Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
She returned to her standard table at the window. Willa had finally arrived and was madly texting party hat emojis about the last day of school.
Bubble tea with Willa was time to debrief everything on the lackluster buffet that was high school.
Every afternoon they sat here, doing homework, going over Willa’s adventures on the prom committee and any and all social disasters.
Except today. Today, Sabine lowered her voice to a whisper and said, “Desmond just invited me to prom.”
“Holy shit!” Willa whisper-yelled, instantly inspecting Desmond behind the counter.
“Don’t look and keep your voice down! I’m going to say no.”
“What? Sabine. It’s fate. The universe wants you at prom. It’s so obvious! And this way, you and he and me and Max—we’d be a double date. It’s perfect!”
“Couldn’t buy a ticket now if I wanted to.”
“I can totally get you in.”
The moment Max and Willa had started dating, Willa had joined prom committee, which had astounded Sabine.
They both loathed the girl who ran it, Peyton.
And they ridiculed her PTA-running mum, Rachelle, who had her hands in prom, too.
But Willa had explained, “I’ve been a loser my whole life, and now that I have Max, the coolest partner ever, I’m going to have a romantic finish to high school if it kills me. ”
Sabine had to agree about Max, a.k.a. Maxine Pasternac–they/them, spikey short hair, tattoos on their serious biceps. Even though Willa and Max hadn’t kissed yet, Sabine got it. At this point, Sabine figured she was the only one who’d made it through all of school without dating.
She eyed Desmond behind the counter. Come on. A first-year university student with good bangs who also knows calculus just asked you to prom tomorrow. Can’t you ditch the brain fog and say yes?
“End-of-high-school sushi’s at seven,” said Sabine. “Wanna come?”
“You’re changing the subject, and I can’t. My dad’s taking us for Indian, the whole family’s going to be there, even my grandparents. He’d kill me if I bailed.”
“Food pic, then,” said Sabine. “Oh! Speaking of which—” Sabine fished a parcel from her bag and slid it over.
“We said no gifts,” moaned Willa.
“I know, but life’s not fair and then you die.
” It was a chapbook. Sabine made them on all sorts of subjects, on all kinds of paper: biology reports, candy wrappers, old magazines—some were collage, some were hand-drawn, some had text, some no words at all.
She’d taken a course at the art gallery in middle school and had made them since.
This was a book of all their fave food moments.
Bubble tea, pressed sushi, Korean hot pot, fried Mars bars at the CNE …
“The best food outings of our misspent youth,” said Willa. “I will treasure this forever. Will your uncle come tonight?”
“I’m sure. Kinda wish my dad was going to be there, too. I know. It’s super dumb.”
“It’s totally not.”
Sabine wondered where in the world her dad was at this moment. She followed him on Instagram. He was very busy, always working, always travelling, but he also didn’t always post where he was, maybe because he was famous. Anyway, it was hard to keep track.
Outside school, students milled: goths, punks, emos, nerds. It was clichéd how you could so easily identify which clique they belonged to. Sabine didn’t have a clique. Clothing-wise, she was no-name jeans, T-shirt, hoodie. Personality-wise, she was book-smart and introverted. Where did she belong?
Sabine slurped tapioca balls through her metal straw and waved a hand at the crowd outside the school. “It’s weird, isn’t it? We’re never coming back here. You’re going to Dalhousie in the fall—all the way to the East Coast. And I’m going who knows where. Literally and metaphorically.”
“It is weird,” said Willa. She took another slurp through her boba straw.
Willa cared about the environment, too, but could not remember her metal straw for the life of her.
She was a mess who lurched from forgotten binder to lost gym shorts.
In return for being treated like part of Willa’s family, Sabine made sure Willa had her act together.
How Willa was going to make it in math at Dal without Sabine was beyond them both.
“Gonna miss it?” asked Willa. They burst out laughing. As if.
“Yeah, I’m shedding a tear. On the inside,” said Sabine.
“How much should I bet on your mum trying to squeeze you into saying yes to a university—any university—tonight? I’ve got a twenty.”
“Not a bet I’m willing to take.”
“And even if you do refuse to reveal your innermost secrets to her, you’ve seriously got no clue?”
Sabine shook her head and slurped.
“Just choose. It’s not like you don’t have your pick.” She held up her hand and ticked her fingers as she ran through them. “U of T, Western, Waterloo, McMaster, Queen’s—and—”
“McGill.”
“McGill. And every disgusting one with a full scholarship. God, you’re such a loser.”
They laughed.
“And there’s truly truly no way to get you to prom?”
