Rough Patch

by Nicole Markotic

  My stomach bounces around, not sure whether to be more nervous about the first day of high school, my body’s bifurcated longings (bi-forking, get it?), or finally having that big talk with Sita. A quick three-turn, and I speed backward around the rink, looking behind me over my shoulder. Done in, I collapse onto the benches, my stiff fingers fumbling to undo my skates. The laces seem fused together and my gloves are drenched with ice crystals clinging to the finger tips. My heart’s beating a tune along with the terrible music crackling through the speakers. I’m totally starving, with only minutes to get home, scarf down breakfast, and rush off to pick up Sita on our way to senior high. Gulp, first day of high school. Did I mention my idea for everyone wearing nametags to proclaim our sexual orientation? I’d wither into a stalk of thirty-week-old celery if I had to wear a nametag announcing anything about my sexuality at school. Or anywhere. I don’t want to shout out loud and proud, I want to hide away, hushed and shushed. The nametag idea is—I am almost too wretched to even admit this—for me. Because I don’t know what I want. Who I want. Who I want to be when I’m wanting.

  LESBO ALERT: SHE NEVER TOUCHES A CURLING IRON.

  HET-GIRL ALERT: SHE LACES HER CANVAS SNEAKERS WITH GAUDY RIBBONS.

  CHAPTER TWO

  All summer I’ve been pining for a great chat with my best friend, Sita. We spent four weeks apart and finally get to see each other on this, the first day of school. Today. I am a bundle of excitement and terror and jiggly breakfast granola (why didn’t I skip a meal, just this once?). Soon as I see Sita, I’m going to tell her all about Surge. My brother calls his best friend Hurler, and the first boy I kiss has the guy-fuelled nickname Surge. He could talk about boring hockey statistics all summer, but then lean closer as an elder braided three strands of sweet grass during a cultural awareness training session. And when she told him that sweet grass is the sacred hair of Mother Earth, his forehead wrinkled into a thousand smiles. I grab my bag, toss a wave at Sam, whoosh out the front door, and walk to my best friend’s while rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing. “Keira, give me the haps!” she’ll shout as she rushes into my arms. And I’ll dive in: “Sita, in the last days of summer, I ... well, the forest isn’t all gophers and badgers, you know. Let’s just say my lips aren’t virgins any more.”

  But when I reach her yard, before I can say a thing, she bursts out the door and screams: “Keira, I kissed Lucien! A grade twelve boy!” So much for my great timing. Sita is adorable, whereas I’m ... okay, I guess. I have short hair, short-short but not buzzed. I wear lipstick sometimes, but I never wear heels cuz I’m pretty tall already. Sita is just pretty, period. Her hair smells of cinnamon and falls just below her shoulders, though she sometimes ties it up in elaborate twists and braid-loops. She has a cute nose, cute chin, and always wears dangly earrings that show off her cute earlobes. Her eyes crinkle when she laughs, and making her laugh is the greatest feeling, ever. She’s laughing now cuz we haven’t see each other in eons.

  I have big news and Sita has stolen my moment. Our hug lasts and lasts, but I’m also sorta miffed. For the first time in the history of our friendship, I have kissing news. But naturally, Sita has bigger news. Hug ends and we speed-walk to school, Sita offering me her new-boy details. “How’d you get a date before school even started?” I ask as we head toward the big bad.

  “Not a date, just a couple of kissing sessions.” Sita’s wearing a baby blue scarf that matches her shoes and her belt. I watch her lips as she talks and they seem excited, if that’s possible. Do my lips look different? Do my clothes count as matching if shirt, skirt, and sneakers are all pretty much washed-out tan? As we enter the school grounds, I slow our pace. We’re not late, and I have zero interest in being early. Slowing down will give me a chance to think. Better to make my confession after school, I decide, when we’ll have more time.

  Sita doesn’t share my restraint. “I ran into Lucien downtown last week. You know, the mall with that indoor-outdoor garden on the top floor? He was actually shopping for school supplies with his mother, if you can believe it, though they were deep in disagreement about the definition of what counts as proper grade twelve goods.” Sita talks in paragraphs without breathing.

