“It’s so good,” Will said, taking his first bite of his sandwich.
We ate in gluttonous silence until Will set his soda down. “I heard you on the phone earlier. Who’s Whitney?”
I hesitated.
“Do you want me to pretend I didn’t?” Will sucked a dab of mayo off his thumb, and I was momentarily silenced.
“Maybe?” I said as he wiped his hands with a napkin.
I couldn’t pinpoint why I felt so comfortable around Will, but I knew it wasn’t the pot. I needed to talk to someone—I’d been drowning under the weight of my secrecy. But I didn’t want to unload about Whitney in the middle of a crowded restaurant, either. “Shall we continue with the tour?”
We spilled out onto the sidewalk, and Will fished his tin of lemon drops from his backpack, holding them out for me. This time I took one.
We sucked on our candies as Will led us through Chinatown to his next destination. He kept positioning himself so that he was on the street side of the sidewalk.
“You don’t have to do that,” I told him. “It’s weird.”
“It’s good manners,” he said.
“In 1954.” I yanked his arm and pulled him so that I was beside the curb.
“Whitney is my best friend,” I said after a while. “She has been since the fifth grade.” I told Will our origin story, how I slugged Cam in the stomach for spreading a rumor that Whitney stuffed her bra. The tale had Will grinning widely—the way Cam, who was twice my size, doubled over in tears, how Peter came to pick me up from school and told the vice principal Cam got what he deserved and that I would not be apologizing.
“They’re dating now,” I told Will.
“No.” His laugh slid down my throat like chocolate sauce.
“Since tenth grade. It turned out Cam had a huge crush on her. Anyway, we’ve been best friends since. I’m an only child, but Whitney is basically my sister.” We dodged around a sidewalk rack of ten-dollar T-shirts. “She was here visiting me for a few days. The whole trip was kind of awkward.”
“You didn’t insult her artwork, did you?”
I let out an amused huff, then gasped as a bike messenger zoomed past, giving my tote a smack. Suddenly, Will’s arm banded around my middle, pulling me to his side.
“Are you okay?”
I looked down at his hand tight on my waist, and he immediately dropped it, a flush spreading from his neck to his cheeks like grenadine into a Shirley Temple.
“Assuming you didn’t call Whitney basic, why was her visit so awkward?” he asked after we’d started walking again, slow enough that people pushed by us.
“I think I wanted it to be something it wasn’t,” I said. “I thought I could make her fall in love with Toronto, but she never will.”
“Does that matter? You’re not going to be a city person soon.”
My head jerked back. “I’ll always be a city person. It’s not one or the other—rural or urban.”
Will raised his hands. “Yeah, you’re right. But why is it so important to you that Whitney likes it here?”
I scratched the inside of my wrist. “I guess I thought if she saw Toronto the way that I do, then maybe she’d understand . . .”
Will looked at me and then at my scratching.
“It’s a stress reaction,” I said, schooling my fingers. Ripping at my own flesh was a revolting habit, but Will didn’t look grossed out.
He shuffled me to the side of a large building. I had the vague sense of groups of people milling around, but my focus had narrowed to Will, who stood in front of me, watching and waiting. “She’d understand what, Fern?”
I didn’t want to tell Will the full, horrible story. But I could tell him this part. I let it out in a rush. “I don’t want to move back home. I haven’t told anyone, but I don’t want to work at my family’s resort. Everyone expects that I’ll run it one day, but I definitely don’t want to do that, either. I didn’t even want to go to business school—it was my mom’s idea.”
Will listened silently. I waited for judgment to mar his expression, but it didn’t, so I kept going. “I think I felt like if Whitney got why I loved living here, then maybe I could have told her about the other stuff. But she hates Toronto. She wouldn’t understand why I’d want to stay. I’ve sort of been lying to her, to everyone.”
“Hasn’t it been hard, keeping all this to yourself?” Will’s eyes darted around my face like he was looking for something.
I nodded. “You think I’m pathetic, right?”
“No.” His gaze locked on mine, and for a second, I thought he might say something else. For a second, I thought he might kiss me. But then he glanced around and announced, “We’re here.”
* * *
—
“The AGO? Really?” I asked, looking at the building we stood beside—the Art Gallery of Ontario. I felt lighter having confessed to Will. “It’s a little—”
“Don’t say it,” he interrupted. “I can hear what’s happening inside your head right now. You’re as transparent as a window.”
I raised my voice. “It’s a little basic, don’t you think?”
His laugh was bright and merry and bursting like a balloon on a pin. A pitch-perfect chord hummed through me.
“It’s one of my favorite places in the entire city. It was renovated a few years ago. Frank Gehry did the design—it’s an architectural masterpiece inside and out.” Will moved his hands through the air as he spoke, motioning to the curved glass facade that soared above the street and stretched the length of the block. “And then there’s the art, of course.”
“Of course.” I clamped my lips together to keep a laugh behind them.
“Now what?”
“I was just thinking I should see if your sister’s free. Maybe I can still get in on her tour.”
“Come on. There’s an exhibit on that I’m pretty sure you’ll like.”
“Really?” Most of my courses were required for my major: business law, calculus, game theory—and I took as many music electives as possible—music and film, global guitar, a history of music in cities. I couldn’t imagine what art Will would think I’d like—I didn’t know what art I thought I’d like. But then I caught a glimpse of a large poster hanging in the window.
“Patti Smith?” I looked at Will, confused.
“There’s a showcase of her photography on. I thought you might be into that.”
“I’m extremely into that.”
Will paid for our tickets and we went straight to Patti’s show. I had expected larger-than-life images of grit and grime. I’d expected punk. But the exhibit was so subdued, austere. The walls were whitewashed, and the photos were small black-and-white Polaroids of inanimate objects. A stone cherub, Walt Whitman’s tomb, a pope’s prison bedroom, a fork and spoon. A handful of Patti’s personal items were displayed under glass.
“It’s not very rock and roll, is it?” I whispered to Will once we’d worked our way through.
“I dunno. Death is a recurring theme in her work,” Will said, gesturing to a photograph of a withering flower. “What? You’re making a weird face.”
“Nothing,” I hissed. “Death is a recurring theme. Go on.” I liked Will’s arty talk.
“As I was saying, there’s a lot of death going on. Death’s pretty rock and roll.”
I leaned closer to him. “Am I an asshole if I say I prefer her music?”
Will cackled, and the sound raced up my spine. A man with a fanny pack strapped around his waist and a DSLR camera slung over his neck glared at us.
“He’s not very rock and roll,” Will said into my ear.
“Disagree,” I said, pointing to the man’s feet. He was wearing cannabis-leaf-patterned socks. “But this is a Patti Smith exhibit. It’s silly that we can’t laugh or speak at a normal volume.”
“We can,” Will said in his regular speaking voice, and the man scowled again. “But should we move on?”
“Sure. You’ve been here a bunch of times, right? Do you have a favorite piece?”