Swimmers

by Amy Bright

  I went back for the last granola bar. Saw this flash of purple out the window. Poppy was undoing her back gate. Stepping through. Shutting it behind her. She walked fast, knowing exactly where she was going. My grandma used to have a dog like that. A German Shepherd who walked so purposefully, it bulldozed everything to get to where it was going. Poppy had that German Shepherd way of walking.

  I swallowed my granola bar down with the rest of the Coke. I tried to get my purposeful walk on. Maybe not so much German Shepherd as Golden Retriever. Loping along. I shadowed Poppy—my version of a spy movie—while she trotted up the road.

  I could almost pretend we were going on one of our normal everyday walks. She was always a good couple of feet ahead of me. Taking the role of the dickish fast-walking boyfriend who leaves his girl, tottering in high heels, behind.

  At first I thought she was going to the high school again. She started off in that direction but, instead of turning up the sidewalk, she kept right on walking. Speed-walking. There’s an Olympic sport for that. It’s the most hilarious thing to watch on TV. But I swear, Poppy would kill at that event.

  When we had been walking for fifteen minutes, no sign of stopping, I stuffed my ear buds in and listened to the music on my phone. It was some techno, a good beat with a sound like lasers over top. I turned it up to almost-max. The sound of it drove my feet forward. Keeping Poppy’s pace, just a good twenty feet behind her.

  It took me a while to clue in to where we were going. Don’t get me wrong—I knew my way around Lethbridge. Three months was enough time to explore almost all of that tiny city. From the Costco end to the University. But Poppy was taking us back to somewhere we’d already been before. Or almost-been.

  The Galt Museum in Lethbridge was pretty old. Aunt Lynne told me it used to be a hospital before they turned it into a museum, meaning everyone had a ghost story to tell about it. Kids staring out of upstairs windows. Clanking sounds in the basement. Unexplained visitors who were never really there at all. It was all bullshit. But Aunt Lynne liked to share her stories, grinning wildly as she explained the unexplained.

  The building was right on the edge of the coulees, which seemed risky to me. I never knew what a coulee was before I moved to Alberta. Turns out they’re these rolling hills, only nowhere near as sturdy. They were falling in all the time all over the city, and the people who built their houses on them had to watch them slide. Tumble down. The museum was way out there. It had a nice view, in line with the high-level bridge above the river.

  Poppy didn’t go into the museum. Instead, she walked around to the back, taking the tiny snow-covered red-ash path out where it twisted across the open coulee. Two people were out there already. Skinny jeans and hoodies. The two girls from the dealer’s house. Poppy went straight toward them, not beating around the bush. But it was all open on the coulee. If I went any further forward on the curved path, Poppy would see me, catching me head on.

  I had to lurk back by the museum. Squinted my eyes. Poppy had bounded right up to the two girls but, now that she was close, she was acting differently. If she had a shell like a turtle’s, it would be up by her shoulders. She would be halfway to creeping back inside of her house.

  It was hard to tell if Poppy had a plan. If she did, then it was going wrong. The girls were closing in on her, a V-shaped attack. The brown-haired girl grabbed the sleeve of Poppy’s coat. She yanked hard, pulling Poppy toward her. The other girl, a Starbucks Blonde Roast, must’ve been waiting for Poppy to get that close. She slapped her, an open-palmed hit.

  "Hey, hey, hey," I yelled, cover blown. I made a beeline for the girls and stepped between them and Poppy.

  Poppy lashed out, her tiny fists flying. She popped the blonde girl in the face, making her nose spray red. Poppy took a blow of her own, as high as her eyebrow.

  The two girls were collecting themselves, breathing hard and getting ready to come after Poppy again. Again I got between them and Poppy. "You two get out of here. Fuck off and leave her alone."

  "Hunter," Poppy said. "Get off."

  She shrugged away from me and went at the two girls again.

  I almost pulled her back, until I realized she wasn’t trying to attack them. She was reaching for a canvas bag hanging over the brown-haired girl’s shoulder. Poppy pulled it hard.

  "Ow." The girl rubbed at her shoulder.

