“Fourteen next month.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’re jailbait to a guy like him.”

  They started walking toward class. It felt like they weren’t getting anywhere in the sea of moving bodies. Kids hurried in all directions, shouting to friends to wait up, and teachers telling them to hurry, hurry, hurry.

  “I thought once we were in high school things would be different.”

  “Grade eight isn’t really high school yet,” Caitlin said. “Even if we are in the same school. I’m okay with it. I see Suzie and she’s just finishing university and now she has to figure out what job she wants to do for the rest of her life, and she has no idea. And Derek who went up north to work on the oil fields. I think he did that to get away from Dad. And Nick has to pick grade twelve courses but he hasn’t figured out what he wants to do after that so he’s not sure what classes he should take. I’m okay being a kid.”

  “We’re teenagers.”

  “Whatever.”

  When they got to their respective classrooms, they said bye and filed in behind the other kids. Nadia sat at her desk and sighed; she no longer wanted to be at school.

  She hadn’t seen Spike at all this morning.

  Mrs. Bowers came in and wasted no time diving into a new math lesson.

  “I hate my life,” Nadia said under her breath. “This sucks.”

  * * *

  At lunch Caitlin and Nadia were sitting side by side at their usual table with a bunch of other friends. Everyone seemed to be having separate conversations. It was so loud that it was almost impossible to hear the person beside you let alone one sitting three places over.

  Caitlin was asking Nadia something when she noticed her cousin not paying attention to her at all. She followed her gaze and wasn’t surprised when she saw Spike and his bandmates sitting across the cafeteria, his girlfriend under his arm.

  Caitlin flicked Nadia’s left ear.

  “What the hell!”

  “Really?” Caitlin said. “You should swallow the drool dripping from your chin.”

  Nadia wiped her chin. It was dry.

  “Real funny.”

  “It might as well be covered in slobber, the way you were glaring at him. Good thing his girlfriend didn’t see you. You’re asking for trouble.”

  “I can’t help it. He’s so hot. Look at him.”

  Caitlin did. To be honest, she preferred the drummer, who had short dark hair and looked like a younger Tré Cool. But she wasn’t going to obsess over him. They were just high school seniors who in a year or two might be nobody.

  Honestly, she had no desire to date any guy right now. She and Suzie talked sometimes, and her sister often related her experience with boys. Relationships were hard. Even with her boyfriend, Scott, it wasn’t always easy. Suzie told her not to rush into it. It got complicated real fast once boys got in the picture.

  Maybe if Nadia had an older sister, she wouldn’t be so fixated on Spike. Caitlin did her best to help her cousin, but they were the same age and both lacked experience.

  “You know, a guy like that will expect his girl to put out.”

  A worried shadow passed across Nadia’s features.

  “That’s right,” Caitlin said. “Guys like him don’t date girls who can’t . . . you know . . . take their thing—”

  “You’re just trying to scare me off,” Nadia said, annoyed. “I’m sure he’s not like that.”

  Caitlin’s eyebrows shot up an inch. “Uh! I’m sure he’s totally like that,” she said. “You think that hoe he’s with is a virgin? I’m sure she does it any way he likes it.”

  “You’re gross.”

  “No, I’m real. Wake up, cuz. Spike is nearly an adult. A man. He’s not interested in you.”

  Tears stung Nadia’s eyes. She grabbed her half-eaten sandwich and stormed off, throwing it in the trash as she passed by.

  “Nadia, wait up!”

  Nadia kept going so Caitlin hurried after her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said loudly but not quite shouting. “Come on, wait.”

  Nadia stopped and turned, her eyes red and full of pain.

  “I can’t control my feelings,” Nadia said. “I think I’d have been more sensitive to your feelings if you were in love with someone you couldn’t have.”

  Caitlin felt her jaw drop.

  “In love? Seriously? You think you love him now?”

  Nadia turned and walked away again. “You don’t get it.”

  Caitlin caught up to Nadia and grabbed her arm to stop her. “Sorry, but I don’t understand how you can think you’re in love with him. It’s one-sided.”

  “Doesn’t make it less real for me.”

  Caitlin shook her head. She had assumed Nadia had a stupid little crush that would blow over. She hadn’t expected her cousin to fall this hard. She didn’t know what to say.

  “But love . . . Really . . .”

  “When I see him, I can’t breathe,” Nadia said. “It hurts so bad that sometimes I want to cut myself to let the pain out.”

  Caitlin put a hand to her mouth. “God, you’re not?”

  “No,” Nadia said. “I know it won’t help.”

  “Promise me you’ll never do that. I can’t lose you. I love you and I’d be so lost without you. It would be like a gigantic hole in my heart.”

  “Now you get it,” Nadia said. “That’s how strong my feelings are for Spike.”

  “But he’s not family. It’s not the same.”

  “It is. We’re both going to fall in love someday with other people.”

  “Someday, not now.”

  “You don’t get to choose when.”

  A small crowd had formed around them and they suddenly noticed they’d become a reality show. Some had their stupid phones recording.

  “What are you all looking at?” Nadia said. “My cousin and I are having a private conversation.”

