Chapters (46)
- Cover
- Other Titles
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Friday
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- Saturday
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- Sunday
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- Monday
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- EPILOGUE
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Everything Nicki is saying, she has already thought herself, in her darker moments. Still, it makes her angry. “I just don’t get it,” she says. “In other places, it is a normal, functional thing for children to grow up and move away. But everyone in Thunder Bay just stays. Nothing ever changes, but still everyone stays. Everyone is so afraid of going off on their own, of doing something outside their comfort zone. They just want everything to be familiar and easy. That’s not how life works! Life is not about what is familiar. It’s about…something else. It has to be. It has to be.”
“Some of us like it here, you know.” Nicki’s voice is level, but her knuckles are white on the steering wheel. “You don’t get to just judge people like that.”
WARNING: PROCEEDING WITH THIS CONVERSATION MAY RESULT IN FORCIBLE EJECTION FROM A MOVING VEHICLE. Screw it. If this is how she’s going to die, then at least she’ll die having said what she needs to say. “Come on, Nicki. You were going to travel. You were going to go see Europe. You didn’t stay in Thunder Bay because you liked it, you stayed because you got knocked up.”
“Yeah. It’s called fucking taking responsibility, Finn.”
“You call living at home with Mom and Dad being responsible?”
“So you have your own house. That doesn’t make you better than me.”
“Why does everyone assume I think I’m better than everyone else? My life is actually pretty shitty. I live alone in a crappy suburb, I have a boring job, I haven’t dated anyone since Dallas. I don’t even have my own dog, I have to borrow my neighbour’s.”
Nicki laughs. “Wow. You’re really selling me on this whole leaving thing.”
“I…that’s not what I meant.”
“No, no, I get it. Basically what you’re telling me is that even your boring, shitty life is better than life with us.”
Finn closes her eyes, leaning her head back against the seat. Her boring, shitty life. She had so many plans when she moved to Toronto. Start another master’s. Go to cooking school. Volunteer at the art gallery. Call that Jennifer Hardy chick she went to Lakehead with who worked at MuchMusic and go out for drinks at a bar so underground it didn’t even have a name, where the DJ played music so new no one had ever heard it before. She would meet interesting people, get offered a job in social media, go to Fashion Week. She would be a Torontonian, which, in her mind, was exactly the opposite of being a Thunder Bayer.