“I don’t want a Mr. Squeaky Clean disguise,” Sam says suddenly. “I’d be happier if people actually saw me. I’d rather my dad yelled or hit the wall or locked me in a tower, but he just stares at me like I’m a train wreck about to happen.”
“You’re not a train wreck,” I whisper into the nape of her neck.
“You’re not a train wreck,” Lucas echoes. He’s sprawled on the other side of her.
“You know what’s weird? It makes me want to be a train wreck. When he looks at me like that, I feel like I may as well prove him right. Or shock him with something even worse.”
“He’s probably still hurt,” I say. “Because of your mom.”
“Of course it’s because of my mom. Or my mom left because of his crap attitude.”
“Why does it even matter?” Lucas asks. “One day your name’s going to be on a big theater marquee and he’ll know he was wrong.”
Sam snorts softly.
I could trump both their family situations with mine. I know Lucas feels pressure from his parents, no matter how casual he sounds about his Mr. Squeaky plan. I know Sam is in some sort of constant Cold War with her dad. But if I told them about the grow, about how much my family needs me there and what my life will look like, forever, I could win the pressure war.
I say nothing.
After a minute, Sam stands.
“Time to go?” Lucas yawns.
She shakes her head. “Back in a sec,” she says.
I watch her walk a few steps down the bank. When she reaches the water, she hops her way from boulder to boulder. She waves to the kids. Then, before I know it, she’s on the rope swing fully dressed, with her miniature admirers cheering as she swings out, farther than any of them, over the river.
She drops feet-first into the water.
Her head breaks the surface a few steps from shore, and she emerges like some sort of water goddess, droplets glistening on her arms, rivulets streaming from her hair, T-shirt suctioned to her body. I don’t know how those Renaissance guys painted perfect breasts all the time. They must have had permanent erections.
By the time Sam has picked her way toward me, the cheers of her groupies are dying down. I wrap her cold body in a bear hug and hope she doesn’t notice my Renaissance issues.
“You should jump.” She grins. “I dare you.”
Lucas laughs, as if she’s suggested something impossible.
I think it’s the laugh that gets me. And the way Sam raises her eyebrow.
Before I can think too much about it, I stride down the bank toward the rope. With Lucas whooping and Sam cheering, I grab high, run and swing. As I arc over the river, it feels like flying.
Then the water sucks the breath from my lungs and turns my entire body to ice. It’s like I’m back in Kootenay Lake learning to swim with Judith, while Dad barks at us about the sturgeons that will eat our toes if we don’t kick harder.
My feet touch the rocky bottom and push. With two or three strokes, I’m scraping the shore.
“Crap, that’s cold!”
Lucas shakes his head, laughing. “I can’t believe you did it, man.”
Sam squeezes me, as if she might be able to wring me out.
I’m dripping and possibly hypothermic, but my skin is tingling and, for once, it’s not just because Sam is so close.
“I learn new things about you every day, Zac Mawson,” she says.
I grin at her.
I’ve never learned another person before, and no one’s learned me. I’ve never sat on a riverbank and listened to a girl’s stories. I’ve never looked for ways to make her laugh.
As we stretch out on the bank, she tucks her head into my shoulder and closes her eyes. After a while, Lucas begins to snore softly behind us. We’re spread out to dry in the sun like a handful of bud.
With my arm around Sam, staring up at the evergreen branches lining the river, I can almost imagine us in the loft of our own cabin with boughs brushing the roof and leaf-mottled sunlight streaming in the windows. We could spend entire days naked, and no one would know. We could climb onto our roof, smoke up and trace patterns in the stars. I could paint her over and over again, the way Alex Colville painted his naked wife standing on her head.
“Can you stand on your head?” I whisper.
“Not right this second,” Sam says in a half-asleep voice.
I could hike to my parents’ place every couple of days, help out with Walt and with the grow. Judith could stay with us sometimes. Though we’d have to get dressed on those days.
Sam dozes beside me as I build an entire fantasy forest in my head.
•
In the first week of June, it rains as if it will never stop. Dad’s in the drying shed weaving twigs into funnel-shaped fish traps. Mom hums to herself while she patches a shirt. Walt has his usual outbursts from the corner. And I sit at the table, papers spread around me, trying to study for my final math exam.
Walt’s curses seem strangely appropriate.
“Fucking prick.”
Find the value of the constant a for which (e,2) lies on the graph of y=ln(ax).
“Fucking prick.”
I’m used to the rhythm of it by the time Walt drifts off in his chair. After a while, Mom’s humming stops, too.
It’s actually harder to concentrate in silence. I find myself staring at Walt rather than at my notebook, imagining a graph that tracks his years in the woods along one line and his mental decline on another. Those two lines would start in distant corners, then grow slowly closer, and finally cross.
Or I could paint it in a triptych. The first panel would show his glory years, the second would be him and Dad managing on their own, the third could be today, with him slumped in the corner. Though there would be no room in a triptych for the years before he crossed the border, or the stage of his life when he learned to draw.
This is the problem with my paintings, even the ones inside my head. They take off in their own directions. At least graph lines go where I point them.