  Once Poppy had the bag, she took off in the direction she’d come from.

  "Hey," I yelled. "Hey!"

  I caught her up in the museum parking lot. Grabbed her by the arm and made her turn around and look at me.

  "Shit," I said. Maybe she gave that one chick a bloody nose, but she had a cut through her left eyebrow.

  "Yeah, she got me. Big deal."

  "Big deal," I mimicked. "What the hell happened? What was that about?"

  "Nothing," she mumbled. Then she turned to steel. "What were you doing following me? You creep."

  "Don’t make this about me." While she wasn’t ready for it, I grabbed her canvas bag. Yanked it off her shoulder hard. "What’s even in this? What’d you go back for?"

  It wasn’t a pair of boots this time, but it wasn’t anything much better. Nothing that seemed worth getting in a fight over. Just an old leather jacket. Worn and creased.

  Something clicked. A snap into place.

  "It’s your dad’s, hey?" I said. Toned my voice right down. I felt it scratch from when I’d yelled at the girls to leave her alone. "Why’d they have it?"

  Poppy shrugged, lips zipped.

  "Don’t do that," I said. "Just give me an answer."

  She took off ahead of me. Back to ten paces in front and me ten paces behind. I let her walk home like that. All the way back, a thirty-minute hike. When we turned down our street, I finally stopped her with my hand on her shoulder.

  "Come over to Aunt Lynne’s," I said. "You should clean that. If it gets infected, you could lose your whole eye or something."

  Poppy followed me into the house, where I went to the bathroom and got some stuff together from the medicine cupboard. It was funny to sit Poppy down at the table and fix her up. I swabbed some antiseptic cream on a Kleenex and dabbed it all over her eyebrow. I cleaned it off and did the same thing all over again, this time with Polysporin.

  "How big does a cut have to be to get stitches?" she asked me.

  "Beats me."

  She put her hand to her eyebrow. "It doesn’t feel that bad."

  "Think a Band-aid will do?"

  "Yeah."

  I stuck it on. Perched above her eye, the Band-aid turned her into a pirate.

  "You’re right," Poppy said, finally answering my question. "The jacket’s my dad’s. So were the boots. The ones I got back from the high school."

  "I figured," I said. "What were those girls doing with it?"

  "It’s kind of a game." Poppy fiddled with her Band-aid, pressing at it with the heel of her hand. "To steal stuff that belonged to my dad."

  "From your house?"

  "Yeah," she said.

  "Dude, that’s police business. You should call them."

  "Mom has. They stop for a while and then they try again. They steal something from us since he stole so much from them."

  "That’s fucked up."

  Poppy shrugged her shoulders, avoiding eye contact.

  "Poppy," I started. "Should we talk about that? About what was in that box."

  "I don’t want to," she said, quietly. "I really don’t."

  The doorbell rang, clanging through the house. I ignored it. It was the worst time to leave Poppy by herself. But the doorbell was followed by a hard knock, a repeating pattern.

  "I’ll be right back," I told her. "Hang on."

  When I opened the front door of Aunt Lynne’s house, Lee was standing there on the front step. Her cheeks were rosy red from the cold. She waved a gloved hand at me, even though I was a foot away from her.

  "Hey," she said. And then, smiling, "Fancy meeting you here."

  There were only a
handful of reasons for Lee to be here. None of them were good.

  "What happened?"

  Lee shifted from foot to foot.

  "It’s Niall."

  "Is he okay?"

  "You have to come home," she said.

  My legs went to Jell-O, making it hard to stay standing. I pressed my shoulder up against the wall, trying to find a way to answer.

  "I can’t."

  "I came up here on the Greyhound. I have a return ticket for tomorrow. I booked you one, too. First thing in the morning."

  "Jesus. You’re serious."

  "Hunter?" Next to Lee, Poppy looked like a ten-year-old. Maybe I’d gotten used to the way Poppy sometimes seemed older than she was but, next to Lee, she looked just like a kid again. And I could see her noticing it. The way I saw her.

