by Sara Quin
In all the excitement of Garage Warz and pervasive conflict with Sara, another relationship of mine became sick. A melancholy spread like a virus between Alex and me as I focused more and more on myself.
“Your music is a gateway to you, to your heart,” she said after the win. “I’ve always known that. And I’m proud. No one could be prouder that you won. But I’m afraid now that everyone can see it, it will take you away from me.”
“How is it going to take me away from you?”
“The world is going to find out how amazing you are, and it’s going to change things. Change us.”
“How is it going to change us?”
“Soon you’ll be gone.”
“I’ll be gone? You’re the one leaving for England in three months. Where am I going?”
I felt angry with her sudden hesitancy and fear. Her claim that my success would lead to the eventual end of us felt unfair: She had driven me to take music seriously. She had counseled that Sara and I were destined to make a career with our music even when our songs were still in complete chaos. She had tracked my progress as I learned to write and construct songs and, in doing so, built myself up in the lyrics and the melodies I wrote. She was the first to see that I had learned how to put to music the things I could never say out loud to anyone, even her. Alex had unraveled the fear and the guilt I had about not wanting to go to university from the desire and need to pursue a career in music after we graduated.
It was Alex who reassured me when I worried I might never get out of Calgary. “You’re not trapped here,” she told me while lying next to me in the dark. “Believe that. I do.” She had pushed me to apply for Garage Warz after our mom’s cousin Tracy told us about the competition at the university. Alex made sense of everything—music and me. What didn’t make sense to me was how she felt after we won. Perhaps I was naive, too in love, and too excited by the win to ever see or understand her fear. Maybe I was too young and caught up in the dream to consider it might actually be one. But to me winning Garage Warz was a sign we were on the right path. I was sure of it.
The only thing I wasn’t sure of after Garage Warz was how I looked in the press. Watching the video footage my dad had taken of us performing, I couldn’t reconcile the person I saw singing onstage with myself. For years I’d hidden my hair, tying it back, unsure what to do with it. For years I’d hidden my body behind baggy clothes and under layers of sweaters and jackets. But now Alex had taught me to love my body. And the last time I’d loved my hair was when I’d had it cut short as a kid. I’d been in hiding for a long time. But now I wanted to be seen.
Alex was devastated when I told her I was going to get my hair cut.
“But I love your hair.” The haircut was another example of how I was changing, growing away from her, she said.
Sara seemed nervous when I told her. “Do you think I need to cut mine?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “This is about me.”
In the mirror at the salon, I watched as the hairdresser cut away inches of my long brown hair in severe snips.
“Shorter,” I said, again and again. As she cut, the me I had imagined finally materialized when my hair came close to chin length. “There. That’s perfect.”
No haircut would reassure Alex that distance wouldn’t change us, that music wouldn’t take me away from her. But I felt intent on proving it didn’t have to. No haircut was going to convince Sara to let go of her fear, to trust me or what I felt sure that we were on the cusp of. But I left the salon with one obstacle out of the way.
39. SARA QUITTER
My 6:00 a.m. shift at Robin’s Donuts on Saturday morning felt particularly brutal with a hangover. Standing with the donut manifest, I kept my eyes on the video monitor hanging precariously over the prep table in the back of the restaurant, watching for customers. My older coworker smoked the last of her cigarette and threw the butt into the garbage can next to where I was working. She grabbed a tray of donuts, leaving me in the kitchen alone. Underneath my uniform—a thick brown shirt, stiff as cardboard and scratchy as sandpaper where it rubbed on my neck and biceps—I could feel sweat pooling under my arms. My stomach lurched dangerously up to my throat. I lowered the racks of freshly baked donuts into vats of glaze, letting the excess pour off like paint. When I was finished, I stacked them in the display case next to the counter in the restaurant. In the smoking section I dumped the ashtrays overflowing with butts and black ash into the garbage. I avoided cleaning the bathrooms.
By 9:00 a.m. the restaurant was crowded with old men reading the paper and smoking cigarettes. Talking loudly to one another across the tables, they snapped at me when they wanted a refill of their coffee. A long line of regulars snaked out the door to the strip mall parking lot, impatiently calling out their orders and rolling their eyes when I didn’t remember how much cream and sugar went into each of their cups.
“I’m just part-time,” I warned each customer as they approached me.
My mouth was chalky. I wanted a Coke or just a hunk of ice to suck on. In between transactions I pressed my thumbs into my eye sockets and crouched down behind the counter to pray for the earth to spin faster.
“Time?” I asked my coworker.
“Nine-thirty-two,” she said, looking at the clock above my head.
My shift ended at one.
“I hate the smell of coffee,” I said.
“I can’t live without it.”
“Is that why you work here?”
She looked at me like I’d said something incredibly stupid.
Every hour I took Windex and paper towels to the outside display and cleared away the sticky handprints and long pieces of hair collected on the glass. My boss loved it when I did things like this unprompted. He told me he liked that I took initiative. He liked me so much that when Mom made me ask him if Tegan could get a job there, too, he agreed to give her shifts at another Robin’s Donuts location. Though I worked only a few blocks from our house, I envied that Tegan’s job was at a kiosk, located in a Canadian Tire store. It had low foot traffic, and there were only a few regulars to disappoint.
