Wake (60 page)

I’m startled out of my imagination by the thump of Willa’s foot landing next to me on the bench. She climbs over the backrest instead of just walking around and drops down next to me.

“Do I have to teach you how to use a bench?”

Willa gives me a dry look and says, “Are you sure you’re qualified? You can barely drive standard, can you really handle a bench?”

“I can too drive standard.”

“Don’t think I didn’t notice how the shifter grinded after you drove my car.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

Willa takes a piece of gum out of her pocket and puts it in her mouth. I thank her for offering me some and she says, “Open your mouth.” I’m not dumb enough to fall for that one. Eric spit his gum into my mouth when I was ten, and once is enough.

Willa offers me a hard mint instead. I smile. It’s a little bit flattering that she carries these around in her pockets for me.

I bet she carried them for Thomasina too, before she killed her.

“So you were bored?”

“Shitless.”

“My brother is sending me to group therapy.”

“Damn,” I say, because she sounds unhappy about it. But really I’m thinking that it’s probably a good thing for her to get some help.

“It gets worse.”

“What?” More antidepressants? Suicide watch?

“It’s held in a church.” She makes a noise of disgust and rolls her eyes. I take it she’s not religious. The subject has never come up, but I don’t want to make any assumptions.

“Do you pray?”

Does she think she’s going to hell for killing Thomasina?

Willa looks at me with an expression of gentle scolding. “That’s an extremely personal question, Jem.”

If I didn’t already know she was serious, her use of my first name would have done it.

“Is the subject of religion altogether off limits?” Because I’m curious now, damn it.

“I hear your mom and brother go to church.”

“You heard? You were just randomly talking about my family?”

“Small towns.” She smiles. “Makes you miss the privacy of the city, doesn’t it?”

“Ironic, isn’t it, that the more surrounded we are by people, the more isolated we become.”

“That’s not irony, that’s human nature. We’re hard-wired not to be able to visualize any group of humans greater than the size of the natural herd.”

Are we hard-wired to put each other out of our misery, too?

“You sound incredibly pretentious when you channel Darwin.”

“Shut up or I’ll help you de-evolve.” Willa pushes herself off the bench and goes over to the swings. For a moment I think that I might actually get to push her on a swing, but she stands on the seat instead of sitting and pulls on the chains, rocking the swing side-to-side instead of back-and-forth.

“We had swings like this at the park by my house in St. John’s,” she says. “But they weren’t used much.

Teenagers used to wind them up around the top bar until they were unreachable.”

I stand in front of her with my hands in her pockets, watching her rock.

“Is that why you don’t know how to use it properly?”

“I loved doing this when I was a kid.” She pulls harder on the left chain, widening her arc. “I would pretend I was a surfer. Then I saw the ocean and tried it. The whole thing is grossly overrated.”

“Do you want a push?”

Willa gives me a look that reads, ‘What do you think?’ That’s a no. I grab the chains and halt her motion.

“What the hell ?”

I climb on with her and she makes a little squeak of surprise as the swing tips with my added weight.

I’m slightly heavier than she is, and the swing lists to my side so she has to lean back to keep from falling into me.

“Lower your hands on the chain,” she says with a laugh. “Your center of gravity is too high.” I slide my hands down half a foot and our balance evens out a little more.

“Happy?”

Willa shifts her right foot forward and pulls her left one back, deliberately jolting the seat so I have to scramble to readjust. I jolt her right back but she bends her knees to stay on. She gives the left chain a tug, and we’re both destabilized by the side-to-side rock. An equally hard tug on both chains stops the rock and shakes the seat.

Willa is laughing. She loves this. I lower my hands on the chains and bend my knees, angling the seat so far that she gives another squeak of surprise. Her feet are practically on the edge, trying to stay balanced. Her arms shake with the effort of trying to hold herself up on flimsy chains. If she let go right now she would fall forward on me.

I hold it for a few seconds, and then let up. The swing moves back and forth with proper balance while Willa catches her breath.

“You are such a shit.”