  “In the middle of a high school hallway!” someone shouted from behind the crowd and others snickered. “Of course, we’re going to watch.”

  Caitlin grabbed Nadia and led her away until they’d reached a corner where no one was around.

  “Be straight with me,” Caitlin said. “Do you really think you’ll ever get him?”

  Nadia looked at her for a good thirty seconds. “Probably not, but—”

  “No but,” Caitlin said. “You’re right. We’re both going to find someone to love someday, and maybe someday that same person will stop loving us. But you know what? I’m always going to be there for you, no matter what. I don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all.”

  “I think it’s too late for that. I might still be too young, but my heart doesn’t seem to care. It’s throwing me against that brick wall like I’m some stupid ragged doll.”

  Caitlin pulled Nadia into a hug. “Well I guess I’ll pick you up and patch you up best I can then. I just hope you’re not in so many pieces that I can’t put you back together.”

  “I love you,” Nadia said.

  “I love you too.”

  * * *

  Caitlin was in bed, worried about her mom.

  It was Saturday night, the fourth of February; the cold spell hadn’t let up yet, and it had snowed most of the day. She glanced at her clock on her night table: 12:43.

  That was a.m.

  Like, after midnight.

  Her mind was a beehive of uncertainties. So many crazy things were happening lately, with her parents and with Nadia. She couldn’t really do much to help her mom and dad. If they were going to call it quits, well that was that. Grownups did stupid things too, and the consequences were often like shrapnel after an explosion, flying everywhere and hitting innocent people.

  Collateral damage.

  Like her and Nicholas.

  Caitlin blamed her dad. He’d always been strict, like Granddad, but overall a good dad. He used to spend time with her and Nick, but over the last while he was barely ever home.

  Like tonight.

  It was too late for him to still be at work. It was possible that he was staying over with Nana and Granddad, but she doubted it. Her mom wouldn’t be in her room crying right now if that were the case.

  He was probably with that other woman her mom was sure he was seeing. That was hard to take. She was the kid here, but more and more she seemed to be the one to take care of her mom. She and Nick.

  Caitlin had talked to her brother about what was going on and he’d pretty much told her what she already knew: that Dad was cheating on Mom and it was just a matter of time before she threw him out.

  Or he moved out.

  Mom drank way too much now. She’d always been a social drinker, but now it was almost daily. It really hurt Caitlin to see her mother that way—depressed, helpless, breaking.

  Caitlin had never thought that her mom could look so lonely and fragile. She wasn’t a big woman, but she’d always been solid, fair and compassionate, loving and nurturing, the needed balance to her dad’s toughness.

  It didn’t matter to Caitlin why he had stopped loving her mom; just the fact that something had ripped them apart was enough to make her leery about love. She found it hard to believe that love could last forever.

  Which made her worry about Nadia.

  Her cousin was so sure that Spike was the love of her life, and at thirteen Caitlin knew better. The problem was that Nadia couldn’t be reasoned with, like a puppy that hadn’t learned yet that going to the bathroom in the middle of the living room wasn’t acceptable. Thing was, the puppy would learn.

  Caitlin wasn’t sure Nadia would.

  At least, not as quickly as Caitlin wanted. It broke her heart to watch her cousin consumed by a love that was completely one-sided and would always be. It was impossible to watch her mom be pulled apart by a love that had unexpectedly been confined to a room too small and too dark, left alone to wither away.

  Love felt like a dirty word, colourful and beautiful but prickly and dangerous, an unattainable treasure hidden at the top of a dangerous path full of traps and poisonous thorns.

  Caitlin stared at the minutes change on her alarm clock, inching her closer toward dawn and further away from sleep.

  Eventually her mind grew too tired and shut down, and for a short while she didn’t worry about the troubles the people that mattered most to her were going through.

  * * *

  Nadia was sitting on her bed, laptop resting on her thighs, her favourite music playing on her iPod while she worked on her poem.

  She could hear her parents out and about outside her closed bedroom door, getting household chores like laundry and vacuuming done. There was a time, when she was about ten, when she’d liked to vacuum, with her parents finally trusting her to use the machine, but now she hated it when they forced her to do her room.

  Not that she kept it messy.

  In fact, she didn’t like a messy room, preferred her things where they should be, and if she happened to leave dirty clothes on the floor at bedtime, it quickly got tossed into the laundry basket in her closet the next morning.

  Nadia typed on her keyboard and then fiercely hit the backspace key to erase a whole line. She’d been at it an hour now and she’d only managed to add a few more line to the original poem:

  Why does he ignore me all the time

  When he knows I love him so much

  I feel like a fool

  But can’t stop myself no matter

  He looks at me but doesn’t see

  Nothing else seemed to come to mind. She wasn’t really that happy with what she’d written, but it had been so much work and she couldn’t bear to delete it all. Writing was more difficult than it seemed and she had a lot of respect for those who wrote songs, who conquered the challenge of finding the right words to say what you wanted to say. Trying to make sense with so few words was hard. Now she understood why so many lyrics to songs seemed to make no sense at all. Except maybe to the person who’d written them.

