Rough Patch

by Nicole Markotic

  Which is why I need to talk to Sita right now. She’d explain away my confusion. She’d help me figure me out. In a way, maybe she already has.

  I pull out my phone from inside my slipper and text Surge: “mis yr smyl, yr laf, yr smyl.” Surge wasn’t texting his friends all summer, like I thought, but playing war games on his phone. He’s not so great with words. Now that I’ve written to him once again, maybe he’ll get enthusiastic in return? Except, once he reads my message, he’ll probably try to call me. And when I don’t answer, we’ll go back to blank-blank-blank. I fall asleep sad. I’m so tired of not having anyone to talk to!

  Next day at lunch, Joline’s eating a chorizo-with-anise sandwich. She waves it under my nose.

  “Take a bite, I dare you.” Joline tries to get her sandwich close enough to my face to scrape against my skin.

  “You know anise only smells like licorice,” I inform her. “What are you, in grade two?”

  “Is that supposed to be an insult? Isn’t your sister seven years old? Are you trying to insult me by comparing me to your sister?” I swipe away the sandwich and it slides across the table. Joline just grabs it and keeps munching. She thinks she can make anyone do what she wants: even get me to eat something that smells like licorice. Maybe a mild skin rash will at least get me out of English class?

  Twenty times this week, I’ve started to text Sita about what a humongous pain Joline is, but I stop my fingers before hitting “send.” I’m the one who confessed. And then, yes, we both behaved in un-best-friend ways by not defending the other.

  My phone stays blank all week. No texts from Sita and none from Surge. My first whirlwind romance: two days of smooching plus a downward slope of dwindling texting.

  When I was twelve, Sita’s family took me to Banff for a long weekend (no exams in sight, and all assignments already handed in). All the sisters came, even Amila and Valia, who’d both moved to Vancouver but flew back just to cram into a car with parents and siblings (and one sibling friend) in the middle of February. Skiing that powdered snow felt like skating an avalanche. Sita and I twirled and swirled past the bendy poles and pristine moguls like our home had always been these slopes. For two days. On the third morning, I got up too early and went for a skate while everyone else slept. By breakfast, I’d improved my double Loop jump even though the only rink around was a rinky-dink outdoor one. Sita’s family couldn’t get me to ski at all that final day. I was done.

  And now, it seems, Surge is done with me. “Sounds like you miss his lips more than you miss him,” I can hear Sita say in my head. Even when she’s not here, she’s here. The thing is, I want to tell Sita, kissing Surge didn’t make me want to kiss boys more or make me want to kiss girls less. I adored kissing him, but those kisses didn’t solve all my problems. I just get to be more confused.

  And I get to be confused without my best friend helping me sort things out. Or at least offering sarcastic snippets as I’m muddling through the sorting.

  IDJIT ALERT: TEEN ALIENATES ALMOST EVERYONE SHE CARES FOR ENTIRELY BECAUSE SHE ACTS OUT OF FEAR THAT SHE MIGHT ALIENATE ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE SHE CARES FOR!

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Some girl I don’t recognize is goofing around with Sam when I get home on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving. Without Sita to walk with, I’m home in record time. And then I see this stranger sitting on our front porch, on this luscious Chinook afternoon, jacket slung over her arm, telling jokes to Sam.

  “Knock-knock.”

  “Who’s there?

  “Delay.”

  “Delay who?”

  “Adelay-de-hoo!”

  “Knock-knock.”

  “Who’s there?

  “Socks.”

  “Socks who?”

  “Socks to be you!”

  “Knock-knock.”

  “Who’s there?”

  “A monster.”

  “A monster who?”

  “Quick! Run for your life!”

  Most of the jokes aren’t even funny. Most don’t even make sense. But Sammie loves jokes that don’t make sense. Who is this girl who can make Sam so happy?

  Sammie tells me that her school bus blew a cap or something, and the driver commandeered some high school buses to take a few extra elementary kids each. The driver of this one tried to take Sam right to our house, but the bus couldn’t get a good enough grip to stop on the hill, so had to go around the corner before stopping. The driver wouldn’t let her get off by herself when he couldn’t watch her go straight to our house. And he wouldn’t leave the rest of the kids alone on the bus. They might have been there for hours had this high school girl not stepped up and said they were close to her stop anyway and she’d walk Sammie to the house.

