by Sara Quin
“I’m just not surprised,” Tegan said finally. “They don’t care about what happened to us last night. How fucking traumatized we are!”
“Sounds familiar,” Christina said, rolling her eyes.
* * *
Our friendships with Wendy and Stephanie had been strained since a sleepover at Stephanie’s in the summer. After we spent hours smoking weed and wandering through the empty tennis courts and parks behind Stephanie’s house, she’d invited a few of us back to her place. While Veronica, Christina, Tegan, and I drifted off to sleep in piles of blankets on the carpet downstairs, Stephanie and Wendy had sat on the front steps outside drinking wine from long-stem glasses and gossiping in the dark.
When I woke up, it was blindingly bright. The overhead lights, which were never on in Stephanie’s room, exposed a nightmare: Christina was screaming angrily at a group of men who were bent over our bodies. These men weren’t boys—they were older, stronger, and no one I recognized. They were laughing, grabbing at our ankles, which were exposed by the blankets they’d tossed off us while we were still asleep. Christina intimidated them with her wild kicking; at five eleven she was formidable prey. I pedaled my legs defensively in the air. They turned away from us to focus on Veronica and Tegan, who despite their furious kicking and yelling were easily overpowered. With their fists tight around both girls’ ankles and wrists, these strange men dragged them to the bottom of the stairs and then up to the main floor. Christina and I followed behind them, howling, helpless to do anything more than create a vacuum of panic and noise. When we arrived in the living room, the men finally released Tegan’s and Veronica’s limbs. Wendy and Stephanie were standing near the front door, blushing and laughing, still holding wineglasses. I’d been betrayed by girls for male attention before, but this set a new precedent.
After that night, whose side you were on was determined by whom you identified with most in the story. We fixated on the role each of us played in the incident, rarely considering the men who had participated in the attack. However unfair, the betrayal seemed to reveal something sinister about what girls would let boys do to other girls. Why had these strangers been permitted into the basement to scare us? Why hadn’t Stephanie and Wendy come running when they heard our terrified screams? Why wouldn’t they apologize for a prank that had spun out of control? There was a code that we had always adhered to, an unspoken promise to close ranks when any of us were at risk. These men introduced a permanent shift in our world, a danger that was impossible to dismiss.
* * *
When we returned to school a few days later, I recognized faces in the hallway that I’d never noticed before New Year’s Eve. Perhaps even more jarring was that they seemed to know mine. Bound together as central characters in the story of Wendy’s already infamous party, we snuck knowing glances at one another as we passed. Details were exaggerated in animated retellings across rows of desks in classes. Even the specifics of our car chase filtered through a school-wide game of telephone. In these versions, we crashed or were caught, were dragged from the car and beaten. Wendy herself heard tales of the unlucky hero who threw a party and was kicked out of her house and then sent to another high school by her furious parents. In that way, Wendy got what she wanted. The party was a legend, and everyone knew who she was. She seemed to bask in the glow of the newly famous. Maybe we all did.
36. TEGAN BACK TO REALITY
I threw my fists against Sara’s bedroom door so hard and fast I felt my face flinch as the door rattled in its frame. Tears blurred my eyes as I shouted, “FUCKING OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR, SARA! RIGHT FUCKING NOW!”
For a half hour I’d been trying to get her to give back a shirt of Alex’s she’d taken out of the dryer without asking. Alex’s sister was waiting in her car out front, and Alex was pacing wildly in the hall behind me.
“I have to go,” Alex said, crying tears of her own. “If I don’t go now, my sister’s going to be mad. Tegan, I have to leave.”
“SARA!” I yelled. I knew she wasn’t going to open it no matter how loud I yelled. “Just go.”
Alex gave up and headed toward the top of the stairs; her backpack, half unzipped, was slung over her shoulder. In a defeated whisper she said, “She’s so fucking mean sometimes.”
