The snow has stopped by the time I wake up and stumble out to the kitchen, where I’m disappointed to find Wex sitting at the table, all ready for school.
“You should really get dressed,” he says through a mouthful of something neon-colored with marshmallows. “It’s not a snow day today.”
“Damn it.”
“Language.” He swallows his mouthful of Day-Glo cereal and sticks out his tongue at me, brightly colored crumbs still stuck all over it.
“Ew. Disgusting.” I head off to the shower. I’m not used to having so little hair, and I use way too much shampoo. By the time I get it all rinsed out and decide which of my new clothes to wear—I pick an emerald-green T-shirt, with a grey hoodie over it, and a pair of jeans that Ashley said make my butt look great—I’m running late, and I really have to hustle to make it to school on time.
I’m still earlier than Marie-Claire, though, and I can’t help but notice the double take she does when she sees me. She gives me this awkward little smile when she spies me looking at her, then quickly looks away and makes a point of sitting at a table on the other side of the room from me. All through class, though, I catch her looking in my direction, checking out my new haircut and new clothes. I can’t tell if she’s jealous or judgmental or both, but I guess it doesn’t matter one way or another. It’s not like we’re friends anymore.
I look for Ashley in the hall between classes, hoping for a friendly face, but all I get are Marie-Claire and Katie chatting away with their backs to me when I go to my locker. It seemed like a great idea back in September, all of us getting our lockers so close together, but now it’s just awkward.
“Do you want to come over tonight?”
I look up, wondering if Katie’s talking to me all of a sudden, but of course not—she’s asking Marie-Claire.
“Ah, I can’t. I’m going to a party. At the university, you know? I’d invite you along, but alors, you don’t have a fake ID.”
Katie lets out a little sigh that sounds like she’s trying not to let her disappointment show. “That’s okay. Another time.”
In gym class Ashley comes burbling over to me, chattering away about how great my hair still looks. I didn’t get any new clothes I could wear in gym, so I’m still stuck in my ratty old track pants and one of Simon’s T-shirts that comes almost to my knees. It’s volleyball today, which I’m sure suits Katie fine, since it doesn’t require partners and all she really has to do is step out of the way when the ball comes anywhere near her. But Ashley and I wind up on one team and Katie is on the other, so the whole time we’re standing together and Ashley is talking to me, I can see Katie staring daggers at us through the net. I can’t help but feel bad for her, especially having heard Marie-Claire brush her off not half an hour ago, but at the same time, she is the one who engineered all my other friends dumping me.
Ashley slides up to me in the changeroom afterward, oblivious to the fact that both Katie and all of Ashley’s former friends are staring.
“So, what did your brother say about your hair?”
“He said it looked good. After he busted me for skipping school.”
“Oh, crappy. For what it’s worth, my dad almost nailed me for taking the car. He didn’t think there was enough snow on it for it to have been sitting there all day.”
“Oh no! What did you tell him?”
“I said I left my school bag in the backseat and had to go get it because my homework was in it, and I thought I would brush off the car to be nice.” She rolls her eyes. “He’s so gullible. All I have to do is act like a total ditz and he’ll believe anything I tell him.”
I think back to her performance with Travis at the hair salon, and I wonder how much of Ashley’s day-today existence is an act…including her sudden friendship with me.
“Well…I’m glad you didn’t get in trouble.”
“Even if I did, he always gets over it pretty fast. So what did you do yesterday?”
“I went to see my mom.”
“Wow, in the insane asylum?”
“Um, it’s a nursing home, but yeah.” I watch Katie tuck her regular clothes under her arm and duck into a toilet stall to change. I can tell from the look on her face that she’s trying not to cry. I look back at Ashley, determined not to let it get to me. Katie brought this on herself, after all. “So what are you doing tonight?”
“I don’t know. You want to do something?” Ashley pulls a pack of gum—the kind with the liquid center— out of her purse and pops a piece into her mouth. “Gum?”
I take a piece—I never turn down an offer of gum or breath mints, because you never know when it’s a hint. I give Ashley a good once-over. If I’m thinking about tracking down my sister and getting her take on the Travis Bingham situation, and if I’m playing detective, I could do a lot worse for a sidekick than someone as quick on her feet as Ashley. “I was thinking of going for some Chinese food,” I tell her. “You want to come along?”