  She put the laptop to the side and went to the window. It was snowing outside. Seemed like it had been snowing since November. There was so much of the white stuff everywhere that her dad kept saying he was running out of room on the front lawn. The banks were as high as she was.

  Out across the street kids were playing in a fort they’d made. A sad moment seized her, the realization that just a couple of years ago that would have been her and Caitlin playing in the snow, and now it seemed like those days were so distant that they barely felt real. She’d looked forward to growing up—being able to do things like drive a car, earn some money, go out without her parents—but she had never expected that before she got there, there would be this gap between being a kid and being old enough to get that freedom.

  The road between childhood and adulthood seemed to be filled with heartaches and disappointments. Being a teenager felt like a trip into one of those houses of mirrors you find at a carnival. Everywhere you look is a deceptive interpretation of the reality you thought you saw and wanted.

  A knock on her door.

  A squeal as the hinges protested.

  “Hey honey,” Mathieu said.

  Nadia turned around and saw her dad with the vacuum cleaner in tow.

  “When you get a chance, do you mind doing your room?”

  “Sure,” she said and walked back to her bed.

  “Doing homework?”

  “Sort of,” she said. “Not really in the mood so I’m not getting very far.”

  “Maybe you need a break,” he said and gave a nod toward the vacuum cleaner. “Our subconscious keeps working even when we’re concentrating on something else. I often get my best inspirations when I walk away from a project for a bit.”

  She knew that. Her dad had told her this so many times already. He had no idea what it was like to be a teenager in today’s world. She knew he’d had a pretty shitty childhood, and that he’d been raised by Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa, and they were pretty cool in their own old way, but her world was different. So much pressure all the time. Social media was everywhere and you had to be popular in today’s world or you were nobody.

  If she were more popular, maybe Spike would know who she was and maybe, just maybe, she’d have a chance.

  “You okay?” Mathieu said.

  Nadia looked up at him. “Yeah. I was just lost in my thoughts. Maybe I’ll vacuum now after all.”

  “We’ll have tacos for dinner.”

  “Cool.”

  Back when it had been her favourite, she would have been all excited and would have had a big smile on her face. But that had been the prepubescent her.

  She missed her.

  Her parents had often warned her not to want to grow up too fast, that being a grownup wasn’t as glamorous as kids made it out to be in their own mind. Like any kid, she hadn’t believed them.

  Not like she could prevent time from pulling her into adulthood anyway. She’d gone willingly, but now wondered whether she shouldn’t be resisting it, like some of the kids in her class who still went out to recess and played instead of standing around like she and her friends did, to look like the high school kids instead of the middle school kids that they were. It was hard to be in the same school as the grades nine to twelve and not really be a high-schooler.

  The older kids simply ignored them anyway.

  Which was why Spike had no clue who she was.

  And that was why Caitlin was on her case for obsessing over him. Her cousin didn’t understand. If Caitlin had been the one in love with Spike, Nadia would have given her her support.

  Wouldn’t she?

  It was all so confusing.

  She hated the way it hurt, deep inside somewhere she couldn’t reach. Love was a winding road along the side of a mountain that had no guardrails to stop you from falling over.

  Nadia felt like she was falling over.

  And no one was there to grab her.

  She plugged the Dyson vacuum cleaner into the outlet and lost herself in the noisy whine of its motor, its suction so powerful that it collected dirt that had settled deep into the crevices of her carpet.

  If only she was able to use it to suck out the ache that had lodged itself deep into the fractures of her heart.

  * * *

  On Valentine’s Day, Caitlin bought her mom a card and a heart-shaped box of dark chocolate, her favorites.

  “Thanks, sweetie,” Nancy said and gave her daughter a hug. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

  When they parted, Caitlin noticed her mom fighting hard to keep her tears from spilling over. Neither said anything but they both understood what was happening. Her mom wouldn’t have any more Valentine’s Day with her dad.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to ask her mom if it was over with her dad, but that wouldn’t be appropriate today. It was better to enjoy the moment as best they could.

  Surprisingly, Nicholas came home with a bouquet of flowers, a three-pack of Lindor chocolates, and Chinese takeout.

  “Wow!” Nancy said.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day, Mom.”

  This time Nancy was unable to stop her tears and Caitlin found herself crying too. She felt sad for her mom but she was also proud of what she and Nick had done.

  “The two of you,” Nancy said and took a breath, “are wonderful. I’m so lucky to have you.”

  “You’re a good mom,” Nicholas said. “I know I haven’t really told you this before, but you are. I’ve always been able to count on you being there for me.”

  “Yeah, for me too,” Caitlin said.

  “You deserve to be happy,” Nicholas said.

  Nancy tried on a smile but it drowned in the sadness of her features. “I don’t know how I’d get through this without you kids,” she said. “And I’m sorry that you’ve both seen me at my worst.”

  “If it wasn’t for Dad—” Nicholas began.

  Caitlin shook her head fervently and that killed whatever he was about to say.

  “Let’s eat,” he said instead. “Got your favourite, Mom.”

  Nancy raised herself on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

  They devoured dinner and then the three of them watched a romantic comedy called, appropriately enough, Valentine’s Day. It was full of current stars including Bradley Cooper and Jessica Biel.

 

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