When I was younger, my favourite book was an old, ratty, used-bookstore copy of a “Choose Your Own Adventure.” The Curse of the Golden Cane was an endless well for my imagination. Whenever I was bored with life or frustrated at my small world, I’d flip open the pages and find choices galore. Nothing was set in stone, no endings were fixed. All that lay ahead was twists and turns, to be decided by me and only me. Well, unless we were reading together. “We” being me and my best friend Cami. She was almost as attached to that book as I was. We’d go on our adventures together, except that we, without fail, would choose different paths at every crossroads. So, we would have to flip back and forth, following my path and hers to see where we’d end up.
From the various “Choose Your Own Adventure” books we explored during those voracious pre-teen reading years, our paths invariably diverged, and most often concluded in the same sorts of end. My choices seemed always to lead me in the quickest way to the end. I choose the safe routes, the easy escapes, and my story was always over way before Cami’s. She would be stuck in a pit underneath the pyramids while I was already curled up in front of a fire back at the lodge. Then I’d just have to wait, while Cami finished her adventure. Her path took twists and turns, was usually dangerous, and often included an narrow escape from the hands of various forms of monsters or beasts.
I remember one time, when I was particularly jealous of Cami’s daring adventures, I made a conscious decision to choose the dangerous choices. But do you know what happened? My choice always ended in an untimely ending, which greatly cut the adventure short. I never could figure it out, how she made her reckless choices, had her adventures and still had everything in the end. It was one of those mysteries about Cami and one of the reasons she was my best friend ever.
***
Perhaps I should start by introducing myself. I’m Bryce M. Scott, only daughter of Jane and Prescott Scott. (My grandparents thought Prescott Scott sounded like an important name. I think it’s just silly). I am the only daughter, sadly not the only child. My two older brothers and quite good at reminding me that I will never have peace and solitude until I leave for college. Even then, there’s no guarantee, Jamie and Adrian could find me anywhere, it they wanted to torture me badly enough!
You might have noticed from our names – our parents liked the idea of unisex names. Something about growing up in the seventies, I suppose, and duly unfortunate for us! Not a month goes by that someone calls me Adrian or Jamie. It gets old.
Other than a poor choice of names, my parents have been okay to me, I guess. I mean, does anyone actually admit to liking their parents? But, compared to Cami, I have it easy. But that’s another story for another time. We’re not talking about Cami, this part is about me, remember!
So, back to my beginnings. Born in Florida, Mississippi. Sound familiar? Well, the only thing of any importance to ever come out of my town was Samuel Clemens (that’s Mark Twain to you). He was way before my time, so I don’t think that even counts as enough to keep Florida on the map. Other than the one little ratty museum dedicated to his birthplace, the town has a grand total of 8 buildings on Main St. If you want to do anything, you have to drive 45 minutes on the interstate. Even then, the most you get is a Wal-Mart and McDonalds. I didn’t exactly grow up in a hotbed of culture and entertainment.
Still, what my surroundings lack, I made up for inside. I never got tired of dreaming my way up the interstate and away into magical worlds unknown. I don’t know where I wanted to end up, but it was definitely North. So when my parents told me we were moving to Canada, I figured it had to be an improvement – it was certainly more Northern.
At the tender age of 11, my parents took me and my two evil brothers to the wilds of Canada. Well, as wild as southern Ontario gets. To us, snow storms and freezing temperatures were enough to make us feel like we had moved to the Arctic. My mother’s eccentricity in choosing children’s names perhaps came from her occupation: a sociology professor. The move to Guelph was a step up the career ladder for her, from community college to a real university. My father followed wholeheartedly. I embraced the change more than my brothers, likely because I was younger. My friends in Mississippi were largely disposable, mostly because none of them had the imagination to share my interior life with me. Guelph, Ontario was just as good as a place to daydream, who needed friends!
My opinion changed shortly after that first fateful day of school. To this day, I don’t think there is a worse feeling in the world than the first day of school at a new school. A Junior High no less – it was like walking into the den of lions. I was bound to be eaten alive.
The only thing that saved my social existence was Cami. Cami M. Hudsky, to be precise. She’s never told me what it was that made her decide to befriend me. Maybe it was just because she liked my hair (bright red). Whatever it was, during,my first period, she passed me a note. It was just after the painfully forced self-introduction prompted by that oblivious teacher Mr. Johnson. I had sat down quickly, trying to hide the bright pink flush spreading from my neck up to my cheeks. I felt the paper flutter over my shoulder into my lap and gingerly unfolded it. Expecting a jab about the colour of my hair or the shade of my face, I was floored to read:
“To the new girl: Hello. Do you want to sit with me at lunch? Cami”
She signed her name with a little heart for the dot over the i. I was always envious of that i, I wanted an i in my name, just so I could put a heart above it. Cami was like that, the kind of girl that everyone wanted to be like. Cool, but in a different sort of way. Cami was cool because she was confident in doing things her own way. Others could follow or not, Cami heard her own drummer. That was probably where Cami and I most differed. I was the exact opposite, always following the crowd and needing reassurance. So it was a no-brainer to accept her invitation for lunch.
