Betsy Wickwire's Dirty Secret (13 page)

W
e bought the outfit for me and the shirt for Murdoch, then drove all the way out to Sunnyside Mall because there was a place that, according to Dolores, sold really good french fries, not to mention forty-three flavours of ice cream. We got our orders, then sat out on a dirty brown picnic table and watched the traffic crawl by. We made fun of how much Murdoch ate. I mentioned how my grandmother loved watching skinny men chow down. Dolores decided we should made a video of Murdoch eating and put it on YouTube so pervy old ladies like Betsy's Nana could get their thrills. I almost pushed her right off the bench for saying that, but then forgot about it and helped make the video. We bought three more large orders of poutine and two chili dogs, then Dolores fed them to Murdoch while I taped it on his phone.

We waited in line to get our cones and ate them in the
car. Dolores got maple-bacon (the Double-Dare of the Day), I got Monkey Paw, and Murdoch got vanilla. We bugged him the whole way to the lake about choosing vanilla when he had forty-two other flavours to pick from but he was surprisingly tough on the subject. He claimed it was his God-given right to eat whatever he wanted and, moreover, he thought we were the boring ones for choosing cheaply outrageous flavours that, frankly, indicated we had self-esteem issues and a corresponding need for attention.

Dolores tried to make some crack about Murdoch being the one who needed the attention because otherwise why would he have let himself get so tall, but the joke didn't really come together. Murdoch and I booed and hissed until she stuck her tongue out and gave up on it. Of course, we were halfway down the path to the water by that time.

There were more people at the lake than there had been the day before. It didn't bother me. They were scattered on various rocks so it's not like they were right on top of us, but Dolores didn't like it.

“I guess we're going to have to go hard-core,” she said, and led us down another trail.

It was clearly not as well known as the first one. We got all scratched up by the branches and at one point had to kind of scramble over some rocks where water swamped
the path. By the time we got to where we were going fifteen minutes later, sweat was bubbling on my upper lip.

We were higher above the water at this end of the lake and it was totally quiet. The only other person was a canoeist paddling out by a little rock island.

“What I tell you?” Dolores said. “Totally worth it,
n'est-ce pas?”

She took Murdoch's shirttail and wiped the sweat off her face. He didn't even blink. I wondered what they got up to when I wasn't around. My heart thumped.

I left them alone and went off to change. I'd brought my old bathing suit this time. The one I used to swim in at Williams Lake. It was a blue-green floral print and I liked the way the halter top made me look like I actually had almost-significant boobs. I'd put it in the bag for the Sally Ann the night before but took it out again. Nick and Carly couldn't ruin everything for me. I liked that bathing suit. I was going to keep it.

I adjusted my pseudo cleavage and found my way back to the lake. Murdoch was wearing real swimming trunks today. His legs didn't look so unnaturally long in them.

Dolores was wearing another Giant Tiger special. It was black with a little skirt and there was something sort of 1920s about it. She'd taken off her glasses and was wearing red lipstick. It was the first time I realized how cute she was.

“Going in?” I said.

“Nah,” Dolores said. “I'm going to warm up first.” She lay back down on her elbows with one leg bent at the knee, like an old-fashioned pin-up girl, only with green hair.

“Warm up? Please tell me you're kidding.” Murdoch's tongue hung out like an old dog's. “I'm dying …”

“Well, forget about her, then,” I said. “Come on in with me.”

“You sure?” It was like he was asking permission to swim in my own personal lake. It made me laugh. “You sound worried.”

He rubbed his hand over his stomach and looked at his feet. He had a faint brown birthmark on his chest. “I am, a little.”

“Why?”

“Don't know … Scared you're going to go all Harry Houdini on me again, I guess.”

I pulled my face back. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

“You know. Setting another World Underwater Record, or whatever it is you were trying to do yesterday.”

“Oh, that.” My laugh sounded totally fake. “Don't worry about that.” I headed down the rock in front of him. I was embarrassed. What had I been thinking yesterday?