I locked the door to my room after Alex left and fell face-down on my mattress. I cried hot tears of frustration into my pillow. I didn’t want to give Sara the satisfaction of hearing how much she’d upset me. When I opened my door to go down for dinner, Alex’s shirt was crumpled on the floor in the hall. I hated Sara at that moment. I felt increasingly embarrassed by her open hostility toward Alex and me and hopeless to stop it.
Alex tried to combat it initially, showering Sara with praise when she played us her new songs, lending her clothes to Sara when she said she liked them. Alex claimed that when I wasn’t around, Sara acted like a different person. Nicer. So I knew I was the problem, but I didn’t know how to fix it.
“Your girlfriend’s just sensitive,” Sara would tease when I would involve Mom in the conversation.
“No, you were a fucking asshole to her. Because that’s what you are. A fucking asshole.”
“Alex can be sensitive, Tegan,” Mom conceded.
“She’s not sensitive, Mom. Sara took her toque without asking and then said she didn’t know where it went. And then I found it in her closet.”
“You shouldn’t be in my room. Stay out of my stuff!” Sara yelled.
“Mom. Mom. Aren’t you going to do anything? That’s not fair.”
“Work it out between you,” she’d say, unpausing her show, blocking us out.
Sara smirked. “Yeah, Tegan. Stop tattling.”
Alex had brought up my mom’s reluctance to pick a side, too. She felt injured that no adult ever seemed to come to our defense when these altercations took place within earshot of them. Trying to explain to Alex that it was about me, not her, was impossible.
“You’re just an extension of me,” I would plead. “My mom thinks it’s about Sara and me. So she doesn’t get involved because it’s not about you.”
“It is about me because it’s me she’s mean to.”
It was hard for Alex not to make it about her. Which I understood well.
I had a hair trigger about Alex’s family, too. I was tortured by the fact that her parents didn’t appear to know who I was, Sara or Tegan. After two years, they still seemed confused about which one of us was her best friend, leading to constant name mix-ups when I was over at her house. When we first became friends, it was amusing, but after we started hooking up, it became deeply hurtful. Though they had no idea that something had changed between Alex and me, some part of me wanted them to treat me differently. To know that I was special.
“How do they not know that your best friend is named Tegan, not Sara?”
“They aren’t like your parents. They probably get my sister’s friends mixed up too. It’s not personal. They really like you guys. Both of you.”
“But I’m your best friend. I’m the one over there all the time.”
Alex just sighed. “I don’t know, Tegan. I don’t know.”
Our houses had become riddled with emotional potholes and situations with our families that could knock us out of alignment without warning. We were constantly changing our plans to go where people weren’t. If Alex’s family wasn’t going to be home, we spent the weekend at her house. If Sara decided to stay at a friend’s, we’d change our plans and stay at mine. If my dad went out of town, we’d invite ourselves to his apartment while he was away. We tracked privacy like hounds.
“Can I go with Alex to her family’s condo this weekend?”
“Where is it?”
“Jasper.”
Sara rolled her eyes. “Must be nice . . .”
“Yes, you can go,” Mom answered. “I want you to call when you get there. And be back to do homework Sunday by dinner.”
“Thank you.” Turning to Sara I added, “Try not to act so jealous al
l the time.”
The next afternoon I felt high waiting for the doorbell to ring. It was the first time I’d ever left the city limits without a parent.
“Alex, you make sure you drive slow,” Mom warned when Alex arrived to pick me up.
“Watch out for black ice,” Bruce added from over her shoulder, his brow frowning in worry.
“Yup,” I said rushing Alex out the door. “We got it. Slow and cautious.”
