“You really believe that?” Tinsley asks. Clearly she doesn’t, but maybe she doesn’t know my cousin as well as I imagine. Barry wasn’t being rational. He was overcome with fear and panic. Another bust and they were going to lock him away. Behind that groovy exterior, the boy who was once so tough and daring has been reduced to a fragile and frightened casualty. The first couple of years after the beating he hardly left the house. Spent his days in the living room with the lights off and the curtains drawn, a shadow with cigarette smoke slowly spiraling into the air. On the rare occasion when he did go outside, it was usually to fly a kite in the street. He rarely left the block.

“When the bus caught fire. How calm you were.” In the dark, Tinsley’s caressing fingers rest on my face long past the time required to brush a few more strands away. She leans close, blocking out the stars. The scent of patchouli is in my nostrils, an involuntary stirring in my loins. The siren calls, and I have no sailors to fix me to the mast.

But I hate the way my father cheats on my mother. . . .

Tinsley’s lips, parted ever so slightly, are on mine. Why do I so passively accept them, when the lips I yearn to feel are Robin’s? Am I worried about hurting Tinsley’s feelings? Or is it because right now a kiss from Robin is as distant as the stars above?

Tinsley keeps the kiss short, then whispers, “That’s for saving us.”

She gently slithers off me, then presses herself against my side, her arm resting on my chest.

Saturday, July 26

“Zach’ll be here in a couple of hours,” Barry says early the next morning, stepping out of a phone booth beside a Rexall drugstore in Kemptville. Tinsley and I are sitting at a picnic table, our knapsacks, Barry’s duffel bag and camping stove, the butterfly kite, and some of his art supplies on the ground beside us. Last night Barry returned in the dark to say he’d found the town but everything was closed. Half an hour ago, I bade farewell to Odysseus and wished it safe journey to that hallowed junkyard in the sky. Then, carrying what we could, we walked here. The sun is barely above the thick green tree line to the east. The gathering heat is gradually drying the dew that accumulated during the night. A harsh chorus of cicadas has started to rise. Feels like it’s going to be hot today.

The I Ching coins clatter softly on the road map of southern Ontario that I’ve spread on the table. Tinsley scribbles in her notebook. Barry sits down beside her and lights a Camel.