Well… Schroeder is awake. Ugh.

—

And now I’m soaking wet to boot. Great. Thanks a bunch, Schroeder!

—

Hahaha! Oh wow. Really wish my phone wasn’t on the fritz. Otherwise I would be filming the epic meltdown that Schroeder is having right now.

He woke up just after I stopped writing – maybe a half hour ago? He was just a little bit upset to discover that we’re adrift on a mysterious ocean. On one of Miller’s sofas, no less. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him scream quite that loudly before. He staggered up like he was drunk and I honestly thought he was going to fling himself head-first into the water. Simon and I grabbed his legs and tackled him into the end of the sofa. After a brief struggle I was the one who ended up falling in the drink. Amazing.

Drying off now. Stupid soggy underwear.

Schroeder is mostly just yelling at the moment. He looks deranged. Simon is trying to calm things down. You do that, Simon.

Now he’s asking me why I’m writing in this notebook. Schroeder, that is. I just told him I’m writing out his memoirs so that future generations of Widerstand kids will know what a tremendous failure he was as a leader.

Think there is gonna be a fight. Yeah, he looks pissed. Stand by!

—

Huh. False alarm. He must have swallowed a lot of seawater or something. He and Simon are huddled over at the other end of the sofa now, talking. Well, muttering. Boy, is it weird seeing the two of them conspiring together.

Schroeder keeps glaring at me like all of this is my fault somehow. As if! I didn’t ask you to follow us to Miller’s house, you jackass. As I recall you just showed up out of nowhere.

Huh. I kind of like this journal idea all of a sudden. I can write whatever I want about people and they will never see it. SCHROEDER IS AN EMOTIONAL HEADCASE AND A TERRIBLE REBEL LEADER AND I HATE HIS GUTS.

Simon, you’re cool. Fist bump.

I have the sofa fort all to myself now. Nice.

Actually, now that things have settled down for the moment I should take advantage of the peace to write some more. I think we were just getting to the good part too, when everything started going downhill. So by good I mean ‘bad’.

Oh boy. This should be fun. All right, where did I leave off. Hang on a sec.

Oh, right, okay. So that last part I wrote, that was how I first met Simon. I didn’t think too much of him at the time, other than that he was ridiculously polite and kind of a loser. But as the week went by I ended up spending more and more time with him. Go figure. We would meet at the old band shell in the park and go explore the town together. It was kind of fun. Simon stopped being so jumpy, though he kept on looking over his shoulder like he thought someone was following him.

He didn’t like to talk about himself either. Not even about the little stuff. In the days that followed not once did he breathe a word about the reason why he was hiding in that old warehouse. And I didn’t ask about it any further. What? I’m not a responsible adult. It wasn’t any of my business.

Still, I couldn’t help but be curious about him.

Let me tell you a quick little story. One afternoon we sat on the front step of my house eating popsicles. It was a really hot day out. Sharpe Street was sleepy and quiet. Nothing moved in the heat, save for a few robins pecking dried up worms off the sidewalk. Nom nom, worm jerky.

So I looked over at Simon and said, “Where do you live?”

He was struggling to break his popsicle in half. “Pardon?”

“Where do you live? Is your house near here?”

“Yeah. It’s on the top of the hill.”

“Uh huh? What’s it like?”

“It’s okay.”

“Okay? Is it a big house? Little house? Is it really run-down or disgusting or something? Are your parents hoarders.”

“No! It’s…”

I waited. Simon stared down at his popsicle. Then he said, “It’s an okay house.”

My curiosity would not be denied. “What about your parents? What are they like?”

“They’re okay too.”

“Your mom, though! Geez!” I whistled. “What’s the deal with her?”

“I don’t know. What’s the deal with yours?”

His tone was defensive. I guess he had noticed I live alone with my dad.

“Hey,” I said. “My mom is none of your business.”

And Simon said in a real quiet voice, “Well, my mother is none of yours.”

In the chilly silence that followed we sat and mutely studied our melting popsicles. Not a pair of happy campers. A handful of hollering kids whipped past us on the street on bicycles.

I’ll admit, I was a little steamed at Simon for bringing up the mother subject. Okay, maybe I had been the first one to mention it. But still. I don’t know what happened to my mom. All I know is that she’s gone. When I was really young she put a note on Dad’s desk, a note that he never talks about, and she got in her car and she left. I wish I knew where she went. Or why she did it. Dad doesn’t talk about that either. I remember he was upset when he found that note. But I don’t think whatever happened made the love vanish with her. She just had to leave.

I don’t remember much about her. I loved her when I was little, I’m sure. But that’s a fuzzy memory now. I may not like talking about her, but it’s not because I’m mad at her or anything like that. I just don’t like it when people get sorry for me when they hear my mother is gone, like I didn’t get a chance to grow up properly without her. I want to tell those people, hey, look, I love my dad. He may be a nerd, but he did a good job raising me on his own all these years and he rules. Just because I only grew up with one parent doesn’t mean I grew up with only half the love, geez.

Rawr. Anyway.

After a few minutes had passed I finally sighed.

“Look, I’m sorry I brought it up,” I said. “I won’t talk about any of that stuff again if you don’t want to bring it up. Okay?”

Simon struggled one more time to break his popsicle in half. Then he gave me a sidelong glance.

“Okay,” he said.

I held out my fist. “Awesome. We cool?”

He tentatively bumped it. “Yeah. We’re good.”

“Great. Now give me that thing,” I said, and he handed me his popsicle and I broke it for him, because at that point I was more annoyed that he couldn’t do it himself.

“Thanks.”

I held it out of his reach. “Why are you wearing your school uniform when we still have like two weeks left before school starts?”

He only shrugged one shoulder. So I said, “At least take off the tie! You have to be stifling in that get-up.”

