Chapter 2 14 Years Ago
CHAPTER 2
14 YEARS AGO
July
It was our first summer spending time out of the city. My dad had purchased a cottage in the North Bruce Peninsula that he’d deemed an important real estate investment, as if he couldn’t justify doing something solely for the sake of enjoyment. My sister and I were reluctant to go. The cottage wasn’t cool like the Muskoka ones our affluent classmates went to in the summers.
But when we saw the two-storey wooden house, painted blue like the bay behind it, we knew we were somewhere magical. There was no clamour of construction or rumbling from the nearby train tracks. Instead, a bird chirped through the silence and a cooling breeze rustled the trees. The air was crisp, free of the cloying scent of laneway dumpsters. Stepping into the cottage, I had never seen so much space, having lived my entire life in a cramped townhouse in east Toronto. Liberated from homework and never-ending extracurricular activities, Mel and I explored our new home.
The house, for all its nooks and crannies, did not have a secret passageway that we could find, so we roamed the backyard in search of adventure. We traipsed down the cobblestone path that led from the back of the house to the dock.
Our dock was empty, but a mere five metres away was our neighbour’s, laden with boats. Mel coaxed me over the property line and unease trickled down my spine as I followed her, breaking the rules.
“I kind of want to try it,” Mel said, pointing to a kayak and a giant orange pedal boat drifting on the water. The water level was low, so she had to sit on the wooden dock to reach the boat with her foot.
“We don’t have life jackets and that’s not our boat,” I said pointedly. Mel had an irreverent approach to the rules, toeing right over the edge of being harmless.
“Do you guys want to go in?”
I jumped. Standing at the landing of the dock was a boy around our age, with mussed blond hair and freckles flecking his nose.
“Is this really a boat?” Mel arched her eyebrow. The orange monstrosity barely seemed buoyant. It was rectangular, the size of a twin mattress with pedals.
The stranger approached us, his dimpled smile becoming clear as he came closer. With his soft, boyish face, he seemed harmless. He was barely taller than me, but his limbs were gangly and disproportionate, like a trapezoid meant to become a rectangle.
“Yeah, it’s a pedal boat,” the boy told us, running his hands through his wild hair.
Mel sprung up. “Okay, let’s try it.”
The boy considered us for a moment and then nodded. “You guys can pedal together.” He pointed at the two seats in the front. “I’ll hop in the back.”
“I don’t think we should get in a boat with someone we don’t know,” I whispered to Mel, widening my eyes to let her know that this was a bad idea.
She ignored me. “Hi, I’m Mel.” She reached out, offering her hand for the stranger to take.
“Wes,” the boy said, shaking her hand. “Come on, let’s grab some life jackets.”
Mel smirked. “See, now we know each other.”
“If Mom comes out and we’re gone, she’ll freak,” I warned Mel. But really, I was the one freaking out. Were there sharks in freshwater? Or worse, what if I fell in and looked like an idiot in front of the strange boy? It would be just like school.
“Fine,” she huffed. “I’ll tell Mom. You go get the life jackets.”
That was almost worse. I barely said a word to the boys in school. My mother had warned me off them for years. The law was no dating until after college. Not that anyone would be interested in me anyway.
I turned to my sister to protest, but she had already left.
“Looks like you’re with me,” the boy said as he strode off the dock. “So, what was your name?” I studied his back as he went, but there were no signs of menace coming from him.
“Lia,” I said, trailing after him as we veered from the dock towards the house next door.
“Well, Lia, what brings you to Pike Bay?” he asked, his foot catching on a stray plank of wood, clumsy limbs flailing, all oversized paws and no coordination. I held back a snort but he laughed at himself, freeing me to laugh with him. “Watch the dock,” he choked out, his laughter coming harder when he saw my amusement. “It’s a bit uneven.” His blue eyes seemed even brighter with mirth, and his smile brought out a dimple in his left cheek. He wasn’t self-conscious about his mistake, not like the kids I knew with veneers of perfection and who traded in schadenfreude. I couldn’t help but smile back.
“My parents recently bought this cottage. How long have you lived here?” I asked as we entered the garage.
“We moved here last year. It was my grandma’s house.” His words were measured, but his eyes got squinty.
“Do you like it?” I asked, catching a red life jacket he threw at me. Everyone must love it here.
“It’s okay.” Wes swallowed. “I guess I don’t always feel like I fit in here.”
