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hostility with desire.
    The picture disappears and I’m back in the Great Hall, still pinned between his hands, music blaring, bodies writhing around us. “Can I let go?” he asks.
    I nod.
    “I suppose we lasted fifteen minutes.” He lowers his hands slowly like he might need to grab me again. He gives a choked, humourless laugh. “You jumped a table, Everton. A bloody table. In front of everyone.”
    “It’s not like I planned it.” All my linear focus and ability to stand upright evaporate. I can’t tell if I’m more intoxicated by alcohol, adrenaline or KMT. Groaning, I lean my forehead on his chest. “Take me home, Jamie. I can’t feel my face.”

VIRGIN
    Jamie tips the driver and the taxi pulls away. We stand in the dark, Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, eyeing the rustic clapboard house as though it’s riddled with booby traps. Miriam isn’t back yet but she will be in an hour or so, and when she sees I’ve come home early she’ll figure it out and it’ll be on. The third degree. The overreaction. The guilt. I blow white breath through my lips and turn half-formed arguments in my muddy brain. “Can we just stay out here?”
    Jamie chuckles, the brief, heavy sound of the condemned. Miriam will find some way to use my mistakes against him, fuel for her argument:
Synergist Coding is dangerous
.
    Jamie peers down the drive. “I guess we’ve got a little time to come up with an alibi.”
    “She won’t stay late at Emilie’s and miss the chance to play curfew cop.”
    “Mmph.”
    Columbia Avenue becomes a slowly balding forest in late October. The dry rustling of dead leaves overhead and the squelch of damp ones underfoot. Out in the forest, the Border River rushes, deep, wide and wild. I picture flying down its bank, the leap I’d make to cross it and the mountains beyond. “We could go for a run?”
    “We could join the circus.” He squeezes my hand. “Wouldn’t make a difference. She’d find us eventually.”
    I sigh.
    He sighs.
    Neither of us moves.
    The narrow house looks warm and inviting from the cold shadow of the sidewalk. Light filters through a gap in the living room curtains. Miriam’s studio on the right sits in darkness. Upstairs, a lamp glows behind the study blinds, always on. I’ve loved this house my whole life but since the truth came out about who and what everybody was and wasn’t, moms, twins, fate, futility and mutant DNA, the atmosphere of the place exhausts me. It’s all a bit too My Life as a Greek Tragedy and I don’t want to talk about or “process” anything. April wasn’t my real mom. Miriam is. It hurts too much to think about it and I’m sick to death of feeling like an exposed nerve ending. Miriam tries to give me space, let me deal with things my own way, but she’s a fixer and sometimes it gets the better of her and, inevitably, things end in yelling and tears. Mostly, I stay quiet and avoid being in the same room as her, the strategy of a coward.
    “Come on,” Jamie says, tugging my hand.
    We make our way down the sloping drive, Jamie holding my arm to keep me from skidding on the gravel. We clamber up the steep back steps to the landing and Jamie takes the key from my fumbling hands and lets us into the dizzying light and clamour of the kitchen.
    Brightness momentarily blinds me. I stumble over to turn the stereo off, flicking the switch, then the small TV on the counter. Miriam always leaves things on, like she’s out of time, fleeing a burning building. Buffy pads up the hall, meowing in greeting. I lean against the cupboards to keep from losing balance in the uncommon hush and hold my head. “I think I need to lie down.” I don’t feel bad. It’s just the endless rotation of everything around me that makes it hard to stand.
    Jamie dumps our things on the long wooden table. “Go ahead. I’ll get you something to eat.”
    Buffy meows and follows Jamie to the counter, purring, twining herself around his legs. I know just how she feels.