On the last day of their friendship, two weeks before graduation, Kaitlynn Morin is intercepted outside of chemistry class by Erica Neufeld, who spins her around from behind and yells, “Hey slut!” into her face.

The slur is a joke and doesn’t mean anything. Still, Kaitlynn glances around to make sure there are no teachers within earshot before replying, “Hey whore! What’s up?”

Erica is breathing heavily from excitement, or maybe from running, because—as Erica puts it—she’s built for comfort, not for speed. This, too, is a joke, although one Kaitlynn suspects of concealing something that isn’t funny.

“My sister’s in town,” Erica says.

There are two sisters, both older. Shana lives on the base in Moosejaw with her asshole husband and their new baby. Ashleigh lives in Calgary and is a stripper. There’s no point asking which sister Erica means because Kaitlynn already knows. She can tell from the gleam in Erica’s eyes, shining out from behind her signature cat’s eye glasses.

She keeps her voice purposefully non-committal, sensing where this might be headed. “Are you seeing her?”

“Ashleigh doesn’t have time before her shift,” Erica says. “But I was thinking we could go out and support her.”

“To the Doctor’s?”  

The Doctor’s isn’t a strip club per se, but every other Friday the owner puts up a temporary stage and pole and brings in dancers from the city. Kaitlynn has never been to the Doctor’s on one of these Fridays. Even though she’s curious about these evenings, she’s also wary. The fact that Ashleigh will be dancing makes her warier.

“Are girls even allowed in?”

“Of course! It’s against human rights to keep women out of clubs. We could sue them.”
        “Except we’re underage.”

“Except for that.”

“I don’t know,” Kaitlynn says. “It seems kind of incestuous, doesn’t it?”

Erica’s face turns so hot her freckles seem to glow. “My sister is an exotic dancer, not some kind of hooker. It’s an art form. Jesus, Kaitlynn. When did you turn into such a prude?”

Now blood rushes into Kaitlynn’s face. “Sorry. I’m being weird.”

“Also, she’s getting back on the bus at closing time, and I won’t get to see her if we don’t go. So let’s go, okay, slut?”

Before she and Erica struck up a friendship in grade seven, Ashleigh was Kaitlynn’s babysitter. There were other babysitters, of course, but Ashleigh was her favourite. After finishing their pizza—half-Hawaiian, half-pepperoni—Ashleigh would take Kaitlynn into the master bedroom, slide open the mirrored doors of her mother’s closet, and shut them up inside its dark interior, where they would make a nest among the purses and shoes. Then Ashleigh would tell her scary stories, like the one about Bloody Mary, who appeared if you said her name three times in the mirror, or the one about the girl whose hand was licked by a psychopath hiding under her bed and not, as the girl mistakenly believed, the family dog. By the end of the first story, Kaitlynn would be on Ashleigh’s lap, resting her head against her chest and breathing in her scent of CK One, menthol cigarettes, and wintergreen Lifesavers. The memory gives her an uncomfortable jolt, like touching an electric fence.

“I should probably study for finals.”

“Please?” Erica clasps her hands together, pretending to beg, even though she isn’t pretending. Because even with her fake ID, Erica won’t get in without Kaitlynn, who has the kind of looks that open doors.

“They don’t even get fully nude,” Erica says. “It’s basically burlesque.”

“Okay,” Kaitlynn says.

Erica’s wide, crimson face breaks into a grin. She stands on her tiptoes, plants a kiss on Kaitlynn’s cheek, and hurries off to catch her bus. “Don’t forget to wear something that makes you look older,” she calls over her shoulder.

“Sure. I’ll raid my mom’s closet.”

“Not like that, loser. Dress sexy.”

***

Erica’s parents kicked Ashleigh out six years earlier, before Ashleigh had finished high school. Kaitlynn assumes it had to do with drugs, or maybe sex, but she doesn’t know for sure. For a while, Erica talked a lot about running away to Calgary to live with Ashleigh, but it never seemed to be the right time for Ashleigh to take her in. She was always breaking up with a boyfriend or starting a new job. Eventually, Erica stopped mentioning it. Still, Kaitlynn knows how much her best friend misses her sister. She tells herself that this is why she has agreed to accompany Erica to the Doctor’s on a Friday, where they will watch Ashleigh take off her clothes.

Kaitlynn’s evenings at the Doctor’s have been a mixed bag. Mostly bad. The last time, before Christmas, she’d passed out in a toilet stall and Erica had abandoned her, angrily assuming she’d taken off with the guy in the Oiler’s jersey who’d bought her drinks all night. Kaitlynn remembers puking in the bouncer’s car on the way home and little else. Even though it’s something they now laugh about, they both nursed bruised feelings for weeks.

