“You asshole.” I peer over the edge of the boat and call out for Carin. “You were going too fast.” Wingman passes me a flashlight to shine into the water, but all that’s reflected back is more darkness.
“You were the one that wanted to go faster,” Wingman says, looking over the other side of the boat.
I turn around and kick him in the leg. “Shut up.” I lean out and scream Carin’s name. After a moment and from what sounds like a great distance, I hear the slap slap rhythm of messy strokes and call out again. I see the white of her shirt first. She swims slowly and steadily to the boat, climbing the ladder, her clothes sticking to her and draining water over the deck floor. Without pause, she clomps heavily right up to me and punches me square on the chin. I lunge at her and we roll around in the boat, pulling each other’s hair and slapping. Carin bites my shoulder and I twist her arm. Bitch! Cow! Eventually we tire ourselves out and sit in the dark, panting on opposite sides of the boat. The lap of water against the hull and the illusion of the stars fixed in space make me feel a bit better. Blood thumps through my temples and I start to laugh, tears rolling down my face. Wingman’s disembodied voice comes from somewhere in the dark. “Do you girls want me to take you back to the dock?”
CARIN LEAVES A TRAIL of water behind her as we walk back to the trailer park. She’s soaked, hair dripping and mascara running, her favourite white slingbacks floating somewhere in the lake. I walk several paces behind her. When I ask her if she wants to wear my flip-flops she doesn’t even turn around.
We cross over the dam that feeds the channel. Orange floodlights illuminate the bridge, casting a light thick with winged insects. Papery moth bodies brush against my bare limbs. When we get to the other side, I try to catch up. “Carin?” She quickens her pace. “Come on. Slow down.”
Carin spins around suddenly and I almost bump into her. “You could’ve got us hurt. I could’ve drowned.”
“I’m sorry.” I shrug my shoulders, surprised at how good it feels, how freeing to be helplessly wrong.
“Sometimes sorry is not what someone needs to hear,” she says, turning and walking away from me.
“Carin, I’m really sorry,” I say. My giggles return and I try to choke them back. I try to make them sound like tears.
She whips around with her hands on her hips. “Are you laughing?”
“No,” I choke, laughing hysterically now, doubled-over with the effort of trying to conceal it.
“You’re the one who’s crazy.” Carin yells at me and stomps off down the dark street in the direction of Sunnyside. My laughing fit settles into gentle hiccups. All I can hear now is the gravel under the slap of my flip-flops.
THOUGH I’VE NEVER TOLD her, I was thankful for Carin that day on the channel when we were kids and we tied our inner tubes together. As we floated, a storm was building off Skaha Lake and the clouds were blowing in fast. We were tired from the ordeal under the bridge and shivering from the cold, so we decided to get out of the water to find a payphone and call Mom to pick us up early. Grabbing onto the long grasses edging the channel, we hauled ourselves up onto the steep bank. I ran up the incline, dragging my inner tube behind me, determined to leave Carin to chase after me. The grasses grazed our thighs, and the rocks and prickly weeds bit at our bare feet, but Carin never whimpered, scurrying to keep up with me.
When she suddenly dropped her inner tube and grabbed my arm, I turned and slapped her. It was quick and instinctual. She didn’t flinch. Her eyes remained focused beyond me on the ground, the insistence of her hand enough to keep me still. A few inches from my feet, a large rattlesnake rested, wrapped in a fat, lazy spiral. Another step would have landed my foot in the middle of its coil. My stomach shot into my throat and for that moment while Carin’s hand gripped my arm, I felt our hearts racing together. She guided me as we slowly crept around the snake, and back on the path we walked side by side to the gas station. We didn’t speak a word to each other, but I could feel Carin’s pride, her delight at having saved me.
We never told Mom anything about what happened that day — the tubes tied together, the bridge, the man, the knife, the snake — and now that she’s gone it bothers me. I’m not sure why we never told her that story. I guess we thought — the way kids always do — we’d be in trouble.
IT’S ONLY NINE O’CLOCK, but the trailer is already stifled with morning heat. I pull back the little curtain to Carin’s bedroom, where she’s sleeping with her mouth hanging open, a small puddle of drool on her pillow. Sometime during the night she kicked off all her covers in what looks to me like a violent rejection, her arms still a frozen flail above her head and her legs stalled mid-kick. I pull the curtain shut quietly and walk back outside.
The car is sweltering and I roll down all the windows while I load my bag into the trunk. As I pull out of the trailer park, I catch sight of Carin in the rearview mirror, stumbling from the trailer in her pajamas, her hair a rat’s nest on top of her head. I pause for a moment and then reverse, putting the car in park and leaving the engine running. Carin leans into the window. “Here.” She reveals two sweaty aspirin from the clutch of her palm. “Thought you might need these.”
“Thanks.”
“You were a mess last night.” Carin grins at me. “It was hilarious.”
“I’m sure it was very funny for you.” Sitting, looking up at Carin, it’s the first time I feel like the younger sister.
“Get home safe.” Carin is still chuckling as I start to drive away. “Mexico,” she yells, as I roll through the trailer park.
I stick my head out the car window. “I’ll think about it.”
Carin follows the car to the edge of the road and as I drive away, she hops across the hot concrete in her bare feet, waving at me in her goofy way. I reach my arm out the window and wave back before pulling out onto the highway and following the snaking road through the arid hills and up into the green mountains. The air turns cool on my skin, sending a shiver of goose bumps up my arms.
Deep into the mountains everything thins: the trees, the air, the clouds. I’m not sure if this mountain highway is actually the highest I’ve been above sea level, but it feels that way. Every time I drive it, I feel like I can see great distances. The forest stretches and spills off the sides of the Earth. I reach the highway’s crest and then I’m descending again. Everything from here on is closer to the coast. It’s here, at this height, that it hits me: a pang of missing that catches like a stone in the softness of my throat and settles somewhere in my stomach. I finally miss her at the right time. She is my childhood. She’s the part of me that has passed and I miss her.
THE SPIDER IN THE JAR
AFTER COLLECTING THE BEER bottles from the bunkhouses at the sawmill, the brothers headed into the forest behind their house to eat wild blackberries until their bellies were rotten with them and their fingertips were stained purple.
“Lookit.” Ben crouched on one knee, shaped his hand into a gun and took aim at a sparrow perched on a branch. “Bam!” The bird took flight through the trees. When the boys were in the forest, Ben spent a lot of time talking about BB guns.
“Don’t scare them,” Henry said. Their Mama kept three birdcages in the kitchen — one with finches, one with budgies and one with an African Grey — and Henry liked to stick a finger through the cages to rub their bellies or feel the curt jabs from their beaks. Every morning, it seemed to Henry, they tried to escape. At first light, he could hear them flapping around, screeching and knocking against the metal cages. By lunch they quieted, and by evening they slept. There was always a racket in the kitchen in the morning with the birds and the coffee machine and the brothers.