tim couldn’t possibly have been on the phone the entire evening. And what about my phone call with Cam? For sure we were still going out, and I’d virtually promised I would make it with him sometime soon.
So what did that mean for me and Joc? Would it be best to just tell her straight out? Joc, it was all a mistake. I’m sorry, I was drunk and I didn’t know what I was doing. And you know I’m Cam’s girl, he’s the best guy on the planet and he has my whole heart. The part I haven’t eaten, of course, but still...
With another groan, I rolled over and stared at the wall. Not a good scene, I thought miserably. Joc knew me better than Cam, she would suss out that lie before I even opened my mouth. That is, I reminded myself heavily, if she was thinking what I thought she was thinking—about us, I mean. Because, realistically speaking, I didn’t actually know what was going through her head. After all, Tim had interrupted her before she’d finished speaking. So it was entirely possible that I was assuming the wrong things. My brain had been fuzzy with beer—it would have been easy enough to misread the scene. All things considered, that was probably the reason Joc had taken off down the hall. When she’d heard Tim’s accusation, she’d realized how I might be misinterpreting things and hadn’t known how to handle it.
Which meant that the best way to deal with the situation was to ignore it. Taking a deep breath, I rode out a shuddery wave of relief. Okay, I thought. As usual, Queen Dylan is in a funk over nothing. I mean, once I got a grip and started thinking rationally, it became overwhelmingly clear that I was misreading the whole scene. Like Joc said, girls often danced with each other. It didn’t have to mean anything. It was ridiculous, really, to even wonder if she was like me. She was so obviously hetero—she turned on to Dikker and their sex life was definitely happening. She’d just gotten tipsy yesterday, and her usual physically friendly self had gotten friendlier than normal. No big deal, no need to get radioactive about it.
Another hour and a half went by as I lay awake, watching the rain come down and wondering what to say to Joc the next time I saw her. But in the end I didn’t meet up with her that morning. When I called at 8:00 AM her phone was busy, and when Dad drove by her house to see if she needed a ride to school, her mom told me that Dikker had already picked her up. Then, when I went looking for her at lunch hour, she was nowhere to be found. I even tracked down Dikker painting sets in the drama room, but he said he hadn’t seen her since school had started. He didn’t seem concerned and obviously hadn’t noticed anything odd about her that morning, but after lunch she didn’t show up for English. And when I went to her house after school, no one answered the door.
Just to be sure I went around to her bedroom window, pushed through the soaking wet hedge underneath and looked in, but the room was empty. A scared feeling came over me then—I mean, with all the rain and cold and wet dark trees, it felt as if someone had died. And suddenly I just didn’t know what to do anymore, how to manage things. I mean, all I wanted was to be close to Joc, to be with her. Why did friendship have to be so complicated?
Returning to the front of the house, I sat on the porch and watched cars go by. But none of them stopped, no derelict Honda came revving up to the curb. With all the rain coming down and cars slushing past, the street looked dismal and gray, and after a while tears started slipping down my face. Joc and I had had a lot of fights over the years, but none of them felt like this—a huge yawning ache, too big to even begin wrapping my mind around. I mean, technically we weren’t even having a fight. Neither of us had done anything stupid, it wasn’t as if I could say, Hey, I’m sorry I was a jerk, and everything could go back to normal.
No, this time there was no normal to go back to, I realized with a fresh rush of tears. When Tim had made his accusation yesterday afternoon, Joc had finally had to face what she’d suspected about me for years, and now she was avoiding me because she didn’t know how to deal with it. As usual, everything came down to my goddamn hormones.
With all the crying I was doing, I knew I couldn’t go home yet. Someone would notice, and I would have to lie, or explain things I didn’t know how to explain. So after a while I got up from the porch and wandered off down the sidewalk. The Dundurn Street bridge was close by, and soon I was leaning against the rail and staring down at the river, watching the water flow past. Only that got me thinking about last month’s gigantic bubble bath, and the way Joc had taken off her clothes and I’d refused to take off mine. And that just got me started on all the crazy mixed-up possibilities again.
