Twenty Miles Read Online Free PDF Page B

grinned down into my face.
    ‘Hi,’ he said.
    ‘Hello.’ I made my face a question mark and took another step sideways. He stepped diagonally toward me again, that amused smile, like we were two-stepping.
    ‘You played hockey in Kenora – Beachview,’ he said, his dark eyes skating zigzags across my face.
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘Isabel.’ As though he’d been searching for a punchline and it was my name.
    ‘Uh. Yeah.’ I combed his face for a thread of memory. Dark hair, eyes. The scar on his upper lip. Nothing.
    ‘I played Peewee with you a couple of years. Jacob. Copenace.’
    ‘Oh, um, did you go to Beachview? Elementary?’
    ‘I came in from Redbear. The reserve.’ His smile curling the scar up into a crescent.
    A round kid, swollen cheeks, wisps of hair glued damp on his forehead. Crying as his feet thawed after outdoor practice, that burn that follows numbness, the cruel trick. No sound, but steady streams of tears down his cheeks. His parents whispered to him, their voices like Buck’s brother-in-law, Uncle Noah, the S that continued after the word was done. His dad removed his shoulder pads, pulled his arms through a winter jacket; his mom rubbed his curled feet. They arrived in a long van filled with relatives. Colourful jackets, long leather mitts with beads that winked under the fluorescent lights in the stands.
    ‘You look different,’ I said.
    ‘I was fat.’ A fact, unapologetic. ‘You’re playing hockey here now? I saw you in the rink the other day.’
    ‘Yeah. Well, trying out. You know. They invited me to.’
    ‘That’s wicked, Isabel. Wicked. Congratulations.’ He put his hand on my shoulder, the padded plush of fingertips through my T-shirt, sincerity etched in the crow’s feet beside his eyes, and my shoulder steadied itself under his grasp for a moment, then dropped like the wing of a plane. ‘Second year for me now. It’s a good place to be. You in Rez?’
    ‘McMurtry.’
    ‘Ah, I was there last year. I’m in St. Mark’s now. How do you like it?’ He caught a leaf in the air, a fluid swipe of his palm, and twirled it between a thumb and forefinger.
    ‘It’s not bad.’ A siren wailed behind us, the sound sifting through distance until it was small.
    ‘There’s a lot more of that,’ I added.
    ‘Of what?’
    ‘Noise.’
    ‘Yeah. In Redbear I can hear my grandmother sneezing down the street every morning.’
    I laughed.
    ‘Seriously, I can. Every morning, three sneezes. Good projection.’ Jacob smiled, laid the leaf in his palm.
    ‘Hey.’ He turned to me like he’d just remembered something. ‘We should go for a skate sometime. You know, like the old days.’
    I teetered on the edge of this suggestion. Sudden fear licking the back of my neck.
    ‘Well, I guess we both live at the same rink now, so.’ I laughed like a girl.
    ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ he said, leaning down. I felt wedged in by his teeth.
    ‘Skating.’ That fake laugh again. I’d just invented it and now wanted to send it into extinction.
    ‘With me?’
    ‘With the team.’
    ‘And me?’
    ‘Are you trying out for the women’s team too?’ I tried to throw my eyebrows at him.
    ‘I wish.’
    I shrugged, struggling to keep my feet under me. The conversation was too fast.
    ‘We should have a coffee,’ he said. ‘You know, we K-towners gotta keep the spirit alive here. Yeah?’
    ‘I don’t drink coffee.’ True.
    Jacob stopped in his tracks and tilted back his head, his laughter low and smooth. I looked at him over my shoulder, kept walking.
    ‘You’re giving me a workout, eh?’ he said, catching up to me. ‘Going for coffee – it’s like a metaphor, you know?’
    ‘A metaphor for what?’
    ‘Well, for lots of stuff.’ A stretch of silence. I didn’t know where I was going.
    ‘Anyways, if you don’t drink coffee now, you will soon,’ Jacob said. ‘Believe me. Morning practice. Vats of it in the dining hall. You’ll get hooked.’
    ‘No, I won’t.’
    ‘You