by Sara Quin
I briefly worried that Stephanie might be angry with me for interrupting, when Zoe snapped the fluorescent light off and found my face again in the dark. Twisting my hips, she pushed me down onto the floor and spread my knees, pressing her full weight into me. My head hit the porcelain toilet.
There was a knock at the door, and once again the light overhead was on. Zoe backed off me and pulled us both up in one swoop. We stepped into the dark hallway and I turned toward Stephanie and Penny’s bedroom, unsure if Zoe would follow. The bodies of my friends were a blur in the soft blue light. They were dancing near the stereo and I went to join them. My heart was hammering as I swung my arms around their shoulders. I tried to move with the music but knocked the whole group off-balance. Crawling into Stephanie and Penny’s room, I passed out on one of their beds.
When I woke up sometime later, there was no movement in the room, and the music was off. Zoe was lying beside me, her eyes wide open, staring at my face. Everything was in focus. Our faces met. She pressed her thigh between my legs, and I felt her hand pull on my zipper. I had wanted this for months. Zoe’s tongue was in my mouth, her hand in my jeans. There was no talking, no flirting, no hesitation. But when I woke up in the morning, she was gone.
22. TEGAN LOOKING FOR A HERO IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
We met Tess through Leah, a friend from junior high. They went to high school in the southeast part of Calgary, at a vocational school focused more on trades than grades. She brought up Tess constantly, the way someone with a crush finds any opportunity to talk about them every chance they get. The more Leah talked about Tess, the more I wanted to meet her. We finally got our chance in late fall.
I was outside in my socks at Grace’s waiting for Leah to drop off some weed for the party. When she finally appeared, she invited us to her friend Rick’s house. She told us he was throwing a party. “You guys should come. Tess will be there.”
“We have to go,” I insisted to Christina when we were back inside Grace’s. We were sitting at the long wooden table in the kitchen.
“What’s wrong with this party?”
“Nothing, but it could be fun to do something different. If it sucks, we can leave.”
“Come on, Christina. We’ll stay an hour,” Sara interjected. “Don’t be such a mom.”
“Fine,” Christina agreed. “But we have to be back for curfew.”
Around ten we all headed to Rick’s. As we walked through the front door, into the wall of bodies, my eyes were already burning. The air was thick with a mix of body odor and cigarette and pot smoke. The mashed-down green carpet was littered with beer bottles, cigarettes, and guys who looked to be in their twenties. Posters on the walls were half torn and hung at different heights. I felt out of place and really young. I was immediately too hot in my army jacket, but I didn’t take it off; this seemed like the kind of place where if you put something down, it wasn’t yours anymore. “Let’s go find Tess.”
We found her outside the bathroom at the top of the stairs, with a cigarette dangling from her lips. Her dark brown eyes were friendly, her hair was tied back in a slick ponytail. She wore a mask of dark foundation, and her eyes were rimmed in thick black eyeliner. “FUCK YEAH,” she yelled, slamming Leah into the wall in a sort of hug-like greeting as we approached.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Tess spit toward Sara and me after Leah introduced us. “This one over here never shuts the fuck up about you two.”
“Fuck you,” Leah warned. “That’s not true.”
“What did you say?” Tess pushed Leah against the wall, and the two play-wrestled until Leah yelled for mercy. “That’s what I thought,” Tess said in a mocking growl at Leah. Sara and I shot each other nervous looks, but we both laughed as Tess started teasing someone else.
People vied for her attention as we trailed behind her, the sea of bodies parting to let us through as if we were famous, untouchable in her wake. I gulped down the devotion for Tess and my beer as we moved past. “Where the fuck are you going?” she yelled from the top of the front steps when she caught us leaving an hour later.
“We have a curfew,” I yelled.
“You better fucking come back next week!”
We did. We went the Friday after that, too. And then the one after that.
The more we went to Rick’s, the more I found myself bringing up Tess any chance I got, as Leah had before me.
“Someone has a crush,” Alex joked one night on the phone.
“No,” I said, but I did.
