I had switched from a public elementary school to an all-girls private school in the fifth grade, and from day one, I didn’t fit in. I had short hair, and I loved skateboarding and playingOne day after class, I was hanging out outside the school with one of these friends and a boy who attended a nearby school.The grad lounge was a hallowed room on the top floor of the school that was reserved for the twelfth graders. I’d never been inside—even thinking about it felt forbidden.
The rumour grew and evolved, exaggerated more and more in each retelling, and I was powerless to control it. My friend’s older sisters started asking them about it. I was terrified that my own siblings would catch wind of it. Even people I knew from other schools heard it. An older friend from my neighborhood pulled me aside one day and said, “Some of my friends are saying you’re a slut. I told them it wasn’t true, but I just wanted you to know what people are saying.
The winter before high school ended, a childhood friend told me that I should apply for a summer job at her camp. The camp was heavily focused on canoe-tripping, with even the youngest campers heading into the backcountry and some of the older kids going on six-week Arctic river trips. I took more trips that summer. I learned how to route plan, honed my navigation skills and got really good at perfectly browning pita pizzas over campfire embers. I made friends and spent days off with them, swimming in lakes, having forest parties and lying in the sun on lakeside docks, my shins covered in scratches and bruises from traversing seldom-used portages. I revelled in these new, strong, adventurous friends who viewed me as one of them—until, eventually, I was.
I pulled my life jacket over a fleece I’d borrowed from my dad and swung my legs into the stern of my canoe. I was 21 and exactly where I wanted to be. Erin and I soon knew everything about the girls: their siblings’ names, the things that had sucked about grade nine last year, their insecurities and camp crushes. We knew a lot of it from them opening up to us on long paddling days and the rest from 15-year-olds’ blissful ignorance of the fact that voices carry remarkably well across water and through tents.
She’d advised us to get an extra early start that day and do the portage in the morning, making sure we planned our day so that, no matter what, we didn’t have to camp there. Day eight was flagged in our minds. As we headed into the thick forest, I calmed myself by picturing us climbing into our canoes on the other side. With the canoe on my shoulders, I began to hear theof raindrops echoing as they landed on the hull. When we broke out of the woods at the end of the portage, the sky was dark grey, and violent raindrops obscured the lake’s surface.