“That’s how I feel all the time,” I said, without thinking. My cheeks turned red.
Wes answered with an open smile, striding out of the garage. “Are you coming?”
I followed him back down to the dock. My initial reaction to anything new was fear, but Wes wasn’t so bad. The pedal boat I still wasn’t sure about.
Mel was waiting, waving at us. Wes smiled broadly back at her and my heart sunk a little.
All the boys and girls back home wanted to be Mel’s friend. Meanwhile, my circle was small, namely other girls who had strict parents and a penchant for getting good grades, like my closest friend, Zainab. The chances of Wes wanting me as a friend over my sister were slim.
Once we’d donned our life jackets, we troubleshot how to get all of us on the pedal boat. Mel managed to effortlessly settle in the front and I was supposed to join her.
“I can’t do it,” I said, my foot wobbling as I sat dangling my legs off the side of the dock, trying to reach the boat. The drop was high and I didn’t trust my arms to hold me up. “What if I fall in and an amoeba goes up my nose?”
“I don’t really know what an amoeba is, but I think you’re safe,” Wes said.
Mel huffed. “Lia, please just get in.” She stared out into the bay, splashing her hands. “It’s like maybe four feet deep.”
Heat burned my cheeks. Wes’s eyes on me made the embarrassment feel a thousand times worse.
“Listen,” Wes said, coming closer towards me. “I dare you to do this, and if you do, you can dare me to do anything later.”
“Like what?” I asked, voice shaking.
Wes pretended to think, wrinkling his forehead. “No, I can’t give you ideas. What if they’re too scary?”
My laughter came out strangled. After crouching down, Wes suspended himself off the edge of the dock, using his legs to pull the boat closer for me to reach.
The gap between my feet and the boat still felt insurmountable, even though it couldn’t have been more than eight inches.
“You can do it,” he said seriously, his eyes lighter than the clear sky. And then I was dropping myself down into the pedal boat with a yelp.
“Sorry,” I apologized as Wes hopped down, landing with an uncharacteristic grace.
“Don’t be,” he said. He turned to my sister. “Should we head out?”
“You have to pedal,” Mel reminded me as I sat there. There was a puddle of dirty water underneath the pedals.
I forced my feet to move despite the splash from the puddle. Wes’s weight dragged in the back as we moved into the bay. The gentle laps of the waves and our slow pace soothed me.
“So, Mel and Lia, where are you from?” Wes asked. I looked instinctively at my sister. There were two ways of answering.
“Toronto,” I said. Mel paddled faster. We hated this question.
Mel continued in a well-rehearsed monotone drone. “And of course, we aren’t originally from Toronto though we were gestated and born there, but our parents came across the ocean first from England, and prior to that, Africa. Their parents were born in Africa, but I’m not sure if they were gestated there or in India, and then their—”
Wes was taken aback. “I didn’t mean to interrogate you on your family tree. Everyone who comes up here is either a local or from Toronto or Hamilton.”
“It’s fine. As long as you don’t tell us how exciting it is to meet someone from India.” My sister turned back to stare at him. He met her gaze head-on and relaxed when she smiled. He’d passed her test.
“So, why did your parents get a cottage here?”
I shrugged. “My dad wanted to make an investment. He thought that the property here was a solid bet.” Noting Wes’s curious face, I continued. “He’s an accountant but thinks he’s a businessman.”
“What do your parents do?” Mel asked.
Wes’s shoulders stiffened, eyes glinting with a faint layer of defiance. “My mom works at the grocery store. My parents grew up here, but my dad doesn’t live here anymore.” The tips of his ears were pink, with anger or embarrassment, I couldn’t tell. Wes examined the lake intently, searching for a portal to escape her line of inquiry.
“What’s that?” I pointed to a lump of land in the lake outside of the bay.
“That’s a secret island.” Wes’s shoulders loosened.
“A secret island? Like, with treasure?” Mel’s interest piqued, even though I was content to pedal around the miniature waves in our sheltered inlet.
“We don’t have to go there,” I said. “I was just curious. It’s probably safer to paddle out here.”
“No, let’s check it out. There’s an abandoned cabin. It’s cool,” Wes said.
Somehow, I muffled my protest and went along with it, pedalling until we reached the island. Our chatting distracted me from how sweaty I was from the exertion and how the plastic seat made my butt sore. We discovered Wes was fourteen, the same age as me, and that he liked to read.
