We passed some idiot handing out pamphlets to the Wax Museum. She was dressed like Queen Victoria and China told her to fuck off.

It was fun, walking down there, with China. Two hungover girls, with tar in our hair and dirt in our mouths. Tourists threw us looks of disgust. Fuck you, China screamed to no one in particular, and we started smashing into tourists for no reason at all. I really wished she wasn’t leaving because I could have watched her harass people for the rest of my life. Buddy, she screamed at this one befuddled character holding a crumpled map. Buddy, take our picture, please.

If you saw the Polaroid, you’d see how I was laughing, how we looked like lifelong friends. I kept the photo in my notebook as long as I could.

But it’s gone now.

Guess where? It’s with all the stuff the cops seized.

It’s in the Evidence File, exhibit 13. You could check out the Polaroid, and probably never notice that I was holding the knife up like it was a middle finger. Cops noticed. They’re saying I was “brandishing” the knife, but it was just a joke to freak out the tourist. How was I to know our careless photo would end up as evidence? I’m telling you now. Be careful if you ever take a Polaroid.

Anyway, if you look at the photo, you’ll see what I mean about China being prettier than any of the smiling girls in stupid magazines.

Our bus station wasn’t exactly glamorous. It’s just one room with a couple of vending machines and maps on the wall showing our speck of an island surrounded by an endless blue ocean. DISCOVER CANADA, a sign said. I hated seeing our little island in the lowest place. I guess that was the point. You’d look at that skinny pathetic piece of land and want to buy a ticket immediately.

I watched China as she waited in the ticket line. From the back, in Everly’s beige coat, she could pass for a private school girl. No one would ever guess that she was a girl who’d OD’d five times just so she could sleep somewhere clean. I watched her as she reached the ticket seller, startling the drab woman behind the grate when she yelled out, One way to Penticton, in her heavy-metal voice.

I guess it was the combination of starvation and a cocaine comedown because I started to cry and I had to cover my face with my hair when China sat down beside me. She wouldn’t have noticed anyway because she was gazing down at the one-way ticket she’d bought with Dirk Wallace’s salary.

Penticton, the ticket said. One Way. No Return.

I’m getting out of this shithole, she said for what seemed like the seventeenth time. I hope my mom’s still alive.