“Do you think if Walt could go back fifty years, he would choose differently?” I whisper to Mom.
Her eyes jump from her sewing.
“I’ve never considered it,” she says. “It’s hard to imagine him anywhere but here.”
It’s true. His face is darkened and weathered from outdoor work, wrinkled like tree bark. With a few days’ growth on his chin, he could be a scraggly evergreen draped in lichen.
“I can’t imagine him wearing a suit or working in an office.”
“Or working for someone else,” Mom says.
Even the idea makes me snort.
Boss: Get those reports done.
Walt: Fucking prick.
But did the woods make him like this, or did he choose the woods because he was pre-made for this life?
I try to imagine the perfect person to run a grow-op. Not worried about authority. Walt meets that requirement, sure. Ready for physical labor. Well, he used to be. Able to spend long hours alone. He certainly doesn’t seem to crave company.
Dad’s the same way. He’s been puttering in the drying shed for hours, with only himself and the bears to talk to, and soon he’ll return to the cabin looking calm and happy. He’s good with his hands. Tough. The only authority he accepts is God’s. He was born for life here.
And then there’s me.
“Would you have done things differently?”
The question occurs to me suddenly, and I ask before I can chicken out.
Mom looks surprised. “If I’d chosen differently, I wouldn’t have you or Judith,” she says.
That’s not a real answer.
“If you had the same family, but in town?”
She tilts her chin, looking into the distance. “I grew up differently than your dad,” she says finally. “I had schoo
l, and friends, and church. A life that was busy, but not always happy. Coming here was a refuge.”
“A refuge,” I repeat.
“Maybe it’s gotten harder in the last few years,” she says, glancing at Walt. “But this is still home.”
I know she’s looking at me now, but I keep my eyes on my notebook. Part of me is praying she’ll ask the question and part of me is terrified.
She doesn’t ask.
Which doesn’t keep it from circling in my head. On the day I graduate, can I climb the trail, throw down my pack, start work and not go back? Could Sam? Could she stand a week of rain, caged by cabin walls? Because if she could, we could manage our own grow, have kids, build our own place. I could paint. Maybe she could teach after-school drama classes in town.
I wouldn’t be on my own, using the inside of a shed as a canvas.
Walt mutters in his sleep. Above our heads, the rain rattles against the roof. Outside, a bear huffs.
These would be the sounds of our life. No hallway noise. No phones dinging as Sam’s friends texted her their nail-polish disasters.
No applause.
This place is the opposite of a theater stage and trying to picture Sam here, in her leopard-print leggings, seems a little crazy.
But love has conquered hurdles before. My mom is living proof.
10
On Saturday morning, Sam drives to the campground and waits for me at the trailhead. When I see her — which I do well before she spots me — her cut-offs and halter-top seem like a costume. Underneath, she looks like a girl who’s scared of bears but trying hard not to show it. She scuffs one running shoe in the dirt.
“Hey.”
She jumps.
I don’t risk leading her anywhere near the grow. Instead, we take a trail that skirts the side of the mountain past a beaver pond. This is the scene that’s going to sell Sam on life in the woods: the perfect stillness of water broken by the ripple of a fish and the dip of a swallow.
“It’s gorgeous,” Sam breathes. Then she slaps at a mosquito.
She insists on leaving the trail and walking through the reeds until the ground is marshy and sucking at our shoes. Maybe she thinks a beaver will pop its head out of the water. There’s no sign of them today, though. Just their lodge across the pond. We’re trespassers walking the edges of their property line.
I have a sudden image of a beaver-Walt, aiming a shotgun at us from inside the lodge.
Sam slaps at more mosquitoes.
“Why aren’t they eating you?” she asks.
They probably are. “I’m immune.”
The image in my head for this morning involved Sam and me lying on a patch of grass, which in my mind was much shorter and softer than these beaver pond reeds. There was a splash of sunlight and a lot of skin.
I reach for her, wrap one hand in her hair and breathe girl-smell.
After a few minutes, she pulls away to scratch her legs again.
“You’re not loving this place.”
“No, I am! It’s beautiful,” she says. “I guess I’m just in the mood for people today. How far is your house from here?”
I shrug. “It’s a bit of a hike.”
“Maybe I could meet your mom,” Sam says.
She’d love my mom. She might even like the cabin. But even when she leans against me again and her breasts press against my chest and her breath tickles the skin at my neck, I don’t entirely lose my mind. There’s no way I can take her to the grow. Am I going to introduce her to Dad and the bears? Tell her to duck if she hears Walt grab his gun?
When I shake my head, she presses her lips together.
“It’s just…Mom won’t be ready. She’ll want to impress you and if she’s not expecting us…”
It’s lame, and Sam knows it.
“Another day,” I promise. “Next time they’re in town, we’ll get together.”
They haven’t been to town in ages, but it’s not impossible. When we were kids and we would grocery shop with Mom, she would occasionally run into someone she knew from her past. It seemed strange, but it was okay. No one got shot.
Sam turns and heads back toward the campground. I trail after her, not sure whether it’s safe to speak.
But then, when we’re almost there, she looks back at me.
“We should go somewhere fun.”
Maybe I’m forgiven.
