“Amazing,” Sam says softly.
“It’s my favorite, too,” Judith says. She’s only half-looking at the painting, though. My sister keeps darting glances from Sam to me, then grinning behind Sam’s back.
“Where do you get your ideas?” Sam asks.
“Obviously not from real life,” Judith says. “Do you know this guy has never been more than an hour from here?”
They make matching cartoon faces of astonishment.
“We should go,” Sam says immediately, turning to me. “Vancouver road trip!” She practically flings my canvas into the air. I take it from her fingers and reroll it.
“Seriously, Zac. This weekend. I’ll tell my dad I’m sleeping over at someone’s house. We’ll take your truck. If we skip school Friday, we can be in Vancouver that night. Spend Saturday there and head back Sunday.”
She makes it sound as if escape is one well-laid plan away.
“Not likely.” I turn to Judith. “Can I make grilled cheese for all of us?”
But the girls follow me inside, and Sam won’t stop talking. Even as I butter bread and turn on the hot plate, she’s babbling about the beach in Vancouver, and collecting shells, and seeing a play at the York. She slides onto the orange bench behind Judith’s fold-out table.
“It’ll be so much fun.”
When I don’t respond, she turns to my sister.
“Don’t you think he should go? It’s criminal to paint like that without seeing a real city.”
“I agree. You should go, Isaac,” Judith says, putting a bowl of chips on the table and settling herself beside Sam.
I shoot her a glare. She knows I can’t skip town for the weekend with Corporal Ko’s daughter. What if he came after us? Or what if Dad found out I was in Vancouver? I may as well tell him I was in the third circle of hell for a short vacation.
“Broaden your horizons,” Judith says.
I bang a lid onto the pan. It’s so convenient that my sister, the one who abandoned her family, now recommends escape as good therapy for everyone. But of course I can’t say this in front of Sam.
And what am I doing here anyway, gathering materials for a useless portfolio?
I grit my teeth.
Sam nudges my hip with hers. “Say yes. It’ll be amazing.”
I take a deep breath. Remove the lid and flip each sandwich, which isn’t easy in Judith’s small frying pan. I concentrate on squishing them all in.
“We wouldn’t even need to pay for a hotel room. Just camp out in the back of the truck. Sleep under the stars…”
I’m pulling dishes from Judith’s cupboard when I lose my grip. Literally. One of the plates hits the edge of the counter, and shards fly everywhere. I practically throw the other two onto the table.
I had a picture in my head this past weekend, of Sam falling in love with the forest and deciding to live with me on our own grow. And, okay, I get now that it was a fairy tale. A ridiculous, never-never land option. But she and Judith are rubbing salt on that ripped-up dream with every word they say.
“I can’t! I can’t go, all right? So get off my case.” I can barely see. Red pounds in my head and foams into my line of sight. I crunch across the floor and out of the bus, slamming the door behind me.
I’m between the rows of apple trees before I calm down enough to breathe. I lean on my knees and concentrate.
Inhale, exhale. It takes a lot to rile me, generally. Apparently, it takes a dual attack by Sam and my sister.
Judith once told me that her psychology class had to put their problems into imaginary picture frames, then examine them from a distance. So that’s what I do. I settle onto the grass and paint a mental picture of Sam. I imagine her by the creek with our cabin in the background.
But then Hazel pokes her nose into the frame. And next thing you know, my dad shows up in the foreground. Vancouver? What the hell ya thinkin’?
My frame has basically splintered by the time I hear the bus door bang. Sam looks around, spots me in the orchard and picks her way through the long grass. She sends clover flowers swaying and bees circling. She could be from a Renoir painting.
“Judith told me about your family,” she says, plopping herself on the grass.
I shift my eyes to the bus. What did Judith tell her?
“I didn’t know your grandpa was still in such bad shape,” Sam says. “You should have said something. I understand if your parents need you around.” She tugs on my elbow. “I wouldn’t have been so pushy.”
I shrug, haul myself up and start back toward the truck. Sam follows, a hand still on my arm.
“I’m trying to apologize,” she says.
I stop and turn toward her. “Would you ever live in a cabin in the woods? With an outhouse? And no other people?”
She looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind.
“Never mind. It’s just that…”
“Is that what you’re painting next? We could check out some cabins, for inspiration.” She says this with a suggestive wiggle of her eyebrows.
Which does make me smile.
None of this is Sam’s fault, I remind myself. I’m the one leading a double life.
Sam stands on her tiptoes and plants a kiss on my lips.
“C’mon,” she says. “Let’s get your paintings.”
As we reach the bus door, Judith emerges with a stack of foil-wrapped sandwiches.
“I figured you’d be running out of time,” she says.
I take them, along with a collection of forest paintings and three of my skyline canvases. Sam and Judith both insist I take the one with skyscrapers and birdcage buildings. I choose two others — one a market scene with all sorts of strange products and produce for sale, and the other a city along the water, where the buildings above are normal but their reflections are funhouse-warped.
