The watery light of dawn found Kerri, sixteen and, until recently, a student at Harmony Heights Secondary School, passed out on the picnic table. The long grass around the table was littered with empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, and an empty pizza box. Her best friend, Jolene, was curled up under a transparent plastic tarp on a foldable chaise lounge that was missing one arm.
When Kerri came to, she was shivering. Her feathered blonde hair was crushed flat on one side of her head and stuck to her damp face like a fringe of small wet tongues. Dean was sitting on the tabletop at her side, rubbing her denim-clad bum. Kerri grunted and sat up slowly. She slumped forward, her throbbing head cradled in her hands. Dean leaned over and murmured into her hair.
“F’goff,” Kerri moaned, and elbowed him away. She put her head back in her hands and wondered if she’d pissed him off, but a wave of nausea quickly monopolized her attention. After a minute, she heard footsteps and looked up to see Dean stalking across the yard to the house, hand in hand with Jo, who looked like she’d won the lottery. Kerri watched them disappear through the screen door and then lay back down with a sigh.
When Kerri came to for the second time, the sun was peeking out from behind the house and she was sweating. The smell of cooking food wafting from the kitchen window coaxed her up off the picnic table and into the house.
Paula stood at the stove in a nightgown that had once been pink but had been washed into a gloomy shade that was somewhere between beige and grey. The fabric was pulled taut over her belly and her bare feet were cracked and grey with dirt. A cigarette dangled from her lips above a sputtering pan of ground beef. Kerri’s stomach simultaneously turned and growled at the smell of food, smoke, and dirty dishes.
“Mornin’,” she said to Paula. Paula said nothing. Kerri’s hi-cuts stuck to the linoleum as she walked over to the kitchen sink. She ran the faucet until the water was cold and the sulphur smell had subsided, then pulled back her hair and leaned down into the crusty sink to drink from the tap.
Paula watched out of the corner of her eye for a minute. “My dad called.”
“Huh?” said Kerri, straightening up and shutting off the tap.
“My dad called. He’s comin’ this afternoon. You know what that means.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Kerri nodded and wiped the smeared blue mascara off her face with the sleeve of her jean jacket.
“That means you’s all gotta split or there’s no way he’ll give me any money.”
Kerri slumped over the sink and salivated as she watched Paula break up the browning meat with the back of a bent metal spoon.
“Whatcha makin’?” asked Kerri.
“What’s it look like I’m making?” barked Paula. She took the cigarette from her lips and leaned towards Kerri to flick her ashes into the sink. Kerri moved out of the way and then slumped back against the counter without taking her eyes from the pan.
Paula waited another minute and then yelled, “I’m makin’ hamburger! What’s it look like I’m makin’?” Under her breath, she said, “Moron.” Paula and Kerri were the same age, but Paula acted like an old woman. They stood in silence until Kerri’s stomach audibly growled.
“Smells good,” said Kerri.
“Ya, well if you want some you better hurry up, cause my old man is comin’ round and none of you’s can be here when he does!” Paula smacked the spoon against the side of the pan and squeezed her left eye shut against the smoke of her cigarette. Kerri turned the tap back on to drink some more.
Paula yelled over the running water, “And tell them fuckers to clean up before you’s all take off!”
That afternoon, Kerri and Jo laboured slowly down King Street towards the Beer Store. It was the first warm day of spring. Jo had the sleeves of her Leafs jersey pulled up over her shoulders and Kerri had tried to roll up the legs of her stretch jeans, but they only went up to the tops of her ankles before they got too tight. One side of her feathered hair was still matted flat against her skull, but she’d reapplied her blue mascara and her lips were coated in sticky pink gloss—the same as Jo’s.
“This sucks,” said Jo.
“Mm-hmm,” said Kerri.
“We need one of them old-lady carts.”
Their gait was halting and awkward. They each carried a six of empties in one hand, and in the other they had balanced between them two two-fours. It was more than they could handle, but Kerri had insisted the Beer Store wasn’t too far of a walk. Kerri had never walked to the Beer Store before. The dimensions of downtown Oshawa, once so familiar as it whisked past her in the passenger seat of her dad’s pickup, now seemed to stretch endlessly before her. By the time they’d reached King Street, nowhere near the halfway point, Kerri knew she’d made a mistake.
