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from Toronto, but sometimes as far away as England. I saw the Hollies there once. They did that song, “Bus Stop.” Very weird to hear it like that, not on the radio, but right there in front of you.
    The dance was right across the bay so we took the boat. We cut the engine halfway across and just drifted. It was so quiet out there in the lake, the water black, just like ink. Nothing moving.
    “Put your hand in,” Harper said. “It’s like soup.”
    “We should go swimming.”
    “I just got my hair right,” he said.
    “Right. Me too.”
    “It’ll wash all the deodorant off.”
    “You need it in that place.”
    We were silent for awhile, the boat just hanging there in space. Across the water you could hear a girl’s voice; then a screen door slammed.
    “God, it’s eerie how you can hear everything.” We listened for a few moments.
    “I wish I had a girl here,” Harper said. “I might try to take Annie Kincaid home in the boat tonight. Can you get a ride if I do?”
    “Who would I get a ride from?”
    “Just do me a favour, will you, if I give you the signal? Don’t come up and ask me when we’re going home.”
    “Hardly,” I said.
    “And don’t tell the old lady.”
    I won’t.
    A boat puttered by us, its bow light all green and holy.
    “I’m looking forward to Christmas,” I said,
    “Christmas?” he said, “Where the fuck did that come from? Was it that light on the bow?”
    “Yeah,” I said, “I like it when it’s all cold and snowy. I sort of miss it.”
    “What time is it?” Harper asked after awhile.
    “Time you got a watch.”
    “No, really, we don’t want to get there too early. Look like a pair of fucking losers.”
    “We should dress like twins. You know, matching cardigans.”
    “Right. A pair
of real
assholes.”
    I heard him laugh in the dark.
    “Never could figure out why those guys do that. Dress the same. Even when they’re grown up. It’s completely fucked up.”
    “Exactly.”
    “So what time is it?”
    “It’s ten o’clock.”
    “Better sit out here a bit longer.”
    He spread himself out on the seat, putting his feet up on the side of the boat. Arms behind his head. I lay back on the otherseat and the two of us just floated out onto the black lake, staring up at the stars and saying fuck-all.
    I saw Sandy Hunter in the line-up but I pretended not to see her. She was a local girl, went to high school up here. I met her at a dance last summer where she was wearing this white shirt (you could see she had real tits underneath, the way the shirt was pushed out), and when Greg introduced me to her, I was so nervous I could hardly talk. I don’t think I even looked at her. Anyway, must have been a few nights later, I looked up her number in the phone book and with my heart thumping like a fucking rabbit, I gave her a call. I even made a list of stuff to talk about, so I didn’t run out. Anyway, it went all right. But it was the damndest thing, soon as she started to like me, she stopped seeming so good-looking. I grew distinctly cool toward her and then one day when one of her friends told me that she told her that I’d kissed her, I pretended it was big betrayal, you know, the sort of thing she shouldn’t have told anybody about and I used it as an excuse to dump her. She called me up a few times after that, sort of bawling, which made me like her even less, but I felt guilty, like somebody who’s run over a dog: you just want to back up the car and finish them off.
    Finally she cooled it and stopped calling me, the rest of the summer went by. I didn’t get another girlfriend and one night I saw Sandy again at the Teen Town dance. She was wearing a black turtleneck sweater, with those little tits standing out, and I was pretty cocky and confident, I mean I was pretty sure she liked me more than the guy she was with, she was just with him because she couldn’t be with me, and this song came on, “Sherry,” it was, and I clapped my hands together and I