Chapter 2
September 1967

On Sunday, September third, Ellen settled beside the window in the coach car on the late morning CPR train. With a jerk and the bang of metal couplings, the train began moving slowly out of the downtown waterfront. Within an hour the dense urban landscape relaxed into a broad expanse of meadowland farms. The train wound through the Fraser Valley past Chilliwack, where her parents shopped for groceries when they camped at Cultus Lake. When the Chilliwack station disappeared, Ellen stared out the window at a foreign landscape. It’s so big, she thought, and so empty.

Then, almost imperceptibly, the mountains drew closer, squeezing the fields into a narrow ribbon of green edging the broad, flat, gray of the Fraser River. Ellen sat with her nose against the glass as the train traced the edge of the Fraser Canyon, hanging suspended on a delicate line stretched along the rocky cliffs. Below her in the oily, roiling water, the swirling river eddies mirrored the play of Ellen’s emotions. The heat trapped in the deep recesses of the Fraser Canyon shimmered and waved as it beat against the sides of the train. The air blowing in the open windows was so hot that it provided no relief. When the train passed the Hell’s Gate rapids, Ellen imagined the long lines of miners that had struggled along the sharp banks of the river a hundred years earlier, lured by the promise of gold at Barkerville. The miners must have thought they were headed into Hell. My hell’s called Salmon Arm.

For weeks after Ellen’s parents had announced they were moving, the arguments had gone on. But no matter how hard Ellen had tried, nothing swayed her parents.

“Is this Salmon Town near Vancouver?”

“No,” Ellen’s father said, “It’s in the Interior.”

“If you move, where will I live?”

“With us, of course.”

“But how will I get back here to school?”

“You’ll go to school in Salmon Arm,” her mother said.

“But my program!”

“Ellen, I’ve talked with both schools. No matter how hard you work for the next couple of months, you’ll still be short two courses for graduation. There’s Senior Matric at the high school in Salmon Arm. You can take some first-year university courses next year while you finish those last couple of Grade Twelve courses.”

“You can’t be serious.”

When her mother didn’t respond, Ellen slammed her hands on her knees and stood up. “I don’t care what they have in Salmon Whatever. I’m not going. I’ll stay here. Get my own place.”

“You’re fifteen,” her father said. “There’s no way a fifteen-yearold is ready to leave home. You’re young.”

Ellen crossed her arms and glared. “If it’s so important that we live together, you can stay here for a year till I finish.”

“Ellen, that’s enough. You’re going with us, and that’s the end of it.”

“Can’t you be flexible?”

“No, we can’t,” her father said. “The resort is for sale now, not next year.”

“Resort? What resort?”

“Your mother and I have put an offer on a summer resort just outside of Salmon Arm. The ad was in the paper last week. It’s as though fate planned it this way.”

“What do you know about running a resort? You’re an accountant.”

“Ellen, don’t be rude.”

“If our offer is accepted, we’ll take possession on the first of June. It’s a little later than I might have liked, but we’ll be there for the main tourist season.”

“June!” Ellen wailed. “Making me move is bad enough, but not in June! I can’t leave then. I’ve got exams. I have to work in the lab this summer!”

Ellen’s father rubbed his hand over his jaw. “We know. That’s what your mother and I have been talking about the last couple of nights. We know you have to stay for your UBC job, but we can’t wait. You’ll need a place to stay. Fortunately, Sylvia Andrews has volunteered to have you stay with her during the summer. That will work for everyone. You finish your year and job, we run the resort.”

“You’re ruining my life! This is so unfair,” Ellen cried as she ran to her room.

“OK, I give up,” Ellen said several days later, after repeated unsuccessful attempts to convince her parents that she could manage on her own for the coming year. “But I can’t believe the only reason you won’t let me stay and finish school here next year is because I’m fifteen. You’ve set it up so that I can stay here this summer. I don’t see the difference between summer and next year.” She stared at them through narrowed eyes.

