“Okay, it wasn’t just her vowels,” I add. “She was, I don’t know, sexy.” When I say that word, I avoid looking at Sita. It’s all or nothing right now. But what if Sita blurted out that question because she wants me to deny it? Still, I plunge further into my story. “Dianne treated us like we were as grownup as she was. Or like she was still a teenager like us.”
“Grownups get in trouble if they kiss teenagers.” Sita doesn’t even sound sarcastic when she says that, just worried. She’s leaning back against the rock, huddled against the now-cool winds. Maybe huddled against where my story’s going?
“No, wait—listen.” I explain that Dianne had an awesome dyke hairdo, wore the most adorable ranger shorts ever, never wore lipstick, and smiled at me way more than she did at Surge. “And Dianne also only had till the end of summer, same as me. She could only work in Canada for a year, on exchange. Come the end of September, she was going back to Perth.”
Go on, finish the story, Sita’s hand wave implores me. I take a huge breath. All or nothing.
“Okay, so I figured she might kiss me if she knew I liked her, since we both were going to be on opposite ends of the globe pretty soon.”
Sita squishes her paper cup, and actually tosses it into a regular garbage bin. Uh-oh! I grab my heart back from the tip of one of the mountains on the horizon and stuff it fast inside my jacket. “Then, suddenly, it’s our last day. It was now or never, I thought, if anything could happen with Dianne.”
“Let me guess,” says Sita. “You’re going to gross me out telling me all about kissing someone who’s, like, practically a teacher?”
“No,” I admit. “I didn’t kiss her. I wanted to. But I ended up kissing Surge instead. I didn’t mean to. I mean, I was going to ask him about what he thought about Dianne.” And maybe Surge saw me looking at him. Maybe—like me—he just figured that day was the last one we had left.
We’d been walking around, I tell Sita, and I thought he’d been quite a few feet to my left. I hadn’t thought, because without coming any closer, he was holding my hips, pressing his vanilla lips against my neck. And, in spite of my total shock—a boy is trying to kiss me! a boy is kissing me!—I leaned down, my lips parted and softened, and—
“And? And?!” For once, I’m the one with details and Sita’s the one whose job it is to pry those details out of me.
“And we kissed. And kept kissing. And walking. Except we had to stop doing the one to do the other.” The boulder’s exterior feels rough against my shoulders, comfortably bumpy and coarse. “We tried walking and kissing, but I tripped. So we mostly held hands, with about seventy-five kissing breaks before we got back to the main office.” I should have told Sita this story before. She’s jumping up slightly onto her toes (though that may have been from the chill), and clapping her hands (again, might have been—).
“You kissed a boy? You really kissed a boy!” She sounds so excited and happy for me, I don’t need to jump around to keep warm. “So you don’t like girls? You’re normal, right? Except, like, maybe just a late bloomer?”
I shouldn’t have told Sita this story. Or told it in a different way. Her response is exactly why I haven’t said anything before today. My heart goes from racing along the skyline with the Chinook winds to thudding against the backdrop of the mountains. I could just say to her: yes, I like boys. It would be true. And Sita and I would be back to our usual rapport. Except she’s the one who tried to boot me out of my miniscule closet-box, and now I’m just gonna let her cram me back in? Where’s that explanatory nametag when I need it?
“It was just kissing,” I tell her. “Surge was—”
“Wow,” Sita exhales this word. Finally, something about my Smokey-the-Bear summer is worth listening to.
“I really liked kissing Surge, Sita,” I tell her. “I really did.” Sita nods encouragingly. “But I was kinda sad too, because I was also thinking about what it would have been like to kiss Dianne.” Yes, truth be true, while he was kissing me. “And I knew that I’d never get a chance to kiss her, and maybe not kiss any girl, if some boy has his tongue down my throat.”
Maybe I shouldn’t be so crude. Maybe I should try to make daydreaming about a girl a bit more, well, daydreamy. But if Sita is going to be mad at me, it may as well be for the whole hog, the stuffed swine, the full-blown boar.
After years and years of not telling my best friend about my kissing wishes, I now wish to tell Sita absolutely everything. I’ve been in one box for too long. And not just the either/or, but the in-between, too. All or ...