When we reached the muddy edge, Wes tied the boat to a stray tree and we stumbled up the shore. I slipped in the slick dirt, squealing in horrified laughter as my foot dipped into the cold water.
“Maybe I’ll dare you to jump in,” I told Wes, flicking the water off my foot onto my sister.
“Fair enough,” he said, taking a few long strides into the water before he dove below the surface. Mouth agape, I stared at him until he emerged, wet and drippy like a dog. “Refreshing!” He splashed cold and sludgy water towards me.
I shrieked, scampering up the bank as Mel and Wes laughed, and I relished the feeling of being included in the group.
The island was small, the size of a large yard, the landscape littered with stray wildflowers in vivid purples and yellows. The three of us hovered outside the abandoned cabin. A tree had woven itself into the structure, but somehow the wood was intact. My reluctance towards our journey lifted.
“It could use a good paint,” Wes said. “But want to peek inside?”
Mel led the way eagerly. The door creaked open, there was no lock. Inside, the white-painted walls were chipped, and the scuffed floor wanted a rug. But somehow, even though dust coated the window panes, the air smelled of fresh earth and wind.
“It’s wonderful,” I said.
Mel was less interested. “Should we check outside? I want to tan.”
I followed her out. If I had thought our cottage was wild, then this was true wilderness. The unruly grass mingled with weeds and reeds, except for a luscious green patch in the gap between sprawling balsam fir trees. The sun beamed on us as we approached, as if welcoming us to lie down and read.
“We should have brought a blanket,” I told Mel. This was the perfect place to be this summer. Some space from our eavesdropping parents where we could read and Mel could update me on all her scandalous high school gossip.
“See, aren’t you glad we came?” Mel smirked. “We should definitely picnic here.”
“Next time,” Wes said, wringing his still soggy shirt out onto the grass.
Later, after we docked the pedal boat, Wes didn’t seem to want us to go, trailing us till the edge of the cobblestone path leading to our back door. “Tomorrow?” he suggested.
Mel and I beamed in agreement.
When we finally returned home sweaty, dirty and content from an eventful day, my parents were waiting inside the cottage with the curtains open. My father was sitting on the armchair next to the window, a finance book in his hands. My mother puttered around the kitchen placing a large bowl covered with tinfoil on the table. A sweet and spicy aroma emanated from the marinated meat. It must be mishkaki, a rare treat for special occasions.
“Who was that?” my father asked sternly. I held my breath. Would we never be allowed to go to Secret Island again?
“The neighbour’s kid, some boy,” Mel said, leaning against me, telling me to keep my mouth shut. “He showed us around the bay.”
“What do you mean, some boy?” The furrow in my dad’s brow grew deeper. My father was always probing, vigilant of breaking any silent rules: no going to parties at our male classmates’ houses, needing to pre-approve any outings with friends, like movies or the mall. And obviously, no dating.
I didn’t want this chat to get out of hand. We needed to change the topic quickly. My stomach obliged me, growling after all the excitement. “Dad, is it dinnertime yet?”
My dad laughed, setting down his book. “My hungry girls. We’re going to barbecue. Do you want to see how it works?”
I nodded. I loved spending time with my dad. He worked in accounting in a fancy law firm in a sky-high glass tower downtown. Even though he often complained about the lack of prestige, to me, he was the most accomplished man in the world. He’d taken me with him on Bring Your Child to Work Day and had beamed when I told him I wanted to work in a gleaming office exactly like his. His dream was that I’d be able to do what he couldn’t. Be a boss at a big firm. Prove that the Jumas could achieve anything with hard work. And he lived that example too. While Mel and I would spend the summer at the cottage with our mom, he’d be driving into Toronto for part of the week for work. As he reminded us, when you were an adult, there was no such thing as summer break.
My mother turned to my father. “Make sure they don’t get too close to the flame!”
He just laughed, loud and hearty from his belly, and forgot his question about the strange boy we had gone out with.
Mel and I smiled at each other. We so rarely got to hear my dad laugh like this. Usually, it was his half-present chuckle, the rest of his mind far away from us in his cubicle in the centre of the city.
It was at that moment that we decided we loved the cottage. Nothing could go wrong in this strange, beautiful place.
Of course, my father wouldn’t drop the idea forever of his daughters spending time with an unknown boy. The next day, when Mel and I tried to leave the cottage after morning prayers, he stopped us at the door. “Absolutely no socializing with strangers” was the consensus that he and my mother came to.
