North Fork (14 page)

“Why?”

“I don't know. A feeling. I follow my instincts. They're accurate most of the time. Not always. My take on you is that the adults in your life haven't lived up to your expectations, and you've got some things to work out about authority and finding a direction and a way to connect with people. I watched you and Kristen together. You were connecting. She saw the same good things in you that I see, and I don't think you could harm her intentionally, even if she did something that hurt you.

“I don't think either of you would harm the other intentionally, but people tend to protect themselves at the expense of others, and we often don't think through the consequences of what we do. I can't imagine you causing her death in any way but an accident or a moment of rage. We all have emotional hot buttons, but if that had happened, I don't think you would have tried to conceal what you did. You'd have told them right away, because that would be far easier than what you're going through now. You may be angry because your life feels crappy, but the truth matters to you, and I think you would step up and take responsibility the way you wish adults would. It really is just a feeling. I could be wrong. Am I?”

“No.” I looked directly into his eyes, no faltering, and said, “I miss her. She understood being alone the same way I do, and she trusted me. People don't trust me much, but she did. Do you really think she might be alive?”

“It's a nice thought, Corey, and I held on to it as long as I could, but now...”

“I told her a story about my uncle running away when he was
our age, and I like to imagine that she did it.”

“It would certainly surprise a lot of people.”

After he left, I tried to imagine Kristen turning up alive, but I couldn't. I was letting go of that hope like Smith did about his cancer going away. I thought I should be sad because of his bad news about it, and I was glad he did most of the talking because it helped cover up my not knowing what to say. The news that he believed me made it hard for me to concentrate on what he might be feeling.

After I got a motel room that first day, I just went with the vacation feeling. I mean, why not? Corey's story about his uncle was my inspiration. This isn't Hawaii, but the day I arrived, the weather was pretty nice. Even though there are rainy days, it hasn't been bad. The city is beautiful, and just looking at the buildings and the greenery puts me in a good mood. Until I got the job, I worried about money. I knew I wouldn't last long living like a homeless person. This whole thing, my being here, has been a pretty amazing story. No wonder I got suckered by Grant.

I had to stay at a motel for only a week. Now I share this house with Ian and Char. They're not a couple. They don't share a room or sleep together, but it seems like they've been friends forever. He seems safe and sometimes I wonder if maybe, even if he isn't sure about it himself, he's gay. They went to the same high school together and have a lot of inside jokes. They're both nice and like I said, they don't seem dangerous or anything, and I don't worry about my stuff being stolen. I don't have much to steal anyway, so what I really mean is they respect my space and my room feels private.

The house belongs to Ian's uncle who plans to remodel it and move into it himself, but he isn't ready to start yet, so he's letting Ian rent it cheap. Most of the houses around here have already been fixed up, so the neighborhood doesn't have the ghetto feel that it would if they were all still like this one. We let it get pretty messy and, like Natalie, Ian and Char smoke. Mainly, they don't bother me and I can afford my share of the rent.

Ian and Char are from Port Alberni, a mill town on the west side of Vancouver Island. Coming to Victoria was also a pretty big adventure for them, and it couldn't have happened if Ian's uncle hadn't had this house available. They both graduated last year and seem to be taking a break after high school, trying out working and living away from their parents. They came the same week I got here, which had something to do with how we met.

They wanted to go to Vancouver, but their parents talked them out of it. I'm glad, because I think Vancouver is more dangerous and because I'm getting to share their good fortune. The house was really kind of a gift by the uncle to help guide their decision. They had enough money saved to pay rent for the first month, but they needed jobs and another person to contribute rent money if they wanted to stay. They found jobs in shops that sell stuff to tourists, and they found me to help with the rent.

When I came here in April, the streets were already crawling with tourists. That first day, after lying on the motel bed for a while, letting my new situation settle in, and all wired with the improbability of being here, I went looking for cheap food. I figured that by eating cheap, I could use a little money for fun. I hadn't eaten since Anacortes and I found the perfect restaurant. My lucky streak began.

It's the kind of place you'd walk past unless you were looking for an inexpensive meal. There are windows that look out on the sidewalk, but the front of the building is drab and the sign on the window closest to the door is faded. It's a few blocks up the hill from the harbor, on a side street. I was hungry and wanted a place to sit that didn't have that cheesy, fake-upbeat feel that fast food restaurants have and that end up being depressing. It was early afternoon by then, but there were still a lot of people eating, so I went in.

That's when I met Trudy, and how I got my job. Pretty
unbelievable! She doesn't look like Trish, Natalie's aunt, at all, but she has some of the same mannerisms. She showed me to a table and took my order for a club sandwich. She brought milk with my tea. I'd never had it that way before. Mainly what I've learned about her is that her inner person, the part that our poet friend, Emily, would call the soul, seems familiar in a good, warm way and it's right out there on the surface for me to see, which is amazing, considering how I've lived with Bonnie forever and don't feel at all that way about her.

Of course I didn't figure all this out that first day. That first day, it was just a kind of nice feeling I got from her. She made me feel welcome and it helped me stay in my vacation mode and not lapse into feeling alone and lost in a strange city. The third time I ate there it was later in the afternoon and Trudy wasn't very busy, so we struck up a conversation.

I think she was pretty once, and her hair was probably dark brown when she was younger. It's so mixed with gray now, it's hard to tell. She has kids who are grown and don't live around here, and I can tell she misses them. She's had kind of a hard life and never had much money. She smokes, too. It's made her skin wrinkly and she looks older than she is. She asked if I was here on vacation and I told the same lie I told the customs guy about coming to see my father, but I expanded it, mixing it with some truth, and said that I had never met my dad but that I knew he lived in the Victoria area and I was going to try to find him. I told her I was from Seattle.

