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The Kitchener-Waterloo Record -- Small town, bored teens, big regrets

SYNOPSIS

How much would you like to undo the terrible consequence of a rash decision you made long ago?

In their final year of high school, fate deals friends Aaron Fenn and Dean Higham two very different hands. For Dean, the year is just a matter of killing time before he can leave their small Ontario town for university. For Aaron, it is one of abandonment, boarding houses, and bad luck.

Years later, an adult Dean, now a successful Toronto condo salesman, wonders how to remake the past after a chance encounter with Aaron’s sister sends him careening back to the hometown he abandoned.

Tell Your Sister moves deftly through the recent past to show how Aaron and Dean’s friendship and their subsequent lives were determined by the choices they were forced to make.

Unflinching and mordantly funny, this novel about blind loyalty, first girlfriends, bowling alleys, big hair bands, petty crime and betrayal is an evocative, unforgettable kind of love story.

CHAPTER 1

His dark head still wet from the shower, Aaron Fenn ran through the buoyant haze of a deep blue autumn morning. In a town of inclines and subtle divisions, Millward Secondary stood in the north end amidst curving streets of split-level homes. The bell for first period sounded as Aaron turned the last corner before the school, books and binders swinging at his side. He hadn’t even had time to come up with a fresh excuse for why he was late again.

Outside the main entrance students took last drags on their cigarettes. The school served both the town and all of Castlereagh county and the lobby into which he stepped smelled in equal parts of Polo and pigshit. Aaron nodded to a girlfriend of his sister, then slipped into the boisterous stream of kids flowing along the main hallway.

The door to his first class, English with Miss Hirst, was already closed. Once inside, Aaron looked for Susan Higham’s hazel eyes and held them with his own. Too busy to call from the Bowladrome the night before, he now counted himself lucky to receive a quick smile from her.

His desk was beside a window through which passed a cool odour of mellow rot. It was from here that he watched the slow passage of the morning when Miss Hirst droned on too long. Aaron didn’t always agree there was so much to talk about in a book. You either enjoyed it, or not. There were so many to read you couldn’t spend overly long on just one.

"Mr. Fenn, I’m glad you could join us this morning," Miss Hirst said. She was a thin, older woman who was rumoured to have contracted malaria teaching in Africa.

Aaron didn’t answer. Susan, whose strawberry blonde head was two seats up and one over, had on a maroon top he liked, with wide, drooping sleeves, and the tight Jordache jeans all the girls wore. When she turned to him, finally, Aaron was ready with a grin of his own. His girl liked when he paid attention to her.

"All right," Miss Hirst said. "Today we’re going to hear the last Shakespeare seminars and then I’m going to hand out our next book for the weekend."

The students’ collective groan was interrupted by a staticky summons from the P.A. system in the corner. From where he sat Aaron couldn’t make out what the caller wanted. Miss Hirst pushed the lever and spoke into the microphone in the wall. "I’ll send him down right away."

He was on his feet before the teacher turned. She shook her head, and Aaron felt the eyes of the class, Susan’s included, on him. "Was that who I think it is?" he asked.

"Mr. Garnett would like to see you in his office."

"Must be a slow day down there," Aaron said. His classmates laughed and even Miss Hirst suppressed a grin. He left his binders on his desk, stuffed the Shakespeare into his back pocket and paused to lean over Susan. "I’ll see you at break."

"Anytime now, Aaron," Miss Hirst said. "I have a lot to get through today."

"I’ll be in the caf," Susan said. "I’m starving for a honey bun. So what did you do now?"

"I don’t know," Aaron said. Her perfume, a cloyingly sweet scent called Moondrops, enveloped him. "I can’t think what else can go wrong."

After he was gone Susan struggled to follow a paper on the roles of the Nurse and Friar Laurence. Aaron was right: there was little bad news he could still receive. His mother had died just over a year ago, and this past spring his father had remarried and moved Aaron’s younger sisters, Nancy and Emma, to the city suburbs. Susan’s friend Serena stood to announce that her seminar wasn’t ready yet, yes ma’am, she understood, ten per cent a day.

