The menu looked kind of expensive, but Z told me it was okay — that he and J were friends with a few of the servers, and they’d probably cut a few bucks off our bill, as long as we tipped well. J said she’d been craving this pizza for months, and that a bad day was the best reason she could think of for us all to stuff ourselves with deliciousness.
I told them about writing the letter. And about the nervous feeling in my stomach while I waited for the world to end or maybe not. I told them about our lockers too, and the grade eight guy with the marker.
“Wow,” J said, taking a sip from her water glass that she kept refilling every two minutes like she was on a long trek through the desert, “that was brave, Jo. Seriously.”
“Yeah,” said Z, “totally. But it’s going to suck for a while, you know that, right?”
“I kind of figured that out the hard way,” I said, my stomach gurgling in anticipation of pizza with buffalo mozzarella — who knew you could even milk a buffalo?
“It’s definitely going to suck,” said Trisha.
She’d told me privately that she kind of hated that I’d written the letter. She understood why I’d done it, but I guess I hadn’t realized that it would make things weird for her, too.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said.
Fortunately, she hadn’t been too mad. Which was good, or else I would have been down to no friends at all. Except Z and J.
“It’s fine,” said Trisha, taking a piece of bread from the basket in front of us and swirling it in a plate of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
“Yup,” J said, grabbing some bread, too, “or it will be. You know, eventually.”
“And what happened with that random with the marker?” Z asked. “Did they, like, suspend him or whatever?”
“No, but he got in pretty big trouble. I’m not totally sure what happened.”
“That’s so weird,” said J.
“Uh-huh. Part of me wonders if we’d all still be friends if this guy hadn’t messed with us for no reason.”
“I don’t know,” Trisha said through a mouthful of oily bread. “I kind of think it would’ve happened anyway.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, gulping back my water. I knew Trisha was probably right, but it still kind of hurt.
And even though I still felt sad — and weird that I was maybe never going to be real friends with Stacey again — it was a pretty great night. It wasn’t quite what Zim had promised me more than a year ago; we definitely weren’t going to stay up and see the sunrise or even wander around the neighbourhood together (Mom and Dad had told us we had to be home by ten), but it was still great.
Our pizzas arrived and were unbelievably good. If I lived downtown I think I’d eat that stuff at least once a week — and my face would never recover. But just as Z and J were settling up the bill with our server — and by settling up I mean laughing and trading stories while our server, a friend of theirs, felt J’s belly — I spotted a familiar face entering the restaurant.
Declan. Walsh.
With his parents!
Somehow I’d imagined that Declan’s whole family would be perfectly cool. Like they were some alien race of absolutely calm, chill people, who also happened to be amazing guitar players — his talent had to come from somewhere, right?
But Declan’s mom and dad looked more like scatterbrained professors. His dad’s hair was grey and curly, but with a seriously pronounced bald spot in the middle, and his mom was wearing about fifteen different brightly coloured scarves around her neck. They were laughing about something while Declan looked kind of annoyed to be seen somewhere so hip with his parents who so obviously weren’t.
“That’s him,” I whispered to Trisha, trying to subtly nod my head in Declan’s direction.
“Who?” Trisha said, surveying the dining room.
“Stop it,” I hissed, “don’t be so obvious. That guy over there with his parents. It’s Declan.”
“Wow,” Trisha said, copping a not-so-subtle stare, “he’s cute.”
“Isn’t he?”
But before I could think of what I could possibly say to him, Z and J had their coats on, and told us we’d better be getting back.
I slowly zipped up my coat, drinking Declan in from the corner of my vision. He was cute — almost impossibly cute — but he really was just a guy. A guy who ate pizza. A guy who was embarrassed to be seen out in public with his parents.
I trailed just a little ways behind Z, J, and Trisha as we walked out of the restaurant, and paused by Declan’s table as I passed it.
His parents were deep into the menu, but Declan was staring at the far wall, looking bored. He caught my eye and I held my breath.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” It came out of my mouth like a puff of smoke, and I smiled. “You should try the buffalo mozzarella. It’s good.”
He smiled back at me. “Cool.”
Which is when my heart basically gave out under me and I ran to catch up with the others.
“What happened?” Trisha whispered to me as we walked towards the bus stop to take us back to the subway. J and Z were ahead of us, talking about cribs or something.
“He said hey.” My voice was dreamy and disbelieving.
“Yeah?” Trisha said, obviously impressed.
