Her head snaps up, and when she looks at me, her face is pinched with pain. “There are wolves everywhere, Zach. Out there.” She points to the window behind us. “In here.” She points to her head. “Things...Things happen when you’re alone. When I was a kid, I was always so scared. Sometimes I was stupid enough to be scared of real wolves coming to get me, but I could hear it. That howling. I heard it whenever I was alone, and I was alone at home all the time. Everybody...everybody justleft.My dad. My sister. My step-siblings. Even my mom didn’t have a lot of time for me. That’s why I made so many friends. I was that kid who was always running around the neighbourhood knocking on people’s doors. I was probably pretty annoying, but I learned how to make people like me. I learned how to be fun. I made my own pack so I wouldn’t have to be scared of the wolf pack.”
She’s shaking. There’s a metallic taste in the back of my mouth when I swallow, and it takes a moment for me to recognize it for what it is: dread.
“DeeDee, what happened?”
She draws in a shaky breath and lets it out before clutching the hand I still have resting on her knee.
“We don’t need to talk about it. It’s not very fun to hear.”
“I’m not just here for the fun, DeeDee.” I can’t help sounding a little stern. “I’m here for the scary parts too.”
Her grip on my hand tightens. We sit in silence for a few minutes, and I’m about to offer to let it go when she starts to speak again.
“I wasn’t really close with anyone in high school. I knew a lot of people, but they were just people to talk to and party with, you know? Except Clémentine. Clém was my best friend. We were like one person to everybody:DeeDee et Clém. We both wanted to move to Montreal after graduation. I wanted to go to haircutting school, and Clem wanted to study makeup art for movies and plays and stuff, but we needed to save up, so we got this really shitty apartment in Trois-Rivières.”
She pauses for a moment, and I run my thumb along the back of her hand, letting her know I’m here.
“Clém started working as a dancer at a strip club, and she got me a job as a bartender at the same place.” She watches my face like she’s waiting for a reaction, but I just sit there waiting for her to go on. “It was really fun, actually. Everyone is always talking shit about strippers, but they are some of the baddest bitches there are. We both loved our jobs. We were supposed to move to Montreal after a year, but the money was good, and one year turned into two. After that, things started going bad. She never told me if anything happened, but Clém started hating dancing. I didn’t see it then, but I think she became depressed. There were always drugs at the club. Everyone knew it, and Clém started getting into it just to get through her shifts.”
The dread is rising like bile in my throat. A prickle of awareness inches up the back of my neck. I can see where this is going.
“She got into trouble with the wrong people, something about money. She kept saying we should leave town, that we should just pack our bags one night and go, but we never did. I was so worried about her, but she was just...It’s hard to help someone when they get like that, and I was so young. I always made sure she had someone to leave the club with if I wasn’t working, but one night her ride bailed without telling me, and she...she just didn’t come home.”
I can hear the blood rushing in my ears. I’ve only gotten through half a piece of toast, but my appetite has vanished.
“I didn’t know what to do. I sat there for so long, all alone in that shitty, shitty apartment, and she just didn’t come home.” She’s crying now, shoulders shaking with quiet sobs, and I throw my arm around them. She leans her weight into my chest. “I called everyone, but nobody had any news. I waited until the next day to phone the police, but what was I going to say? ‘My best friend who is a stripper and owed money to drug dealers is missing?’ Girls like Clém aren’tpeopleto the police. They made a missing person thing, but I don’t think they even looked for her at all.”
She gives in to the tears and cries into my chest while I hold her. I feel hollow. Numb. Almost three years I’ve known DeeDee, and never did I think she could have been through something like this. Never did I look at the girl dancing on table tops and pouring tequila shots and think she could be hiding so much pain.
So I hold her. I hold her so tight and pray to whoever might be listening that I can take some of it away.
“I moved to Montreal the next month. I cried during the whole bus ride here. It felt like I was giving up on her, leaving like that, but I did everything I could, and I was so scared the same thing would happen to me.”
“DeeDee, don’t you dare feel bad for getting out of there,” I can’t help urging. “It terrifies me to think that you might have stayed.”
She sniffs and sits up straight, running the back off her hand over her eyes.
“I don’t really tell people about this. I try not to think about it.”
“I told you I’m not just here for the fun.”
She hesitates for a moment and then nods, drawing in a few deep breaths.
“You know,” she adds in a quiet voice, like she’s sharing a secret, “sometimes I like to think that she’s here, that she got on a bus to Montreal like we always said we would. Sometimes I think I’ll bump into her in the street one day, and she’ll be all happy and beautiful. She’ll have some fancy job doing makeup for plays. She’ll say she had to run away so she wouldn’t get me in trouble, but she always knew we would see each other again. Sometimes I see girls who sort of look like her from the back, but when they turn around, it’s never her.”
Heat pricks the corners of my eyes as I watch her stare off into the distance, the most gut-wrenching ghost of a smile I’ve ever seen resting on her lips.
“DeeDee, I had no idea...”
“Of course you did not.” She barks a laugh. “I’m pretty good at hiding it,hein? When I started working at Taverne Toulouse, I was broken. It felt like I would never laugh or feel safe again. It felt like my whole future was gone. I couldn’t go to haircutting school, of course. Istillcan’t. It...It’s too hard without her, but when I met Monroe, and Roxy, and...and you, it made me feel okay. It felt like having a pack. It felt like having the friends I was always looking for in Trois-Rivières, and it didn’t matter if any of mymauditboyfriends ever worked out, because I had my little family of barflies there for me.”
“DeeDee.” I shift so I’m completely facing her. “I’m not somemauditboyfriend, okay? I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to make you believe it.”
She smiles, and it might not be the triumphant moment I’m looking for, but I see hope there. I look into her face, and I see a chance.
“I really want to. I really do, Zach.”
“Good.” I jump up off the couch. “Let me tell you something, DeeDee Beausoleil. I’ve had a lot of time to think of the perfect first date to take you on, and I have quite a few ideas. I think we should do all of them today.”
