North Fork

by Wayne M. Johnston

  My dad’s house is in the crummy part of Burlington, east of the tracks and south of what used to be the town before all the malls went in on Old 99. They talked about getting me enrolled at the high school here to finish the year, but since there are only a few days of school left, the teacher lady from Juvie said she would keep working with me to get the assignments done from my old school and turn in my work there.

  If I could go away, I would. I fantasize about disappearing to Mexico more than ever now. I could just disappear, like Kristen did. Maybe I’d end up dead, and maybe I wouldn’t. I don’t have any money and don’t speak Spanish. Maybe, if I really wanted to, I could pull it off, but I’d have to steal first. I could just take off hitching, or get a bus ticket to some place far away. I’m not eighteen and without ID that says I am, it would be hard to find a job.

  But if I run I look guilty for sure. There’s a court date coming up from the drug charge and if I miss it, I’m in more trouble. For now, I’m just waiting until I can’t take it anymore, or someone finds out what really happened. The best thing would be to go live with someone who didn’t think I was a criminal, someone far away where I could go to stores, walk around in public, get a job, go to school. But no one wants me. No one wants to be associated with me, not even my sister. Staying with her in Seattle would be way better than being here, only she doesn’t have room and it would complicate her life. We’re not that close, I mean, for me to ask her to make sacrifices.

  I try to pass the time. Sometimes I use school work as a distraction, just like when I was inside, and I still have my imagination. I read some and watch a lot of TV, and when nothing else works, I either get high on the old man’s vodka or I smoke a little. At night I walk.

  The worst thing about being let out was totally unexpected. Juvie has this strange feel, like it’s on a different planet or exists in a dream. Even though I could now, I don’t go out in public and I haven’t gone back to the river. I avoid familiar places. But being out, having a phone in the house that rings sometimes, even if it is just someone trying to sell something, and being out on the road at night, which I do to keep from going totally loony, brings it home that Kristen is really gone. All the time I was in there, without even thinking about it, I assumed that if I got out, the world would get back to normal.

  But it hasn’t.

  Natalie

  That little weasel is out of jail. Can you believe it? They just let him out to walk around free and plot another perverted murder. At least now everyone knows about him and it’s not so likely that anyone will be suckered into being alone with him the way Kristen was. We found out his dad’s address. One of Kristen’s Honor Society friends who’s a TA looked it up in the school records. I heard some kids at school talking about egging the house this weekend. I’d go with them in a minute, but Brad is taking me to Seattle.

  School is almost over and I’ll be a senior. Less than two weeks to go. It’s really hectic, especially Smith’s class. He assigns all this stuff, like English is the only class we have. I also got a good summer job in the port office. I’ll answer the phone and collect moorage money from people for their yachts. It pays ten dollars an hour, so I could make enough over the summer to buy a cheap car. Trish says she thinks she can afford insurance on the Granada now, so I can be added to the policy. I’m pretty excited about it. It’s part of why I made the decision I did.

  I haven’t told him, so it will be a big surprise for Brad. I hope he likes it. It’s a huge change for me and I’m pretty nervous about it, but I have an appointment after school today to get my hair cut and dyed back to my natural color. I can’t believe I’m doing it. Weird hair has been my trademark since middle school. It’s what people expect from me. Maybe it’s part of what Brad likes about me and he’ll be mad that I changed it, but it was part of the deal for the job. Our relationship shouldn’t be about hair anyway.

  I was lucky to get the interview. A lot of people applied, but I got some teachers to write letters. Smith wrote a really good one. I heard that he doesn’t think Corey did it. I don’t blame him too much and I still like him. Teachers are kind of like ministers. It’s their job to be nice, even to slime balls.

  It was pretty easy to talk to them at the port and I know I can do a good job. So I’m sitting there in the office answering their questions, the port manager and the lady who runs the office, and it feels pretty good. They seem to like me okay, and I can tell it’s winding down, when the guy looks me in the eye and says, “How important is your hair?”

  And I had to decide in that instant, because I could tell from the way he asked that I probably wouldn’t get the job with maroon hair. So I said, “I’m planning to change it back to its original color. It’s kind of brown. This color is just a phase I’ve been going through, to be different. I guess I’ve outgrown it.”

  So they gave me the job and I have to go through with the big change. It took a while, but I found a picture of myself with my natural hair color to take to the beauty shop. It’s funny. While I was looking, I found all these pictures of Kristen and me in the drawer. We look so different. I mean she’s all girly and preppy and I’m all punk and rebellious-looking. She’s been gone for two months and I just keep missing her more. The thing I heard is that when people die, sometimes the people closest to them start acting like them. Like their brothers or sisters take on some of their personality traits to fill in the empty spot they left. Maybe that’s why I’m changing my hair. I bought some new clothes the other day too, including something to wear to the wedding. It was like she was with me, helping me choose, and what I bought is a lot more normal-looking than what I usually wear.

  Brad may not recognize me on Saturday.

  Kristen

  The blinds were open because I like the light. My bedroom window faces the street and I was expecting him. Whenever I heard a car, I looked to see if it was him. I’d been seeing a lot of him. When we were with other people, he made jokes about me being his long-lost niece. Grant told me I made him happy. I filled a gap in his life that he hadn’t even known was there. It was great. It was like the poverty part was gone from my pretend vacation.