As a joke, Kaitlynn has layered a pair of dowdy capris and a sequined tunic from her mom’s closet over her real outfit, a sleeveless dress made from thin, stretchy cotton. No bra. When Kaitlynn finishes peeling out of the disguise, struggling in the sticky heat of the front seat of Erica’s dad’s car, Erica says, “Wow. You look amazing.” Her tone isn’t entirely approving. Kaitlynn and Erica started out at roughly the same attractiveness level back in grade seven, which is to say, plain, but over the years Kaitlynn has developed a lanky beauty while Erica has stayed short and plump. Tonight, Erica is wearing a fit-and-flare dress in a giraffe print, cowboy boots, and her omnipresent glasses, dressed to attend a hipster crafts fair, not to spend the evening in a strip club.

They park at the electronics store half a block away from the Doctor’s and sit on the hood of the car, passing a plastic water bottle filled with vodka cran back and forth. Because Erica is driving, Kaitlynn drinks the lion’s share. She also takes a few hits off a roach saved from the previous weekend. Soon warmth radiates outwards from her center, moving down her limbs in languorous waves. She admires her legs, long and slender, which she has stretched out in front of her. Back in grade seven, when Kaitlynn was teased for her size ten feet, she would have sold her soul to be pretty. And then, like a miracle, it happened, as if all her hours studying Brazilian and Dutch supermodels in the pages of Vogue had worked some transformative magic. She is still surprised when she passes a mirror. After the surprise comes gratitude. In the movies, it is the tall pretty girl who has the adventures. The short chubby girl is only ever the side kick.

They score a table near the stage. At this hour, the place is almost empty; just a few biker dudes playing pool in the back and a cluster of staff at the bar, relaxing before their shift. Kaitlynn thinks she recognizes the bouncer whose car she puked in and angles her chair away from him. Did they mess around? she wonders with a lurch in her stomach.

A waitress breaks off from the group to inform them that the taps are off for the evening, and they’ll have to buy bottles of beer for seven dollars each. Kaitlynn and Erica count out their money, not tipping the waitress when she returns with their drinks. As soon as she’s gone, they burst into giggles, as if it is funny to be broke.

“Shouldn’t you go find your sister?” Kaitlynn says, nursing her beer. She both wants and doesn’t want Erica to leave her alone at the table. If she’s alone, someone might talk to her. That could be interesting. Or maybe she will sit there like an idiot, the only female in the place not working.

“Nah, she’ll be on the bus getting ready,” Erica says. “We’ll see her after she performs.”

Kaitlynn remembers playing Dance Dance Revolution with Ashleigh and Erica in the Neufeld’s wood-paneled basement in middle school. Now Kaitlynn pictures Ashleigh writhing on the lap of one of the men playing pool, navigating around his beer belly and belt buckle. The vision both excites and appalls her.

The place fills up fast. A bundle of loose wires sparks in Kaitlynn’s gut, making her feel as if she might lift out of her chair. What if someone she knows sees her? Her dad’s friend Dan, for instance, who—according to Kaitlynn’s mom—has been ‘going off the rails’ since his divorce, or Pastor Fred from Youth Ministry, or the old guy who walks his arthritic beagle up and down their street every morning, smoking cigarettes and talking to himself? Across from her, Erica sits with her arms folded over her matronly chest, beaming, as if she is waiting for a different sort of show to begin: Disney on Ice, maybe, or an Avril Lavigne concert.

She will leave, Kaitlynn decides. But the idea of walking across the bar to the exit makes her giddy with anxiety. And then it’s too late, because bright light floods the stage, and she is caught within its penumbra.

“Good evening, gentlemen!” a voice booms, a cheesy combination of carnival barker and talk radio host. “Who’s ready to see some sexy girls?”

The room explodes. Kaitlynn glances around, taking in the squinted eyes and the mouths contorted in mid-whoop. Despite the cheering, the energy in the room is not cheerful.

Erica joins in the revelry, wolf-whistling and pounding her fist on the sticky surface of the table, making their empty beer bottles jump. Their choice of seating now strikes Kaitlynn as having been poorly thought out. They’ve hogged prime real estate near the stage, taking it away from the customers it was intended for. 

