23. Clover

I've barely taken two steps off the bus before Bianca slams into me like a meteor intent on burying us both in the pavement.

"Oof!" I wheeze as all the air gets squeezed out of my lungs.

She's not deterred by my lack of oxygen. If anything, she just hugs me harder.

"I missed you!" she gushes. "Ugh, I'm so glad you're here. You smell so good. You smell like you."

"You freak," I tease after she's loosened her grip enough for me to talk.

"You love it," she shoots back.

She lets me go, and I take in the familiar sight of her thick-framed glasses, messy dyed blonde hair, and freckled skin sporting a deep tan from spending most of her summer out scouring the sea for kelp-related discoveries.

She snatches the small backpack stuffed with a few days' worth of clothes out of my hands before I can stop her.

"I will carry this, madam," she says as she slips the straps over her shoulders. "Now, let's get you inside my horrible sublet apartment. You must be exhausted. Your shitty air mattress awaits, should you need a nap."

She starts heading up the sidewalk, and I fall into step beside her.

"Wow, you make it sound so appealing."

"Oh, trust me," she deadpans, "it is not appealing in there."

Trust Bianca to tell it exactly like it is.

Her frankness is part of the reason I spent the entire day getting down to Victoria when I'm just going to have to make the same grueling, multi-vehicle journey back up the island the day after tomorrow.

I needed someone I could actually talk to, someone not entangled in the suffocating small town web of River's Bend.

"Here it is!"

Bianca swings her arm out to indicate a row of narrow townhouses with drooping front stoops made of cracked concrete and wooden banisters in varying states of decay. There's a smell of rotting garbage permeating the air even though I can't spot any trash cans around.

We're in an area known for low-budget student housing, or at least as low-budget as things get in Victoria, but this block seems to be taking things to a whole new level.

"What's that smell?" I ask.

"My neighbour's backyard," Bianca says as she leads the way up to one of the townhouses and fishes her keys out of her purse. "Don't even ask. You don't wanna know."

I take her word for it and follow her inside. The house has been divided into three different units, which probably shouldn't be legal given how small it is, but it does mean we have the whole top floor to ourselves. It's been set up as a cramped studio featuring a futon and a narrow strip of a kitchen equipped with a mini fridge, hot plate, and very little else.

"Welcome to my humble abode," Bianca says as she deposits my backpack next to the futon.

She sits down on the rickety chair accompanying a small desk under the window and motions for me to take the futon. "So," she says once I'm settled, "are you finally going to tell me what happened?"

A couple days after my disastrous morning with Neavh, I sent Bianca a text asking if I could come down and stay with her to get out of town for a bit. After some prying, she got me to admit my need to escape was related to Neavh, but I told her the rest would be better to share in person.

I slump against the questionably lumpy futon and let out the biggest, most dramatic sigh of my life.

Bianca's eyes widen. "Wow. That bad, huh?"

I close my eyes and follow up my sigh with a zombie-like groan.

Bianca claps. "Let it out, girl. Express yourself."

I can't help chuckling at her enthusiasm.

"Ugh, it's really good to see you," I tell her.

She purses her lips, not swayed by the distraction. "You haven't answered my question."

I sigh again, this one less theatrical, and play with one of the French braids I put in my hair to help pass the time on the bus.

"I don't even know where to start. Everything just went so…wrong."

I avoid her eyes, still toying with the end of my braid. Bianca stays quiet for a moment before taking on a serious tone.

"So…is it over? With Neavh?"

I flinch and drop my braid. It lands against my shoulder with a thump.

"Can it be over if it never technically started?" I ask. "It's not like we were really dating this time. We knew it was only for the summer. It was just supposed to be for…"

I trail off when I see the look she's giving me, daring me to tell her it was just for fun when we both know otherwise.

"Okay, yeah, we weren't just hooking up," I say instead, "but then what the hell were we doing? It was so messy."

"Was?" Bianca repeats. "So it's done?"

I squeeze my hands together in my lap.

"I don't know," I admit. "I told her I was leaving town for a few days. I told her I needed to think. I haven't said that it's over…whatever the hell it is."

Bianca gets quiet again, pulling out her trusty ‘observant therapist' technique, and I crack after a minute ticks by.

"What am I supposed to do?" I wail. "I look like an idiot being in this situation all over again. Even if I don't want it to be over, I can't ignore the fact that it probably should be. It was probably stupid for us to even try this at all. Why the hell did I think it wouldn't hurt this time?"