As class ended Miss Hirst handed around ragged paperback copies of The Great Gatsby. Susan took one for Aaron as well as herself and held the books to her nose, breathing in the yellowing pages and the oily smudges of a hundred other hands. She collected Aaron’s binders and waited for him until the bell rang for second period. When he still didn’t appear, she decided to stuff his things into her own locker before her next class. On her way there she saw Aaron walking quickly in the opposite direction, tears streaming from his blue-grey eyes.

She caught up to him as he opened his locker door. "Okay, what happened now?"

Aaron ripped at magazine pictures of the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan inside his locker, then kicked at it. The metallic boom echoed down the hallway. "Aaron, what happened?" Susan said.

He slammed the door again. "They’re kicking me out."

"They what?" She looked along the hallway, which was now almost empty. "What for? What did they say?"

"Garnett said I’ve been late too many times, that I hadn’t demonstrated sufficient interest or something like that."

"He actually said you’re out because you’ve been late a few times? They can’t fucking do that."

"That’s nice talk in the morning," Dean Higham said as he arrived at a locker near Aaron’s. Susan’s older brother was Aaron’s age and half a head taller than her. "What’s going on?"

Aaron wiped at his reddened eyes with the cuff of his denim jacket. "He didn’t actually kick me out. He’s being sneaky about it. I’m supposed to think about it and see him again next week."

"He can’t do this," Susan said. "Go talk to Mr. Agnew. He likes you."

"Let me guess." Dean had a tennis racquet under his arm. "Garnett?"

"Yeah. He said I was wasting my time in grade 13 if I wasn’t going to university. Then he asks where I was going to get the money for school and I said I didn’t know. I’ll get a loan or something. Isn’t that his job, to help me with that stuff?"

"If not him, then a guidance counselor," Dean said. "You should report him to the principal."

"What’s the point?" Aaron piled some school-issued textbooks at the bottom of the locker. "I also got a lecture on how crowded the school is this year."

"That’s not your fault," Susan said. "He’s totally bullshitting you. You don’t even apply to universities until December. You don’t have to decide anything now."

"Think about it," Aaron said. "It’s not like my father’s got any money."

"Ask for more hours at the bowling alley," Dean said.

"How many part-time jobs am I supposed to get?" Aaron stuffed his binders into a grey canvas knapsack and handed a copy of Cat’s Cradle to Susan. "Can you return this to the library?"

"You can do it tomorrow," Susan said, even as she accepted the book.

Aaron pulled a navy hooded sweatshirt from the locker, which was empty now save for the textbooks at the bottom. "I’m getting out of here," he said. "School’s out."

"What are you doing later?" Dean said.

"I’m hoping your sister comes by for awhile. Then I’ve got to work tonight."

"I’m getting the feeling you used me just to meet my sister."

"You just figuring that out now? Is that a new racket?"

"Slazenger." Dean held it out for inspection. "It’s the kind McEnroe uses."

"I’ll bet it is."

"Where are you going?" Susan asked.

"Home, back to bed." Aaron pulled Susan to him, breathing in the Moondrops as he turned them away from Dean for a kiss.

"C’mon," Dean said. "No displays of affection in the hallways, remember?"

"Are you coming over later?" Aaron said to Susan.

"I’ve got classes all day. Then field hockey practice, then C.G.I.T."

"You can make it over later. I’ll call you from work. See you, Dean."

"You want a lift somewhere?" Dean said. "I’m on a spare."

Aaron strolled backwards out the hallway. "Nah, I want to walk."

"Try and cool down," Dean shouted after him. "Garnett can’t do that, so this isn’t over yet."

Susan waited until Aaron turned a corner out of earshot. "Dean, what are we going to do?"

"I’ll talk to him. We can’t let him quit. But he’s right about not having any money. Where’s he going to get it?"

"He can get grants. He can get loans. I can’t fucking believe you just said that."