Free Somewhere In-Between by Donna Milner Page A

someone else. You don’t have to wait.”
    He said no, he would wait and drive me home, which of course was exactly what I wanted him to say. Then, just in case I got too smug, he leaned against the wall and added with a grin, “I promised your mom.”
    Someone shoved a can of beer into my hand. I passed it to Levi and went to find the washroom. When I returned he was still leaning against the wall watching the partiers who were getting louder and louder. He handed me the full can of beer and I took a few gulps, then teasingly shoved it back, daring him. This time he took it, lifted it to his lips and took a long swallow. When he passed back the can his dark eyes held mine as if to say, ‘There, are you happy?’
    Suddenly the laughing and singing, all the forced excitement around us, was nothing but noise. I grabbed Levi’s arm. “Let’s go,” I said. “We can wait in the driveway. My parents can’t be much longer. Or I could try the basement and patio doors.”
    Walking out to Levi’s car, he raised an eyebrow but said nothing about the unfinished beer I brought with me. Outside the rain-slick street had tuned frosty in the frigid night air. Levi drove cautiously down Cottonwood Drive, and then picked up speed out on the highway. Just before we reached the turnoff to our street, the rose fell out of my hair. I unlocked my seatbelt to grab for it and the beer can slipped from my grasp, splashing foam across Levi’s lap. He jerked back, hitting the brake. Suddenly the motion of the tires changed, becoming weightless, soundless, as if sliding across air. “Shit!” Levi swore. “Black ice!” Now this is where it starts to get fuzzy. As the world spun out of control, I lifted my head up to peer over the dashboard just as a lamppost headed toward me at an odd angle. Then the white light, white noise, with no sense of time or space.
    The next thing I knew Levi was carrying me away from his crumpled car, screaming at someone who was jumping out of their vehicle to call an ambulance. He laid me down on the side of the road and placed his jacket under my head. Kneeling over me, his hair and the crow pendant, hanging in my face, his tears falling onto my cheeks, he lifted me gently and held me in his arms. Crazily I was watching all this from above, and all I could think about was how upset my mom was going to be. I kept trying to tell Levi to let her know that I was okay, but my lips wouldn’t move. And then my father was there, pushing Levi away from me. As Dad hugged me to his chest, the truth hit us both at the same moment. Just as an even crazier thought occurred to me—who will play Rizzo’s part in the play tomorrow night?—two of the RCMP members grabbed Levi by the elbows. His arms were forced behind his back. When the handcuffs clicked on and they led him to the patrol car, I knew he wasn’t going to make his morning practice.

9
    Out on the lake, sunlight shatters into a million tiny fragments across the wind-rippled surface. Julie stands at the kitchen sink rinsing the nugget potatoes and staring out of the widow. The undisturbed view, the absence of anything other than what Mother Nature placed there eons ago, is calming. Something she needs right now.
    The cold water washes over her hands and swirls down the drain with the garden soil while she contemplates her reaction to Virgil Blue. Remorse over her outburst is already seeping into the sliver of space left for any feelings other than ungenerous grief. Was Ian right? Was her reaction so strong because Virgil, like Levi Johnny, was Native?
    All her life, her life before the accident, Julie had believed that the term
bigot
applied to others, not to her. When she was a child, whenever she and Jessie misbehaved, her father would tease them, saying, “Guess we’ll have to give you back to the Indians.” Back then, her dad’s playful threats had conjured up images of