“Kerri, c’mon,” Jo pleaded. “Let’s just stick these in a bush or something and come back for them later.”
“No way!” Kerri said. “Anyone could come and take them. And then what?”
Jo sighed, and they walked on in silence for a moment or two.
Jo sized up Kerri’s eyelids, puffy and red behind their bright blue armour of makeup, and asked, “So what’d yer mom have to say when you called her?”
“Nothing much,” mumbled Kerri. “Mostly she just cried and stuff.”
“Think you can get her to admit your dad kicked you out?”
Kerri shrugged. The empties clinked.
“No way you’ll get welfare if she doesn’t,” Jo said ominously, shaking her head.
“We’re high school drop-outs, Jo,” snapped Kerri. “Neither one of us is gettin’ anything.”
Jo sucked in the sides of her mouth and raised her eyebrow, but didn’t say anything more.
They walked on. At one intersection they paused to pull the bottoms of their shirts up and out through their neck holes, creating makeshift bikini tops and exposing their hard, teenaged bellies to the downtown traffic. Jo had twisted her long dark hair up on top of her head and stabbed a twig through it to hold it in place. Occasionally, a passing car would honk.
“So,” Jo continued, trying to mask the drudgery of their task with small talk, “how come Paula’s dad doesn’t live there with her?”
“He has a girlfriend,” said Kerri. “He lives in her trailer with her.”
“And he just comes around on welfare day to give Paula money?” asked Jo, incredulous.
“Yup.”
“She’s fuckin’ lucky.”
“No kidding, eh?”
“Does Paula know her mom?”
“Yeah, she grew up with her mom, but her mom’s crazy. When Paula told her she was pregnant, her mom told her to get rid of it, and then she, like, gave her a black eye, so Paula left.”
“Huh,” said Jo, mulling it all over. “Doesn’t her dad hit her?”
“Sometimes, but I guess it isn’t so bad since he’s never around. Besides, now that she’s preggers, he won’t lay a hand on her.”
The girls stopped and put down their beer cases. They walked round the front of the cases to switch sides. They paused, squinting at the sun and kicking at the dirt until their fingers stopped screaming.
Jo said, “I’m fuckin’ dyin’ for a smoke.”
Kerri bent down, slid the edges of the beer case handles into the deep grooves on her fingers, and said, “You ready?”
Jo nodded, and they picked up the cases and resumed their slow, lopsided gait.
“So how’d you meet Paula, anyway?” asked Jo.
“Home Ec,” said Kerri.
The girls were taking a break in the shade of a rusted billboard frame. Behind them, the broken concrete of an empty parking lot gave way to anemic crabgrass and dirt. At the far end of the lot, the brick wall of a defunct car wash read, “We’ll Make You Shine.”
They sat on their beer cases, flipping the bird at any cars that honked.
Kerri found a dry, yellowed cigarette butt in the gutter beside them. It still had a couple hauls’ worth of tobacco in it, so she ripped off the filter, stuck the torn end in her mouth, and held Dean’s Zippo against the burnt end. Jo’s eyebrows twitched when she saw the lighter, but she said nothing. Kerri snapped the Zippo shut with a flick of her wrist and handed it to Jo, who tucked it into her pocket and let her hand linger briefly over its shape beneath her jeans.
Kerri puffed gingerly, squinting as bits of loose tobacco caught light and flew up in the breeze. She said, “This one day in class? Ms. Bayner was holding up these kitchen utensils, okay? And she was all, ‘What’s this one was for?’” Kerri paused to hold the cigarette out to Jo, and with her other hand pulled a strand of tobacco from her tongue.
“She held up this thing we’d bought my mom for Christmas. Each year we fill her stocking with, like, kitchen stuff, even though it makes her mad. My dad’s just like, whatever.”
“Prick,” said Jo.
“So anyway, I was like, ‘That’s a potato masher!’ and Ms. Bayner like, laughs, and then everyone laughs. Ms. Bayner was all, ‘Well, that’s very creative, Kerri, but what’s it really for?’ and everyone else was, you know, giggling and shit.”
“Bitches,” Jo said.
“Totally.” Kerri nodded. “But Paula never laughed. She just sat there and, like, looked at me, or whatever. We started hanging out after that. I felt bad for thinking she was trash at first. She’s not so bad once you know her.”