I bury my face in my hands, my shoulders curling inward as I prop my elbows on my thighs and stare down at the edge of my shorts.

There's an ache deep in my ribcage, so sharp it hurts to breathe.

"It hurts," I mumble. "It really fucking hurts."

Bianca flings herself at me, and in a matter of seconds, we're curled up on the futon while she strokes my hair and tells me everything will be all right.

I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting off the hot tears that threaten to spill down my cheeks. As Bianca plays with the ends of my braids, I can almost imagine I'm lying in bed with one of my sisters, crying over some school project I got a B+ on, or working up the courage to come out as bi, or any of the other endless reasons I've gone to Trish and Emily for help over the course of my life.

The ache in my chest gets even deeper as I realize how much I wish they were here now. I wish I could go to them with the same openness and trust I always have, but somehow, they feel like they're tangled up in this mess too. My whole family does. My whole home does.

My whole life feels like a sweater I used to fit, one I keep trying to stuff myself inside even as it rips a little more with every attempt.

"Did you have a fight or something?" Bianca asks after a few minutes.

I nod against her.

"I guess we did. I don't really know what to call it," I say. "Actually, I had a fight with my dad about her first. He was giving me the whole ‘I don't want to see you get hurt' routine, and it made me realize that everyone else is just sitting around waiting for this to go wrong. I guess that was still on my mind when I saw Neavh the next day. Things just felt…off."

Bianca lets out an understanding hum.

"Then that same day, she found out she's getting a bunch of money deposited from this job she worked in Australia," I continue, "and it just set me off. Like, she can take off at a moment's notice whenever she wants now. I guess I didn't realize a big part of the reason I've been okay about this summer is that she literally couldn't leave. I didn't have to worry about…about her thinking I'm worth staying for."

My voice drops to a whisper, and Bianca tightens her arms around me. I take a few breaths to steady myself before I go on.

"I got pretty upset after that. I said some things I regret. I basically told her she's just running away from all her problems in life, which was really insensitive considering what she's been through." My face gets hot at the memory of our argument, burning with a mixture of guilt and indignation even all these days later. "She said some things too. She said I'm only sticking around Vancouver Island because that's been my plan for so long and because I feel obligated to everyone else."

I feel Bianca's body stiffen.

"But that's not true," I blurt. "Of course it's not true. I'm not just here because I'm too scared to do anything else. I want to be here."

Bianca chuckles. "You want to be in this shithole apartment that literally smells like rotting trash every time I open the windows?"

I chuckle too, but before I can complain about her taking me so literally, she stretches her arms up above her head and sighs. When she speaks again, she stares across the room instead of at me.

"You know, Clover…if you ever do want to follow a different path in life—"

"I don't, though!" I interrupt, my voice a little too loud for the small room. "This is what I've dreamed of my whole life."

Bianca gives a pointed look to the four grimy walls boxing us into the cramped room.

"Yeah," I say, "shitty student apartments and all. I've always wanted to study in Victoria. I'm literally living the dream."

Bianca reaches over to grip my shoulder and waits to make sure I'm focused on her.

"Okay, okay, but hear me out," she says. "If you ever end up wanting to live a different dream, even for a little while, I don't want you to feel like you're obligated to me. I'm going to be your friend no matter what, and if that means I need to stay up until four in the morning to video call you while you're in some far-flung destination so I can keep you up to date on all my fascinating kelp discoveries, then so be it."

She lets my shoulder go, laughing at the mental image she's just created.

I force myself to join in and hide the way her words feel like they're splitting me open, stretching me out and snapping yet more threads of the old sweater that just won't fit the way it used to.

No one has ever said anything like that to me before. No one has ever made me feel like maybe not everything has to change if I do.

Maybe the important things—the important people—will be okay either way.

Maybe those parts of my life will always fit no matter what.

As I sit up further on the lumpy futon and laugh with my best friend, I can't figure out if that thought is comforting or terrifying.

I dip my toes into the cold water of the Salish sea, wincing at the chill. Even in the warmth of June, the Pacific is frigid enough to require a wetsuit if you want to do more than just splash around.

Today's cloudy sky isn't helping. A thick layer of grey cumulus blocks out anything more than a silvery-grey glow as I roll up the legs of my jeans and wade out a couple steps from the shore. I almost slip on some of the algae-covered rocks lining the bottom, but after wind-milling my arms for a few seconds, I manage to get a grip with my toes.