  He took me back to the museum. It felt like being there with an uncle or a teacher. He knows a lot about Native American and natural history. Most of the time, that’s the way it was, like being on a family outing but without all the tension I would feel when I was with Bonnie and Sterling. He treated me like I was his favorite daughter. I got his full attention. We also went to the Butchart Gardens like he promised, even though the roses weren’t blooming yet. I love that sunken part that was once a rock quarry.

  Time with him passed quickly and I grew more comfortable with him, and it was easy to say yes when he suggested doing something. I wouldn’t have given it much thought except for what happened after the bike ride with Leigh.

  My spending an afternoon with Leigh wasn’t even a real date. I hadn’t talked to him for quite a while, but one day when we were having a slow afternoon, he asked how my bike was working now, and if I ever rode on trails. I hadn’t, of course. I didn’t think I wanted anything to do with trails from what I’d seen of those guys in their football armor at Whistler and the stories I heard from some of the guys at school who ride like that.

  “The place I’m thinking about is different,” Leigh said. “The trail we would go on is really flat and wide, more like a logging road.”

  So I went with him. He let me use an old mountain bike that he kept for riding on the street. It didn’t have shock absorbers, but the tires were wide and worked better on gravel than the skinny tires on my bike would have. It was nice to get off of city streets. Even though he is quite a bit older than me and is mature enough to be running the restaurant, he has this young attitude. He likes mountain biking and rock climbing and travels around the world with his buddies to do those things. He said he doesn’t want to worry about a career yet or about having to settle down, because he doesn’t know what the career would be, and he’s havin
g a lot of fun. He tried college, but he just couldn’t get into it, so now he’s working for his dad, saving up money for another trip.

  We had fun riding and talking. It was all very innocent. It would have just been another good day in my great adventure and part of what made it harder and harder to think about going back, except for what happened when he dropped me off. I noticed the white SUV right away when we turned onto my street. It was parked across from the house. We had stopped to eat on the way back and Leigh was meeting friends at a pub, so he just dropped me off and kept going. Grant stayed in the car until he was gone.

  “Where have you been?”

  His voice had an edge that made me think of Sterling. The first thought that came to mind was that I shouldn’t have to tell him. So I answered, “On a date.”

  “So, who’s the lucky guy? Do I get to meet him?”

  “It was no big deal. We went on a bike ride. I know him from work. He’s my boss.”

  “He looks young to be your boss.”

  “He’s still kind of a kid, like me, but he’s a good boss. We had a good time.”

  “When you weren’t here, I got worried. I even stopped by the restaurant.”

  Then he changed the subject. It was instant and complete.

  “I’ve got tickets to a show tomorrow night. It’s a rare opportunity for us. A dance troupe from New York at the Royal Theater. I really want you to see this. It’s quite special. We can go to dinner first.” He seemed pretty excited about it.

  I agreed to go with him, but then I began to have doubts. I had nothing to wear and he offered to take me shopping, but I decided to decline his offer. It’s funny how some little thing, a detail, can change the way you see something. The exchange of a few words and a particular tone of voice and my view of Grant had changed. He had been good to me and I didn’t want to hurt him, but in spite of his insistence that we were just friends, it was clear now that he was courting me, even though he hadn’t tried to kiss me romantically or tried anything else. He was jealous of Leigh.

  In spite of all the favorite-niece-and-friend talk, he treated me like we were dating. He opened doors for me and held my chair in restaurants. He touched my back, my arm, my hands, but he never put his hand on my thigh or anywhere private. He had kissed me on the forehead. It had made me uncomfortable because he stayed close, inhaled deeply and said he loved the way I smelled. But he has this way of gracefully backing off and putting you at ease when you start to feel threatened. I should have seen it sooner, but I let myself get seduced even if it wasn’t about sex yet. After meeting him, I continued going to work, of course, but didn’t see much of my roommates. Biking with Leigh was really the first break, the first chance to break the spell, and now it’s broken.

  Everyone I know here thinks he’s a relative, and that I’m making the connections I told them I came here for. But he’s not family. He’s twice my age. I hadn’t asked him if he was married, at least not point blank the way Natalie would have. My courage for that kind of thing comes and goes, and bringing up that topic would have cut through the favorite-niece game. If Natalie had found a birth certificate that raised all those questions about who she was, she would have homed in on the person who could answer them and created a storm that wouldn’t quit until everything was out in the open.

  Grant is evasive. Bonnie is too, but in a different way. Grant can talk for hours and keep you interested without revealing anything about himself. I recognize this kind of deceit because here, I can’t reveal anything about myself either. The woman’s clothes I saw in his car that first day when we put the bike in the back made me think he must be married. I asked him about the dress and blouse to give him a chance to tell me about his family, and he said the clothes belonged to a friend, a neighbor. If he has a wife, she’s either out of town, or she gives him lots of space. So does his job. He has a lot of free time. Besides knowing Victoria, he knows Vancouver too. Maybe he really lives there and comes here on business. Maybe he’s a lobbyist or has something to do with the government and has this family back in Vancouver. I learned more about Leigh’s life in one afternoon than I have about Grant in several weeks.