At the end of my shift, I dragged the heavy, gray mop across the floor, collecting piles of ingredients in its tangles. The clean, soapy bucket turned putrid and black after a few dunks.
“Where did you learn to do that?” my boss asked me across the counter.
“Um, I learned it by using . . . a mop?” I said. Was he kidding? I went back to the kitchen, pulling my apron over my head. This was the only moment I enjoyed having a job: when my shift was over.
“Sara, you are just fantastic!” my boss said when he found me in the back.
“Oh, thanks,” I said.
“Listen, can I ask you a favor?”
“Yeah, I . . . guess.”
He gestured silently for me to follow him into his office. I crowded in next to him and shut the door. “Sara, I know that you’re still in high school . . .” he said, pausing. “Would you consider coming on Wednesday after school to swap out the registers between shifts?”
“Swap out the registers?”
“I just trust you. You know?” He showed me the combination for the safe and walked me through the steps.
“I think I’ve got it,” I said to him before I left.
“Put ’er here,” he said, extending his hand, beaming.
When I got home, I stripped off my uniform and shoved it straight into the washing machine. My skin stank of smoke and sugar.
“Did you grab your check from work?” Mom asked me, unpacking groceries into the cupboards.
“Yes. It’s a joke.” I threw the envelope down on the kitchen counter.
“Well, it’s good inspiration. You don’t want to sell donuts for the rest of your life.”
“I’d be better off selling drugs at school. Or my body, for that matter!”
“I keep telling you and your sister this is why you need to go to university. That’s your future you’re looking at right there if you
don’t get your math mark up.”
“That’s not helping!” I said.
“What do you need all this money for anyway?”
“Stuff! Food!”
She popped her eyebrows at this, her hands deep in bags filled with groceries. “Oh, I see. Food. Because there’s nothing to eat in the house.”
“Or clothes or CDs or whatever!”
“It’s only two shifts a week, Sara. That isn’t very many hours.”
“Well, what do you expect me to do? Quit school so I can take more shifts?”
“I worked and went to school. Not to mention that I raised you and your sister full-time. So don’t complain to me.”
“It’s not the same thing!”
“And I grocery shop and empty the litter boxes that are overflowing with cat shit and drive you and your sister around to raves and parties and pick you up again in the middle of the night!”
“I volunteer, I go to school, I take piano lessons!”
“You also find plenty of time to talk on the phone.”
“Mom!”
“And play guitar—”
“I thought that’s what you wanted! We’re supposed to be practicing—”
“Sounds mostly like you’re just screaming at each other.”
“Instead I’m cleaning toilets and ashtrays!”
“If you don’t like your job, quit. But I am not going to start giving you an allowance again.”
“Can you at least drive me to the bank, so I can put this in my account?”
“Oh! And drive you to the bank!”
“Jesus, never mind!” I stormed from the kitchen and upstairs to my bedroom.
* * *
Winning Garage Warz hadn’t exactly changed Mom’s mind about us going to university, but it did give her a sense that we were interested in something other than our friends and talking on the telephone. When she gave Tegan and me permission to quit working at Robin’s Donuts so we could focus on studying for finals and performing shows, we were ecstatic. After school the next day I pulled my uniform from the dryer, still warm, and folded it neatly into my backpack. I rushed up the street toward the donut shop as fast as my legs would carry me. I found my boss in his little office, working on a stack of invoices.
“Hey! What’s up?” he asked.
“Um, can I talk to you about my job?”
His face went slack. I wasn’t his first quitter. “Let’s grab a coffee,” he said, standing up.
It was disorienting to be on this side of the counter, to be seated where I’d watched customers sit for months. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the smell and taste of coffee made me ill. I fidgeted with the handle on the mug at a table near the window.
“I’m going to have to quit,” I said. “I’m really busy with school and music and—”
“I have to be honest, I’m extremely disappointed,” he said. “You have real management potential.”
I struggled with how to respond. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “I’m just too busy,” I said. “I’m really sorry.” I pulled the uniform from my backpack and placed it between us on the table.
“Good luck,” he said, and shook my hand.
In the vestibule between the restaurant and the exterior doors was a stack of VOX magazines with our faces on the cover. I grabbed one. I wasn’t a quitter, I just finally knew who I wanted to be.
40. TEGAN SARA AND TEGAN
Sara and I unraveled pretty quickly in a real recording studio. After two years of Broadcasting and Communications classes and countless hours cross-legged in Sara’s bedroom recording ourselves, we didn’t have a clue what we were doing when we went to make our first professional recording, our prize for winning Garage Warz. We’d prepared for the four-hour block of free studio time by arranging for a drummer to rehearse with us. Brian, the husband of a woman Mom worked with, was ten years older than us but had a goofy way about him that made him seem younger. His sideswept bangs covered a set of wide eyes that shined with kindness at Sara and me as we taught him the songs in our living room at our first rehearsal. The three of us shared a similar sense of humor, and we spent a lot of that afternoon crafting jokes to make one another laugh between songs. Some of our friends had come over to watch, and even though it was just a rehearsal, it felt like a show.
