I nodded and slipped my hand down into her underwear. They felt like plain cotton and I thought I'd come again before she did if I didn't start concentrating. "You can show me how you like it," I whispered.

Sasha slipped her hand over mine and showed me and I concentrated. Or tried to. I concentrated as best I could considering both our hands were jammed down her pants.

Then all of a sudden this little kid was standing next to the couch in his pajamas, drinking the whole scenario in. "Elijah!" Sasha cried. She zipped up her pants and leapt up from the couch in one swift motion. "What is it?"

The roof-climbing kid. I should've known he'd be a problem and he was. He bent over and threw up on the floor. Not a little. I mean, every single thing this kid had eaten for dinner was on that living room carpet-mounds of macaroni noodles swimming in orange goo and sprinkled with the remnants of an undeterminable green vegetable.

Some of the vomit was on his pajama top too and the kid stared down at it and the puddle in front of him, his eyes gla.s.sy from the effort of it all. "It's okay," Sasha soothed, taking his hand. "Let's get you into some new pajamas." She guided him out of the room and I stared over at that same British detective program continuing to unfold on the muted screen, my brain processing everything that had just happened.

The vomit puddle definitely put a spin on the situation. I cleaned myself up first. Then I went into the kitchen and rummaged around in the cupboards, searching for paper towels. A few minutes later I was busy blotting at Elijah's vomit, which smelled almost as rank as Keelor's hockey bag. I squirted stain remover onto the Wilkinsons' beige carpet and visualized the impeccable walls in Dani's house. Sometimes I still couldn't believe I'd broken it off with Dani to attach myself to Sasha Jasinski. Not that I regretted it, more that it surprised me that I didn't.

Sasha stepped back into the room about twenty minutes later, a blanket and pillow in her arms and Elijah two steps behind her. The kid was in fresh pajamas and his hair was sticking out in thirteen different directions-like mine when I rolled out of bed in the morning. "Hey, thanks," Sasha said, studying the damp spot on the carpet. "You can hardly see it."

She set the pillow and blanket down next to me on the couch and put her hand on Elijah's shoulder. "He doesn't want to be in his room. I told him he could lie down here for a while." I nodded and vacated the couch. Elijah sat down, his bony knees pressed together, and stared straight ahead with hazy eyes. "My brother's clingy like that when he gets sick too," Sasha continued. "He doesn't like to be alone." Sasha's brother was seven and a half and crazy about her. He would never think of picking up a saw without permission. He and Sasha were about as far from problem children as you could get.

I sat down in an armchair and eyed Elijah. "So what do you want to watch?"

Sasha covered him with the blanket as he lay back. Then I heard the kid speak for the first time. "Spider-Man 3," he said clearly, pointing to the entertainment unit.

"That's a good movie," I said as Sasha slid the DVD into the machine. She sat in the other armchair and smiled over at me. I smiled back, although I was more restless than happy. The kid's eyes were glued to Spider-Man 3 and I thought he was probably having a better night than I was by that point. I kept hoping he'd make a fast recovery or that Sasha would tell him it was time to go back to bed.

Instead the movie played on. About halfway through I gave up and said, "I better go. It's almost midnight." Elijah mumbled a goodbye in my direction. I said goodbye back and felt a bit sorry that I'd met the pale imitation instead of the Cocoa-Puffs-crunching, roof-climbing kid.

Sasha walked me to the door and flung her arms around my waist. "I missed you tonight," she said wistfully. "I really wanted to be alone for a while."

"I wanted to finish what we were doing." Saying it made the feeling stronger, and I leaned down and kissed her hard.

"Me too," she said, after we'd inched apart. Her cheeks were flushed and she glanced guiltily at the door. "You make me crazy sometimes, you know that?" She pulled me back down towards her and kissed me again. She threw her whole body into it, pressing up against me like she couldn't get enough. She tugged at my hair and licked my neck. She made me crazy, kissing me like that when we both knew I had to go.

"I make you crazy?" I repeated, breathing heavy. "I'm not the one holding everything back."

