Rez Runaway

by Melanie Florence

  Rez Runaway

  Melanie Florence

  James Lorimer & Company Ltd., Publishers

  Toronto

  For my family — Chris, Josh, and Taylor. You make my life an adventure.

  Prologue

  My name is Joe Littlechief and I grew up knowing that there was something different about me.

  I lived in a place where the smell of fry bread was always in the air. We hunted for food rather than for sport. Our reserve didn’t have a casino or anything. We lived pretty simply. But it was home and I didn’t know any other life.

  For the most part, I guess I was a typical seventeen-year-old. I played soccer with my friends. We gathered on Friday nights to talk and dance and just hang out. I had an old beater that I bought for fifty bucks from Harry Lafontaine, but it didn’t run most of the time. I tinkered with the car when I had the time. I watched hockey and played PS4.

  Like a lot of kids on the rez, I lived with just my mom. It’s not like I had any pent up feelings about my parents’ divorce. It had happened when I was so young that all I ever knew was having only my mom to rely on. No need for a therapist or anything. Mom loved church. Something to do with her years with the nuns I guess. I never could figure out why my grandfather sent her and my aunt to a residential school. He had spent most of his childhood in one being abused. But my mom had a better experience and the one thing she took away from the school was a deep faith in God. She was pretty devout. She took the whole commandment thing pretty seriously and the priest’s word was law. The church community set the standard for her life, and she really relied on it when she and my dad split up. From what she told me, Dad had been a sporadic churchgoer and much less strict with the rules. Maybe that’s why their marriage didn’t work.

  My friends and I have as much fun as we can find on the rez. As a group, we hang out in a clearing in the woods, talking shit, and flirting with the girls. Sometimes someone would grab a bottle out of their parents’ stash and we’d pass it around. Truthfully, I’d usually fake it. I’d bring it to my lips and pretend to take a drink. I got good at grimacing and choking in what I assumed was the usual reaction to the rum or rye or whatever they’d taken.

  My father had been a drinker. I didn’t remember much about him but I remembered that. Stumbling into the house in the middle of the night, stinking of booze and smoke. Groping at my mom. Sometimes taking a swing at her. She’d beg him to repent — to come to church and renounce Satan and the evils of drink. He’d refuse and drink harder. My mom finally kicked him out and he left to start a family with someone who shared his love of the local watering hole. I haven’t seen him since. No big loss. Like I said, I didn’t remember any good times with my dad. And I knew I didn’t want to end up like him.

  See, for the most part I’m just a normal, average teenaged boy. Except for one thing. When all the guys sat around and talked about the girls they wanted to hook up with or commented on how big Maggie Running Wolf’s boobs were getting, I found myself looking at Benjy — a kid I had known since we were babies. I’d look at my best friend talking about Maggie and I’d wonder what it would feel like to kiss him instead.

  Chapter 1

  Aunt Ava

  I usually spent Saturday mornings with my mom, drinking coffee and catching up. My mom filled me in on her visits with my Aunt Ava and what she learned at church or bible study or women’s group. She talked about what she was planting in her garden and what she was going to cook over the next week. I mostly talked about school. She loved to hear about what I was learning or reading. I showed her what I was working on in my sketchbook. She was one of the few people who knew how much I loved to draw. I told her about the funny things Benjy said or the huge fish I caught but threw back. It was something we had done together since I was a kid, except for me drinking coffee.

  “So I saw the way that Betsy’s granddaughter was looking at you at Paulette’s fish fry,” my mom said slyly. She peered at me over the rim of her steaming mug.

  I blew on my own coffee and avoided her eyes. “Roz. Yeah. I know.”

  “She’s a nice girl, that Roz.”

  Oh she’s shrewd, I thought. Like any mom, she was curious about my love life, which was pretty much non-existent. Rather than being relieved that I wasn’t out running around with a bunch of girls, she worried about it. She asked a million questions. Why aren’t you dating anyone? Why are you so picky? What’s wrong with Betsy’s granddaughter? She was now in full on matchmaker mode.

