And if they were, he also hoped that they wouldn’t be afraid to seek his help. He’d have to tell them they could come to him, no matter what.

  He grabbed a Spartan apple from the fruit bowl and bit into it. His little girl was growing up and as hard as that was for him and Lori-Anne, he realized it might be more confusing and difficult for Nadia.

  Especially if something was going on that she wasn’t sharing.

  * * *

  The girls were in Nadia’s room, and she had her iPod plugged into the base station, pounding out music by Interpol, She Wants Revenge, Blink-182, and a bunch of other bands she heard on Live 88.5.

  She especially liked the band Of Monsters and Men. Their song Dirty Paws was exploding.

  Live was her new favourite radio station. They played really cool alternative music, none of that popcorn Top 40 crap. Crap she’d listened to until a month or two ago.

  Before Spike.

  She’d read on his Facebook that he loved Live, so she’d started to listen to it. It was strange at first, hearing music she’d never heard before, but then there were the oldies her parents played on the stereo once in a while, like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, so she’d kept listening and now it was what she actually liked. Funny how the musicians from a generation ago could be so in tune with what she was feeling and going through now. She guessed being in love was the same no matter what generation you were in. A broken heart hurt just as much back then as it did today.

  Maybe Caitlin was right. Spike had no clue who she was, and why would he when he had a girlfriend that he probably loved?

  Still, it sucked.

  He was so much better than the boys her age. Grade eight boys were so immature. They still acted like they were in elementary school—so dorky.

  “You were rather rude to your dad,” Caitlin said as she stuffed a chocolate chip cookie in her mouth. “He was just asking us what he asks us every day.”

  “Maybe I’m just tired of the same old thing.”

  “You should try my place then,” Caitlin said. “No one is talking these days. Or they’re yelling. Mom and Dad get at each other and before you know it Nick and I get caught in it.”

  “What about Suzie?”

  “She’s always at her boyfriend’s place. Nights too. She’ll probably move in with him soon, I guess.”

  “That will be so great when we have our own place,” Nadia said. “I mean if we don’t have boyfriends when we’re Suzie’s age, we should move in together. Be so cool.”

  “Yeah, sounds great.”

  “You don’t sound like you want to,” Nadia said.

  “We’re thirteen. It’s years away. Things change.”

  Nadia fell back on her bed while Caitlin sat at the end. Each was lost in her thoughts.

  “Do you ever wonder what life will be like in twenty years?” Nadia said. The Foo Fighters’ This is a Call was playing. “When this song came out, the internet was something only a few people had and it was so slow and not much was on it. The iPhone hadn’t even been invented. No one even knew what texting was.”

  Caitlin lay down beside her cousin. “So?”

  “Don’t you wonder what we’re missing now that we’ll have in twenty years?”

  “Not really.”

  Nadia rolled to her side and held her head in her palm. “Google is part of our vocabulary now. Do you realize that? How many times a day do we say ‘just google it’? Just imagine not being able to google. The world used to be dumb. Now we just google and boom, we have the answers.”

  “Maybe we’re the ones who are dumb,” Caitlin said. “We don’t bother to know anything because we can just google it.”

  Nadia lay back down. “Now you sound like my mother when she saw my mid-term grades.”

  It was Caitlin’s turn to roll onto her side. “Maybe she’s right. Seriously, most kids our age can’t spell. We just let spell check do it for us.”

  “If they didn’t want us to use it, they wouldn’t have invented it.”

  “Do you ever wonder how we’d live if all that technology went away?”

  “Why would that happen? They don’t take technology away. They keep making more. That’s why I wonder what our kids will have that we don’t have. Probably some real cool stuff we’ll wish we would have had.”

  “But in twenty years we’re only going to be thirty-four so we’ll have that too, whatever it is.”

  “Yeah, but we’ll be adults with jobs and responsibility. It won’t be the same.”

  “I guess.” She lay back down beside Nadia.