“Sure,” said Jo, though she didn’t sound convinced.
They sat for a while longer, and then Jo asked, “So what was that thing, anyway?”
Kerri rolled her eyes. “I can’t remember what it’s called. But it’s, like, this metal circle with a plastic handle on one part of it, and slits on the other. For making pastry or whatever.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. As if I’ll ever be making pastry for some fat fuck. Why am I gettin’ graded on this?”
Jo laughed. “Ladyfriend, if that ever happens, you call me pronto, ’cause that is something I’d pay money to see.”
Kerri smirked and spat in the gutter.
It took them another hour of walking to reach the Beer Store. Jo spent the last half hour near tears, but Kerri ignored her and kept her eyes locked on the friendly orange sign that hovered like a second sun above the distant rooftops. Once they’d heaved their cases up onto the metal conveyor belt, Kerri went outside and sat on the yellow curbstone in the parking lot. Jo stayed inside with the empties, sighing theatrically while she waited for the beer guys to stop ignoring her.
Kerri hummed to herself and smiled up into the sun. Her fingers were still throbbing and she couldn’t raise her arms without considerable effort, but they’d made it, and now they were going to have some money. Money for food and smokes and the bus. Money they had earned, and could spend on whatever they damn well pleased.
It felt good thinking about what she might like to do. She could smell the lake on the breeze, and she thought maybe later, when they were done scavenging for more bottles, she and Jo could get down to the waterfront and still be back before sundown. Maybe even have an ice cream while they were at it. Kerri hadn’t dared to think this way when she was living at home because her days at home had all been the same. Tightness in her chest and throat. Sitting still in her bedroom with the door closed, tracking her dad’s every movement in the house. What room was he in? Had he just sighed? Was he mad? Was he coming?
But she didn’t live there anymore, and better yet, her dad didn’t know where she was. She was free. Sitting there in the sunny Beer Store parking lot, faced with the unknown possibilities of an afternoon that was hers to fill as she pleased, Kerri felt a surge of something big and bright and endless fill her up till she thought she might burst wide open right there on the concrete. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, surprised to feel herself on the verge of tears.
“Goddamn!” hollered Jo as she sailed out through the sliding glass doors, trying unsuccessfully to raise her trembling arms above her head in triumph. “We got six fuckin’ dollars!”
“No way,” laughed Kerri. She turned her face away from Jo, blinked back her tears, and swallowed hard. “Didn’t he check for BT holes?”
“Obviously not.” Jo extended her hand down to Kerri. “Today is our lucky day.” She pulled Kerri up to her feet.
“No kidding,” said Kerri. She brushed the dust from her bum.
Jo was snapping her fingers and skipping towards the sidewalk. “So now what, ladyfriend?” she called over her shoulder.
“Well,” said Kerri, holding her lower back and pushing her belly out front of her in a stretch, “I think we should do like Paula said and check people’s yards and shit for more empties.”
“Fuck that,” said Jo. “Let’s get smokes.”
“Who’s gonna buy them for us?”
Jo pulled the twig out of her hair and struck a pose. “Bitch, who wouldn’t buy them for us?”
Buying cigarettes downtown turned out to be hard. At school, there was always a senior who would buy you a pack if you let them keep a few cigarettes from your pack as a fee. But downtown in the middle of the day, the adults turned stone-faced as soon as Jo or Kerri approached them. After an hour or so of wandering they finally got lucky with a sad-eyed woman who said she used to be just like them. Kerri and Jo had laughed about that as they headed for Kinsmen Park.
“As if,” said Jo. “Did you see that hag? She was never like us.”
“Her nic stains were practically brown,” said Kerri, looking nervously at the first two fingers of her right hand.
“You can rub lemon on them. Your fingers. My mom read it in her Chatelaine.”
Kerri looked up at Jo. “You think that’ll save us?”
“From what? Being a fuckin’ Debbie Downer? No, that’s totally your future. But at least your fingers won’t look like hers.”
Kinsmen Park was part of a green valley that cut through the whole city, top to bottom, with a creek in the middle that ran through culverts and under bridges until it emptied into Lake Ontario. Kerri used to crane her neck to catch a glimpse of it on the bus ride to her high school.
“Hey, let’s go down to the creek,” said Kerri. “There’s probably a few empties down there—we can get some more coin.”