“I brought sandwiches if you want to have a picnic,” I say.
“The mosquitoes are killing me.”
“Want to go to the lake?” My entire scene could be relocated to the edge of the sand, with the sound of tiny waves lapping. She could press herself against me on the beach towel. My brain shows a quick series of body positions, all of them good.
“Yes!” Sam says. “But not here. Let’s go down to Twin Bays. Everybody will be there.”
Which is exactly the reason I’d rather not go. But she’s already pushing past the huckleberry bushes, their almost-ripe berries bobbing in her wake.
There’s no sign of Amir, though I spot his van as we emerge at the campground. His tree is empty, not even his sleeping bag visible on the platform.
Feeling somehow abandoned, I climb into Sam’s car.
“We’ll go for another hike soon.” Now she’s talking to me like I’m a toddler. “The beaver pond was amazing. But doesn’t it feel like we should have a little fun now?”
Twin Bays is exactly as fun as I expect.
There’s no shade. Sand sticks to the backs of my legs, and jet skis drown out any lapping of waves. Sam is quickly surrounded by squealing friends in bikinis, who are fairly amazing to look at, but also like an alien species. When one of them tries to chat, I get overwhelmed by skin and coconut lotion. I only manage monosyllables.
“Cheer up,” Sam says eventually, sitting beside me. She’s stripped down to her bathing suit and most of her is temptingly bare.
“Guess what? Tuesday’s the last day of school for seniors, right? So Brandon’s having a party. A graduation bash.”
“Great,” I say. I’m watching a game of truth or dare a few steps down the beach. One of the girls is licking Tic Tacs from a guy’s belly button.
“So you’ll come?” Sam’s breast touches my shoulder in a highly distracting way. It takes all my focus to figure out what she’s talking about.
“I can’t.”
I don’t want to. I don’t want to be stuck in that crowd — the same people who are here on the beach, except pressed together and sweatier. I don’t want to celebrate, either.
“Can we blow this place? I want to hang out with you, not with —” I wave one hand at the masses.
“We just got here!”
Her lips curl into a little-girl pout. I can tell she’s unhappy with me, but right at this moment, I’m not sure if I care. I’ve got sweat rolling down my back, sand and a cigarette butt stuck to my elbow.
“I’ve got to go,” I tell her.
“Fine.”
She gives me a quick peck, but she doesn’t wait for me to leave before joining the truth-or-dare game. As I backtrack across the sand, I can hear her taking over, changing the rules. There’s going to be a round entirely of dares, followed by one entirely of truths.
That’s one game I’ll never be able to play.
When I get to the parking lot, I realize we came in Sam’s car. I refuse to turn around and ask for a ride home, though, so I stand on the side of the highway with my thumb out until an extremely large angler picks me up. Then I sit in his Subaru with a tackle box by my feet and a can of worms in my lap.
It’s not entirely what I had planned for today.
•
I don’t see Sam again until noon on Monday, when she catches up to me on the way to the parking lot and leaps onto my back, wrapping her arms around my neck.
I’ve been having long imaginary discussions with Sam since Saturday. I call her a social butterfly, and she tells me I’m a hermit. I tell her I want to live in a cabin in the woods, and she laughs as if I’m joking. None of those conversations ever ends well.
But now, when she hops from my back and smiles up at me like the world is perfect, it’s tricky to remember why I’ve been mad.
“Where you going, Zac?”
“I have some paintings stored at my sister’s place, and I need to choose a few for Mr. Pires.”
“I’ll help,” she says.
“It’ll be boring.”
But she insists. When Sam insists on something, with her eyes wide, her mouth in a tiny pout and her fingers half stroking, half prodding my chest, she’s impossible to resist.
Soon we pull down the orchard drive, and my sister comes out to meet us.
“I’ve heard so much about you,” Judith gushes, just as Sam says how happy she is to finally meet her. Then Sam squeals over the bus.
“It’s so adorable,” she says. “And it’s on wheels. You could go anywhere!”
Judith grins, but she doesn’t exactly look ready for a cross-country adventure. She’s puffy-eyed and pale.
“Everything okay?”
She shoos me away with one hand. “No big deal. Can I get you two some lunch?”
When she hears why we’ve come, she helps me drag my plastic bins from beneath the bus. Soon she and Sam are unrolling one painting after another, as if they’re on a private tour of my psyche.
Earlier this year, I created a whole series of imaginary cities. Buildings like mushrooms. Sometimes multi-colored and cubist. Sometimes full of sweeping blue-and-white curves like Mediterranean markets in outer space. The cities are all empty, because I can’t imagine what kind of people or creatures might live in buildings that lean and sway like these.
Judith sits beside Sam on the orchard grass. They’re both staring at one particular canvas, which isn’t even my best. It’s the silhouette of a skyline at dusk, sunset glowing pink and purple in the background. Some of the buildings are skyscrapers like the ones you see in photos of New York. But here and there are unusual shapes. Something between a mosque and a giant birdcage with a door swinging open, gilded edges glinting in the last light. Two teardrop-shaped domes connected by an arched walkway. A tower of egg-shaped shadows balanced on top of one another. Above it all, a single crow.
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