Dean Black’s the headcase; the heartthrob; the one I’m supposed to love. He’s got silky, shoulder-length hair, an Afro comb tucked in his Bootlegger jeans. He wants to be a rock and roll star, but he’ll settle for planting trees. After he receives a diploma from Mount Doug—or Mount Drug, as it’s known—he’ll go up to Horsefly Lake. That’s where the logging companies have cut down all the trees, thrown down napalm, burned and slashed the stumps. In the charred black ground, kids like Dean will plant sprigs. They’ll earn ten cents a tree. He’s seen me with my Swiss Army knife, hacking off branches. He thinks I should come with him. He smiles bratty when he talks about treeplanting; his grin’s crooked and pure. He wants me to come and sleep in his tent, but I can’t imagine him in a cremated forest. I can’t even imagine him carless. I can only see him as he is. The guy who drives to the liquor store and walks in without fear. Bottle in hand, bounding back to the car, raising his arms and bellowing, We are the champions. He’d slide up the window, put his hands up my shirt, and swig Southern Comfort. His hands up my shirt, he’d sigh kindly. He really wasn’t a bad guy. Especially when he was alone. I’d bring him down to Arbutus Cove. We’d lie in the crevice where the curve of rock was still damp from the tide. Grappling like we were in the black water, blind and floating, he’d get nervous. I didn’t want him to move away from me and reach for his prized plastic bag. I’d tease him. Offer to take off my top if he threw his drugs in the water. A hard choice for a burnout. Don’t make me do this, he’d say, and then he’d give in.

I thought I was on to something.

Lying in the crevice with him, I could forget about treeplanting and living on an island where the ocean surrounded me, always.

In the bushes, he’s different. I can’t tell him how much I hate the music on his radio, how familiar lazy days, loud guitars, and slow, stoned laughter are to me. I’ve known all this since I was a kid, but to him it was new and fresh, a real risk. His mother had sewn Led Zeppelin’s logo on the back of his jacket, in gold thread. His father was the manager of Canadian Tire, which made Dean the wealthiest kid in our school. Except for Ivy Mercer, and no one talked to her. She had a haughty stare and hid out in the library. Maybe later I’d make another feeble attempt to befriend Ivy, but for now I was in the bushes with the burnouts.