It was 2001 and I'd just started listening to Slayer. A lot of people didn't like 'God Hates Us All," but I found it accessable and wonderful. I'd spent a lot of time not listening to metal, most of my life actually. It felt like a good gateway. Shan was a much better skateboarder than I was. We talked often, through schoolbetween classes and later when we got home using the instant messaging program ICQ. She said the key to a smooth ride was clean bearings, and I had no idea what she was talking about.

One Thursday night in July I was sitting in my a pair of boxers and a sleeveless t-shirt. I'd written something offensive on the shirt with a sharpie and thought it made my arms look cool, like spools of wire capable of something. She asked me what was up, and I said nothing. That's cool, she wrote back, and started talking about her day and I read half heartedly, because honestly, how different could our days be from one another, we went to the same school. Maybe something about another girl trying to be bitchy to her, or a period or something. At this point I still thought there was a difference between 'problems' and 'girl problems' and had absolutely no interest in understanding the latter.

Shan asked what I was doing on the weekend, and I responded, halfheartedly yet again while simultaneously typing a message in a chat in the other window, trying to persuade a girl in Toledo I met on a board to send me pictures of her tits, and frantically so because it felt like I was getting somewhere. Nothing, I said.

I think you and I should go out somewhere, she typed back to me. What do you need to do this weekend, I asked, and she said she didn't know so I didn't respond right away. C'mon, I wrote in the other window, adding a smiley face, which was returned. Because of that I knew she was going to send them. She'd done it before, basically without me even asking, but now it was somehow harder, because I knew what I wanted but I didn't know how to ask. We could go look for some records, Shan said from her window, I think only because she knew I would be into that, or pretend to be into that, and I said yeah, okay, that my Dad was taking my brother out of town this weekend so I could put off cleaning the pool, and in the other window I typed a smiley and waited for a response. The girl in the chat room had been disconnected, so I replied to Shan and wrote yeah, that'd be cool. She typed a smiley, and said she had to eat dinner. Her mom was making something Korean. Shan's Dad was Korean. The girl in the chatroom reconnected and apologized for leaving for a second. It's okay, I wrote. Can you hold up a sign with my name on it when you take the picture, I typed, so I know that you're really who you say you are.

I was in Grade 10 and Shan was in Grade 11, although she was almost two years older than me. To say that we were inseparable would be a lie. We existed in the same orbit—a core group of friends brought together by a mutual distaste for nothing in particular, metal with aggressive drumming, skateboards and underage drinking. We spent a great deal of our time forging notes for one another, because as much as we didn't want to go to class we were also still living in the shadows of our parents. The threat of being grounded was ever present, god forbid we miss drinking our two stolen beers in some basement, in some house was a little too much to risk. Despite our best intentions, we were imitations of delinquency, weekend warriors with little golden hearts buried under inexperince, stupidity and sneers we were still perfecting. Aside from shoplifting and getting chased away from the retirement home by the cops where we'd skate, I realize now we were never much to anyone.

I met Shan downtown at King station after having taken the GO in from Meadowvale, headphones obnoxiously blasting the entire time, interval training for tinnitus. We travelled North on foot for nearly an hour stopping in at the various independent record stops we'd looked up on the Internet, buying nothing, saying almost as much. Faced with the realization you have nothing to say to someone, you either babble on incoherrantly or batten down entirely, and both of us opted for the second. I kicked a can recklessly into the street. I wish we could, you know, just get a beer, I said. Yeah, she said. Look at all these bars, I said, pointing to a cafe with a neon sign, cursive writing. I don't know how people who can legally drink all the time aren't just drunk every day, there are so many bars around, I said, letting the words fall out of my mouth. I guess they need to drive though, I answered myself. A Dodge ripped through the intersection in front of us, crushing the can flat, flecks of soda spraying into the air in a mist so fine I could taste the cloud of cream soda in the back of my throat.

When we got back to the station, it was one of the old ones with the turnstyles that look like teeth. I had lost my token through the hole in my shorts pocket, and to show I was pissed I said Fuck loudly and an old woman glared at me, which I took as an act of aggression. It's okay, Shan said, there's no guy in the booth. She placed her hands on my shoulders, pushed me into the entrance and pressed up against me from behind and when it happened it made me feel small. She never looked bigger than me but somehow she was, tracing my body with her frame, incomprehensibly warm and soft in all the places mine wasn't, and even though she was to my back I wondered legitmately for a second I was going to die, right then and there from an exploding heart. Maybe I was smaller. I was definitely skinnier. As she leaned up against me and the breath slid out of her, I smelled spearmint and cherry and something else, and it pushed onto my ear and slid down the front of my shirt, and as she pushed the metal in front of me, my arms hung weighty and useless through some unbearable nameless confine. Metal ground metal, and too quickly we were through the other side, and as she stepped away, I felt the space tear between us, the shocking cold splinter through from where our thighs had just touched, the faint brush of her arms against my ribs. Thanks, I said, and she laughed and said Imagine if we were both fat, and I did.

Monday night I sat on the computer, shirtless and tired, typing a science lab. That morning we had played with litmus paper and I'd stolen a good ammout of it without even a moment's consideration as to the application. Shan messaged me. I had a good time the other day she wrote, and I told her I did too, and she asked me if I would like to go out. I said, Saturday again, and she said no, not go out go out, but go-out. Like going out with each other. I swallowed, and for some reason put a shirt on. I don't know Shan, I typed, I don't want to jeopardize our friendship, we have a whole lot of fun now and I don't want to wreck that, and she answered immediately. That's bullshit, she typed, and it was. I responded Woah, no, I'm serious, really, and I continued to say all sorts of words like value, respect, fun, a million things I'd heard people say out of context, hoping I could cobble them into an excuse I didn't know why I was making. I don't want us to look back and regret this you know, I typed. She waited a long time to respond and while I waited I breathed deliberately. When she responded, she had written I don't think at this point either of us understands what regret is. I clicked on the window to respond and she signed off before I could.

Two and a half weeks later I was typing a history report on the computer, angrily trying to bash away the fact that I had just been told I'd be spending the summer with my Mom in Pensacola, when my Dad called Jeremy, the phone and I picked it up. Hey man, Jason said on the other end, and I said Hey. I totally fucked Shan he said, and I said Oh, and he said Yeah man and a moment later, he said I guess I got my yellow belt now you know and laughed. What, I asked, and he said you know, and I said Oh, right, because she's Korean, and he laughed and said Well I guess half a belt. Are you guys together, I asked, and he said Fuck, I don't know, she just called me and then came over, we'll probably talk about it later, I honestly don't even know what happened. I guess that's why I called, I don't even really know what to do. He said this insincerely. I didn't know what to tell him, so I said Hang in there. He said some other things and I said some stuff back to him, and when the call was over he hung up first. Once I had set the phone back in the cradle I stood up. I walked over to the window, stared out into the molten air, cooling green and blue over the back yard, buried in crickets' cacaphony, the peeling paint of the back deck begining to pick up the first pristine flecks of primeval moonlight and I placed my hands on the windowsill, inhaled deeply through the dusty screen, and felt absolutely nothing.

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