I stood at the edge of the lake and swung my toe through the water.

“Did you take ballet lessons?” he said.

That embarrassed me too. I put my arms above my head and pirouetted into the lake.

I bobbed back up just as Murdoch was jumping in and caught a faceful of water. I started to cough. Stuff sprayed out my mouth and nose. It was so gross it made me laugh.

“You okay?”

Murdoch had such a worried look on his face that I laughed harder, which, of course, just made me cough harder. I began to dog-paddle back to the rock, all bug-eyed and sputtering like a little kid. I could barely keep myself afloat. Murdoch swam toward me, grabbed my arm and pulled me to shore. He lifted me up onto the rock. His hands went practically right around my waist.

I was still laughing but I was snorting now too and letting out big slimey burps that tasted like Monkey Paw ice cream.

He was going, “You okay? You okay? Just nod or wink or breathe or something.” His forehead was all dark and knitted together into one big unibrow of concern.

“I'm fine. Really.” I gulped down something oysterish that was stuck in the back of my throat. “Just laughing.”

“That was laughing?” His face unknit. “This was the
second time in two days you almost gave me a stroke.” He shook his head and hoisted himself up on to the rock beside me.

“Yeah, well, you deserved it. I'm still paying you back for the, you know … shower incident.”

He hung his head. “I'm never going to live this down.”

“Oh, come on. I have as much to be embarrassed about as you do. More. I mean, I knew it was a bunny tail when I put it on.”

His head bounced and I saw he was laughing. There was something about his laugh that I liked. Something about how little noise he made, just in general. For a big guy, he took up surprisingly little room. It was a nice change from what I was used to.

Neither of us had much to say after that. Just for something to do, I tried to spot the canoeist again. Murdoch put his glasses back on but only looked at his knees. Eventually, he said, “Nice day, eh?”

I was going to tease him about saying something so lame but he beat me to it.

“Sorry …” He turned up one corner of his mouth. “I'm not known for my conversational abilities.”

“Oh. I don't know about that. You were holding your own back there when we dissed your choice of ice cream.”

He looked at his legs again and smiled. I noticed how dark his lips were. “Yeah, well, you hit on one of my passions.”

I realized that I liked teasing him. It reminded me of something.

No. Someone. Gregor.

I hadn't thought about Gregor in ages. We'd been friends a few years ago. He was a little, sort of nerdy guy. Cute —but not “boyfriend material,” as Carly used to say. The two of us had spent a lot of time like this, just goofing around, laughing, teasing each other, following private jokes further and further into stupid places until nobody else knew what we were talking about half the time.

Then I met Nick. I still hung out with Gregor, but things were different, and a while later, he got a girlfriend too and we didn't see a lot of each other after that. I hadn't realized how much I missed him — or at least missed the way I used to be with him—until now.

I put my fist in front of Murdoch like a microphone. “And what else do you feel passionate about, Mr. Latimer?”

He squirmed a bit but then he nodded in a thoughtful way and pretended to take the mike. “Hmm. Well. Quality footwear … Uh …
Mad Magazine
… And, of course, the early films of Jim Carrey. What about you, Miss Wickwire? What do you feel passionate about?” He adjusted his glasses with his thumb and index finger. It was a nice touch.

“Passionate?” I was going to say
neon-ribbed condoms
but I wasn't sure if he'd get it. It might just have been weird. “Nice sheets, I guess. I hate those really thin ones that get the linty balls all over them.”

“Cheap T-shirts do that too.”

“Don't like those either.”

“You're a woman of taste.”

“Thank you.”

“Anything else?”

A little wind blew across the water on to my wet skin. I rubbed my arms and thought.

“Well … Good conditioner, I guess. Something not too greasy. You know how it is.”

“I don't, actually. Don't use conditioner.”

“Really?” I tugged at a piece of hair that was sticking straight up from his head. “I'd never have known …”

He flicked my hand away and patted his hair back down. He was enjoying this too—although he turned away when he saw me thinking that. I thought of Carly and changed the subject.

