She had hinged all her hopes for a new life on Jennifer Hardy, who, as it turned out, had quit her job at MuchMusic to teach yoga in Scarborough and would only meet Finn for lunch because she didn’t like to come downtown after dark. It only took a few months for Finn to realize that her day-to-day life in Toronto would not be the triumphant exile she had imagined during all those lonely high school lunch periods sitting alone in the cafeteria. She was soon doing the same things there that she had done in Japan – hiding in her apartment, reading books she had brought from home, eating at McDonald’s because it was the only place she could understand the menu. In a place where she had explicitly gone to find something new and exciting, she had actively sought out the easy and comfortable. The familiar.

So maybe she was a bit of a hypocrite. But at least she had tried something. Even if she was failing, at least she hadn’t just given up before she started.

“My life might be boring and shitty, but at least it’s mine,” she whispers out the window.

—

By the time they get to Duluth, it is after three. They drive straight to Canal Park and Nicki pulls in behind the Dairy Queen so that they can start their search on foot.

“So many tourists,” she says as she starts speed-walking through the crowds towards Minnesota Avenue, Finn running to catch up. “I’m never going to find them.”

“I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to pick out an old woman with a broken pelvis and a teenager on a mission to save the planet,” says Finn.

“What’s this we business? I thought you were dying of starvation or something.”

“Like I’m going to give you the chance to leave me stranded in Duluth.”

Nicki shakes her head but doesn’t argue. They make their way towards the lift bridge, past all the tourist shops and bars and restaurants with their faux northern outdoorsy wholesomeness, window displays of trees and bears, pictures of fishermen in red plaid, airbrushed photos of wolves on T-shirts, while the restaurants advertise walleye as “the catch of the day,” as if it were ever anything different. But whether they come up from the Twin Cities or down from Thunder Bay, the tourists love it, and they buy into it all.

“All these people,” Finn says to herself. “Just out together, being normal.”

“What people? What are you talking about?” Nicki peers into the doorway of an old-timey toy store with model trains and creepy dolls set up in the windows.