Looking for Tess in every corner, longing to be near her when she was far, I let her grow up around me like a weed. With one arm slung over my shoulder she would move us through the crowded house parties at Rick’s as if we were a pair. If a guy got too close to me, Tess would sense it and come barreling out of whatever corner she’d been holding court in. “Fuck off” was all she had to say, and they’d scatter like mice. Eventually our friends stopped going to Rick’s with us.
“It’s so dirty.”
“The guys are old.”
“My parents would kill me if they caught me going there.”
“I’m shocked you haven’t gotten scabies yet from those people.”
“It’s not that fun.”
So Sara and I went there alone. And Tess acted as a custodian, offering attention and protection for us both.
The night Tess turned eighteen, Sara and I needed it more than ever.
“Those bitches are always looking for trouble,” Leah warned Sara and me as a crowd of unfamiliar faces arrived just after ten. “Steer clear of them.”
Within an hour the girls had pissed off half the party. After they dumped a slick path of dish detergent on the kitchen floor to create a slip and slide of sorts, Rick had ordered Tess, the resident bouncer, to get rid of them. I’d watched her usher all three out of the kitchen, pointing them toward the front door in a firm but friendly tone. On their way out they tried to shake Sara’s hand, but she refused.
“She’s got a thing about shaking hands.” I raced over to explain when things started to get heated. “I’m her sister. We’re twins.” I motioned to her face and back to mine. “See? So here.” I extended my hand. “Shake with me instead.”
The tallest of the three looked between Sara and me and seemed okay with the deal I was brokering. She took my hand. “Alright.”
I went back to my card game and didn’t see the glass bottle hurtling toward me in time to move. When it hit the back of my head with a thud, I flew forward off my seat onto the filthy carpet. Half the party was already on the front lawn by the time someone had helped pull me up off the floor.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, dizzy and dazed, already halfway out the front door to find Sara. On the lawn Tess was slamming punches into one of the girls, who was lying flat on her back in front of her. I searched the dozen or so people scattered in the front yard, looking frantically for Sara. She and Leah were sandwiched between a few of Rick’s friends next to where Tess was hitting the girl.
“What’s going on?”
“She’s the one that threw the bottle at you,” Leah answered. “Are you okay?”
“I think she thought you were me,” Sara said, wobbly from alcohol. “Boy, did she pick the wrong person to pick a fight with at this party.”
Tess dragged the girl to her feet and shoved her toward her friends. Someone had called a cab for them, and as they staggered away Tess grabbed me by my shoulders and forced me back inside Rick’s.
“Are you okay?”
“I think so.” I was shaking.
“Fucking bitches,” Tess said, but she looked excited, not angry.
“TESS!” Leah’s guttural cry ripped through the screen door. Tess dropped her hands and pitched herself through the open door and down the steps. This time I was on her heels.
Everyone still outside was crowded near the cab stopped at the curb. As I got close, I saw all its doors were open; the driver, half in and half out, was
yelling incoherently. The three girls Tess had just ejected from the party had Sara pinned facedown on the back seat with their knees. They were punching her back and screaming for the cab driver to “Go!” Tess was next to an open door and had hold of one of the girl’s legs, which were kicking wildly. Next to her, Leah was trying to untangle Sara from the bodies on top of her. I could see Sara’s cast from her broken arm dangling, unmoving, off the edge of the seat.
“Help her!” I screamed.
“Get out of the way!” Tess yelled. Leah stepped back, and Tess leaned in the car, grabbed the girl on top and dragged her out, tossing her into the snowdrift behind her like a doll. Then she hauled out the other two. Leah and I grabbed Sara’s legs and helped her out of the cab; the driver took off. As we helped Sara across the lawn, I saw Tess swinging brutally at the girls she’d dragged from the car. They were crumpled on the ground, not even bothering to fight back. I felt sick.
“ENOUGH!” Rick yelled from the top of the front steps. “Tess, get the fuck inside before the police show up. All of you get inside. NOW.”
“Are you hurt?” I asked Sara when we were back inside.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Is your arm okay? Why were you in the cab?”