I glance around to see who might have witnessed my near-demise, but I've got Shoal Point almost to myself this early in the evening. Aside from a family tossing a Frisbee around and a couple tourists snapping photos of the Victoria skyline, my favourite spot in the city is reserved for me today.

I take a deep breath of briny air and listen to the familiar medley of sounds: waves lapping against rock, screeching seagulls, blaring ferry horns, and the reverberating rumble of the city.

My shoulders drop, releasing a tension I hadn't realized they were holding.

There are more picturesque spots than this to sit and watch the ferries come in. Shoal Point doesn't have the most majestic view compared to somewhere like the bustling inner harbor, and it's a bit out of the way from downtown, but for the past four years, this has been the place I come to search for stillness whenever the rush of student life gets to be too much.

The breeze off the water plays with the ends of my hair as I scan the waves. This place is too close to the city for many wildlife sightings, but once or twice, I've seen a couple seals out bobbing in the distance, and a cute little old fisherman I met here once told me a tall tale about spotting an orca just meters away from this very spot.

There's nothing that large out today, but still, the area is teeming with life: the electric green algae coating the rocks, the barnacles clinging to the posts of a nearby dock, the seabirds swooping through the sky. Even though I can't see them, I know the names of all the fish that swim in these waters, all the crawling creatures that hide along the rocky shore.

I know this place. I know this island.

This is my home.

I've devoted all the energy of my short life to learning everything I can about Vancouver Island: what it was, what it is, and what it could be if we manage to come together and take care of it with all the focus and determination it deserves.

I thought the only way to save it was to stay—to make sure my path is always aligned with what is best for this place. I thought that had to include me being here, but as I continue to stare out at the rippling water, all I can think about is everything I don't know, everything I haven't seen, everything I've yet to experience on this planet that is steeped in more secrets than one lifetime could ever be enough to figure out.

I could sure make a damn good try at it, though.

I know the dangers of echo chambers, of groupthink undisturbed by outside perspectives. I know that almost every major discovery in every field of science was made by someone who did things differently, someone who looked at the way things were and thought, ‘Let's try something else.' I know that most of the time, those people failed. Those people got it wrong.

When they didn't, though, they shifted everything—sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but always in a way that stretched the breadth of human understanding past the place it was before.

Those are the shifts we need if we want any hope at saving this planet, and they don't happen when you keep doing the exact same thing you've always done.

They don't happen when you stick to the plan.

The wail of a boat horn pierces the air, and I watch as one of the large passenger ferries heads out for Port Angeles, loaded up with travelers bound for the States.

I've only taken that ferry ride once in my whole life. I haven't even travelled past Oregon. I've never traversed deserts or hiked through jungles. I've never explored the moss-covered remains of ancient cities or stood in the midst of sprawling plains that stretch out as far as my eyes can see.

As the ferry drifts slowly out into the sea, shrinking down into a distant pinprick against the horizon, I wonder how many of those things Neavh has done. I wonder if her knees ever got wobbly at the thought of starting a journey, the way mine are turning to Jell-O now. I wonder how she kept going, even when she was scared to take another step.

I wonder if I could ask her. I wonder if she'd tell me.

I close my eyes, breathing the salt of the ocean that's cradled me my whole life, and I let myself wonder if she'd ever take me with her.

"Well, don't you look dramatic."

I twist around at the sound of Bianca's voice and nearly send myself crashing into the water. I end up doing yet another cartoonish windmill routine with my arms while Bianca laughs at me from the shore.

"Never mind," she says. "I take it back."

She's dressed in jeans and a t-shirt like me, a backpack laden with textbooks slung over her shoulders. We planned to meet for dinner here today after she finished work, so she's arrived straight from spending a rare boat-free day in her office.

I pick my way along the slick algae under the water and then zig-zag my way up the jagged rocks lining the shore. By the time I reach Bianca where she's standing next to my socks and shoes, my feet are coated in a thick layer of pebbles and dirt.

I do my best to brush the debris off and shove my still damp feet into my socks. I hadn't planned on wading in today, but something about the water called to me the second I arrived.

I've now got a pretty good idea why.

"You ready for dinner?" Bianca asks, nodding in the direction of our favourite café and restaurant, which sits just a couple minutes' walk away. "I really hope they still have those cheesy pasta chip things on the menu. I've been dreaming of them all summer."

She starts to lead the way there, but I call out to stop her.

"Bianca, wait."