The first stripper, a tiny Asian woman named Lux, climbs onto the stage in a sheer black negligee and six-inch high clear platform heels that make her look as if she is levitating. She dances to an R&B song, twirling around the pole languidly. Before the song’s chorus even starts, she strips down to a thong and does a few split-legged moves on her back. Kaitlynn can see the scars underneath her rigid breasts. When the song ends, Lux snatches up a spray bottle and a cloth and wipes off the pole. Then she hops down, shrugs back into her negligee, and starts making the rounds, bending down low to speak to the men, giving them a good look at her cleavage, trying to sell private dances. But the men aren’t biting yet. Maybe they want a chance to size up the other girls, Kaitlynn thinks. Or maybe they aren’t drunk enough.

Out they come, one dancer after another. A brunette with full-sleeve tattoos who executes the most graceful back walkover Kaitlynn has ever seen. A ripped blonde in thigh-high shiny boots who spends most of her act on the pole, as if gravity does not concern her. A curvy red head in a leather harness get-up whose musical choice of Evanescence makes Kaitlynn think they could be friends. They are mesmerizing.

Yet she can’t stop her eyes from darting around the room, skimming it for signs of danger. She feels that at any moment one of the bikers will snap his cue in half and impale his opponent in the heart. Or that the accountant-type in the corner will shatter his beer bottle and drag its jagged edge across the waitress’ throat as she leans over his table to serve him. Is it the weed, making her paranoid?

Beside her, Erica is having the time of her life, ignorant of the dark looks her antics draw from the men nearby who sit hunched over their bottles of Bud. Just as she’s about to tell Erica to tone it down, the DJ comes over the mic and prompts, “Let’s give it up for Quinn!” and Erica hollers. At first Kaitlynn is confused—who is Quinn? —but then she remembers that strippers use stripper names. So far tonight there has been a Lux, a Raven, a Kimber, and a Tasha. And now a Quinn, who is Ashleigh.

The woman climbing onto the stage wears a tiny ass-grazing kilt and a white blouse that glows purple under the lights. This person, Quinn, is a stranger. Kaitlynn recognizes the song, though: icy sheets of synthesizer that shatter over a drum machine and bass like broken glass. It is Blue Monday by New Order. Ashleigh transmitted her love of 80’s synth pop to Erica and Kaitlynn around the time she taught them how to smoke, and now it is another thing that sets the two of them apart from their Toby Keith-loving contemporaries. But it is jarring to hear the song in this context.

On stage, Ashleigh tosses her hair and pouts seductively. She climbs up the pole and slides down it. She lies supine and scissors her legs above her. She crawls with her back arched and her ass thrust in the air. This Quinn bears no resemblance to the Ashleigh who cocooned herself in over-sized hoodies and picked at her nails until the black polish resembled Rorschach blots.

She comes over to the table when she’s finished. Erica gushes over her. “Oh my god, Ashleigh, you were amazing!”

“You have to call me Quinn tonight,” Ashleigh says. Her eyes are glassy beneath their heavy lashes as if she is on something. She says she isn’t allowed to sit with them unless they buy her a drink, but Kaitlynn and Erica don’t have any more money. So Ashleigh squats beside their table, balanced precariously on her platform heels. Her proximity makes Kaitlynn queasy: her reek of sweat, cigarettes, and perfume; her breasts, barely concealed beneath the thin shirt. Kaitlynn is seized by the impulse to reach out and touch them, then immediately repelled by the thought.

“Wow, you’ve grown up,” Ashleigh says, giving Kaitlynn the once over. “Do you remember when I used to tell you scary stories?”

Heat rises in Kaitlynn’s face. “Not really,” she lies.

The last time Ashleigh brought her into her mother’s closet, Kaitlynn wet herself, soaking both Ashleigh and the carpeted floor with urine. She’d been eight or nine at the time, too old for accidents. Ashleigh had cleaned up the mess and run a bath for them, rubbing Kaitlynn’s back and shoulders as she bawled in the tub. She’d thought about Ashleigh’s private parts for weeks afterwards: the pubic hair shaved into a tidy triangle, the pink nub of labia peeking out from between her legs like a baby gerbil.

The waitress returns, bearing a tray laden with shot glasses and cans of Red Bull. “The gentlemen at the next table want to know if you ladies would like to do Jägerbombs,” she says, giving ladies a little extra emphasis, as if she knows Kaitlynn and Erica are underage. Kaitlynn looks at the table the waitress gestures toward, grateful for the interruption. The men are probably in their early thirties, dressed in collared shirts and chinos. Some ineffable quality about them suggests that they are the kind of guys who call each other girls and say that things are gay. She has grown up around boys and men such as these.

“We’d love to,” Ashleigh says, speaking before Kaitlynn can gather her thoughts on the matter.

“I’m driving,” Erica says quickly. She’s still wearing her I’m game for everything! face, but cracks have appeared on its surface. Apparently, she is not game for this. “Can’t we just hang out for a few minutes?”