Once Sam and I climb into the truck, Judith wraps her fingers around my window edge and peers at me.
“You going to be okay?”
When I nod, she taps the side of the truck twice, a quick goodbye, and turns back to her bus. No big emotional scene. She gets it, even if she did gang up against me for a while.
“You want to talk about anything?” Sam says, reaching to twine her fingers through the hair at my collar.
Sam, on the other hand, doesn’t get it at all.
•
After school on Tuesday, Mr. Pires photographs my paintings one after another, while I have silent convulsions beside him. As soon as he sets up the lights, my brushstrokes begin to look like tsunami-sized mistakes. I see ways my compositions could be improved, if only I could start from scratch. One of my forest scenes makes me think I must have been high on Dad’s pot fumes when I painted it.
“I could choose different ones,” I say, when Mr. Pires is on his fourth or fifth photo and I can’t stand it any longer.
“Hmmm?” he says, still concentrating on his focus.
“I could do different ones. The deadline is gone anyway. I have time.” All the time in the world.
He looks up, rubbing his eyes. “These are good, Isaac. Really good. If you’d submitted them six months ago, you’d be holding an acceptance letter right now.”
Does art school offer lifetime deferments? I want to throw up.
“I’ve been hesitant to ask this,” Mr. Pires says, leaning over his camera again. “Partly because I don’t want to get your hopes up, and partly because of what happened with the magazine — ”
“Sorry,” I mutter.
“Not your fault,” he says easily. “But I have a friend at Emily Carr University. I could send him these. See if there’s anything he can do.”
I collapse into a desk and put my head in my hands. I don’t know why I’m bothering with a portfolio in the first place. But if I’m never going to submit it, why do these photos seem like such a b
ig deal?
“Do they have art classes at the community college here?” I ask through my fingers.
Mr. Pires snorts. “For bored senior citizens, yes.”
I dig my fingernails into the skin of my scalp. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Okay, send them. Please.”
I feel as if one of the tree trunks from my paintings has fallen from the canvas and crushed me. I can’t breathe. I can’t even begin to process what I’ve just said.
I stumble out of the building. I don’t even remember until I’m driving away that today was the last full day of school. Only exams are left. My days in class are over.
•
I haul a batch of new hoses up the mountain and spend the evening replacing a piece of our watering system, but the job’s done long before dark. It’s too early to light the lanterns, but the cabin seems dim and the ceiling even lower than usual, like we’re living in an underground den.
Grabbing my sketchbook, I take off for the cathedral, Hazel lumbering along behind me. I settle myself on a patch of moss and try to draw the trees, the way the last bits of sunlight slice between them. The way the tips of the branches appear so fragile and so strong at the same time. The way the trunks stretch and split and stretch again.
On paper, they turn into a crumbling civilization, towers toppling against one another and smoke spiraling from the ground.
Nearby, Hazel rips and noses her way into a dead log, her claws shredding the wood and her pink tongue vacuuming insects.
Usually when I draw, my brain drops into a different zone and I think about nothing except pencil and paper. Time stretches like the evergreens. But now I find myself staring at Hazel, or the leaves, or nothing.
Brandon’s party is tonight. Maybe I should have agreed to go with Sam. Half of me hates the idea. The other half of me wants to spend every possible minute with her, making her laugh. Watching the way she scrunches the spikes on her forehead at the same time she scrunches her nose, whenever she’s listening hard.
I’m supposed to be enjoying life a little. Maybe I need to take up Buddhist meditation. Live in the present.
Become a druid.
Hazel looks up at the sound of my laugh. I can just imagine what Dad would say if I embraced druidism. Or Buddhism, for that matter.
Mr. Pires said he’d send in my paintings tonight. The files are probably gone by now. I imagine his friend receiving them, maybe posting them somehow to an internal system so admissions committee members (I picture them in black dress shirts and wire-rimmed glasses) can download the files.
And then what? Do they roll their eyes as they flip through? Do they burst out laughing at a turnip-shaped building, and know immediately that I’ve never actually seen a city?
Or maybe a committee member — one might be enough — stops on a slide to notice the sun glaring from a dome. Maybe she’s caught by the way a cat, the sole sign of life, is disappearing down a dark alleyway in the lowest, darkest corner of the piece. She’s so intrigued by the painting that she convinces everyone to bend the rules. Such rare talent. I must be allowed into the program, she says.
I shake my head and scribble a looping spiral over my disaster sketch. I could go crazy trying to guess people’s reactions. Who knows what they’re looking for? Maybe they don’t like forests and cities. Maybe they’re looking for farm life this year. Or even a certain kind of brushstroke.
Maybe it’s way, way too late.
When Hazel pads over, I lean against the musky stink of her fur and try to see the world like she does — food and hunger, friend and foe. Then I give up on that, too, and haul myself up and back to the house.