Protesting got us nowhere. We spent the day in drudgery, doing Kumon workbooks and helping prep food for dinner. After, our mother drove us down to the general store ten minutes away to pick up inflatable tubes and groceries, and eventually ice cream to cool us from the heat.
By the time we got back, I almost forgot about how we’d bailed on our plans with Wes. Until Mel murmured to me as we pulled up to the cottage, “I don’t think these floaties would last the journey to the island.”
“Probably not,” I said, the ice cream in my stomach suddenly going hard. We would see Wes again for sure; we were neighbours, after all. But would he still want to be friends?
Later that evening, I stood at my window as the sun descended and stared at the window across from mine. If I squinted, I could see the span of a dark blue comforter on a twin bed in the corner. It had to be Wes’s room. I envisioned a long, taut string with tin cans on either side, threaded through the sparse branches of trees across the yard, which I would use to whisper an apology. But the window remained dark. I pushed away my hopeful thoughts.
The sky grew dimmer, and right when I was about to pull myself away to go to bed, the light flicked on and a familiar face popped out.
“Where were you?” His yell echoed in the open space. I pointed at my door because I couldn’t holler back at him. My parents would come running. When he looked confused, I exaggerated my gestures and pointed downwards. Frustration twisted my stomach. I couldn’t tell if he understood what I was saying.
“Lia?” my mother called, her voice getting closer. “Time for bed. Lights off.”
I closed my window and turned to her just as she opened my door. “Yes, Mom.”
When I turned back, Wes’s curtain was closed.
The next morning was cloudy; the heat from the past two days had dissipated and the cottage air had a snap to it. Mel and I draped one of the large throw blankets on the couch over us while my father sat in the armchair with his paper. My sister and I had a weekend routine. Mel pilfered the cartoon section from the paper, and I read leaning on her shoulder, the two of us snickering at Calvin and Hobbes .
My father looked up from his dense portion of the paper with a bemused expression. “Why comics? You girls could read something else that would broaden your minds.”
“But they’re fun,” I said. “Why don’t you read the comics instead of the business section?”
“I need to plan my investments for your college tuition, and keeping informed about the business world helps me make smart decisions,” he said, thick brows furrowed.
“Maybe I’ll read it after you,” I said. My dad’s beam was warmer than the sun.
“This one is going somewhere,” my father said to my mother, when he got up to grab a mug of chai from her. I pretended to not hear, as Mel glared at them.
My mother replied, “She’ll be the top of the top and will find a doctor or a lawyer when she goes to school.”
Mel’s face flushed. “We’re both going to watch cartoons. Maybe I’ll be a fairy godparent when I grow up,” she snapped, turning on the television. As an obedient younger sister, I joined her.
There was a faint rap at the door.
“Hmm, is someone there?” My father shifted on the sofa.
“Maybe it’s Wes?” I whispered to Mel, grabbing the remote to turn off the television.
“Who could it be?” My mother pulled herself up, approaching the entry way. “Are there door-to-door salesmen here? Or burglars?”
The neighbourhood that we lived in back in Toronto was on the rougher side, and as a precaution, we had an alarm system and didn’t go out unsupervised after dark.
Mel rolled her eyes. “Because a robber will politely knock before taking your things, Mom.”
A sharper knock echoed through the door.
“You never know. Karim, come here,” my mother requested. My father let out a heavy sigh, walking towards her.
Finally my father propped open the door half a foot. Standing there with a welcoming smile on her face was a woman carrying a pie. She looked a decade younger than my parents, with her blond hair tied back in a ponytail. Trailing behind her was Wes, dressed in a collared top, his hair neatly combed back.
“I’m Sharon, Sharon Forest. We wanted to welcome you to the neighbourhood,” the woman said, grinning broadly, her eyes crinkling at their corners. My father hesitantly opened the door wider in the face of this woman’s expansive grin. “It’s so exciting to have children Wesley’s age next door. He’s been dying for company.”
Wes’s cheeks flushed. His mother raised the pie. “It’s apple and walnut,” she said. “Made with butter, no lard.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Wes added, with an angelic dimpled smile.
My mother and father gave each other a lost look. In the city neighbours barely interacted, but here it seemed they came bearing desserts.
“Thank you,” my mother said graciously, taking the dish from her as if she hadn’t been ready to call emergency services to save us from possible intruders. “Please come in,” she said, stepping aside. “Come meet our neighbours, girls!”