“Come on, Kiki,” Ashleigh says. “It’ll be fun!”

“But they’re rednecks,” Erica hisses.

Ashleigh glances over at the men, waves, and holds up a finger so they’ll wait. “They’re harmless. What do you say, Katie-Kat?”

Both Ashleigh and Erica look at Kaitlynn, according her the tie-breaking vote.

Erica’s pathetic mask of enjoyment has slipped off, revealing the face of a high school senior who just wanted to go home and put on her jammies. Kaitlynn knows the right thing to do is to help her out.

But Kaitlynn doesn’t want to help Erica out. She as much as told Erica that coming here was a bad idea, yet Erica insisted. Erica even instructed her to dress sexy so they could get past the doorman! Now Erica is doing what she always does: freaking out and insisting that they leave the second guys start paying attention to her. But what did Erica think was going to happen?

Besides, Kaitlynn wants to keep hanging out with Ashleigh.

“I’m down,” she says, avoiding eye contact with Erica.

The men drag chairs over and join them. Cory is thick set, with full, ruddy cheeks set off by a chinstrap beard. Ryan, or maybe Bryan, is skinny and has a nervous energy about him, possibly owing to the silver band he wears on his left ring finger. By the time Kaitlynn has swallowed back her first Jägerbomb, she’s learned that they work together at a flooring company—hardwood, tiles, carpet, and laminate—Cory in sales and Ryan, or Bryan, in accounts. Cory does most of the talking: “The thing is, with flooring, you get what you pay for. The hardwood you get from China is filled with all kinds of chemicals and shit that off-gas. Most people don’t know that.”

Kaitlynn is surprised to find herself feigning interest, doing it automatically as if she is expressing some hither-to-unknown genetic imperative. Cory has positioned himself between her and Ashleigh and he reaches out often to touch her, punctuating each stupid joke with a light touch on the knee. At some point his hand stays on her leg and he strokes it absently. A second round materializes. Ashleigh laughs and tosses her head, leaning in and talking first to Cory, then to Ryan, or Bryan. She lets both of them touch her hair, but when they try to touch other parts of her, she stops them. Kaitlynn is aware of the bouncer watching from his station near the bar. Erica refuses to drink anything and fixes her attention on the stage, keeping her back to them. At first her posture is rigid, but after a song or two she seems to come to some sort of internal decision and resumes her previous antics, cheering and dancing in her seat as if she were at a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

“What’s the deal with your friend?” Cory says, leaning in close so Kaitlynn can hear him over the thumping bass. “Are you two lesbians or something?” He has started rubbing her leg with more intention, pushing the thin cotton of her dress up a little as he does so.

“God, no!” Kaitlynn says, too quickly. She and Erica did, in fact, go through a phase in grade nine when they made out often, but whenever they did so, Erica made Kaitlynn pretend to be one of the Jonas brothers. Kaitlynn doesn’t remember who she imagined Erica to be during those sessions; the images are blurry in her mind.

“Lesbians are hot,” Cory says. “But I’d rather see you make out with her,” he jerks his head toward Ashleigh, “than her,” he jerks his head toward Erica. Kaitlynn laughs as if he is joking, even though he is not. All the while, Cory continues to stroke her thigh and she continues to let him because the environment makes her feel as if it would be unreasonable to ask him to stop. Yet, more than ever, she is filled with the sense that only a thin film of civility coats the proceedings, like skin over boiled milk.

Perhaps sensing Kaitlynn’s discomfort through the haze of whatever drugs she’s on, Ashleigh looks over at her, raises her eyebrows, and tilts her head in silent inquiry. Are you good? Kaitlynn nods— All good! — and Ashleigh winks. The wink, Kaitlynn knows, means that she is in on the joke. But she isn’t sure what the joke is.

Ryan, or Bryan, requests a lap dance, which Ashleigh gives him right there at the table, because the Doctor’s doesn’t have private rooms. Ashleigh tries to talk to him, kidding around and acting playful, but as soon as she straddles him, his face assumes a look of grim concentration and finally Ashleigh gives up with the chatter and just starts writhing in time to the music. Her shirt comes off again, then her skirt. Cory watches without taking his hand off Kaitlynn’s thigh. An uncomfortable heat uncoils in Kaitlynn’s lower belly, a heat she is glad is invisible. Erica keeps her attention focused on the stage, where the blond in the boots is swirling around the pole to a power ballad. When the song ends, Ashleigh dismounts and accepts a folded twenty that she shoves under the strap of her thong.

