3

And then I saw Alex.

Aw crap, I thought. 

I’m dead. Great.  Gran just died, and now Alex is dead, too, and Mom and Dad are all alone, and ….

I felt a knife rip open my chest, piercing up along my throat and into my mouth.  I was on my side now, something hard supporting my weight below me.  My body was convulsing.  

I’m coughing came hazily to my mind.  

Suddenly, I remembered something unexpected.

Wait.  I haven’t seen Alex in days. 

Where was Alex, again? I couldn’t remember.  All I knew was he hadn’t been in the canoe with me.  I had been reading. My mind was wandering, unable to focus on a single though.  What had I been reading, again? I didn't understand. 

How is Alex here?

“Alex?” I croaked, not recognizing my own voice.  What did my voice sound like, again? 

Not that, was my mind’s weak response, all that it could muster in my present state.

“It’s okay, everything’s gonna be okay, you’re fine now.  Don’t try to talk for a little bit, it’ll hurt.  You hit your head on the side of your canoe.”

“Alex?” I repeated.  I sounded better, but not nearly back to normal yet.

“I’m Sidney” he replied.  He paused, not say anything anything more until my breathing had returned to normal.

“How do you feel?” he asked.  

His face had come into focus now, and I could see why I had mistaken him for my brother.  They both had the same hair colour – a trait the three of us shared – but his eyes were hazel instead of the blue that myself and my brother. His face was different, too.  Softer, kinder,  I decided, than Alex’s.

“I’m…..” I stopped to observe my current state.  What was I?

“I’m freezing!” My teeth had abruptly begun to chatter, and it felt like a jackhammer was stationed in my brain, finishing the job that knife had started earlier.

“Oh, crap, I forgot about hypothermia! I’m gonna go get you a blanket, okay? I’ll be right back.  Don't move.” I heard his footsteps break into a run.  I closed my eyes while he was gone.  They hurt.

“Hey, don’t close your eyes now, we’ve gotta make sure that you stay awake.” He wrapped a blanked around me.

 “I don’t want you going into a coma or anything.  You don’t want that on my conscience, do you?” Now that I was apparently not going to die I could tell he was easing out of lifeguard mode.  There was even the hint of a smile in his words.

“Do you think you could sit up now?”

I nodded.  He helped me sit up slowly, and I saw that we were on a dock, with a large gazebo up ahead and the stone façade of a house behind it.  So we weren’t on my dock, then.

“Where are we?”

His eyes became wide with concern, but suddenly all the tension in his face released, and he let out a laugh.  He sat down, legs criss-crossed, facing towards me, his back to the house.

“Oh! We’re, uh, on my dock.  I was about to dock my boat, then I saw a canoe with no one in it, and what turned out to be you flailing around in the water.  You were pretty close to here, so it was easier for me to do CPR on the dock than in my boat. Safer, probably, too.”

I flinched.  This guy, this Sidney, had done CPR on me? I had made up my mind that he was super cute while he was explaining where we were, and I blushed at the mental image of him pumping my chest, and putting his lips – which were crazy-big, or 'super kissable' as some of my friends might say – on mine.  He didn’t seem to notice that I had coloured, though.  He was still talking, but his speech was broken by relieved laughter.

“For a second there I totally thought you had amnesia or something, and suddenly you were going to be asking me what your name was, and what year it is, who the Prime Minister is, all that.”

I mustered up a giggle, despite my embarrassment.

“What's your name, anyways?”

“Alanna.  Alanna O’Connor.”

He grinned. “Awesome. I mean, now if you forget it, or something, then I’ll be able to answer without making something up.  I’m not so good at coming up with stuff on the fly like that.”

I was much warmer now, thanks to the blanket, and self-aware enough to realize that I must look like a mess.  I knew I had to get away from him, go somewhere and clear my head by myself.  Not because of anything he'd said or done – he was as nice as anyone could possible hope for a guy to be, and he had just saved my life and all – but because I felt like a complete dunce.  What kind of person hits her head on a canoe, anyways? He must think I’m a complete idiot.

I ran my hands through my wet hair, sweeping the ends over my right shoulder and squeezing some water from them onto the deck. 

“Thank you so much, Sidney” I said his name softly, unused to the way it felt in my mouth.  I’d never met anyone with that name, so I hadn’t had the chance to use it much.