“Leah and I were helping them to the cab when they pushed me in and started hitting me. It happened so fast.”
Someone offered Sara a fresh beer and asked what happened. She jumped up and took the drink and started retelling the story. I felt guilty watching her. I knew I should insist we leave, make her walk with me to Grace’s where we belonged, with our other friends, out of harm’s way. But I didn’t think Tess would be okay with us leaving, and part of me didn’t want to. Even after everything that had happened.
“Tess wants you,” Leah said, interrupting my thoughts. “She’s upstairs in the bathroom. She said to bring her some ice.”
Tess was next to the grimy tub, a giant bottle of beer between her legs when I came in. I knelt and dumped the ice into the water, gasping when I saw her knuckles, which were already bruised and swollen. “Fuck,” I said. She didn’t react. I sat against the bathroom door and watched Tess slide her right hand into the tub. Outside the door, I could hear Leah and Sara telling the story to anyone who would listen. “You’re a hero.”
“Yeah, a real hero,” Tess scoffed. After a beat, she looked over at me and gave me a crooked snarl of a smile. I was terrified of her, but there was nowhere and no one else I wanted to be with more in that moment.
23. SARA SWITCHBLADE
“Tess said we should bring a guitar over and play at Rick’s house this weekend,” Tegan said on our walk to school.
“Really?”
I tried to imagine us carrying our acoustic guitar into the bedlam of that house, singing campfire-style on the couch pocked with cigarette burns or the rotten carpet stained with beer. The only music I ever heard coming out of the speakers was thrash punk and occasionally No Doubt, if Tess threw punches and blocked the guys from changing it. I was afraid we might cross paths with the girls who’d beaten me up a few weeks earlier. Tegan didn’t seem nervous at all. For once I let her confidence fill me up.
The night we took our guitar to Rick’s it was frigid. The kind of cold where every car and bus on the road exhales great plumes of smoke. The hems of our pants dragged under our heels and became soaked and muddied, our feet completely numb. Leah carried the acoustic guitar from the bus stop with her hand wrapped in her sleeve, telling us, “Save your precious fingers,” in a monotone.
She was dressed even less appropriately than us in only a hoodie, which she’d tightened around her head and face. When we crossed through the entryway at Rick’s, I saw a dozen eyes turn and stare at the guitar case in her hand. We were often razzed by the older boys who hung out there, but the guitar seemed to provoke something crueler.
“Oh-ho!” a guy named Phillip bellowed. “Since when is this a coffee-house?” He reached his hand down to the stereo next to the couch and turned up the volume.
“You sure you know how to play that?”
“ ‘Free Bird’!”
“Play Nirvana!”
“Look at those groupies!”
When Tess came down the stairs, she flipped her middle finger up at them like a switchblade.
“Fuck you. And you!” She leaned in, sneering close to their faces. “AND FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, YOU!” She finished with her finger dug into Phillip’s chest.
They went pale and turned their eyes back to their video game.
Upstairs, Rick sat in the corner of his bedroom, stoned, his skin washed with blue light, his eyes cut like slits across his face. Tess closed and bolted the door. Tegan opened the case, and our friends found spots to sit on the mattress. Rick lit a joint, and generously passed it around. Leah pulled frozen bottles of beer from her bag. Tegan started noodling on the guitar, twisting the pegs, trying to bring the guitar’s tuning into focus. Then she started to sing. The jeers and hollering from the boys in the living room rose, but we shifted our bodies closer to hear Tegan’s voice. Tess, in particular, seemed transported. The energy that vibrated through her like a seizure all but stopped. She could have been asleep.
24. TEGAN DITCH PIGS
While Leah and Sara made awkward small talk on the landing at the top of the stairs at Rick’s, I casually pretended to sip my warm beer next to them. Though the blinds were drawn in Tess’s room, I could see she was on the bed, facing away from us. The longer she refused to acknowledge us, the more we squirmed. It felt like we were trapped in quicksand with her; a miserable, slow-moving death that had been in progress for about a half hour.
