I’m a great example of a stereotypical rez kid. I grew up here, and I’m not smart enough to leave. My parents were alcoholics- mom’s dead and dad brings home a young junkie barely older than I am. She’s a city native- from New York. Her family… they made it out. Her grandmother lived here, and they’re staying here over the summer to deal with her house and shit. I remember walking past her gran’s place. She took my breath out of my lungs- jogging down the gravel driveway in a blue bikini. She must’ve sussed out I was going to the lake from my swim trunks and the bikini top I was wearing. I was about to say no, but then my dumbass friend, Kai, said yes before I could refuse.

She chatted incessantly the whole walk there, and I could see Kai’s eyes bouncing from her chest to her ass to her face again. She was beautiful; thick in a way no other girl here really was. She didn’t go in the creek, just sat on a rock on the shore and tanned. She laughed at Kai’s jokes, getting flirty. She secured invitations to bonfires and whatnot like that, barging her lashes and tossing her hair. Kai filled around with her and whatnot, but it was me who walked her home when she’d had too much. She caught him with another girl and broke it off.

She shook it off quickly. “Like water off a duck’s back, right?” She had said as I walked her home again. I didn’t say anything. She kissed me when we got to her door. When she pulled away and I licked my lips, they tasted off that expensive, sheer, sticky gloss she always wears. This time it was Cherry, but I think she’s got every flavour. I kept licking my lips when I walked back home myself, like that would make it make anymore sense. We haven’t talked about it, and I don’t want to talk about it.

She showed up at the Powwow on the fair grounds, and I was surprised. She came for fancy shawl dancing and lemonade, I came for the relay race. I’m borrowing a neighbour’s horse to do it, one that took pity on my mom and helped her out when my dad was on a bender. The horse’s name is Spooky- he’s a dappled grey mustang. I watch her dance, then she watches my race. My team wins, and I have the childish urge to ask if she saw me, if I was good, did she see me smile. I tamp it down.

We end up underneath the bleachers, sharing a cigarette. Her lipgloss is already on the goddamn thing, as while as on my fork from when she tried my food and my plastic cup of lemonade. It’s like she’s kissed my brain, and all the memories of her are tapped in that sticky, shiny gloss- refusing to let me have any peace. She kisses things, I’ve noticed. Whether it’s a dog, a horse, a baby, her little sister, her parents. She’s affectionate, clumsy… all sorts of things that remind me of a foal when I look at her.

She pulls out a vape pen, and takes a hit. She resales a blueberry-scented cloud, and I glance at her. “It’s weed,” she murmurs as she holds it out to me. I shake my head and take a drag on my cigarette, inspecting it when I ash it. I smoke the menthol ones, for an added element of punishment. She can’t handle the taste, I guess. We kiss again, this time longer and more tender than the last. Her bangles make a soft noise as they clink together when her hand comes up to touch my face, then my hair. I let her let my hair, because I want to know what it feels like.