Terry did still want to hang out on Saturday. He friended her on facebook and sent her a private message confirming their plans. She spent part of Saturday morning going through his facebook photos and then the rest of it agonizing over what to wear. It was a cold November day so her options were limited. She settled on the usual jeans and hoodie nd her late-fall-early-winter coat, which was brown with a purple and green plaid design. She opted not to wear a hat but stuck one in her coat pocket just in case and put her mitts in the other pocket.
She stood by the window, waiting for Terry to arrive and when he did she hastily ran to the door and announced that she was going out.
Angela emerged from the kitchen. “Where are you going?”
“Just out.”
“To Jay’s?”
“No, just out.”
Julie and Simone were now watching this exchange with interest.
“Would you care to be a little more descriptive?” asked Angela.
“Mom! I have to go!” Cerise’s hand was on the doorknob.
“Who are you going to be with?”
“I dunno! People!”
“What people?”
“The people I hung out with on Halloween.”
“I thought you were with Jay on Halloween.”
“Well I was but I also hung with other people, who also exist. From school.”
“There’s a car out there,” announced Julie, peering out the window.
“You’re driving somewhere? In a car?”
“We’ll we’re not gonna go by horse drawn carriage,” sighed Cerise.
“Who is this person?” asked Angela.
“A friend from school!”
“A friend of Jay’s?”
“A friend of mine!”
Cerise opened the door and stepped outside.
“Wait! When will you be back?”
“I dunno. Mom…”
“Be back by eleven,” said Angela resolutely.
“What?” Cerise shrieked. “Since when do I have a curfew?”
“Since you started going out with anonymous drivers,” said Simone with a smirk.
Cerise glared at Simone. “Who’s like, uh, waiting.”
“If you’re not even going to tell me where you’re going or who you’ll be with the least you can do is be back at a reasonable hour. I don’t want you staying out all night again,” said Angela.
“Oh yeah, one time. One time I like, accidentally fall asleep at a party that like, barely even occurred. Meanwhile Julie does whatever the hell she wants…”
“Like even!” said Julie.
“Cerise,” Angela pinched her nose.
“Ok, fine, whatever! Bye!”
Cerise closed the door behind her and ran off to Terry’s car. She got in the passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt while apologizing for keeping him waiting.
“It’s cool.”
“So where are we going?”
“Where do you wanna go?”
“Oh, I dunno. Wherever I guess.”
“Well it’s your choice. Whatever you wanna do.”
“Oh yeah?” Cerise smiled and looked at Terry’s face as he watched the road.
“Yeah, I mean, you know. Whatever you want. I mean last time we did what I wanted and that you know…”
“Sucked.”
Terry chuckled and agreed. Cerise looked out the window and saw a series of white flakes fly by.
“Oh my god!” she exclaimed.
“What?”
“It’s snowing!”
“Oh yeah.”
“I love snow. I like winter better than summer.”
“Really? Me too!” he exclaimed.
“Summer’s so hot and gross. You get all sticky and sweaty. Winter’s fun. You can go skating and sledding and have snowball fights and stuff.”
“Yeah,” Terry chuckled.
“Oh my god!”
“What?”
“A park! Let’s go play in that park!”
Terry laughed as Cerise pulled on his coat sleeve.
Karl descended into Jay’s basement and tossed his bag of dice onto the coffee table. “Where’s Cerise?” he asked.
“She’s out with Terry Trebifratboystereotypey tonight,” grumbled Jay.
“What, again?”
“I thought she didn’t like him anymore,” said Willy in disappointment.
“Who cares?” asked Vani. “Come on, let’s do the roll-off.”
Karl emptied his dice bag and Vani, Jay and Willy each took a twenty sider. Vani won the roll-off and immediately started up where he’d left off yesterday. Willy leaned back on the couch and opened the bag of M&Ms he’d brought.
Terry hadn’t had a destination in mind when he’d left Cerise’s house. He’d simply driven around Beaconsfield until they’d ended up in Kirkland
“Do you do this all the time?” Terry asked in amusement as he sidled up next to her.
He was several inches taller than the monkey bars and crouched under them, positioning himself facing Cerise. He took hold of the bars and folded up his legs, then began doing pull-ups.
Cerise laughed. “Do what?” She tried to do a pull-up too but gave up after about a second and planted her feet back on the ground.
“Play on jungle gyms?” Terry asked as he continued to show off his upper body strength.
“No,” Cerise pouted. “Who would play with me?”
“I’d play with you,” Terry grinned.
Cerise smiled and ran to the swings. Terry followed and they each sat in a swing and propelled themselves forward. They were both too tall for the swings and had to raise their legs up to prevent themselves from hitting the sand.