Walt’s dozing. Mom’s mixing teas. Dad’s outside somewhere. I try to read a couple of paragraphs of a book Judith gave me. It’s about these guys who saved paintings during World War II, but it’s all biography and history and not enough action.
Mom appears behind me, putting a soft hand on my back.
“Why don’t you go out for a while?” she suggests. “Go for a drive. Head into town.”
“It’s too late. I won’t get back before dark.”
“Could you stay at Judith’s?”
“You don’t need me?”
“We’ll manage.” Then she smiles. “I do remember being seventeen.”
It’s like she’s thrown open my cage door. I didn’t even know that this was what I wanted, but I feel a million times lighter. I give Mom a quick kiss on the cheek and toss a change of clothes into my pack.
Then I’m out the door before she changes her mind. Or before Walt wakes up or Dad arrives to change her mind for her.
11
Once I find a place to park along the gravel shoulder, I cut the engine. Immediately, the sounds of the party pour in. There’s music blaring and guys shouting, with an extra-loud laugh erupting every once in a while, or a sudden whoop.
I resist the urge to drive away again. Instead, I get out of my truck. I take a deep breath and climb the steps to the porch, where I shoulder my way between groups of drunk people.
“Isaac!” Lucas’s voice reaches out like a big hand. He’s sprawled on the couch in the living room, looking, as usual, slightly too cool for the place. Soon I have a beer in my hand to take the edge off my sweaty claustrophobia.
“Happy to see you here, bud. This isn’t your usual scene.” He’s buzzed his hair short, maybe to match his black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off.
“Heard it was the party of the year.”
He laughs. “They say that about every party. And if you miss one, they make it sound like you were left out of the greatest night ever. But they’re all the same, really.”
He has to shout to be heard over the music. As I scan the crush of bodies, I try to imagine hanging out at these places all the time. There’s a very drunk girl dancing on the dining-room table. Another girl is pushing her way from the room, mascara running down her cheeks.
There’s a skinny dude swaying in one corner, looking as if he’s about to hurl.
Watching this every week sounds like torture.
I’m shoved aside by a massive guy in a muscle shirt. “Lucas! My car’s crapped out, man, and I gotta pick someone up. Can you take a look?”
“No problem.” Lucas extracts himself from the couch cushions.
I resist the urge to throw myself at his ankles as he leaves. Maybe he notices.
“Back in a flash,” he says.
As soon as he’s gone, the music seems louder and the beer fumes thicker. I climb onto the back of the couch and scan the crowd for Sam. There’s no sign of her, so I head for the patio.
Halfway there, I’m almost bowled over by two drunk guys grappling. A lamp crashes to the floor. I manage to get past, but it feels like squeezing myself into a solid wall of people, everyone shouting now.
“Look out!” someone yells. A dining-room chair tips over.
I try to step forward and get an elbow in my ribs. I’m not even sure I’m still heading in the direction of the patio doors.
But it doesn’t matter. Because at that moment, Sam finds me.
“Zac! You came!”
As she throws herself toward me, I get a whiff of wine and cinnamon gum.
“You okay?” she shouts in my ear.
“I need space!”
The chaos fades as soon as we get outside. Sam leads me around the corner of the house and we sit against the siding. Just enough light reaches us to make the edges of her skin glow.
“Whew,” I say. “Getting out wasn’t easy.”
“Try getting out of my house,” she says. “My dad threw a fit. House parties apparently don’t fit with his vision for my future.”
“And what’s his vision?”
“RCMP officer, like him,” she says, as if this should be obvious.
“
Seriously?”
“He seems to think it’s hereditary,” she says. “Programmed into my DNA.”
She curls against me and lets her head rest on my chest. I wrap my arms around her, wanting to pull her impossibly close.
“I don’t see it.” This may be my own genetic code talking, because my gut cramps up whenever Sam mentions the RCMP. I try to think objectively, but I still can’t imagine her as a cop. Police officers are supposed to be cool and collected at all times. Sam is more an explosion of random energy.
“He alternates between ignoring me and suffocating me,” she’s saying now. “No wonder my mom left.”
I listen while she tells me about their argument. It was probably no different than a million other arguments between dads and their daughters. But in Sam’s mind, it’s like a stone stacked on other stones and the whole wall seems about to cave in on her.
Maybe we’re all trying to avoid our own cave-ins. Maybe at these parties, the gates in the walls lift for a couple of hours. Maybe everyone’s looking for a temporary emotional leave of absence just like me.
“I’ve never been so happy to see him leave for a night shift,” Sam says. Then she tugs down the neckline of my shirt and kisses the skin beneath. “I’m sorry I pressured you to come tonight. I know it’s not your scene.”
As if on cue, a beer bottle flies from the deck and shatters against the back fence.
Sam raises her head and I raise my eyebrows.
She laughs. “Want to get out of here?”
“Where to?”
“Dad’s on night shift, remember?”
We get to her house in record time. And once inside, we don’t even make it to the bedroom. She strips off my shirt in the entranceway and steps out of her jeans on the living-room carpet.
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