With great reluctance he did so. I gave him back my grape-alicious hostage.

So many awkward Simon conversations back then. It was kind of hilarious and frustrating all at once. He didn’t talk much, though he seemed happy to follow me around. I was like, wow, this guy must be pretty hard up for friends. I think I just insulted myself there.

He seemed keen to get back to school. All I knew about Hogarth Hills was that it was a very old and very posh boarding school for rich kids. At first I thought Simon’s parents had to be loaded if they were sending him to live there. Then I wondered if they only wanted to get their son out of the house.

He sure loved that uniform, at any rate. And one day he dragged me into a dumpy little office store to buy school supplies. Now, don’t get me wrong. I like school. It’s cool. But school shopping on one of my swiftly dwindling holiday afternoons was not high up on my list of fun activities.

So I only bought a few pens and notebooks before strolling off to look at collector china plates with pictures of World War II bombers on them. Simon ended up with a bag full of pens and pencils and paper, both ruled and graph, and a dozen colour coordinated binders and notebooks with little sticky tabs on them for keeping subjects neatly ordered.

He spent like five minutes at the highlighter rack alone. Seriously. Five minutes. Browsing. He bought four blue ones.

“Blue impels your memory to retain information longer,” he said when we stood in line at the cash register.

“Wow, that just gave my life meaning, Simon.”

That’s Simon for you.

I gotta say though, my dad sure loved him.

Seriously. Dad thought Simon was the greatest. I think Simon being so polite really impressed him. Once I caught him putting on one of his good ties after I told him I had invited Simon over for dinner.

“We’re eating KFC, Dad,” I said as I watched him straighten it in the mirror. “Not lobster.”

Simon ate dinner at my place a lot. He followed me home pretty often, but on Fridays he got especially clingy. I usually just told him to come over for dinner every weekend. He did. Every Saturday. Every Sunday.

It was on a Sunday evening that my smitten father finally popped Simon the big question.

“Would you like some more coleslaw?” he said.

“No, thank you,” said Simon.

Dad passed it to him anyway. We sat around the kitchen table with a bucket of fried chicken in the middle.

“Morgan and I are heading over to her grandparents’ farmhouse next weekend, Simon,” said Dad. “How would you like to come with us?”

Simon froze, caught in the middle of picking out a chicken leg. “I’m sorry?”

I stopped slurping at my Coke and sat up warily. This hadn’t been discussed with me yet.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Every weekend before school starts Morgan and I head out to my mother’s old farmhouse,” said Dad. He waved a french fry. “I thought that maybe this year you’d like to join us. What do you think, Simon?”

I think a look of panic flickered across his face.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“You’re more than welcome to come along. I bet Morgan would appreciate the company too. Usually she’s all on her own when we go to the farmhouse.”

I shot Dad a look. I never appreciate company. I like being all on my own.

“Dad…” I said warningly.

“I realize it’s a bit last minute, but if you haven’t got any plans you’re welcome to join us,” said Dad, oblivious. “I’ll be at a hockey game on Saturday night, so you kids would have the whole house to yourselves. Bring along a movie and some chips and you’ll be set. How does that sound?”

A night alone with Simon. Oh, pinch me.

“I couldn’t intrude,” said Simon.

“Nonsense, we’d be happy to have you along. Wouldn’t we, Morgan?”

My fist tightened around my Coke. Now, don’t get me wrong. I liked Simon well enough. But we hadn’t exactly reached the point in our friendship where chilling on a couch and casually enjoying each others’ company for hours on end was a good time either.

I set my teeth. “Sure.”

Dad gleefully rubbed his hands together.

“We’ll pick you up at your house at about, what, ten in the morning?” he said. “Would that work for you, Simon?”

The strangest look came over Simon’s face just then. His brow furrowed and his eyes cut to the side. He bit the edge of his lip and fiddled with his chicken leg.

“Actually, sir,” he said slowly. “I think… it’d be easier if I just met you here.”

“Really? Well, I suppose that’s fine. Be here at ten and we’ll be at the farmhouse by eleven. We can have an early lunch and then you’re free to roam about the farm all day. Bring some old clothes and a pair of shoes you don’t mind getting dirty. I think my parents might even have satellite television by now. What do you think?”

“Fantastic,” I grunted.

Simon tried to smile. It came out like a grimace.

So now Simon was coming with us to the farmhouse this weekend. Amazing. Thanks, Dad.

The rest of the week passed quietly enough. Simon and I spent most of it hanging around town, drinking slushies from the corner store and eating chips. Simon took me to see the golf course down by the lake. We wandered down to the marina and hucked rocks off the pier. Went swimming in the bitterly cold lake. The entire time neither one of us breathed a word about the upcoming trip to the farmhouse.

And then next Saturday morning rolled around.

—

Ugh, I’m getting really hungry here. Isn’t it time to eat something yet?

—

Uh oh. Schroeder and I just gathered our knapsacks together and did a quick inventory check. Aside from a handful of granola bars, some juice boxes, and five bottles of water, one of which is Schroeder’s big 1.5 litre bottle, we have no food, NO food. We’re gonna die!

Get it together, Morgan. Don’t freak out. We’ve got enough here to hold out for a little while. Maybe we can catch a fish or something. Yeah! Simon can politely ask them to jump onto our raft. I think I saw that in a Sesame Street episode once.

Schroeder is taking this a lot more calmly than I would have expected. Maybe he did drink seawater. Simon is back in a fugue state. He can be a big help sometimes.

Now Schroeder is going into survivalist mode. He’s lined up our sad handful of granola bars along with the juice and water and what is he doing. Oh. Rations. He’s rationing everything out. He says we can last a week with what we’ve got – longer if it rains and we collect the rainwater.

A week on a raft with these two. Fucking fantastic.