  “Can you imagine us with kids?”

  Caitlin burst out laughing. “Now that’s a scary thought.”

  “I hope I’m way cooler than my mom. Maybe like my dad, but even better.”

  “Your mom isn’t that bad.”

  Nadia dissected the thought in her head. Her mom could be nice. She was most of the times. It’s just that she could be a bit pushy too. “Sometimes she reminds me too much of Granddad.”

  Caitlin snorted. “My dad is Granddad.”

  “Yeah, he really does look like him.”

  “Nana is pretty cool though.”

  “Yeah, she makes the best blueberry muffins.”

  “I love her cheesecakes.”

  “Me too.”

  They both stared at the ceiling.

  “Ever wonder if Uncle Cory became gay just to piss off Granddad?” Nadia said.

  “I don’t really think that’s something you choose just to piss off your dad. That’s something that was inside of him. Like if I have to choose between my red shirt and my yellow one, I’ll take the red one because that’s the one I really like.”

  “That sort of makes sense.” She paused. “Do you want to read something I wrote?”

  “Sure.”

  Nadia pulled out a journal she kept in her night table and leafed to the middle. She handed it to her cousin.

  Why do things hurt so much?

  Sometimes, at night, I think I can’t

  I’m so lonely amongst a thousand friends

  Who can’t help me get rid of the pain

  Caitlin gave it back and said nothing.

  “So?”

  “It’s . . . it’s good?”

  “You’re not supposed to say it like a question.” Nadia slammed the journal closed and stuffed it back in the drawer. “Now I wished I hadn’t showed it to you.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Caitlin said and picked at her cuticles. “It seemed sort of personal. Are you really in this much pain or was it just made up?”

  Maybe her writing really was more personal than she’d thought and maybe she should have kept it to herself. Being young was so difficult. Love was so confusing.

  She just wanted someone else to understand what she was going through. Her cousin made the most sense, being the same age and being so close.

  Still, Nadia wished she were older; maybe then Spike would notice her. And maybe if she didn’t like him so much she wouldn’t feel this tightness around her heart that was impossible to ignore.

  She often wished she were still in elementary school, just having fun like the boys in her class still seemed to be able to do. She felt stuck in the space between being a kid and being old enough to be in control of her life. Thirteen sort of sucked in so many ways. The worst was that she was still treated like a preteen when what she really wanted was to be treated like a grownup.

  So yeah, to answer Caitlin, she was in pain, and the problem with being thirteen was that it was impossible to see past that pain because the future was just too damn far away. Every day was like the one before, except her pain seemed to be growing.

  She didn’t know how to deal with it, except to write her feelings down in her journal, and hope to someday catch up to her future and know how to deal with it all.

  * * *

  When Caitlin climbed into her mom’s car, she didn’t just smell the cigarette smoke on her, she was pretty sure she smelled booze too. And what had her parents always told the kids? Never get into a car with someone who’s been drinking.

  WTF.

  “Mom, you smell like a bottle of wine.”

  Nancy turned to her. “I just had half a glass. I’m fine.”

  “If you kill us driving home, I’ll never talk to you again.”

  “Okay, I deserve that.”

  “I’m sure Uncle Mathieu would have driven me home.”

  “I don’t really need your uncle to know about our dirty laundry.”

  Caitlin rolled her eyes. “Seriously? I’m sure everyone in the family knows you and Dad are getting a divorce.”

  “Who the hell said we were getting a divorce?”

  Caitlin tried to backpedal. “Nobody. I just assumed because all you and Dad do is fight.”

  Nancy’s left elbow rested against the door and she leaned her head into her left hand. “We’re not fighting.”

  “Mom, really?” When Caitlin looked at her, she saw her mother look small and defeated. “When are you going to tell us what’s going on? I think me and Nick have a right to know. Probably Suzie too, even if she barely lives at home anymore.”