“No way,” said Jo. “See that tree?” She pointed up at the crest of the eastern side of the valley, where a line of trees marked the edge of the park. “That tree has our name on it. Last one there gets a punch in the arm.”
Kerri laughed as she watched Jo run the first few feet up the hill and then pretend to have a heart attack.
“Who’s the Debbie Downer now?” shouted Kerri as she sprinted past Jo’s corpse. Kerri didn’t look back, but she could hear Jo laughing and swearing behind her as they pseudo-raced up the hill.
When they reached the top, gasping and coughing and spitting, they sprawled out on their backs beneath a maple tree. Jo lit two Dunhills and passed one to Kerri. “You juiced it,” Kerri said, wrinkling her nose at the soggy filter.
“Ahhhh, it doesn’t get any better than this,” sighed Jo, ignoring her.
“No shit,” agreed Kerri, her face turned up to watch the leaves above her flit from green to silver and back again in the sun. “This is livin’.”
“Miller time,” aped Jo, and Kerri snickered.
They smoked in contented silence and watched a man down in the park playing fetch with his orange dog.
“Think you’ll go back to school one day?” asked Jo.
Kerri pulled thoughtfully at her smoke and exhaled with a sigh. She didn’t really give a shit, but she knew Jo was worried about it. Jo’s older brother had said they were making a big mistake by dropping out like he had done. Now he stole cars for people who wanted to scam their insurance.
“Probably,” Kerri said eventually. “Maybe when I’m older and I got nothin’ better to do. While I’m young I just want to, like, live. You know?” She looked over at Jo. Jo was nodding.
The dog had climbed partway up the hill toward them and was walking in tight, frantic circles. The man put his hands in his pockets and waited.
Jo said, “This is so awesome. Dean and those guys are idiots, eh? They totally shoulda just come with us instead of fucking around at the arcade.” Kerri didn’t really mind their absence, but agreed anyway.
Jo said, “Dean and I are totally gonna get married. I can just tell. Can’t you just tell?” She looked brightly at Kerri. When Jo’s parents had divorced, her mom had drawn the blinds in the living room and collapsed on the couch with a migraine. She’d been there every day since, and that was three years ago. Kerri had met Jo’s mom. Her face was just as washed out as Paula’s crummy old nightgown.
“Married,” said Jo, watching as the dog finished up its business and then galloped in a long, wide arc towards its master. “You think he’s gonna stay out of jail long enough to get married?”
“Totally,” said Jo. “He’s got my brother to show him how it’s done. They’re gonna make a killing. Hey,” Jo said, hitting Kerri’s leg with the back of her hand. “What about you? Think you’ll get hitched one day?”
Kerri thought about her parents. They’d stayed together for reasons that were beyond Kerri, as they obviously hated each other. She suspected their miserable marriage persisted because of her.
“Doubt it,” said Kerri.
“Really? Not even if you’re in love with someone?”
Kerri chewed on her lip and scowled at the grass, deep in thought. “Nah,” she finally said.
Jo looked at her with disbelief and then looked away. “Huh,” she said, under her breath.
Kerri frowned. “Well, I don’t know…Fuck,” she said.
“Being in love is the shit, Kerri. You’ll understand more when it happens to you.”
“Well, you didn’t ask me about love, did you, Jo? You asked if I was gonna get married. They got nothin’ to do with each other.”
Jo was suddenly furious. “Marriage is love, Kerri! You just think that way because of your parents! You shouldn’t let them fuck it all up for you like that.”
“Well, tell me, Jo. Didn’t your parents love each other when they swore in front of God and everyone that they’d stay together no matter what?”
“Shut up.”
“Wasn’t that love, Jo? D’you think they knew they were gonna wind up all pissed off and divorced when they were in love?”
“Fuck you!” yelled Jo, with enough force to echo off the field below. The man and the dog both looked up at them.
Kerri lowered her head and focused on digging a little hole in the dirt beside her with her fingernail.
After a while, Jo muttered, looking straight ahead, “This is different. Me and Dean.”
The streetlights were flickering as Kerri and Jo walked arm in arm up the street towards Paula’s. They were singing, “Tangerine, Tangerine…” in melodramatic nasal voices. When they turned up the walkway, Kerri stopped singing but Jo continued, “Living reflect-shu-huns, from a dream…” Kerri shushed her and punched her on the arm.