On the drive up, Alex held my hand on straight stretches, taking it away only for the hairpin turns on the icy mountain passes. I felt giddy, grown up, in love as we sang every word to the Ani DiFranco record Not a Pretty Girl. When we arrived at the condo, it was past dark. The two of us padded around the simple carpeted two-bedroom, our hands webbed together, flipping on lights in the different rooms as we went. Its opulence was its emptiness, and I felt rich. In those rooms, those two days, the simplest of things felt pleasurable without the fear of being caught: cuddling on the couch, making out while we cooked, taking a bath together. We were able to have conversations in full voices rather than whispers about our family, our siblings, and our friends. For two days I didn’t strain to listen for anything but sounds of pleasure from Alex—her laugh, her heartbeat, her sighs, and her breath against me. For two days I forgot about the messiness of our lives back in Calgary. The gloom that hung over Bruce’s and Mom’s heads. The anxiety and emotion that could overtake any conversation between them and us about school or grades or money. I forgot for two days about my friends who were slowly dividing themselves, every day becoming more like strangers to me as we prepared to move on from Crescent Heights, maybe even from Calgary. I felt lighter and happier those two days in the mountains with Alex than I had in a long time. More certain we were meant to be together; that all the conflict we faced on a weekly basis from our families was about them—not us. I knew the weekend couldn’t last. That there was nothing about locking ourselves away in a mountain retreat that was realistic. But for two days I let myself imagine we were home.
Driving back Sunday afternoon, I lowered the volume on the stereo and admitted to feeling melancholy as we neared the city limits.
Alex agreed. “Back to real life.”
“Back to reality,” I sang in response.
We giggled. She took my hand as Calgary appeared on the horizon.
37. SARA GARAGE WARZ
Garage Warz posters were hung all over the city. Our mom’s cousin Tracy tore one off a bulletin board at Mount Royal College and brought it to dinner at our grandparents’ house.
“You should submit a tape,” she told us.
I scanned the flier.
Are you unheard? unsigned? unmanageable? Include tapes, press kits, and a letter of recommendation from your mom. Grand Prize: Gigs + Plenty o’ Quality Studio Time.
“They’ll never pick us,” I said. “It’s probably only for people who are in college, right?”
“Let me see,” Mom said. “You’re entering this contest.” She slid it back across the table to Tegan. “ ‘Free studio time.’ Meaning, I don’t have to pay for it.”
“We do need a proper demo,” I said, looking at Tegan.
We’d been fighting with Mom all year about our post–high school plans, and the contest stood as a test of our seriousness about a music career. A truce seemed plausible if we took formal steps toward legitimizing our band by signing ourselves up.
“If you’re both dead set on playing music next year, this is a great way to prove it,” she said to us on the drive home.
“We could use the new recordings from Broadcasting. They’re better than the Plunk ones,” Tegan suggested.
“I guess,” I said.
“Why are you acting so weird?”
“We’re just not really a band,” I said. “We don’t even call ourselves Plunk anymore.”
“Just put your names on the tape,” Mom said. “They’re your songs.”
“That sounds kind of boring,” Tegan said.
At home that night we slipped a cassette tape of our recent songs inside a yellow envelope and scrawled “Sara and Tegan” on the outside. As suggested on the flier, we included in the package a handwritten note from our mom.
“Go,” Mom said to us in the parking lot outside the campus radio station on the final day they were accepting applications. Tegan walked ahead of me, swinging the envelope confidently as I dragged behind. The door to the radio station, plastered with band stickers, was locked, so we slipped the package through the mail slot.
“Done!” Tegan said as we climbed back into the Jeep.
A month later we received a phone call from someone at Mount Royal College.
“Is this Sara and/or Tegan?”
Tegan’s eyes widened as the news sunk in: we were in.
* * *
In the week leading up to the competition, Mom offered to take us to get something pierced. She had offered to do this annually since we were twelve, but we’d never been brave enough.
“Um, yes!” Tegan roared, leaping up and tossing the guitar back down onto the mattress. We loaded into the Jeep and drove to a popular tattoo and piercing shop in Kensington.