And just like that, I was in. The doors of Sir. John A. McDonald Junior High had opened to me, I could come and go without fear. Although not part of that elite inner-circle of cool, I had been accepted by one of the popular ones, and nothing I could have done on my own would have earned such a spot.
That day at lunch, I was a nervous wreck. Cami had a regular table by the window, with a steady stream of students to keep her company. She seemed to know everyone, and certainly everyone knew her. As I tried to discreetly eat my sloppy joe (an impossibility, by the way) she would keep introducing me, just after I had taken a huge bit.
“Oh, Bryce, you should meet Trish. She’s the editor of the newspaper this year. She’s really great at writing. Trish, this is Bryce, she just moved her from Mississippi.”
Cami’s graceful introduction left me mumbling through my beef. Most of the people I meet that day probably thought I was an inarticulate cow, but that didn’t matter. Cami had invited me into her circle, and from that day forward, I stayed there.
***
That first semester at a new school is still tough, no matter whose circle you happen to be in. I was learning the ropes, which classrooms smelled, where one would go if they wanted to hid from hall monitors, and how to work the different teachers (an important skill at any school). Through it all, I started to feel like my inclination to look North for hope might have been well placed. Life in Guelph was a definite improvement over Florida, Mississippi. The Sir John A. (I quickly learned to drop the MacDonald from the name) was at least 4 times as big as my old school. The far as the cities go, I went from a few buildings on Main St., to a real life mall. What more could a pre-teen ask for?
The getting settled period in my new town and new school was largely on my own. The move did not bring my family any closer together. My parents still spent long days at work, my brothers quickly found groups of friends to participate in questionable activities with. I felt like the only member of the family who actually cared if we did family things at all. However, there was never any chance to voice my concerns, every day after school, I came home to a house all to myself.
For the first few months, this was a real problem, because the house was always a mess and there was never any food. My parents were not entirely without parental concern, so shortly after, they discussed it and realized that our family was ‘climbing the ranks’ so to speak. To them, I guess, that mean we had enough disposable income to hire a housekeeper. So from about November on, coming home was better. Still, not the same as having a family to come home to, but at least our housekeeper Melissa had all the rooms clean and some prepared meals in the fridge, marked like “cow: 3” or “sheep: 4”. I could never figure out why she did that, her English was perfect, she knew that it would be better to say beef or lamb. I think maybe she was a secret vegetarian and trying to convert us!
There were days when I dreading going home to such a quiet, cold house. Our house in Mississippi had many flaws, but it was never cold and tomblike! I could really freak myself out by walking along those marble floors – too many “choose your own adventures” about Egyptian mummies buried alive in large, house like tombs. On Mondays and Wednesdays my homeroom class always ended early, and I would rush home to try to catch Melissa before she left. If I slid in at 5 minutes to 4 she would just be packing up her purse, so I could corner her. We’d never have much to talk about, mostly we ended up gossiping about neighbours. I think Melissa felt sorry for me, or she was at least astute enough to pick up on my absolute desperation. So she’d politely answer my questions. Once 4 pm came, though, she was off to her family and her home, and I was once again all alone.
The first time I went to Cami’s house I was shocked. It was the exact polar opposite our own home. My house was too big for its own good, sparsely furnished and as I mentioned, COLD. So, it was just before Christmas. We had known each other since September, and this was the first time she had invited me to her house. We went to my place all the time, at least once or twice a week to do our homework or watch TV. Every time I suggested we go to her place she would make some weak excuse about it being messy, or not enough room, or her mom having friends over. To finally get invited, I really had to push. I gave her a great guilt-trip speech about how good friends we were and how I had let her see into my life but she was keeping hers closed. So I finally got to see her home, which I could only describe as a rabbit hole!
It was tiny and messy, just as she had foretold. But it was also the safest, warmest little place I had ever seen. Whereas all the floors in my house were cold marble, hers were all a long, shaggy, olive green carpet. All of the furniture my parents had picked out for our ‘now we’ve made it’ house is a black wicker, with nary a piece of padding in sight. The Hudsky family home had something soft covering every square inch, the couches looked like they would swallow a small child whole, and there were floppy pillows piled on the chairs and by the side of the couch, should anyone want to curl up on the carpet and pretend they had fallen back into the seventies! Most of the pillows ended up not being used by people, but by furry animals that Cami’s mom certainly treated like people.
My mom had always been suspicious of the concept of keeping animals in the house as pets. Not because she thought they were messy or anything, more that it was an unnecessary caging of intrinsically free beings, or some such thing. The only pet she let me keep was a rat. Not my first choice, but it was better than having no one to talk to. So I keep my little rat, Kaiser Wilhelm III in his aquarium and occasionally gave him a tiny pat. Any fingers coming down into his home panic poor Wilhelm, so I usually only get nibbled fingers for my concern.