That was when I saw Joc. Crouched on the riverbank, she was partway under the bridge, trailing a stick in the water and watching the rain come down. I couldn’t see her face, but her clothes and hair were soaked, and I realized that she must have been out in the rain for hours, skipping school and walking around the way I was now, thinking her own lonely thoughts.
What were those lonely thoughts about? I wondered as I watched her. If I went down there now and we talked, what would she tell me? Would we be able to be honest, say the things we each needed to say, and work out how things were going to be between us? But if that was what Joc wanted, why was she here all alone, hiding out under the bridge? It could only be because she didn’t want to talk to me, because she was so completely and utterly embarrassed by the things Tim had said that she wasn’t taking even the slightest chance of running into me.
Fear reared up through me then, and a sadness so huge, I could barely breathe through it. Because I wasn’t ready to hear Joc say something like that, not in the middle of a cold gloomy rain, with both of us upset the way we were. It would be too absolute, too final. I mean, I just wanted things to go back to the way they’d been yesterday afternoon before Tim’s accusation— secret, shimmering and in-between, where I could play with ideas in my head without having to do anything about them.
As quietly as possible I moved away from the rail and started walking back over the bridge. My legs had gone stiff from standing still for so long so I was walking slowly, my head down, full of a damp emptiness. Then, halfway over the bridge, a new thought hit me. What if Joc came climbing up the riverbank right now and saw me walking away like this? She would know that I’d seen her down there and hadn’t talked to her, hadn’t even bothered to say hello. Our friendship would be over for sure then, nothing would ever bring us together after that.
Without looking back I took off, running full out into the rain.
Saturday evening Cam picked me up at 6:30 and we headed to the mall. The movie we wanted to see started at 7:30, so we hung around the arcade for a while, playing Streetfighter, Cam’s favorite game. He was in a good mood—I was wearing a sweater he liked, a light green crew neck with pale yellow flowers worked across the front, and his face had lit up when he’d seen it. So we were holding hands and leaning against each other a lot, and the whole thing could have been really fun if it hadn’t been for the cold I was coming down with due to being out in yesterday’s rain. And, of course, I kept thinking about Joc crouched alone on the riverbank, watching the water go by. Watching her thoughts go by. Just watching the sadness all go by.
“C’mon, Dyl,” said Cam, turning toward me. “You have a go at it.”
With a grin he stepped back from the controls, and I moved into the player’s position. But just as he leaned forward to drop a looney into the slot, I glanced around the room and who did I see but hot lips Sheila, the passion of Confederation Collegiate, standing in the entrance to the arcade. Immediately I froze, watching as her eyes traveled the dimly lit room. She appeared to be looking for someone, and a sick feeling in my gut told me who it probably was. Would she be able to see me from the entrance, I wondered frantically. Cam and I were at the rear of the room, partially hidden by several junior high boys at the next machine, but as I watched, Sheila’s eyes focused in on me and she stiffened. Yes, she’d seen me, and there was that familiar desperate hungry look again, erupting all over her face.
“Uh, Cam,” I said, every nerve in my body going into red alert. “I’ve gotta go to the can, actually. C’mon.”
“Hey, I don’t have to pee,” Cam grinned. “You go and I’ll wait here.”
“Okay, fine,” I said, ducked around the junior high boys and took off through the crowd. Across the arcade I could see Sheila steaming down the far aisle, probably headed for Streetfighter. If I stuck to the aisle I was in, I would reach the entrance without a direct encounter—if Sheila didn’t suddenly start leaping over the rows of video games that separated us, that is.
That left the question of how long she would hang around Streetfighter, watching Cam play once she’d realized that I was gone, but there was no point in worrying about it now. Barreling out of the arcade, I headed down the mall at light speed toward the food court and the nearest girls washroom. A small private space, that was what I needed—something I could close myself inside, get my head together and think. Fortunately the lineup waiting at the washroom entrance was short, and I got into a cubicle quickly. Without even checking the toilet seat to make sure it was clean, I sat down and buried my face in my hands. I could feel it coming—another extraterrestrial funk. Mad chaos was taking over my brain, and all I could think about was how much I wanted a smoke. A smoke with Joc. Where was she now? What was she doing? Was she sick in bed with a head cold, from being out in yesterday’s rain? Or was she with Dikker, working her way through a six-pack and not even thinking about me?
