Chapter 4: I Forget, Our Love Was So Hopeful
She walked back in a daze, clutching the camera. She was halfway back to the bus when she remembered that the camera had still been running when she saw them. Jamie stopped on the side of the dark road and switched the camera on, cueing up to the moment when she had tipped the camera over the edge of the loft and caught them there in the glowing patch of moonlight.
On the playback, she could hear a murmur of voices but no words, other than Sara's bitter what's the point. She couldn't hear but everything was in focus when Sara ran to Tegan, kissed her intensely, and they both toppled over into the hay. The clip ended and Jamie stood there, eyes on the screen, stunned again. After a moment, she shook her head. What are you doing? she asked herself, and pressed delete. The file moved to the trash can and Jamie continued her quick walk back to the bus, the sky already changing from black to deep blue.
. . . . . .
She dreamed about climbing a broken, rotting ladder, much higher than any ladder in the real world. She climbed miles and miles into the dark sky before the thing crumbled and she fell and fell and fell and woke, with a start, rubbing the sore spot on her palm where the splinter had gone in. It was bright; she opened her eyes, noted the red, puffy spot on her hand. What time was it? She looked at the screen of her phone. It was nearly noon. From further up the bus, she heard the clink of a spoon in a cup. She swung her legs over and got out of her bunk, and there was Sara, in the dining area. Their eyes met.
"Morning," Sara said to her groggily.
"Barely," Jamie replied, uneasy, trying to smile, hoping her eyes didn't reflect everything she'd seen the night before. Sara looked like she'd slept in the deserted field beyond the farmhouse; her hair unkempt, her eyes puffy and dark.
"Have you seen Tegan?" Sara asked suddenly, blowing on her hot coffee a little.
Yes, but not as much of her as you have, Jamie thought, involuntarily. "Uh, not since last night," she said, vaguely. "Didn't she come back?" Jamie asked, when what she thought was didn't she come back after you fucked her and left her in the hayloft with her pants down?
Jamie saw a brief frown flicker across Sara's face, a barely perceptible shake of the head. Jamie looked down at her hand, picking absently at the end of the splinter, and winced.
"Is something wrong with your hand?" Sara asked with a yawn, smoothing her messy hair back from her forehead.
"Oh. . ." Jamie started, aware then that she'd been fiddling with the sore spot on her palm again. "I have a splinter, I think. . ."
"From what?" Sara asked. Jamie's mind went blank for a moment. Why is it, she thought, that the more you need a convincing lie, the less you're able to produce one?
"Not sure. It's all red and puffy, though," she said, deflecting, turning her palm out to show Sara.
"Ouch. You should get Tegan to help you with that. She's good with her hands," Sara said, drinking her coffee. Jamie bit her lip.
She was halfway through her pineapple yogurt, sitting at the booth with Sara, when Tegan came in. The icy air blew in with her.
"Hey," she greeted them, arms folded across her chest, shivering.
"Where've you been?" Sara asked.
"Just out for a walk," Tegan said casually. "Mmmmm, pineapple," Tegan unbuttoned her jacket and sat next to Jamie in the booth.
"Jamie has a splinter in her hand," Sara said, getting up to refill her coffee cup. Jamie's face flushed as Tegan casually took hold of her wrist and pulled Jamie's hand up to her face. She hoped that neither of them could see the warmth that spread through her at Tegan's touch. All of the drama between Tegan and Sara themselves had almost made her forget about how she had felt about Tegan in the first place.
Almost.
"Oh, yeah, it's all inflamed or something," she said. "I can get it. . ." Tegan got up, opening a drawer next to the fridge and rummaging around.
"Did you even come back last night?" Sara asked. "I didn't hear you."
"Yeah," Tegan said lightly, extracting a small sewing kit from the drawer and returning to her seat next to Jamie.
"When?" Sara asked, leaning against the wall, hands wrapped around her hot coffee cup. Tegan took a needle out of the sewing kit, glancing up quickly at Sara.
"Late. Why do you care?" she asked, her voice forced and chipper. She took hold of Jamie's hand again, pulled it over in front of her and turned it, palm up. Jamie felt ridiculous but held her breath as Tegan pressed her fingers down, flat, and prodded the swollen red area gently with the tip of the needle.