John sighed. “Ellen, think of this summer as your first chance to experience independence. Your mother and I worry that you’re very isolated. Your life is made up of school and study. I don’t want you to wake up one day like I did and realize you’re caught in a dead-end, boring job.”

Ellen threw up her hands. “Dad, that has nothing to do with me. I’m going to be a doctor, not an accountant. I like what I’m doing. And I do other things. The symphony. Movies. Plays. You take me.”

“That’s right, Ellen,” her mother said, her tone sharp and heated. “We take you. Your father and I. Without us, you’d be a hermit. You should be going to dances and movies, or having friends over to listen to records.” Ellen cringed as her mother talked.

Ann looked at Ellen’s stricken face and wilted. “It’s not your fault. I know you’ve tried. Maybe going to a new place will give you a new start,” she added wistfully. “At least we’ll still be together as a family.”

Unlike most married women Ellen knew, Ellen’s mother had worked after her daughter’s birth. The older women who had taken care of Ellen had encouraged her quiet, introverted behavior. Before she started school, Ellen’s only contact with other children had been on occasional weekends when her parents took her to the neighborhood park to play. Ann had tried to encourage her to make friends, but Ellen had hovered close to her mother, watching the other children.

“Here, Ellen,” her mother said one day as she handed fouryear-old Ellen a red pail and a small yellow shovel. “There’s a girl about your age over there by the sandbox. Off you go. Play with her.”

Head bowed, toes dragging in the grass, the pail and shovel dangling limply from her hands, Ellen began to walk toward the sandbox. Every few steps she turned and looked back at her mother. “Go play.”

Toes against the wooden edge of the sandbox, Ellen stared down at the girl who was dropping sand into her pail, hitting the sand with the shovel, and upending the pail to make castles. Ellen looked back at her mother, who made shooing motions. Squatting cautiously in the sand beside the girl, Ellen reached out with her shovel and patted a castle. As the sand mound crumbled, the little girl let out an ear-piercing wail. Eyes wide with panic, Ellen stared, the shovel still extended in front of her. A hand appeared and pulled Ellen to her feet. “Did you hit her?” Ellen looked up into a strange woman’s red face and began to cry.

“She was just playing,” Ellen’s mother said as she took Ellen back to the bench.

“Well, she should be playing with someone her own size.”

Ellen’s attempts to play with children her size were equally unsuccessful. She lacked the older children’s coordination; she couldn’t skip, play jacks, or catch a ball. The polite girls ignored her while the more rambunctious boys played Keep Away with her red rubber ball or used her head as a target.

For Ellen’s seventh birthday Ann invited three girls from catechism class for a beach party. Ellen made a beach-themed quiz game with clues printed on cardboard cut from empty cereal boxes.

“What’s a mol-luck?” one girl asked.

“Moll-usk. ‘Find a single-shell mollusk.’” Ellen said, reading the clue.

“‘Find part of an animal that has molted,’” another read slowly. “I don’t get it.”

“You know, when an animal outgrows its exoskeleton and sheds it so a new one can harden.”

“This is dumb,” a girl said, dropping her clue. “Let’s go build a wall and keep the tide from coming in. I’ll be the King of the Castle. Last one to the water’s a rotten egg.” Ellen watched the three girls race down the sandy slope toward the tidal flats. The cardboard clues dropped out of her hand and cartwheeled down the beach in the gusty breeze.

After Ellen had weathered countless rebuffs and teasing, she had stopped trying. She had stayed an outsider. She convinced herself that she preferred to be alone, that she didn’t need friends. She spent her time in solitary activities. Reading and learning, her constant companions, never disappointed her. When being alone was her choice, it no longer hurt.

Pushing the memories back into her subconscious, Ellen stood up, slammed her hands on the table, and glared at her parents. “Ever since I started school you’ve nagged me about friends. I don’t see how going to a new town will help.” With her head held high and her lips tight together, Ellen stomped to her room. Her bedroom door slammed so hard that the glass in the kitchen windows shook.

