by Karen Grose
“Then your records must still be there,” Detective Perez said.
“How do you mean?”
“By law, schools are required to keep them.”
“Whatever.”
“Listen Greta. A lot of people sitting in this chair would have trouble with the story you’re telling me. I want to see what’s in them. Official documents from Social Services. Correspondence from the police.”
“Knock yourself out. All you’ll find are my crappy marks.”
The detective frowned. “I’ll have the file sent down. Maybe there’s something from Officer Pappas. Sometimes we crack a case from the strangest things.”
She sighed. “What’s to crack? My dad died of cancer and you’re still trying to pin it on me.”
Detective Perez leaned forward and spoke slowly. “So why don’t you get to what happened at the hospital and we’ll clear it all up?”
With her fists at her sides, Greta’s face flushed. “Him. Him. Him. Why don’t you shut up and listen?”
She’d been out of her depth. The first day, the school was a maze. She was late for her classes and no familiar faces smiled back in the halls. Cliques she knew nothing of sprung up and spread out, claiming turf in all parts of the building. She had nowhere to go, and so she sat outside the front of the school and ate lunch alone, vowing to herself she wouldn’t panic. Every day, she slumped home after school, unlocked the door to the apartment, and dropped her backpack on the floor, with no idea how she was going to make it through another week.
Hot and sweaty, she stood in front of the fridge, looking for something to eat. Someone banged on the apartment door.
“Open up.”
“Okay, okay,” she said irritably, recognising the voice on the other side. But she didn’t move; instead, she continued scanning the top three shelves for food.
Mrs. Xiangzi kept knocking, and then the apartment door rattled. “Hurry up in there,” she said louder. “I need help in the restaurant.”
Greta closed the refrigerator and unlocked the front door. “Mrs. Xiangzi, the most I can do is toast or scrambled eggs. Maybe French toast on a good day. And I very much doubt any of those things are on your menu.”
Mrs. Xiangzi laughed. “Not cooking. Too many people. I need help serving.”
“What?”
“Give people their tables. Clear up the dishes. That kind of help.”
A knot formed in Greta’s stomach. “I guess I could do that.” She looked down at her sweaty track clothes. Her nose told her everything she needed to know. “When?”
“There’s a line up out the door. Why do you think I’m knocking?”
Greta sighed and followed Mrs. Xiangzi downstairs. Eighteen tables covered with red and white tablecloths were overflowing. Families and couples were sat talking, laughing, shoveling Mr. Xiangzi’s delicacies into their mouths. There were plates everywhere. Glasses empty. Through the large glass window next to the front door, a line-up of people flooded out onto the street.
Greta quickly got to work. While Mrs. Xiangzi brought out steaming dishes on big white platters, Greta cleared the empty ones from the tables and refilled the customers’ drinks. She brought them soy sauce, serviettes, soft drinks, crayons for the children to colour in their menus, and cutlery when they gave up on the chopsticks. When they left, she wiped down the tables, re-set them as fast as she could, and after she’d sat new families, started all over again.
“When the dinner shift finally slowed, Mrs. Xiangzi made me supper. She hated that I wanted sweet and sour chicken balls and French fries over her famous Almond Soo Ga. And then, after the place cleared out, she gave me the thirty dollars left on the tables. But I passed it back.”
“Why would you do that?” Detective Perez asked.
“It didn’t feel right. Ian treated me like a slave and never gave me a dime. But Mrs. Xiangzi insisted. She said I seated and bussed, so the tips were mine. She told me to save them for something, and I had thousands of things I wanted. Food. Clothes. A phone. New running shoes. She told me if I showed up again, I’d earn more.”
“She gave you a job?”
Greta laughed. “Only if I showered first. On weekends, it was packed. Weeknights were slower, so sometimes we’d sit in the kitchen and talk or I did my homework. Mrs. Xiangzi helped me out. After about a month, I had earned enough that I managed to buy myself a phone. I wish my mother had seen it. The first thing I did was take a picture of her photo that I’d hidden behind my bedroom mirror. I uploaded it to the home screen. Then I got in touch with my old friends.”