  Then she offers up details about Lucien and his “luscious lips.” I let her tell me all about how he likes the way her fingers taper down to her fingertips (yep, he said “taper”). Soon as they managed a mom-less meeting, they kissed and groped a bit but mainly just locked lips and held hands. “Lucien doesn’t want to date. He wants to be free in his last year of school,” Sita says and does this wave of her hand, dismissing my objections before I even get to say them. “I know, I know, he thinks dating somehow steals his freedom. He’s a boy, what do you expect?”

  “I expect him not to kiss you when no one’s around then just dump you as soon as school starts!” Sita’s the one always advising me to demand a lot, never to settle. One kiss from this Lucien guy, and all her boy-lessons go out the window, kaplooey?

  “He didn’t dump me. He said right from the beginning that we weren’t doing the dating thing.” And then she actually gets a dreamy look on her face! “Just the kissing thing.”

  “He’s a jerk,” I tell her. But Sita does her hand-wave gesture at me. “Of course he’s a jerk, that’s why I’m not gonna date him.” The dreamy look again. “But it was mind-blowing kissing, and now I’m the one who’s free to date a boy I actually like talking to.”

  So: they have to be good at kissing and talking. Tall order.

  “Do not worry,” she reassures me as we enter the school grounds, “we’ll have you dating senior boys in no time flat!”

  Smokers crowd around the side door, jocks crowd the fields, and a wall of faces I’ve never seen stare out at us. Lots of girls in flared skirts, like we’ve re-invented the ’50s. Where are all the kids from last year? Four junior high schools feed into this high school. I should recognize somebody, but every face is new. And seems hostile.

  Since she’s filled me in on the Lucien details and the bell’s about to ring, Sita demands I sum up the best and the worst of the summer, in one sentence each.

  “Best: no parents and lots of outdoorsy fun.” Short and sweet, but—coward that I am—leaving out the best best part. “And worst: mosquitoes, mosquitoes, mosquitoes.” I take a gulp of breath. Should I dive back in, redo my one-sentence summaries? But we’re surrounded by students clustering around the entranceway. Sita considers the wall of strangers. “Hey, look, there’s Amanda. Oh, and Marisol. And there’s Raf heading inside. Let’s go.”

  And not to get too biblical or anything, but the wall parts and we nudge past the strangers through the double doors to where the halls teem with kids who look way older and way cooler than I’ll ever be. “Hmph.” Sita sounds disappointed. “Lockers, crammed classrooms, and graffiti. Welcome to the brand-new same-old.”

  We check our schedules and—groan—we don’t even have lunch together. Tuesday (today, two other dentists hired me already!) and Thursday afternoons, I have to burn off to my after-school job. Wednesday will be Drama Club for Sita, so I’ll have to wait till Friday. This is how Sita and I operate. We need a whole afternoon of just us, of catching up on vital and extensive gossip.

  Sita shunts us over to the office so we can get our locker assignments. The secretaries don’t come across as mean exactly, but they’re not super friendly either. One keeps banging a sheaf of papers onto the counter to punctuate her instructions: “Locker number 1437 ...” bang “Go right at the stairwell near where Yearbook meets.” bang “Fourth floor.” bang “You can remember that because of the four in fourteen.” If we need directions to our own lockers, how’re we supposed to know where Yearbook Club meets? “Locker number 1722 ...” bang “Go past the second gym and up to the second floor.” bang “No, second, not seventh.” bang “If the combos don’t work, check your locker number before coming back down here. Check three times.”

  Guess this can’t be their favourite week of the year. Maybe coming bac
k to school to work is a worse bummer than having to come as a student? As we exit the office, Sita whispers, “I am going to try to forgive you for abandoning me over the summer,” but since she doesn’t know about Dianne and Surge, it’s a joke threat. I do, truly, want to tell her my summer secrets; I don’t just want to tell her one thing about myself, but both things: bi-things. And for that, my timing needs to be perfect. Friday.

  HET-GIRL ALERT: AFRAID THAT IF SHE TELLS HER BEST FRIEND ABOUT DIANNE, SHE’LL GET LABELLED A LESBO, FOR SURE.

