Trevor stepped off his porch and leaned against the side of his 4Runner, watching my mopey walk with an amused look on his face. We hadn’t seen each other since the end of June because he’d been away travelling in South America on a motorbike all summer. He looked extra rugged, but still like himself in his standard white T-shirt and dark jeans. “Need a ride?”
I honestly wanted to go back to my room and curl up under the covers. My granddad would probably insist on leaving the guests unattended and driving me himself, though, so I said, “Yeah, I guess so.” I walked across the lot to where he was parked and reached up to hug him. “Welcome home.”
“You too.” He squeezed his arms and wrapped me in a warmth that did feel like home, but it reminded me that Britannia Beach might not be my home for long. I stepped back and tucked my hair behind my ears as I glanced at our tiny old mining village—twelve heritage houses, a small diner, a church, and a couple of tourist shops—backed up against the base of the forested mountain and across the highway from the beach. It was quaint, but old and easy to miss.
Not wanting to think about the fate of the village, I focused back on the immediate problem. “I don’t want you to make a special trip into town just for me. Were you headed into Squamish anyway?”
“Yup. I picked up a shift at the docks. And Kailyn needs a ride to her program.” He reached over to take my school bag and placed it in the back of the truck.
“Thank you. My granddad thanks you, too.”
“No problem.”
“How was your motorcycle trip?”
He eyed my outfit with an expression that was difficult to read. A skirt and boots were a change for me compared to the tomboyish ponytail, jeans, and bulky sweaters I normally wore. I wanted to make a statement at school that I wasn’t the same quiet, boring Derian they had known before I moved away. Based on Trevor’s reaction, it wasn’t producing the statement I had hoped for. “The trip was good,” he finally answered.
“Why are you looking at me funny?”
“I’m not. You look nice,” he said, but it sounded more like he was just being polite.
I ran my hand down the side of the beige skirt my mom bought during one of her attempts to make me more urban chic. “Do you think the skirt’s too short?”
He grinned as if I’d cracked a joke.
Embarrassed that he thought my attempt to reinvent myself was humorous, I mumbled, “Never mind,” then changed the subject. “I didn’t know you were back. You could have come over for breakfast.”
“I was going to, but we got home late last night. The jet lag made me sleep through my alarm.”
I nodded, distracted by the years of memories of our families eating breakfast together at the Inn. Growing up, Trevor and I used to always play together, but after he went to high school, the only time we ever really hung out was with our dads and his sister at breakfast. We hadn’t eaten breakfast together since before my dad’s accident, and I suddenly realized how much I missed it—another one of the many things that came to an abrupt end when my dad died.
As if Trevor could read my mind, he reached over with one arm and hugged me into his chest. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He knew how close I had been to my dad, and he knew how my world imploded after the accident. Although his familiarity was comforting, I stepped back to end the hug. My grief was surfacing, and I didn’t want it to. Everyone at school knew why I had moved away for a year. The stares and whispers were going to be hard enough to face without also being an emotional wreck at the same time.
Trevor checked my expression to make sure I was okay, then shoved my shoulder in a playful way to get me to smile. “You can make me breakfast tomorrow. Kiki, let’s get a move on,” he called back towards the house at his sister. She was born with Down syndrome and, although she was older than him, Trevor had been helping to take care of her since their mom took off. He opened the front passenger door for me as Kailyn stepped out onto the porch of their house and locked the door with the key she wore around her neck. “Are you getting in?” Trevor asked me.
“Kailyn likes the front seat. I’ll sit in the back.”
He stepped forward and opened the back door for me before he walked around and hopped into the driver’s seat. Kailyn climbed into the front passenger seat and slammed the door. She clicked her seatbelt on, tucked her straight blonde bob behind her ears, and opened one of the pre-teen magazines she was crazy about, even though she was nineteen. Her freshly applied lip balm made the air smell like the Strawberry Shortcake doll I played with when I was little.
“Hi, Kailyn,” I said as Trevor pulled out of the Inn’s parking lot and turned north on the Sea-to-Sky highway to head to Squamish.
Kailyn didn’t say hi back, but she asked without looking up from the magazine, “Did you know that Austin Sullivan’s favourite thing to eat is Hawaiian pizza? And his birthday is on April seventeenth?”
“No. I don’t even know who Austin Sullivan is,” I answered, never really that up on trends.
“Gah!” She slammed the magazine down in her lap exaggeratedly. “Deri. You’re so silly. Everyone knows who Austin Sullivan is. He sings the song that goes, ‘When I see your eyes, eyes, eyes, I want to cry, cry, cry.’ You know.” She sang in her husky monotone voice. I didn’t recognize the song at all.
Trevor looked over his shoulder at me and smiled because my face obviously showed my utter ignorance of pop culture. He joined in and sang the lyrics with Kailyn. “Recognize it now?” he asked me with a wink.
“No. Let me see his picture. Maybe I’ll recognize him.” I leaned forward to peek over Kailyn’s shoulder. She showed me a magazine page with a collage of twenty different teen idols. I had no idea which one was him, so I said, “Oh yeah, he’s really cute.”
“He looks like my brother, don’t you think?”
“Really?” I sat forward. “Show me again. Which one is he?”
She held the magazine up and pointed to a ruggedly handsome outdoorsy-type guy who had dark hair and light eyes. He was on a farm, shirtless, with a cut chest and abs, leaning up against a wood fence. He did look like Trevor. I sat back in my seat and Kailyn grinned wide enough that her chubby, freckled cheeks made her eyes squint shut. “Deri thinks Austin Sullivan is really cute, and he looks just like you. That means she thinks you’re really cute. Did you know that?”
Trevor didn’t turn his head, but I could see his eyes in the rearview mirror. They darted for a second to look at me.
Kailyn turned in her seat to face me. “You and Trevor should get married one day,” she whispered loudly.
Right. As if that would ever happen. Trevor could have any girl he wanted, and the introverted tomboy next door wasn’t even on the list. He smiled—maybe because the idea of getting married to someone he thought of as a kid sister was ridiculous, or maybe because he couldn’t wait to tease me for saying a guy who looks like him is cute. Either way, the entire topic of conversation made me uncomfortable. Fortunately, one of Austin Sullivan’s songs came on the radio. Kailyn turned the radio up, and we drove along the winding highway without talking.
The road followed the coastline with the ocean on our left and the mountain rock faces to our right. It was one