“... nothing! Absolutely nothing would make me kiss a girl.” She folds her arms in front of her chest, as if protecting her breasts from me.
Yipes, is Sita getting nervous that my confession puts her in danger of unwanted lust from me? “Sita, you don’t think that I like you?” I think how to best reassure her. “I would never—I mean, you’re my friend, I don’t want ...”
“Look, K,” Sita pouts. “Do you really ever think about kissing me? Do you? Fuck a duck!” As if kissing hypothetical Dianne is okay, as long as there’s a Surge in the punchline. As long as Sita doesn’t have to feel a lesbo-kiss on her own lips.
My face gets very red then and my hands start to sweat, even though I took my mitts off at lunch and forgot them in my locker. “Fuck a duck,” for some reason, sounds so mean.
“NO!” I yell at her. I yell it so loud everyone back in the coffee shop can hear me. So loud that all the birds left in the city rise up as one and choose migration that very second. “You don’t even ... No!”
“Stop yelling!” she yells. “Do you think I’m like you?” she whispers angrily, even though no one else is around. “You think I should be kissing girls?” Oh no. All I need to do is say something. Anything. My brain begs my mouth to glide.
Instead, my legs pay heed. I push off from the rock and I run.
This little queer girl runs alllllll the way home.
IDJIT ALERT: SHE FINALLY CONFESSES HER DEEP, SECRET SELF TO HER BEST FRIEND, AND THEN BLOWS THE LANDING.
CHAPTER TWELVE
What I’d heard Sita say was, “Do you want to kiss me?” but maybe she said, “Do you want to kiss me?” I don’t know what I was thinking, telling my boy-crazy best friend that I (sometimes) like girls.
The closet may be cramped, but it’s not like anyone else is scrunched in here with me. At nearly sixteen, I haven’t done more than kiss, so I can last a few more years without confession, yes? Once Sita reaches university, she’ll hang out with loads of gay drama boys and funky lez-chique girls, and my problems will seem laughable. Then, when I’m legal, I’ll head to some big, bad lezzie bar downtown. By telling Sita now, I’ve forced myself into a very lonely high school box. No lunch buddy (yeah, like Amanda or Joline will stay loyal to a freak), no in-between-classes waves, no Friday afternoon dates. Uh-oh, maybe the fact that I call them “dates” is also freaking Sita out. Maybe she thinks that I think ...
No phone call from Sita during dinner, which she knows drives my mom batty, but which she also knows is the best time to catch me in a semi-static state. For once, I don’t scarf down everything in sight, but Mom doesn’t notice my uneaten food at the end of the meal. Even Sammie’s distracted by the Explorer Passport she made in art class, with a page for every campground we’ll visit next summer. I start to clear the table without being asked, in case I need to deke out for a quick meet-n-greet with Sita before bedtime. Nada. And no text messages on Saturday. Or Sunday.
I absolutely, truly, ridiculously miss texting with Sita. Back in the summer, she may not have wanted to hear much news about a herd of bison that broke through a containment fence, or the highest fire hazard warning in eleven years, but she was excellent at sending me juicy zingers: “True story: Talia Sitkins went on a date with a cop and she’s only fifteen! Her parents grounded her and his boss grounded him!” And: “Sliced my index finger helping my dad cook elaborate lamb and chickpea meal. Hospital and seven stitches. Here’s a pic of the wound bef
ore repair. Here’s an after pic.” Loved the news and was très grateful that my phone couldn’t handle photos! And: “When, when, when r u back? Calgary is dull. I am dull. Save me before I befriend Talia Sitkins! that is how desperate I am ...” You gotta love a friend who lets you know you’re missed!
Goes without saying that my phone’s on permanent silent mode, so it never rings, beeps, or in any way tells me I’ve got mail. Doesn’t matter: I check my messages every 4.6 seconds at home. All I need is a buffer like a sweater or a dinner napkin or the couch, and the parents don’t notice me punch in the letters. It’s beautiful. Of course, I can’t ever call people back, so my friends have to accept the “I don’t really have a cellphone, but I’ll text you anyway” sitch. Luckily, most kids my age don’t do much with their phones besides text. But Surge kept calling.