It looked like he might blush now. “It’s no big deal.  Don’t worry about it.”

“No, seriously, I mean it – thank you.  You saved my life.  If it wasn’t for you, I’d definitely be sitting at the bottom of this lake right now.  And I only just moved in, so that would be kind of a bummer.”

His eyes crinkled. “I wondered why I didn’t recognize you!  I’ve lived here for a few years now, and I know most of the people here, if not by name than at least by sight.  But you...I’ve never seen you before.”

“Yeah, we just moved here at the end of May.”

He nodded. “That explains it.  I just got back here last night, actually.  You were an exciting end to my first fishing expedition of the year.  My biggest catch today, actually.

I laughed, the feeling still cutting my chest a little, but much less than before. Something he said had intrigued me.

“Where did you just get back from?”

He looked a bit startled.

“Oh.  I was in Pittsburgh. But I’m on summer vacation now.” He smiled pleasantly.

“Neat. Do you go to school there?” I wagered that he was too young to be holding down a full-time job, and I hadn’t heard of many Nova Scotians heading off to the States for school, but maybe he was an exception.

“No, I sort of…work there.  Well, work and play,” He got this look in his eyes just then that made me think whatever he did in Pittsburgh I wanted to do, too, if it could make someone look as happy as that.

“The best of both worlds, you could say.  I…play hockey there.”

I realized now why this whole time I had had this nagging feeling that I might have met him before.  

I wasn’t an avid hockey fan – I’ll admit that I’m not the kind of person who likes to support a losing team, and the Toronto Maple Leafs weren’t exactly storming up the standings when I lived there – but I was still knowledgeable enough about the subject to carry on a conversation with your average fan.  Growing up a rink-rat, albeit as a figure skater rather than a hockey player, hockey knowledge somehow seeped its way into my mind to the point that the general gist of the league - which teams were doing well, which players were having a good year, who had won the Stanley Cup - became part of my knowledge.  Living in a dorm with several hockey-mad friends didn’t hurt, either.   I had seen him on the highlight reels countless times, I was sure of that, and was pretty sure that he played for the Penguins.  

The Penguins just won the Stanley Cup a little voice inside me said.  Probably why he just got home. 

I had never paid much attention to him other than a fleeting thought that he was kinda cute, and wow, could he ever play.  But now…well, maybe now I’d have to start paying more attention.

“That’s cool.”

I didn’t know what the appropriate response was, so I left it at that for a few seconds.  There was an awkward silence.  Should I gush about how awesome he was supposed to be? Change the subject? Mention how much the Leafs had sucked the past season, a sure-bet if I wanted to make him laugh? I decided to go with the response I thought that, if I were in his shoes, he’d most like to hear.

“I guess we both spent a lot of time in rinks when we were growing up, then.  I was a figure skater, once upon a time.” I grinned, and he grinned back, then lowered his eyes.  I couldn't read the look on his face just then.

It had become overcast while we were talking, and the air felt heavy, like it was going to rain.

“It must be getting late,” I said, “And I’m sure you’ll want to be getting your fish ready for dinner.” I blushed, remembering him referring to me as the biggest ‘fish’ he’d caught all day. I hope he didn’t think I was rude.  I didn’t really know how to navigate this type of situation, having never been rescued by a dashing hockey player-slash-fisherman in the middle of a lake. 

“Oh! Yeah, I should get you back home, it’s getting kind of late.  Your parents must be wondering where you are.”

He slowly walked to his boat and motioned for me to join him.

He seems sad, I thought.  Maybe he's enjoying this as much as I am? I quickly dismissed that thought as delusional. 

“Oh, no, that’s okay, I can just walk.” I liked talking to him, but I already owed him so much.  It felt absurd to let him take me home, after he’d just made it possible for me to actually arrive home, y’know, alive and all.

“Besides,” I added, “It’s not like anyone will be waiting for me or anything.  My parents are in the city for the weekend, and my brother is in New Brunswick.  I have plenty of time to get home, don't worry.”

It was like his ears perked up when I said that.  What was he responding to - that my brother is in New Brunswick? The fact I have a brother, not a boyfr -- I cut myself off before I could finish that though.  He was reacting to the back that my brother was in New Brunswick.  That must be it.

