Rough Patch

by Nicole Markotic

  “Hmm.” Sita finally rejoins the conversation. “Okay, I’ll think of something.”

  The thing about letting a straight-A student come up with solutions is that she’ll do it, no matter how drastic. We unwrap chocolate bars and munch away, the entire downtown at our feet. In less than ten minutes, Sita comes up with the perfect plan for us to get to a party by 8:50, hang out with cool kids from our school (and quite a few older kids not from our school), and get out by 9:47.

  “It’s about time you kissed a boy anyway,” Sita says.

  “Says you.” I have got to tell her about Surge, but—

  “You’ll be lucky if you actually like kissing your boyfriend. Forget about liking your first kiss ever.”

  Instead of correcting her, I pull my legs in so I don’t trip joggers crazy enough to run up these stairs. “Don’t you even like kissing?”

  “Of course I like kissing,” she answers. “But the first kiss with most guys is usually slobbering and too quick and you’re too nervous and he’s, well, he doesn’t care as much as you do. Way better to get it over with, with someone you don’t even have the hots for.”

  “Okay, okay. But the deal’s off for this party if Tyler’s there.” And that is exactly the right thing to say to convince Sita that I’m in. Her plan is for us to go, scope things out for a while, and then let two random boys drag us outside for a make-out session. That way, we get to the party, we get seen at the party, and then everyone assumes we spend the rest of the party making out—not leaving because of a ridiculously early and uncool curfew. I have to admit, the plan has no flaws. Except for me, of course.

  Look, I’m a girl who wants to proclaim her bisexuality yet is terrified of a random make-out session. Terrified to spend an evening kissing a boy I don’t even know, terrified to tell Sita that I maybe wouldn’t mind if I were kissing a girl. As far as my best friend 4evAH is concerned, no one’s even tried to kiss me.

  In grade nine there were a lot more boys that I wanted to kiss than there are now in grade ten. Either boys are getting less adorable as they age or I’m getting closer and closer to the other end of bisexuality. Or maybe I’m just feeling loyalty to my summer fling? (“Fling” is an exaggeration, for sure. Still, I am not as inexperienced as Sita thinks.)

  I get up to climb the rest of the stairs. I’m just too panicked to sit still. “But aren’t we still in the same pickle with your plan?” I demand. “How do we get out of jail free, once it’s time to go?”

  Sita explains that she has her eyes on three guys she knows will be at this particular party. So as we walk up to the top of the crescent, she explains how the amended plan will go: She flirts with one or all of them, and when it’s time to go outside, I tag along. I’m the best friend too sad to get her own date. She makes out a bit with Boy Number Lucky (Sita’s nickname) and then I drag her off, cuz we’re supposed to be at this party together. Boy Number Lucky goes back inside, and we slip out the garden gate. We get home by 9:59. My parents are impressed by my ability to make curfew, Sita’s by sticking to her agreement to hang out with Keira only.

  And that is pretty much how we manage our first high school party that weekend.

  Crowded hallways in the house and beer cans everywhere on the front lawn, a keg surrounded by ice in the bathtub, and kids chugging as a way to celebrate successfully getting through the first week of school. Except for the excitement of getting in, I don’t really get off being there. Too many kids squash into the kitchen and living room for me to join their conversations. Downstairs in the family room, so many couples—straight couples—are making out, I feel like I’m in a porn flick, and I head back up the stairs pretty quickly. When I go to sit on the living room floor, a grade eleven girl squishes over so I can perch on the arm-rest of the couch. I think she’s making room to be friendly, but she’s macking on the boy next to her.

  All this public action makes me long for Surge’s lips. When he kissed me, only the birds and the bees (and a couple of otters) hung around as witnesses. How corny is that? Most of August, Surge and I spent hours together talking about the disappearing grizzlies, our favourite hike in an area that was due to be clear-cut by next summer, or how we’d divvy up the next day’s chores. Okay, arguing about how we’d divvy up the next day’s chores.

  Turns out, his parents signed him up to be a junior ranger without even asking him, submitting one of his school essays for the application. When the interview rolled around, Surge wasn’t even sure what he was interviewing for.

