“Well, yeah.” She shrugged, like it was obvious.
She took a step down and sat on the top stair, her face almost level with his.
He only hesitated for a second, then climbed up and sat next to her.
She didn’t say anything; she gripped the uneven boards under her legs, looking off across the field on the other side of the street.
“So,” he said, “I guess you think it’s weird, me coming here?”
“No, not weird,” she said slowly, thinking of his little white house at the other end of the road—they were sort of neighbors, after all. From the same side of town. “It’s just, I don’t know, why now?”
He took a deep breath and blew it out slow. For a minute he, too, just looked at the fields. Then he said, “What are your parents like, Evie?” And without waiting for her answer said, “Mine are fucked.”
She looked at the side of his face, the blond hair tucked behind his ear. “Yeah,” she said. “Mine too.”
“I thought so.” He nodded, tugging at a string of beaded leather that wound around his wrist. “I knew there was something…I don’t know, I mean, we live in the same ’hood, and I see you at school a lot. I drive past here all the time thinking I’m just gonna stop.”
“I’m glad you did,” she said.
“You are?”
“Yeah, I mean—” She shrugged and looked around. “I’m here alone most of the time. It’s cool to have someone to talk to.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, a slim grin sneaking across his lips. “It’s cool.”
They sat in silence again.
“So, you wanna go somewhere?” he asked after a while.
She shrugged. “Sure.”
That night he had taken her to the Olympia Café. She’d never been in before. She’d thought only townies hung out there—kids who actually lived in town, not just clinging to the dirty edges like her and Shaun did.
But the waitress knew him. Her name was June, and she called him son. She dumped two greasy menus on their table and walked her big square hips away. Shaun leaned and in a low voice said, “June won the lottery twice. You should see her truck.”
He didn’t look at the menu. He stretched his long arms across the back of the vinyl banquette. Evie anxiously scanned the greasy pages, trying to find something appealing, but she was too nervous to read any of it, so she just flipped through.
“Nothing’s good here,” he said, taking the menu from her. “Are you hungry?”
“Uh, no, not really,” she said, suddenly feeling dumb. “I had dinner before.”
She looked around. There was an old drunk at the bar, nursing a beer. A radio played the baseball game in the kitchen, and June leaned in the pass-through, talking to the cook.
The place was dark, with wood paneling and an ugly brown-and-orange carpet. Ceiling fans listlessly turned the air. It was pretty quiet, too late for townie kids to be there—at least, the ones with curfews.
Shaun sat back and turned half sideways in the booth, stretching his long legs out across the seat. He must have stood six foot two in his bare feet.
She’d noticed him as soon as she started at North Cold Water Collegiate. He hung out on the hill with Réal Dufresne and Alex Janes, but he could easily have been a jock. He was broad across the shoulders, lithe at the waist, and he moved with the determined grace of an athlete, each gesture flowing logically from the last. And boy, was he good-looking. Almost too perfect to be sitting across the table from her in real life.
“So, what’s wrong with your parents?” she asked, just as the back door of the restaurant banged open.
Sunny and Alex came in from the parking lot. Sunny looking scary and beautiful in a long, black, completely see-through skirt, worn over a shorter, tighter, opaque one, and tall black boots. Alex loped along ahead of her like a witch’s familiar.
“H.D.,” Alex called, eyeing Evie as they came across the room.
“Janes,” Shaun replied flatly.
He introduced them to Evie when they arrived at the table, but he didn’t move his legs so they could sit down. “Evie lives down my street,” he told them.
“Cool, cool,” Alex said, looking at her. “You’re a Northerner, right? I seen you at school.”
Evie nodded. Northerner was local shorthand for their high school, though she was more accurately an Easterner, since the town was pretty clearly divided. Best and Least.
“We were just at the band shell.” Alex jerked his head in the direction they’d come from, and Shaun nodded without comment.
After a few minutes Alex and Sunny sat at another table, and Shaun turned to face Evie, taking his legs down from the seat. They talked, and as they did, he watched the other couple over her shoulder. It only dawned on her later that this had been her initiation. That Shaun had wanted her to meet his friends, to stir them together to see what happened.
Lots of girls at school whispered about Shaun. He had a reputation for being kind of slutty, a player. It was a long time before she realized that, although he’d had plenty of hookups, he’d never had an actual girlfriend. At least, not until Evie.
Shaun started coming around most nights after that one. They sat on the top step looking out across the grass, just talking. And then one night he put his hand down over hers, gently but with purpose, and she didn’t resist.
“Does your grandmother ever wonder where you are at night?” she asked, trying to ignore the electricity from his fingers.
“Nah,” he answered, voice full of swagger. Then he explained, “Nan’s pretty old. She doesn’t really understand much anymore. Mostly she just thinks I’m there anyway. Like, I catch her talking to me sometimes, but I haven’t been around for hours. Once I was even—” He stopped and grinned. “Ah, never mind.”
“What?” Evie asked. “Tell me.”
“Uh…” He cringed a little, and