That first week, I barely missed him, though that may have been cuz I’d barely thought about him in any way before the kiss. Was Surge my boyfriend? I didn’t know, and I sure wasn’t going to ask him. Eventually, I’d ask Sita. And once I told her about this new boy in my life, she’d use her wisdom gained from listening in on her sisters’ phone calls to steer me in the right direction.
Except, there was that part of me that knew (feared?) just how happy she’d be about this boyfriend business. So for weeks I let Sita talk about Luscious Lucien and Tony Baloney and Dreamy Daz. I kept Surge as a party surprise, there to bring out whenever I needed to establish my true het-girl-ness. Except that plan really backfired. Mega-failure.
Sita’s the one who tells me that I like girls, and I bring the Surge story out as proof of my girl-attraction? And then I go and get mad at her for not understanding stuff that I don’t even have the first clue about?
HET-GIRL ALERT: MISSES TEXTING WITH THE BOY, EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVEN’T EXACTLY WRITTEN TO EACH OTHER A LOT.
LESBO ALERT: NOTICES THAT SHE DOESN’T HAVE A LOT TO SAY TO THE BOY, AND FEARS YUMMY KISSING IS NOT ENOUGH.
IDJIT ALERT: THINKS THAT NOT BEING FULLY ENAMOURED WITH HER BOYFRIEND (BOYFRIEND? I HAVE A BOYFRIEND?) MEANS SHE MIGHT BE A LESBIAN.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mom does this thing right at the beginning and end of every yoga workout. Her yoga guru teaches that people matter to other people, even when we haven’t all met each other. I don’t get how twisting your foot over your head is the path toward Peace on Earth, but Mom eats this stuff up. She even does hand actions to accompany the words.
Hands to forehead: “passionate thought.” Hands to mouth: “passionate speech.” Hands to chest: “passionate heart.” Mom recites this chant for weeks. Sometimes when she gets home from work, sometimes in the evening when Dad’s at work. And sometimes on the weekends just before I fly off to skating practice. I think of telling Winnie about the chant, but she’s not a hippie type. Then again, neither is my mom. Or she didn’t used to be, anyway. Who knew Mom had passion anywhere, let alone in her heart?
For one minute, for sixty desperate seconds, I consider telling Mom about my falling out with Sita. I walk in the door expecting a lecture about how Mom’s sick of me being late for every Friday supper. Again. Instead, she’s pushed aside the coffee table covered with Sammie’s 1,000-piece snowflake puzzle and is down on her mat, deep into—you guessed it—the Plow pose. I stand in the hall, wondering if I should interrupt. Then I hear the chant.
Hands to forehead: “compassionate thought.” Hands to mouth: “compassionate speech.” Hands to chest: “compassionate heart.” COMpassionate. She’s not celebrating passion, the chant’s all about respecting the masses out there. Funny how empathy never begins at home. If I tell her Sita and I had a big blow-out, she’ll only say that Sita and I are going through a rough patch. And I’m certainly not ready to tell her a blow-out about what. So I skip the heart-to-heart, set the table in dead silence, listen to Sam describe the stamps she’ll create for future campground passports, and go to sleep mad. And sad and empty and lonely. Only Sita would understand how I feel.
My parents married young, real young, like, right-out-of-high-school young. You think having “youthful” parents is a good thing? Let me correct you on that one: I had to bargain like crazy to get my parents to allow me to work part-time—like being a teenager and wanting cash is a sin. For my parents, it’s practically a felony. They don’t want me getting stuck in what they call a dead-end job.
That’s how my mother thinks, anyway, about being “just” a secretary. She’s senior secretary at an insurance firm, so she has to be there before everyone else, make sure the boardrooms are set up, new flowers have been ordered, that the appointments book is updated, blah, blah, blah. I can see why she’s bored, but instead of trying to get me to university, why doesn’t she just go back to school herself?
My dad likes his job. Right after their honeymoon, Dad took a bartending course and had no problem finding part-time work right away. A couple of years after they married, he got a full-time bartending position at a skanky bar downtown. Since then, he’s worked his way up to a swanky hotel. “Oil execs or party boys, come the end of the day, they all want to wet their whistle.” Means he works late, works every weekend, but he gets paid well, and gets pretty amazing tips.
