The Night Wanderer Read Online Free PDF Page B

the vain hope it would keep any swelling down. Her feet were big enough already.
    As she rubbed the lotion deep between her toes, Tiffany felt the shiny silver bracelet on her right wrist slide down to the base of her hand. She loved that bracelet. Tony had given it to her just a week ago. It was his first present to her—therefore, it was the best present in the world. It fit perfectly and looked kind of classy, and Tiffany had decided she liked classy.
    One month. It had only been one month since they had started going out. Of course she’d seen Tony around school for the last four years—but it was about a month ago that carburetors and weekah root brought them together.
    When Tiffany shifted position to begin massaging her other foot, the forgotten history book fell off the bed. It hit the floor with a loud thud, forcing Tiffany back to reality. Somehow it had remained open to the page she was supposed to be reading. Something about the fur trade. The topic appealed to her about as much as the ancient mangy furs she’d seen in the local museum. All this fur-trading stuff happened so long ago, what possible relevance could it have in her life now? Canadian history teachers seemed obsessed with the topic.
    Those days were long gone and though she was proud of her Native heritage, she found the annual powwow events quite culturally satisfying enough, thank you very much. The thought of herself in a buckskin dress, skinning a beaver, almost made her laugh and throw up at the same time. But while she wasn’t particularly fond of buckskin, Tiffany did have a love for leather jackets. If there was only something called the Versace trade.
    Where was she . . . ? Oh yeah, remembering her first days with Tony B. The thing she remembered most was his astonishment over her status card when it came time to pay for things. During one of their early dates, he had to pick up a birthday present for his mother at a store downtown. They window-shopped for about twenty minutes before they both decided on a bottle of Alfred Sung perfume. As the clerk was about to ring in the purchase, Tiffany got an idea. It would be a favor for Tony. Quickly whispering into his ear, she suggested they use her status card. “Status Natives don’t pay sales tax,” she explained. It was some treaty thing, she assumed. It was only a few bucks but every little bit helped.
    Tony agreed and Tiffany whipped out her card. Technically, only she was supposed to use it, and only for goods going directly to the reserve, but some merchants close to reserves turned a blind eye. A sale is a sale, and the tax doesn’t come out of their pockets. So Tiffany and Tony walked out of the store with the perfume, and he had a whole new appreciation of her abilities. He would have to remember this, he joked. Evidently it was one of the fringe benefits of being First Nations.
    Her feet properly cared for, Tiffany began to absentmindedly flip through the history book. She had some big test coming up and try as she might (okay, she didn’t try that hard, but she promised herself she would try harder), she just couldn’t get into it. Then she came upon an artist’s rendition of old-fashioned Indians handing over a pile of furs to some bizarrely dressed merchant in exchange for a rifle. Tiffany tried to find herself or even her father or grandmother in that picture, in the faces of those Indians, but couldn’t. The image in the book had about as much in common with her as carvings on the wall of King Tut’s tomb had with modern Egyptians. Though those pictures had been carved by actual Egyptians. These ones had been drawn by Europeans, and the Native people looked like demented savages. They weren’t the people she knew or had heard about. Therefore, why should she care?
    Bored, she closed the book and put it to the side. Once more the bracelet dangled on her wrist, taking her mind back to Tony.

    It wasn’t long before Tony