“Nope.”
“Hopeless,” said Willa.
“Hopeless and useless,” said Sabine, hoping to sound ironic, not pathetic.
Tonight, she’d celebrate the end of high school with her mum and Uncle Noah.
Tomorrow, official prom night, she and her mum would probably watch a movie.
She hoped she was making the right choice to ditch prom.
She glanced at Desmond again behind the counter, then back at Willa, and shrugged.
Out on the coach-house deck, Marlow poured her cheap-ass bubbly, now on the warm side, into two flutes.
They’d hung Christmas lights out there year-round, which their landlord, friend, and overworked family and estate lawyer Violet Pomerantz helped put up while regaling them with tales of the stupidity of people when money, family, death, and possessions were involved, as well as her adventures in online dating as a forty-something.
Marlow had never attempted online dating, and after Violet’s stories, a vow of celibacy seemed preferable.
Tonight, Marlow had also bought dollar store paper lanterns, so it looked especially festive.
Sabine opened the takeaway containers and sent a food pic to Willa. “Love the grad sushi, Mum, but can we find a place that doesn’t use black plastic trays?”
“It’s on the list.”
“Yeah, but your list has seven thousand things on it. Where exactly on the list?”
“You want it moved up, sweetheart? Do the research. My exploding brain thanks you.”
Why anyone used those trays was beyond Marlow, too.
They couldn’t be recycled in Toronto because the sorter machine’s conveyer belt couldn’t recognize black items, so it went to landfill.
Marlow didn’t want a night all about how the planet was going straight into the toilet, but she got why her kid was depressed about these things.
Marlow held up her glass. “To the end of one chapter and the beginning of an even greater one, which I’m sure you’re going to tell me all about—as in, which university you’ve picked—so I can rejoice that my daughter has direction after a stellar year of academic achievement, and I promise to research a sushi place that doesn’t use black trays. ”
“Willa tried to bet me twenty bucks you’d bring up university.”
“Fall for it?”
“As if.”
They looked out over the decks and back alleys: kids playing street hockey and hopscotch, people poking about their gardens.
They lived above Violet’s garage in a sweet cedar-shingled coach-house in the Annex—only one bedroom, but Marlow could bike to work, so a perfect location.
They’d moved in when Sabine was a baby, and the rent was reasonable.
Well. Reasonable for Toronto—which wasn’t saying much.
When Sabine had gotten older, Marlow had given her the bedroom so she could study.
Marlow slept on a Murphy bed in the living room.
Now all the other places to rent were too expensive.
“How was your last day?” Marlow asked, smearing wasabi on a California roll.
“Useless. All everyone did was talk about prom.”
“About that …”
“Yes, Mum, I’m sure about missing prom.”
Then Marlow wouldn’t tell Sabine that she’d bought her a ticket in case she changed her mind. A seventy-five-buck safety net.
“Willa and I went for bubble tea. Then Peyton showed up and was all like …” Sabine tossed her hair off one shoulder, adjusted her pretend cleavage, and squeaked: “ ‘OMG, Willa, you bought your dress off the rack? Luck-eee. I had to get mine made from scratch, it took weeks, and was like super expensive, but you only graduate once, right?’ And then she looked at me.”
“Fling tapioca balls at her?”
“Couldn’t—Peyton’s mum was with her. Rachelle.
Who was on about how Mr. Dickieson was mad about the cost of prom, and she told him—” Sabine struck another pose, Peyton-esque but older: “The PTA spent months on the Spring Fair silent auction so the grads could have a cruise, and we not only met our goals, we superseded them. Fireworks over the Toronto harbor will be gorge—I got them in school colors so they’ll match the tablecloths, napkins, and gift bags. ”
“Fireworks to match the napkins,” said Marlow, watching a sparrow land on the coach-house banister and fly off just as fast. “Epic.”
“She’s Peyton on steroids. Who says ‘superseded’ anyway, and gets its usage wrong?”
“What does it mean again?”
“To take the place of a thing or a person previously in use. To supplant. ‘Radios have been superseded by cell phones with audio capacity.’ ”
“Note to Rachelle: don’t use complicated words with my kid or the school principal. Note to self: same.”
“And who needs a tailor-made dress, boat cruise, grab bags with watches in them? No one uses a watch anymore. Just more garbage on the planet.”
“How much money did Rachelle raise with the fundraiser?”
“A ton. She got all her silent auction items donated, and apparently there was so much money she barely knew what to do with it. Nice problem to have.”
“If she raised so much money, why was there a ticket price at all?”