Page 69 of Shifting Gears

The first full weekend ofAugust comes too fast for Nora’s liking.

It kicks off with something that Dani calls a corn roast. The name is fairly self-explanatory—people gather in Dani’s backyard, corn is roasted and presumably eaten—but what Nora didn’t expect is the scale of the endeavour. It’s comparable in size to the Canada Day celebrations. People set up lawn chairs and haul in picnic tables borrowed from the park, but there’s less of a family atmosphere. It’s adults-only this time, and it’s suitably more raucous.

“How exactly do I access the edible part?” Nora asks, several drinks deep when Sarah hands her a plate with a burger and an un-shucked ear of charred corn. Having only ever eaten it after it’s been removed from both the husk and the cob, she’s not sure how to handle it.

Dani elbows her way past Sarah to perch on Nora’s picnic table. Her seat dislodges Ryan’s cup, but she ignores his noise of disapproval.

“I’ll show you,” Dani says, picking up the still-steaming piece of corn and pulling the husk back with her bare fingers.

“How do you do that without gloves?”

Dani finishes peeling, impaling each end with a skewer. The skewer handles are shaped like little yellow corncobs.

“I’ve handled hotter things.” Dani says it with a wink, and Nora laughs despite herself.

Sarah makes a disgruntled noise. “Keep it in your pants, Dani.”

“Tired of mycornyjokes?” Dani says, grinning like a fool as she holds up the ear of corn. Nora rolls her eyes so hard, she’s surprised they don’t leave her head entirely.

Dani looks delighted.

Once dusk falls, Sarah and Dani set up a bonfire. The party shifts into a lower gear—s’mores and hot dogs are roasted, the moonshine is broken out, Nora curls happily into Dani’s side, and Owen serenades everyone gathered around the fire in Muskoka chairs with a guitar and a low, soothing baritone.

Dani sings along to some of the songs, too. Her voice is soft and sweet. Nora can feel the vibration of it when she rests her head on Dani’s shoulder. Along with the drinks and crackle of the fire, it’s almost enough to lull her into a very pleasant doze until Nora frowns at yet another person heading into Dani’s house to use the washroom.

“A lot of people have been going in and out. Don’t you worry about people breaking your things?”

Dani looks puzzled. “If they didn’t break anything the last few years, I doubt they will now.”

“You host this every year?”

“We used to do it out in the woods near the old CromTech warehouse,” Ryan says, his mouth full of buttery corn. He’s had a few Solo cups too many, and his cheeks are ruddy with it. “There’s an old quarry out there where we used to party. But not anymore.FuckCromTech.”

Several other people around the fire cheer at Ryan’s curse.

The sudden and unfavourable reminder makes Nora feel like the two ears of corn she just ate might make a reappearance.

“Not fans, I take it?” Nora says tightly, trying to swallow down the nausea.

Ryan scoffs. “Are you kidding? My dad lost his pension when they closed all the plants. We struggled my whole life thanks to them.”

“They’ve been turning around lately, I think,” Naomi says. She’s stretched out in a chair on the other side of the fire while Sarah shucks an ear of corn for her. “They’ve got the most reliable medical imaging tech on the market, with lower prices than the competitors.”

Nora can only be grateful that Naomi either doesn’t remember the conversation they had at Pride or hasn’t made the connection. Either way, Ryan seems less than impressed.

“Big fuckin’ whoop,” Ryan mutters. “Doesn’t change what they did.”

“They didn’t even have the decency to not leave all their shit behind to rust when they closed everything down,” Owen says, strumming his guitar tunelessly. “We stopped doing the corn roast down there after a big fire in ’08. All the fuel they left rotting in the tanks at the manufacturing plant blew up. Bunch of the forest burnt down.”

Nora’s stomach churns even harder. She’d known her father had shut things down here quickly, but she’d had no idea he’d done it so irresponsibly, to the point of causing a disaster that the locals would remember even years later. “Oh my God. Was—was anyone hurt?”

“No,” Dani says quickly. “The fire department put it out pretty quick, everyone was fine.”

“Everyone except the trees and the animals and the soil that got fuel all in it. Fuck ’em!” Ryan shouts, gesturing with his gnawed corncob. “It could have gotten people hurt! Pure greed and laziness is what it was. They should have cleaned it up!”

Equally full of food and alcohol, everyone else raises their voices to match.

“It was a shit thing for them to do back then, but it was forever ago. I never saw the point in holding old grudges,” Dani says.

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