Delilah looks up, bewildered by the offer. She shakes her head.
“Okay.” He clears his throat. “So listen, Lila. I have some news.”
Her hand freezes, milk dripping to the table below. “What?”
He takes a sip, winces, then blows on the steaming cup. “Your mom and I have been talking, and we have decided it’s time you and I headed on down there. To California.”
She drops the spoon and a small wave of milk laps out of the bowl. “What? Will is still missing! We can’t just leave.”
“Delilah, I know you care about Will. We all do. But he has been gone weeks now.”
“But there’s still a chance. You still go out there looking.”
“We’re not . . . we’re not looking to find him alive out there. When they found me, I was fifteen minutes away from being dead.” Mac reaches across the table for Delilah’s hand, but she pulls it away. “He just . . . he must have gone the wrong way. I know it’s sad. But we need to carry on with our lives.”
She can’t believe this. That he would just bring up moving to California like it’s no big deal. When he knows it’s the last place she wants to go. And like Will being missing isn’t even a thing anymore. That it’s something they should get over.
She looks at her father, his hollowed-out face, thin from stress. Grey streaks shooting through his beard.
“Why?” she says. “Why did he bring you back and go back out again?”
Mac sits back in his chair. “I have no idea. You know that.”
“You have no idea because you don’t remember.”
“That’s right. I don’t remember.”
“But you remember some stuff. You remember waking up. You remember walking in the snow. Why don’t you remember where he went?”
She tries not to think about the gloves stuffed in that bag in the back room. The bag isn’t there anymore; she doesn’t know where it’s gone. Delilah hasn’t seen her dad wear either of the shirts that were in it since.
“That’s how these things work. I can’t decide what I want to remember.”
She stands, grabs her bowl, turns and dumps it clattering into the sink, soggy cereal and all.
He takes a deep breath behind her. “What is it? What’s going on with you?”
Ice crystals have formed on the kitchen window. She can’t see through it. Even if she could, all she would see was white.
“He knew about the bush,” she says. “He knew how to survive in the bush.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t.”
He doesn’t answer.
She turns. “He knew, but he didn’t survive, and you didn’t know but you did survive.” She says it like the fact that it is.
“Jesus.” Mac stands and faces her. His eyes are wild, wounded. “Do you wish I was the one who died out there? Is that what you wish?”
She shakes her head, tears trickling down her cheeks.
“What then? Because it sure as hell sounds like it.” He takes her shoulders, tries to make her look at him, but she won’t. “It was an accident, Delilah, a fucking awful, terrible tragedy. Nobody wanted it to happen. You think I wouldn’t do anything I could to change it?” Delilah doesn’t answer. He stands there like that, holding on to her. His hands are bricks on her shoulders.
“Let go,” she says. “I am not going to California.”
“Well, yes. You are,” he says, holding her gaze, his arms dropping to his side. “It’s the best thing for you after everything that’s happened up here. I already booked the tickets. I have saved enough money for a down payment on a house in the town your mom is living in. And that’s where we’re going.”
“Well, have fun,” she says, fury flashing through her. “But I’m not going to live with Mom and all her crazy artist colony friends. I’m staying here.”
He shakes his head, frustrated. “Yeah? With who, Delilah? Who do you think wants to take in somebody else’s snotty thirteen-year-old? Come on. We are a family.” His hand smashes down on the table when he says this, and Delilah jumps, startled. “We have been through a lot, and we are going to be together again. Like a real family.”
A real family? Annie left them. Annie betrayed Mac with Marcel. Is that what family does to each other? She shakes her head, but no words come out of her mouth. She turns and runs to her room, pulling the blanket closed behind her.
“We leave in two weeks, Lila,” he calls. “I’m sorry.” He sounds tired now, all the fight drained out of him.
DELILAH TRIES TO GET through the school day without having to talk to anyone. When she woke up that morning she noticed he had packed some banana boxes and stacked them in a corner of the living room. He was already getting ready to leave.