“They must have been happy to hear from you.”
“Yep. But it was hard. I wasn’t with them anymore. And I hadn’t made any new ones. I’d searched the other kids up on social, been creeping them for days, but their posts were shallow. Nasty. Some were mean. I don’t know what they were thinking. They shared stuff I’d never share.”
Detective Perez sighed. “I know all about sexting.”
She shook her head. “No. Not that. Stupid pranks. Parties. Stuff I didn’t need. So I decided I was good alone and kept to myself, kept busy. I discovered I loved making my own money. I went to school, ran track and worked. No drama.”
TWENTY-FIVE
O ne Saturday evening after the restaurant closed, Mrs. Xiangzi picked up her new phone. She pointed to the home screen.
“Who’s that?”
“My mom.”
“You must miss her.”
Greta swallowed hard.
“Where is she?” she asked, gesturing for her to sit down.
Greta punched in her password and scrolled through the images of her life before her mother died. Mrs. Xiangzi flipped through them with her thumb. She stopped to examine some more closely and pushed others aside. When she described the day her mother died, Mrs. Xiangzi’s grasped Greta’s hands across the table.
“I’m going to tell you an ancient proverb,” Mrs. Xiangzi said. “Our ancestors were wise, my dear. Long ago, they passed along insights in stories and sayings so we could learn from them,” she said.
Greta had never heard an ancient Chinese secret. She perked up. “Like what?”
Mrs. Xiangzi paused. “Mr. Xiangzi always reminds me aged ginger is more pungent than fresh.”
That was true; Greta knew that, at least. He’d said it in the kitchen before, but she thought he’d been talking about the beef dish. “So what’s the lesson?”
Mrs. Xiangzi laughed. All four-foot-ten of her shook to the core. “It means the older, the wiser.”
She shook her head. Ian wasn’t.
“Let me put it another way,” Mrs. Xiangzi said. “Young people need to listen to their elders because some of them have life experience and can give good advice.”
She thought of her mother. That made sense.
“Not everyone uses proverbs correctly, though,” Mrs. Xiangzi explained. “Mr. Xiangzi is two months older than me, so when he wants something I don’t, he reminds me not to close my ears to my elders or I may suffer loss.”
Greta looked at her startled.
“No, dear, he’s not serious,” she laughed. “He’s using the proverb to try and get his own way.”
“You don’t give in, do you?”
“It depends,” she said, her shiny black hair sliding sideways. “Compromise is the seed of longevity.”
What? She tucked that expression away for later. “So, what would you say is my proverb?”
Mrs. Xiangzi squeezed her hands. “If my great-great grandmother had met you, I bet this is what she would have said. She would have told you: if you work hard enough, you can grind even an iron rod down to a needle.”
“What? You lost me in the translation, Mrs. X.”
“Miss G.,” she smiled, “let me try again.”
Greta liked the sound of that—both trying again and the new spin on her name. G. It had a nice feel to it; like sliding on a new pair of pants. Which reminded her… God, she needed new clothes.
Mrs.
Xiangzi folded her hands on the table. “It means constant work can grind down big problems, like wearing away a stone.”
She crossed her legs under the table. “Come again?”
Mrs. Xiangzi grinned. “One more time, Miss G. We need to be patient with issues we’re dealt with because persistence and effort helps solve them.”
Greta tilted her head, waiting for Mrs. Xiangzi to go on, but she sat there, rested her chin in the palm of her hands, and left the explanation in the open between them, untouched and simmering. She shifted in her chair and, after she nibbled on her almond cookie to avoid the awkward silence, she stood and said goodnight. Mrs. Xiangzi clasped her hands warmly and gently cuffed her on the cheek.
Back in her bedroom that night, Greta tried to decipher the proverb. The iron rod was her current situation, and she wasn’t scared of the hard work required to push her way through. But the details were light. How could she whittle the rod down? Turn things around? Make sure there was money to pay the rent? Eat? And how could she focus in school to get a career when she was bored out of her skull?