  "Hey," Lee said, sticking out her hand, "I’m Lee. I’m a friend of Hunter’s."

  "From Victoria," Poppy said, stating the fact.

  "Yeah," she said.

  "So, what, you’re going home?" Poppy asked me.

  She said it straight and easy. I wanted to think she didn’t care. But she did, more than I’d thought. I went into the kitchen, Poppy following close behind me. Part of me didn’t want Lee to hear all of this.

  "I guess I’m going tomorrow," I said. "Lee came to get me. We have a friend. Niall. I have to go back because of him."

  "You’re seriously leaving," Poppy said.

  "I have to," I said.

  Poppy’s fingers started tapping on the doorframe. "Good," she said. "I wanted to see where you live."

  I carefully shook my head. "You can’t come."

  "’Course I can," Poppy said. Her hands reached up behind her head to tighten her ponytail. It raised up an inch in height, gave her a peacock flair.

  "You can’t," I said. "There’s no way."

  Poppy took a step forward.

  "You have to take me," she said.

  Poppy’s forehead Band-aid was small and ugly. The flesh color stood out against her face. Her expression was set in stone. A gargoyle face.

  "You’re serious," I said.

  "Take me with you," she said again.

  "Poppy, Victoria’s a long way."

  "Yeah," she said. "And we’ll come back here when you’re done doing whatever you have to do."

  But whatever it was with Niall, who knew how long it would take? Who knew what I was going back to? "I don’t know."

  "Please."

  I sat down heavily at the kitchen table. Her mom would kill me. Aunt Lynne would kill me.

  Poppy nudged the back of my chair.

  "I can’t just take you with me."

  "You can’t leave me alone," she said. "I don’t want to stay here."

  "Pops."

  "Please," she repeated. Her pleading was so different from her usual straight talk. I clasped my hands around my neck and looked at the floor. Like maybe there would be an answer written down there. Dear Hunter, here is what you do.

  Poppy was twelve years old. I couldn’t just take her to the province next door without telling anyone. But if I told someone—her mom, Aunt Lynne—there was no way she would be able to go.

  She sat across from me at the table. Her bangs were too long and hanging in her eyes. Her breathing was loud, like she had a stuffed-up nose.

  "I’d bring you right back, two days, max," I said. "It won’t be for long."

  "Okay."

  "But you can’t tell your mom because there’s no way she’d let you come."

  Lee had been listening, leaning on the doorframe.

  "Hunter," she said, "she can’t come. She’s too young."

  "She can come." I turned to Lee, trying to make her see how important it was. "It’ll be fine."

  It was far from fine. But I couldn’t leave her behind, especially with what I’d found out. It made a little more sense, the way people looked at her and her mom when they were out. The reason she was homeschooled.

  So, she was coming with us.

  D E C E M B E R

  O n t h e B u s

  We’d have an hour and a half in Kelowna.

  "Do you think we should wake Poppy up?" Lee asked. "She’ll probably want to get off the bus if we do."

  I put my hand on Lee’s thigh, fingertips on her kneecap. I made them into a spider, floating them out and then in again. I folded them into my palm and gave her a nudge on the shoulder. "Yeah."

  I scooted across the aisle into the seat beside Poppy. The drawstrings on her hoodie were uneven, one hanging way lower than the other. I thought it would be funny to pull on them, wake her up that way. I thought that for maybe two seconds before I just shook her by the shoulder. "Poppy?"

  "Where are we?"

  She was angling her head back, away from my face. It was the way you hide fusty just-woke-up breath from whoever you’re talking to. I knew that trick, but I wasn’t sure if Poppy was aware she was doing it.

  "Kelowna," I told her. "Come on. We’re going to see what’s around."

  Poppy grabbed her backpack from under the seat. Me and Lee had shoved all of our stuff under the seat in front of us. Lee left a sweater draped across our two seats and a book on Poppy’s to save our places.

  "You want me to carry that?" I asked her, transferring the straps to my shoulders.

  "Don’t lose it," she said.