She keeps her eyes cast down and brushes past people in the halls. A raging furnace burns inside her. She has visions of the school blowing up around her from her own sheer desire, splinters of blackened wood falling in the snow.
In Socials, Delilah watches Misty apply lip gloss using a small heart-shaped mirror. Misty fluffs her feathered bangs, and Delilah wants to stand and start shouting at the kids in the room about how ridiculous and stupid they all are. How the things they care about don’t matter at all. She feels like doing something drastic, dangerous. Something she will regret like hell later.
After last bell, Jones catches up in the hall. Delilah is walking swiftly, moving like a shark through the milling bodies. She is heading for the back door by the library.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“Smokers’ pit.”
“Seriously?” He slows down. “I can get you a smoke if you want one. From my dad.”
“Just come. They’ll give us one.”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“Fine. I’ll see you later then.”
“Okay . . .” he seems taken aback at her abruptness. “Hey, I’m going out to the cabin one day this week. Do you want to come?”
“You are?” she stops, the cigarette momentarily forgotten.
“Yeah. Maybe Sunday after—”
“Tonight?”
“Tonight? No, my mom won’t let me go at night. Not in the winter.” He looks at her like she’s nuts.
Her eyes flicker down the hall past the retreating backs of the students to the doors, where the sun has already started to sink into a grey twilight.
“So we don’t tell her,” she says.
“What?”
“We tell your mom you’re at my place and my dad we’re at your place.”
“I don’t know . . .” He looks tempted, but anxious. Weighing things.
She sighs, irritated with his caution. “Forget it.” She turns to go, continuing her mission to the smokers’ pit.
“Fine,” he calls after her. “But they’ll kill us if they find out.”
“Whatever,” she says without looking back. “See you after school.”
She walks to the door. Takes a deep breath and pushes. They’re out there, the girls with their sprayed hair, their roach clips dangling from barrettes. The guys with their army jackets decorated with black felt pens that announce their favourite bands—Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Who. Delilah stands there in her bell-bottoms with the rainbow on the back pocket, her virginal white sweater under her red parka. She hugs her books to her chest. The guy closest to her is taking a cigarette out of a new pack, crumpling the foil. His black hair hangs in his pink-rimmed eyes.
“You want one?” he asks.
She nods. Reaches out and takes one clumsily and lets him light it for her. It takes her three tries before she realizes she needs to inhale for the cigarette to light. He smells faintly like stale booze.
“Never seen you before,” he says. “You just starting out here?”
She takes a drag and it burns her mouth, her throat, her lungs. It tastes terrible, her mouth feels coated in toxic ash, she wants to cough and gag, but she doesn’t. She lets the smoke out slowly and takes another drag.
“Yes,” sh
e says. “My parents just bought a big house uptown. There’s, like, a giant Jacuzzi. It’s as big as a hot tub. They work for the government. We’re staying here until I finish high school.” The next drag goes down smooth. She’s already got the hang of it.
SHE GOES FOR ANOTHER smoke after the last bell rings, so she’s late meeting Jones. By the time she gets to their meeting spot in front of the school, she can see he’s already a block away, heading down the hill. He’s carrying a Coke, so he must have stopped at the drugstore. She quickens her pace, almost slipping on a slick patch of ice on the sidewalk. He stops to look in the window at the hardware store and she gains a block.
“Hey,” she calls when she’s only a few stores away. “Wait up.”
He glances at her, takes a swig of his drink and looks back at the window.
She catches up. They stand facing the hardware store window. “What are you looking at?”
He points. “Camp stove.” There’s an arctic camping scene set up on a platform. A below-zero tent, some puffy sleeping bags, the green metal cook stove with the detachable propane tank, some enamel plates and cups, and metal forks. A few cotton-batten clouds drifting from fishing line.
“Oh. For the fort?”
“Cabin,” Jones says. “You smell like smoke.”
Delilah smells her hand. “Oh yeah, I do.” She smiles. “How come you didn’t come with me? Those guys aren’t so bad.”
Jones snorts, takes another swig, and tosses his can on the sidewalk, crushing it with his boot.