After about a week or so of eating there every day, she told me the restaurant owner was looking for a temporary waitress because one of the other women wanted a few months off to help her daughter take care of a new grandchild. She said the daughter had had complications with the delivery, had other small children, and was still pretty sick. If I was going to be around for a while it might help me stretch my money, and I would be doing someone
a big favor at the same time. By then I had already met Ian and Char and was staying here. I had given Ian a month's rent even though I wasn't sure I could stretch my money that long, but moving in with them was an easy choice because ten days in the motel cost more than what Ian needed for a month. The job offer was too perfect, like an answered prayer. It made it easy to avoid the thought of going back.

Meeting Ian and Char was another piece of luck that I can only attribute to fate. It was the first night, and for the first time in my life, I could just walk into a bar if I wanted. I chose one, picked a table and ordered fish and chips and pear cider. The waitress didn't even ask for my ID. There was a hockey game on the big screen TV. The couple at the next table were really getting into it, and when the guy—his name turned out to be Ian—went off to the bathroom, the girl, Char, asked me which team I was for. I didn't have an answer because I don't know much about hockey except that it's a lot like soccer, only on ice.

We talked a little that night. They asked if I lived here. Since they were new in town, they were trying to meet people and get connected. The town they came from sounded small, like Mount Vernon, and it's pretty isolated, so they knew a lot of people there and were used to people being friendly. I told them the same story I told Trudy, that I was trying to connect with my dad and that I didn't know how long I'd stay. After that night, we kept running into each other, and they kind of adopted me and offered to let me share the house.

Actually getting hired had to be guided by fate at least as much as finding a place to stay. I was worried about not having the Canadian version of a social security number, called a Social Insurance Number (SIN for short; I think that's funny). Char told me it would be easy to get one since I have my birth certificate, but sending in an official application for a government document scared me. So far, nothing I'd done here had been very visible,
and when I went into the back office at the restaurant to talk to Mr. Wickam—his first name is Leigh, like Lee only with British spelling—I didn't have one.

I was expecting to meet this adult man, which I guess he is, but he's only in his twenties, and after I talked to him and had the job, Trudy told me his father has money and owns the building and the restaurant too. Leigh dropped out of college and is the black sheep in the family, but needs their money, so he's running the restaurant until his dad figures out what he wants to do with it. Trudy thinks the father is testing him and says that Leigh's not a bad guy to work for. Since he doesn't really know what he's doing, he listens to the employees and because of that, no one has really cheated him yet.

He was checking me out during the interview, flirting, which made me uncomfortable. He has a slight British accent and some people would think he's good-looking, but he makes me nervous. He's not my type, but I'm glad for the job and probably won't have to be around him much. He said that since I was temporary and would likely go back to the States anyway, he would just pay me cash, under the table. If a card became necessary, we could deal with it then.

Brad is real conscientious and knows what he's doing. I watched him put the boat away, and when he was done, everything was exactly as it was when we got there. I pay attention to things like that, like whether people are flaky or not, because I don't trust flaky people. I asked him if he was being so careful because he wasn't supposed to use the boat and we were getting away with it because his parents weren't home. I think I hurt his feelings, but that's the kind of relationship we have because of how we met. I get to say what I think. He's not flaky. Like when we were in the boat, you could tell he knew what he was doing, and he was careful to explain safety things. Most kids don't do that kind of thing, but he has this earnestness about him, like he wants to do right and if someone will show him how, he'll do it, even if it's hard. Maybe that's why we get along.

So the boat was put away and we were in his rooms. He doesn't just have a room; it's like an apartment. It was around dinnertime, and we were hungry because we didn't take anything to eat on the boat with us. I was in the shower when his mother came home, which of course may not have looked so good to her in spite of what we know about the wrestling coach affair, and Brad was in the kitchen, making corned-beef-and-Swiss-cheese sandwiches. He had planned ahead and went to Haggens' yesterday, which I thought was nice. So she came down to let him know she was home and heard the shower running which, so far, only meant that he had a friend with him.

Since I took my backpack with fresh clothes into the bathroom
with me, she didn't know I wasn't a guy. Brad and I haven't done anything yet, so it was only natural that I'd want privacy to dress. We've only come close to what you'd call making out twice, and it's kind of tender and careful when we do even that much. It feels a little dangerous because friendships get wrecked by that stuff, and neither of us is sure what kind of relationship we have. I'm normally not shy about my body, because I'm of proud of it. I think I look good in a bathing suit, and it was okay being with Brad and wearing one all day, but I'm still cautious around him. I care what he thinks. I think suggestive clothes make you think about sex as much as being naked does, so I wasn't about to parade around in a towel. When I came out, I was fully dressed, but my maroon hair was still wet.

I was combing it in front of this big mirror that's on the back wall of the bar and kitchen area. I have several piercings in my ears, not just the lobes, but up toward the top too, and with the light playing off my wet hair, the silver really stood out. I asked Brad if I could borrow his hair dryer. From the bathroom, I hadn't heard a thing when she came down the first time, so she startled me by coming down the stairs behind me.

She was still dressed from the day and she's quite good-looking, like she might have competed in beauty pageants when she was younger. She was manicured, not just in the carefully groomed sense, but her nails too, fingers and toes. She is what you'd call willowy, thin but not skinny, like rich girls you see in movies playing tennis, healthy and evenly tanned. She was wearing a tailored silk top and Capris, with the kind of leather sandals you see at Nordstrom's that cost more than I make in three months, and tasteful jewelry that Kristen's mom would like to wear and tries to imitate.