Mom sighed again. "I'm sorry, baby. We'll have to cancel."
"But we've already paid for the campsite!" Even I could hear the whine in my voice. So much for nearly being an adult.
"I know, Cole. But Estelle needs someone to help her. The police made a big sweep of the Niagara Falls downtown, and she was caught with drugs in her possession. She's still in detention now but will be released in a few days. There are reasons that she can't go back to Angus, so Brian's been beating the bushes to find someone able to take her in and be responsible for her. The judge will give her an absolute discharge, but only if she commits to staying with an adult relative for the next year and stays in high school."
"What about Aunt Mary's kids - the twins, Anne and James? They've got an apartment in Toronto."
"It's in Pickering, actually, not that it makes any difference. But it's only two bedrooms and the Children's Aid won't allow her to stay with someone outside of her immediate family unless she has her own room. Anyway, Anne's still working on her PhD, and James is just working odd jobs. They don't have the resources to take her in. We do."
"What about Jonathan? He's married with a three-bedroom house..."
"And his wife's expecting a baby. They're going to be too busy caring for a newborn to even notice that Estelle is around. I'm sorry, Cole. There's no one else. If she doesn't have an approved place to go, she stays where she is until her birthday. And I won't let her stay in Juvenile Detention if there's anything I can do to prevent it."
"Mom, she's going to be eighteen this month. Why does CAS even care?"
"Because she is being released from detention as a minor. They've insisted that the rules be followed to the letter, and there's nothing we can do about it."
"This isn't fair," I yelled, crumpling up the paper in front of me and throwing it across the room. I got up and stomped to the door before turning around. "She's not even really family. Estelle's only a step-cousin."
"Cole David King, sit your ass down this instant!"
I was so shocked at her tone and the swearing that I was in the chair before I even thought to move. I don't think that I had ever heard her curse before, and certainly not at me.
"You will never say anything like that in front of me ever again. And you will never even think about saying anything to that effect in front of Estelle. Do you understand?"
"But..."
"Never!" She slapped the table to emphasise each word. "Do. You. Understand?"
I hung my head. "Yes, Mother."
"Good." Her voice softened. "Now, I want you to treat her just like your other cousins. Don't pick on her or bother her about what's happened or why she was in detention. Don't even ask unless she offers to talk about it. I know you may never be best friends, but I want you to welcome her and at least make an effort to be friendly."
"Fine, I'll try."
"That's all I can ask, baby." Mom smiled sadly and placed a hand gently on mine. "I know that this is going to be hard, Cole. But we'll make it work out."
***
RIDE
Estelle arrived a few days later, but I didn't actually meet her. I mumbled a 'hi' from the other room and slipped out the back for a bike ride before I said something I'd regret. This was the first time since I was four that we had missed our summer camping trip, and I was more than a little annoyed. I was hoping that a short ride would let me work through some of my anger.
Although a lot of kids had recently gotten into mountain biking, I chose to stick to the roads. I had about two thousand dollars invested in my bicycle, and it was pretty darn fast, if I do say so myself. At six-foot-three and 175 pounds, I was tall, with a classic cyclist's lean build. My long legs allowed me to use extra-long cranks for more torque output, and I had won several races at the high school level. I had already managed a metric century a couple times - 100 km in a day - and completed an imperial century (100 miles) just a few weeks earlier. An older third cousin had gone with me, surprising me when he brought his 12-year-old kids with him. If nothing else, the pre-teens did a good job of motivating me not to quit. I'm not sure which of us found the ride more difficult, but we all finished.
I knew that there were only a handful of teens in Hamilton that could hope to keep pace with me on a bike. A couple had beat me at races in the past year, and I had won against all of them at least once. My coach had told me that I could try out for the Canadian Olympic team, but I would need to sink several thousand into better equipment if I wanted to be competitive. My mother had a good job and got paid well, but not that well. Everyone knew that equestrian was expensive, but competitive cycling wasn't as cheap as most people assumed. That being said, I was attending the Cycling Canada tryouts in three weeks, just before my birthday. If I did well enough, I would be eligible for funding to help with the purchase of a new bike. I knew that it would be an immense amount of work, but I was excited at the prospect of potentially riding in the 2000 Games.