“Hey! What’s yer damage all of the sudden?” whined Jo, rubbing her shoulder.
“I dunno,” said Kerri, who’d stopped halfway up the walk and was staring up at the house. “Just, what if he’s still in there?” She jutted her chin up at the darkened windows and tried to cram her hands into her pockets. They wouldn’t go, because her jeans were too tight, so she crossed her arms in front of her instead.
“Who?” asked Jo.
“Paula’s dad.” Kerri and Paula both acted tough in their own way, but both knew what it was like to feel terrorized and helpless. Jo didn’t know; she just had an older brother who adored her.
“Well then,” Jo said. “We’ll just ask ol’ Daddy Warbucks for some of his fine cash moneys! Besides,” she continued, bouncing up the porch steps while Kerri hung back, “we’re just a couple of Paula’s friends dropping by to see if she wants to hang out. Right?”
Without waiting for Kerri’s response, Jo rapped brusquely on the front door. The girls waited. Jo knocked again, and Paula swung open the door and stared stonily at her.
Jo put on a snooty accent and said, “Would the man of the house be in?”
Paula said, “You’re looking at her.” She turned on her heel and walked away. Jo sashayed into the hallway, opened the door wider, and bowed deeply towards Kerri.
“Madam,” she said.
Kerri walked silently past Jo.
Jo straightened up and said, “You’re welcome!” She swung the door shut and followed Kerri down the hall.
In the kitchen, the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling gave off a dull orange glow through its patina of grease. The air was blue and wispy with cigarette smoke and smelled faintly of bacon. Paula sat at the table, still wearing her nightgown, smoking a cigarette and jimmying one leg up and down. She balanced a coffee mug of RC Cola on her large belly, which had begun to round and harden. Kerri and Jo stood. There was only one chair. Jo was telling Paula about their day.
“I’ll tell you one thing, though,” Jo was saying. “That was the hardest six bucks I ever earned. Nearly tore my fucking arm out of its socket.” She gingerly rotated one arm in a circle and winced.
“More like the only six bucks you ever earned,” said Paula, as she ashed her smoke in an empty potato chip bag. “D’you’s get any other empties like I said to?”
Kerri glared at Jo.
Jo said, “Time got away from us today, but we’ll be back out there first thing in the morning.”
Paula rolled her eyes.
“What about you, Paula,” asked Kerri. “How’s yer dad?”
“Well, that’s the thing—” But she was interrupted by an excited “Goddamn!” from Jo, who had opened the fridge.
“Look at all the grub in here!” Jo hollered. Paula bolted up from her chair, positioned her body between Jo and the fridge, and slammed the fridge shut with her hip. Jo backed up with her hands in the air and said, “Whoa!”
Paula pointed her finger in Jo’s face and seethed, “My dad’s on to you. He says you all gotta stay away!”
“Whaddaya mean he’s on to us?” Jo demanded, lowering her hands to her hips. Kerri shook her head and chewed the inside of her cheek.
“He saw the state of this place,” Paula yelled. “He knew I been havin’ people round!”
“Well, you didn’t tell him we were staying here, did ya?”
“No, but he knew—”
“Oh, bullshit, Paula!” Jo cut her off. “How’d he know unless you told?”
“Listen!” hollered Paula. “It’s my fuckin’ house and I’m tellin’ ya my dad wants all yer asses outta here and that’s final!”
She turned to grab her smokes from the table and muttered, “Or else he’s callin’ the cops.”
Jo looked at Kerri. Kerri looked at the floor. Jo shook her head and walked over to the screen door that lead to the backyard. She pressed her forehead against the screen and said, “Great.”
Through the screen they could hear crickets and someone’s mom calling them in for the night. The trees and the rooftops were black silhouettes against the darkening sky. From the living room, they heard the metallic twang of the TV turning on, then the sound of canned applause floated down the hallway followed by, “Wheel–of–Fortune!”
The three girls were sitting in the dark living room, their faces pinched in the TV’s flickering blue light, when they heard a car door slam out front. Kerri and Paula started and glanced towards the window, but the nicotine-stained curtains were drawn. Jo jumped up and disappeared down the hall. They heard her open the front door and yell, “Hey, baby!” and then a bunch of guys were talking and laughing and filling the hall with heavy footfalls and the clink of beer bottles. Kerri glanced at Paula, but Paula was glaring at the TV.