  “You should ask your father,” Nancy said and put the car in drive. “Because he sure won’t admit it to me.”

  “Admit what?”

  Nancy took a deep breath. “Your father is seeing another woman.”

  Oh, that isn’t good.

  “For real?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “But how can you be?”

  “When you’re my age and you’ve been with the same man a long time, you notice the signs. Trust me.”

  Caitlin felt tears in her eyes.

  “I don’t understand. Why . . . why would Dad do that?”

  “I. Don’t. Know.”

  “This Christmas is going to suck.”

  “That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”

  “But Mom, it’s not like I don’t see and don’t hear. Was it something you did to piss off Dad?”

  Nancy pinned her daughter with narrowing eyes for a moment and then turned her attention back to the road. “You think it’s my fault?”

  Caitlin looked out the window. The houses seemed to be zooming by too fast, as were her thoughts.

  “I didn’t mean . . . Mom, I’m just . . . scared.”

  Nancy grabbed Caitlin’s hand. “I know, baby. Me too.”

  They drove in silence for a few blocks. They’d gotten quite a bit of snow the last three weeks and the snow banks were quite high already. If the weather kept this up, by spring the snow would be piled fifteen feet high. It never happened because there were always one or two warm spells during the winter which melted what had already accumulated. Still, this year the snow had come early and stayed. So far.

  A white snowy Christmas was always better.

  Except for this year.

  Caitlin didn’t want her parents to divorce. That wasn’t supposed to happen to her family. Nadia was so lucky. Uncle Mathieu and Aunt Lori-Anne never fought, and they were always hugging and kissing.

  Caitlin wiped her face with the palm of her hand.

  “Are we going to have to sell the house? I like that house.”

  “We’ll be fine,” Nancy said. “Let’s just see what happens. And please keep this between us for now. Maybe it will all blow over and things will get back to normal. Maybe I’m wrong.”

  Caitlin looked at her mom from the corner of her eye and she could see the brave face her mother was putting on. It made her feel bad to see her mom like this—confused and scared and angry.

  Love could be so cruel.

  * * *

  On Christmas Eve everyone gathered at Nana and Granddad’s place for the traditional family Réveillon de Noël. They went to midnight mass and then had a big feast, and Santa dropped by and everyone got a gift—they were from Nana and Granddad but they all pretended it was from Santa—and by the time Nadia and her parents got home, it was just after four in the morning.

  Nadia woke to the smell of a cooking turkey hours later, just after one in the afternoon. Her mom always prepared it before they went to her grandparents for the Réveillon and since they had an oven with a delay start feature, it was as easy as inputting the start time and temperature, and voila! Wake up Christmas afternoon to the juicy aroma of a Christmas turkey halfway to being ready for dinner.

  “Hey sleepy-head,” Mathieu said.

  “Hi Dad.” She rubbed sleep from her eyes. “Mom not up?”

  “She’s been working a lot lately so I thought I’d let her sleep in,” he said. He was sitting at the counter with a cup of coffee. “Did you have fun last night?”

  She poured a glass of milk. “It was a bit strange. Uncle Jim and Aunt Nancy didn’t talk to each other, and Caitlin was bummed out.”

  “I did notice,” he said.

  “And I wished Uncle Cory had been there.”

  “Me too.”

  “Do you think it’s because Granddad doesn’t like that he’s . . . you know.”

  “Your uncle is gay and whatever there is between him and your grandfather is their business. Your Granddad is not an easy man to please.”

  “He’s totally different than Great-Grandpa, that’s for sure. Are they coming over for dinner?”

  “Yes, Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma will be here around three.”

  Nadia seemed pensive. “This time of year always makes me wish your parents were alive. I mean, I love my great-grandparents, but I would have liked to know my grandparents too.”

  “It’s the time of year we miss those we’ve lost.”

  They heard footsteps and turned to stare at a very sleepy Lori-Anne who had a tangled mess of hair full of knots.

  “Hey Mom.”

