Easy Street

by Jeff Ross

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I don’t want to do it again.” He’d started to cry. I hadn’t even noticed it. I heard it in his voice, and then he was wiping at his eyes. “Ever.”

  “You won’t,” I said. “Get into this program. Get the apprenticeship or whatever, and it’s like none of this ever happened.”

  “It’ll never be like none of this ever happened,” Adam said.

  “It could be close,” I said.

  “Yeah. I guess it could.”

  We talked more on the ride home, but not about what was going to happen next. Instead it was about other car rides we’d taken. About the cottage we used to visit. The days that seemed so far in our past that they might as well have belonged to other people. But they didn’t. They were ours.

  Eventually I fell asleep, and I didn’t wake up until we were just on the edge of our town. I sat up with a horrible taste in my mouth.

  “What time is it?”

  “Late afternoon,” Adam said, laughing. “It’s been a day.”

  “I can’t wait to go to bed.”

  “Dude, you just slept for, like, three hours. I’m the one who can’t wait to go to bed.”

  We pulled up outside the house. The front door was open. Mom was out on the porch with a cup of coffee in her hands. She waved to us.

  “Don’t tell her what happened,” Adam said.

  “There’s no way I would say a word to her.”

  Adam grabbed the brochures. “I don’t want to disappoint her anymore.”

  “I think you’re heading in the right direction,” I said.

  He nodded to this, then opened his door and stepped outside.

  “How was it?” Mom asked.

  Adam got hyped up, waving the brochures as he crossed the lawn.

  “Electrician,” Adam said.

  Mom’s face lit up. It was really good to see.

  “Yeah?”

  “Everyone needs electricity, right?”

  We sat down on either side of Mom, and Adam began describing the school. The buildings and people and how he felt so energized there. He went quiet for a moment, and Mom laid her head on his shoulder.

  “This is going to be good,” she said.

  “It is,” Adam replied. “I know it is.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Adam went to college that fall. He took some online courses over the summer to upgrade his math and English, and by September he was ready for the full-time program. Mom and I moved to a little place called Ancaster, just outside Hamilton. Close enough to Adam that we could see him now and then, but far enough away that it didn’t seem like we were following him.

  Which we totally were.

  One weekend he came to see us and we all went for ice cream at this place in the little downtown core. We sat outside, even though it was a cool evening. We’d been sitting there for half an hour in near silence when a memory surfaced. But it didn’t feel like a memory. It felt like a dream that had come to life. Or something we’d done long ago and completely forgotten about.

  “Do you guys believe in déjà vu?” I asked.

  Mom looked at me and considered this.

  “I’ve had it happen,” she said. “Like when you stop and go, Wait, didn’t this already happen?”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Maybe we’ve had some moment in our minds that we hope will happen one day, and when it does we remember that desire.”

  “Maybe,” I said. It was so strong a feeling, though, that I could taste it. The ice cream. The sun setting. The cool air pushing into the folds of my hoodie.

  “I think it’s something different,” Adam said. “I think it’s, like, a message that you’re in the right spot.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know. I just know that whenever it has happened to me, good things were happening. Or were about to.”

  Adam licked his ice cream, and it was there again. That feeling I’d seen all of this before.

  And then I remembered.

  We’d been at the cottage. It was on a little lake, and Adam and I had been given some money to go buy ice cream. Instead of walking, though, we’d taken a canoe. The ice-cream stand was on the other side of the lake, but instead of paddling straight across, we’d gone along the shore the whole way around. It had taken hours, or at least it had felt that way at the time. We’d seen fish and geese, and people had waved to us as if we were some kind of royalty. But when we got to the ice-cream place, it was closed. We felt horrible. We’d spent so long getting there, and we were tired out. We had sat down in front of the place and just stared at the water. Talked about how much it sucked. Adam had looked at the stand a bunch of times. He’d seemed really angry. Then he’d gotten up, walked over to it and just stood there staring at it.

  Then, out of nowhere, a teenage girl had come walking around the side of the stand.

  “Were you two wanting ice cream?” she asked.

  “Yeah!” Adam and I both said.

  “I saw you from my house. I closed early to look after my brother, but my parents are home now.”

  She’d opened the stand and gone inside.

  I remembered the whirring of the motor for the fridge. The clack of the big window opening. And all the kinds of ice cream laid out before us.

  “You can have two scoops for the price of one for being so patient,” she said. I’d picked chocolate and mint. Adam went with strawberry and vanilla.

  We’d thanked the girl and she’d shut the whole thing down again and left.