  LESBO ALERT: AFRAID THAT IF SHE TELLS HER BEST FRIEND ABOUT SURGE, SHE’LL JUST BE DEAD STRAIGHT, NO GIRL FANTASIES ALLOWED.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Summers, my family never does anything besides camping, and only for a bunch of three-day clumps when my parents can coordinate their holidays. Total family-focus. In other words: dull. But Sammie really gets off on planning those trips. Maybe because she doesn’t have to do physio on vacation, or maybe because her wheelchair is just so fascinating to other campers. This past summer, she made a cardboard sign reading, “No fee for photos.” And held it up, adding sweetly, “although monetary gifts are always appreciated.” Dad took away the sign and let anyone take as many photos as they wanted, with him in the photo posing as if he’s on the verge of lifting her and her chair.

  So last spring, we were up in the room we share, planning the summer holidays. I could easily see Sammie growing up to be a general. She’s covered the walls on her side with maps and old-timey drawings made to look like photos: a bird mid-flight, a half-submerged alligator yawning in a swamp. Our mom constructed a lap-desk to fit Sammie’s chair so it can hold all her school supplies. Mostly, Sammie stuffs the chair’s many pockets with her explorer magazines, stickers, card games, and joke books. To prep, she hauled out two different topographic maps. “We’ll start out in Banff,” she announced, “curve down into Montana, then up through Washington, across the BC Rockies, and end up in Jasper.” She hunched over the map, slapping on stickies every 400 km or so.

  “Remember,” I asked her, “that one place where we dared Tyler to jump off the cliff and he did, and then we all got into trouble?” Sammie adores our puke of an older brother, but that doesn’t stop her from doing her best to get him into trouble. Even when she sometimes has to pay a price herself.

  “Kiki, this time, we won’t dare him to jump, we’ll warn him not to!” Sammie cracks me up. She’s just so on. Of course, if his sisters advised him not to jump off a cliff, Tyler would absolutely have to. No way the Mom Police could blame that one on us. Mom polices us girls pretty strictly but goes easy on Tyler. Go figure.

  Sam loves it when we’re all stuck in tents, and the showers are faulty so everyone’s pits are über-rank by the third day. She also loves having no summer school and no physio. Doesn’t matter that her wheelchair isn’t made for those hikes. Tyler just folds her chair into the trunk, whips her over his shoulder, and off we go. I’ll say this for Tyler: he’s a jerk-face to me, but he’s the best big brother to Sammie. And during those camping trips he even reins in the shite he dumps on me most of the time. Maybe because none of his jock friends huddle around as audience.

  Either way, for a few long weekends a year, our family sort of works. Mom and Dad take turns driving, and Tyler and Sam and I play backgammon and Schmier and Go Fish in the back. The radio’s on, and nobody has to make announcements about their day. Both my parents work, but only my mom has a strict dress code (she’s a secretary at an insurance film), so I think one of the reasons she loves vacations is she gets to slob around in jeans and a sweatshirt. And when Mom hits the hay early, Dad lets us slurp tiny sips of rosé wine and mash burnt marshmallows in our mouths till we crash. The parents pre-book the campgrounds, which are way cheaper than motels. And there’s usually a lake to swim in, free of charge. Can’t get any more frugal than that and still call it a vacation.

  “This is what you should do for the summer,” Sammie suddenly announced way back before summer, tapping her finger on the map, right at Lake Louise.

  “Huh? Whaz you on?” Sammie and I slip into short-hand occasionally. Drives Mom bonkers; she thinks I’m babying Sam.

  “Huh yourself. Be a ranger. One of those people who helps us at the campgrounds.” She stuck her finger up her nose and then pulled it out, as if to flick something on me.

  “Ga-ross,” I flicked back. “Thanks for the idea, but I think you have to go to school for, like, a bazillion years before they let you be a Forest Ranger.” I wiped my finger along her back, like I had a goober there and just had to leech it onto her.

  Sammie isn’t exactly good at letting go. Sometimes she wants to play the same game over and over and over or talk about an episode of a show again and again. It can get boring, but if you cotton onto how Sammie talks, you can divert the word-flow, create tributaries in the conversation. It’s fun, once you get into it. Mom never gets into it.

  “It’s what you should do for the summer,” she repeated.