“Would your brother’s name be Alex, by any chance?”

“Yeah, that’s him.  Oh! I called you Alex, didn’t I?” The third blush in less than an hour.  How embarrassing - I'd called him by my brother's name! Oh well, I’d done much worse. 

“Sorry about that – I forgot he was in New Brunswick…and he’s a strong swimmer…and your hair is the same colour…” I was rambling now.  Shut up, shut up!  I told myself.

He had renewed energy in his voice when he spoke again.

“Well, you know, I’d be really worried if I just let you go all the way home to an empty house, where you could hit your head again or something, and then how would I know that you’d be okay? You could die and it would take the whole weekend before anyone found you!” He was trying to suppress laughter while he spoke, “And I have a ton of fish and everything, so why don’t you stay for dinner? I’m sure I could find you some dry clothes or something, you’re probably my sister’s size.”

Did he just ask me to stay for dinner? This hockey-playing, girl-saving, fish-catching – okay, I’ll admit it, HOT – guy just asked me to dinner.  I had never been more flustered.  Usually when a guy asked me something like this I had no trouble turning him down; I could just picture him making a mud-pie when he was seven or something and it was all too easy to let him down gently.  I cursed myself for not accepting any of those double-date offers; I should be better prepared for this kind of thing!

He’s probably just genuinely worried that you could collapse, and he would feel guilty, said the rational side of my brain.  It’s just sympathy.  He doesn’t like you or anything. Be serious, Aly!

I was right.  And besides, if I spent another hour in his company I would probably collapse anyways – but from the stress and newness of this whole crazy situation, not from a head injury.  Sidney made me nervous.

“You know what, I think I’ll take a rain check on that.  I…uh…well, I can’t.  I just…can’t.” As I spoke I was walking as fast as I could away from the dock, and I was almost yelling by now so he could hear me.

“I’m sure I’ll see you around, though!” Just before I turned onto the street I looked back and saw that he looked confused.  He had jumped up, but wasn't following me.  He was standing on the dock with his mouth hanging open a little, and his head was cocked to the right. 

He's probably never seen anyone act so rudely!, my brain chided.

I chirped out a goodbye before I could fall to pieces, or something.  That's certainly what it felt like. 

“And don’t worry, I’ll return your blanket soon, I promise!”

I practically ran all the way back to my house – which wasn’t far, in the grand scheme of things.  My lungs were aching by the time I slammed the screen shut and pressed myself against the inside of the door.

What the hell was that all about?

2

And so May became June.  It was the last weekend of the month; my parents were away for the weekend, attending a reception held by the university in honour of my mother, and my brother was in New Brunswick, visiting some older friends who had a house on Mount A’s campus.  Having the house to myself was relaxing; after weeks of getting used to a foreign layout and new furniture it was finally starting to feel like home.  I jumped when for what seemed like the millionth time that week the screen door leading to the backyard slammed behind me.

Note to self: You gotta stop doing that!

I settled down in one of the recliners facing the lake and started flipping aimlessly through the newest issue of Vogue.  I didn’t really follow the latest designers or even that many of the newest trends, but I’d always adored haute couture – clothes so ridiculous that there were less than 1,000 true couture customers left in the world, the article said – though ‘ridiculous’ was my word, not theirs.

Bored with the magazine, I leaned the chair back and rested it, pages open, over my eyes. My skin wasn’t as fair as most people of Irish descent – my dad loved to say that we were probably at least part Spanish, from when all those Spaniards settled in Ireland after the Spanish Armada and mixed into the gene pool. Still, I hated the feeling of a burn, and my arms and legs were exposed – I was wearing a bikini top under a white tank with khaki shorts – so I ran inside and doused myself in sunscreen.  As I walked back out I noticed for the first time that Alex had left the canoe tied to the dock.  It was towards the end of the afternoon, and the water looked so inviting.  Hadn’t I wanted to get out on the lake all this time? Now was as good a time as any.  I checked inside the storage shed for the life jackets I knew were around somewhere, but couldn’t find them. 

Alex must have left them in the boat when he took it into town for a new mast, I thought.  

