Page 27 of The Devil Wears Tartan

“Oh, lovely! I hope you two have fun. It’s not another study date, is it? You should watch a movie, or do something else relaxing. Oooh, maybe some of those face masks people are so into these days!”

“It’s always a good time for a face mask,” Brianna, the middle-aged receptionist at the desk across from me, chimes in with a grin. “I buy them off Amazon.”

I try not to think too hard about the fact that I’m being given tips to improve my social life by my own mother and a lady who says ‘I buy them off Amazon’ with the satisfaction of someone who’s discovered a revolutionary life hack.

My life must really be in dire need of an upgrade if even my own mom is insinuating I’m boring.

Too boring to be interesting on my own.

I give my boot an extra hard tug, stamping the sole on the ground to remind myself that’s not what my mother is saying.

That’s what Savannah said. That’s what she told me when she tried to justify cheating on me because I apparently ‘couldn’t form my own life goals’ and just ‘absorbed’ hers.

I’m still thinking about that little showdown in Johannesburg as I wave goodbye to my mum and Brianna before heading out to wait at the bus stop. The familiar sight of a red and white OC Transpo bus pulls up a couple minutes later, and as I settle into a seat and watch the streets I’ve known my whole life go by, I can’t help wondering if maybe I am a little boring.

I never got excited about brochures for universities in faraway cities or countries the way other kids did in high school. I never felt that typical teenage ‘I need to get the hell out of here and find myself’ angst. I never dreamed of strapping on a giant backpack and getting on a plane to Europe.

That was all Lydia could talk about our whole graduating year, and that was why I went along with her—because I saw how bad she wanted it, how just the thought set her on fire, and because I lied and told myself I felt some of that fire too, when really, the truth of what I wanted sat heavy in my stomach the whole time.

The truth is that I want to spend my whole life in those ruby red moments inside the Murray School of Highland Dance. I want to give those moments to as many kids as I can. I want to spend every single day showing people how beautiful, exciting, and important highland dance can be.

When I’m in those rooms and walking those halls, they feel huge, so full of potential, but when I leave, I realize how damn small it sounds to say my only ambition is to keep working at my family’s barely profitable dance school like I have since I was a teenager. Even the Bachelor of Education I’m working on is just a way to learn more about being a teacher and maybe have a fallback if the Murray School doesn’t work out.

It’s not really the life of a modern, empowered, adventurous woman—the kind of woman I see on TV and social media. I don’t think it’s what my parents had in mind when they spent my whole childhood telling me and my siblings to dream as big as we could. It’s definitely not what Savannah was looking for in a girlfriend.

Maybe that’s why I can’t stop thinking about her, even as the memories of my time in South Africa fade like the autumn leaves in the trees the bus is zooming past. Sometimes I can’t even see her face all that clearly anymore, but I hear her voice like it’s right in my ear, as loud as every Instagram ad telling me to ‘level up and think bigger.’

It feels like cheating to just be happy with what I have, like I’m not playing the game right, like I’m missing a vital piece.

The sight of Lydia’s neighbourhood doesn’t help me get off my train of thought. Sandy Hill is a student mecca, full of low rise apartments and dilapidated little houses split into way more units than should be legal. String lights, flags, and tapestries functioning as curtains fill most of the windows. The front yards are all full of makeshift yard sale finds like wicker couches, scuffed up rocking chairs, and even a few stuffed animals in University of Ottawa merch perched like strange guardian spirits on banisters and balconies.

It’s the kind of neighborhood you’re supposed to get your first cramped, crappy apartment in to experience the joys and pitfalls of beginning adult life.

I’ve never wanted to live somewhere like this. I have fun visiting Lydia, but I’m always grateful to get back on the bus home.

I get out at a stop a block away from Lydia’s place and start trudging up the sidewalk. Loud, bass-heavy music thumps through the walls of one of the houses I pass, multi-coloured lights flashing in the upper windows. The house beside it has gotten an early start on Halloween; little plastic skeletons dangle from the spindly crab apple tree in the overgrown patch of front lawn, reminding me how far I’ve made it through my first semester of school. By this time next month, I’ll already be prepping for exams.

And I’ll have faced Kenzie onstage at SDOO’s November competition.

A shout from above distracts me. I look up to see Lydia waving from her house’s upper balcony, which, in my opinion, is sloped enough to warrant some kind of building inspection.

“Hey, best friend!” she calls.

I lift my hand in a wave, and she tells me she’ll be right down before disappearing inside the house.

She lives with more roommates than I can keep track of, and the tiny entryway is filled to bursting with coats and shoes when she pulls the front door open to let me inside. She has the front section of her hair pulled up into a little Pebbles Flintstone ponytail on the very top of her head, and she’s wearing an oversized t-shirt with the university’s environmental club logo on it.

“Enter, friend!” she commands, waving me through and stepping back enough for me to bend and take my shoes off.

She pulls me into a hug before I can get my jacket off, and I sag a little in her arms. I don’t know what I’d do if she hadn’t come back to Ottawa. Sometimes all it takes is a hug from Lydia to turn an entire crappy week around. As she unfurls her arms and starts leading the way up the stairs, I wonder how long she’d need to hug me to erase the past six months.

“Dude, I have news for you,” she says over her shoulder. “Big news.”

The excitement in her voice as she bounces her eyebrows up and down melts most of the doom and gloom off me, and I reach up to give her butt a slap.

“That kind of news?”

“Maaaybe,” she drawls as we reach the top of the stairs.

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