The alarm went at six-fifteen. I was already looking at it.
I phoned, and he picked up before it rang.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
“Happy birthday.”
For a bit that was all. I could hear him breathing, and behind him the Reimers’ house waking up: the coffee maker, the shower going, Donna saying something to Gordon on the stairs.
“Fifteen,” he said.
“Did you sleep?”
“Some.” He moved the phone. “Brett slept on my floor. He brought his pillow in at midnight and said if I did one more push-up he’d tell Dad. He’s still down there. He snores.”
“Is he going to grill in his pyjamas?”
“Probably,” said Nathan. “See you at one.”
* * *
Tracy had been up since five. The kitchen smelled like sugar, and the pink cake sat on the counter under a big plastic lid she’d bought at the Co-op specially, with HAPPY 15TH PAIGE across the top in white. She’d done the letters three times, she said. The first two had come out crooked, and she’d scraped them off with a knife and started again.
“You look nice,” she said, when I came up.
I was wearing a yellow sundress Tiffany had made me buy in May, and the jean jacket over it. It was too warm for the jacket. The radio said twenty-two by the afternoon. But the jacket had the snap pocket, and the card was in it, the way it had been since September.
Tracy saw me touch the pocket. She didn’t say anything about it. She’d read it upside down in the hospital in June and said we were staying. At Easter she’d read it again, the right way up, and asked which, and squared it on the tablecloth.
“Hold the cake,” she said. “On your lap. Both hands. If you drop it I’ll cry.”
“You’ll cry anyway.”
“I’ll cry more.”
I held the cake on my lap all the way to Hawkwood with both hands, and Tracy drove down Nose Hill Drive at forty with her hazards on.
* * *
The yard was full by two.
Gordon had put the patio table out on the grass with a plastic cloth on it, and the cooler under it, and folding chairs from the garage in a ring. Brett was at the barbecue in a Crowchild T-shirt and shorts, with the new tongs, turning hot dogs like they were something difficult. Donna had put a vase of lilacs in the middle of the table, from the bush by the side gate, and they smelled like the whole of June.
Cassidy came with her mom and one present, a gift bag, with two toques in it, a blue one and a gold one.
“One present,” she said. “Split it.”
“It’s June,” said Nathan.
“It’s Calgary,” said Cassidy. “It’ll snow.”
Tiffany came with Sadie in Sadie’s mom’s car, and Tiffany hugged everybody, including Gordon, who didn’t know what to do and patted her twice on the back. Sadie gave me a card with a magpie on it she’d drawn herself. Inside it said you’ll be fine in her small writing and nothing else.
Connor came on his bike and went straight to the barbecue and stood beside Brett, watching the hot dogs.
Manny came last, on his board, and fell off it at the bottom of the driveway in front of everybody, and got up, and bowed.
He’d brought the same present in different colours. Two little painted birds no taller than my thumb, standing on round black bases. A magpie for me, black and white, with a green shine on the tail where he’d gone over it with something metallic. A blue jay for Nathan.
“Why does he get a jay?” I said.
“You always liked the magpies,” said Manny. “Since Grade 5. You used to save them your crusts.” He shrugged. “He can have what’s left.”
“How long?” said Nathan, turning his over.
“Six hours for the jay.” Manny shrugged. “The magpie was longer. The shine was hard.”
Then he went over and introduced himself to Tracy, very politely, holding his hand out, and she shook it and said she’d heard so much about him. They stood together by the lilacs. I saw him tell her something with his hands. Then he held one hand out flat, the way he did for the voice.
“Tray,” Manny said.
I didn’t hear the second one. I saw his face do it.
Tracy looked at him. She didn’t get it. Nobody could have got it. It wasn’t a thing you could get. But she laughed anyway, out loud, her real laugh, the one from the car on the way to Lethbridge, and Manny went red and looked delighted.
* * *
At four the phone rang in the kitchen, and Donna came out on the deck with the cordless and held it out.
“Nathan,” she said. “It’s your dad.”
Gordon, at the barbecue with Brett, turned around.
“Lethbridge,” said Donna. “The other one.”
Nathan took it out to the front step. I went to the side gate, by the lilacs, where I could see him around the corner of the house. He was sitting on the top step with his elbows on his knees.
