Sam, though, is still interested. She looks at him like a wide-eyed news reporter.
“What have you learned so far?” she asks.
“It is not about happiness,” he tells her. “It is something deeper than that. A peace with who I am and where I am.” There’s a long pause while he inhales, holds, then slowly streams smoke from his nostrils. “Where I am in the universe, you understand?”
I can hear Walt’s voice in my head. If he were here, pre-stroke, he’d have both hands on a rifle barrel by now, and he’d growl, “I’ll tell you where you are in the universe, son. You’re in a load of shit.” He’d scare the guy right out of the woods. It would be for Amir’s own good, too. Even if he doesn’t fall out of his tree and crack his skull, he’s going to crap his pants once Dad gets around to tossing bear dinners under his tree in the middle of the night.
If I convince this druid to leave now, it will be easier for everyone.
But I can’t do it. Sam has asked him another question. In answer, he stands, plants his feet wide and opens his arms to the sky as if he’s embracing the world. It’s ridiculous, and yet so sincere that I can’t help envying him a little. He doesn’t know a thing about where he is in the universe. If he did, he’d be up the mountain dipping into pot that’s a hundred times better than his. But maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe he really is finding himself. He’s a guy who can embrace life in public without embarrassment. There’s something to admire in that.
I get the feeling Amir doesn’t feel a lot of pressure. Not out here, anyway.
Lucas hasn’t managed to free himself quite so effectively.
“I gotta get back,” he tells me, still shaking his head at the druid. “Math test after lunch.”
Sam, too, turns to go. But I sidle a little closer to Amir.
“I should tell you, there’s a ton of bears around here. You might run into one, or hear one in the night. Stay calm, okay? Most of them are harmless if you keep out of their way.”
“Thank you. There is no need to worry about me. Animal spirits are part of the universe. We see each other, you understand?”
It seems Dad’s usual strategies aren’t going to work.
•
The three of us head back to school for the afternoon. When I pass Lucas between classes, he plants his feet in the center of the hallway and opens his arms to the universe. When I pass Sam two seconds later, she half shuts her eyes and waves one finger in the air.
Nut jobs.
I drive Sam home after school, then walk her up the driveway to her white-on-beige home, the opposite of a druid treehouse or a cabin in the woods. This entire street is perfectly squared and clipped.
“Want to come in for a while?” she asks.
She has the fingers of one hand tucked into the waistband of my jeans, and I’ve lost all blood flow to my brain.
Inside, it looks less like the den of a right-wing, badge-carrying powermonger than I expect. I can’t even see any Mountie memorabilia. Just a brown leather sofa facing a flat-screen TV in an open-concept living/dining room.
Built-in shelves on either side of the TV display small stacks of hardcover books (mysteries and Michael Crichton), plus a few pottery bowls. There are family photos.
In one picture Sam sits between a buff, broad-shouldered Asian man and a petite blonde woman. They’re nestled close on a driftwood log, leaning their heads toward one another.
It’s a different Sam than the one I know. This photo version has long glossy hair, one side tucked behind her ear. She’s wearing a cute purple sweater and an open smile, like nothing bad has ever happened in her world.
Sam — the evolved Sam with dark eyeliner and a skull pendant — joins me by the shelves. She sighs when she sees the photo.
“Past era,” she says.
“When was it taken?”
She’s already turning away, fingers scrunching the spikes on her head into confused perfection. “Couple of summers ago. Want to see better pictures?”
Which is how I end up cross-legged on her living-room carpet, flipping through an oversized scrapbook. Each page is covered with theater programs and photos from her old high school.
Sam’s had parts in Little Shop of Horrors, The Lottery and Footloose.
As I turn the pages, she tells stories about forgotten props, last-minute improvs and performer meltdowns.
Tucked into the back of the scrapbook are theater-school brochures, which Sam reaches to straighten.
“You must have an art-school collection like this,” she says.
Suddenly I feel as if I’ve wandered into the guidance counselor’s office. I close the book.
“When do your parents get home?”
“It’s just my dad, and he’s working,” she says. “He won’t be here until after dinner.”
I reach an arm around her waist.
Judith stole a bottle of old Scotch from the bar one night and we drank it together in the orchard. Kissing Sam is like shooting that Scotch. Heat flows from my lips, through my throat, all the way down my spine. My hands move along her skin without asking my brain’s permission. I breathe in the smell of her, outdoor air and shampoo and cinnamon gum.
Beneath her shirt my fingers fumble. She takes pity on me, finally, and unfastens her own bra. Her skin feels like the undersides of leaves.
Her hands trail down my back, making scorch marks through my shirt.
When she pulls away, I’m breathing hard. I have to dig my fingers into my palms to keep from reaching for her again.
Then she tilts her head toward the sliding glass door and I spot something on the back deck.
“You have a hot tub.”
She raises an eyebrow at me. “Want to try it?”
So that’s how I end up eating crinkly Korean shrimp crackers in a hot tub with Sam, while wearing only my boxer shorts. Sam has changed into a blue bikini. The tub is completely hidden by the shrubs on one side of the yard and by the deck fencing on the other. It’s as if we’re in our own private pond.
