The Journey Prize Stories 24 by Various Page B

sometimes come to the stands andsay hello, looking back and forth between her and Lewin, who had his long, flaking face pressed against Micah’s shoulder. And on the trampoline in the evening, Lewin ran his fingers through her hair, messing it up, and she ran hers through his, making it neater. Sometimes he put his hands around her neck and squeezed.
    “I could break your neck,” he said one night, and she nodded. Then he said, “Do you really pray? Like really really?” and she nodded again. His hand was loose on her neck, as if he’d forgotten it was there.
    The Grade 12 summer retreat was the last thing they ever did with the John Huss youth group. While the others canoed or waterskied, Lewin and Micah flopped luxuriously on worn armchairs, watching
From Here to Eternity
. They talked about Montgomery Clift and how no one had appreciated him and how he drank himself to death. They would have appreciated him. They couldn’t room together, but they met in the dining hall after everyone else was asleep. The first night, Micah had to wait in the dark, sitting on the stage with the huge antlers and dead fireplace behind her head like a dark sun. The next night, Lewin got there first and she saw him from the hallway, one eye painted over in the gloom and one shining wetly, waiting.
    They sat beside each other, facing forward. His eyes were always watering, his eyelids inflamed from the pills, along with the rest of his face. If he had dark eyes it wouldn’t have looked as bad. He accused her of being late, of not wanting to come. Lewin smacked his palm against the pitted wood of the stage and the sound was like a gunshot. They both jumped. Lewin’smother had moved Uncle Don and his daughter into the house. Lewin put his head down between his knees and Micah stroked the back of his head. The hair was soft, slightly flyaway, charged with static.
    On the last day of the retreat the youth minister told them to pray with a friend, to join hands. Micah sat crossed-legged looking at her own hands, limp in her lap. Lewin came across the floor, which had an orange carpet with a red swirl so bright it felt like someone snapping their fingers in Micah’s face. Lewin took her hands out of her lap and sat in front of her, his face passive, dark spots on his lips where he’d bitten them.
    They’d only been apart overnight, but she’d forgotten how tall he was. She closed her eyes. He breathed out and it was ragged, uneven. He said, “God, let us stay friends.” Micah opened her eyes and looked at him. She felt like her throat was made of wood and someone was knocking from the inside. After a minute or two, Lewin dropped her hands and stood up.
    She found him later, standing in shallow water down near the dock. The neatly folded cuffs of his shorts were wet.
    “What kind of car do you think we’ll get when we’re married?” she asked. She stood back from him. “There are so many good ones.”
    He said, “Remember that wine, at the funeral?” In the sunlight, his skin didn’t look as bad. “I heard the caterer yelling at a girl about it. About the missing bottle. The one we took.”
    Micah nodded. She didn’t say, “What do you mean ‘we’?”
    Lewin asked, “Do you think we would have won Bible Challenge if we hadn’t quit?” And then, “When you pray, is it inside you or outside or both?”
    Lewin turned away again, looking out over the water. Micah slipped off her sandals and walked in beside him, studying the back of his head, the face that wasn’t there. She could feel her own head float upward, her neck popping, and she wanted to leap forward with an answer for him.

MARTIN WEST

MY DAUGHTER OF THE DEAD REEDS
    H is daughter was dead, he told me, drowned in the river. Claimed by the taupe clay and fouled cattle in the cattle wire of the Red Deer River basin, she would never surface. Come Monday morning her classroom desk would be empty and a pair of ballet shoes would hang unclaimed in the cupboard and no