“I have to get home. See ya.” He takes one last look at the camp stove and then starts walking.
Streaks of grey and that surreal twilight blue that make Delilah feel like she’s in a waking dream are already washing out the afternoon sun.
“Hey,” she calls, angry. She can feel the furnace start up again. Whatever good it did her to smoke that cigarette has worn off already. “What’s your problem?”
“Nothing,” he calls over his shoulder. “What’s yours?”
His loping back retreats. She notices the patch on the back of his parka sleeve. A small red plaid square against the green, cut from one of Red’s work jackets. She looks off down the hill, and she can see Joliffe with its sparse dark trees and the white ice surrounding it.
“Jones,” she calls.
“What?”
“I still want to go. I’m sorry I was late meeting you.”
He stops. Waits for her. “You’re the one who wanted to go.” He sounds sulky.
“I know.”
“It’s . . . cold, you know. And kinda, like, dangerous.”
“I know. I don’t care.”
He watches her for a moment. “Okay. It will be really cold. Even with a fire. It’s still not insulated that good.”
“So? We can bring lots of blankets.”
He chews the thumb of his mitten, looking at his boots. “I don’t want to have to bring you back in the middle of the night.”
“You won’t have to. Oh my God, relax.”
Like she would be that much of a baby to make him take her home. They walk down the hill in silence. Delilah wonders what shape the cabin will be in. She thinks of the wind whistling through the crack in the walls they haven’t filled yet. The roof is precarious, too. They did a lot of work on it in the summer, but the heavy snow could have collapsed it by now. Then she thinks of the one single mattress they hauled out there on the sled a few weeks before. One mattress. Not big enough for two.
When they get to Jones’s after school, nobody is there but Laska, who is curled by the airtight and perks up when they enter the house. Jethro had started letting her wander because every time he puts her in the pen, she howls for hours and keeps the neighbours up. He was afraid someone was going to shoot her.
Jones scrawls his mom a note saying he is staying over at Delilah’s. They make a Thermos of tea and load some bread, cheese, and canned chicken noodle soup into a plastic grocery bag. They pack extra parkas, sleeping bags, and firewood into the sled outside the door.
Laska at their heels, Jones pulls the sled down to the frozen lake. The sky is clear and dark, the moon lighting a path to Joliffe. They had tried to tie Laska to it so she could pull it for them, but she wouldn’t do it. She sat back as soon as they harnessed her.
They follow the silver, glittering glow of the moon to the island, pulling the sled easily over the smooth snow, then trek across the rock to the cabin. Smoke curls from Old Tom’s shack at the southern tip of the island. This makes Delilah feel safer, even though Tom is a strange old trapper with missing teeth and a long yellow beard like one of the seven dwarfs. There are rumours about how he used to stand in front of the Yellowknife Inn and preach to people who walked by about the evils of alcohol and the sins of the flesh.
Once they are on the island, the sled keeps getting stuck in the snow or snagged on hidden shrubs. They have to stop many times to pull it free. Once, it overturns and they must repack everything, sweeping around with their flashlight beams in the snow to make sure they don’t leave anything behind.
Delilah’s legs ache from the walk and she is sweaty and itchy under her parka. She wishes she had gone home, thinking it might have been better to sneak some of her dad’s beer and listen to Janis Joplin records.
The cabin is eerily dark and quiet. Nothing much has changed since they were there last. There are dead leaves on the plywood floor. The old mattress rests against the wall. The table, crooked but standing, is still there. They are both breathing hard from the walk, white wisps illuminated in the harsh light of their flashlights. She could live here, she thinks. If everything goes to hell, she could just live here.
“Looks okay,” Jones says. He brings the dry wood they brought with them over to the rusty old stove and kneels to start a fire.
Delilah shines her flashlight on the one narrow mattress again. How will they decide who sleeps where? “Yeah. It looks fine.”
They play cards by the light of the kerosene lamp, sitting at the table with chipped mugs of tea. The fire is roaring in the airtight and although they are still wearing their parkas, they aren’t cold anymore.