“Look what the cat dragged in!” Jo came around the corner with Dean in tow. He was followed by Jo’s brother, Chris, and his friend Jerry, who were each carrying a case of beer.
“Why you sittin’ in the dark?” said Jerry, as he smacked on the overhead lights. Only one of the light fixtures worked, and it was over by the dining table. A gaunt man with wiry red hair and a sallow complexion lingered by the door. Kerri hadn’t seen him before. He looked old. The other guys were all around nineteen, but the new guy looked like he could have been in his thirties.
Dean extracted himself from Jo’s embrace.
“This here,” said Dean, putting his arm around the man’s bony shoulders and jerking him side to side, “this here’s my good buddy Paul. A friend of the family.”
Kerri smiled at him. Jo said, “Howdy, Paul!”
Paula didn’t say anything, and neither did Paul.
“Paul just got in from Vancouver this morning, so we thought we should celebrate. I haven’t seen Paul in years, ain’t that the truth, Paul?” said Dean.
Paul said, “Yup.”
“Hitchhiked all the way,” said Chris.
“No way,” said Kerri, in awe. Paul smiled and nodded.
In a goofy voice, Dean said, “Paul-a, meet Paul! Paul, this is Paul-a!” Jo giggled but Paula kept staring at the TV, scrutinizing the Wheel of Fortune credits that were flying up the screen. Jo and Dean exchanged a look.
Dean staggered over to the couch and sat down beside Paula. Her arms were crossed and she raised her shoulders up around her ears when Dean tried to rub them. “Paula. Wassa matter, darlin’?” asked Dean in a syrupy voice.
“Fuck off,” she said. But her edges were clearly softening, so he kept it up.
“Paula, tell Dean wassa matter. Don’t you wanna drink the nice beer I bought special for you?” He held out his hand. Chris pulled a bottle from his case and smacked it into Dean’s waiting palm. Everyone was smiling now except for Jo, who stood in the doorway beside Paul, glowering at Dean.
Dean kept his eyes on Paula, cracked the cap off the beer, put his arm around her shoulders, and held the bottle up to her grinning lips. His mouth was almost touching her ear. “Paula,” murmured Dean. “Why don’t you have a nice cold beer and tell Dean all about your daddy’s visit.”
Jo piped up from the doorway. “She said he’s calling the cops on us.”
“What?” Dean slammed the beer on the coffee table and stood up. He stared at Paula like he was about to hit her. Paula shied away from him. Dean was on parole. He’d only been out of jail for a month. Theft Under, and assault.
It was Paula’s turn to try and smooth things over. She grabbed the foaming beer from the table, shook her head, and said, “No, no, no, it ain’t like that at all!” She took a sip of foam.
“Why don’t you tell us how it is, then?” said Jo.
“Well, you shouldn’t go twisting my words like that, Jo!” Paula snapped. Paul had backed all the way up into the hallway and was trying to catch Jerry’s eye.
“Listen,” Paula said. She held up her hands and kept smiling at Dean. “I can handle my old man. All’s I’m tryna say is that you’s should help out more around the house. I ain’t yer fuckin’ maid.”
Kerri looked at the guys. Chris was the only one who’d made an attempt to help Kerri and Jo clean earlier. The rest of them had taken off as soon as Kerri had yelled up the stairs through a mouth full of ground beef that Paula’s dad was coming. None of them looked chastened now.
Dean looked at Jo with disbelief. “Jo, didn’t I tell you to help Paula clean this morning? She can’t do it all on her own!” Paula raised her head and closed her eyes, savouring the victory.
“Dean!” Jo stamped her foot and opened her mouth to let loose, but Jerry cut in.
“Look, man, if there is any chance at all of pigs I’m fucking outta here.” He chugged his beer, slammed the empty back in his case, and began pulling his coat back on. Jerry was the only one in the group with a job and a car and money. His co-op placement had hired him the summer after grade eleven, and he’d never gone back to school. He cleaned air ducts for a living and had a company van. They all relied on him.
Paul’s voice floated in from the hallway. “I don’t need no heat, man. Fuck this.”
Dean sighed. “All right, that’s it!” Paula flinched. Dean flipped his long hair back over each shoulder and pulled back the bandana he wore over his head.