For a while, we talk. About Lucas. About Sam’s dad and how he has no interest in Sam’s life. She’s already signed up for a week of a drama camp in Cranbrook this summer. She’s applying next year to theater schools, but her dad doesn’t know that part. He’s never asked, apparently.
“We had dinner together last night, and for more than seven minutes, the only sound was his knife scraping against his plate,” she says. “I timed it.”
“What broke the silence?”
“He got a call from work.”
I want to know more. I want to know what she eats for breakfast and whether she sleeps on her right side or her left. I want to know what she doodles on the edges of her notebooks. But she wants to ask things, too. When she brings up my family, I talk about Judith and her job at the bar and her bus in the orchard. I promise to take Sam there one day.
And then, because I can’t answer anything else — and also for other better reasons — I put my hand on her ribcage again, and my mouth on the curve where her shoulder meets her neck.
She slides a leg across my lap. I feel lightheaded with the heat.
“This could be dangerous,” I say, letting my head rest of the edge of the tub.
“You have no idea.”
The way she says it makes me lift my head, look at her more closely.
“Never mind,” she says.
It’s easy to let her words slide, the same way my hands slide up and hers slide down. My pulse pounds in my ears.
Then I feel Sam’s body tense. When I open my eyes, she’s staring over my shoulder.
A deep throat clear.
I wonder frantically if I can avoid turning around, forever. But of course I turn, and meet the eyes of a fully uniformed man with a sharp-edged brush cut, an intense glare and a deep furrow in his forehead.
Sam says nothing. Not, “Dad, this guy sucking my face, his name’s Isaac.” Not, “You’re home early.” Not, “This isn’t as bad as it looks.”
Which would normally leave me to stand and walk across the planks of the deck and reach to shake his hand, except…I’m wearing only boxers and Sam’s hand has been right there. It’s definitely not safe to stand up yet.
I raise my fingers in a lame wave. “I’m Isaac.”
“Corporal Ko.”
That does it. Below the waterline, everything shrivels.
“Nice to meet you,” I croak, but Corporal Ko has already turned to go inside.
“Time to wrap it up,” he calls back.
I would like to wrap it up. I’d like to wrap myself in a towel and sprint for the door.
Sam, though, appears to think the entire scene is hilarious.
“You should see your face right now,” she says.
I press my palms to my temples. “Is this what you meant by dangerous? When you said that I had no idea?”
“No!” she insists. “When I said that, I was talking about my mom. My parents had a raging New Year’s Eve party a couple of years ago. My dad fell asleep on the couch once most of the guests had gone. When he woke up, the house was quiet, but he couldn’t find Mom.”
“Where was she?”
“Outside in the hot tub with another guy. Someone who worked with Dad.”
I wince.
“He didn’t tell me that story, of course. One of the wives told me. And all of this was in Kelowna, not here. Different hot tub.”
I consider drowning myself. I’m in the hot tub of a cop, with his daughter, in the same place he once found his wife.
Personal vendetta. Revenge. Death.
I suck in a long breath while I look at Sam. She’s swirling the hot tub bubbles between her palms. Her cheeks are flushed with the steam, and her hair stands in small damp spikes around her face.
I grab a towel from the edge and wrap it firmly around my waist. We’re the Montagues and the Capulets and she doesn’t know it.
We’re everything I’ve been taught to avoid, my entire life.
She has no idea.
“I have to go.”
There’s no sign of Corporal Ko when I walk through his house a few minutes later, dressed again and holding my sopping boxers in a plastic grocery bag.
At the front door, Sam smiles up at me. “See you tomorrow.”
She doesn’t seem the least bit concerned.
“Sure,” I say. But I duck her kiss, and I have to resist the urge to sprint to my truck.
All the way up the highway, my face burns. My insides flip and churn with the horrifying awkwardness of being caught in the hot tub with Corporal Ko’s daughter and not being able to stand.
I hit the horn, the blast echoing from the rocks and making me feel, somehow, a tiny bit better.
•
I can still smell the chlorine on my skin as I hike home. Mom smells it, too.
“Did you go swimming?” she says after she hugs me. She’s in the garden, picking lettuce for dinner.
“Yeah. After school with some friends.”
It feels as though there are pebbles stuck in my throat. I’m not used to lying to her.
“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing,” I say. I thought I had my face under control, but I flush as soon as I think about the hot tub.
I need to stop talking, because she believes me. She’s turned back to her vegetables.
The days are long here this time of year. The sun is still hovering over the mountains across the lake, and Mom’s garden patch looks like an Impressionist’s version of green.
“I could take over here. Give you a break?” I offer.
I could spend the rest of my life weeding and never see a hot tub again.
My cheeks burn.
Don’t think of hot tubs.
Mom still doesn’t notice. She sends me to check on Dad.
“He’s over by the clearing, I think. He’s the one who might need a break.”