So the relationship I have with Wilhelm is almost exactly opposite of the Hudsky family’s cats. Muppet, Raffles, and Oreo. They were really part of the family. Cami’s cat was Oreo, a tall, graceful black cat, with the requisite white markings on her nose, neck, and forepaws. Oreo was a one-owner kind of cat, and jumped under the bed on that first visit of mine. The other two were better, and after we’d taken off our shoes (an Ontario thing, maybe…we never did that in Mississippi) we were absorbed into the couch and topped with two FAT fur balls.
The Hudsky families furry living room, all soft and warm and cozy, was exactly what I had imagined a true family room to be like.
“Cami, I can’t believe you didn’t want me to come over. Your house is great – I love it!”
“Whatever, Bryce, this place is an old, dirty mess compared to your house. There is junk everywhere” Cami whined, as she pulled a rather pointy-looking toy out from under her leg. “There’re cats everywhere, and kids everywhere and I never have anywhere to go be by myself.”
If on cue, her two younger sisters came tearing through the living room, Kimberly in the lead, holding what seemed to be the prized Barbie doll, with Diana trailing after, screaming:
“It’s mine, give her BACK!”
“See what I mean?” Cami nodded to the path taken by the two children, “they are always whining. Or trying to get me to play with them. Or stealing my stuff. It never ends.”
I understood a little bit of what she meant. I mean the house was a few steps beyond comfortably cluttered into the realm of danger-zone. And the girls did seem a little high-pitched and high- maintenance. Still, if given a choice…
“Still Cami, if you had the choice, I think you’d choose a warm and involved family-filled house over my empty tomb. Maybe not just for a day, but once you’d live there long enough you’d find out that it gets pretty lonely.”
Cami did her usually fluttery hands around her ponytail and sighed. “Maybe Bryce. But I just wish we could chance houses so I have a chance to find out what being alone feels like. I think my dream someday is to have a house all to myself, with each room just for me, to do with what I please, to decorate how I please. I could always go out to find people to hang out with, but I’d have a huge space all to myself.”
“That sounds like a nightmare to me.” I had to talk some sense into this girl! “What would you do with a house all to yourself? Wouldn’t you want to fill it with kids and games and cats and friends and parties?”
Cami rolled her eyes. “Parties? Oh, Yes! But everything else I can live without.”
“We are SOOO different.”
Cami slugged my arm.
“Awwwh!” I whined, rubbing the spot. She must be getting a lot of practice in at karate class.
“Yah, we’re different, but we’re way more the same. I mean that whole peanut butter thing? We’re basically soul mates!”
The peanut butter thing was a discovery we had made earlier that week. Turns out, from our random conversations, that we both had created our own dessert and they were exactly the same. First you take a big bowl and smear peanut butter all over the bottom, right up to the rim. Then you sprinkle / stick little chocolate chips all over. Stick it in the microwave until everything is hot and gooey. Now, the best part! Add a huge scoop of ice cream to the middle. Cami had been taught the recipe by her Aunt. I had learned it from necessity. Before Mom and Dad hired Melissa to get groceries, the shelves were a little bare. I was tired of having no chocolate sauce for my ice cream, so I looked in the cupboard and started to get inventive. Of course, we both came to the same wonderful concoction, and when we discovered that, we made two big bowls of “Bryce & Cami Delight” to celebrate.
“Heh, you feel like some Bryce and Cami delight?” I asked Cami, trying to take her mind off of the messy room and the whining girls.
“Sure.” She looked relieved to have the subject changed. “You stay put, I’ll make them.”
She hopped up to go to the kitchen. “Not like I have a choice!” I called after her. Muppet, who was sprawled across my lap, sleepily opened one eye to give me a look that said something like:
“Are you talking about me? How rude.”
We had our ice cream and went to her room to find our books and start studying. Cami’s sisters occasionally ran down the hallway screaming about something, but otherwise we were undisturbed.
We hadn’t seen any sign of Cami’s parents, and it was almost 8:30. I wasn’t sure if this was one of the underlying reasons Cami hadn’t wanted me to come to her house. I was pretty sure Cami didn’t want me to ask about them but I just had to know. “So are your parents going to be home soon?”
Cami shot me a look that was a clear “I don’t want to talk about this” sign.
“Oh, no, they both have to work late tonight.”
“Oh.” I muttered, taking her hint and turning back to my text book. Of course, I was super curious about what her parents were really doing, or even what they’re jobs were. Cami was entirely tight-lipped when it came to her parents.
But being a good friend, I dropped it. We just enjoyed our evening of “Bryce and Cami Delight” and tolerated our studying for our history test. As much as I wondered about Cami’s life, our friendship was still new enough that I didn’t want to risk it by journeying into forbidden conversation territory.
Our friendship stayed in that tentative first-steps stage for almost a year. We spent most of our time together at school or at my house, and I never brought up the forbidden subjects. But that all changed that summer before we started high school.
About Us: We're just two friends, off to choose our own adventures!Carole Nickle
Name: Carole
Current Home: Various Locales, You have to choose a country, so..., South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands
Details: I like English, teaching, writing, website design, geeky computer programs and chocolate.
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