“What else do you do?”
“I relax.”
“You’re good at that,” I say, jogging on the spot.
“Sun’s different here,” Carin says, flipping onto her stomach. “Don’t stay out too long.”
I pad out of the trailer park and run along the channel, following the path that banks its edge. The heat hangs in the valley, stretches from mountain to mountain, sagging under its own weight as my feet raise clouds of dust. I enjoy the push against the swelter, the tightening of my leg muscles propelling me forward. It makes me feel capable, as strong as the channel rushing against the muddy banks. I take a detour into our old neighborhood, running past our childhood home, a split-level rancher with a wide green lawn and two-car garage. The new owners have changed the siding and planted some rhododendrons under the living room window, but otherwise the house looks as I remember. I run past the community centre where we took swimming lessons, the A&W where I had my first job, our old high school.
It was when Carin dropped out six credits shy of graduating that I decided to move to Vancouver. There wasn’t much left for me in the Okanagan, just motorboats and drunk driving, and I couldn’t stand to watch Carin fritter her life away. She never seemed to care, didn’t dream about anything beyond Penticton. When people used to ask her what she wanted to be, she’d make up a ridiculous profession, a monkey trainer or jellybean taster.
Mom died a few years after I moved to the coast. I thought the shock might spark something in Carin, but she stayed almost stubbornly the same. The small inheritance she was given was piddled away slowly, weekend after weekend. Somehow, being far away from her made me certain I wasn’t going to become her. Penticton became a reminder of all the things I missed about my mother, but Carin still ate at the little café near the beach where she and Mom used to go on a lazy weekend; she’d tell me about it as if it was nothing. “Went into Jenny’s today, had the best fucking bowl of soup.”
As I run along the bridge and onto the side of the highway, I try to draw deep breaths, but my throat feels raw from the dry air. Cars whip past me as I try to keep up my pace, but I’ve lost the rhythm. I stop and bend over, hands on my knees, and feel a wave of nausea pass through my body. I hear hoots behind me, a loud honk, and a whoosh of dusty baked air. The blue-and-red school bus drives by with several drunken knuckleheads hollering out the windows. I straighten and give them the finger — something Carin would do, but it feels good. “Morons,” I gasp, trying to catch my breath. Wishing I’d brought water, I start walking down the side of the highway, the ground shifting under my feet like a heat mirage. There’s another honk and a spray of gravel. I turn, ready to flip off the next bunch of assholes, but it’s my own car on the side of the highway. Carin sticks her head out the window. “Need a ride?”
Without saying anything I walk over and get in.
“You don’t mind?” she says, checking the mirrors and pulling back onto the highway. “I borrowed it. The keys were right on the counter. I needed some booze.”
I roll down the window and lean my face into the breeze.
“You’re red!” Carin says, looking over at me.
“I was running.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, closing my eyes.
“It’s just — you’re sweating a lot.”
“Just drive my goddamn car.”
“Well, I won’t say I told you so.”
“Don’t start.” I squint at her.
“You’re lucky I found you,” Carin says, swerving into the fast lane and cutting off another car. The highway swims in front of me. I’ve lost some small anchor.
“Fine, Carin. Thank you, okay? You were right.” I’m drifting.
“Is that why I’m getting the attitude?”
I brace my hands against the dashboard and lean forward.
“I can be right too sometimes,” she says.
Drops of sweat drip off my nose and onto the floor of the car.
“You’re the oldest.” Carin flourishes a hand. “I’d bow down, but I’m driving.”
“Carin, pull the car over.”
“What?” She looks over at me confused.
“Pull it over.”
She crosses three lanes of traffic to the side of the road and I swing open the door and stumble to the ditch. I bend down, resting my elbows on my knees, and throw up all over the grass. Everything comes up and when it’s all out, I dry heave. Once I’ve finally stopped, I feel Carin’s gentle hand on the small of my back. Cars speed past us on the highway. She hands me a bottle of water and I take a swig, spitting it out on the ground. I take another swig and swallow. The water is warm and metallic from sitting in the heat of the car. It’s days old. I get back inside and we drive the rest of the way home in silence.