  So that night, the night we had our moment of truth, I was in my room waiting. I heard a car and saw the Cadillac pull up. It’s a quiet street with big shade trees evenly spaced. I watched Grant come up to the front door. He was carrying flowers, yellow roses. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

  On the way to the restaurant, he did most of the talking, telling me about the dance troupe and why the chance to see them was so special. I ordered my usual pear cider and drank it down like I was thirsty, then got most of the way through another before I was able to say it.

  “Grant, these past weeks have been really great. You’re a good friend and you’ve spent a lot of time with me—”

  “This sounds like a prelude to something sad. Let’s not be sad.”

  The cider was pretty strong, and I hadn’t eaten. The alcohol was finding Natalie’s bluntness for me.

  “It doesn’t have to be sad, Grant. I just need some space. I’ve been spending nearly all my free time with you. I miss having time alone. I miss people my own age.”

  “Of course you’re right, Amy. What’s happened between us is highly unusual and happened very quickly. You should have time for your friends, but you’ve become such an important part of my life, it will be hard for me. Yesterday when you went off with that young man, it was torture.”

  “That’s what I mean. It shouldn’t be torture. I’m not your wife or your girlfriend, and I don’t want to be. I’m not your niece. I don’t really know anything about you except that you’ve been nice to me. For all I know, you have a wife and family somewhere that you should be spending your time with. I’ve enjoyed your company, but I had fun yesterday with Leigh and I shouldn’t need your approval if I want to go out with someone my own age.”

  “I see. You’ve fallen for him and you’re dumping me. That’s what you’d call it isn’t it? Dumping?”

  Even cushioned by the cider, it was clear that he had changed. His eyes were hard. No sign of the usual smooth slide onto a more pleasant topic. The waitress came for our order. He snapped at her, icy voiced, to give us more time. He was like Sterling.

  “Grant, I can’t dump you. We’re not going together. We’re not in love. I need a friend. Friends give each other time and space. Friends tell each other about their lives. I’m going through some hard stuff right now. You’ve been nice to me. You said you were my friend and I believed you. I wanted it to be true. I wanted to believe that someone could be nice to me just because he liked me.”

  While I was talking, I flashed back to the feeling I had the first night at the restaurant in Brentwood Bay. The feeling about how that particular moment was the result of so many unlikely moments that it deserved the truth, or at least I had to be willing to tell the truth if I was asking for honesty from him. It had to be fair. If he had told me honestly about his life, then I would have had to tell him about mine. I had to be willing to go back to the Valley and to life with Bonnie and Sterling, if that’s where the truth took me. I had to be willing to know the truth about the birth certificate, about my real father, however unpleasant it ended up being.

  I said, “I just want the truth. I don’t care if you’re married. I don’t care if you are trying to seduce me, which is what I think right now. Just tell me the truth. No more pretense about me being your long-lost favorite niece.”

  “You’re such an innocent,” is what he said. His eyes were still cold. They drilled into me and I shivered.

  “Are you married?”

  He laughed. He sounded bitter.

  “Tell me about your job. What’s it like? Do you work for the government?”

  The waitress came back.

  “Order something,” he said softly, but I could feel the hardness behind the words, and it scared me. I ordered a chicken dish.

  He ordered lamb.

  Then he changed back and
started talking about New York and how, the last time he was there, he saw the dance troupe that was performing tonight.

  “It was a spectacular performance and even if they aren’t as good tonight as they were in New York—traveling companies can be inconsistent—it will still be a good show.” His eyes warmed and he told me I would like the chicken dish, that it was quite good. It made me think of Bonnie and my few attempts to get her to talk about my real father.

  “Grant, did your wife die?”

  His eyes drilled and I shivered again and got quiet. I ate a piece of bread. When the chicken finally came, I tried to eat. He was right, it was good, but I couldn’t eat it. His plate had this circular rack of bones sticking up and I couldn’t help but think of lambs and butchering and honesty and how much of life is based on pretense.

  “We’re not friends,” I said. “And I don’t think you ever wanted to be.”

  “You’re such a fool,” he said, “a beautiful little fool.”

  “That may be true,” I said, “but I’m not staying here any longer, and I’m not going to your goddamned ballet.” I said it quietly so as not to make a scene. I picked up my purse from the floor next to my chair and stood to leave. To anyone watching, I could have been going to the bathroom. He didn’t look up, but paused and said,

  “Pity.”

  It made me feel crawly all over. Then he looked up at me and said, “Such a shame.”

  The way he said it scared the crap out of me, but I kept my cool and walked out.

  It would have been a long walk back to the house. I had enough money with me for a taxi but had never been in one before; they’re not that common in the Valley. From the movies, and I felt like I was in a movie, it didn’t seem like hailing one would be that hard. I didn’t know what to expect from Grant, but I had a very bad feeling and was glad there were a lot of people around as I walked down to the harbor in front of the Empress and got a cab.

  I was relieved to find Ian and Char home. They were eating Easy Mac and drinking Molson’s.