I didn't bother getting into my riding gear, I just grabbed the bike and took off. I should have been wearing a helmet but couldn't even be bothered with that. It wasn't a legal issue, as I was over sixteen, but I knew better. The bike had clipless pedals installed, which were designed to work with cleats. But they had almost no traction for regular street shoes - like the sneakers I was wearing. Reasoning that I wasn't doing a hard ride so it wouldn't be an issue, I pulled out onto the street and immediately forgot all about taking it easy. I took a right turn onto Stirton, pretty much ignoring the stop signs at Cannon and Wilson. Those were both one-way streets, so I only had to worry about traffic from one direction and simply took quick glances to make sure I had space to cross. There were a few horn blasts, but no one was close enough to be a threat to me. I had to stop at King due to the traffic - it was also one-way - but I quickly made the right turn and cut across four lanes to make a left onto Arthur, just a hundred metres down the road. Another left and a right took me to Main, and I barely slowed as I turned left onto yet another one-way street. (Hamilton has more one-way streets than any other city I know. It can be annoying, but once you know them it's not that big a deal.)
Now on a major street, I accelerated into top gear. This was a race bike, and I was easily keeping up with traffic. Between the traffic, potholes, cracks in the pavement and sewer grates, my mind was pretty much occupied. A few minutes later, I reached Kenilworth and was forced to stop. I slowly slipped past the stationary cars waiting for the green light, then turned south, heading for the Mountain. (Although we called it Hamilton Mountain, it was really the Niagara Escarpment - a nearly-vertical cliff that ran a couple hundred kilometres from the Niagara River roughly north into Central Ontario.) I was soon turning onto the incline of the Kenilworth Access and had to start gearing down. There was less traffic here, fewer grates and smoother pavement, but now my mind was focused on simply keeping my body moving. The road was mostly straight here, climbing sixty-five metres in two and a half kilometres, with one hairpin turn half-way up. Basically, it was a ten-minute wind sprint. When I finally reached the top, I followed a loop of road onto Mountain Brow, which led along the top edge of the Mountain over to Concession Street.
This was an easy, quiet and level stretch that I used to cool down. But my mind was no longer occupied with survival, and it started to dwell on other things. Like Estelle and my ruined camping trip. I would be turning nineteen at the end of the month, and this was an important one for me. It was supposed to be the last time I went camping with my mother before I was officially an adult. Technically, the only difference was that I'd be able to drink once I was nineteen, but it was the final milestone into adulthood. We had planned everything out, and it was going to be great. Except, now it wasn't going to be at all. By the time I hit East 31st Street, I was seething. A couple more turns and I was heading down the Sherman Cut. A left at the end took me onto the Sherman Access, leading down off the Mountain again.
The first mile was a slight down grade, and I quickly got up to the speed of traffic. Then there was a hairpin turn that dropped more than twenty metres. It was a good place to pick up speed, if you were brave. I was angry, so that was close enough. By the time I reached the lights at Charlton, I was going over seventy kilometres an hour, riding on tires barely an inch wide. There was a green light for the Sherman Access traffic, so I didn't even look left as I grabbed a bit of brake and positioned myself for the turn, signalling briefly with a flick of my arm. There was a separate lane for right turns, and I was using all of it. Since Charlton had a red light, there shouldn't be anyone coming, and I completely ignored the yield sign. As I leaned sharply into the turn, I heard the roar an engine at full throttle behind me and to the left, getting closer fast. I didn't dare look, but leaned more on my right pedal, veering toward the curb. I caught a flash of chrome in the corner of my eye and involuntarily glanced over. In a freeze-frame, I saw a red Mustang barreling toward me on Charlton just as my right shoe slipped off the skinny pedal. My leg snapped straight and the foot smashed hard against the curb. The bike jerked and started to stand up, the miniscule clearance between my path and the car's disappearing before I realized what had happened. The last thing I heard was a crunch as the car's hood and bumper caught my left leg.
***