“Hey, Dad,” he said.
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s good. Fifteen.” He laughed. “No. A football. With laces. No, I asked for it.” He listened. “Yeah. She’s here. She’s in a dress.” He listened. “Okay. Yeah. You too, buddy.”
He sat there after, with the phone in his lap. I went back to the yard before he saw me.
* * *
At a quarter to five I went inside to use the washroom, and then I didn’t come out.
It was the upstairs one, at the top of the stairs, with the blue tiles and the towel rack that had come off the wall the time Brett swung on it. I’d used that washroom every day for fourteen years. I’d brushed my teeth in it with my eyes on the tap. There was a mirror over the sink the whole width of the wall, and I’d never looked in it if I could help it.
I looked in it now.
There was a girl in it in a yellow dress and a jean jacket. Her long black hair was coming out of its clip, and she had the eyebrows that tipped up in the middle. She had both hands on the edge of the sink. She looked like she was going to be sick.
Through the little window I could hear the yard. Tiffany laughing. Brett saying who wants a burnt one. Gordon’s voice over everybody.
I could stay in here. I could lock the door and sit on the edge of the tub until it was over, until the candles were out and the cakes were cut and nobody had wished anything at all. Then nothing could go wrong. It would just be a birthday.
Somebody knocked. Twice, fast.
“Sweetheart?” said Donna. “They’re bringing the cakes.”
“Okay.”
She didn’t go. I could see her feet under the door, in her good sandals.
“I was in there too,” she said. “Last night. Gordon thought I was sick.” She was quiet. “I wasn’t sick. I was just sitting on the edge of the tub.”
I looked at the door.
“He’s looking for you,” Donna said. “Nathan. He’s got that face.”
I unlocked it. She was standing in the hall with her apron on and the long barbecue lighter sticking out of the pocket. She looked at me, at the dress, at the hair. Then she reached up and took the clip out and put it back in properly. Her fingers were shaking.
“There,” she said.
We went down the stairs together. She held the rail. Near the bottom she stepped over the fourth stair without thinking, and so did I.
* * *
They brought the cakes out at five.
Donna had the football. Tracy had the pink one. They came out of the back door one after the other, side by side down the deck steps, both of them watching their feet, and put them on the patio table next to each other, by the lilacs.
The football was exactly last year’s. Brown icing, white laces, NATHAN in blue on a green field. The pink was exactly last year’s, with the writing across the top. There were fifteen candles on each.
Donna took the long lighter out of her apron pocket.
The wind came up the second she started. It came over the fence the way it always did in Hawkwood, from the mountains, out of nowhere. Half the candles on the football went out before she’d got to the pink one.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Donna said.
I looked at the candles, the little lines of smoke going sideways, and my stomach went. Does it count. If they go out. If it isn’t all of them.
“Light them again,” said Nathan.
He said it very calmly, beside me, with his eyes on the cakes.
Gordon came over from the barbecue and planted himself on the windy side of the table. He put both his big hands up around the football like a wall. Brett came and did the same thing at the other end, around the pink. Donna went down the rows again with the lighter. All thirty, this time.
“Okay,” said Gordon, behind his hands. “Okay. Go.”
They sang.
Gordon sang loudest and the only one on key. Tracy sang loudest and a little behind. Everybody else was somewhere in between. Brett wasn’t singing, really. He was just moving his mouth, with his hands around the cake, looking at us over the candles.
Nathan stood beside me. His arm was touching mine. I could feel him breathing.
“Together,” he said, under the singing.
“Together.”
I shut my eyes.
I said it in my head, all of it. The same words. I didn’t stop before the end. I didn’t stop at all.
I wish I could wake up as a girl.
Then the answer, in case anybody was still checking.
Stay.
We blew.
* * *
When I opened my eyes the candles were out.
All thirty of them, little sticks of smoke going straight up, now, with Gordon’s hands and Brett’s hands around them. Everybody was clapping. Tiffany was yelling woo. Tracy had my camera up and was taking pictures with the flash on, in the daylight. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
I stood there.