By the end of summer, Ellen understood what her parents meant about becoming a hermit. Unlike her parents, Sylvia Andrews had made no effort to interact with Ellen. She provided a bed and meals, nothing more. After Ellen walked into the living room one evening and found Mrs. Andrews crying, she avoided her as much as possible.

Ellen was hungry for the discussions she used to have with her parents. Other than brief conversations with Syd, she hadn’t talked with anyone all summer, not even her favorite librarian, who always seemed to be off work when Ellen went to the library. At the end of every day Ellen biked back to Mrs. Andrews’s house, ate the supper that was left for her, and spent the evening alone reading or watching TV.

At the end of August Ellen gathered her personal effects from the locker at the lab. Arms full, she turned around as Syd came hurrying up.

“Oh, good. I was hoping I’d catch you before you left, Ellen. I intended to do this earlier, but things piled up and, well…” Ellen waited. “I want to thank you personally for doing such a good job in the lab. Not every student approaches the work with such commitment and attention to detail as you have. You’re moving somewhere in the Interior?”

Ellen nodded. “Salmon Arm.”

“That’s too bad. It’s not easy to find someone to work who’s as meticulous as you. If there’s ever anything I can do, please feel free to ask.”

Ellen looked down at her arms so Syd wouldn’t see the wide smile on her face. In a quiet voice she said, “Thanks. I enjoyed working here.”

Unable to concentrate on reading, Ellen stared out the window at the passing darkness, slowly relaxing into the rhythm of the swaying train. As the train broke out of the confines of the Fraser Canyon into the broad, tumbleweed-dotted plateau lands around Cache Creek, the sun dropped behind the rolling hills. Waves of heat from the sere, sun-baked hills continued to pulse against the train. Slowly the sky deepened from blue to a deep green-indigo. In the fading light, the land became increasingly featureless. Soon the only thing Ellen could see was an occasional, lonely light shining bravely in the darkness outside the train. She wondered who lived so far from everything, and if they liked being so alone.

When the train stopped in Kamloops, the lights and bustle of the station seemed discordant, frantic. Then, as the Kamloops lights disappeared, Ellen felt her frustration with herself grow. She had stubbornly refused to discuss the resort or Salmon Arm with her parents. It was as though what she didn’t acknowledge didn’t exist; what she ignored, disappeared.

The newly risen moon lighted the passing land and a long strip of water paralleling the tracks with a silver glow. The bare hillside gradually acquired a mantle of trees, and the ribbon of water broadened into a small lake. Small settlements, identifiable only by a handful of lights and signs along the track, appeared suddenly out of the dark and disappeared again in seconds. To the click-clack rhythm of the train wheels, Ellen repeated the names over and over as though each was a bead on a rosary. Monte Creek. Pritchard. Chase. Squilax. Sorrento. Tappen. In the distance Ellen could see moonlight reflecting off the surface of a broad lake. In spite of the heat that still filled the train, Ellen shivered. Salmon Arm.

As the train drew near the station, Ellen strained to see along the dimly lighted platform. Among the distant figures she recognized her parents. She smiled, surprised by the rush of relief and love that hit her. Then, anger flared. All the resentment she had felt when her parents told her they were moving came bubbling out from where she had buried it, overwhelming her anticipation and pleasure at seeing her parents again.

From what Ellen could see in the couple of minutes it took to drive from the station to the highway, the town wasn’t very big. Two blocks and we’re in the wilderness, she thought, ignoring the sprinkling of house lights on the seven-mile drive along the highway to the resort.

Over the soft music playing on the car radio, Ellen listened to her parents talk enthusiastically about the resort. “Everyone’s trying to fit in one last weekend before school. The cabins are full, of course, but the campground is bulging at the seams, too. As fast as your dad can build a picnic table, someone registers and puts up a tent. I expect tomorrow will be a madhouse. Thank goodness all our casual help’s coming in to work this weekend. It isn’t going to be much of a homecoming for you.”

“This isn’t my home.”

Ellen spent the next day with her transistor radio playing on the blanket beside her, alternately reading in the shade and cooling off in the lake. In spite of herself Ellen was impressed by the long stretch of white sand and the warm, clear lake water. This beats Jericho Beach hands down, she thought, and the water’s not salty.