After school I find Simon up on the third floor, cleaning out 318. The potheads who lived there were two months behind on their rent and bailed when they found the eviction notice on their door. “Hey,” I say. “I need twenty bucks.”
He looks up from scrubbing a nasty brown smear off the wall of the living room. He’s wearing a paper mask and rubber gloves, and sweating so much that his hair is slicked down over his forehead.
“What is that?” I ask him.
“Three guesses. Bunch of idiots.”
“They smeared…poop on the wall?” I can feel my face squinching up in disgust. “That’s so nasty.”
“I need a can of gasoline and a match for this apartment. Burn it out and start from scratch.” The mask wiggles up and down as he talks. If it weren’t so disgusting in here, I would laugh at him.
The mess really is incredible. There’s a hole through the bathroom door like someone has punched it, a huge stain on the floor that may or may not be blood and, of course, the poop on the walls. I guess they really wanted to send Simon a message of some kind, although I can’t imagine why. It’s not like he had much choice about kicking them out—not when they weren’t paying their rent. And it’s not like Simon owns the building—he just collects the rent and plunges the toilets. And scrapes caca off the walls. It literally is a crappy job. For a second I feel sorry for him, but then I remember why I’m here.
“So, twenty bucks.”
“Don’t you have a job or something? Oh, wait. You blew all your money on a haircut and new clothes, so now you need a loan.”
“Um, a loan?”
He laughs. “Of course. Not a loan: a gift. And what do I get out of this?”
Not much point in lying at this point, I may as well tell him where the money’s going. “Uh, I’m going out for Chinese food with Ashley. I’ll bring you back some leftovers.”
“Chinese, huh?” He uses the back of his wrist to push the mask down off his mouth. “What restaurant?”
“I think she said Mr. Woo’s.” I watch his face carefully for a reaction, but there isn’t one; I guess he doesn’t know Emily is working there. If she even is. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s lied to Wex.
“All right.” He peels off one glove, fishes his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans and hands it to me. “Take what you need. Bring me back a combo four.”
“What’s in a combo four?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never eaten at Mr. Woo’s. But combo four is always the best choice.”
Combo four, it turns out, is chicken balls with spareribs, fried rice and mixed vegetables. The egg roll is a dollar extra, but I figure since dinner is on Simon anyway, I’ll splurge. I opt for combo two myself—chicken with mushrooms, sweet-and-sour pork and those skinny noodles on the side. I’ve never been inside Mr. Woo’s before, but it’s cleaner than you’d think from the dingy, coal-flecked exterior. It’s a long, skinny room with black-and-gold wallpaper, a red carpet and little fake candles on the tables. There’s a two-foot-high bronze Buddha on the takeout counter by the front door. Our waiter’s name is Dave, which disappoints me a little. It’s embossed on a little silver name tag that looks like it’s been through the laundry with his shirt a few times. He’s Asian but doesn’t have an accent, which somehow makes the whole place seem less exotic to me. Mr. Woo’s is about as close as I’m ever going to get to China. The least Dave could do is make the experience more authentic for me.
Still, it’s a little odd being at a sit-down restaurant where they bring the food to your table. Other than when Katie’s mom takes us out for dinner, I think the last time I actually had a waiter and a menu was back when Momma was more or less holding things together, working at the No Frills as a cashier, and we used to go to Swiss Chalet on Thursday nights after she got paid.
Ashley is obviously used to eating in restaurants and even manages the chopsticks like she knows what she’s doing. Once we get our meals—including Simon’s in a Styrofoam takeout container—Ashley leans across the table with a conspiratorial grin. I’ve told her why we’re here, and I think she’s excited to have another project. As detective’s sidekicks go, she’s kind of a natural.
“So, what’s the big plan?”
“I don’t know…ask Dave the waiter if Emily’s working and find out if she has a break coming up?”
“Oh.” She looks disappointed, like she was expecting something more dramatic. “Yeah, I guess that’ll work.”