“You enjoyed that.” She did. She’s still smiling. Willa just rolls her eyes at me. Standing upright and balanced like this, our fronts are almost touching. She’s right there, and it occurs to me that I could just bend down and kiss her right now.

What?

Nothing.

That’s what I thought.

Maybe just her cheek…

Willa steps off the swing and adjusts her sweater around her shoulders.

“Come with me on Sunday?”

“What?” I step off the swing.

“Frank wants to drive me. I’m not looking forward a long, silent car ride with him on top of therapy.

Please come with me.”

“You want, like, moral support or something?”

You should support her getting help.

It won’t change anything.

She’ll be happier.

And what’ll I be?

Willa gives me the eye and says, “You’re pretty screwed up yourself. You might fit in to Group better than you’d think.”

“I’m not going to gush to a bunch of strangers.”

“Pfft. Neither am I.”

If she’s going to lie again what’s the point?

Help her. Encourage her.

She did it for you.

“One condition.”

“What?”

“You come with me to dialysis again.”

“That’s it?”

“You come to my unpleasant stuff, I’ll go to yours.”

Willa considers that for a moment before holding out her hand. “Deal.” We shake on it and her blue glove feels soft against my palm.

“Let’s walk,” she says. We head down the sidewalk with no specified destination in mind, in the direction of what constitutes ‘downtown’ Smiths Falls. Almost every business is already closing up for the night.

“You really like working for Chris’s family?”

“It’s a paycheck. Better than bagging groceries.”

I tell her my sister is thinking of doing just that and Willa tells me to offer Elise her condolences.

“So has Elwood molested you in the back room yet?”

Willa laughs out loud, and I get the sense that I’m missing part of the joke. “Other way around,” she says. I’m definitely missing part of the joke, but I play along and smile anyway.

“What happened?”

Willa shakes her head. I can’t help but wonder if she did fool around with him, and the thought disgusts me. Why would she even joke about it? Does she
like
him? Unlikely, considering how often she speaks condescendingly of him. But she talks to me that way too… and she liked me. Has she moved on to Chris I-don’t-know-basic-anatomy Elwood?

You say ‘moved on’ like there was something to move from.

There was.

Well, that was quick of her.

Maybe she’s only fooling around with him because we went nowhere.

Right. Because Chris Elwood is an obvious second choice to Cancer Boy.

I’m beginning to think she just felt sorry for me and mistook it for affection.

“Didn’t he and Paige break up?”

“Again.”

“Was it because of something you did?” I give her a sideways look and Willa rolls her eyes.

“Calling me a home-wrecker now? I didn’t do anything with Chris. If Paige isn’t just talking out her ass, he’s not worth it.” She makes an obvious hand gesture. So she just casually talked to Paige about the size of Chris’s dick?

“Is that what girls talk about in the locker room?”

“No, we compare breast size and help each other shower.” She elbows me teasingly. I elbow her back. “Change of subject,” she announces. “I got an interesting call earlier this week.”

“Yeah?”

“
Ava
said to tell you to answer her messages. Been dodging an old friend from Ottawa?”

Oh shit. How did Ava get Willa’s number?

“You talked to Ava?”

“She left a message. She’s quite charming.”

“What did she say?”

“well ,” Willa begins dramatical y. “She called you a dumbfuck and invited me to a show in Ottawa.”

“No.”

“What do you mean ‘no’? You are a dumbfuck.”

“You’re not going.”

“I hadn’t decided,” she replies stiffly. I put a hand on her arm and try to make her see reason.

“It’s a metal band. You don’t even listen to metal.”

“Alright, now I just want to go because you don’t want me to.”

“Willa.”

“Are you going?”

I wasn’t planning on it. “Yes. We’d have to put up with each other all night and—”

“Good. We can carpool.” Damn it all to hell.

“You’re being deliberately difficult.”

“Duh.” Goddamn it she drives me crazy. She can’t just trust me when I say it’s not a good idea and do what she’s told?

“You’re not gonna try and act like my dad all night, are you?”

“Blow me.”

Willa stops on the sidewalk and drops to her knees. Sweet Jesus. She looks up at me expectantly, chal enging. “well ? Whip it out, Harper.”