  “Hey, I thought it would at least be a high-paying job.” Surge laughed as he zinged a flat stone into the middle of an abandoned beaver pond. “Man, if the guy conducting that interview had asked me why I wanted a training position, I’d’ve been out of there like lightning. I was so pissed at my parents, but I went, cuz by that point I really had to get away from them!”

  “Yeah, I did it for the parental escape route, too,” I admitted.

  “You?” he asked, like he figured me for some kind of homebody.

  “It’s a total trip to be out in the wilderness without relatives,” I told him. And at that point I actually wondered if I should ask him about my longing to kiss Dianne. Surge thought she was a bit stuck-up, but he must have thought she was okay to look at; I caught him staring at her a couple of times. Sure, I figured, he might freak about me being a homo, but that day was our last day of summer. He blasted a pine cone against a tree. Surge was hard to read. On the one hand, he seemed too cool to be cool, you know? On the other, he was from Bonnyville, and staying a week in Edmonton for training (the kids from the boonies got everything condensed into seven solid days) was the most time he’d ever spent in a big city.

  “We do a fair bit of camping in my family,” I told him. “I had to get away, but no way my parents would agree to let me wander around, say, Vancouver for a month.” I didn’t admit to Surge that they couldn’t afford to let me spend a summer anywhere else, either. “But I’m glad I had this summer, and not just because I got to get away from my family,” I added. The sky looked bluer than I’d ever seen, and the black spruce branches cut across that blue. “Actually, it’s been a fabuloso month.” I breathed in pine needles and wild roses and the end of summer.

  Dianne had sent Surge and me to check campsites for properly doused fire pits, and to collect bits of garbage that people think it’s all right to leave behind for the magic elves to clean up. He chucked another stone over the pond. I thought maybe he still wished he’d spent the last four weeks working at the Co-op grocery store with his buddies. I tried to figure out what he was thinking from his expression, but all I saw were his eyes squinting up against the blaze of the afternoon sun. Before we kissed, I noticed his pale green eyes a lot more than his succulent lips.

  My Surge daydream dumps me back at the crowded party when I hear Sita meeting up with the first Boy Number Lucky (Tony). But after chatting with him for zero-point-eight seconds, she gives him the hand-flick (same as the hand-wave, but with more contempt) and moves into the kitchen to grab a beer. The living room, with a bay window that’s wide open, has clumps of kids passing joints and nodding to the Chainsmokers tune blaring from a laptop shoved sideways onto a bookshelf. Mostly, the boys lean back against the walls with their eyes closed. The music blares, and a grade ten girl I vaguely recognize passes around a guitar-shaped bong. I’m still holding my first beer and thinking about pouring its contents into the droopy ficus tree next to the couch, but I just keep warming the can in my hands. I don’t totally love the taste of beer, and I’m not about to down anything stronger, not with my first fall skating session with Winnie tomorrow afternoon.

  From where I sit, I can watch the living room crowd, see into the kitchen, and observe who’s still coming in the front door. When I spot Sita with Daz, the second Boy Number Lucky, I can tell she likes him more than the other boys—no hand-wave for him. But he’s in grade eleven, and we’ve already learned that most boys don’t want to hang out with what they consider immature newbies.
Nothing immature about Sita. She perches on the kitchen counter and leans into his laugh as he tells her stories with his hands and arms and his entire body. Definitely a theatre guy. At 9:41, she hops off the counter and walks out the back door, so I get up to follow.

  This is where it gets a bit sticky. I mean, am I supposed to sit beside them while they go at each other? By now, I should trust Sita. We get outside, and she introduces Daz to me. “My friend and I are heading out,” she says. “But I’ll see you in Drama Club, right?” And then she leans up and kisses him on the chin, soft and sweet. And we deke out the back garden gate.

  On the way home, I’m all worried that success at one such party will lead to sneaking around every other weekend. Have I mentioned that I’m a dweeb? And that I have to be up at a ridic hour on weekend mornings? “Relax,” she tells me, just before we part ways, “I met a guy. You will too.”