“Yeah.”
I put my arm through hers, squeezing us together to try to block out the freezing wind, and we walked to the bus stop together.
Twenty
Wedding (disambiguation)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A wedding is the ceremony in which two people are united in marriage or a similar institution like, “Well, I guess if we love each other and we’re having a baby, we might as well make it official.” Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnic groups, religions, countries, and social classes. Most wedding ceremonies involve an exchange of wedding vows by the couple which, if you’re J and Z, you will write yourselves and they will be so sweet and funny that you will actually make each other crack up and cry during the ceremony, presentation of a gift (offering, rings, symbolic item, flowers, money, matching tattoos — seriously, I couldn’t make this up, they each got rings tattooed on their fingers), and a public proclamation of marriage by an authority figure or leader — or whoever that woman at city hall was. Special wedding garments are often worn (J and Z actually bought their wedding clothes at Value Village — it was ridiculous, and pretty excellent. J managed to find a puffy white dress that fit over her belly, and I wore an old lacy prom dress that she promised looked cool. Z wore a ruffled shirt and suspenders and looked kind of like a magician) and the ceremony is sometimes followed by a wedding reception a.k.a. a giant party in our tiny, tiny house. Music, poetry, prayers, or readings from religious texts or literature are also commonly incorporated into the ceremony — or, if you’re anything like these guys, the whole thing will be done to the tunes of AC/DC.
I almost couldn’t believe it when Z proposed to J, even though I think Mom and Dad saw it coming. He did it while we were all out for dinner for my birthday. He definitely stole the spotlight, but I didn’t mind at all.
Well, maybe I did mind just a little.
But the wedding was great, and we had so much fun. There was a ton of music and food at the house afterwards, and lots of people came. Z and J’s friends were there, but so were Mom and Dad’s. I invited Stacey just because it still kind of felt like she should be there, even though we hadn’t really talked since the letter. But her family was going out of town that weekend, so she couldn’t make it. Or anyway, that’s what she said. It kind of hurt, but not as much as I thought it would. Trisha came, though, and we danced like mad together and had an amazing time. Some of Z and J’s musician friends even brought their instruments and played a mini concert in the basement. Now that was cool.
But I guess we’re not going to be able to party like that for a while because we’ll be too busy baby-proofing the house for Z and J’s k
id.
A girl — they just found out.
I’m going to be an amazing aunt to a tough, smart, beautiful little girl.
The photographer we hired for the wedding — one of J’s friends from the bookstore — didn’t do such a great job. A lot of the pictures were weird and shaky, but there’s one she took that I absolutely love.
It’s of me and J and Trisha dancing, but it’s only a picture of our feet. Trisha’s wearing Mary Janes and a skirt with red-and-black striped tights, and you can just see the bottom of her shirt, a Mainline concert tee that J gave her when her belly outgrew it (the plain clothes Trisha had left her house in were lying somewhere on my bedroom floor — she wasn’t ready to stop being a secret superhero/rock star just yet). J and I are still wearing our big, poofy dresses from the ceremony. We’re holding up the skirts so we can dance properly, and you can see two sets of hands holding fistfuls of tulle, and, underneath them, two sets of combat boots dancing for their lives.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the staff and patrons of the Toronto Public Library’s Parkdale branch, where I furiously typed out the first draft of my manuscript during an only slightly terrifying stretch of unemployment.
Thank you to Mandy Sherman, that first draft’s first editor. And to Sheila Barry for further notes and encouragement that eventually whipped Something Wiki into shape. Thanks for the job, too.
Thank you to Shannon Whibbs for her energy and editorial flair that helped polish the story and brought it to life as an honest-to-dorkness book.
Thank you to my family and friends for their bottomless pit of love and support.
And thank you to Graham — and Ramona — for giving me the best possible place to come home to.
Copyright © Suzanne Sutherland, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
All characters in this work are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Editor: Shannon Whibbs Design: Laura Boyle
Cover Design: Crysta Horner
Cover images © chihhang/ LeeDaniels
Epub Design: Carmen Giraudy
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Sutherland, Suzanne, 1987-, author
Something wiki / Suzanne Sutherland.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-4597-2821-9 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-4597-2822-6 (pdf).--
ISBN 978-1-4597-2823-3 (epub)
I. Title.
PS8637.U865S64 2014 jC813’.6 C2014-902122-4
C2014-902123-2
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