  Sam introduces me, the way she usually does: “This is my sister, Keira, and she’s an Ice Capades star.” I bow because, really, what else are you going to do with an intro like that?

  “And this is Jaaaaaaaaye.”

  “Jay?” I’m not sure why Sam’s drawing out the name, trying to figure out what it is she wants me to pay attention to.

  Sammie doesn’t let me swing in the wind for long. “No, Jane,” she corrects me, “but with a ‘y’—you know, Jaaaaaaaayne.”

  I don’t know, but I can see Sammie wants me to somehow pronounce it with the correct spelling. I stick out my hand. “Jaynee? Nice to meet you.” My hand hangs around in the air on its own for a while before she takes it.

  Her smile is kinda cheerful and sad at the same time. “That’s what my brother calls me, too. He’ll be here soon,” she says, as if I’d asked how long she was going to litter our front porch with her butt.

  “You said you lived near this stop,” Sammie pipes up, accusingly. Nothing gets by that kid, I tell you.

  “Yeah?” Jayne asks. “Are you sure?” And when Sam nods, Jayne slowly crosses her arms over her chest and squishes her lips to the left side of her face. “Guess I lied then,” she says, as if she herself is just working out the details. “Guess I had my suspicions that there was another person out there in the universe who couldn’t get enough knock-knock jokes, so I lied to escape the travelling orange prison.” She purses her lips and curves them to the right side of her face.

  “Oh my god, those were jokes? You were trying to be funny?” Sam slaps a palm against her wheelchair like the armrest is a substitute forehead, and she’s in the sad position of breaking the news to poor Jayne that her sense of humour is beneath even a seven-year-old.

  At that, the sadness falls away, leaving only the cheerful part of Jayne’s smile, and she sits back down on the cold cement again. “So, I can wait for my brother to pick me up, even though he has to come from way waaaaaay across town?” She’s facing Sam, but I get the feeling her words are aimed at me. She’s not wearing makeup, and her hair is pulled back into a ponytail. Plain Jane, I think.

  “No problemo,” I tell her. “Does he really have to come far? Doesn’t your school have more buses?” Her smile shoots down a few octaves again.

  “I go to Backstrom,” she says as if only to Sam, “same as you. We don’t have any classes together, but I sat behind you at the first week’s assembly. Your sweater dropped off the chair, and I handed it back to you. You said I was your hero.”

  Her words make a light dance on my spine, although I barely remember that; I mean, I don’t remember her, but she remembers me. There I was, a newbie to high school, feeling pretty invisible, but she saw me.

  “What time do you have lunch period?” I ask, and from her Chinook smile I know I’ve landed this jump on just the right edge of my blade: clean and still moving. Maybe we can sit together? Maybe her friends can join my friends (if you can count Joline in that category), and soon we’ll be a big pack of kids who rule grade ten and ...

  And then her brother drives up in a Trans Am (I swear) wearing a muscle shirt and backward baseball cap. It’s not that warm any more, but he doesn’t have any kind of winter gear on and even has the window rolled down with a bare elbow hanging o
ut. And he doesn’t honk and start to drive away before she’s even reached the door. He gets out, and he smiles at me when Jayne introduces us. Then he shakes Sam’s hand likes she’s a grownup. Then he punches Jayne on the shoulder—lightly!—and asks if she’s ready. But not impatient-like. He’s asking, because if she isn’t ready, he’ll wait, like he’s her friend or something. I wish Tyler were around to see this. Then I’m glad he’s not. Jayne introduces her brother as James, but she calls him Jamie. He calls her Jaynie. Jamie and Jaynie—cute. He looks too tough for any girl to call him such a sissy name, but he lets Jayne call him that.

  When they’re in his car, he waits for her to buckle up before he drives off. He says something to her and she nods, unrolling her window. He doesn’t blast the tunes as soon as he’s turned on the ignition. I’m staring like they’re animals in a zoo. An older brother and younger sister who get along, who like each other.

  “Knock-knock!” Jayne yells out the window as James’s car pulls away, and she waves to both of us.

