I still have ten more questionnaires to finish in the next month, but it doesn’t matter.
You know that moment when superheroes—the ones who gain their powers, not the ones who are born with them—realize what they are, and what they can do? Like when Spider-Man wakes up from the spider bite to discover he can shoot laserlike webs from his hands and scurry up a wall, impervious to gravity pulling him down?
This is that moment.
I can do anything.
LEGENDS OF THE STONE
KittyKat: go go go!
[]Sythlight: I lost him. Where’d he go?
KittyKat: that’s like the fifth one. do you lose your keys as often as you lose wereboars?
[]Sythlight: Hey, you lost the first one.
KittyKat: no way
[]Sythlight was slain by a venomous wereboar.
KittyKat: bahahhaak
[]Sythlight: Found him!
KittyKat: ha ha I can’t believe you died to a wereboar
[]Sythlight: A venomous wereboar
[]Sythlight: Can you get to my stuff?
KittyKat: yeah I think so
KittyKat: give me a min phone keeps ringing
[]Sythlight: K
[]Sythlight: Made it back to my stuff. You back yet?
[]Sythlight: Kat?
KittyKat: got to go ttyl sorry
[]Sythlight: Is everything okay?
KittyKat has logged off.
CHAPTER 17
MEG
COMPETITIONS, AT LEAST, ARE MORE EXCITING THAN STANDING AROUND AT THE archery club watching Grayson shoot his arrows, then collect them, then shoot them again, like playing fetch with himself. I ran to grab them for him once, but he still had one last arrow left and he just missed shooting me in the arm with it and somehow it was my fault, not his, so I didn’t try that again.
Late Saturday afternoon, we ride across the city to the other club with Grayson’s parents, and I hold Grayson’s hand the whole way, even though it’s all clammy with sweat—serious girlfriend points there.
The club bustles with competitors, from a tiny blond girl with her hair in pigtails and a pink grip on her miniature bow, to a burly ape of a white guy with a red bandanna atop his head who probably shoots arrows off the back of his Harley. I don’t see any black competitors, but as always, that’s no surprise. Though actually, the whole place is disproportionately white. It’s like I’ve left Edmonton and landed in . . . I don’t know, some place that’s way more white. I want to ask Grayson why he thinks it is that I can count the number of nonwhite competitors on one hand, but he looks too nervous for that kind of discussion.
Grayson’s division is the third group—probably not up for an hour or two, he reports—so we buy nachos and sit on the chairs at the back, chomping our cheese-coated chips as we watch the bow-wielding warrior tots.
The pigtailed girl claps and giggles every time she shoots, like this is the greatest fun she’s had since she mastered the potty, and she shoots better than the grim-faced kid with an arm brace, whose parents hover around him, clucking advice and reprimands.
My phone vibrates in my pocket—it’s too loud in here to hear it—and I lick the gooey orange off my fingers before wriggling it out.
It’s a text from Kat. A text. From Kat!
SOS! Please come. Now. Please.
And it’s not even an angry text! I shove the nachos at Grayson and tap out my reply.
Your house?
I pull on my coat as I wait for her response. Grayson grabs my arm as I stand. “Where are you going?”
I pat him on the head. “Sorry. It’s an emergency. I have to go.”
His brow softens. “What kind of emergency? Are Kenzie and Nolan okay?”
“Yes. I mean, I assume so. It’s not them—it’s Kat.”
“Kat?” The furrow returns. “I thought you guys weren’t talking. What’s the problem? Can’t it at least wait until after my group?”
I just shake my head. Kat wouldn’t text me an SOS unless she meant it, especially not after two weeks of silence that’s been growing louder and louder every day.
My phone lights up with the one-word response:
Yes
I lean down and kiss Grayson on the forehead. “I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t an SOS. Get your mom to film your round for me, okay? I’ll watch later and cheer lots, I promise.” Then I whirl out of the bustling hall and into the winter night.
It takes three different buses to navigate across the city to Kat’s house, but I manage it in only forty-five minutes. Her house is dark, except for one light shining from the tiny basement window, but when I ring the doorbell, she swings the door open like she’s been sitting right there.
“You came,” she breathes. Even in the shadowy darkness of her front hallway, her eyes look red-rimmed.
“Of course I came, sillyface. It was an SOS.”
Then she throws her arms around me and collapses against me in a very un-Kat-like show of affection, or maybe desperation.
“What’s the SOS?” I ask once she pulls away.
She pushes a few loose strands of hair back toward her ponytail, as if trying to glue them into place.
“It’s Granddad,” she says, hand still atop her head. “He’s had a stroke.”
KAT
IT’S MEG’S TURN TO SMOTHER ME IN A HUG. “OH GOD!” SHE BREATHES, WORDS tangling in my hair. “Is he okay?”
In other words, is he dead or not dead? I shrug as she pulls away. An hour ago, when the nurse called, he was not dead. Or at least, not dead yet. Since then, I’ve sat in my dark living room, looking over questionnaire after questionnaire, spreading them across the floor, counting them, searching them for some strength that, I have determined, I definitely do not have. Since then, anything could have happened.
“ICU,” I say, shrugging again.
“Which hospital?” she asks as she starts rummaging in the front hall closet.
“Royal Alex.” I think. After the nurse said Granddad had collapsed of a stroke at the grocery store, everything else she said was muted by the roaring of a waterfall in my ears. Maybe she said the Misericordia. Or the Grey Nuns. I should’ve written it down, recorded her words in black pen strokes on lined paper as if preparing for a school final. Except in this case, it’s a life final.
My stomach lurches as Meg winds a pink-and-purple-striped scarf around my neck.
“Well, that’s easy, then. The 125 will take us right there.” She stands on her tiptoes and shoves a plain green toque onto my head.
I shake my now-green head. “We should wait for my parents.”
“Oh, are they on their way?” Her face brightens as she lifts my coat off the floor at her feet. I don’t know when she put it there. Perhaps it walked there on its own.
I clench my phone tightly and shake my head for like the umpteenth time. “Not answering. Date night. They’re at a movie,” I force out, my voice breaking. When Granddad said he was going out to run a few errands, I didn’t think twice about it. He goes out a lot, and he’s been so much stronger lately.
Meg nods. “Which one? What time did it start?”