Autumn Harris of Melbourne St.

Autumn Harris lived at #53 Melbourne, four doors down from our house. She was the only other girl my age on the street and probably the best friend I ever had. I envied her because she was it. She knew it. I knew it. And Billy Dorset knew it.

I probably would never have become friends with Autumn if little Elaine Grosner, a pig-tailed girl with brown hair and freckles, had not moved to Nova Scotia this summer. Elaine’s daddy worked for a community college and was transferred leaving the house next door awaiting new owners. And there was Autumn. She strolled by the house one day that summer as I was out playing dollies on the front lawn. When I looked up there she was smiling her crooked smile. She traipsed across the lawn, just as easy as you please, and yanked a bottle from my dolly’s mouth, stuffing a cigarette in its place. She tossed laughter and an invitation to join her over her shoulder.

“C’mon sweet baby Jane,” she said as she sauntered down the sidewalk. I fell madly in love.

I caught up with Autumn in Telford Park. I joined her on the swings where she sat smoking as she kicked at the dirt with the toe of her running shoe. I didn’t have the nerve to tell her I didn’t smoke, but I somehow managed to blurt out Billy’s name when she asked if I liked boys.

That summer, I pledged my allegiance to Autumn by kissing Graeme McKinnon, right on the lips too, because she said she wanted to see him turn red. I picked Mrs. Pinkerton’s stinky marigolds and threw handfuls of them on her verandah because Autumn dared me to. And I stole cigarettes from Kulik’s general store. I remember the first time I nicked a pack of smokes.

Mister, he looked at me long and hard when I entered the store for the third time one afternoon. He knew a sneaky kid when he seen one, but I just marched up to the counter and pushed my blue-jean jacket back with my arms, just like Autumn showed me, and asked for candy in the counter below then I grabbed a pack of small, regular DuMaurier off the display rack and tucked them in my waistband of my shorts. His suspicion swept over me, but I smiled all nice-like. He got fidgety when his eyes glanced up from those things sitting quietly in my training bra and met mine staring back at him. He cleared his throat and quickly made change. I strolled out of the store brimming in confidence because Mister had handed me back the two-dollar bill I gave him, plus a five. I couldn’t believe I had pulled it off, but I kept my cool well past Pharmacy, past Woolworth’s and burst in to a nervous fit of giggles when I reached Autumn and her boyfriend waiting for me in the doorway of Hank’s Pool Hall.

Autumn grabbed the smokes and tucked them into the back pocket of buddy’s Wranglers. I guess I must have been gawking at her hand lingering on his thigh because when I looked up he was grinning at me. I must have looked as guilty as Mister at the corner store, because he let out a low growl of laughter and I felt the heat in my face in the hot August sun.

It wasn’t long after that day I saw Billy and Autumn necking in the field near the park. Billy had his hand up Autumn’s shirt and she was squirming around. I stood and watched. Billy was mine. I started toward them thinking she was squirming because she wanted to get away from Billy, she wanted him to stop what he was doing, but then I saw her face, the way she smiled up at him as she peeled off her T-shirt. I saw Billy’s face twist and pucker, like it hurt him to look at her. I raced all the way home right to my bedroom and hugged my pillow.

Mother knocked on my bedroom door and I dried my eyes and pretending to be studying for math. I figured she had come about the cigarettes. I had stolen a pack and not turned it over to Autumn as she demanded and tucked it in my laundry basket. Today was Tuesday, laundry day. But ma just sat down at the foot of my bed and stared at the yellow print curtains – our mother-daughter project for Home Ec and just blurted it out.

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Later that summer I overheard ma telling my father she was worried that I didn’t cry.

“She just went back to reading her book,” she told Pa as she rattled the dinner dishes in the sink.

“She just looked up at me,” Ma continued, “and said, ‘thank you for sharing that with me.’”

I would have told her, if she’d asked. I would have told her that I was not sad. When school started the next week I didn’t walk around like a zombie like Graeme McKinnon, or bawl my eyes out in the washroom like some of the younger girls. I did not think that Autumn, as Mr. Brighton proclaimed in math class, had been destined for a teenager’s death, whatever that meant. I did not walk around pretending like it never happened like Billy Dorset did. And really, I did not miss her all that much.

But I remember, now, how I felt that day mom gently held out her hand for mine when she told me that Autumn died in a motorcycle accident. I felt as if something cold had been poured over my heart.