  We spend the next Saturday night at the coffee shop so I can hear all about Daz: “He likes playing the trumpet, but just for fun, he’s not in the marching band or anything.” Trumpet player implies cool. Marching band, not so much. Then I hear some more: “Daz really likes reality shows, for, like, the irony.” They’re not officially a couple yet, but Sita’s definitely smitten. She goes over and over the details she’s already told me: how many minutes they talked on the phone last night (thirty-seven); how tall he is (the perfect amount taller than she is for kissing); how he smells like ginger ale and winter coats.

  And I don’t mind listening. We curl into a corner at the coffee shop, slurping mochaccinos and batting words back and forth, just like we used to slam tetherballs over and over in grade one. The last thing I want is to gross Sita out. I pull my drink closer and lean down to slurp the whip-cream topping. I’m a coward, I think to myself. I have to tell Sita that—just maybe—the reason I’m not kissing boys at a party is cuz I’m holding out for something else. Am I holding out for Surge? Am I holding out for some fictional girl? I don’t know. I have such a story for my best friend, but once I start, I’ll have to tell her the whole story. I’ll have to expose me.

  HET-GIRL ALERT: SHE PUTS GLITTER ON HER FACE FOR A PARTY, EVEN THOUGH THAT IS SO 2012.

  LESBO ALERT: SHE REFUSES TO SULLY HERSELF BY KISSING BOYS SHE DOESN’T KNOW.

  CHAPTER SIX

  That night, after making it to her house by quarter after nine (the coffee shop closes at nine anyway), I go in with Sita, just like I’m an old-timey gentleman after a chaste date, and we gab in her bedroom for nearly an hour. Sita’s locker at school screams “neat freak,” but her bedroom is a freakin’ mess. Just like all her sisters before her (all but one has moved out), she throws clothes on the floor (yes, clothes that she will wear again and yet manage to look neat as a pin supposedly looks), stuffs books under the duvet, and drops change on any surface that doesn’t tilt. Don’t even get me started on the rubber snakes and felt lizards peeking out from underneath her bed and piled high in her closet. Sita collects all things reptile, so herds of stuffed and plastic creatures crowd her bookshelves and bed and even the windowsill. No way my parents would allow such a “creative” display in our bedrooms. “Put it away, or I take it away,” the Mom Police threatens. Luckily, she’s too busy with work and dinner and Sammie’s extra-curricular to follow through on all her threats. In a gesture of duty, Tyler’s been folding his T-shirt collection.

  So Sita and I play scrunched-paper basketball using a crumpled chip bag as the basket and repeat every rude remark Max Bledsoe got away with this week. But at 9:56, I grab my coat, shove my boots on without lacing them, and run home. In bed, I go over the conversation we didn’t have, the one that starts, “Sita, I have Big News,” but then I get distracted thinking about kissing Surge. The first time we kissed, my lips burst from the inside out. The second time we kissed, I could hear the clouds spiral and the leaves drip off the trees. Seriously.

  Evil nemesis that my brain is, once I start to think about Surge’s body, I also think about Marisol’s. We share science and math classes. Her nose scrunches up when she tries to calculate with rational numbers. On Thursday, she passed me a note about her much older sister’s Zombie Marathon addiction. “Seriously archaic AR! does she know she’s 27?!” Marisol wears clothes inherited from that much older yet much less buxom sister. Which means her own curvy “buxom” bursts out at you. At me. At lunch, Marisol sits with Raf and the other gamers. Sadly, my infamous cell phone can’t even capture regular photos, let alone A.R. creatures, so Marisol and I don’t have much to talk about. I fall asleep transported onto that fallen log on the naturally sandy beach at Crimson Lake, my brain summoning the image of Marisol nuzzling Surge’s neck. Hoo boy.

  The next Tuesday, after I get home from my job at Dr So’s office, Mom tells me that I should balance the tension of skating and school and work with yoga—as if. Bad enough coming home after school to find your mother in the middle of the house practicing Plow pose (that’s when you lie on your back, your arms go where your legs should be, and your legs reach above your head, toes to the floor—totally weirded me out the first time I saw her do this!), but imagine if I’d come home with a friend? Or a date? Mothers and spandex: not a good image. No wonder I’m single—it’s not my confused hormones, it’s my mother. Anyway, these days, Mom’s looking a bit puckered around the eyes, so why should I believe that yoga helps her relax?

