“Sun’s different here,” Carin says, flipping onto her stomach. “Don’t stay out too long.”
I pad out of the trailer park and run along the channel, following the path that banks its edge. The heat hangs in the valley, stretches from mountain to mountain, sagging under its own weight as my feet raise clouds of dust. I enjoy the push against the swelter, the tightening of my leg muscles propelling me forward. It makes me feel capable, as strong as the channel rushing against the muddy banks. I take a detour into our old neighborhood, running past our childhood home, a split-level rancher with a wide green lawn and two-car garage. The new owners have changed the siding and planted some rhododendrons under the living room window, but otherwise the house looks as I remember. I run past the community centre where we took swimming lessons, the A&W where I had my first job, our old high school.
It was when Carin dropped out six credits shy of graduating that I decided to move to Vancouver. There wasn’t much left for me in the Okanagan, just motorboats and drunk driving, and I couldn’t stand to watch Carin fritter her life away. She never seemed to care, didn’t dream about anything beyond Penticton. When people used to ask her what she wanted to be, she’d make up a ridiculous profession, a monkey trainer or jellybean taster.
Mom died a few years after I moved to the coast. I thought the shock might spark something in Carin, but she stayed almost stubbornly the same. The small inheritance she was given was piddled away slowly, weekend after weekend. Somehow, being far away from her made me certain I wasn’t going to become her. Penticton became a reminder of all the things I missed about my mother, but Carin still ate at the little café near the beach where she and Mom used to go on a lazy weekend; she’d tell me about it as if it was nothing. “Went into Jenny’s today, had the best fucking bowl of soup.”
As I run along the bridge and onto the side of the highway, I try to draw deep breaths, but my throat feels raw from the dry air. Cars whip past me as I try to keep up my pace, but I’ve lost the rhythm. I stop and bend over, hands on my knees, and feel a wave of nausea pass through my body. I hear hoots behind me, a loud honk, and a whoosh of dusty baked air. The blue-and-red school bus drives by with several drunken knuckleheads hollering out the windows. I straighten and give them the finger — something Carin would do, but it feels good. “Morons,” I gasp, trying to catch my breath. Wishing I’d brought water, I start walking down the side of the highway, the ground shifting under my feet like a heat mirage. There’s another honk and a spray of gravel. I turn, ready to flip off the next bunch of assholes, but it’s my own car on the side of the highway. Carin sticks her head out the window. “Need a ride?”
Without saying anything I walk over and get in.
“You don’t mind?” she says, checking the mirrors and pulling back onto the highway. “I borrowed it. The keys were right on the counter. I needed some booze.”
I roll down the window and lean my face into the breeze.
“You’re red!” Carin says, looking over at me.
“I was running.”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, closing my eyes.
“It’s just — you’re sweating a lot.”
“Just drive my goddamn car.”
“Well, I won’t say I told you so.”
“Don’t start.” I squint at her.
“You’re lucky I found you,” Carin says, swerving into the fast lane and cutting off another car. The highway swims in front of me. I’ve lost some small anchor.
“Fine, Carin. Thank you, okay? You were right.” I’m drifting.
“Is that why I’m getting the attitude?”
I brace my hands against the dashboard and lean forward.
“I can be right too sometimes,” she says.
Drops of sweat drip off my nose and onto the floor of the car.
“You’re the oldest.” Carin flourishes a hand. “I’d bow down, but I’m driving.”
“Carin, pull the car over.”
“What?” She looks over at me confused.
“Pull it over.”
She crosses three lanes of traffic to the side of the road and I swing open the door and stumble to the ditch. I bend down, resting my elbows on my knees, and throw up all over the grass. Everything comes up and when it’s all out, I dry heave. Once I’ve finally stopped, I feel Carin’s gentle hand on the small of my back. Cars speed past us on the highway. She hands me a bottle of water and I take a swig, spitting it out on the ground. I take another swig and swallow. The water is warm and metallic from sitting in the heat of the car. It’s days old. I get back inside and we drive the rest of the way home in silence.
CARIN HAS CLEARED THE trailer floor of clothes and laid a foamy down with a neatly tucked pink-and-blue flowered bedsheet and matching floral pillow. They’re Mom’s old linens. I don’t know why, but the whole scene makes me feel lonely. I can hear Carin outside laughing with someone as I go to get a glass of water. She opens the trailer door and pokes her head in. “Do you want to come out with us tonight?”
“I’m still feeling sick.” I pour myself a tall glass of water.
“Heat stroke?”
“I guess.”
We stare at each other a moment, the refrigerator humming in the background.
“Okay,” Carin shrugs. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning, then.”
“Sure.” I head back into the living room as Carin, drunk, struggles to close the door. She lets out a giggle and then opens it again. “June?”
When I turn back the look of sadness in her face surprises me. “Yeah?”
“Are you mad at me or something?”
“Why would I be mad at you?”
“Just checking,” she says, shrugging again and ducking out the door. From the window I watch her and some guy traipse out to the street, Carin’s hand tucked in the back pocket of his jeans.
I slide into the cool sheets, trying not to disturb Carin’s tucking job. Beside the foamy she’s placed a thick manila envelope addressed to me. I tear it open and papers fall out everywhere — pink cakes with white flowers, white cakes with pink flowers, white cakes with white flowers. Out flutters a handwritten note from Sue Clarkson: Pick one you love. Love, Sue. Love Sue? I shove the envelope of pictures as far under the couch as I can reach and flip off the table lamp. In the dark I squint at a corkboard Carin has propped up against the wall with pictures pinned all over it of her with a variety of guys I don’t recognize. In the middle of them all there’s an old picture of Mom. I reach out and unpin it from the corkboard. It’s from the early seventies, her hair parted in the middle, her eyes thick with liner. The expression on her face is typical Carin: cool deadpan. She was probably the same age as me in that photo or close anyway. I realize looking at the picture what different paths our lives took and that maybe if we’d met at that age, as strangers on the street or in a bar, maybe we wouldn’t have been friends or even spoken to one another.
WHEN I OPEN MY eyes the photo of my mother is a few inches from my nose. I put it back on the corkboard and hope Carin hasn’t noticed I moved it. Outside Carin is sprawled on her back on her air mattress in the gravel, her head fallen partially onto the ground, her neck at an awkward angle. I walk down the three trailer steps and look around. There are beer bottles all over the patio table and an overflowing ashtray by Carin’s head. Near her feet there’s also a pair of large men’s sneakers, but I don’t see the possible owner anywhere. I place my foot near her head on the air mattress and give it a good bounce.
Carin groans and rolls over onto the gravel. “What?” Bleary-eyed, she tries to focus on me and then dismisses me with a limp wave.