When Emi came home I was still reading on the couch, secretly glancing at the door every two minutes wishing Evander would come upstairs again, but Emi didn’t need to know that.

“How did it go, Sarah?” she asked, as she dropped her purse on the stairs.

I told her about the evening as she propped her white-toed boots on an ottoman and untied the black lace scarf from around her neck. Emi always looked like she was auditioning for the part of the witch. After knowing her for four months, I could tell that something wasn’t quite right with her. She was a young, wealthy mother (not over thirty), and even though she constantly wore black, her apparel never dipped into the realms of the vampire fads. Instead, she dressed classically, like the artist she was. That was where she went on Tuesday and Thursday nights—to the city art gallery. 

In short, she dressed like she was mourning for a dead husband, but acted like the sun was always rising. She was very cheerful.

“Did Evander show you his book?” she asked casually.

“No. Did he write a book?”

“Hm. He really didn’t talk to you about it? He’s been writing it for years and he submitted it to two publishing houses. Unfortunately, he got rejected. He was really discouraged, so I decided I would get it printed and bound for him myself. You know, to give to him as a present.”

“You’re so sweet, Emi.”

“No. I’m not. I just wanted to show him that if all he wanted was a shiny cover with his name on it, then it’s not expensive to buy. He needs to figure out what his motivation for writing really is, and I think this the quickest way. I thought he might mention it to you because I had to order a lot of copies for the printing house to do it for me. If he hasn’t offered you one, then you might as well take a copy. I know how you like to read.”

She got up and fetched me a brown, hardcover edition. There was no cover art and there was only the title in gold lettering with Evander’s name underneath. It read: Behind His Mask, by Evander Cheney. I felt like I had just been given the world.

“Thanks, Emi,” I cheered. “You’re the best!”

“I know,” she said with a wink. “But please, don’t tell him I gave you this. If he was too shy to mention it then he might not be comfortable with you reading it.”

“Is he shy?” I asked, unknowingly. Sometimes I felt sure his silence was not shyness, but discrimination. 

Emi raised her eyebrows in shock. “Teenagers must live their lives with blinders on. They’re so self-conscious; they can’t even notice what’s going on in another teen’s life. Evander is not shy. He’s reclusive. He’s the type who will do whatever he wants, but he’s also the type who doesn’t want to share himself—another stumbling block he’s going to have to conquer if he wants to be a novelist. Just promise me you won’t tell him I gave you a copy.”

“Kay, I won’t tell him,” I promised.

“And don’t read it when you’re over here,” she continued.

“Okay.” 

She grinned and gave me a little pat on the shoulder. “Enjoy it, little girl. Now, hide it in your bag.”

She walked me to the door and looking outside, commented on how dark it was getting now that summer was over. “Why don't I call Evander up to walk you home?”

I glowed. I got my shoes and coat on and tucked the book in my bag. She was orchestrating a new fantasy for me. Evander was going to walk me home!

He took forever coming up the stairs and while I waited, I couldn’t help thinking about what Emi said. Wasn’t she being a trifle over-anxious? Surely it couldn’t bother Evander too much to see me reading his book. Nah, he was a huge snob and she was just trying to protect me from the uglier side of his moodiness.

Evander came up the stairs and got ready to walk me out. Emi waved good-bye to us on the stairs and we were soon on the sidewalk.

We walked by a few houses before I thought of an adequate conversation topic. Forgive me for my insipidness, but when I was around him, I got rattled and my brain didn’t work at full capacity, so my ideas were less than astounding. That night, they were quite stupid. 

“Do you think it’s really necessary to walk me home?” I asked. “It’s not very dark yet.”

“It’s no trouble,” he drawled.

It was another one of those moments I liked best.

“The neighborhood’s not the best, but I’ve never had anything bad happen before when I walked home from babysitting jobs.”

He was silent for a second before he spoke up. “You’ve walked home alone from other jobs?”

“Well, yeah. A lot of the other moms I work for are single and they don't have a nephew handy to send home with me.”

“No, I guess not,” he said slowly.

Then we were at my door. I whipped out my keys and slid them into the lock. “Thanks, Evander. See you next Tuesday.”

“Yeah, see you.” He waited until I was in the second door before he turned to go back down the apartment building steps. 

I turned and watched his back for a second. I was sort of hoping he would ask me to call him the next time I had to walk home alone from babysitting. It was very natural that he didn’t. That was one of my thoughts that fell into the daydream category.

Going up the stairs, I walked past the bloodstain. A few months ago someone had been stabbed just inside the building and no one had bothered to deep clean the carpet to get rid of the bloodstain. That was the kind of place I lived. Two landings up, there was a pee stain where an adult had literally taken a wiz on the carpet. No one had bothered to clean that up either.

It was strange that the hyper cheap apartments and the ritzy houses should be within walking distance of each other, but that was Edmonton for you. One second you’re standing in front of a skyscraper reflecting the sky as clear as water and the next you’re walking past an unkempt peepshow theater. It was the same in the residential areas. One minute you’re walking by the cheapest apartments the city has to offer and the next you’re passing a house that sold for over a million dollars because of the gorgeous view of the river valley.

The apartment where I lived with my mom was a one-bedroom. We slept on two bunk beds in the same room with blankets put up around our bottom bunks like bed curtains. Why bunk beds? I had two older sisters who didn’t live with us anymore, but just in case they stopped by, my mom wanted to have a place for them to sleep.

Where was my dad? Who knew. My mom had been through the process of dating (when she had daughters) enough times that she had grown tired of it. She hadn’t brought a man home since I was seven. So, unless one of my sisters showed up, then it was just the two of us.

I said before that it was the living room in Evander’s house that made me feel so unworthy of him. That was because it was so different from the living room in my apartment. The family pictures on my living room walls were half-sized school pictures. My mom couldn’t afford to get them done every year, so they were all up on the wall – even the ones from when I was in the second grade. I look scruffy. No one bothered to make sure my hair was smooth or that my face was clean. It wasn’t just me either, my sisters looked the same. 

As for my sisters, there was Rachel. She moved out when she was seventeen. Since then, she worked in an overpriced, low-class restaurant that dressed their waitresses up like hookers for their male oil-rigger clientele. I despised her for not aiming for something better, but she made major money in tips. And she had a secret. The truth was her head was shaved and she wore a beautiful blonde wig to work. That proved there was a tiny spark of rebellion in her and I knew that one day she would make enough money to do something better with her life.

My other sister, Carly, ran away from home six months before. My mother made the police treat her disappearance like a missing-person case, but I knew she ran away and we wouldn’t find her until she came back on her own. Maybe that was her idea of a prank to drive all of us nuts, or maybe she outright hated us. Who could tell exactly what she thought?

By that point in my unnecessary and painful comparison of living rooms, I wasn’t feeling too excited to read Evander’s book. I left it in my school bag and brushed my teeth instead.