  “Sam. Sa-aa-am.” I slowed down my speech. “How can I make your delicate baby-sister brain com-pre-hend? I’d need to train for a gazillion years. I’m not as talented when it comes to summer activities as I am in the winter escapades.”

  “You’re such a doofus. Last summer when we were in the Kananaskis there were, like, oh, a gazillion teenagers running around with ‘Junior Dweeb’ nametags on their chests. Don’t you remember? Tyler hit on anything with boobs. Like that silky girl near Lake Louise.”

  I sat up so fast I dumped our maps on the floor, and pens scattered under her bed. “Yes!” I shouted. “You’re a genius!”

  “Duh.” She grabbed the red felt pen with both fists and pulled it along some future route on a map.

  Turns out, the website explained, there’s a Junior Ranger program for teens who want “to expand your horizons and learn to appreciate the outdoors.” I read that as a translation for “get away from parents for the summer, and have an adventure that won’t cost a bundle.” It didn’t pay much, but it included job training. Six weeks total, from mid-July till the Labour Day weekend. I’d get home the night before high school started.

  “Sam, you’re my hero! Oh, and by the way, don’t think I didn’t notice that you said boobs!”

  I knew Sita would kill me, as I’d miss major shopping trips and new-school prepping, but I also knew she’d forgive me. I filled out forms, begged for parental signatures, and had to submit an essay. That sucked. An old English assignment? We’d read The Old Man and the Sea in grade nine, and every boy in the class picked it for their final essay. Why? Because it was short. Seriously. I’m not great at school, but those boys shoulda figured out by grade four that short does not mean easy. (And, for those who wish to know, my essay was on Margaret Laurence’s ginormous The Diviners. I am not a genius, but I think I got my A-minus just for picking the fattest book on our teacher’s shelf.)

  Thinking of those boys, I took the opposite of a shortcut: I wrote a whole new essay. On skating. And not just that I like it—my grade nine teacher wrote on my final essay that liking a novel isn’t the same as analyzing a novel—but I tried to show how spinning on the ice makes me feel: bold and dainty at the same time, confident. A risk-taker, but also someone who plans ahead, gauges both the ice and even how steady my legs are. I wrote about how skating on a rink every single morning was like navigating through my teen years, trying to jump and point and balance all at the same time. I was trying to impress them, to show how I could take one situation and apply it to another, winter sport to summer job. I swear I think I impressed them only because I ended my essay by announcing that figure skating made me feel like “a true Canadian girl”! Yuk, but ... I made it onto the short list.

  Then the interview, where I just kept repeating that I loved camping, that my family had camped at every provincial park south of Edmonton, and that helping others was my middle name (seriously, how cheesy is that?). Then I recited the name of every campground in southern Alberta—saved by Sammie’s maps! When
I got home, Mom took both my hands in hers (hand-hugging), and told me that, no matter what, she was proud of me. Yeah, like if you blow the interview, parental pride is an adequate consolation prize. Dad, in his usual spot on the couch, didn’t say anything. He acted miffed that I was so willing to miss family vacation time. “Hey,” I told him, “this job will help me grow as a person.” So he decided not to stay mad. Cheesy rules.

  When I got the thumbs up, I took Sam to the park and did fourteen cartwheels around her chair. I was so dizzy, I lay down on the see-saw feet-first while Sammie tried to upend me. She didn’t have the arm strength, but eventually I toppled and got the appropriate giggle response. Both my siblings like to torture me, but one of them can actually be happy for my happiness.

  But those first two weeks of training were so dull I thought I’d have to poke my eyes out, just for some excitement. We spent Monday to Friday, and then Monday to Friday, in a classroom. Here in Calgary. We had lessons on fire hazards and fire prevention and general fire safety. For rangers, turns out fire is a big deal. A very big deal. On the plus side, I could still get in some skating every morning, so I missed only four weeks of practice, rather than six. Oh, and we also memorized the names of bugs, in case we got lost in the woods, even though we were supervised every minute of every day. As in: which bugs to roast, should we run out of food. Seriously. “Red, orange, yellow, avoid that fellow. Green, black, or brown, wolf it down.” And every night we had homework, with a test on the final Friday. If we didn’t ace the test, that was the end of our summer.