CARIN HAS CLEARED THE trailer floor of clothes and laid a foamy down with a neatly tucked pink-and-blue flowered bedsheet and matching floral pillow. They’re Mom’s old linens. I don’t know why, but the whole scene makes me feel lonely. I can hear Carin outside laughing with someone as I go to get a glass of water. She opens the trailer door and pokes her head in. “Do you want to come out with us tonight?”
“I’m still feeling sick.” I pour myself a tall glass of water.
“Heat stroke?”
“I guess.”
We stare at each other a moment, the refrigerator humming in the background.
“Okay,” Carin shrugs. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning, then.”
“Sure.” I head back into the living room as Carin, drunk, struggles to close the door. She lets out a giggle and then opens it again. “June?”
When I turn back the look of sadness in her face surprises me. “Yeah?”
“Are you mad at me or something?”
“Why would I be mad at you?”
“Just checking,” she says, shrugging again and ducking out the door. From the window I watch her and some guy traipse out to the street, Carin’s hand tucked in the back pocket of his jeans.
I slide into the cool sheets, trying not to disturb Carin’s tucking job. Beside the foamy she’s placed a thick manila envelope addressed to me. I tear it open and papers fall out everywhere — pink cakes with white flowers, white cakes with pink flowers, white cakes with white flowers. Out flutters a handwritten note from Sue Clarkson: Pick one you love. Love, Sue. Love Sue? I shove the envelope of pictures as far under the couch as I can reach and flip off the table lamp. In the dark I squint at a corkboard Carin has propped up against the wall with pictures pinned all over it of her with a variety of guys I don’t recognize. In the middle of them all there’s an old picture of Mom. I reach out and unpin it from the corkboard. It’s from the early seventies, her hair parted in the middle, her eyes thick with liner. The expression on her face is typical Carin: cool deadpan. She was probably the same age as me in that photo or close anyway. I realize looking at the picture what different paths our lives took and that maybe if we’d met at that age, as strangers on the street or in a bar, maybe we wouldn’t have been friends or even spoken to one another.
WHEN I OPEN MY eyes the photo of my mother is a few inches from my nose. I put it back on the corkboard and hope Carin hasn’t noticed I moved it. Outside Carin is sprawled on her back on her air mattress in the gravel, her head fallen partially onto the ground, her neck at an awkward angle. I walk down the three trailer steps and look around. There are beer bottles all over the patio table and an overflowing ashtray by Carin’s head. Near her feet there’s also a pair of large men’s sneakers, but I don’t see the possible owner anywhere. I place my foot near her head on the air mattress and give it a good bounce.
Carin groans and rolls over onto the gravel. “What?” Bleary-eyed, she tries to focus on me and then dismisses me with a limp wave.
“It’s going to rain,” I say, before heading back into the trailer.
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She spends the rest of the day in her bedroom with the curtain drawn, coming out only once to make fried eggs. While the rain comes down outside, I wander around, bored, tidying up the trailer, wiping down the inside of the empty fridge, and flipping through cheap gossip magazines, the only reading material I can find. I call Anton and tell him I’ll be coming back by tomorrow evening.
By late afternoon the rain has stopped and the sun comes out and burns away the clouds. I take a walk along the beach and eat a hot dog for dinner, sitting on the promenade watching couples, families, and groups of friends go by. A limousine drives slowly down the strip, honking, with grads waving out the sunroof. I go back to the trailer but don’t head inside, instead dragging one of the patio chairs to the channel, where I can watch the sunset. Carin comes out with her own chair and we sit together in silence for a while. The sun has just finished dropping behind the mountains, pulling with it a shade of darkening blue. Across the way, a teenage couple is standing on the edge of the channel with a dinghy, testing the water with their toes. I shiver at the thought of floating down in the dark. “Feeling better?” Carin asks eventually.
