Pain & Wastings by Carrie Mac Read Free Book Online Page A

spaced out.”
    I swallow the lump of panic in my throat. It’s just a dingy old café. I glance up at the neon sign. I used to love seeing it when I was really little, after my mom and I came back from visiting her brother in Wetaskiwin. The Greyhound would drive right past it on the way to the station. Sometimes they’d let us off on this corner, if the driver was nice, but usually he’d make us ride all the way to the station, and then we’d have to walk back. If it was open, we’d go in for hot chocolate and a plate of fries.
    I shove aside the past and boldly push open the door and let Kelly go in ahead of me. The same Chinese lady greets us with a frown. I know it’s her. Older, but still with the fingernails and freaky penciled eyebrows. She doesn’t look at me, just shuffles past us, dropping off menus on her way.
    â€œI love the pancakes here,” Kelly’s saying. I try to focus on her voice. The woman comes back and fills our mugs with lukewarm coffee.
    â€œYou order food too,” she barks. “Not just coffee.”
    We both order the pancakes, which seems to satisfy her. She brings the bill with the food and then takes her seat at the front booth, opens her Chinese paper and lights a cigarette.

Chapter Fourteen
    After breakfast we walk along Hastings toward the movie theater at the far edge of the Downtown Eastside.
    â€œYou don’t like pancakes?” Kelly says, sauntering past two drug dealers right up in each other’s face, screaming at the top of their lungs, fists clenched. When I was a little kid living down here, that stuff didn’t bother me either, but now it makes me nervous. “You hardly touched them.”
    â€œI wasn’t as hungry as I thought,” I mutter. Instinctively I put my hand around Kelly’s waistand pull her a little closer as a knot of junkies slither by, all jerky motions and full of twitch.
    â€œHey.” She removes my hand. “I can take care of myself, thanks.”
    So I guess this isn’t a date.
    â€œSure.” I stick my hands in my pockets to avoid touching her again. “But if something happens, who do you think has to defend your honor?”
    â€œMy honor?” She fixes me with a sideways look. “My
honor
?”
    â€œI’m no psychic...” I look her up and down, raising my eyebrows at her slip of a sundress and knee-high boots with the heels that make her almost as tall as me, and she is a short little bit of a girl when she’s barefoot. “But even I can predict someone’s going to want a piece of you down here, whether they have to pay for it or not.”
    â€œReally. Huh.” Kelly plants her hands on her hips and stops in her tracks. “Look, Ethan, you might’ve grown up in this hellhole, but I’ve spent my fair share of time down here too. I know a thing or two about surviving, so don’t go thinking you’re going to be my knight inshining armor, because, frankly, I doubt you could ‘defend my honor’ without getting yourself killed.”
    I don’t care about her slagging me off, not at all. All I want to know is how she knows I used to live down here.
    â€œWho told you that?”
    â€œHarvir. So what?” She starts walking again. “You think you’ve got this whole aloof ‘I’m so tortured you can’t touch me with a ten-foot pole’ thing going on, but you’re no more special or screwed up than the rest of us inmates, Ethan.”
    â€œWhat’d he say about it? What’d Harvir tell you?”
    She stops again, turning with a flourish that spins her dress out as if she was a model turning at the end of the runway. “Are you even listening to me?”
    â€œWhat’d Harvir say?”
    Other than the art therapist, Harvir is the only one I’ve told the whole story to. He promised he wouldn’t tell anyone,
ever
. Sure, other people know because the art therapist