  “Yeah. She’s really nice,” I said simply.

  “And so pretty.”

  “Sure,” I mumbled.

  “So?” she prompted.

  “So what?” I asked. I was acting dumb, even though I knew that drove my mom crazy.

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “So . . . you should ask her out after church. She could come over for lunch.”

  “Mom!” I felt my face burning. There was a fine line between a casual interest in my dating life and actually pimping me out to her friend’s granddaughter.

  “What? You’re seventeen. You should go out once in a while with a nice girl.”

  “I do go out, Mom,” I grumbled. I took a huge gulp of coffee and nearly spit it across the table at her when the lava-hot liquid seared my tongue.

  “With your friends,” she pointed out.

  “You like my friends.”

  “I do,” she admitted. “But some of them never set foot inside the church. And some of them go out more than I think is proper.”

  “But I don’t go out enough?” I asked, teasing her.

  She shrugged. “I just worry that growing up without your father around maybe didn’t give you much of an example on how to have a relationship.”

  I smiled at her. “Mom, I promise you that you haven’t damaged me or anything. If I meet someone I like enough to ask out, I will. Okay?”

  “Okay.” She smiled back. “Are you coming to church with me tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, maybe. Depends what time I get in, I guess.” I smirked at her. “See? I go out.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” She stood up and shuffled over to the refrigerator and started pulling out eggs and bacon to make some breakfast.

  “I’ll help,” I told her, standing up and taking the egg carton from her.

  “Anyone home?” My Aunt Ava breezed through the back door and sauntered into the kitchen. It was her usual greeting, even though everyone on the rez knew when my mom was in. My mom and her sister had a standing date on Saturdays to cook and gossip. Aunt Ava lived with my grandfather in the tiny house the sisters had grown up in. I suspected that their Saturday mornings were more about her getting away from him than from a need to catch up on who was fighting with who on the rez.

  Aunt Ava set a bag of vegetables from my grandfather’s garden, a loaf of her fresh-baked bread, and one of her world-famous apple pies on the counter. She leaned down to kiss me on the cheek before pouring herself a cup of coffee and flopping into the chair across from me.

  “Did you tell him we saw Betsy’s granddaughter at Paulette’s fish fry?” Aunt Ava asked my mom. She took a sip of her coffee before dumping several spoonfuls of sugar into it and stirring it idly.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “I did,” my mother replied.

  “And?”

  My mother shrugged.

  “I’m sitting right here,” I waved at them.

  Aunt Ava turned to look at me. “So, smart guy? What do you think of her? What’s her name? Ron?”

  Ron? “Roz,” I corrected her. “She’s nice. Not really my type though.” That was an understatement, I thought.

  “Oh really? And what
is your type?” she asked.

  My mother smiled. She loved when her sister came over and backed her up.

  “My type?” I stalled. Batman. Superman. Pretty much any hot superhero in a skin-tight suit. “I don’t know. Maybe that girl from that show? I forget her name.” Smooth, Joe, I mocked myself. I was practically sweating. It was one thing to get around my mom’s questions. But it was a lot harder when there were two of them ganging up on me.

  My aunt cocked her head at me, her eyebrows raised. “Which girl? From which show?”

  “The girl!” I said, not meeting her eyes. “You know!”

  But I saw the look that passed between my aunt and my mom. It was time for me to beat a hasty retreat before I was buried under a landslide of questions.

  I hated lying to them. Especially to my mother. It had just been the two of us for so long. It didn’t feel right to be dishonest. But if I was being honest, I was afraid of what my mom would think. What would she do if she knew that it wasn’t some big-breasted, empty-headed starlet I lusted after? She was the person I loved and trusted the most in the world. And I was afraid to tell her that the celebrities I dreamed about were usually much less . . . feminine.

  I swallowed and ducked my head, taking one last gulp of coffee. I swallowed my truth down with it.