Every time she saw her parents, Ellen focused on her book. At one point, just after she had watched her parents hurrying away from the office in opposite directions, a car pulled up in front of the office. Ellen frowned and resolutely began to read. I’m not getting involved. Let Phil, that town kid they hired to collect from the cars, deal with it.

Several times during the day she swam out to the float on the cabin side of the beach. The float was a magnet for kids. Cries of “Mom, look at me!” “Bombs away!” and “Yippee!” were followed by splashes as the children jumped or dove into the water.

In the late afternoon, though the sand still radiated trapped heat, the east-facing cabin beach was in full shade from the cottonwood trees growing along the bank. Ellen checked that her parents were nowhere in sight and began to walk down the wide, shady beach in front of the cabins, which was sprinkled with families on blankets, air mattresses, and old inner tubes of all sizes for playing in the water. She recognized several of the kids who had been swimming; they were now sprawled on their stomachs, feet waving in the air, intently reading comic books. As she neared the last cabin, the ground rose slightly, forming a shoulder-high, treeroot-webbed bank with rough dirt paths from the narrowed beach to each cabin. The sand below the last cabin was grass-tufted and log-tangled. An insubstantial wire fence, the split posts standing in every direction but straight up, marked the end of the resort property. A sign, “Private Property—Keep Out,” was tacked onto one of the posts. Although she could see the lakefront curving away, the willows growing in the sand blocked her view of the shore.

She turned and walked back, her feet ankle-deep in the water. Not seeing her parents, she continued around the long sand point to the tenters’ beach, where the sunlight still reflected off the sand, white, and blinding bright.

The afternoon sun, not yet behind the round, tree-covered hills to the west, spotlighted the tents packed side by side on the ground at the top of the long, sloping beach. Just past the launching ramp the water’s edge was lined with a flotilla of colorful boats pulled securely into the sand slope, their sterns rocking gently in waves from the wake of passing boats. Off shore, the broad bay was still churning with the wakes of boats pulling water-skiers. A thick layer of wood smoke hung high above the beach, dissipating as it floated over the water. As Ellen meandered down the length of the beach she could see a second and, in places, a third line of tents stretching back from the sand. Like the cabin beach, the tenters’ beach ended in a tangle of willows, logs, and grasses.

As the sun fell behind the hills, Ellen watched the water mirror the subtle color changes in the sky. It’s beautiful, she thought.

After Ellen’s father shut the office for the night, they sat down together for a late dinner of bologna, cheese slices, bread, and a pile of carrot, cucumber, and celery sticks.

“So, who’s driving me to school tomorrow, Mom? You or Dad? You can’t expect me to walk from out here in the wilderness.” Ellen leaned back with her toes on the floor and balanced on the back legs of her chair, rocking slightly.

“There’s a school bus,” her father said.

“A bus?” Ellen leaned forward, and the front legs of her chair hit the floor with a thunk. She tried to mask the wave of panic that hit her. “Just tomorrow, right?”

“No, every day.”

“You said I had to live here, and I came. But I can’t go on a bus. I can’t.”

“There really isn’t any option. School buses are a fact of life in rural areas, Ellen. You took the train here by yourself. What’s the big deal about going on the bus?”

Ellen’s stomach began to churn as memories of the merciless teasing she had endured on school outings flooded back. There would be no teacher to protect her or sit beside her. “You have to drive me. Dad. Please.”

Ann looked at her husband and raised her eyebrows. He shook his head slightly. “Ellen, someone who’s mature enough to live on her own can cope with taking a bus to school.”

“Are you finished ruining my life, or is there something else I need to know?”

Her mother shook her head. “You also need to know that the bus stops to let off kids for Salmon Arm Elementary and the junior high first. The senior high is up the hill. When you get there, go to the school office,” she said. “We got the transfer paperwork done in May so everything should be there. Do you want me to call the vice-principal?”