Paula tried to melt into the corner of the couch.
“Can everybody just chill the fuck out for a second?” Dean stormed over to the doorway. “Paul!” he yelled. “Get the fuck back in here and sit down!” They all heard the front door shut, and Paul reluctantly reappeared. Dean spun around to face Paula. The tassels on his leather jacket slapped against his back.
“Paula, is yer dad callin’ the cops or isn’t he?”
Paula was on the verge of tears. “No.”
“You’re absolutely fucking sure?”
“Yes!”
“All right!” said Dean. “So can everyone just relax?”
Chris caught Kerri’s eye. He rolled his eyes and then winked at her. She lowered her head and smiled at her hi-cuts.
Dean sighed and flopped back down on the couch next to Paula. He shook his head slowly and looked at the TV. “Fucking Jeopardy!,” he said. Chris handed him a beer. Dean gestured to Jo and she scrambled over to the couch to curl up beside him. Paul sat down near the hallway where he could keep an eye on the front door, and Jerry opened a beer for him.
Dean elbowed Paula and said, “Check out this fucking goof, eh?” He pointed at a Jeopardy! contestant who was licking his lips and rubbing the side of his nose. Paula laughed her loud laugh, and the conversation began to flow. Kerri told Jerry about the dog she’d seen in the park. It had reminded her of his.
Paul said, “What is Uzbekistan?” The Jeopardy! contestant echoed him and won the lightning round. Dean laughed, shook his head, and said, “You edumacated fuck.” Paul grinned and held up his beer for cheers.
As the evening wore on, the conversation deteriorated into the usual drunken shouting match. According to Dean, the real problem with people today was that no one had any respect. The guys all agreed with him on this point, and there was a moment of quiet, until Jerry broke the silence with an underhanded remark about the Leafs, and then everyone started shouting again.
Paula had fallen asleep in front of the TV, despite all the noise. Kerri was lying on the floor smoking a cigarette and staring off into space. Jo stood up and said she was going for a walk. Kerri got up and followed her out into the backyard.
They wandered over to the picnic table and sat down.
“Too bad we don’t have a tent,” said Kerri. “I’d totally sleep out here again.”
“Yeah,” said Jo, wistfully. “Those shit-for-brains’ll be shoutin’ all night about who can take who, and blah fuckin’ blah.”
Kerri laughed.
“Swear to God,” Jo continued. “They think they’re such hot shit.” She stood up and began sweeping her right foot through the long grass, looking for something.
Kerri said, “Yeah. When’s the last time me and you sat around talkin’ about how we’re better than everybody else?”
“Exactly. Fucking blowhards.”
Kerri heard a metallic clink in the grass under Jo’s foot. Jo heard it too, and bent down to pick up a beer cap. She put it in her pocket and continued her search.
Jo said, “So, like, seriously though, Chris is pissed at me for dropping out.”
“Sounds about right,” said Kerri. “Big brother and all.”
“Oh, as if!” Jo rolled her eyes. “He’s a drop-out too, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I know, I know, I’m just saying. Big brother. He’s just, like, looking out for you or whatever.”
“You think it was stupid to drop out?” Jo asked.
Kerri shrugged. “So they say.”
“But you don’t think so?” Jo watched Kerri, her head tilted to one side.
Kerri leaned back and looked up at the sky. There were no stars. Just a dull, dark pink dome of trapped light from the car plant down the street. She said, “I don’t know. I just kinda wanna figure it out for myself.” She looked over at Jo. Jo stood there, waiting. Kerri frowned. “Its just like, people don’t really know what the fuck they’re talking about. They just repeat the same old crap. Like what’s been told to them. You know?” She waited for Jo to nod in agreement, but Jo only tilted her head.
“So I’m like, what if everyone is full of shit? What if it’s all downhill from here? Because seriously, Jo, if I get all old and sad and shit? And I find out then, when it’s too late that, like, everyone was blowin’ smoke up my ass about what really matters? Like with school and parents and whatever? And I wasted all my fucking life tiptoeing around and being scared to breathe and doing whatever I’m told to do? I swear, I’ll fucking lose it.” She kept her voice strong, but quiet. “I swear to God I will.” She looked at Jo.
Jo stared back at her.