When Dave brings the bill, I lean back in my chair a little, like I couldn’t care less about the answer, and ask him if Emily Cooper is working tonight.
“Oh, Emily? Yeah, I think she just went out back to have a smoke. You want me to tell her you said hi?”
“No, that’s fine.” I hold back a grin and leave Dave the twenty Simon gave me, which isn’t much of a tip on a seventeen-dollar tab, but it’s all I have so it’ll have to do. The alley that leads to the back of the building is two stores over, so I have to hustle a little to make it there before she finishes her cigarette. I’m still wriggling into my coat as I round the corner into the back alley.
Sure enough, Emily is leaning on the Dumpster, sucking on a cigarette, her holey, faded parka pulled on over her dingy kitchen whites.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding out these days.”
She looks startled to see me but not unduly annoyed. “This isn’t where your gang usually hangs out, is it?”
I shrug. “I guess I’ve got a new gang now.”
Emily looks suspicious. “What happened to the old gang?”
Another shrug. I’m not really sure how to answer that. “You know. People grow in different directions.”
“That’s a load of horse crap.”
“Okay. So apparently I did something to piss one of them off and now none of them are talking to me. So I’m branching out. Making new friends. You know.”
“Well. Sometimes it’s good to get rid of your old friends.” Emily takes another drag on her cigarette, looking philosophical. With her hair all tucked back in a hairnet, she looks older than usual, and the security lighting in the back alley makes long, thin shadows of the lines starting to develop around her eyes. Suddenly I’m sorry for her, a little. It’s bad enough that I lost a father I never got the chance to know; Emily actually lost her daddy. No wonder she’s so screwed up.
“Are you getting rid of your old friends too?” I ask.
“I guess so. Trying to put my life in some kind of order, you know?”
“That’s great. I hope it works this time.”
“Gee, thanks.” She doesn’t say it sarcastically, though, so she must know what I mean. She’s tried getting her act together more than once, but it would be great for Wex if it finally worked. And for her, too, I suppose. She spends so much time being horrible that it’s easy to forget there’s a person in there.
“So, um…I didn’t just happen to be in the neighborhood, you know.”
“No?”
“No. I, um, wanted to ask you something. About Travis Bingham.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. Jenna, would you let it go already? That was forever ago. He’s nobody. He’s a ghost. He’s sitting in prison somewhere, and he’s probably going to die there.”
“He’s out. I’ve met him.”
Emily pauses with the cigarette halfway to her lips. “What?”
“He’s out on parole, working for some heating company. He came in to fix the heater at the salon where I got my hair cut.” I decide to leave out the part where I stalked him at his halfway house. In hindsight, that part’s probably more than a little creepy.
“How did you know—”
“I’ve seen his picture a million times, Em. And I talked to Momma; I know he used to live with us.”
Emily narrows her eyes at me, and I recognize the way she tips her head just slightly to one side as a sure sign she’s about to let me have it. “With us? No, not with you. Dad kicked him out when you were born. Said he was done feeding other people’s kids.”
Of all the reactions I could have gotten from Emily at the mention of Travis’s name, this is the last one I would have expected. There’s no anger at the idea of Dad’s death. She’s not worried about Travis roaming the streets. Instead, she seems to be mad at me, not for anything I’ve done, but just for being born and getting Travis kicked out of our house. I take a step back from Emily, stumbling into a dingy snowbank, and soaking my leg to the knee for the second time in as many days.
“So Dad kicked Travis out…and Travis killed him?”
Emily shrugs, takes one last drag on her cigarette, then flicks the butt almost but not quite at me. It lands on the shoveled path in front of me. “I guess so. Look, what difference does it make? Dad’s dead, Travis did his time. Life goes on, right?”
“I…yeah. I guess so.” I still have more questions than answers, but it looks like Emily has reached the end of her patience with me. I step out of the snowbank and shake the dirty snow off my pants as well as I can. “Thanks.”
Emily looks surprised. “Sure. Don’t worry about it.” She grinds out the still-glowing cigarette butt with the toe of one of her Doc Marten’s as I turn to go. “Hey, Jenna.”
“Yeah?”
There’s a funny look on her face when I look back at her, like she’s thinking real hard about something. “How did he look when you saw him? Travis, I mean. Did he look…okay?”