“I am. I’m going home tomorrow morning,” I say. The couple is in the water now, drifting under the first bridge. “How are you feeling?”
“Great.” As if to demonstrate, Carin stands up and touches her toes a couple times before bending into a yoga pose. “So, let’s go out tonight.”
“I don’t think so,” I say, shaking my head. “I have a long drive tomorrow.”
“Come on. Can’t we have one fun night?”
“I thought we were having fun.”
“Right,” Carin says, rolling her eyes and stifling a yawn.
“I’m not in the mood.”
“I want you to meet someone. Remember that guy on the bus?” She smiles brightly and I figure it’s probably easier to say yes then to say no at this point. “One drink.”
AS WE WALK ALONG the crowded promenade, I pull self-consciously at the hem of the denim skirt Carin has lent me and try not to worry about how or if I will sit down. I picture seams split wide open, leaving me exposed in the middle of the bar. The strip radiates in the glow from the hotel casino. Tricked out lowriders and muscle trucks cruise the street as competing hip hop boom boom booms from their open windows. Carin leads us through the patio jammed with tables full of people to the back of the restaurant, where the bar is just as packed. I ease myself — minding the skirt — onto a stool at the edge of the bar, Top 40 blasting from speakers in the ceiling above us. Carin waves at one of the bartenders, trying to order us drinks overtop a row of people seated along the bar. He pulls down two tall glasses and several bottles of colourful booze. I recognize the bartender now. He was on the channel bus and he was also the guy Carin was with last night. He’s not as good-looking as I remember. It must have been the wet hair, now a fuzzy mess of blond curls around his head, like he’s attempting cherubic but failing miserably. He sets two drinks in front of us. “You found me,” he says, grinning at Carin and bobbing his head.
“This is my sister, June,” Carin says. “June, meet Jet.”
“From the bus, right?” he says, shaking my hand. I press my lips together, suppressing a smirk. His hands are wet from working behind the bar — ice, beer, and mixers. Idiot boyfriend number... oh, I’ve lost count.
“I brought your sneakers,” Carin says, pulling them out of her bag.
“Awesome.” Jet pours a round of pink shooters for all three of us and we touch shot glasses and down them. He pours another round and I push mine toward Carin. “Come on,” she laughs. “We’re just getting started.”
“My shift is almost over,” Jet yells over the music. “I’ll come hang.”
“Great,” I say, sarcasm lost in the bass thumping from the speakers. I take the shot and throw it back. “Happy?” I say to Carin.
“Be nice,” Carin hisses in my ear.
We barely interact the rest of the evening. Carin sits with her back to me, bowed deep in conversation with Jet. Every time I get to the last inch of my drink, Jet’s friend behind the bar whisks it out of my hand and gives me a new one. For that reason, at least, I always have something to do. At some point during the evening, my neighbour turns on his barstool and takes interest in me. He’s of the gelled crunchy-hair variety with a tight T-shirt sporting the lettering “Wingman” across the chest. He spends most of the night talking about his speedboat. I must look bored, because Carin taps me on the shoulder and asks me if I want to leave.
“This is my sister,” I tell Wingman, motioning to Carin with a floppy hand. I can’t remember his name, so I don’t introduce him.
“I’m trying to get your sister to come out on my boat,” he says, squaring his shoulders and drinking from his pint.
“Fat chance,” Carin laughs, thumbing in my direction. “Queen Prudent over here.”
“Her?” Wingman rests a meaty hand on my shoulder and gives me a shake as if he’s known me for years. “No way.”
I grab his wrist and remove his hand, shooting Carin a look that says, keep going and die.
“A dinghy, maybe,” Carin says, cracking herself up and spilling some of her drink on my skirt.
“All right,” I say, dabbing at the wet spot with a bar napkin. “That’s enough.”
“She’d mess up her hair,” Carin says, raising the pitch of her voice a squeaky octave. She hoots and slaps Wingman on the back.
“Fine,” I say, finishing my drink in two large gulps. Carin’s eyes widen and I smile at her. “Let’s go for a boat ride.”