Leah had begged us to come: “One last party at Rick’s before the end of the school year.”
We had agreed, but only out of guilt.
After the fight at Rick’s, Sara had been reluctant to return again. Leah and Tess had convinced us to play a gig and some of our routine returned, but things didn’t feel the same as they had before. We instigated a slow disappearing act in the months that followed, showing up for only a few hours, then an hour, then not at all. I made excuses to Leah and Tess when they called.
“We’re grounded.”
“Alex has a competition I have to go to.”
“Stephanie’s having a party.”
Soon one week turned into four, and then six, and then I lost count of how many weeks had passed since our last visit.
Tess and I had kept talking, though. She had been expelled for fighting and was living at Rick’s and I felt bad for her for having to stay there. She’d call after school, and we’d discuss my classes and the books I was reading. She was smart and loved to read. They were the first sober conversations the two of us had ever had, and I enjoyed them immensely.
One night when we were on the phone, I was in Sara’s room playing Mario Kart when Tess said, “You guys should come over to Rick’s. I’m so fucking bored.”
Sara shook her head no, but I said, “You come over. It’s a school night. We can’t leave, our parents are here.”
“Okay.” Then the line had disconnected.
“Shit.”
“You’re on your own,” Sara said, ushering me out of her room and locking the door securely behind her, as if she were afraid.
From the living room window, I watched Tess’s shadowy frame hustle up the street just before midnight. I scampered to the front door silently to greet her with a sick feeling in my gut that I’d be caught sneaking her in. I warned her to be quiet in a hysterical whisper on the snowy front porch before I led her to my room. Sitting next to each other on the small couch at the foot of my bed, Tess offered me a small bottle of whiskey she’d brought along with her. I shook my head no and fixated on the snow melting off her army boots into my purple carpet. Seeing her in my bedroom, among my things, was discombobulating. I was used to seeing her in the chaos of Rick’s house, not the tidy orderliness of mine. Even when she was silent, her presence in my room felt oppressively loud.
&
nbsp; “I didn’t expect you to live somewhere so . . . nice.”
“Oh . . .” I shuffled on the couch, trying to hide my awkwardness. “We just moved here . . . my stepdad, he builds houses . . . he . . . he built it.”
“Why the fuck do you guys hang at Rick’s?”
It felt like a statement not a question. I shrugged, hoping not to come apart entirely in her eyes. Did she feel like we misled her somehow? Why did we hang out there?
We talked until she finished the last of the whiskey and I suggested we go to bed.
“I have to get up in a few hours for school.”
She wore her clothes, and I wore the pajamas I’d awkwardly changed into while she looked away. I could make out the faint sound of her mascara-thick eyelashes opening and closing in the dark, and at some point her hand brushed my leg. I turned over casually, my heart thumping in my chest, and edged myself to the farthest part of the mattress I could without falling off. Neither of us spoke or moved after that. I barely slept, and just before six I got us both up and snuck her out the back door without a word. That afternoon, after the longest day of school I’d ever lived through, I stripped my bed, washing away all evidence Tess had ever been there.
When I told Alex about the sleepover that night, she snickered. “I knew you were into her.”
“I’m not.”
“She’s into you, too.”
“No, she’s not.”
“Who takes the bus across the city to go to someone’s house at midnight, drunk? She wasn’t bored. You’re kidding yourself if you think that’s why she came over. Do you like her? Is that it?”
“Oh my god. No. What are you talking about?” I tried to laugh it off. But my face flushed and I pressed my forehead into the wall beside my bed in shame. All of a sudden everything about me and Tess felt so obvious and I felt so embarrassed. Alex had come to Rick’s only once, but she’d been disgusted that we were hanging out there. Like Tess, and now me, she had wondered, “Why do you hang out there?” Though it had clearly been a question, it felt like a statement, or maybe a warning. It sounded to me as if she were saying, I would never hang out here, so maybe you shouldn’t either. Like a caught cat, I arched my back and skulked away from any mention of Tess after that.
