Page 12 of The Devil Wears Tartan

I hum along to the Cold War Kids song playing through my headphones. I can just make out the muffled shouts of the Frisbee players a few metres away as they dive and leap for the disc on the wide lawn of the park.

The sun is beating down on the back of my neck, making me reconsider my thick knit sweater and my choice to grab a picnic table without any shade. I know it’ll only be a couple months before we’re all huddled up inside like hibernating squirrels, so instead of moving, I tilt my face to the clear blue sky and breathe deep.

I can smell grass clippings and a trace of the vanilla perfume I dabbed under my ears before I left campus.

This part of Major’s Hill Park conceals most of the busy city streets surrounding the lawns and gardens. To my left, I can see a sliver of the parliament buildings sitting on an outcropping high above the Ottawa river. After a day of rushing around to packed lectures and then slogging through a shift in the noisy, food-encrusted campus dining hall, this park always feels like a piece of heaven.

I focus back on the textbook in front of me and continue with the assigned reading. My sociology classes have levelled up now that I’m in third year, and I know they’re just a taste of the workload awaiting me when I can finally start my Master’s of Social Work.

I’ve had it all mapped out since before I even finished high school. I have dates and requirements for every step of the path to getting my first real job in the field as fast as possible. All I have to do is make sure each and every one of them happens in perfect order.

All I have to do is stay in control.

That seems to be getting more difficult by the hour. Two days ago, I found out they’re slashing most of my dining hall shifts due to an overstaffing issue. My mom also wasn’t exaggerating when she said the car barely made it to her appointment last week; it’s now in for yet another round of repairs we can’t afford. There’s no availability for me to take on extra hours at the dance studio, and I doubt there’s any other part time job in existence that would fit into all the current demands of my schedule.

Nine thousand dollars has started sounding more and more like a magic spell with every day that’s passed since the highland competition.

Nine thousand dollars would allow me to take the summer courses I need to sign up for. I’d graduate on time. I’d go to grad school on time. I’d finally start living my life instead of scraping and clawing through it like there’s a bottomless black pit looming just under my feet at any given second.

Regret tightens my stomach as soon as the thought enters my mind; when I think about being at home with my mom, sometimes a deep, dark pit is the first image I conjure up, and I hate myself for it.

It’s not her fault.

She’s trying. She did go to her appointment. She even picked up her prescription without me needing to remind her. She wants to get better.

I try not to think about all the other times she’s seemed to round a corner and ended up back where she started. Guilt makes me push my textbook away and reach for my phone to see if she’s texted me.

My lock screen is a generic blue ombre design, but the background changes to a selfie of me and Chris after I put my pass code in. I must have been about fourteen at the time, based on the excessive, crooked black eyeliner I’m wearing. He’s got his arm around my shoulders, and we’re both laughing so hard our faces are a little blurry.

I should change the photo to something else, but instead I hold onto the spark of happiness I feel each time I see it, right before the hurt hits.

Everything was so much simpler then, before Chris’s dad left my mom—just like my dad left my mom years before that.

There are no messages from her, but my calendar has supplied me with an alert about the SDOO scholarship meeting tonight. All the prospective applicants are supposed to meet with one of the association members to ask questions and formally sign up as participants.

A few days ago, I wasn’t even sure I’d do it. The time commitment that would go into spending the whole school year chasing a scholarship I might not win is a huge gamble, but losing half my hours at the dining hall has shifted the equation.

So has Moira Murray.

My hand tightens around my phone as I think back to our little face-off outside the auditorium. I shouldn’t have spoken to her at all, but as soon as I saw the scholarship paper, that sensation of a giant chasm splitting the floor underneath me hit so hard I went straight into the fight side of my fight-or-flight response.

She was a threat, and she was going after something I needed just because she could. It didn’t matter if that was a totally unreasonable and overdramatic way to think about it. When it comes to Moira, reason has always found a way to bolt and leave me running on pure instinct.

I hate it. I keep myself in check around everyone else. I hold it all in. Even Chris would always be prodding me with his elbows or flicking me in the head while he told me to just open up. Sometimes I did with him, but it was always a choice. I chose to trust him with my feelings because he felt safer than anyone I’d ever known.

When it comes to Moira, I’m usually hissing my feelings in her face before I even realize I’m doing it. If someone had shown up in that moment outside the auditorium and asked us to bet everything in our bank accounts on beating each other for the scholarship, there’s a big part of me that would have jumped to do it without a second thought.

I need my second thoughts. I don’t have room in my life for mistakes.

I listen to the thump of blood pounding in my ears as I shut my music off and scan through the bus schedule on my phone. I have about fifteen minutes before I need to head for the Westboro cafe where the meeting is being held, but I start packing up my books after shutting off the screen. There’s no way I can process any new information now, and I can review some lecture notes on the bus ride to make up for the wasted time.

I get on one of the red and white OC Transpo buses down on Rideau Street. All the seats are packed, so I give up on my studying plan and slip my headphones back on before clutching one of the support poles and swaying along with the bus’s movements.

The same Cold War Kids song comes on. I’ve had the whole album on repeat for days, but ‘First’ is my favourite track. I listen to the singer speak about burning a candle at both ends as the thump and snap of the drums plod on like a steady march just on the cusp of breaking out into wild and gorgeous disorder.

The bus stays crowded all the way down to Westboro station. The evening has cooled off a little once I step outside, and I’m grateful for my thick sweater as I head up to the main street on foot. The shops here all have a very ‘trendy mom’ vibe to them; the cafe we’re meeting at looks like it was built specifically for frequenting pre and post-hot yoga. I step into the white and mint green interior and scan the bistro tables and benches for any sign of people I recognize.

“Kenzie! We’re over here!”

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