  Tyler pops his head into the kitchen but not enough of his body to get roped into helping with any vegetable chopping or table setting. He’s wearing a T-shirt with the slogan, “I hate being the greatest, but it’s my job.” Yeah, right.

  Tyler has done things like rip posters off my walls and belittle my friends (when I’m foolish enough to invite anyone besides Sita over), and he calls me Stickbean when his friends are around. Once Sita asked, “Isn’t it Stringbean?” Luckily Tyler didn’t hear. Tyler does not do well when people correct him. And don’t go thinking that he’s a tough-ass who likes to bully his own sister but will step in if anyone else tries to get in her face. Nope. He’ll lead potential tormenters right to my face. He’ll post the road signs.

  Have I mentioned that Tyler is a turd? He’s a turd. No, he’s a jackass. No, wait, he’s the turd from a jackass. Tyler is almost two years older and seventeen years meaner than me. According to my parents, who cannot entirely be trusted on this one, he was totally infatuated with me when I originally showed up and spent the first year of my life trying to hold me (not easy for a toddler), talking baby-talk to me, and giving me every one of his toys, every chance he had—even as they mysteriously reappeared in his room on a nightly basis. So: total adoration and I can’t even bask in the memory of it.

  My brother plays sports not because he likes basketball or soccer or—god forbid—football, but because he’s good at them, and he likes to be better than anyone else at everything else. For Tyler, soccer is boring and football “too mathematical,” but he plays because teachers like a high school kid who exhibits team spirit. And because girls like jocks. Yes, girls like jocks. Most girls. Enough girls. But the same girls who like boy jocks do not like girl jocks. Tyler’s good at football, despite hating the math part of the game. But one of the things I like about skating is the calculating and planning and measuring of how close you land to the boards, trying to keep the jump at the same height but landing a few millimetres over. I make up all my own Singles routines (with Winnie’s final approval) and most of the other girls’ Duo Dance routines (yep, very few teenage boys in my figure skating association). The other girls trust me because my routines fit them, not the music.

  Skaters make three mistakes when choosing a song for their dance routines:

  A)Techno-drivel.

  B)They want the latest single sensation, and by the time the competition rolls around they end up with an over-played Lady Gaga or Cold Play hit.

  C)They let their parents choose the song and end up with, like, Hall & Oates (google it). Except even most of the competition judges aren’t that old.

  In sk
ating, the wrong tune kills your routine. You have to choose music that helps your body open itself to the ice. I know, I know, that’s practically yoga-speak, but something magical happens when you pull off just the right spin with just the right high note. Or can kick your leg high enough in the right spot to get you through a rough patch. So I piece together routines that will allow me to whip my skinny, boney body into a frenzy and blast most of the other competitors out of the (frozen solid) water (yeah, yeah, cheesy—but Winnie always says that we should skate like we know our blades melt the ice). When I’m skating, I don’t have to worry about my body and who might like to kiss me. I don’t worry about who I like, or who I should like. And not a single skater—not Winnie, not any of my skating partners—has noticed that I choreograph different types of dance numbers, different skating “steps,” depending on who my dance partner is. Or maybe they’ve noticed, but think I’m just tweaking the routine to fit the skater. But I’m not, I’m changing the routine to fit me, to fit how much (or little) I’d like the other skater to fit me.

  Truth be true, at skating practice, I let it all hang out there, baby (Austin Powers cracks me up). And not a single one of those straight girls (oh, trust me, they’re all het-girl straight) ever figures out my devious plans. I’m not surprised the other skaters don’t realize that I’m choreographing dance routines just to get some of their hands on my hips, but I’m disappointed Sita hasn’t got my number yet. Sita is crack-the-whip smart, yet she hasn’t put the puzzle together. She hasn’t noticed that my puzzles come with five corner pieces or with too few straight-edged pieces to make the dream-teen picture. That’s because I’ve become an expert at keeping all the different puzzle pieces in separate piles. Separate boxes, even. In separate galaxies.