  The snow was falling in fat flakes that stuck to our jackets. I made a circle between my thumb and my first finger and looked through. Instant telescope. It was warp speed snow, like stars shooting past us. Lee pulled my hand down away from my face and held it tight. Her mittens were so fat. I could have been holding onto a bear paw.

  The snow gave us some insulation. Maybe it was ten below out or something, but it was a comfy cold. It was dead quiet.

  "So, look," Lee said, pointing behind us. A small group of people from the bus were heading into town. "We can go with them and see what’s in Kelowna, or we can go for a walk outside the city."

  "I vote outside the city," Poppy said. She bent her knees, making a pair of chicken wings that she stretched alternately. "I got, like, a cramp or something."

  "Good call," I told her. "Walk to that hill?" I suggested. It was an easy one, maybe a beginner’s run on a ski hill. The moon made the snow shine silver.

  Lee held on tighter to my hand. I could almost feel her fingers clenching around mine under all that layered fabric. Mittens with a pair of gloves on underneath.

  "Poppy," Lee said. She held out her other hand.

  "No, thanks," Poppy said.

  "Pops," I said. "We’re a team."

  "I’m good." She shoved her hands into her pockets.

  We headed to the hill. The cold hit my teeth and froze them, and I tried not to suck in the freezing air. The snow was hard to walk through, a nice layer of powder on top and a crunching ice on the bottom. My sneakers soaked up the snow with every step. Poppy was way up ahead of us. With her hood up, she looked like a baby thug, a hooligan in training.

  "She’s going up the hill," Lee said.

  "Guess that means we are, too."

  Poppy was moving at a good pace, so me and Lee started huffing up the hill. Down below, you could see some of Kelowna, the city spread out with its lights. Maybe I needed glasses, because all the light posts gave off tiny halos of light. Shit was a little blurry and I wasn’t even on anything.

  "Jesus. I think I’m dying," I said. We’d finally caught up with Poppy, a good halfway up the hillside. I could see my breath coming out in tiny puffs that sat on the air in front of me. That nice feeling of insulation was gone.

  Lee had to take her inhaler out of her jacket pocket and take a few puffs.

  "Asthma," she explained to Poppy between wheezing. "I’ll be cool in a sec."

  She sat down on the side of the hill and I joined her. Lee’s asthma was just one of those interesting facts about her. She’d lose her breath in the spring when shit was growing again, and I’d sit beside her and wait it out. Poppy was interested. She
kept a close eye on Lee.

  "How are you doing?" I asked Poppy. I was still wearing her almost child-sized backpack. The straps were tight across my shoulders. "Bet Gregory wishes he was along for the ride."

  "Why? You got some cat-sized winter gear somewhere?"

  I said to Lee, "There’s a good investment for your dad. Tell him to get working on the cat clothes."

  Lee smiled at us. She was still breathing hard enough that her back lifted up and down every time she inhaled.

  We were getting close to Victoria. There were a handful of stops between Kelowna and Vancouver, before a quick ferry ride across to the island. We’d be there in the morning. I’d be seeing Niall again. My palms started sweating in my gloves.

  I pushed off the edge of the hill, trying to see how slippery it was, and the answer was: pretty damn slippery. Poppy and Lee were staring down at Kelowna. I grinned, ready to shake it up a little.

  "See you guys," I said and pushed hard against the snow.

  "Hunter!" Lee yelled.

  I picked up speed, sliding down on my ass. The bottom of my jacket had less traction than my jeans, and I had it pulled down so I was really going. The trees blurred green beside me, the same as when we were in the bus, watching it all fly by. I stopped sliding a few feet from the bottom and ran the rest of the way, flying ass over teakettle, barely balanced.

  Lee and Poppy slid down after.

  Poppy was looking worse for wear. Her hair was shiny from being unwashed and she had dark circles under her eyes. Maybe being so tired was part of the reason she had been so desperate to come to Victoria with me. Her dad gone and her never saying a word about him. I saw the way they treated her, that group of teens out in the alley. Outside the house downtown. On the coulees. That was some leper shit, right there. Treating her as if they needed a ten-foot buffer. Maybe I’d want to leave, too, if I was her.