  Then we’d sat at the picnic table out front and eaten the cones in silence. Side by side at the picnic table, looking out over this lake at dusk.

  My brother and me.

  “I think you’re right,” I said, watching Adam pop the end of his cone into his mouth. “You get déjà vu when something good is about to happen.”

  He smiled at me, and that was what I remembered. The smile that said he was thinking, wondering, considering, always ready for the next big thing. For now, he looked content.

  Jeff Ross is the author of several novels for young adults, including the Orca Soundings titles Coming Clean and Up North also featuring Rob Maclean and his brother Adam. He teaches scriptwriting and English at Algonquin College in Ottawa.

  Rob wants to be a DJ, but when a girl overdoses during his first gig and his brother is implicated, Rob realizes he could lose everything.

  “Powerfully sharp.”—Booklist

  “A quick paced story, compelling and real… Highly Recommended.”—CM Magazine

  Racial tensions run high in a small northern town, and after Rob witnesses a violent incident, the police are pressuring him to identify their prime suspect.

  “A very good novel that leaves readers thinking about their own views…Recommended.” —CM Magazine

  Chapter One

  The problem with my brother is that he is far too often full of it. Which is why I was skeptical when he said he’d landed me a DJ gig at the local all-ages club.

  “Friday night,” he said.

  “Seriously, Adam, don’t mess with me right now.” I was in my room trying to beat match an old soul record with a white label drum and bass LP. It was not going well.

  “I’m serious, Rob. I got you this Friday night!”

  “Adam,” I said, taking my headphones off and silencing the stereo. “DJ Sly does Friday nights at The Disco.” DJ Sly was a ridiculous name for a DJ. The Disco was a ridiculous name for an all-ages club. And yet, at that time I would have done anything to be DJ Sly playing at The Disco. Proving yet again that life, at its core, is a cruel joke.

  “Do you mean the DJ Sly who just recently took a nasty tumble and busted his wrist? That DJ Sly?”

  “What?” I said. “I never heard about that.”

  “That’s because it happened yesterday and you, as far as I can tell, have been locked in here for the past week.” He looked at the floor where there were piles of dirty plates and glasses. Mom had been working d
ouble shifts, leaving the two of us to our own devices.

  Always a bad idea.

  Adam is taller than me by about three inches. He’s also thicker. I’ve never been able to break 120 pounds while Adam is a steady 160. He is far too fond of hair gel. His black curls are totally glued to his head. I have longer hair and let it do what it wants. And yet there’s always talk about how we look so much alike. Adam has small eyes, which some people might refer to as beady. And his nose is a little too big for the rest of his face. It’s these kinds of characteristics that people seem to become depressed about. Like, there’s nothing you can do about the size of your eyes or nose, but people are going to make you feel bad about it anyway. Adam also had some pretty severe acne for a while, and his constant action against the angry red balls has left his skin pock-marked and rutted.

  In the end, though, neither of us are hideous. But Adam has cared too much for too long about how he looks, and now he often walks hunched over with a hoodie pulled up around his face. Though I have noticed that in the past few months he’s begun to stand a little straighter.

  “Anyway, Sly is down for the count and he needs a replacement.”

  “And how did you get me Sly’s night?” I dropped my headphones around my neck. I then cleared a bunch of records off my bed to make room to sit down.

  “I’ve been working there. You know that.” Adam leaned against the door frame and examined a fingernail.

  “So you’ve been saying. What, exactly, is your job?”

  “This and that. What does it matter? I got you the night, Rob. You can do this, right? I haven’t just made myself look like an ass on your account, have I?”

  I looked at my crates of lps. A lot of DJs had moved onto digital mp3 turntables. But MP3s sound awful, in my opinion. When you put a poorly encoded song through a giant system like they have at The Disco, it sounds like you’re listening to music underwater. Everything is floppy and round sounding. Records are crisp. The beats hard.

  Besides, I can’t afford a laptop to run it all.

  “For sure,” I said, sounding as confident as possible.

  “It’s a big night, man,” Adam said. He hadn’t moved from the doorway. I knew exactly why. He wanted to be thanked for his awesomeness.”

  “Yeah, it’ll be huge. Thanks, man.”

  “No problem.” He swiveled off the door frame and put his fist out in front of him. I gave it a quick pump.

  “How long is my set?”

  “Three hours. You go on at nine. DJ Lookie takes over at midnight.”

  “Awesome,” I said, getting excited about it. “Thanks, man. Seriously.”

  orca soundings

  For more information on all the books in the Orca Soundings series, please visit

  orcabook.com.