"How am I supposed to feel when you say something like that?" she said, pulling away. "It sets the whole relationship up wrong. Like we're on opposite sides."

"Hey, it's not like that. I'm just saying you could trust me a little." I pinched the hem of her top between my fingers. "I don't even know what you look like under this. Has anyone ever found out?"

Sasha furrowed her eyebrows like I'd just proven her point. "Why do you have to push it?"

"This is coming out wrong. I'm not trying to get you to do it." But we could be closer in other ways. I didn't say that last part. I dangled my hands at my sides and slowly exhaled. "It's just...things were going really well earlier. I really like you. I guess that makes it hard for me to slow things down in my head."

"You know how it is, Nick," she insisted. "I really like you too, but I told you from the beginning-I'm not ready for all the heavy stuff yet. Why can't we just hang out and enjoy whatever we're doing without any pressure?"

"We can," I said, and meant it. I knew I'd get home, replay the whole night in my head, and be completely p.i.s.sed off with myself for opening my mouth in the first place. "You're right. I don't want there to be any pressure between us." I kissed her on the forehead, innocent as could be. "Hey, what about the kid? Will he tell his parents?"

"I'll tell him not to," she a.s.sured me. "He's okay. I think we're safe."

"Good. The last thing I need is to get in trouble for something I didn't even finish."

Sasha's lips spread into a smile. She smacked her mouth against mine, then opened the front door. I grabbed my in-line skates and stepped outside thinking how things were never this confusing with Dani. Pure. Unplanned. Perfect. All hope of that had disappeared at the beginning of July. I bladed home, warm summer wind at my back, and let the good and bad feelings pile up on top of each other until I didn't know what I was feeling, only that I couldn't stop and that I wasn't sure I'd want to, even if I could.

eight.

Sasha was right about fall. There was barely enough time for us. I had two hockey games a week, practice, shifts at Sports 2 Go, and a steadily increasing amount of homework. Sasha and I were in the same law cla.s.s and she handed her homework over for me to copy at least once a week. At first I didn't like doing it, not as a general thing but specifically because it was hers and I wasn't into the idea of using my girlfriend. After a while it became almost a necessity, like the lying. Besides, I usually lent my math homework to Keelor, which balanced the whole arrangement in my head.

Holland had started at Courtland Secondary that September and sometimes I checked up on her in the hall. She was hanging around with a bunch of smart arty kids mostly-kids that'd probably devoured the Lord of the Rings trilogy in grade school and now wrote angst-filled poetry for their blogs. Holland refused to give me the Web address for hers. She said anonymity was the whole point, allowing her to say whatever she wanted. "So what're you hiding?" I asked jokingly.

She stuck out her tongue at me and said, "You'll never know."

I figured it was nothing to worry about. She was a good kid. She could've been part of Sasha's family if it weren't for the rainbow-colored hair Mom had agreed to at the end of August.

One night, after a subdued Grayson-free shift at Sports 2 Go, I asked Holland what she thought of high school. "It's the same old thing with a few new faces," she said with a shrug. "Hannant is really good. You ever have him for history?"

"Nope." That was the word around school, though, and it definitely wasn't based on his looks. He was one of those guys who had a single thick eyebrow slashed across his face and furry, paw-like hands. "Raines is good too. Not by the book all the time, you know? Like she's really into what she's doing."

"Yeah, I heard that," Holland said. "Diego said she was the best teacher he had last year and that she had a book of poetry published a few years ago."

"You know Diego?" The only Diego at Courtland Secondary was in twelfth grade. He had a heavy Italian accent and was the star of the school soccer team. We had a couple mutual friends and ran into each other at parties.

"Small school," Holland said. "You know how it is-everybody knows everybody." Yeah, and everybody definitely knew Diego. He was one of those guys all the girls wet their pants over. Last thing I heard he was acutely serious with some girl in Quebec, which seemed to make him all the more attractive to the female side of the student body.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Anyway, high school is just a stopover," Holland added. "It has nothing to do with what's really happening."

