Free Grave Concern by Judith Millar

he’d replied. What did they get up to on any given Friday night? At least two of the above, grinned Nicholas, at some third party’s house.
    Kate hesitated, then came out with it: Did they ever talk about girls? That’s when it first twigged, and Nicholas’s pain began. Disjointed bits emerged, some meeting at the curling rink, Kate’s ensuing crush. Kate was forthright, as if Nicholas had no stake in the thing. Was she blind, or just blindly in love with his friend? Nicholas didn’t want to find out. As they parted at the bottom of his street, Kate asked breezily whether J.P. had ever mentioned her specifically.
    Now it was Nicholas’s turn to hesitate.

    Kate had no idea what J.P. was really like. This, at least, was what Nicholas told himself. Sure, he could see the attraction; J.P. was good looking, no one would dispute that. At his best, hilariously funny. Smart, maybe too smart for his own good. But there was the other side: crude, full of nebulous grudges.
    Fairly sure he would say no, Nicholas asked J.P. along one Saturday on a family expedition. The Enderbys were going to tow their sailing dinghy to Big River, at the mouth of the Pine. Slow and lazily rolling in its wide valley bed, the Big was often mistaken by area visitors for a lake. It was this lake-like quality that made it so good for sailing. To Nicholas’s surprise and faint consternation, J.P. said he would come.
    The morning of the day they were to go, Nicholas fretted that J.P.’s edgy manner might bomb with his mom and dad. He needn’t have. All the way to Big River in the car, J.P. kept everyone, including Nicholas’s little sister Philippa, in stitches with amusing tales of the Marcotte family cat, punctuated with witty asides on passing sights that breezed just over ten-year-old Pip’s head.
    Dr. and Mrs. Enderby took the boat out first. The minute they’d cast off, J.P. turned to Nicholas and offered him some weed. Nicholas groaned. This was exactly the kind of impropriety he’d been dreading.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” J.P. said. “They’re gone. Not paying attention. Lighten up, man.”
    â€œNot here, J.P.” Nicholas whispered, though there was little need. “Not with parents and” — he glanced over at Pip in her hippie-flowered shorts, wading near shore — “ her around. Where’s your head at?”
    J.P. seemed hurt by this, more hurt than seemed appropriate to Nick. J.P. smoked about half the joint, then doused it and put it back in the breast pocket of his lumber jacket. He said little as they sat on the rocks staring over the water, and Nicholas got up and walked up and down the beach, glancing at his friend now and then. As he came back to sit down, Nicholas noticed a yellowish discolouration just beside J.P.’s eye. Neither obvious nor drastic. Hardly there. Or was it the light? Nick thought it looked like an old bruise, but couldn’t be sure. Should he ask? But just then, his parents, tearing along on a reach, called out they were coming in.
    â€œYou boys come and fend off!”
    â€œAll set to go out?” Dr. Enderby called as they approached.
    â€œSure are!” J.P. said and rushed forward, getting in Nicholas’s way.
    â€œGrab the stay! Grab the stay!” yelled Nicholas. Too late. The boat hit the dock with a thump as the Enderbys rounded up under partial sail. Thrown forward by the force, they uttered “Oh!” and “Oof!” but gamely climbed out without a word. Still, Nicholas knew his father would vent once J.P. was gone. Tough shit. His dad should have slackened off both sails, not just the one.
    He directed J.P. up front. “Take that sheet and haul in or slack off when I say. You can lock it in that cleat there.”
    J.P. stuck out his palms and wiggled his mouth and eyebrows like Charlie Chaplin, clearly not having understood a word Nicholas said. Nicholas laughed and picked his way