“Seriously!” Kerri was agitated. “Think about it!”
Jo looked down and fiddled with the beer caps in her pocket.
Kerri sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m young. I’ll fix things if I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am.”
Jo walked back to the picnic table and dumped a pile of bottle caps on the table beside Kerri.
“You sound like a lunatic,” she said.
Kerri let out a long, strained sigh. “You should totally be a therapist. You’d be really good at it. Real helpful, like.”
Jo picked one of her caps and turned to face the yard. At the back of the lot, a build-it-yourself shed had been abandoned halfway through the build-it-yourself process. It leaned dejectedly against the fence. Lying face down in the grass between Jo and the shed were the flattened shards of a broken Mr. Turtle pool. The sun had bleached them out to the colour of pistachio ice cream. In the dark, partially hidden in the overgrown lawn, they resembled the picked-clean rib cage of a large animal.
“One drink for the pool, two for the shed,” said Jo. She held her hand up beside her ear, pointed her elbow at the shed, and snapped a beer cap from between her thumb and middle finger. It disappeared without a sound into the grass beside the pool.
“Looks like you’ll be sober in no time,” said Kerri, as she stood up and grabbed a handful of caps. She snapped one and it sailed into the neighbour’s yard.
Jo threw her head back and crowed, “That’s what you get, smartass!”
Kerri grinned and readied her next shot.
They stood there for a while, pinging the occasional cap off of the shed or the pool, hollering when they got a hit, swearing under their breath when they missed. They were both laughing hysterically at nothing in particular when the perpetually shirtless man who lived next door shouted over the fence at them to shut up. Kerri looked back over her shoulder at the house to see if Dean had heard, while Jo bent double, gasping and giggling helplessly into her hands.
Kerri shushed her, not wanting to provoke the neighbour. They’d only been staying with Paula for a few days but they already knew the guy was a yeller.
“Maybe we should go inside,” Jo said when she’d caught her breath. “We’re outta caps anyway.”
“You go. I’m gonna hang out here for a while.”
“And do what?”
“I don’t know.” Kerri shrugged.
Jo paused, her feet in the long yellow rectangle of light from the screen door that stretched out across the grass, and watched Kerri lie down on her back on the picnic table.
“You’re not seriously gonna sleep out here again?” asked Jo. She glanced at the clear plastic tarp, still strewn across the broken chaise lounge, and hugged herself. “Last night sucked.”
“I dunno,” said Kerri. Her voice was flat. “Maybe.”
Jo eyed Kerri with suspicion. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Come inside.”
“I said no!” Kerri snapped.
“Well, what’s your fucking problem?”
“Nothing!” Kerri shouted. She didn’t know why she was shouting. She glanced over and saw that Jo looked hurt.
Kerri sighed and said, “Nothing. I’m just bored, is all.” She was embarrassed at how her voice trembled when she spoke, even though she had no intention of crying. She turned her face away from Jo. Jo hesitated for a moment longer, and then walked quietly into the house.
Kerri listened to the sounds coming from inside. Jo was talking and laughing with the guys. The reggae theme from COPS was playing on the TV, and Paula was awake and singing along half-heartedly in her low, off-key voice. In the next yard over, the hiss of the neighbour’s hose was steady as he watered his lawn. The more Kerri was aware of all that went on outside her, without her, the smaller she felt. She stretched out her arms, gripped the edges of the table, and tried to focus on the rise and fall of her chest.
Hours had passed, and all the other sounds from the house and everywhere else were quiet, when Dean appeared at the side of the picnic table. He didn’t say anything. Kerri knew that Jo was probably sleeping on the couch inside, and that Dean was bored, and that he would try to take Kerri’s hand and lead her up the back staircase to one of the spare bedrooms like he’d done before. Kerri remembered how she’d felt in the Beer Store parking lot when she’d thought the whole day was hers. She’d felt full and strong. The opposite of how she felt when she was at home with her parents. The opposite of how she felt now. Kerri stood up and walked over to the broken chaise lounge. She scrunched up the tarp that Jo had slept under.
“What’re you doing with that thing?” asked Dean.
“Nothing,” said Kerri, as she tucked the tarp under her arm. She headed towards the street.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
Kerri knew that sounded like no answer, but she’d come to realize that nothing and nowhere was better than here and now. She’d make the rest up with time.