Mom thinks being a secretary and bartender isn’t swank enough. But why does she care? It’s not like she’s into fancy clothes or gadgets or going out a lot. I get that kids cost a lot, especially extras like Sammie’s bath supports or my competition fees. But she’s always telling Dad that he should take a course, upgrade. What’s he supposed to do, only serve champagne and not beer?
We usually go through our Sunday morning chores silently, but I’ve barely spoken to anyone in my family since Friday.
“So how come secretary school was good enough for you?” I demand of Mom. Not fair, as she’s pretty sensitive about not having gotten a “higher” education. I’m so sick of being on the rotten end of fights. And always losing. I guess I’m picking a fight because I’m so mad that Sita’s abandoned me. Mom should treat me like I know what I’m doing with my life. Even if I asked nicely about her hopes and dreams, she wouldn’t talk to me like I’m a person, only a daughter. When we do talk, she usually gives me a lecture about the opportunities I’ll get from a solid education: the chances to see other parts of the world and how I should not just think about a job, but plan for a career, etc. But this time, she just answers my question. Sort of.
“Maybe it wasn’t good enough for me,” she replies, quite softly.
I groan because she’s trying to manipulate me through pity. She puts a finger to her lips. We have to be quiet while cleaning the house because of Dad’s late shift. I should tell her about Sita. Some of it. But I’m just too weary for a lecture right now. And if we wake Dad, he’ll be grumpy all day.
Sunday mornings I scrub the kitchen floor, dust the living room, and straighten my and Sam’s bedroom. Actually, Sam’s supposed to straighten our room, but I usually sneak in and pick up anything from the floor, so all Sam has to do is roll around shoving jeans and T-shirts into waist-high drawers. She’s not a total slob, but she does amass loads of books and crayons and bungee cords. Mom also makes me wash all the dishes that have piled up over the weekend. Why can’t we get a dishwasher?
This afternoon, I have skating practice. And the whole family will share a meal tonight, even Tyler, because Sunday evening is the only day and time nobody works or has try-outs or football practice or fund-raising events or a game. Or friends, apparently.
Tyler doesn’t have to wash dishes or clean under furniture. Come noon, he vacuums the carpets, plus his bedroom and my parents.’ Then he’s free.
Sam has to clean the bathroom sink and change the towels.
Last night, Dad’s shift ended at four in the morning. Mom explains that the volleyball team from the University of Calgary came in to celebrate a win and stayed way past last-call. Dad’s been on this topsy-turvy schedule since I was a kid. Which means we all have to tip-toe around most mornings, but it also means he’s usually out l
ater than anyone in the world, so he isn’t the one enforcing my strict curfew.
By next semester, Tyler will have bags full of sports scholarships, if he doesn’t already.
Thing is, there’s no point in crying “unfair” to parents. I learned that when Tyler not only stole my purple flying dinosaur but dissected it. When I “dissected” his soccer shirt in retaliation, he didn’t even cry, just handed the shredded jersey to Mom.
“Clothes are not toys, Keira,” she told me when I explained about my stuffed animal. “Tyler’s punishment is losing those toys, too.”
“But he wrecked my slinky and my dinosaur—it’s not fair,” I wailed.
“No, life isn’t very often fair,” she answered. How’s that for comforting a five-year-old? Tyler’s had it easy ever since. He knows he won’t get shite for doing shite. But I have learned to adapt. I have learned to manipulate the manipulators. Since life ain’t fair, you have to be sharp. You have to listen to parents. I don’t mean obey them, I mean listen to the kind of language they use against you. Words are their tools, but you can steal them and use them for good instead of evil.
LESBO ALERT: MOURNS MORE FOR THE LOSS OF HER GIRL FRIENDSHIP THAN WHATEVER IT WAS SHE HAD WITH THE BOY.
HET-GIRL ALERT: MOURNS MORE FOR THE LOSS OF HER GIRL FRIENDSHIP THAN WHATEVER IT WAS SHE HAD WITH THE BOY.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
You’d think kissing a boy, possibly having a boyfriend, and telling your best friend about girl-boy details wouldn’t lead to a total breakdown of the friendship, would you? Wrong. Today’s Thursday. Sita and I have now gone almost a week with no phone calls, no texts, not a single lunch together.
Rough Patch Page 9