“Oh my god, I’m so old. I’m totally getting nauseous,” whined Cerise. She jumped off the swing and landed with a thump in the sand. “I don’t remember that being so painful,” she laughed.
“Want me to kiss it better?” Terry smiled as he sat next to her in the sand.
“I think I’ll be ok,” she grinned and got up, running to the slides.
“She’s getting away, what do you do?”
Vani held up his hand in the shape of a gun and aimed it at the wall.
“This is boring,” whined Willy, as he lay on the couch like a beached whale.
“Shut the frakk up, Willy!” Karl ordered. “Vani, what do you do?”
“Pow!” yelled Vani, jerking his arms up as though he’d just shot his gun.
Terry caught Cerise as she slid down a yellow, plastic slide. It wasn’t much of a slide and she sort of had to force herself down. He picked her up, wrapped her up in his arms and looked down at her smiling face. “You’re crazy,” he said with affection, putting her down.
She giggled and looked up at the sky, closing her eyes and letting the snowflakes dissolve on her face. “I can’t wait ‘till there’s actual snow. I love snowstorms.”
“I love snow days,” said Terry.
She was so pretty. She opened her eyes and looked at Terry and he smiled down at her. Her cheeks were already flushed from the cold but he could have sworn she blushed even more.
“So um, you hungry?” she asked shyly.
“I sure am,” he grinned.
“Ok, take your time, you don’t wanna rush this,” said Jay.
Vani nodded. “I know, I know. Ok, I send out Marzipan and Saltimbanco to do recon.”
Willy let out a noise that they interpreted as exasperation, though knowing Willy it also could have been gas. “Enough with the endless recon!” he bellowed.
“Shut up, Willy!” Vani shoved him. “When your opinion matters we’ll let you know.”
Willy rolled off the couch like a harpooned seal and flailed at Vani, who, not being completely retarded managed to deflect his attack.
“Willy, stop being so useless!” said Jay. “Go get some Doritos or something.”
“You have Doritos?”
“No! Go to the store and buy some! We’re like five minutes from the dep!”
“Yeah right,” snickered Karl. “The way he walks it’ll be more like five hours.”
“Even better.” Jay rolled his eyes.
“Gimme money,” said Willy, putting out his palm.
“Buy them yourself, frakktard!”
Willy hovered over Jay and turned his back to him. Jay knew what was coming and tried to escape but Willy was too quick and the fart was loud, long and smelly. Jay screamed in horror and ran around the room calling for a gasmask. Willy laughed as Vani and Karl pulled their shirts up over their faces and continued the game.
They drove along a series of residential streets and then stopped at a light when they reached
St-Charles Boulevard.
St-Charles Boulevard.
“There’s lots of restaurants around here,” said Cerise, peering out the window.
“Yeah,” agreed Terry. “You have a favourite place?”
Cerise hesitated. “We could just go to Harvey
Terry turned to Cerise and grinned. “I love St-Hubert.”
He pronounced it in English, while Cerise had said it in French. She wondered if that had come across as pretentious.
“Really?” Cerise smiled. “Me too!”
“I know it’s totally lame, but fuck, they have the best sauce.”
“I know!” Cerise laughed.
The restaurant was full of families and screaming kids but Cerise didn’t mind and Terry didn’t seem to care either. They were greeted in English and seated at a booth in the middle of the restaurant. The family behind them had two kids, a boy and a girl and they were both eating chicken fingers. Cerise wondered if it would be completely moronic of her to order the same thing.
The waiter assigned to their table was obviously French so Cerise followed suit. “Les quatres filets, avec frites et sauce aigre-douce. Pis un coke.”
“Pepsi ça va ?” asked the waiter.
Cerise nodded.
“Salade de chou crèmeuse ou traditionel?”
“Traditionel.”
Terry ordered in English and pretty much asked for everything on the menu. He got the demi-poulet with a baked potato and ceasar salad on the side. He got a coke too and creamy coleslaw but also ordered a plate of onion rings to start.
“Wow, you sure are hungry,” Cerise laughed when the waiter had gone.
“Well I play hockey. Gotta keep my calorie count up,” he said, patting his belly, or rather the rock hard abs she imagined hid under his shirt.
“Hockey, eh? That’s cool.” Cerise knew absolutely nothing about the sport. She’d watched Canada defeat the US
“Yeah, it’s ok,” said Terry. “I used to like it more but I guess the older you get the more seriously you’re expected to take it. The coach acts like it’s the most important thing ever. He wants us all to be gunning for the NHL but it’s like dude, I have a life. I don’t wanna practice 24/7. Sometimes it’s a bit intense.”
