Illustration by Jenn Woodall

It was day four of a week-long heat wave. The only place they could stand to be near each other was in the shower, where they took turns under the stream of cold water and tried to remember winter. Maggie had checked the bathroom lighting a week ago, standing in Sam’s tub with the curtain closed—it was almost dim enough for her to forget what she didn’t like about her body. Still, she unscrewed one of the two lightbulbs when Sam stepped out of the apartment to pay the delivery guy. She tampered with it a minute, then screwed it back in to check it was broken. To Sam she said, “I think one of the lightbulbs in the bathroom is burnt out.” She was relieved when he told her he didn’t have any extras.

Maggie was only 17, but she felt she matched Sam in maturity. Most of the guys she liked to date were older, most of them had hemorrhoids, or a cat. Sam had neither. Sam had his own place, albeit a cramped bachelor suite, and Maggie slept there often. She slept there the first three nights of the heat wave, even though her parents’ house had air conditioning—that was how much she liked Sam.

Older guys were good because they didn’t mind that she was on the thicker side. Big-boned, her mother used to say, and Maggie would scrunch up her nose but stay silent. Maggie liked the way Sam would rest his hand on her hip when they cuddled in front of the TV, or sit his wrists on the shelf of her ass when she reached up to kiss him goodbye. She didn’t have to think too much around Sam, and she liked that, too—to relax her brain, in some ways, even though she still felt nervous around him on occasion, momentarily awake to the years between them and the places where understanding slipped through the cracks.

After a cold shower on night four, Maggie suggested they escape to the movies. Sam brought along a joint he’d rolled. Maggie had never gone to the movies stoned, had never wanted to. She breathed shallowly inside his hot-boxed truck. What few restrictions were left over from the last lockdown had been lifted, and they hadn’t accounted for that—SOLD OUT! flashed the ticket kiosk. SOLD OUT! SOLD OUT!

Still, they queued for popcorn. Only Maggie wanted it. She got a big bag with layered butter, and Sam held it for her so she could grab napkins and a straw for her Fruitopia. “Ew,” he said, handing it back. His palms were slick with grease. “How can you eat something you need napkins just to hold?”

Maggie didn’t know what to say, so she wandered over to the arcade beside the concession. She sat down on a dusty plastic motorcycle and Sam leaned against the one beside her. She thought he might feed the machine some coins so they could race, but instead he turned to her and said, “Okay, so what’s the plan?” Maggie looked down at her popcorn and said she was fine to go back to his place, but Sam wanted more of an adventure.

They drove to IKEA and saw that it was closed for repairs after Monday’s flash flood—Maggie could hardly remember the rain. Sam pulled around to the side of the building so he could think some more. Maggie wanted to suggest Truth or Dare but didn’t want to sound childish. In the end, it was Sam who turned to her and said, “Pick one.” Maggie chose Truth, but Sam hadn’t readied a question, so she changed her pick to Dare. Sam pointed at a red dumpster planted between two security cameras. He pressed his palms together like he was praying, then angled them towards the ground: dive.

Maggie got out of the truck and walked over to the dumpster like Sam couldn’t have thought up a dumber dare. Inside, her heart hammered. When she glanced down, she saw the spot on her chest move—her shirt flinching forward and back with the beat. She tried not to think about impressing Sam, tried to focus instead on being herself, on walking normally and keeping her shoulders back to look confident and breezy. She climbed the skinny ladder to the top of the dumpster and peered over—there were metal poles, parts of picture frames, crumpled instruction booklets, and a fully built utility cart. The cart was olive green and gleaming. Maggie couldn’t see anything wrong with it.

She climbed down and ran back to Sam—“There’s something I actually want in there!” Sam got out and followed her to the dumpster, smirking the whole way. He climbed up the ladder and jumped in. Then he hoisted the metal cart high enough for Maggie to grab from her end. She hauled it over onto the asphalt, and the two of them rolled it back to the truck, snickering.

Maggie wanted Sam to choose Truth. She wanted to ask how many girls he’d slept with before he slept with her. Or maybe she’d ask him to tell her his biggest secret. Or whether he watched much porn or not. But Sam picked Dare like it was his only option. Forty-three degrees outside and a freight train clanged by not far from the parking lot—Maggie dared Sam to go and sit his bare ass on the tracks. He shrugged at the dare and that was how she knew it was stupid. He sauntered over to the tracks like not a thing mattered to him in the entire world. He pulled down his shorts and touched his skinny butt to the burning metal and let out a mock howl.

Sam ambled back to the truck. He drove them aimlessly across the sweaty city, their prized cart rattling around in the back. Maggie was really aware of her popcorn the whole time—swallowing fistfuls, she felt like Sam was watching her. She wanted to keep eating, but instead she bunched up the top of the bag and set it down between her feet. She would finish it later, alone.

When Sam said he wanted a McFlurry, they drove to McDonald’s and he ordered one. He turned to Maggie and said, “Do you want anything?” She did: a caramel sundae, a McChicken meal. But she told him no. Sam said, “Thank you very much,” to the old woman who passed his order through the window. That McFlurry went down in seconds—Sam ploughed to the bottom of the paper cup and surfaced with a smear of chocolate on his chin. Maggie thought of her popcorn, could taste it in her mouth. She sucked in her stomach when the truck bumped over a curb.

They found a place to watch the sun fall between two thickets interrupting a field. Sam helped Maggie into the bed of the truck and she rested her head on his shoulder for a second before the heat straightened her back out. She set her eyes on the canola, the way it glowed against the sun, a yellow banner glistening like butter across the horizon. Then she felt Sam’s hand creep across her back, his palm eventually landing on the soft jut of her hip. He pulled her towards him, her skirt against his half-bare thigh. Maggie tried to let her body relax against his. She stared directly at the sun until everything else in sight became a glowing orb—Sam’s face, when she glanced up at it, looked like a glowing orb, looked like the face of anyone ever, and she suddenly remembered her doughy thighs, and just as soon forgot them.

Sam’s hair blew in wisps across his face, reaching for the apples of her cheeks. When he touched her knee, she felt she’d turned to fire.

KATHERINE ABBASS (she/her) is a queer writer of Lebanese descent. Her work has been nominated for two Alberta Literary Awards, an Alberta Magazine Award, and in 2021, she won the Riddle Fence Fiction Contest. Her short story “Two by Two,” published by Agatha Press, sold out of its 100-copy run earlier this year. She is pursuing her MA at Memorial University.

JENN WOODALL is an award-winning illustrator and cartoonist who lives in Toronto. She has a bachelor of design in illustration from OCADU as well as a bachelor of design in fashion design. She self-publishes her own comics and also has her work distributed and published through Silver Sprocket, based in San Francisco. She is one of the editors of Pulping, an anthology that publishes work from Ontario-based cartoonists.