“And say what? Take care of my baby daughter who’s coming on the bus? Make sure she gets off at the right spot?”

“Remember, if there are any problems you can always phone us,” her father said.

“Why? So you can come hold my hand? If you really wanted to help, you’d drive me.”

“Watch your tone, young lady,” her father said.

Her mother shot a look at Ellen through narrowed eyes. “Ellen, don’t start. I’m too tired.”

A buzz from the office cut through the tension. Ellen’s mother pushed herself upright with a groan. “I had the light off. You’d think they’d know we’re closed for the night.”

Ellen stomped to her room and slammed the door. Everything’s different. Especially Mom. She always used to help. Ellen turned on her radio and sat cradling Bear with her chin between his ears.

The next morning Ellen sat at the kitchen table. Leaning her head on one hand, she stared at her bowl of cereal scooping up spoonfuls and then slowly letting them drop back into the bowl.

“Ellen, you’re going to be late.”

Ellen put on the outfit she’d bought in a store on Tenth Avenue near UBC—a loose beige and white polka dot blouse with a white Peter Pan collar and elbow-length sleeves that disguised her developing body, and a long, brown, gathered cotton skirt. She knew her mother would hate it. Whenever they shopped together, she nagged Ellen to buy something “more fashionable,” more “the ’Sixties.”

Ellen checked the mirror, leaning closer to scrutinize herself. Her symmetrical oval face was framed by long, honey-gold hair that hung straight to the middle of her back. She wore the top and sides pulled back and secured with a hair clip. Clear skin, blemish free. Hazel eyes, wide set, fringed with dark lashes under arched eyebrows. High cheekbones, with a natural pink blush and small freckles. Straight nose with softly flared nostrils. A delicately curved but strong chin. She shook her head. I don’t look like one of the Munsters, but I’m certainly not like those short, cute, bouncy beach-movie actresses with their poofy, back-combed hair, pale pink lipstick, and short dresses. Ellen sighed. She couldn’t do anything to mask her height, but she hoped that the nondescript brown clothes would help her avoid attracting the attention of the other students.

Ellen’s mother frowned as Ellen came out of the bedroom. “Are you sure you want to wear that? The girls around Salmon Arm are wearing much shorter skirts, almost miniskirts.”

Ellen brushed past her mother and stomped out the door, muttering under her breath. “Mothers!”

How could they do this to me, Ellen asked herself as she walked down the resort road. Shoulders raised, she gripped her books, pulling them against her body like a shield. At the highway, Ellen began to pace, darting glances down the road, checking for the school bus. She lifted her watch up to her ear to hear if it was ticking.

Waves of anxiety washed over her, leaving a thin sheen of moisture on her skin. She tugged at the suddenly too small collar of her blouse. Aware of her rapid, shallow breathing and how tightly she was clutching her books, she dropped her shoulders and took a deep breath to push down the growing panic. She wiped her moist palms on the side of her skirt and then quickly checked the fabric, fearful she’d left wet marks.

When Ellen looked again, the yellow school bus was already partway along the stretch of highway leading to her stop. The closer the bus came, the harder her heart beat. By the time the bus stopped in front of her and the door swung open, her whole body was pulsing, the rush of blood in her ears as loud as the bus’s engine. Ellen licked her lips and tried to swallow. She climbed the four steps into the bus, focusing intently on her feet so she wouldn’t trip.

As soon as she reached the top step, the driver rotated the handle that closed the door and stepped on the accelerator, shifting gears as the bus lumbered down the highway. Still standing, Ellen jerked with the acceleration, stepping back and forth to keep her balance.

“Everyone on the bus has to be seated,” the driver said. He glanced briefly at Ellen and then back at the road.