“I guess so. What do you mean?”
“Did he look happy? Or…healthy? Or…I don’t know. Do you think he’s doing okay?”
How do I answer that? He looked like an older version of the man who destroyed my family—only somehow I know that’s the wrong thing to say to Emily right now.
“He looked fine,” I tell her instead. “Yeah. He looked good.”
So now I know why Travis shot my dad, anyway. Score another one for Jenna Cooper, Girl Detective. If his life at home was as horrible as Momma told me, I can see why he’d have been mad. But if he was such a nice guy, like she’d also said, why wouldn’t he have been able to come up with another place to stay instead of resorting to violence?
I come back around the corner of the alley, deep in thought, and run full-on into Ashley. Our heads crack together and we both let out a yell. Funny—in the time I’ve been talking to Emily, Ashley has almost slipped my mind. I give her a halfhearted smack on the shoulder.
“You scared the crap out of me. Where were you, anyway?”
“I was trying to pay my bill. I had so much junk in my purse that I couldn’t find my debit card, and then when I finally found it, I didn’t have enough money in that account and I had to use the emergency ten dollars I keep in the secret pocket in my wallet. Then when I got out of the restaurant, I couldn’t find you. And by the time I figured out how to get out to the back alley, it looked like you were really deep in conversation and I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“Oh.” That was considerate of her, I suppose. “Thanks.”
“So did your sister tell you anything important?”
“I guess. It was weird. She was more reasonable than she usually is. She wanted to know how Travis is doing.”
“Why would she care?”
“I know, right? But when I told her I’d met him, she got all funny. Like…” I search for the word a minute before it finally occurs to me. “Jealous.”
“That’s so weird. Do you think maybe she was in love with him or something?”
“Dude, she was, like, eight when Travis killed my dad. Maybe she had a crush on him, but she’s probably over it by now.”
Ashley laughs. “Dude, did you just call me dude?”
That strikes both of us as funny and sets us to laughing so hard we actually get a dirty look from an old guy shoveling his sidewalk. We turn a corner and head off down Barton, cackling like a pair of drunken hyenas.
When we get to the corner of Dunsmure and Ottawa, we go our separate ways. It’s getting cold again, and the wet leg of my jeans is starting to freeze in the wind. I pass the Tim Hortons—the original one, a little brick building built way back in the sixties before there was a Tim’s on every corner. This one doesn’t have a drive-thru, or even much of a parking lot to speak of, so people perch their cars every which way on the little ring of asphalt that surrounds it. There are a few scruffy-looking regulars at the table by the big window, sharing a Toronto Sun and a box of Timbits, and a homeless guy smoking a cigarette outside by the door with an empty brown-paper cup in his hand, trolling for change.
It occurs to me that I could use a hot chocolate, and I sift through the change in my pocket to see if I have enough. A dollar sixty-three; plenty for a medium-sized hot chocolate, with a few cents left over to throw in the homeless guy’s cup on the way out.
I’m about to step inside when something—or rather, someone—catches my eye. It’s Marie-Claire, sitting alone at the little table behind the display case of sports memorabilia and pictures of Tim Horton in his hockey uniform. Marie-Claire is nursing a brown-paper cup of coffee and flipping through a book of crossword puzzles, a pen tucked between two fingers. I stop for a second, my hand on the door, debating whether I should go in. I think of Marie-Claire at school today, telling Katie she couldn’t hang out tonight because there was a vampire party at the university. Why on earth would she be doing crossword puzzles in Tim Hortons at nine thirty at night if she was supposed to be at a party all the way across town? Did she make it up so she didn’t have to go to Katie’s house? Has she been making up the parties and guys all along?
I’m still standing with my hand on the door when a guy with a shaved head and a beer gut so big it almost turns the corner ahead of him brushes past me.
“’Scuse me, sweetheart. You’re gettin’ between a man and his coffee here.”
“Sorry about that.”
I back away from the door and drop my buck sixty-three into the homeless guy’s coffee cup. I’ve had enough probing into other people’s deep, dark secrets for one night. I’ll leave Marie-Claire to hers for the time being.