More shots arrive. Kaitlynn isn’t sure if she’s on her fourth or her fifth; all she knows is that she will have a vile hangover the next day. She watches Ashleigh climb onto Cory’s lap and repeat the exercise from before. During this interlude, Cory takes his hand from Kaitlynn’s leg and puts it on Ashleigh’s leg. He sticks his face between Ashleigh’s breasts. Kaitlynn stifles the urge to pull her off him.

When Ashleigh finishes, Cory claps his hands and says, “I have an idea. How about both of you girls give me a dance?” He is sitting back in his chair like a king, taking up space that the waitress must carefully maneuver around with her heavy tray of drinks.

Erica swivels and stands up so quickly that she knocks over her chair. This surprises Kaitlynn, who has forgotten about Erica. “No,” Erica says. “That’s my sister.” She looks at Kaitlynn as she says this, not Cory. Kaitlynn opens her mouth defensively, but nothing comes out.

“I didn’t ask you, sweetheart,” Cory says, stroking Kaitlynn’s thigh.

“I’m not your sweetheart, you fucking redneck.”

For some reason, Cory and Ryan, or Bryan, seem to find this funny and laugh.

“Cool your jets, everyone,” Ashleigh says. “Let’s have another drink and relax.” She leans toward Cory and unfastens a button on his shirt, working around long, impractical fingernails.

Everything seems blurrier and grimier than before; the various elements of the evening—the sticky table, the thumping bass, the naked flesh—mingling into a kind of unctuous slurry. Erica, however, is the fly in the ointment, standing there in her prim, ridiculous dress, gazing at Kaitlynn through arrow slits, radiating moral superiority. It is like being under a powerful heat lamp.

Kaitlynn rises unsteadily to her feet. “I know,” she says, “Why don’t I give Ashleigh a lap dance?”

Ashleigh’s mouth drops open into a little O. “It’s Quinn. And I don’t think that’s allowed.”

“Aw, come on,” Cory says, his face shining with approval. “We’ll pay you both.” He reaches out and puts his hand on Kaitlynn’s ass, rubs it in a languid circle.

“Are you joking?” Erica has drawn herself up, getting into Kaitlynn’s face. “Why are you acting like such a slut?”

Kaitlynn thinks of all the other times Erica has called her slut but not meant it. Or maybe she had.

“You said this was an ‘art’,” Kaitlynn says, waving her hand to take in the entire scene. “You said it was ‘basically burlesque’.”

Before Erica can respond, a shadow falls over them. It is the bouncer, the one whose car Kaitlynn puked in. His face is serious and sober, his black tee stretched tight across his beefy chest.

“Party’s over,” he says. “You girls have to go home.”

Cory leans forward, knocking over some empty cans of Red Bull. “How come? They’re not doing anything.”

The bouncer ignores him. “The other dancers aren’t happy. They say you ladies are being a distraction.”

“What did I do?” Erica’s face, already red, deepens to an absurd shade of purple.

“They think you’re making fun of them. And you,” he says to Kaitlynn, “have had too much to drink. Again. Time to go.”

Shame envelops Kaitlynn like a noxious fog. Suddenly, it is imperative for her to get home as quickly as possible so she can begin to blot out the entire evening. She turns to go, but Cory, now standing, grabs her shoulder and jerks her to stop.

“Hey, sweetheart, you forgot to give me your number.”

The bouncer gets between them, promising to toss Cory’s ass on the street if he touches her one more time, and now Kaitlynn is a scrap of meat being fought over by two dogs. Panic rises in her chest. She locks eyes with Ashleigh and suddenly she is eight years old, sitting in a puddle of her own urine. Ashleigh’s features ripple, and for a moment she is the teenager who sucked wintergreen Lifesavers and made up goofy voices so her stories wouldn’t be too scary. But then the smooth glassy surface returns.

“How about we party instead?” Ashleigh says, draping one arm over Cory, now seated, and the other over Ryan, or Bryan, or whatever the actual fuck his name was. “I’ll call you, Kiki,” she sings.

The bouncer steers Kaitlynn and Erica across the crowded floor and out into the parking lot. Kaitlynn feels the eyes of everyone in the bar watching her. She feels the imprint of Cory’s hand on her ass. She mumbles sorry to the bouncer before he returns inside, then stumbles the half block to the car. She is crying.

Erica deposits her at the top of her driveway and pulls away without saying goodnight. Kaitlynn watches the car’s taillights until they disappear. On Monday, things will not be okay between them.

There are no lights on in the house; no one has waited up for her. Kaitlynn sinks to the ground and presses her face into the bundle of her mother’s clothing, breathing in the phantom scent of wintergreen.