"Let's hope not," I said grimly.

Holland c.o.c.ked her head and gave me a funny look. "These are the best years of your life," she said in an auditorium voice. Then the phone rang and she snapped it up and repeated it into the phone before pressing the receiver to her ear. "For you," she said quickly, pa.s.sing me the cordless.

"Nicholas, was that your sister?" Dad's voice boomed.

"She's a freak," I confirmed.

Dad chuckled dryly into the phone. He never knew what to say when it came to Holland, not since she'd decided to ignore his existence. "How's the hockey going?" he asked. "Keeping your head up?"

"You bet."

"Good, good," he said, an unmistakable spring in his voice. "I thought I'd come up and catch a game sometime. It seems like the only way to work myself into your busy schedule."

"Really?" I asked doubtfully. "When?" Dad always made a big deal of trying to get me down to Toronto to visit him, but sitting around his condo, watching the sports network and wondering what everyone in Courtland was doing, got old fast. I'd spent thirty-six hours there in the middle of August, three and a half of which were spent in a French restaurant listening to Bridgette rave about the production of Giselle she'd seen two days earlier. Even Dad had looked bored.

"Well, what's your game schedule look like?" Dad asked. I filled him in on the details and he said he'd come to my next home game. "I'd like to meet your girlfriend too," he added. "Why don't you ask her to come along?"

I didn't have a lot of enthusiasm for that idea. I still felt weird about having Sasha around Mom and Holland. Don't get me wrong, the three of them liked each other well enough; I was the problem. I'd never minded my friends and family mixing, but it was different with Sasha. She made me feel sort of exposed. In a way it was what I wanted, but I didn't want to feel that with everyone. You had to protect yourself a little.

Sasha got all excited about meeting my dad, even though I'd already explained what he was like. "He'll probably ask a lot of questions," I warned. "Don't feel like you have to answer everything. It's just his way of trying to get a handle on you."

"Why does he need a handle on me?" Sasha asked.

"I don't know. To try and figure out why we're together, maybe." He was always trying to figure something out. I remember this fight he and Mom had when I was about eleven. We were on our way to Niagara Falls and disembodied eighties synth music was on the car radio. I hadn't been listening to what my parents were saying, but then Mom's voice spiked up: "It's only ever your a.n.a.lysis of circ.u.mstances that matters, isn't it? How do you keep from getting lost in your own bulls.h.i.t?"

Dad had groaned noisily, rolling his eyes as if to say, "It's not my fault that your mother's emotionally unstable. I am clearly the voice of reason."

"Don't worry about it," Sasha said, grinning at me. "We'll be evasive. Drive him crazy."

I laughed, but I knew Sasha wouldn't be like that on the day, that she'd probably answer just about any question he asked.

In fact, the questions started in the car with Dad projecting all his charm into the backseat. "Are you a hockey fan, Sasha?"

"Not much," she admitted. "I like watching Nick play, though. He's a great skater."

"He should be. He's been skating since he could walk." Dad looked over at me approvingly. "Same thing with swimming."

I mentioned Sasha's interest in sailing and Dad launched into a full-blown Q&A that continued until we got to the arena. Nervous energy danced under my skin as I swung into the dressing room. Partly it was the upcoming game, which always made me a little edgy, even when we were playing a sloppy team like the Garrytown Braves. Mostly it was the thought of Dad and Sasha's eyes on me and Sasha's willingness to please. The potential free flow of information made me more uncomfortable than it should and I threw my hockey bag down on the floor and tried to clear my head of everything but the game.

Keelor was halfway through taping his stick, the first step in his pregame ritual. He raised his chin and said, "How's the old man?"

"Same as always," I confirmed. Keelor's parents had been great about chauffeuring the two of us to and from games since Dad's departure. Mom didn't come close to pulling her weight in that department.

"Yeah?" Keelor said. "You're lucky he's not in the picture more often. Mine grounded me for life this morning."

"What for?"