  “Who’s there? Who’s there?!” Sammie screams at the departing car.

  “We are, Sam,” I tell her. “We’re hanging around our front yard, about to go through to the other side.” And Sam doesn’t even roll her eyes. She likes my answer well enough to roll up the ramp to the door.

  “Yeah? Well, I’m in between outside and inside. You don’t know which way I’m going to go, do you?”

  Does my little sister know I like girls? Does she know I like this girl? Do I like this girl? I think about it. And what her hair might look like when it’s not in a ponytail.

  Sita’s going to go haywire when she hears this, I think. Then I think: drat. And then I think: shit on a stick. By the time I shut the front door behind me, I don’t care any more who’s right and who’s not. I need my best friend. For shite’s sake.

  Sammie lets the door slam into my shoulder as she pushes into the foyer. I yank my boots off but don’t follow her into the living room. Not just yet. Instead, I pull out my phone to text Sita. Enough’s enough. “u r gr8. i am duh. sooo SRRY! i MSS U!”

  My thumb pauses in the air above “send.” Do I really want to broadcast a full apology to her? On the one hand, there’s no point being only half-way contrite. I want Sita back, even if she doesn’t seem to miss me. On the other hand, how come she can let years and years of friendship just drop away without a second thought? Probably too busy with Daz’s tongue down her throat. Not fair, but I now know how distracting a good kissing session can be. Maybe as soon as we get back together, we’ll have a world of catching up, and me liking girls will be the least of our worries—like before, when mostly what we talked about was boy-related. I straighten up and press “send”—and the Mom Police snatches my cellphone out of my hand. I’ve been standing in the hallway, texting. The hallway! Months and months of faultless covert operations, and I blow it in broad daylight!

  She’s caught me with a cellphone that I’m not authorized to own. She confiscates the phone. She screams a lot. I’m grounded for two weeks, like I’m a kid or something! And I can’t even tell Sita about it till the next day.

  The next day, we don’t have a single class together. Sita avoids the entire lunch room, not just our table, and she’s in rehearsal right after school. Even if she calls the house tonight, I won’t be allowed to talk to her. Mom hasn’t noticed that my friendship life has all but evaporated. She’s only interested in punishment and penalty. But when did she ever, specifically, say: “No cellphones allowed!”? She didn’t, but I’m smart enough not to point that out. Not yet, anyway. Mom slams a lot of pots around while making supper. After dinner, I clean up by myself while Sammie and Tyler watch sitcoms in the living room.

  Thing is, even before Mom found the phone, the parentals acted like they didn’t trust me. I’m not allowed to be out late, not allowed to go to mixed parties, I can only go to a friend’s house in the evening if they know where it is and whose parents will be around and if Sita’s also going (because, what, Sita is a good chaperone? Please!). And if I’m ever late getting home, I don’t get to go to that friend’s place again. Ever. Which explains why I don’t have so many close friends, right? That and having to head home even before Cinderella time, just in case the bus gets a flat or there’s a fender-bender causing a traffic jam on the way home.

  “When you grow up and have to keep a job, getting in late, even with an excellent excuse, doesn’t cut it, missy,” my father told me a week ago when I pleaded my case for being given a later curfew. “Missy,” like he’d forgotten my name in the heat of his lecture.

  And now the Mom Police catches me cell-handed. All my lif-elines, disappearing one by miserable one.

  IDJIT ALERT: AFTER GETTING HOLD OF A CELLPHONE WITHOUT PARENTS BEING THE WISER, SHE ACTUALLY TEXTS AN APOLOGY TO SITA WHILE STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF ENEMY TERRITORY, BLITHELY WAVING CELLPHONE IN PLAIN SIGHT!

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The next day, a dentist cancels my shift, so I don’t even have the distraction of cleaning tooth crap to take my mind off my miserable life. Just home, and more homework.

  Except, when I get close to the house, I hear:

  “Knock-knock.”

  “Who’s there?

  “Anita.”

  “Anita who?”

  “Ah-need-ta stop telling knock-knock jokes!”

  We all hang around on the doorstep till the last of the Chinook whispers away. One meeting and I’m smitten. Yeah, terrible word, but that’s how I feel: like the sight of her just smited my heart, right on the spot.