All night that night, she tossed and turned, weighing the possibilities.
“You became close with the Xiangzis?” Detective Perez asked.
Greta smiled. “Without my mom, they were my family.”
“What about your coach?”
“Dewson? It wasn’t like elementary school. Running varsity’s big, you know.”
“I gather. Hundreds of runners. I’m sure all of them hungry—”
“To win? Every single one of them. But he helped me make the leap.”
The warning signal sounded at the Blues’ first meet, and Greta edged up to the front of the line. She looked left. She looked right. Then she froze. She knew that face. There, ten feet away, stood Latoya. When the horned sounded and the runners shot forward, it took the first two kilometers to clear her head. By the third, she’d found her zone and followed the fastest runners behind a hundred meters. By the fifth, she’d narrowed the gap and was on her competitor’s tail. As the finish line approached, she put on a burst for the final two hundred meters, but her rival did the same and won. After she’d circled back to the finish line, hands on her knees to steady her breath, she felt a tap on the shoulder.
“Never had to run that fast to catch you.”
She looked up at black shorts and a white T-shirt. She looked higher. Latoya still had the gap between her front teeth. She was beautiful.
“Oh my God, how are you?” Latoya said as she pulled Greta into an embrace.
“Good.” She stepped back and pulled off her bib, and pointed to Latoya’s. Orillia Secondary School. “Still there, huh?”
Latoya wiped a line of sweat from her forehead. “Yeah. My mom had an affair with some guy so my parents split.”
An awkward silence descended; Greta didn’t know what to tell her. She shifted her left foot to her right. Latoya’s parents weren’t the only ones who’d split—but at least she knew what happened.
“And,” Latoya rolled her eyes, “now he’s my step-dad. But I’m guessing it won’t be for long.” She leaned in. “My mom has a bit of a wandering heart.” She laughed.
Greta took her comment in. There was so much she wanted to say but she couldn’t form the words.
Latoya looked over her shoulder toward the bus. “I’ve gotta bounce. DM me. On Snapchat or Instagram or something.”
“Sure.”
“Or text. Here’s my number.” Latoya reeled off the details. She then placed her hands firmly on Greta’s shoulders. “So stoked we reconnected again.”
Greta laughed. “You’re stuck with me now. You won’t get away.”
Latoya’s face lit up and she smiled a mile-wide smile. “We’ve kinda been stuck together since the water table in Kindergarten.” She gave her one last hug. “I missed ya.”
Three months passed and the Blues made it to the spring championships. In the marshaling area, Greta found the roster; her adrenaline pumping, her stomach a bundled knot of nerves. Her eyes followed her finger to the bottom of the page, and then more slowly back up to the top. Her heart sank. No Orillia Nighthawks. No Latoya McCeighan.
At the starting line, with runners on either side, Greta’s stomach tightened. One made eye contact, mouthing words. Another flipped her the finger. Smack talk. She ignored it and focused. The course coordinator shouted across the field and the girls shuffled forward. When the horn sounded, the fastest leapt out in front to set the pace. The first part of the course was the easiest; two kilometers over flat, smooth ground, and Greta hit her stride near the front of the pack. Spectators stood along each side, their mouths open, their arms up in the air, but in her head, they were silent. At one point, a thin woman with long auburn hair looked straight at her, but when Greta blinked, she was gone.
In the middle of the course, the runners faced rolling hills full of ragged pits and mud. Jostling for space, they bumped into one another and pushed each other out of the way. Greta’s foot caught in a hole, turning her ankle. She yelped. The runners beside her glanced her way. Smiling? Sneering? Smirking? Their reaction didn’t faze her. Instead, their looks spurred her on. She wanted to win and she wanted the other runners to feel pain like she did.
The pace picked up through the last stretch. She lagged behind the fastest runner by ten feet. The pain in her ankle flared, but she worked through it, swinging her arms loosely. Then, when the time was right, she exploded forward with a renewed burst of speed, pumping her legs hard. The closer she got to her opponent, the more certain she was she could take her. During the last kilometer, she cleared her mind. Three minutes later, she had passed the finish line, winning the junior varsity championships.
