The Petty Details of So-And-So's Life by Camilla Gibb

asked Emma if she wanted to come and see a band playing at McMaster University, where he was a physics student.
    â€œSure, why not?” Emma shrugged, cool and cavalier, although saying yes propelled her into an epic clothing crisis for the rest of the week where she tried on every item in her closet and thought she was fat—fatter than fat, obese, criminally so—despite what the mirror said,
the lying mirror
.
    She applied toothpaste to the zit that emerged the morning of their date and thought about cancelling because of it. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to notice. He picked her up in a battered Suzuki jeep without any heat, and they drove to Hamilton, where they spent the night dancing and drinking beer. Emma thought the beer tasted like piss and wouldhave said as much if she weren’t so determined to look cool. She plugged her nose and swallowed it instead.
    He escorted her out of the hall some time after midnight and she promptly threw up all over his shoes. She sat in the passenger seat beside him with her head between her knees the whole way back to and beyond Niagara Falls. They pulled into a circular drive in front of a huge house that seemed to stand alone in the middle of a wooded park overlooking the Niagara Gorge. He left his vomit-covered shoes on the front porch and then, once they were inside, Emma threw up on the Persian rug in the front hall. “Not to worry,” he assured her. “There are plenty of others.” He hoisted Emma over his shoulder and climbed the stairs with her alternately groaning and apologizing.
    They slept in a four-poster bed in their clothes and she woke up in the night and listened to his breathing, inhaling the sweet smell of alcohol leaking from his skin. He was nothing more than a gentle body in sleep, nothing to be afraid of, and she gingerly traced her finger down his tanned, hairless arm.
    Emma woke in a huge room with dark wood panelling and plush mahogany drapes. “Who lives here?” she whispered to the boy-man lying next to her.
    â€œI do,” he said matter-of-factly.
    â€œAlone?”
    â€œFor the time being,” he acknowledged somewhat sadly. “It’s the house my mother grew up in. She inherited it after my grandparents died. My parents are only here during the holidays. They teach in Montreal and my sister is away at school.”
    â€œBut doesn’t it give you the creeps living here alone?”
    â€œSometimes,” he nodded. “It’s a little big. A little empty.”
    â€œMy house is like a shoebox,” Emma said. “There’s nowhere to hide. That’s why I come to the library all the time. To have some privacy.”
    â€œThat’s funny,” he said. “I go for company.”
    â€œI would love to have all this room to be alone.”
    â€œTrust me, the novelty wears off. It gets lonely. But you’re welcome here. I mean, to spend some time here if you want. I wouldn’t mind trading you.”
    He couldn’t possibly mean that, she thought. Trade me for what? And have me here? Throwing up on Persian rugs and breaking mirrors and clogging the bidet? I’m not the most domestic of creatures. Boys had never been particularly nice to her. She knew it was because she wasn’t pretty, didn’t have big tits, and didn’t wear inviting makeup and a Wonder Bra like the other girls at school. They still called her a loser and when they really want to be cruel, a dyke. She hadn’t outlived her reputation as the girl who preferred hermaphrodites to boys.
    â€œWhat’s this?” he asked her, fingering the tooth around her neck.
    â€œDinosaur tooth.”
    â€œIs that right?” he laughed. “And where does one get a dinosaur tooth?”
    â€œThere’s only one way,” Emma told him. “Your father has to reach through a hole in the back of your closet and find it for you.”
    â€œCan your father find one for