  So now what? Do I take her hand? Do I whip out a laminated nametag declaring my sexual identity and pin it suggestively on my chest? Ha. I’m unsure how to get something going when I like someone. Do things always start with a kiss? How weird would it be to reach out and hold her hand? What if she’s not a lesbian? Or (way worse), what if she is, but just isn’t into me? I lean in a bit so my shoulder brushes against hers. Jayne’s jacket smells a bit like patchouli.

  Sammie gives up on us when the knock-knocks dwindle and rolls in to set the table before Mom gets home (huh, when did that kid ever volunteer for housework?). This leaves me carrying the conversation. I can’t ask anything too personal. I looked for her in school today, but no sightings. Was I relieved or frustrated? Something in between. My turn to speak.

  “Um, so why’d your parents give you such an unusual spelling of your name?” Brilliant opening, Keira.

  But she doesn’t retreat from my question, just answers, “On my birth certificate it’s just spelled ‘J-A-N-E,’ but I added the ‘y’ in grade seven, when I became a feminist.” Either she catches the confused look on my face, or she’s used to explaining this. “You know, like ‘women’ spelled ‘w-y-m-y-n’?”

  “Did they change the official spelling?”

  She laughs, “No. Way back in the 1970s, feminists and lesbians started spelling it that way so the word wouldn’t be an off-shoot of the word ‘men.’” She does the lip-squint thing. “I dunno, I heard about that and just wanted to join that fray. You think I’m weird, right?” She blows her hair out of her eyes, cute bottom lip curled around cuter upper lip.

  “Weird for being a feminist in grade seven? Or weird for knowing feminist and lesbian spellings?”

  “You know, just, weird.” And she means it. Like she’s worried her overpowering difference will be too much for me. This before she hears about my lust for skating. But is this too much for me?

  Today’s only the third time we’ve ever talked, including the sweater conversation. Until she said the word lesbian, I didn’t know that she was one. And I still don’t, not for sure, especially since I haven’t seen her hang with any of the “out” gay kids at school. I really don’t know if she likes me or not. But I do, suddenly, know that I like her—I like the lip-squints, how she really looks at Sam when they’re joking around, the thoughtful way she tries to answer all my dull questions, and even her glossy ponytail.

  For once, I know something ab
out myself: I like a girl. This girl.

  The sun’s trying, but the Chinook has blown out of our lives again. Our butts are getting iced from sitting on the cement steps, but I don’t invite her into the house in case she says no. I don’t want us to even move. If I did, even if I kept talking while standing beside her, she’d disappear into her brother’s car or into the frozen air. Instead, I chat mindlessly about her junior high name change.

  “So, there you were, twelve years old, and you just started spelling your name differently? How did you explain that to your parents? How’d you get away with it?”

  “Oh, that stuff is dead easy,” she answers with a slow sweep of her arm. “At the time, my dad and mum just thought I was going through a phase.” And then we both crack up, cuz, really, what the hell is it with parents and phases?

  “So, you don’t mind getting into trouble?” She doesn’t look like the kind of radical who goes against her parents’ wishes, but who knows with this girl?

  “Nah,” she shifts her bum a bit on the stair. Is she trying to sit closer to me, or is she just arctic cold? “Easier to just do it than to worry.”

  Now I have to wonder if she’s talking about the name-change or the other, bigger, topic? Back when I first started grade seven, I remember staring at girls’ boobs, and then getting worried that someone would catch me staring at girls’ boobs. But mostly I thought it was cuz I didn’t have any. I still don’t have much in that area, but these days I know I’m not just staring out of envy.

  “It?” I manage, not sure what we’re talking about any more.

  “Parents. It’s way easier to get forgiveness than permission.” And I realize she’s still in the How-to-Break-the-Rules conversation. Not coming out of any closet that I can see. Jayne gets up and starts to walk to the curb to wait for James. “I made every teacher at school spell my name the new way. They didn’t much care, as long as I did my homework. By the time report cards came out, it was already changed in the school office. Maybe my parents thought it was a typo, and then later they couldn’t argue that they should have changed it back earlier. Or maybe they liked it. You know, adds character.”