"I don't," Sara said, fake-indifferent, with a shrug.
Why do they talk like this in front of me? Don't they realize how obvious they are? Jamie thought, and then wondered herself whether it would be obvious to her if she hadn't seen what she had seen.
"Well, good, then," Tegan said. "Don't worry, I'm a doctor," she said wryly to Jamie, who snorted and looked away as Tegan carefully plucked at the place where the splinter had pierced her skin. Tegan's hands were still a little cold from the outdoors, but Jamie was warm again, like she'd been in the hayloft. Well, not quite that warm.
Tegan was squeezing her fingers, stretching her palm flat so that the skin would be taut and easier to work with, and Jamie was asking herself how it was possible that splinter-removal surgery could be an erotic experience when Tegan gave a victorious cry.
"Aha! Got it," she said, holding the needle in front of her eyes with a surprisingly large wooden splinter stuck to its tip.
"Wow," Jamie said in surprise, hoping her face wasn't as red as it felt. "You really are good with your hands. . ."
Jamie's lip was experiencing a lot of biting lately. She nearly kicked herself under the table. Tegan snickered.
"That's what she said," Sara said lightly, finishing her coffee. Jamie, relieved at the joke and amused by the truth of it, pressed against the spot on her hand that had been penetrated by Tegan's needle, still feeling Tegan's cool fingers on hers.
"Thanks," she said.
"No problem. I love prying things out of people." Jamie, eyes fixed on her yogurt again, couldn't miss the pointed look that passed between the twins. Is this what they did then, she wondered, did they tease, harass, and badger each other all day and on stage and then have angst-ridden encounters at night? Or, maybe, she had hallucinated the whole past week and was either still at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, asleep on the sticky pavement, or her heart had been removed by the organ thieves and she was on some kind of machine which was keeping her alive. And her brain was playing tricks on her. Or maybe her brain had been stolen and replaced with someone else's brain, the brain of someone who was capable of imagining such things.
. . . . . .
The next few weeks of touring and shows passed, and things became sort of normal for Jamie. That is, as normal as things could be under the circumstances. Every evening she was recording shows, recording footage backstage. Every night, she was sleeping under Tegan.
There were more moments, too, that derailed Jamie's attempts to tell herself that she'd dreamt it all: moments half-seen, interrupted. One night, after a show, Jamie had gone out behind the venue, carrying one last case to add to a trailer, when she'd come upon them, standing together in the trailer. Jamie's eyes and brain read the scene faster than she could respond. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought what she saw was the start of a struggle; Tegan took hold of the collar of Sara's jacket, clenching it, pulling her closer; Sara grasped her sister's wrist in one hand, her shoulder in the other. Was she pushing her away? Pulling her closer? Both? This time, it was not only Tegan who was flushed.
"Oh, shit," Jamie muttered when Sara turned to her, startled. Jamie stepped back, embarrassed. "Sorry –"
Sara jumped down from the trailer, hurried past Jamie and dashed back into the venue without a word. Tegan looked at Jamie quickly and then looked away even quicker.
"Fuck," she breathed, shiny eyes down as she passed Jamie, more slowly than Sara had. "Sorry. . ." she said, pausing awkwardly for a moment by Jamie, not looking up. "We. . ."
Jamie held her breath. You don't have to say it. Don't say it.
"We're just . . having some issues, lately," Tegan said, her voice trembling slightly. Jamie's hands clenched against the urge to touch Tegan, to hug her, her downcast face, her drooping shoulders. The moment passed, and Tegan too jumped down from the truck and hurried off, leaving Jamie standing in the trailer, with the case in her hand, no longer sure what she'd come for.
The shows were mostly going well. There was more tension between them than she remembered seeing when she was simply a fan, but then she wondered if it had always been there. Their jokes and banter contained many more double-entendres, but she wondered too if they always had. On many occasions, Tegan would glance at her just before, or just after, saying something she knew she shouldn't say. It was something many fans had commented on when Jamie posted her videos on YouTube. Oh my God! Tegan looked right at you! It had happened time and time again with Jamie there, up front, like a buoy in the sea of faces. Now it was becoming more pronounced, more pointed.
