The Lake and the Library

By S.M. Beiko

ECW PRESS

Copyright © 2013 S.M. Beiko
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77041-057-2
CHAPTER 1

Canvas. Brush stroke. Palette. The light caught the colour and made a clever shade, and I painted on. My work was trying too hard to be a masterpiece, and I was too impatient to let it become one.

“Do you know where you’re going yet?”

I looked up from my canvas. Tabitha blinked once, waiting, expecting an answer.

I blew a strand of hair out of my eyes, ignoring the glassiness of hers, and I shrugged. “Northeast. Winnipeg, to start. Maybe Halifax, someday. Basically as far away from the prairies as we can get.”

I glanced at Tabitha’s shoulder, which was quaking from strain. She’d been bravely holding the same pose for half an hour. Clad in a set of old drapes, striped socks, a puffed crinoline, and a promise, she swallowed back what I didn’t realize then were tears, a bodily fluid forbidden by her personal code of casual humour. Though she stood with dubious integrity, with conviction, she blinked hard.

I was leaving, and this time, Tabitha couldn’t follow me.

“You just want to get away,” she sighed through half a laugh. “From me.”

I was already on my feet, twisting the easel into the dimming sunlight, letting the summer air dry the colours, as Tabitha slumped down to the edge of my bed, her long would-be model’s legs vanishing into the folds of endless gauze. My arms were instantly around her shoulders. I chewed the inside of my cheek, but I had no sage words or scraps of poetry to convince her she was wrong.

“There’s still the summer,” I reminded her. “Loads of time! And it’s not like I won’t come back to visit. Like I could forget you guys!”

“Then why did you always want to leave so badly?”

I nudged her shoulder with my forehead, biting the inside of my cheek even harder. What kind of answer could I have given her? I need to get out and go, find somewhere just for me. Treade isn’t it. I need a field of sunflowers, a hill to roll off, a sea to be swept away by instead of docked at. Sixteen is the age when you don’t know what you want.

“Just for a change, that’s all,” I said. “For something … else.”

We sighed and contented ourselves with the gold foil rays escaping out the window. On the canvas, there danced a princess in the stars. Her eyes were shut indignantly, gladiolas and lilies and birds in her hair. I don’t think she knew which way to turn when the next dance step came, even if it meant falling out of the frame.

“There’s still the summer,” we agreed at last.

* * *

“We’re leaving.”

That was how my mother had told me. Needless to say, I barely made a tremor on the sofa as she stood in the doorway, cigarette smoke dancing around her head in a halo. The statement formed a weight at my mother’s mouth, and lifted one from my chest.

“Leaving. Really? Like … really, really.”

“Really, really,” she smiled, the gap in her front teeth making a shy appearance as she butted out in her bronze ashtray. “I’ve already applied for a transfer from Treade General.”

We are leaving. My mind exploded in a supernova of yes. I did not need the withheld explanation for why. My already overtaxed imagination did not require a where. My face worked and worked, but I couldn’t shave off the grin.

“When?”

“At the end of summer, just in time for school.” Forever trying to be practical. But she was grinning, too. I knew she wanted to get out of Treade just as much as I did. We crowed and plotted, and as the realization that we were finally going to make our escape bloomed under my rib cage, it was a Goldilocks moment: it felt just right.

Ten year