Hell's Hotel (14 page)
Authors: Lesley Choyce
“No kidding. Sometimes he was very kind to me. Sometimes he wasn't so big and bad. I knew it when I realized that I could hurt his feelings. He was human, too.”
“But you wouldn't go back with him?”
“Not in a million years. It's wrong to be so dependent on anyone that they begin to run your life, and, like, you can't do anything without their help or without them making a decision for you.”
“Yeah,” Tara said, suddenly realizing that maybe she wasn't just talking about Rob. Jenn wasn't trying to be cruel. Maybe she didn't even intend it to come out this way, but it was all true.
“Well, you're a whole lot smarter than you ever let on.”
“Rob didn't like it when I said something that proved I was smarter than he was.”
“Guys are like that,” Tara said. “Josh is a good example.”
“It's an okay game to play for a while, but then you get tired of pretending to be stupid and you want to hang out with someone who respects you for who you are.”
Tara knew then that Jenn would be okay. There would be problems, but she'd be able to cope. She'd stopped being somebody's victim. She'd stopped blaming the world for her problems. This was the new Jenn â strong, independent, certainly not stupid. In a way it was a little scary. Jenn didn't really even need Tara anymore. Maybe Tara was going to miss coming to her rescue on a dark Friday night. Or maybe Tara was just now realizing that she, herself, needed a friend like Jenn as badly as Jenn had once needed her.
There were other kids out on the street now in front of the Tim Horton's. Tara saw Craig and Courtenay. There was a couple of younger girls with them. Tara didn't recognize them, but the story was obvious. New kids on the street would “check in” with Craig. Craig would try to steer them away from dangerous situations. But he couldn't do it alone.
“I gotta go,” Jenn said, wiping her mouth and dropping bits of cheesecake on the table. “See you later.”
“Later,” Tara said and watched her friend hustle out the door back into her own world, a world where Tara would only ever be a friendly tourist. She paid the bill and got up to leave. Outside, Jenn was talking so intently with Craig and the new kids that she didn't notice Tara. She was saying something about options, something about being careful and not taking any stupid chances. As Tara walked down to the corner past the vacant lot that once was the unofficial refuge for kids on the street in Halifax, she realized just how far they had both travelled from that dark end of the street, just how far they had travelled from the front steps of Hell's Hotel.
Copyright © 2008 by Lesley Choyce
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
James Lorimer & Company Ltd. acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the assistance of the OMDC Book Fund, and initiative of Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Cover design: Clarke MacDonald
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Choyce, Lesley, 1951-
[Dark end of Dream Street]
Hell's Hotel / Lesley Choyce.
(Sidestreets series)
Previously published under title: Dark end of Dream Street.
ISBN 978-1-55277-038-2 (bound).âISBN 978-1-55277-022-1 (pbk.).âISBN 978-1-55277-606-3 (ebook).
I. Title. II. Series.
PS8555.H668D37 2008 jC813'.54 C2008-904715-X
James Lorimer & Company Ltd.,
Publishers
317 Adelaide Street West
Suite 1002
Toronto, Ontario
M5V 1P9
LESLEY CHOYCE is a novelist and poet living at Lawrencetown Beach in Nova Scotia. His writing has earned him several awards, including two Dartmouth Book Awards and the Ann Connor Brimer Award for the Young Adult novel
Good Idea Gone Bad
. Five of his previous Formac novels have received the Canadian Children's Book Centre's “Our Choice” Award. The
Ottawa Citizen
calls him “a national treasure”.
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