  I kissed each of them on the cheek.

  “You need someone more exciting to gossip about,” I told them.

  Aunt Ava laughed and cut a thick slice of still-warm bread from the loaf she had baked that morning. She slathered it with my mom’s homemade strawberry jam and handed it to me.

  “Off with you,” she winked. She turned toward my mom. “Did you hear about what happened to the Thibideaus?” Clearly I was no longer the hot topic.

  My mother nodded at Aunt Ava. But there was something about the way her eyes lingered on me as I strode out the door. Had she guessed more about me than she was willing to admit?

  Chapter 2

  Secrets

  It’s not easy having a secret. It’s even harder trying to keep one on the rez. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. Say you found out that your man was cheating on you and wanted to cry on your kokum’s shoulder. Your grandmother would already know all about it by the time you walked across the rez to her house.

  Let me give you another example. I hadn’t really dated much, for obvious reasons I suppose. But my friends started planning this group date, which was really just a bunch of us hanging out in our usual clearing in the woods. I figured the easiest thing to do was just go along with it. No matter what we called them, these parties or dates or whatever didn’t entail much more than sitting around the fire and talking about sports or school. Once in a while, someone would take a date farther into the woods for some privacy.

  Let’s face it. I didn’t want to go on a date, group or otherwise. I wanted to head out with Benjy and Marcus and Marcus’s younger brother, Draco. (Their mother was a big Harry Potter fan . . . although why she named her kid after the biggest jerk in the movie and not the hero is anyone’s guess.) I wanted to meet up with the other guys and not have to worry about fending off the advances of a girl I wasn’t really interested in. I especially didn’t want to sit watching the person I was secretly interested in go off with a girl into the woods.

  But a group date is a good cover when you’ve got a secret like mine.

  Benjy had been my best friend for as long as I could remember. Before that even. My mom always told me how she’d sit beside Benjy’s mom at church when they were both pregnant and how they’d laugh when we both starting kicking at the same time. She said she knew we were destined to be friends after that.

  And we were.

  My earliest memory of Benjy is of a skinny little kid in a Batman T-shirt who cried when his red crayon broke in half. He was trying to draw Spiderman. It was a good drawing — better than mine — so I handed over my own red crayon. And pushed Robbie Cardinal down for laughing at him for crying. From that moment Benjy and I were best friends. I had his back then and I’ve had it ever since. I doubt it had ever crossed his mind that anything had changed. He didn’t know that his best friend looked at him much differently these days.

  Benjy’s voice broke into my thoughts.

  “You should ask Sadie to the clearing,” he said, kicking a stone ahead of him like it was a soccer ball. He dribbled it from foot to foot. Then he shot his right foot forward, catching the rock on his instep and sending it flying into a tree. He threw his arms up in the air, his T-shirt riding up and showing off a flat, brown stomach. I felt my own stomach flip and looked away quickly.

  “Nice shot,” I told him. He threw an arm around my neck and pulled me into his side. I could smell the raw scent of him. He smelled of sweat and cologne and hair product and toothpaste and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I breathed him in. I wanted to bury my face in his neck. I pulled away and pretended to slam dunk into the nearest tree just to get away from him. Lame. So lame.

  “Seriously, man. Sadie’s into you. She’s wanted you since the third grade,” Benjy teased, punching me on the arm. “Dude, she’s a sure thing.”

  “I don’t know. I like a challenge,” I replied. Yeah, wasn’t that the truth.

  “Oh come on, Joe. You never hook up with anyone. And Sadie likes you. Just ask her out, man.”

  Benjy was looking at me expectantly. I shrugged.

  “Listen, man, some of the guys are talking.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. But I knew exactly what he meant.

  Benjy looked away, kicking at another rock. “I don’t know. You just never go out with anyone. It’s weird.”

  “It’s not weird,” I insisted, mildly.

  “It kinda is,” he muttered, looking at the ground.