A handful of children were packed into the seats at the back of the bus. Their voices carried over the engine, filling the bus with noise. All the seats at the front were empty. Her knees suddenly weak, Ellen slid into the first seat behind the driver and slouched low. Her heart pounded in her ears, overwhelming the students’ voices, reducing them to a background of indistinct sounds and an infrequent sharp laugh. Her eyes met those of the driver who was watching her in the rearview mirror. She wanted to melt, to hide out of sight under the seat. Sit still, she ordered herself. Don’t do anything to attract more attention. She forced her body back against the seat and slid tight against the metal side of the bus, using the two hard surfaces to support and hold her body upright. A sharp laugh from the back of the bus pounded into her temples. She shut her eyes. Breathe, she thought. I have to breathe.

The brakes squealed as the bus pulled to a stop. Ellen glanced up as four children of different ages but similar looks got on, talking excitedly as they climbed up the stairs. Ellen looked down quickly, panicked. What if one of them sat beside her? And said something? Or didn’t say anything? Should she say something? What?

When the children saw Ellen they stopped talking and eyed her as they passed. They called out greetings to the students at the back of the bus, and the babble of noise began again behind her.

As the bus drove up to small farmhouses set back from the highway singly or in small clusters, Ellen kept her head turned away from the door so she wouldn’t accidentally make eye contact with anyone. By watching the reflections in the side window, she could monitor anyone getting on. No one even paused at the empty seat beside her. Each one looked at Ellen and then kept moving down the aisle. The seats behind her began to fill up, and the noises got louder and closer. Ellen checked her watch. It was quarter to nine. They must be getting close to town.

Much as she hated to admit it, her mother had been right. Her clothes were nothing like the short skirts and bright sleeveless blouses that other students were wearing. Rather than fading into the background, she was going to stick out like a long-necked, long-legged stork. Not for the first time, she wished the miniaturizing machines and shrink ray guns in her father’s science fiction stories really existed. If only she were back at her old school, where she knew how to be invisible.

As the bus lumbered down a long stretch of gravel side road back toward the highway, Ellen listened to the conversation between two girls who were sitting behind her. Her stomach sank and her skin reddened as she realized they were talking about her.

“She must be new.”

“Do you know where she got on?”

“Barry said down by the resort. Maybe she lives there.” Ellen slid lower in the seat, stared out the window, and pretended to be deaf.

As the bus turned and headed back toward town along the same stretch of highway it had already traveled, Ellen looked down at the vacant spot beside her in relief. There likely wouldn’t be anyone else to pick up.

The bus slowed as they approached the Salmon River Bridge and then shuddered to a stop. She looked up in surprise as the door swung open. She watched a tall young man come up the steps and pause. He stared at the back of the bus and then at the empty seat beside her. Ellen’s heart raced and she squeezed tighter into the corner. He continued standing as the bus started moving.

“Find a seat,” the driver said.

Ellen held her breath as he swung into the seat beside her. A hush fell over the shrill din, as though everyone in the bus had taken a breath at the same time. Excited voices behind her exploded in deafening, unintelligible conversation. She knew everyone was staring at her and the boy. With her knees pressed tightly together and her elbows digging into her sides, Ellen stared at the seat, anxious in case her skirt might improperly invade the gap between them. With two fingers she inched the loose skirt fabric closer to her leg until it was under control.

When she shifted her eyes, she could see the slightly worn knees on his blue cords and a bag on the floor between his runners. She couldn’t see what he looked like. He faced the front window and paid no attention to her.

After stopping at a large, gray school near the edge of town, where the younger students exited, the bus drove through town and up the hill. As it pulled up in front of another, newer building, Ellen steeled herself. Before the bus had fully stopped, the other students stood and crowded toward the door. They poured down the stairs in a steady stream, jostling and nudging each other, a cloud of laughter and chatter surrounding them. As the last of the students cleared the bus, the boy beside Ellen stood and, in one effortless, fluid motion, picked up his bag and swung around the pole and down the stairs. All she could see was a tall body with dark hair and tanned skin.

Ellen glanced back in relief at the empty bus. She tightened her grip on her books and stood up.

“Have a good first day,” the driver said, meeting her eyes in the rearview mirror. Startled, Ellen gave the driver a little smile and bobbed her head.

“Thanks,” she said as she left the bus and followed the long stream of students headed through the front doors of the school.