LITMIR.BIZ

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useless images, like crazy dreams. It was nothing. Nothing that makes any sense.”

      “They aren’t useless. Search and Rescue teams are helped by intuitive and clairvoyant people all the time. While I was in Peru, I met a woman who finds missing children. I told her about you. She recommended I read her book. She says people with natural intuition can practice and get better at it, just like any other skill. I brought it home for you to read.”

      I opened my bag and dug through it, hoping there was something I could use as a distraction to avoid the conversation. There wasn’t anything. “Why would I want to get good at seeing traumatic things I can’t do anything about?”

      “The better you get at it, the more likely it will be useful. Maybe you’ll save someone’s life someday.”

      I slouched in the seat and crossed my arms over my chest, fixing my attention on the rock face next to the highway. “A lot of good it did my dad. I saw it happen in exact, excruciating detail and couldn’t prevent it. He still died.”

      Trevor glanced at me with empathy in his eyes. “Your dad’s accident wasn’t your fault, Deri.”

      I shrugged and fought to swallow down the emotion in my throat. “Either way, I want to practice not having intuition at all, not practice to get better at it.”

      We drove in silence. He probably wanted to convince me my brain glitch was a huge asset, but fortunately he let it go. “How are you feeling about being back at school in Squamish?”

      Thankful to talk about anything other than my flawed neurology, I said, “Excited and nervous, I guess. It will be awkward at first when they all try to be sensitive about my dad. Hopefully that won’t last long and everything goes back to normal.” As soon as I said it, I regretted using the word “normal”. My life was never going back to the way it was. It was never going to feel normal again. I exhaled, trying to steel myself for the day ahead.

      “It’s going to be okay.”

      In an attempt to lighten the mood, I joked, “Yeah. Anything is better than living with my mom.”

      A deep crease etched between his eyebrows. “She’s not that bad,” he said quietly.

      Before my dad died, my mom lived in our apartment in downtown Vancouver and only came up to Britannia on the weekends, which was great growing up. Living full-time with my dad at the Inn had worked perfectly since he and I were essentially the same person—nature-lovers, bookish, and artistic. The opposite of my mom. Since Trevor’s mom left them, he always thought I should appreciate the fact that I, at least, had a mom, even if she and I had nothing in common. My whole childhood, he had encouraged me to try harder to get along with her.

      I knew I needed to get over my issues with my mom, especially after losing my dad. I just didn’t know how. After my dad died, my mom refused to drive on the highway between Vancouver and Britannia, where the accident happened. She acted like it was a panic attack thing, but I knew it was just her convenient excuse to never step foot in Britannia Beach again and to guilt me into moving to Vancouver.

      I tried to make living with her work. I really did. I enrolled in the stuffy private school she had always wanted me to go to. I joined the clubs she thought would look good on my university applications. I attended the counselling sessions she insisted on, so I could “process my grief”. None of it made any difference. I missed my friends in Squamish, I missed my granddad, and most of all I missed Britannia Beach. My mom and I got on each other’s nerves. Her standards for everything were impossibly high, she worried so much it was suffocating, and I hated every minute of living in the loud, crowded city. Moving back to the Inn saved me. And I wasn’t sure I could survive losing it too.

      Trevor and I didn’t talk for the rest of the drive, which was something I actually always appreciated about him. He was comfortable with quiet, like my dad. And like me. But his silence felt different, more serious. As if something had changed between us in the year I was gone. He didn’t even look at me again until we pulled up in front of my school and shifted into park.

      Things still felt odd between us. I wasn’t sure how to handle it and ended up sounding awkwardly formal. “Thank you for the ride, Trevor. Have a good day.”

      “I’ll be done work at four-thirty if you want a ride home.”

      “Sure. I’ll meet you back here.”

      After I stepped out and shut the door, the window rolled down.

      “Hey.” He grinned with his chin tilted in a cocky way. “Do you really think I’m good-looking like that guy in Kailyn’s magazine?”

      And there it was. We were back to normal. The teasing was going to be relentless. I shook my head and made a snarky face. “Don’t let it go to your gigantic head.”

      “Too late.” He waved and drove away.

      At least our relationship felt familiar and easy again. Which was good, since I had a feeling going back to my old school was going to be way harder than I had anticipated.

       CHAPTER TWO

      My best friend Sophie Sakamoto wasn’t hard to spot in her black-and-white-striped knee-high stockings, black micro-mini skirt, and fluorescent lime-green tank top. She lounged on the front steps of the school with her boyfriend and some of the guys from their band. Her boyfriend Doug was in grade twelve and they’d been dating for almost two years. They came down to Vancouver almost every weekend to hang out with me when I lived there, thankfully. The loneliness would have been unbearable if they hadn’t. Doug had shaved his dark faux-hawk into a buzz cut since I last saw him. It suited the dark-rimmed punk glasses he wore. Most people got the wrong impression about Doug because he was a musician who wore leather and had tattoos up his neck—well, maybe it wasn’t entirely the wrong impression.

      “Hey, guys,” I said, loud enough for them to hear me, but quietly enough to not make a huge scene. At least, that was the goal. I should have known Sophie wouldn’t let my re-initiation to the school slide without a bit of a scene.

      She shot up and squealed as she lunged over to hug me. “Oh my God. Welcome back. You are not allowed to leave me ever again. The boredom was torture.” She turned to the boys. “No offence.”

      They all laughed, knowing full well it was intended to be an insult. She leaned back to check out my outfit. Normally, she was the one up on fashion, and I couldn’t have cared less. The suede boots were one of the expensive items my mom had bought for me while I was living with her.

      “Damn, Derian, you look stylish.” She tickled my waist. “All we need now is to get you a boyfriend.”

      I glared at her and whispered, “I’m happily single. Thanks. You want to keep your voice down a little? Please.”

      “Why are you turning all red?” she teased. She was going to take it as far as she could, just to amuse herself. And maybe also to get back at me for leaving her alone for a whole year. “Hey, Doug,” Sophie called over to him. “You think Derian looks hot with her new look?”

      Doug laughed. “Is that a trap?”

      “Nope.”

      To my horror, Doug and a couple of other guys on the steps all checked me out. Doug pushed his glasses up, studied my suede boots, then moved his gaze up my legs, over my skirt, paused for a second at my pink button-up sweater, and finished at my face. “Yup,” he said.

      “Smokin’,” another guy added.

      “See,” Sophie encouraged.

      I turned sideways and folded my arms across my chest. “You can stop humiliating me. I’m sorry I left you for a year. It’s not like I wanted to.”

      Her expression changed into sympathy before she hugged me again. “I understand why you didn’t come back last year. I’m not mad

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