I had been taught that canoeing was a no-go without a life jacket, but those disastrous swimming lessons all those years ago hadn’t left me totally inept – I could doggie paddle, though I’d never tried it without a life jacket on. I was pretty competent in a canoe, too – all these years and I hadn’t tipped over a single time.  I carefully climbed in and sat down, laying the magazine at my feet for later.  Pushing off, I plunged the paddle deep and away from the canoe on my right side to clear the dock.  I started out North, keeping a careful distance from the shore, as I didn’t yet know where the lake might become shallow and rocky, grounding my canoe, or worse.  I heard motor boats in the distance, but couldn’t see anyone from where my canoe was situated ahead of an outcropping of land full of evergreen trees.  I circled back, going South now, further South than the house, and when I was equal distance between the lake’s Eastern and Western banks I let the canoe drift to wherever it chose.  The water was relatively still, so I stayed in roughly the same place as I twisted the seat off to the side to make room for my legs.  I lay down in the canoe, the aft bow cradling my head, and began to read again, deciding to go through the magazine in detail this time.  I had barely flipped through all the ads at the beginning when a violent gust of wind came out of nowhere, ripping the magazine from my hands.  Without thinking, I lurched my upper body to try to catch it, extending my torso out over the boat and losing my balance.  A sharp pain came swiftly to my head – in a daze, I tried to think of where it could have come from, but I was losing consciousness, and fast.  I struggled desperately to breathe in, but I was below the surface, and I was punched in the chest, over and over again, as water tore my lungs ragged with each breath.  I’d become heavy, so heavy, and my eyes struggled to close while my head screamed.

STAY AWAKE! FIGHT!  

But it was too late.  I wasn’t shuddering anymore – my lungs were full – and I slipped down….down…

1

A famous writer once said that endings bring about new beginnings; when one door of happiness closes, another is bound to open up.  Everyone’s journey is full of these comings and goings, and while some view them as failures or tragedies, my personal belief is that everything happens for a reason.  If I had to pick a genre to file my life under, I’d choose ‘fairy tale’ every time.

My own story begins, quite simply, at the end of someone else’s – namely, my grandmother. Ever since I can remember she had been a constant fixture in my life. She’s there in my very first clear memory, a family picnic underneath a lilac bush that was abruptly ended when my brother, Alex, discovered an anthill and unintentionally invited the whole colony to lunch.  When I was a toddler my Granny was more a mother to me than anyone else, as my actual mother was busy completing her PhD in Russian Studies, so until I started school shed lived with us.  By the time my father would arrive home from work and my mother from the school they would find that my grandmother and I had done our best to turn the house into a bakery; our counters were always overflowing with cakes, cookies, and other good things during that time. I guess that’s why I’ve always associated her with the sweet things in my life.  She was there to cheer me on at all of my figure skating competitions, and when I agonized over whether I should give it all up to devote myself to soccer full-time, she was the one that reminded me that soccer was a summer sport, and didn’t always interfere with my summer training in the rink; I could do both, she said.  When I gave up my gold-medal aspirations and allowed skating to become a passion instead of an obsession, I was fifteen.  On my birthday that year she walked in the door carrying a cumbersome black case and a gift certificate for music lessons, and I’ve played the cello ever since.  When I think back on the time I spent with her, there isn’t a chance that I would have become the person I am today without her steady influence.

I can date her decline from my last year of high school.  When her husband – my grandfather – died while my mother was pregnant with Alex and I, he left money in a trust for our education, and so we had always gone to a private school, one of the best in Canada.  They required all students in grade 12 to board at the school to prepare for living away from home during university.  Up until then we had bussed back and forth from the school in Oakville to our house east of Toronto, or had been driven by dad on his way to work if the weather was bad enough for the buses to stop running.  That year, though, we only found time to visit home every second weekend.  Alex had always been the more social twin, and he thrived in the dorms where he was just seconds away from his best friends, of which he had many.  I, on the other hand, am pretty sure I was known mostly as “Alex’s sister”, the shy one who divided her time between the soccer field and the library. My small circle of friends that I met over the years through figure skating, soccer, and school didn’t mind letting me keep to myself while they flirted and double-dated, but they never understood why I was always turning down offers from the guys in our grade.  Truthfully, I’d never learned how to be anything more than a friend with a member of the opposite sex.  As a painfully shy girl with a twin of the opposite gender, my companions in our formative years were mostly Alex’s friends, and I was just his annoying sister who mom forced to tag along. I had grown up with all these gangly, shaggy-haired boys, and suddenly they had started to view me as something more than Alex O’Connor’s sister. But I couldn’t – or didn’t want to - see them as anything other than the little boys I had spent my summers with, so I turned down dates and dance invitations, spending my evenings with my single girlfriends or the few guys who had decided that being friends with me was better than nothing at all.  Every so often my grandmother would come and visit, or I would take Alex with me to her retirement home.  As time passed, we watched her fade from my vibrant, lovely Gran into a shell of herself.  At our graduation ceremony she was in a wheelchair, and that’s when I knew I didn’t have much time left to spend with her.  So I made a big decision: Instead of leaving home to go to university, I lived at home and work for a year.  I had planned to go to the East Coast for school, but I deferred my admission and stayed in Toronto instead.  After all, a little extra spending money never hurt anyone, now did it?