I wanted my eyebrow pierced, and I selected a small silver barbell from the tray placed atop the glass by a woman working behind the counter. Her tattoos snaked up her arms and across her chest and neck. Her lips, eyebrows, and cheeks were jammed with studs and metal. I was fascinated and terrified.
I eagerly sat with my face turned toward the piercer, whose black latex gloves held both my chin and a needle.
“Pretty cool of your mom to let you do this,” he said, stabbing clean through my right eyebrow. There was never any doubt that Mom was cooler than both of us. Perhaps we were finally ready to let her prove it. Slipping the barbell in, he spun me toward the mirror. I loved it. Mom stood next to Tegan, who was having the skin below her lip pierced.
“What about you, Mom?” the piercer asked when he’d finished with Tegan.
“Oh, pfft,” she said. “They’re the rock stars.”
We left the shop with grins across our new faces.
As Mom looped through the large campus grounds of Mount Royal College on the night of the semifinal, Tegan and I were still arguing about the set list.
“You can’t have two slow ones right next to each other!” Tegan yelled, drawing black lines across the page. “Plus, I don’t even sing that one.”
Mom parked the car in a spot reserved for students, a fact she ignored when Tegan pointed to the sign. “I was a student here once,” she said, slamming the car door closed.
We were all on edge. We set off across the lot, hurrying behind her like children afraid to be separated in the mall. Inside the bar, daylight splashed through the windows onto the black, beer-sticky tabletops. Rock music droned out of speakers that hung in every corner. We crossed between the tables checkered with patrons, some of whom were lifting pints of beer to their mouths while turning pages of their textbooks. I wanted to grab one of the glasses and chug down every drop. We lurked behind Mom, too shy to address the young man who was crouched on the stage twisting guitar cords into stacks of perfect circles.
“My daughters are competing in Garage Warz!” Mom screamed over the music.
“Okay,” he replied. I died a thousand deaths.
“So where do they go?” she shouted into his ear.
Shuffling off the stage, he disappeared through a door and returned with an older man, who stretched out his hand and said, “They’re not really allowed in the bar.”
Because we were underage, our performing in the competition had required a slight bending of the rules, he explained to us. There was no age restriction on the application, but they’d never had high school students submit. We were instructed to follow him to the dressing room behind the stage, where we were to remain before and after our performance.
“If you’re caught taking one sip of alcohol, we’ll be fined,” he warned us.
“Can our friends
be allowed in if they’re not eighteen?”
“Of course not,” he said, shaking his head.
“I’ll get them in,” Mom whispered in my ear, when his back was turned.
As the backstage filled with musicians, it became apparent that we were the youngest competitors. No one said a word to us, and we nervously tuned and retuned our acoustic guitars.
“It’s like we aren’t supposed to be here,” I said to Tegan. “Even the bartender gave me a dirty look.”
There was a natural flow of introductions between the other bands. One musician moved confidently through the room. His ears were pierced with hoops and his jeans and shirt were preppy. Another guy was twirling a drumstick between the long fingers of his left hand, a toothpick dangling from his bottom lip.
“Are you sure about our opening song?” I asked.
Tegan rolled her eyes. “Sara. Relax.”
“Can we have chairs?” we asked when we were told to make our way to the stage.
We’d never done a sound check, and we were both flustered. We stared grimly at the mic stands towering above our heads. The sound guy twisted the stands sharply, and each of the mics dropped to our height.
“What do you want in the monitor?” he asked, pointing to large, filthy speakers on the floor.
“Each other,” Tegan suggested as he walked to the sound desk. We pulled two wooden chairs from the bar and set them on the stage.
“These chairs have arms,” I whispered to Tegan.
We sat perched on the edge of each seat so we could hold our guitars. We blushed as the grumpy sound guy pounded the stands until they folded in half like upside-down L’s. With the mics pointed to our mouths, an even broader scowl stretched across his face. “Guitars need to be mic’d, too,” he grumbled, and walked offstage to dig around in a row of milk crates overflowing with snarled cords and clips.