  I clenched my jaw, thinking about what he was saying. And about the fact that my friends were talking.

  “So Sadie, huh?” I asked, not meeting his eyes.

  He looked up, smiling. “Yeah, man. She’s really into you.” He paused. “You should ask her.”

  I nodded slowly. “Yeah, okay.” I swallowed. “She’s pretty hot, right?”

  “Oh yeah. Definitely. I’m going to see if Brit wants to meet up with me.”

  “Why Brit?” I asked. “I didn’t even know you liked her.”

  “What’s not to like?” He smirked at me. “She’s got huge boobs. And I hear she lets you go to second base.”

  I didn’t even know what second base was. But the thought of Benjy getting to it with Brit made me feel a little queasy.

  “So what are you waiting for? Call Sadie!” Benjy said.

  “I will later,” I told him.

  “You will not. You’ll wait until the last minute, when someone else has asked her. Because you already know that JT likes her and wants to ask her out. Get your phone and call her!” he demanded.

  “I will,” I promised.

  “Now!”

  I jumped and grabbed my phone. “Okay, okay. Jeez.”

  I found Sadie’s number and called her. “Hey, Sadie? It’s Joe. Littlechief?”

  Benjy rolled his eyes. Probably because we had all grown up together and she knew my last name as well as her own.

  “Yeah, so anyway . . . I was wondering what you were doing tonight? Nothing? Great. Ummm . . .”

  Benjy punched me in the arm and mouthed, “get on with it!”

  “Owww! Sorry. I . . . banged my head.” Benjy was miming shooting himself. In the head, coincidentally. “Anyway . . . a bunch of us are hanging out in the clearing tonight. Oh you are? Okay. Well, do you want to maybe hang out with me there? You do? Great! So I’ll meet you there? Oww!”

  Benjy had punched me again in exactly the same spot.

  I rubbed my arm. “I mean, I’ll pick you up at eight. Okay. Bye.”

  “Yes!” Benjy yelled and high-fived m
e hard. “My man! You have got yourself a date!”

  “Yeah!” I smiled. I tried to show Benjy an excitement I didn’t feel. And I wondered how the hell I had gotten myself into this.

  Chapter 3

  The Big Date

  I was nervous as I walked over to Sadie’s to pick her up. I checked to see if anyone was around and fanned my armpits, trying desperately to dry the sweat that was threatening to drip down my torso. I knocked on the door and waited for someone to answer.

  The door flew open. Sadie’s mom stood there, wiping her hands on her apron and smiling widely at me.

  “Joe! Come in!” she said. “Have you eaten? Would you like some fry bread? How about a piece of pie? Coffee?”

  “No thank you. I’m good. Already ate,” I assured her. “Is Sadie ready?” I was sweating again just thinking about having to go on this date.

  “Yeah, she is. SADIE!” she yelled without turning away from me. Which means I got an earful of screaming mother.

  I smiled through the pain, wondering if my eardrum had vibrated itself apart. “Thanks,” I said, far too loudly. I shook my head, trying to regain hearing on the left.

  Sadie walked into the room, holding one of her little brothers by the hand. “Hi Joe,” she said. She looked down at her brother. “See? I told you Joe was coming. I’ll be home later, okay? I’ll come in and give you a kiss after my date.”

  Her brother — I think it was Martin but I always got them mixed up — nodded solemnly. I smiled at him and he hid behind Sadie’s leg. I had known that kid since he was born and he still hid from me.

  I smiled at Sadie. “You look really nice,” I told her. And she did. She had layered a couple of tank tops and the outer one was hanging off her shoulder. Her cut-off shorts and loose ponytail looked casual but the silver chain and beaded earrings showed she had made a little effort. It occurred to me that most guys probably wouldn’t notice so much about her outfit. Or wish they had such good fashion sense.

  She beamed at me and smoothed her top down around her hips. “Thank you,” she said, smiling shyly. “So do you. Are you ready to go?”