She stood at the front of the crowd at one such show. The crowd was particularly vocal. Once or twice Sara told them to settle down; two or three times, Tegan told them to let it all out. Jamie wondered which option was best.
That night, they played "Give Chase" and when Tegan wailed at the end, her eyes closed tightly, veins standing out on her neck, Jamie recollected seeing Tegan's face look very much like that under very different circumstances, and her knees threatened to buckle beneath her. All the fans around me, if they only knew. What on earth would they think? Jamie still couldn't clearly identify what, exactly, she thought. Moments later, Tegan surprised Jamie by introducing her to the crowd as the newest member of their crew.
"Thank you," she said, fiddling with her guitar. "You guys are being so great tonight so I want to share something special with you," Tegan went on, and Jamie caught Sara glancing quickly over at Tegan as she tuned her Gretsch. "You may already know her. . . she's stood up at the front of most of the shows we've done in the past few years. . ." People were hooting. Jamie kept the camera on Tegan as, from the stage, Tegan looked down at her. "She's followed us to like thirty-seven different countries and finally Sara and I got worried that she would like lose her job or starve to death or get kicked out of school because she spends all her money and time recording our shows and putting up these awesome videos for you to watch and. . ." Jamie heard someone shout her name. Her face was burning and she was happy to have something to concentrate on. She kept her eyes on the screen of the camera, and in that screen, Tegan's eyes looked back at her. "So the only thing we could do was offer her a job. It was like the only alternative. . . So everyone, please give your warmest welcome to Jamie, our biggest fan, with the longest hair, who is now our videographer—"
People shouted. People would shout if Tegan went up there and belched, for sure, but some people shouted Jaaaiiiimeeeeee and more still shouted Wojooooo! A few fanbians behind her clutched her shoulders and whooped. Jamie somehow remained conscious as the band cheered, clapped for her.
"This next one's for her," Sara added, and they launched into "The Con."
Jamie laughed, briefly, at the irony of the song choice. I listened in, yes I'm guilty of this, you should know this. . . her short laugh would need to be edited out of the footage later. She couldn't believe any of it.
. . . . . .
It was after that show that Jamie, hiding in a backstage washroom to avoid two of her former concert-going buddies who asked too many questions, learned that people really do crouch in toilet stalls, draw their feet up and hold their breath while other people talk about them. She sat there, heart pounding, when the conversation started, tense and low, in front of the sink.
"And you need to be careful what you say in front of Jamie," Sara said, setting her bag on the counter and digging through it.
"I'm not worried about Jamie," Tegan said, and Jamie heard the faucet come on.
"She's a fan," Sara said. "It's nothing against her at all but she's a fan and she's friends with fans and she has a camera with her like. . . all the time. . ." There was silence from Tegan for a moment. Jamie pressed her palms against the walls of the bathroom stall, trying to quiet her heart through force of will alone. It was too late for her to flush and come out and pretend not to have heard anything. She just had to wait and hope nobody tried the door.
"Yeah," Tegan conceded heavily.
"It's just. . . be a little careful," Sara said, and Tegan snorted.
"That's funny," she said, sarcastically.
"What's so funny about it?" Sara asked.
"You're saying I have to be careful, and you're the one whose hands were—"
"Tegan—"
"On the bus, in the barn—"
"Shut up, Tegan,"
"In the hotel while Jamie was asleep—"
"Tegan—"
"Or you hope she was—"
"Stop it!" Sara snapped. "Just fucking stop it."
"Why? Why should I stop it? Why won't you talk to me about it?"
Jamie nervously peeked through the gap between the door and the wall of the stall, and saw them, eyeing each other in the mirror, tense. Reflections was never like this.
"What is there to say?" Sara retorted, exasperated.
Tegan's eyes never left the reflection of her sister's. She shook her head.
"Six times," Tegan said, the volume and pitch of her voice dropping. "Six times, Sara."
"Fuck you, Tegan," Sara hissed.
"Make that seven, then," Tegan said, her mouth twisting into a humourless grin.
Sara stormed out of the washroom and Jamie could see Tegan's face reflected in the cracked bathroom mirror, cast down. She gripped the edge of the sink and took a deep breath. So did Jamie.