She glances over her shoulder, her forehead wrinkling. "Yes?"

"I, uh…" I shove my hands in my pockets and nudge at a pebble with the tip of my shoe. "I need to ask you something."

She walks back over to stand in front of me, her expression somewhere between curious and concerned. "Go for it."

I take a deep breath.

"Did you really mean it yesterday? When you said you'd be my friend no matter what?"

The creases between her eyebrows get even deeper, but she nods.

"Of course."

Nerves threaten to swell my throat shut, but I force myself to swallow and keep going.

"Like, if I wasn't at school here? That would be okay?"

Bianca blinks, and then her face goes so blank it's like watching a door slam shut. She stares at me for what feels like the longest five seconds of my life. A cold sweat has broken out on my skin by the time she seems to reboot herself. Then she shrugs, and I see the first hint of a smile tug at the corner of her lips.

"More cheesy pasta chips for me."

Another beat of silence passes before she snorts. I feel like the ground swings out from under me just to slam back into place a second later.

Bianca is laughing.

I just vocalized the possibility of me leaving school for the first time in my entire life, and she's laughing.

She chuckles to herself for another moment before clapping both hands on my shoulders. "Of course that would be okay, Clover. I'd miss the hell out of you, but it's your life."

She squeezes my shoulders before letting go, shaking her head like she can't believe she had to tell me that.

I'm hit with a relief so strong it feels like my spine is liquefying.

My heart is still racing, however, and my brain won't let me stand here in silence without pummeling me with a thousand questions about what the hell any of this even means.

"I mean, of course I'm not actually leaving," I babble. "I'm starting a Master's degree in two months. I can't just not do it, but I've been thinking, you know, theoretically—"

Bianca tilts her head and cuts me off. "Clover, may I be frank with you?"

That has me snorting just like she was a moment ago. "When are you not?"

"So true."

She grins for a second before her face hardens into a more serious expression than she's worn all day.

"Look, Clover, it's fine that you want to donate your body to science when you die, but you don't also have to give yourself to science while you're alive. If you want to go out in the world and live a little before you do your Master's, that's fine. If you don't want to do a Master's at all, that's also fine."

She pauses and squints at me before shaking her head.

"Okay, yeah, we both know there's no way you don't get a PhD someday," she adds, "but still, your path to that can look however you want."

Her words are like a gateway to more possibilities than I can handle right now. My head spins, and I look down at the ground, focusing on kicking pebbles around in an attempt to steady myself.

When I look back up, Bianca is still watching me.

"Don't kill me for this," she says, "but…maybe Neavh was a liiiiittle bit right about you feeling obligated to stay here, and maybe that's keeping you from even considering what you might actually want."

The urge to contradict her rises up in my throat, but I swallow it back down.

That urge is proof of exactly what she's saying.

"Yeah, maybe what Neavh said was…a little bit true."

As soon as I've said it, I'm rocked by a wave of guilt that threatens to send me toppling over in the dirt.

"Fuck," I say as I dig my hands into my hair. "I've really fucked it up with her, haven't I?"

Bianca purses her lips for a moment before she answers.

"Clover, if there's one thing I know about you and Neavh, it's that no amount of fucking up seems to be able to keep you from each other. If you want to fix this, you can."

My chest is now so tight it's hard to breathe. I squeeze my hands into fists and then flex them open, repeating the process a few times.

"I don't know what fixing it even looks like," I murmur.

Bianca shrugs and then leans in closer to me, so I've got no choice but to pay attention to her every word.

"Well, I think you're a lot closer to knowing that than you think you are."

She steps back, some of the lightness returning to her expression as she glances towards the restaurant again.

"I also think this conversation will be much more productive if it includes pasta and cheese."

I crack a smile despite all the doubts and confusion still swirling in my brain. I don't know how ready for pasta and cheese I am, but grabbing my favourite table in my favourite restaurant with my best friend does sound like it will hit the spot.

"Yeah, you're right. Let's get dinner."

As we turn to leave, Bianca bumps her shoulder with mine.

"Hey. You've got me no matter what, okay? You can't escape me, no matter where you go."

I don't know where I'll go, but for the first time in my life, I'm not shutting down every thought that tells me it might not be here.

That might hurt people. That might change things. That might rip the plan I've had for my life into tiny bits, but whatever happens next, I've still got my friend, and I've still got pasta.

Whatever happens next, I'm still off to a good start.

"Thank god for that," I say as I link my arm through hers.