The yard was the yard. The lilacs were the lilacs. A magpie was sitting on the fence by the side gate with its head on one side, looking at the hot dogs. My hand was on the edge of the table, my left hand, with the finger. The dress was yellow. My hair was blowing in my face.
I looked at Nathan.
He was looking at me. He was the same. He was exactly the same as one second ago, big and solid, with the scar from the stitches white over his eyebrow and his hair grown out a little, and his face doing the thing it did at the end zone.
Nothing had happened.
“Who’s cutting?” said Brett. He took his hands away from the cake. “I’m not waiting. I’m cutting.”
“Brett,” said Donna.
“I’ve been at that grill since noon.”
Gordon laughed. He put one hand on the back of Nathan’s neck and the other on the back of mine, both at once. He held on and laughed.
* * *
The friends went home at eight. Cassidy left the toques on the patio table. Manny fell off his board at the bottom of the driveway again, on purpose this time, and bowed again, and went.
The parents sat on the deck with the lilacs and the last of the pop and a bag of chips. Gordon and Tracy were arguing about the Flames. Gordon said they needed a new coach. Tracy said they needed a new everything. Donna was laughing at both of them with her feet up on the cooler, and Brett was asleep in a lawn chair with his mouth open and the tongs on his chest.
Nathan and I sat on the back step, below them, where I’d sat with Brett in May.
It was still light. In June in Calgary it was light till nearly ten. The sky over the cul-de-sac was going the colour of the inside of a shell.
I took the card out of the snap pocket.
I’d carried it all day. It was soft at the fold now, and a bit grey at the edges, from a year of pockets and pillows. I unfolded it.
One year. Then wish again, together: stay, or go back.
Nathan saw it. He leaned over and got his wallet out of his back pocket and took his out from behind the five. His was worse than mine, bent at one corner, with a ring on it from something wet.
He opened it. The same words. The same blue. The same handwriting, like a teacher’s.
We held them out side by side, the way we had in the stairwell at school in September, with our two left hands.
Neither of us said anything.
Then he folded his up and put it back in his wallet behind the five. I folded mine and put it in the snap pocket and snapped it shut.
Up on the deck Tracy said Gordon, you can’t trade a whole team, and Gordon said watch me, and Donna laughed so hard she knocked the chips off the railing.
* * *
At home I went downstairs and got into bed in the basement in Ranchlands. I set the alarm for six-fifteen, the way I’d set one every night for a year.
Then I looked at it.
The red numbers said 10:52. Upstairs Tracy was running a bath. Up at the top of the wall the window was dark blue now, with the grass in it and the dandelion gone to a puff of seed. I reached over and turned the alarm off and turned the clock to face the wall.
I lay there for a minute with my eyes open.
Then I went to sleep.
* * *
I woke up because the light was in my eyes.
It was coming in through the grass at the top of the window, bright yellow, sideways. The dandelion was gone. The wind must have taken it in the night. The clock was facing the wall. I didn’t turn it around.
Upstairs somebody was laughing. Gordon. Then Tracy said “Don’t you dare,” and a frying pan clanged. The smell came down the stairs, butter and pancakes and something burnt at the edges.
I lay there.
I put my hand up to my head. My hair was there, all of it, long, tangled from the pillow. I put my hand flat on the blanket. Left hand, little finger, the hook. I said my name, quietly, to the ceiling. “Paige.” It was my voice.
I got up.
They were all in the kitchen. Tracy was at the stove in her housecoat with a spatula. She’d phoned in. It was the first morning of the new train station and she’d phoned in. Gordon was standing in the doorway in his Reimer Mechanical jacket with his keys in his hand, eating a pancake with his fingers, late for a job. Nathan was at the table with a stack in front of him and syrup on his chin.
“There she is,” said Gordon.
“Took you long enough,” said Nathan. “It’s nine-fifteen.”
“She came down three times,” said Gordon, tipping his head at Tracy. “Three times. Just to listen to you breathe.”
“Gordon,” said Tracy.
“I’m saying.”
“Sit down, honey,” Tracy said to me. “Blueberries. Sit.”
I sat down. She put a plate in front of me, three pancakes with blueberries in them, and butter going soft on the top one, and the syrup.
I was starving. I ate all of it, and then I held out my plate for more.