Jones sets his cards down. “Rummy.”
Delilah sighs, then stifles a yawn with the back of her hand. Her watch tells her it’s after eleven. She glances over at the mattress again. It’s lying flat now, piled high with the sleeping bags. They still haven’t discussed the bed situation.
“Tired?” Jones says.
She shrugs.
He reaches into the bag at his feet and pulls out a small blue bottle and sets it on the table.
“What’s that?” she asks. “Vodka?”
“Gin,” he says. “I took it from the cabinet at home.”
Delilah has that same feeling she had when she opened the doors to the smoke pit, when she took that cigarette from the boy with the black hair.
Jones is waiting. His parka is unzipped, and he’s wearing the sweater she likes with the thick blue and white stripes. It makes her think of a French sailor. He won’t drink it without her, she knows that. He’s waiting to see what she wants to do. She drains her tea in one gulp and sets the cup down beside the bottle.
“Fill ’er up,” she says.
AN HOUR LATER THEY are lying on the rough wood floor, laughing. Jones rolls to his side to catch his breath, tears stream from Delilah’s eyes. Their parkas are discarded on the floor by their chairs. Laska is asleep between them, probably tired of their foolishness now. The bottle is half-empty on the table. They have had enough sense to stop.
“Charrrlie!” Jones says, rolling onto his back again. “Charrrlie, come back, so I can beat on you again!”
“With a two-by-four!” Delilah gasps. They have been doing impressions of all the Old Towners, amusing themselves for at least half an hour. Delilah feels deliciously, deliriously happy. She has a slight, persistent cramp in her stomach, but chalks it up to gin consumption. She doesn’t feel a single ounce of the anxiety she felt before, about anything.
She’s not even worried about where to sleep. She’s not worried if they both crash on the mattress. But the sudden thought of Jones’s arm or leg brushing against her accidentally in his sleep makes her cheeks flush and she turns her face away so he can’t see.
“Hey,” she says. “I think we need some artwork in here or something. Like, on the walls.” Shomething.
“We could make some!” he says. “Let’s nail some old tin cans to the wall like Timmy Fisher does to the outside of his shack.”
“That would be pretty,” Delilah says. “And maybe an old wagon wheel too.”
“Yeah.” Jones turns toward Delilah and rests his head on his hand. “Hey,” he says. “Why did you go out to the smoke pit?”
She gazes up at the ceiling, the rough patchwork of wood and the army-green tarp above them. She wishes there were no roof at all, wishes she could see the stars.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I wanted to do something different. I wanted things to be different for a minute.”
“You know that guy? The one you took the smoke from?”
“Yeah. Al, right?”
“Right.” He’s watching her. She glances over, catches his green eyes. “Did he say anything about me?”
“No. Why?”
All she had talked about with Al was how much school sucked. How much the teachers sucked. How much Yellowknife sucked. It had become immediately clear that, in the smoke pit, it wasn’t cool to like anything.
Jones is silent.
“Why?” she says.
“Some stuff happened with me and him last year,” Jones says.
She feels that insistent pain in her abdomen, all the way down the inside of her thighs, little nails scratching, the tip of a knife on her skin. It must be the gin. She hopes, hopes to God she doesn’t throw up tonight. She will die if that happens.
“What kind of stuff?”
It takes Jones a minute before he talks, and in that minute Delilah thinks of every possible scenario she can. Stole something from him? Called him names in the hallway? Tripped him at Mr. Mike’s so he fell into the salad bar? This last one almost makes her laugh but she catches herself in time.
“We used to be friends,” Jones says. “From when we were kids. Like, four or five. We were in kindergarten together. His folks used to live in Old Town. His dad worked at Giant, and then he got promoted to a big-shot job. They moved uptown and Al . . . I don’t know. It was, like, his mom didn’t want me to come over anymore. Mom says it was like they got a shot at the high life and they didn’t want their past dragging them down or something. I don’t know what it was. But anyways, we stopped hanging out.”
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