Everything Was Good-Bye by Gurjinder Basran Page B

auntie stopped at our table to congratulate my mother on Tej’s engagement. Tej looked up smiling.
    My mother pushed the food in her mouth to one side and got up to thank her. They hugged in a one-armed embrace, my mother’s smile lop-sided.
    The auntie smiled at me. “The youngest one?” My mother nodded. “You are so grown up now.” She spoke with the blunt consonants and round vowels characteristic of esl. “I think you and Pinky are the same age.” She pointed across the room to where her daughter was standing against a cement pillar talking to her cousins, snapping bubble gum between words. Harj had always said they chewed like cows. “The two of you should get together some time, heh? Just like old times.” I nodded, even though I hadno intention of hanging out with her daughter. When we were little, Pinky used to bite my Barbie’s feet until they looked like fins, and then she’d pull their heads off. Once when she’d come over, I waited until she left the room and pulled offher Ken doll’s clothes. When she came in and saw me running my hands over his bumped crotch, she told my mom and I got in trouble.
    Pinky saw us talking and waved me over. She thought she was cool now that she’d had a nose job. “So what’s with you and Liam?” she asked. The other girls tucked their heads into their skinny shoulders and giggled.
    “Nothing”
    “I’ve seen you guys at school. You’re with him all the time.”
    “No, I’m not.”
    “Yeah, you are, and everyone knows it.” She blew a bubble, popped it, and tore at the piece with her tongue. “So do you like totally like him or something?” She pulled the gum again, this time with her fingers.
    “No. I barely know him. He’s not even my type.” I clamped my hands across my chest, though I knew my face had flushed with the lie.
    The other girls laughed louder this time. One even snorted and said, “What a freak,” like I wasn’t even there.
    “Go fuck yourselves.” I turned around and walked away, my face ripe-ning with shame, their laughter turning my stomach.

1.6
    C louds rushed across the sky, ragged strips of blue appeared and disappeared, and when it burned through, the dime-sized sun stung my eyes. Head down, I walked to school.
    “Meena!” Liam pulled his car up beside me, motioning for me to get in. I tossed my bag behind him and slid into the passenger seat.
    “Where have you been? You missed the history final. You can’t keep doing this or you won’t graduate. What the fuck is going on with you?” I clipped my questions when I saw a hint of his sleeping bag lying crumpled under the seat.
    Liam saw me eye it and with the heel of his foot tucked it farther out of sight. “I-I-I’m not going back.”
    I had never actually heard him stutter before. He looked away. His confident facade disappeared into a spittle of syllables.
    “Y-you want to come w-with?” Though he wouldn’t look at me, I saw his face was red, the flush spreading across his cheeks and creeping down his neck.
    I let my silence answer him. I didn’t ask him what had happened, and he didn’t volunteer the information. It seemed that the longer I knew him, the less I knew of him, yet the closer I felt to him. I wondered if that was what it meant to know someone by heart.
    Liam reached into the glove compartment for the mixed tape I’d made him. His hands were red with cold. I took the tape from him and fed it into the deck, forwarding it to “Never Let Me Down Again,” his favourite Depeche Mode song.
    “Are you hungry?” I asked, off ering him an apple from my bag.
    He shook his head. “I ate. I’m okay.”
    I took offmy jacket and flung it into the back. The floor mats were covered in empty soda cans, Tim Hortons to-go cups and McDonalds cheeseburger wrappers. I added them up, trying to calculate how much time he had passed in his car. The week before, when his dad had kicked him out, he’d pawned his cameras for money and lived in his car for days before