The day of the actual recording Mom drove us to the studio. We met Brian outside, where he was jumping from foot to foot, his conga drum in his hand, his face full of confidence and excitement. Inside, the recording engineer directed Sara and me to individual booths to set up. As we shuffled across the wooden floor with our guitars, I gaped at the high ceilings, wobbling around the mic stands and the drum kit already set up toward the small room he’d said would be mine, next to the one he’d pointed out as Sara’s. I felt overwhelmed by the reality of where we were as I slipped on the headphones in the booth, teetering on the stool with my guitar balanced on my knee. It felt surreal to be there. Though only thick glass separated Sara and me once we were set up, it felt like cement. We’d always recorded right next to each other, where we were able to follow each other’s subtle movements and gestures. But the engineer had insisted we be isolated so he could get a clean recording. I hadn’t had a clue what that meant but felt like we shouldn’t argue. As we prepared to start, I glanced back through the glass toward the booth where we’d left Mom and Brian. They were both there peering out from behind the engineer toward us. Seeing them, I felt a jolt of stage fright fill my chest.
Sara started “Here I Am” but kept losing her place, stopping and starting again and again. She said, “Sorry, sorry,” every time.
When we messed up at home, we would laugh, keep the recording going, and use the comedy or our arguments as fodder. But in the studio, it felt like every fuck-up was another wasted minute, a lost opportunity. It wasn’t just Sara fucking up. I couldn’t follow her; I kept anticipating the wrong part at which to jump in. “Here I Am” was complicated, long, and probably not the best song to start with that day. I was perched on the stool like a bird. Sara’s feet were obscured by wood paneling, so I tried to feel the subtle movements in her body to keep time with her. It felt nearly impossible.
“Our songs are like duets. We go back and forth the whole time. It would be easier if I could be in there with her,” I tried to explain to the engineer when, after twenty minutes, we hadn’t managed a full take of the song.
“You’ll be bleeding into each other’s mics if I put you in there with her,” he huffed back. I shrugged, feeling frustrated and embarrassed. He might as well have been speaking a foreign language. In this context, I had no idea what “bleed” or “isolation” meant.
Every foreign term the engineer threw at us and every failed attempt at getting to record what we’d worked so hard on for two years, tugged on the precarious thread holding Sara and me together that first hour. But coming undone wasn’t an option; we needed to leave with a professional demo. We had our hearts set on it.
“It’s their demo,” Mom said. She was sitting on the worn leather couch behind the engineer, mostly obscured from my sight, and her voice sounded small and far away.
I squinted. “What?” I called out, but they were still talking, and my mic wasn’t reaching them.
“Maybe they need to just do it the way they’re used to,” Mom said.
The sound from the booth in our headphones cut out. The engineer dragged a second mic and stand into the little room Sara was in.
“Let’s try it with you both in the same room,” he said, popping his head into my booth.
I hauled my guitar after him; the cord, still plugged in, dragged behind me.
“This will be easier,” I reassured Sara, taking a seat on the stool across from her. She looked pained, flushed, and near tears. I’m sure I looked the same. “It’ll be fine.”
After a few passes, we watched anxiously as the engineer walked across the room toward our booth. “Now what?” I asked.
“It’s all over the pla
ce, what you’re doing. It would sound better if you guys played to a click track.”
“What’s that?” Sara asked.
“You don’t know what a click track is?”
“Like a metronome?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“We’ve never played our songs to a metronome before,” I said, annoyed. “Won’t that just make it harder?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. You two are pushing and pulling all over the place. It’s a mess. Your drummer is going to have a tough time adding his congas to this. That’s all I want you to understand. I just want this to sound good, so that’s what I’m suggesting you do. But if you want to get him in here, all three of you playing together, that’s fine, too. More of a live thing, that’s fine. It’s your demo.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what we want. More of a live thing.”
“Alright, you’re the bosses.”
Brian came sauntering across the room, his drum in his hands.
“Tight fit,” he said, and laughed. His goofy smile immediately settled my nerves, filling the tiny space with a sense that everything was going to work out just fine. He grinned at us and said, “You guys sound amazing. Relax. That guy’s mind is about to be blown.”
We both burst out laughing.
“Let’s try it again,” the engineer said, popping into our headphones as he sat back down in the booth.
“Alright,” Sara said.
The second the three of us started, the passion, intensity, and joy returned. We recorded five songs after that, playing through each song twice. When we were done, there was an hour to spare. We stuffed in behind the engineer to listen to each take, deciding which of the two was strongest.
Adjusting the guitars, we asked for our voices to be perfectly matched. “They should be equal,” Sara said.
“I’m going to add a little reverb,” the engineer offered. “It’ll help distinguish your voices, make them sound bigger, more powerful, too.”
“Cool,” Sara agreed happily.