  Lori-Anne hugged her. “What are you two talking about?”

  “About the people that aren’t here with us anymore,” Mathieu said. “Coffee?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Dad’s side of the family is so small. Only Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma. Even Great-Aunt Jacqueline died when I was three so I don’t remember her. I have no aunts and uncles. No cousins.”

  “You have a mom and dad that love you very much,” Lori-Anne said.

  “I love you guys too.”

  Lori-Anne sat down beside Mathieu, cup in hand. “You okay? Seemed a bit off lately.”

  Nadia shrugged. “Guess grade eight is a bit harder. So much happening so fast.”

  “We’re here to help,” Mathieu said. “You just need to talk to us.”

  “I know.” She peeked into the oven. “That turkey smells so good. I'm starving. What’s for breakfast?”

  “I can whip up some scrambled eggs and pancakes if you want.”

  “Sure. I’ll help.”

  “I’ll jump in the shower while you two get it ready,” Lori-Anne said. “Give me a holler when it’s ready.”

  Nadia saw how her dad was looking at her mom walk away. If only Spike looked at her that way. Caitlin was probably right—she didn’t have a chance—but it still hurt. She didn’t know why she had such a crush on the guy. She really didn’t know anything about him other than that he was a musician. Not like he divulged much on his Facebook page or the band’s website.

  All she knew was that she had this empty space around her heart and that space could only be filled by one person: Spike.

  “I saw that,” she said in a teasing tone.

  “You saw nothing.”

  “Dad, I’m not a kid anymore. I notice stuff.”

  Mathieu fetched a couple of mixing bowls and gave one to Nadia. “Since you’re not a kid anymore, you can mix the wet ingredients while I do the dry.”

  “I hope I can find someone I’ll love someday as much as you love Mom.”

  Mathieu put an arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. “You will,” he said. “But let us enjoy having you to ourselves for a bit longer. Don’t rush into it.”

  Nadia pressed her lips into a tight line and slapped a fake smile on her face. Parents never wanted their kids to grow up too fast, always telling them there was plenty of time. Seemed like grownups couldn’t remember ever being thirteen.

  Maybe someday she would understand. And tell her kids the same things.

  But for now, she wished she were older so a certain boy would notice her.

  “Sure.”

  * * *

  Christmas and New Year’s had come and gone and kids were headed back to school. Bitter cold had arrived like an unwelcome relative and in good old Canadian spirit, everyone complained about it. Heck, if you couldn’t change it, you could at least grumble about it until a warm spell moved it along.

  “Hey cuz,” Nadia said when she saw Caitlin. They hugged like they hadn’t seen each other the last two weeks instead of just a couple of days. “Ready for more fun?”

  The sarcasm was dry and cold, fitting the wintry weather.

  “Christmas vacation could have been longer,” Caitlin said.

  “I’m actually sort of glad to be back.”

  Caitlin gave her cousin an are-you-nuts sort of look, but then caught on. “I’d hoped the break would help you get over him. You need to let him go. He’s not yours.”

  She unlocked her locker and shoved her jacket and boots into it. She grabbed her books and latched her lock.

  “I can’t. I don’t know why. He’s all I think about.” Nadia hesitated. “I wrote a few more lines to my poem.”

  “What are you going to do with it? Give it to him as a sign of your undying love? He’ll just think you’re a weirdo and his girlfriend will pound you. Is that what you want?”

  Nadia looked like she’d been kicked.

  “Sorry,” Caitlin said. “But if your cousin can’t set you straight, who else will? You’re my best friend too and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “But I’m hurting. Right here,” she said, touching her heart. “Haven’t you ever had a crush?”

  “Why, sure. Like last year I really liked Justin Bieber, but I got over him.”

  “That’s not the same. You had no chance of ever seeing him every day at school.”

  “And you have no chance of getting Spike. He’s going to be eighteen this year and you’re thirteen.”

 

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