Heat kicked through me then, a burning, dizzy sift of heat. No one around me would have noticed. No one would have known my freakish malady had returned, the fluke of my faulty body. My skin stayed pale; I didn’t faint. All this time, I’d been worried about my father being killed by a drunk logger, and suddenly I was the one who might die. Die on Yates Street surrounded by old ladies. Dear, they’d say, sweetie, what is wrong with you? They’d call the doctor; haul me off. Seamus would come in screaming about how he didn’t want me to be cared for by chemists with their man-made medicines.

So I willed my fever away. Swooning with stupid heat, I thought of Alaska; the shade of towering trees.

And walking home, I hoped the warmth was really regret. My fear; my cowardice. The moment at Ming’s, the moment on the street, any moment when I could have spoken to the skinny girl. But instead, I’d kept a distance and watched, no better than a lech looking for fresh prey. Only it wasn’t fear as much as certainty. I was certain I knew what she’d think of me. She’d hate me for being pretty and overbundled, poor, friendless, more or less a mute, a mute with no plans. She’d hate me for being known around high school as an Ice Queen, a girl who couldn’t help Heather after she’d had a garden hose stuck up her by Dean Black and his burnout brigade. Walking by some sweet old ladies, heading for the blue bridge that would bring me home, I knew. How she’d hate me. Just hate me.

THE GET LAID

THE last block of Yates Street looks like it could be in a Western. There’s old brick buildings left over from when Victoria was a gold rush town. They have high false fronts and entrances with heavy stone archways. The King’s Hotel is an old gunslinger saloon where all the loggers go to get trashed.

I should have walked, even run, by the derelict old hotel. Should have raced right by the skanky diner, a twenty-four-hour dive called the Day and Night.

But I swear, when I swerved into the diner, all I wanted was to splash some cold water on my face.

Lurid lights washed over me. God, please don’t let me faint, I thought. I wasn’t seeing things straight and clear; I’d glance before I’d veer. I saw the inside of the diner as if I was down on my back and a strobe light was flashing everything into slivers above me. Flash of a painted cowboy. Flash of a sign: Introducing our FAMOUS Texas Steak Delight. Flash of a waitress wearing white orthopedic shoes.

I smelled rancid grease, meat, and Mr. Clean.