That night, after the dinner shift slowed, Greta lay on her bed. Her phone lit up. Texts. Instagram. Snapchat. She couldn’t scroll through fast enough to read the messages pouring in.
G., you’re amazing.
Kudos, G..
Someone had posted a video of her crossing the finish line on YouTube. Underneath they’d added a caption: Blues Rock. She smiled, wishing her mom could have been there.
Her phone pinged again at midnight. Half-asleep, she glanced over at the screen. She sat up.
Latoya: Hey!
She picked up her phone.
Greta: Hey!
Latoya: Saw u on YouTube! (Heart Heart)
Her fingers flew across the screen. I know, right! (Smiley face). Then she changed it to Really? and pressed Send.
Latoya: Ur smtg. U kicked ass 2day.
Greta: (Smiley face puking green puke)
Latoya: So what’s up?
Greta: idk
Latoya: lmk
Greta: Where to start…
Latoya: First day of Grade Three.
Greta texted back and forth with Latoya late into the night and, by early morning, she’d lost steam. Phone back in the charger, she turned out the light. With her arms around her pillow, she stretched down the length of the bed, smiling, her dreams giving way to her forever best friend and her mother.
***
“That sounds like it was a pretty impressive year for a rookie,” Detective Perez said.
Greta sighed and looked down at her shoes.
“Uh-oh. What? Did you get an injury?”
“No. More like trouble in class. I said…”
“Something you shouldn’t have? Quelle surprise.”
She glared. She’d taken French. She thought back to the words that had slipped out of her mouth. What felt sweet at the time wasn’t. Sour? Maybe more salty.
“It wasn’t my best moment,” she said.
“Did you apologize?”
Sweat beaded the top of her lip. “No. The problem was my marks sucked.”
Detective Perez put her chin in her hand. “Which you need for varsity.”
She’d been gobsmacked the day it had happened.
After Coach Dewson cut her from the team, she sat hunched over on the floor in her bedroom. Her reflection sho
ne back from the window a couple of feet above the head of her bed. She looked around her room; stale and white and barren. The medal she’d won hanging over the side of the mirror was the only decoration. It was a reminder of her greatest victory—the result of persistence and effort. That all-too-familiar pain built up in the middle of her chest as she picked up her phone.
Greta: Hey… Got the axe today.
Latoya: ur the star of the team
Greta: not anymore
Latoya: OMG what r u gonna do?
Greta: tbh dunno but screw school
Latoya: ?
Greta: Im done w it
Latoya: ?
Greta:
Latoya: lmk. Here for u. Ily
“I’m not sure why but I guess those rules are in place for a reason,” Detective Perez said.
Greta swiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “It was the one thing that cleared my mind, that kept me calm, that made me feel part of things, a part of something. Poof. Taken away. Gone in an instant.”
Detective Perez reached into a drawer and passed over a box of tissues. “How’d you fill your free time? School? Pick up more shifts at work?”
“My past.” She blew her nose.
“Pardon?”
“There was only person who could tell me about it.”
The detective sighed. “Ahh. Right. This elusive Colleen.”
TWENTY-SIX
G reta googled directions for the Bracebridge Women’s Shelter, grabbed her jacket, and headed downtown. After a brisk twenty-minute walk in the fresh air, with her hands shoved in her pockets and jacket collar turned up against the springtime chill, she found the building. With knots in her stomach, she swung open the red front door.
Beyond the reception desk, a dim-lit hallway gave way to a series of closed offices down to the end. Up front, a large man with tattoos across his forearms sat at the desk. Dressed in a T-shirt, he had shaggy hair and thick sideburns. He needed a haircut. On the phone as she approached him, she noticed he had a very large forehead that bobbed up and down, his bushy mustache twisting as he talked. He directed her to a seat in the waiting area, offering only a few chairs and a low coffee table with magazines. She perched on the end of a seat and waited.