“That was the best decision I ever made,” I thought to myself at her funeral.  We had shared countless laughs and chats over our favourite Earl Gray tea that would never had happened had I spent that year a two-hour plane flight away. 

“I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything in the world.”   Staying at home had also given me time to begin my long goodbye, and I felt at peace with the way she had gone.  Driving home from the cemetery our car was quiet.  We were all thinking of Gran, I’m sure.  When we stopped at a red light my mother turned around from the passenger seat to look at Alex and I in the back.

“Your father and I wanted to wait until after the funeral to tell you both this, but your grandmother left us something quite interesting in her will.” She rolled her eyes, but it was a good-humoured expression, one that I knew meant she was amused, not angry.

“You both know how much she loves – loved - the outdoors,” Mom continued, grimacing slightly at having to speak of her mother in the past tense, “When she was growing up on the East Coast, I guess there was this one particular place that she really loved.  And, well, she knew your father had always dreamed of a Walden-esque retirement…”

“A what retirement?” Alex asked.  He’d never been much of a reader.

A chuckle came from my dad in the driver’s seat.

“Cabin in the woods, Alex.” I could see his eyes crinkle in the rearview mirror.  It was comforting to know that he could still smile.

My mother rolled her eyes for a second time.

“Anyway, your grandmother had quite the sense of humour, because we’re nowhere near retirement, but she’s bought us our cabin. Although it’s not so much what you would call a cabin.  It’s more of a house.  Quite a large house, in fact.  And it’s in Nova Scotia.”

My eyes lit up.  Nova Scotia? It was late May, but I had been putting off any thought of organizing living arrangements for the coming school year until after the funeral.  Alex was headed to Mount A in New Brunswick, and I was going to Dalhousie in Halifax.  I had been dreading leaving for in the past few months, but the thought of an amazing present like that from Gram awaiting me when I arrived was pretty appealing.

“Where in Nova Scotia is this place?” I asked.

“It’s on Schubenacadie Grand Lake.  It’s about a half-hour commute from downtown, depending on traffic,” My mother inhaled like she was nervous for what she had to say next, “I think we can all agree that with Gran gone, there’s not a lot keeping us in this part of the country.  Most of the rest of our family is out East, and you’re both heading out there for school in the fall…” She trailed off, looking to my father to continue.

            “For some time now we’ve both been looking at relocating.  Your mother applied for an opening in the Dalhousie faculty a few months ago, and I’m able to do my work at the bank regardless of where I work from.  So this house was essentially the last piece in the puzzle.  Alanna, you’ll be welcome to live with us, if you’d like.  And Alex, you won’t be too far away, so you can visit whenever you like.  If you get sick of life in the dorms, at least you’ll have a place to stay.”

            “If I get sick of the dorms, you mean,” Alex grinned, “This is awesome!”

            “Right. Alanna, your thoughts?”

            I paused to think for a second.  Leaving our home would mean leaving all of the places that had become so dear to me over my life.  But at the same time, would those places really still hold any magic now that all the people I loved had left them? My friends were all dispersing around the country, as far away as British Columbia and Alberta, but lucky for me a few had decided on east coast schools, and I’d be able to see them regularly.  Gran was the one thing left that had tied us to Toronto, and now she was gone.  It was time to move on.

            A small smile crept up to my lips.

            “I can’t wait.  This is going to be one heck of a summer.”

    I had no idea at the time how true those words would come to be.