CARIN STANDS AT THE edge of the dock shaking her head and for a quick second looks disturbingly like our mother. Wingman turns on the boat and drowns out whatever Carin is shouting at me. The night is warm and star-speckled, and as Wingman unties the moorings I wave goodbye to Carin again. “Don’t wait up,” I call to her. Just as the boat pulls away, she jumps in and sits down beside me. “Because you’re drunk I feel I should tell you, you’re acting like an idiot,” she shouts into my ear over the noise of the outboard motor.
“I’m having fun.” I trail my fingers through the water and flick the droplets in Carin’s face. “Isn’t this what you want?”
The lights along the strip shimmer and warp as the boat cuts through the water. We turn away from the beach and pick up speed, Wingman grinning back at us. Within minutes we’re surrounded by darkness, black sky and water. I can barely see Carin sitting next to me. The desert hills stretch around us, sucking the moisture from the night air. Above, stars spin shapes across the sky. Wingman’s laughing; the boat skips and accelerates. “He’s wasted,” Carin yells.
“Faster.” I shout the word several times at Wingman’s back. Carin digs her nails into my arm, but I push her hand away and stand up, letting the dry air rush past my limbs and through my hair. With the speed of the boat it’s easy to let go of everything — the flower arrangements and seating plans and balloon penises. Carin stands and grabs my shoulders, trying to force me back into the chair. “What?” I say. The word is lost, the wind whipping my hair around my face. The boat carves the water and we stumble, trying to regain our balance. “Sit down, you idiot,” Carin shouts, grabbing at me again.
“Get over yourself,” I shout back, shaking her off. “This is you,” I say, pointing to myself. “This is what you look like.”
The boat takes a sharp curve and rocks to one side. In one quick flip Carin is in the water. The spray from her splash hits my face and then the darkness eats her up. The boat keeps going, Wingman not realizing he’s dropped her, and I lurch up to the front screaming at him to stop the boat. He cuts the motor and the whole lake is swallowed in silence.
“You asshole.” I peer over the edge of the boat and call out for Carin. “You were going too fast.” Wingman passes me a flashlight to shine into the water, but all that’s reflected back is more darkness.
I turn around and kick him in the leg. “Shut up.” I lean out and scream Carin’s name. After a moment and from what sounds like a great distance, I hear the slap slap rhythm of messy strokes and call out again. I see the white of her shirt first. She swims slowly and steadily to the boat, climbing the ladder, her clothes sticking to her and draining water over the deck floor. Without pause, she clomps heavily right up to me and punches me square on the chin. I lunge at her and we roll around in the boat, pulling each other’s hair and slapping. Carin bites my shoulder and I twist her arm. Bitch! Cow! Eventually we tire ourselves out and sit in the dark, panting on opposite sides of the boat. The lap of water against the hull and the illusion of the stars fixed in space make me feel a bit better. Blood thumps through my temples and I start to laugh, tears rolling down my face. Wingman’s disembodied voice comes from somewhere in the dark. “Do you girls want me to take you back to the dock?”
CARIN LEAVES A TRAIL of water behind her as we walk back to the trailer park. She’s soaked, hair dripping and mascara running, her favourite white slingbacks floating somewhere in the lake. I walk several paces behind her. When I ask her if she wants to wear my flip-flops she doesn’t even turn around.
We cross over the dam that feeds the channel. Orange floodlights illuminate the bridge, casting a light thick with winged insects. Papery moth bodies brush against my bare limbs. When we get to the other side, I try to catch up. “Carin?” She quickens her pace. “Come on. Slow down.”
Carin spins around suddenly and I almost bump into her. “You could’ve got us hurt. I could’ve drowned.”
“I’m sorry.” I shrug my shoulders, surprised at how good it feels, how freeing to be helplessly wrong.
“Sometimes sorry is not what someone needs to hear,” she says, turning and walking away from me.
“Carin, I’m really sorry,” I say. My giggles return and I try to choke them back. I try to make them sound like tears.
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