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hungered for a different kind of companionship. By the end of the year, through the dint of many demonstrations of cruelty, violence, and mayhem, I was permitted to occasionally walk with the older, tougher boys, including Chris. Once in a while, it was just me and Chris the whole way.
    My parents were the detached rulers of my life, overseers who asserted authority without much sympathy or interest, having many more important things to do.
    My father worked for the Royal Bank of Canada. There were five major banks in Canada then, and the Royal Bank was the largest. While my personal status was bolstered by the dominant power of this bank, I was secretly bothered by the vigour of its number three competitor, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, or CIBC, whose yellow and brown colours I quietly preferred. One day, I decided I wanted to open my own savingsaccount. Chris, Derek, and Geoff thought that was a good idea, too, and it was one of the few times anyone followed my lead. Instantly, however, I was paralyzed with anxiety. It made sense, given my father’s job, to open an account with the Royal Bank, but there was no branch at Penhorn Mall, the only place within walking distance. Penhorn was CIBC territory. I worried myself sick for days about this, even as my idea took on a horrible momentum with the other boys. They kept trying to get us all organized with a lump sum to bring over to the bank and open savings accounts. Finally, I worked up the courage to ask my father if I could open an account at CIBC instead of at his bank. He okayed the idea without much comment, but I could feel immense disappointment in his indifferent shrug.
    My account passbook was small and vertical, brown and gold, and blazing with guilt. But I liked to put even small bits of money in to see the numbers go up, and I liked to get the passbook updated every month or so to see how much interest had accrued, each new series of numbers punched unevenly into the page, like a telegraph message from some distant and lawless country. Twenty-three cents might be added in, or $1.62. Once I got over seven dollars in interest in a single update. I couldn’t believe it. Seven freaking dollars showing up out of nowhere. I wanted to tell Dad how good that felt but feared bringing up the bank betrayal thing again.
    Derek’s father owned a sports store, though Derek and his father hated sports. Paul’s father was a dentist. We avoided him, and his overly clean hands, as though he were a leper and treated Paul, too, with such disdain that he gradually stopped hanging around. Franky’s father was supposed to be a salesmanof some sort, but even Franky didn’t think it worthwhile to figure out what his father plugged. Geoff’s father worked at the oil refinery, and he seemed so red-faced and angry, we pictured him surrounded by boilers and pipes, clanking them madly with a heavy wrench, screaming for the hissing to stop.
    Most of the other fathers did nothing special for their jobs, they just worked. Everyone’s mother seemed to be a nurse. Except for Sheldon’s mother, who was uncomfortably attractive and worked as a stewardess and part-time aerobics instructor before settling on real estate.
    Chris’s father, on the other hand, was a police officer, a distinction that set him apart. Better, he was RCMP, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Mr. R worked in an office now but he had done a lot of straight-up policing earlier in his career, some of it in tough, remote communities up north, and to further bolster his bona fides, he had a collection of weapons, ranging from pistols to semi-automatic rifles, in preparation for the end of the world. Briefly, he’d even owned a grenade launcher and a genuine Nazi dagger. Sometimes he took Chris and me shooting at the armoury gun range. He carefully taught us how to handle guns, how to aim and fire, how to clean them and care for them. I was a decent shot, but Chris was a sharpshooter, a long-range assassin, and he