Cerise nodded dumbly.
Terry went on. “My dad takes it pretty seriously too, which is like, why? He nev
Cerise smiled. “You’re not on a team at school, right?”
“No, it’s a local team. We’re called the Lakeshore Panthers. It’s midget AA.”
“I dunno, there are words coming out of your mouth but I don’t know what they mean,” shrugged Cerise apologetically.
Terry laughed. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Are there lots of fights?” Cerise knew enough about the game to realize it could be violent and dangerous.
“Sometimes,” grinned Terry.
“Ever get seriously hurt?”
“Nah. Just scrapes and bruises. Got some black eyes, some teeth knocked out when I was a kid, just baby teeth thank god. And broke my nose a few times but that’s no big. I broke my arm once too as a kid but not from hockey. From snowboarding.”
“Oh, you snowboard too?”
“Yep. How ‘bout you? Play any sports?”
“Yeah right!” Cerise laughed. “I’m totally not sportif at all.”
“Ahh again with the French. Your accent’s really good.”
“I went to French primary school. And my dad’s paternal family is Québecois.”
“That’s cool,” smiled Terry.
“Yeah, my grandmother is like, so bitter we turned out so Anglo. She’s always trying to make us eat like, maple syrup and tourtière and shit.”
Terry laughed as the waiter brought their drinks, coleslaw and onion rings. Terry popped one in his mouth and pushed the basket towards Cerise.
“Help yourself, eh?”
Cerise thanked him and ate one. “So I hear you have a big family.”
“Oh yeah, where’d you hear that?”
“Christina Penna.”
Terry’s hand, armed with an onion ring paused in front of his face and he peered at Cerise. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, at Clydes on Halloween. Remember, you were busy playing pool and she and I had a heart to heart.”
Terry frowned in concern. “Uh… ok. What’d she say?”
Cerise couldn’t help smirking. “She was a little bitter but basically nice. She gave you glowing reviews.”
Terry blushed a little bit and looked down. He took a sip of his pepsi.
“She still likes you,” Cerise pointed out.
“Yeah, it happens,” he shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Did um, did she say anything bad?
“Not really. I mean she was pretty drunk; half the shit she said didn’t even make sense. She did say you were like a player and stuff but I already knew that.”
Terry frowned and then smiled awkwardly, leaning back in his seat. “Yeah well…”
“And she said you have like, a million siblings,” said Cerise, generously giving him an opportunity to change the subject.
“Yup,” Terry nodded. “I’ve got two younger brothers, Evan and Joey. My dad remarried and so now I have a half-sister, Brittany, she’s two. And my mom remarried too and I’ve got a step-brother and sister.”
Their food arrived and Terry eagerly dug into his massive plate. A paper airplane suddenly landed on their table and Cerise looked behind her to see the two kids from the neighbouring table grinning down at her. Terry picked up the paper airplane and threw it back at them with a smile. They laughed and threw it back but it veered off into the alleyway and was crushed by a passing waitress. Terry lifted his plate and grabbed his paper placemat, folding it into an airplane. He threw it at the kids and they ducked back down into their seats as their mother orderered them to calm down and stop bothering people.
“I guess it’s a good thing you like kids since you have so many younger siblings,” said Cerise.
“Well kids are people too,” shrugged Terry. “I mean some are cute and some are shitheads, just like everyone else. My step-sister is kind of a pain but my baby sister is awesome.”
Cerise smiled as Terry kept eating. “You babysit her a lot?”
“Yeah, sometimes,” nodded Terry. “And it’s more fun now that she’s finally toilet trained,” he laughed. “What about you? Any step-siblings on the horizon?”
“My parents’ split was pretty recent. As far as I know they aren’t dating other people yet.”
“Give it time,” Terry drawled. “Do you live with your mom or dad?”
“My mom. My dad’s in Quebec City
“Does it suck?”
“What, Quebec City
“I mean him being gone.”
“Well, not really actually. We get along better now that he’s not around. Not that we used to like, not get along but I dunno, he was never really that much of a presence anyway. I’m supposed to go visit him in the summer, but I don’t really wanna go.”
“Don’t like him much?” asked Terry sympathetically.
“I dunno,” Cerise shrugged. “It could be weird. But mostly just boring. I mean what is there to do in Quebec
Terry laughed. “Yeah seriously. Well, I hope you don’t go.”
“Oh yeah? How come?”
“’Cause then we couldn’t hang out.” Terry grinned and stole a fry from Cerise’s plate.
Cerise giggled and dug her fork into his baked potato.
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