can still make out the bones in his chest.
“I was taking it back, doofus.”
“Your face is red,” he says.
His is too.
My mind bugs around for an explanation. I hate lying to Drew, but he asks too many damn questions.
“You’re such a goof.” I laugh some more. “My mom bought it by mistake. She thought it was a douche. Okay? She’s a total zone-out.” I start down the strip again.
Drew catches up with me. “Why haven’t you been returning my calls? Are you mad at me for something?”
“Nobody returns calls,” I blurt. “I called my dad a couple weeks ago. He never called me back.”
I wish I’d never said that. Now I can’t shut up. “And he’s my dad. But nope. That’s life.”
Drew trots to keep up. “Did you try calling him again?”
“Fuck him.” I shove my way through the supermarket door.
“What?”
I turn and squint at Drew’s face. “Fuck. Him.”
I need some food to bring back to Ruby. People are less likely to throw you out if you bring home groceries once in a while. At the meat section, I grab a package of bacon. Don’t even look at the price. Who cares? I watch my feet on the linoleum as I walk to the bread aisle.
Sappy Muzak dribbles through the store. Drew scrambles along beside me.
“That’s crappy, Sammie. I’m—I’m sorry. I thought you were pissed with me. Did you talk to your mom about it?”
I snatch a loaf of grainy bread off the shelf, the kind with sesame seeds all over the crust—the kind they wrap in two plastic bags, it’s so friggin’ fancy—and start back toward the syrup aisle. Real maple syrup, Ruby, the good stuff. Suck on that tomorrow morning!
“Why the hell would I talk to her about it?”
I can’t find the syrup. Just peanut butter and jam and my head is ready to explode.
I don’t know what to do when I get like this. I don’t know where to put it. This is why I don’t want to talk to anyone right now. Least of all Drew.
“She was funny when I talked to her the other night,” he says. “She thought someone had broken into the apartment and she kept saying, ‘Who’s there?’ in this man-voice. She put the phone down a minute and went to check and then she came back on the line and said she had a hammer for protection.” He laughs. “She wanted me to come over. She’s like—”
I stop in the aisle and stare at him. “She wanted you to come there? To the apartment?” This is too much. He has to be bullshitting. Maybe this is Drew getting even with me for ditching him all this time.
“She’d had a few. She didn’t mean anything.”
“Shut up.”
“She kept saying, ‘I need a man!’ ”
My hand shoots out and shoves him against the preserves. His face is shocked as he hits the shelf. A jam jar falls past his ear and busts open on the floor. It looks so horrible, the bloody red of it, like the inside of a skull. We both stare. A big goose egg sits in my throat and I can’t swallow.
Drew looks at me. His mouth opens.
I take off for the cashiers. He doesn’t follow. Who could blame him?
TEN
I GUESS THIS is Jill’s idea of a good time—what the cool kids do, the ones who aren’t “total suckholes.” So far it seems like a drag.
It’s midnight and I’m sitting on a log somewhere in the uncharted brush of deepest darkest Burnaby. Sparks from the bonfire pop now and then. The Byrne Road bush parties are a semi-regular event for Jill and her pals. The straight kids refer to them as Byrne Road Burnouts. This is the first time I’ve come out to one of these things.
Probably about twenty people down here. Maybe more. Kids wander in and out of the trees. Gabbing, necking, singing. On a log directly across the fire from me some dude who looks a little old for the crowd is playing guitar and singing “Let It Be” in a strained voice that would make any self-respecting dog howl his guts out. Three girls I recognize from school are gulping orange coolers from the bottle and singing along. Outside the ring of logs, a few guys pass a joint.
One of the orange cooler chicks falls off her log and the rest of them squeal and crack up and drag her back up off the ground.
Jesus. All these jerks want to do is get drunk and stoned.