"The gra.s.s in my desk." Keelor rolled his eyes. "Can you believe that? They went through my f.u.c.king desk. How's that for trust?" I shook my head and unzipped my bag as Keelor continued. "They said I've been acting erratic lately." He snickered. "Do I seem erratic to you?"

"Where'd they get that idea?" I asked. There were probably only three or four people I knew who didn't seem erratic.

"That time with Karyn in the living room," he reminded me. "And Bekker called my house about the geo cla.s.ses I missed. Man, what a joke." Geography was the one cla.s.s you could normally skip without fear of retribution. Mrs. Bekker was this uncoordinated, walking disaster area of a woman with a bizarre mash-up accent that translated words into unintelligible sounds like: highgraascoppik coeefishint.

"That's rough, man. You should tell them you and Karyn are finished. It might help."

"Oh, I told them," he said forcefully. "Didn't make any difference. I don't even think they believed me." It was the truth too. Funny how the people that have known you the longest can't recognize the truth when they hear it. Maybe that meant I didn't have anything to worry about with Sasha and Dad after all.

My head emptied out the moment I stepped onto the ice. Cold air rushed into my lungs and I forgot everything. Just us and the puck and the wide-awake feeling under my skin that said something real good was going to happen. Sometimes the game goes better when you're feeling good and sure enough, I got an a.s.sist twelve minutes into the first period, feeding the puck to Keelor in the upper slot. He took a snap shot and scored the first goal in what ended up being a hat trick. The Braves drove him into the boards all night, but Keelor didn't stop. He kept going to the net and so did I. I was just behind the goal line when I caught the Garrytown goalie napping and banked a shot in off his shoulder.

Back in the dressing room, Gavin, Keelor, and the rest of the team walked around slapping each other on the back, congratulating each other on the 41 win and talking about how the Braves couldn't get it together out there on the ice.

"Nick, was that your dad out there?" Gavin called from across the room.

"He's having a get-to-know-you session with Sasha," Keelor confirmed. An elbow pad sailed through the air between us as Gavin groaned sympathetically. I lobbed the pad back in the general direction it'd come from and began unlacing my skates, in a hurry to get the rest of the night over with. At least Bridgette hadn't made the trip. I didn't think I could endure another ballet lecture, not politely anyway.

And polite I was, listening to Dad and Sasha chat about science, politics, and the depletion of the ozone layer. I dove in and out of the conversation while checking out the Toronto Maple Leafs game on the monitor across the restaurant. "Do you ever think of giving it up?" Dad said, suddenly focused on me. "Hockey seems to keep you very busy. You want to keep your grades up for university, you know."

"I know that." This was the part of the evening where he began to demonstrate fatherly concern for my well-being. Got it, Dad. Could we move on to the next act? "I'd give up my job before I'd give up hockey."

"So why not do that?" he asked.

I focused a level gaze in his direction. "Because I need the money." Mom's job and the child support payments covered the basics, but since when did the basics get you anywhere?

Dad raised his eyebrows at me before shifting his gaze to Sasha. "Do you have a part-time job too?"

"I do a lot of babysitting," Sasha piped up, "but the pay is lousy."

"And there's the sick kids and power saws," I reminded her.

"Right," Sasha said, eyes dancing. I asked her how our young friend Elijah was lately and for a few seconds it felt as though it was just the two of sitting there in that wooden booth, letting the conversation wander effortlessly back and forth between us. I actually missed her when Dad's voice joined in again.

All in all, the evening wasn't too bad. Things never go wrong at the moment you expect them to. When you're completely relaxed, oblivious to any potential dangers, that's when bad things happen. Someone should flick you in the head and tell you to keep your head up when they see you walking around like that.

Sasha's parents insisted on having Dad in for coffee when we dropped her off. Mrs. Jasinski had a good look at him, like she was trying to memorize his features for a police description. "You two look so much alike," she commented. "You must hear that all the time." Uh-huh. Then Mr. Jasinski asked about Dad's job as a city planner, which provided plenty of fuel for conversation.