Miserably I glanced at my watch. Fifteen minutes had gone by. Would Sheila have given up looking for me in the arcade and headed off somewhere else? And Cam must be wondering what was taking me so long. Reluctantly I stood up, flushed the toilet and stepped out of the cubicle. A quick scan of the waiting lineup revealed no one with a desperate hungry look on her face. But as I approached the sinks my eyes fell on a familiar figure, half-hidden behind several women and leaning against the paper-towel dispenser.
Hot lips Sheila. Waiting for me. Obviously.
“Uh-uh,” she said grimly, ducking behind me and cutting off my escape. I had to give her credit—she moved fast, faster than I could think. Turning to face me, she added sarcastically, “Don’t you want to wash your hands?”
“That’s my business,” I snapped, trying to step around her, but she moved with me, cutting me off again.
“Fine,” I said, trying to keep a grip as I turned back to the sinks. “I will wash them.”
Soaping my hands carefully, I held them under the tap and watched the water sluice off each and every soap bubble. Under no circumstances was I looking at Sheila, the line of gawking women behind her, or the mirror and my beet-red, obviously guilty expression. With a grim dead-end feeling, I dried my hands and tossed the paper towel into the garbage. Then I turned toward Sheila and fixed my eyes on her left shoulder.
“There,” I said coldly. “Satisfied?”
She shrugged, then said, “Are you?”
I wanted to slug her. I mean, why didn’t she just get it? Didn’t she ever fuck up? Had she never made the slightest itsy-bitsy little mistake?
“What business is it of yours?” I demanded. “What business is anything I do of yours?”
“It is when you kiss me,” she replied, her voice calm and deadly clear.
Panic swept me and I almost clapped a hand over her mouth. “I did NOT...kiss you,” I spluttered, taking a step back. “I was drunk. I wasn’t kissing you, I was drunk.”
By now every woman in the lineup had forgotten her need to pee and was eyeballing us frantically. Fortunately they were all complete strangers. With any luck, I would never see them again. Arms crossed, Sheila was also ignoring the row of fascinated expressions, her dark eyes flat on me, bright and full of hurt—hurt that had undeniably been caused by me, hurt that I was continuing to cause. Well, that was her fault, really. If she hadn’t come in here, looking for me when I so obviously didn’t want to see her, this conversation wouldn’t be happening.
“I just want to talk to you,” she said softly, her eyes getting even brighter. Then she started blinking rapidly, and I realized that she was trying to keep herself from crying. “Just...talk,” she added, her voice trailing off.
“Yeah, well,” I said, my eyes flitting everywhere but her face. “I don’t want to talk, okay?”
This time when I moved toward the door, she let me pass. The lineup of waiting women stepped back quickly, creating a path, and then I was out of there and letting the washroom door swing closed behind me. With a deep breath, I turned to head back to the arcade and saw Cam leaning against a nearby wall, a concerned expression on his face.
“There you are,” he said, coming toward me. “A girl asked me where you went and I told her, but you were taking so long I got worried.”
Behind me the washroom door opened and Sheila came bursting out. Hurt still glimmered in her eyes, but the desperate hungry expression was back and she looked very determined. Walking up to me, she held out a slip of paper. When I didn’t take it, she jammed it into the left front pocket of my jeans.
“Call me,” she said, leaning so close I could feel her breath on my face. Then she turned and strode off across the food court.
“That’s the girl who asked about you in the arcade,” said Cam, watching her go. “Who is she? What did she want?”
“Just someone I met at the Confed dance,” I said quickly. “It’s not important.”
“Confed?” asked Cam, looking startled.
“Yeah,” I said, shooting him a glance. “Why?”
His eyes dropped. “Nothing,” he said, but he seemed uneasy. “Hey, the movie’s about to start. We’d better get in line.”
I held out my hand and for a second, just the flicker of a heartbeat, he hesitated. Then he reached out, our hands connected and we were in sync again, headed down the mall toward the movie theater.