Part of me wants to do it, just to be a smartass and call her bluff. But the saner half of me thinks this is a horrible idea. So I stand there.

After a few seconds of nothing, Willa stands up and smirks smugly. “That tiny, is it?”

Crap, there is absolutely no good comeback to that. What am I supposed to say?
Actually, it’s so

massive that were I to bludgeon you across the face with it, you would lose teeth.
Right, that’ll go over well.

I stand there for a few seconds after she walks away, working on that whole inner peace thing so I’m not tempted to strangle her.

I wonder if she’d be any good at—

Shut the hell up.

I follow Willa. She doesn’t slow down to wait for me. When I catch up with her I throw my arms around her shoulders in a restraining bear hug and make her promise to be careful if I agree to go to Ottawa with her.

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“You can let go now.”

“Nah.” She annoys me, I annoy her. That’s just how this works. Willa turns her head to look up at me over her shoulder.

“Ava knows we’re not…right?” The gap in her sentence is loud.

“Did she say something?”

“Does she think that?”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“Okay. Thanks. ‘Cause this isn’t a date.”

“Clearly.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

I resist the sudden urge to kiss her temple. How can she annoy me this bad and still be so appealing?

“What’s that look?”

“What look?”

“That look you just had.”

“No idea what you’re talking about.” I let her out of my arms. She’s about to round on me when I change the subject, “So what time is this sob-fest on Sunday?”

Willa huffs. “We leave at eight.” I regret my deal with her already. Who wants to get up early on the weekend?

Saturday

I wake up from a nap to find that it’s two o’clock. My phone is still in my hand and the alert for a new message is flashing. I tried to call Willa all morning and texted when she didn’t answer. Al her replies were vague and deferential.
Later. Not now. Can’t talk atm.
Her latest message isn’t any more comforting:
Crazy

b usy. Having fun.
And my mood takes a nosedive. She’s having fun, is she? And it was too much trouble to invite me along?

I get out of bed and shuffle downstairs. Eric has the afternoon off work. Maybe I can talk him into a few rounds of
Call of Duty
. At the very least I think I can get Elise to hang out with me.

I enter the kitchen to find that the house is a lot more crowded than I first suspected. Elise is at the island counter with Willa, who is teaching my sister how to carve a chicken. The bird smells fantastic and is roasted to that perfectly golden color. At the table, Eric sits with Elise’s jackass crush and his really hot girlfriend. The girlfriend’s name escapes me, but she’s telling Eric a story about a great Mexican restaurant in Kanata.

Elise takes her freshly carved, extremely juicy slices of hot chicken and prepares sandwiches for everyone. Willa sets a small morsel of dark meat aside and puts the rest of the chicken carcass in a large pot. I think she’s going to make soup from that. The prospect of fresh chicken soup excites me, but then I remember that it takes hours to make, and everyone is just sitting down to lunch now.

I walk around the island and congratulate Elise on the chicken. “Did Willa show you how to do that?”

“Yup.” Elise nods vigorously. “Trussed it and everything.” She carries plates over to Eric and her guests—hot chicken sandwiches on rye with cheese, lettuce and tomato. God, I wish I could eat that.

I approach Willa at the stove where she’s loosening as much meat as she can off the bones with her fingers. “Hey.”

“Sleep well ?”

“I didn’t know you were coming over.”

Willa winks. “I was down here the whole time, you hermit.” Behind me, Eric makes an inarticulate sound of pleasure and says that Elise’s sandwiches are awesome. Damn it.

I lean in to speak quietly, “Did you make anything I can eat?” It’s cool if she didn’t; I have leftover soup in the fridge and yogurt too.

“Of course I did.”

Willa opens the fridge and takes out a cereal bowl with a layer of cling wrap on top. I don’t recognize the contents, but it’s pretty chunky. Willa gets two plates down from the cupboard and reaches past me to grab a foil-wrapped package from the side counter. The foil package turns out to be a round loaf of very pale bread. It’s still warm. Willa cuts off four slices and sets them up to make sandwiches.