"They seem like a nice family," Dad said in the car later. Yup. "And Sasha is a bright girl." Uh-huh. "Nicholas." That last word hung in the air as Dad fixed his stare on me. "Is everything okay with the two of you?" Sure it was. "What I mean is-you're being careful, aren't you?"

Being careful? My head snapped up before I could stop it. That was a conversation I didn't want to have for so many reasons. For one thing, it was none of his business what happened between me and my girlfriend. For another, the topic was premature and I didn't want him to know that either. The fact that we weren't sleeping together was as much personal information as if we had been.

"Everything's fine, Dad," I said. "You don't have to do this."

"I'm sure I don't," he continued, eyes back on the road. "But I still think I should. Just because we don't see each other all the time doesn't mean that I don't want to be involved in your life. You can always talk to me. I hope you know that."

"Thanks," I said abruptly. That was a good thing to hear, but I didn't want to go there. Nathan was the only person getting any information on the subject and I didn't even tell him much. Mostly it was just Sasha and me working things out as we went along and the new rules, clothes optional, were working out just fine.

"So just let me get it out then, okay?" Dad's voice was weirdly conscientious, like he was afraid he'd mess up his lines. "A lot of young people have s.e.x without considering the consequences, but there are a lot of things to worry about-diseases and pregnancy-and you need to act responsibly, for both your sakes. You have to take care of the girl you're with. Even if she says she's on the pill or having her period. Got it?" I nodded like my life depended on it, embarra.s.sment scratching at the inside of my stomach. "You don't want to find yourself in a complicated situation until you're ready to deal with it. So condoms all the time, right?"

"I hear you," I said in a low voice. A tangled weed was growing inside me; its pointed leaves tickled the lining of my stomach. I glanced out the car window and noticed, with a shallow breath of relief, that we were two blocks from my house.

"Okay." Dad nodded. "Good."

Neither of us said anything until we pulled into the driveway. I thanked Dad for coming to the game and grabbed my hockey bag from the trunk. "I miss watching you play," he said. The two of us were standing beside the car and that weed poked up into my throat, threatening to choke me. Sometimes I missed the way things were too, but there was no point in getting worked up about it.

"You don't have to miss it," I told him. "It's still happening."

"Right," Dad said lightly. "You're absolutely right." He reached into his wallet and handed me two crisp fifty-dollar bills. "Safe s.e.x money."

"Okay." I was still staring at the fresh bills in my hand. "Thanks." I shoved them down into my back pocket. In my head I was already telling Sasha and she was saying: "I can't believe you let him think that."

"Give us a call," Dad said, getting into the car. "We'd love to see you again soon." We. I reminded myself to give them a call the next time a new ballet opened. How would I sleep at night without a full costume and cast description? Dad honked as he reversed out of the driveway and I hauled my hockey bag into the house and IMed Sasha every word.

Sasha has this teddy bear named Toby on her bed, a real raggedy thing with st.i.tches in its stomach. I first saw him when she gave me the official tour of her house back in July. "How long have you had that thing?" I asked. "Does he get to sleep with you at night?" I knew the answer before she opened her mouth. "That's so cute," I sang, wrapping my arms around her in the doorway. "You're so cute."

That girl had her entire history stored in her bedroom-sailing trophies, picture books with inscriptions from G.o.dparents and old aunts, even her baby alb.u.m. "Shouldn't your mom have this?" I asked, flipping through the alb.u.m.

"We have loads of family alb.u.ms in the living room." Sasha twirled her hair around her finger. "This one is mine, for when I leave home. It's funny, you know...." She glanced down at a picture of her toddler self, darting across a maroon carpet. "They don't even feel like me."

"I think that when I look at mine too." There's one in particular. I'm about three and I'm wearing these dark brown cords I was crazy about at the time. It's winter and I'm staring down at the snow like I'm mesmerized. I wish I could remember exactly what I was feeling when that picture was taken, but I can't. It's like Sasha said, like it's not even me.