So Hazel and I pick our way through the bracken and toward the plants, which have been growing like crazy. They’re almost as big as their sword-fern partners now, and they stand out a bit against the darker green around them.
This clearing is the whole reason we live where we do. It’s on a gradual slope, with perfect southern exposure. There’s the creek along the edge for water, and a steep drop a few minutes farther south to discourage any random hikers.
I spot Dad by the creek. He’s diverted water into our old metal barrel, and he’s hauling a bag of fertilizer toward it in a way that’s guaranteed to mess with his back.
“Dad! I got it.”
He drops it with a grunt and backs up a few steps.
“Is this an extra shot?”
We fertilized the plants a few weeks ago. Usually we fertilize more often when they’re small and setting their leaves, then ease off as the season progresses.
“Trying to give ’em a jump,” Dad says. “In case we want to harvest early this year.”
I don’t know why we’d need to harvest early, but I don’t bother arguing. I haul the bag to chest height and dump the crystals into the barrel. The water turns a bright, impossible blue — the color of the ocean in travel-agency posters for tropical vacations. Maybe it will impart an extra vacation feel to the high. Maybe I can pretend I’m in Mexico, far away from any hot…
Once I’ve given the stuff a good stir, I scoop out a bucket and begin dousing the first few burlap-wrapped plants.
“You can head inside if you want,” I tell Dad. “I got this.”
He gives my shoulder a slap on the way past.
“Couldn’t do without ya,” he says.
I sigh. Ever since I met Sam’s dad, I’ve been desperate to get home, as if I could hide in these trees and leave every embarrassing moment behind. But as soon as Dad says those words, Couldn’t do without ya, I feel trapped.
At the edge of the clearing, Dad and Hazel become silhouettes against the trees, their figures dominating the foreground while evergreens fill the middle. A couple of puffy pink-tinged clouds rest on the blue background. Maybe I’d paint a few cannabis leaves peeking from along the edge.
I fill another bucket. And another.
Couldn’t do without ya. I hear Dad’s words all through dinner, dishes and homework.
I’m still hearing them as I fall asleep.
8
As I turn onto Canyon Street, the town looks like an ant colony beginning to stir. Cars nose onto the road, and a few people hurry along the sidewalk. Dad has sent me with papers to deliver, so I turn down the street by the lawyer’s office — Higgens and Brown. Though I’m early, the door swings wide when I push on it.
“Hello?”
An empty reception desk.
“Hello?” I peer around the corner toward Mr. Higgens’ office. He’s a white-haired pot-bellied guy who seems to be wearing the same gray suit every time I see him. He’s on the phone, but he waves me in. I hold up the envelope, drop it on his desk and make my escape.
Soon this sort of thing could be my only interaction with the outside world. I could operate in sign language.
The idea whines and buzzes in my head like a mosquito I can’t swat.
At school, Sam is waiting beside the doors. Usually when she throws her arms around my neck or plants a kiss on my lips in the middle of the hallway, I feel as if everyone is turning to stare at us. But today I feel a rush of relief.
Before I can speak, she’s telling me her latest drama news. Her interpretation of a scene last week differed from that of the teacher, apparently, and Sam is so convinced her way is right, she’s going to perform it again for her today.
I interrupt. “What did your dad say yesterday?”
She scowl
s. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“It’ll take more than that,” she says.
To what? Have Corporal Ko plot my demise?
The bell rings before I can force Sam to clarify.
“I have drama. Gotta go.” She stands on tiptoes to kiss me, then hurries down the hall. I don’t see her again until lunchtime, when we climb into my truck and drive to the viewpoint along the highway, eating our sandwiches curled against one another on the bench seat.
“So…your dad really wasn’t mad?” I’m finding this hard to believe.
“He doesn’t care, okay? It’s not a big deal.”
If he didn’t care, why interrupt us in the first place?
But I can tell I’m not going to get more answers. Sam’s jaw is set, and she’s folded her arms across her chest.
“Sometimes I can’t wait to get out of here,” she says finally, looking out over the fields to the mountain pass. “One day you’ll see me in the ads for a big new Broadway play. And I’ll see ads for your next gallery show.”
I snort. “Not likely.”
“Of course it’s likely! Your sketches are amazing. Face it. We’re both going to be ridiculously famous.”
“I only paint for myself. To see what I think.” In my drying shed.
Sam rolls her eyes and shakes her head as if I’m spouting nonsense.
“Whatever school you end up at, check out the performing arts options for me, okay?”
“I’m not going to school. I’m going to stick around.”
She pushes herself upright so she can better eyeball me. “What are you talking about?”
I shrug.
“Don’t you want to get out of here? Don’t you want to have great teachers, and see galleries in other cities, and paint with other people who love painting?”
I shrug again. Of course I’d love those things. But I can’t take a four-year vacation from my life just to paint, can I? That would no longer count as a temporary leave of absence.
“Well?” Sam asks.
“It’s not so easy.”
“It is easy. It’s called making plans.”
“I plan on going to English this afternoon, followed by art.” I pull myself upright and put the key in the ignition.
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