“How many are you looking for?”

“How many what?”

“You know. Things I feel, um” — I suddenly felt sort of ridiculous—”passionate about.” “Oh. Well. Say three …”

I perked up my voice and said, “Okay. I also feel quite strongly about … fresh bread. I won't eat it if it's stale.”

“Wow. Picky, picky. I'll eat stale bread.” “Yeah, but you'll eat anything.” “True.”

I fluttered my legs and looked out over the water. “Sheets, conditioner and fresh bread … god. I never realized how shallow I am.” I laughed, but sort of meant it too.

“Like, next to me? Shoes,
Mad Magazine
and Jim Carrey? I'm not exactly Nelson Mandela either, you know.”

“No, guess not … Quite a pair, eh?”

He nodded, but didn't look at me. I realized I didn't know many shy people. My friends had always been right in the front row, hamming it up for the camera, grabbing the mike.

I noticed the canoeist, pulling his boat up on to the little island. He was wearing a white sunhat and a backpack. I wondered if he was a scientist of some type. (Something about the hat just screamed nerd to me.) Maybe there was some rare miniature turtle or water lily in the lake that he was studying.

Other people had passions. It was weird thinking that.

I turned back to Murdoch. “Is there anything you really
are
passionate about? Like, seriously, I mean.”

“I was being serious.”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He put his hands up. “Seriously.”

“Right.”

He leaned back and kind of levered his feet out of the
water. “Size eighteen. Trust me. I care about good shoes.”

“And
Mad Magazine?”
I wasn't going to let him off that easy.

“I'd love to draw like those guys did. In fact, I dropped out of second-year engineering in January so I could spend more time working on it. I spend hours and hours every day now trying to draw like them.”

“Boy. You must be serious. That's more time than you spend eating.”

He gave this little sniff of a laugh. I wondered if I was going too hard at the whole food thing.

He moved his leg and adjusted his trunks. The hair on his calves made me think of spider legs. I thought of bringing up the book idea but I didn't know how.

“That just leaves the early works of Jim Carrey,” I said.

“Okay, I exaggerated there a bit. It was the only thing I could come up with off the top of my head.” He bit his cheek like he had a dirty secret. “He was pretty funny in
Ace Ventura
though, wasn't he?”

Something about that made me happy in a really simple way. “I loved that movie when I was a kid! I knew all the words and everything.”

We tossed around some of our favourite lines and it was fun for a while, but then it got to feeling sort of forced. The talk drifted off again. Murdoch scooped up a couple handfuls of water and splashed them over his back.

I realized that
skinny
was the wrong word for him. He had muscles. He just didn't have much covering them. An ectomorph. Biology, if nothing else, was coming back to me.

The Ectomorph and the Amoeba
. Maybe I could do a book about that for all the baby nerds out there.

“So what are
you
passionate about?” He tried to make it sound like just a casual question, but it obviously wasn't. “And don't say sheets or conditioner either. I mean really.”

I put my hands on the edge of the rock and peered into the water. Little waves kind of shivered across my reflection.

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe nothing. At least right now anyway. I guess there was stuff I used to be passionate about, you know, once upon a time and everything.”

“Such as?”

We were both looking straight across the lake now. It was like having a conversation with someone driving a car. Nobody took their eyes off the road.

“I don't know.” I honestly didn't.

For the longest time, nothing came to me, then for some reason I thought of my coach and her fire-in-the-belly pep talks. “Maybe winning the regional basketball championship. That seemed kind of important back then, I guess.”

I was just going to leave it at that but something happened and I said, “I had a boyfriend too.”

My heart hit hard against my chest. I was listening to someone else talk. “I was pretty passionate about him for a while.” I looked up at the sky and laughed but it sounded horrible. “At least until he dumped me for my best friend, that is.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“No. No. Who cares?” I flicked a little speck of something off my leg. “I'm certainly trying not to.”