Joe's family moved away from Queensborough, and Lauren's followed them. At least it seemed that way to Joe.

It probably wasn't that simple. A lot of things went into the decision to move house. Joe's parents claimed to want to move closer to BCIT, the British Columbia Institute of Technology, so that Joe and Johnny didn't have to travel far to get to their place of post-secondary education. 

Joe's dad didn't need to be close to the mill anymore because he was on disability leave following an injury that had occurred on the green chain. He'd made his way up to sawyer before his mill had shut down and he'd had to find work at another mill. He'd had to start at the new mill at the very bottom again, and his body was not used to the constant grabbing, pulling, twisting and launching of boards into skids. He was frankly too old for the work, and no one was surprised that he'd injured himself. It wasn't life threatening, but it meant he couldn't work on the green chain anymore, and the mill wasn't going to offer him anything higher up because those jobs were already occupied by people with more seniority there. 

Luckily the IWA had a decent Long Term Disability plan on which the family could rely for a steady income while Joe's dad collected rent from his other properties, his entire work now being the maintenance of those properties, which was much easier than the green chain. He also still helped Mrs. Anderson landscape her grounds from time to time, but that was more leisure for him than work. He loved gardening; it was as if he'd smuggled his native soil in his shoes when he'd immigrated to Canada, and it had absorbed into his skin and travelled through his bloodstream, so that he never felt right unless he was outside getting his hands dirty. 

Joe and Johnny found BCIT the best institution to go to for studying trades. Joe's mom liked the idea of moving to Burnaby North because it also had a large Italian population, and St. Helen's Parish also had services in Italian. Housing prices were still relatively low, and they could purchase outright after selling their house, avoiding the sky-high mortgage rates at the time. It seemed like the best option for a move, and the timing seemed right.

And yet. And yet Joe seemed to notice a fever in his mother's eyes lately, a kind of cornered animal look that unnerved him. He noticed it most whenever she saw him with Lauren; whenever she came over for dinner, and Mom fussed over her, fidgeted with the cutlery, offered everyone more helpings when their plates were already full, and generally did everything to avoid meaningful conversation with her; whenever he drove away with Lauren on a date, and Mom implored him not to stay out late because he had work the next morning, even though he was still of the age where he could be out all night and still put in a full day's work. He wondered whether at least part of the reason for the move, in Mom's mind, was to put some distance between Joe and Lauren.

It wouldn't have worked anyway, even if it had been the entire reason. Joe drove now, so he could always drive from Burnaby to Queensborough to see his love. And she was his love. They made love. They professed their love for each other. They talked about marriage, even though they were barely out of high school. There was no way he would be separated from her now.

Joe knew Mom didn't approve of Lauren. She'd been the strange little tomboy who'd severely injured Mr. Trybek when they'd broken into the Trybek house to rescue Rachel, something Mom still couldn't wrap her mind around, it had been so reckless. Years later, he would agree with her, especially when he pictured his own children in that same situation.

Lauren had only dropped the tomboy look in the last couple of years, but Joe knew Mom still wasn't satisfied, because there were two things Lauren wasn't: Italian and Catholic. The former she couldn't do anything about, and the latter she probably wouldn't. Joe never brought up conversion to her, because he knew Lauren had no time for his religion, and it wasn't that important to him that she be Catholic. He liked her as she was and didn't want her to change herself for his sake. 

Johnny was amused by the whole cat and mouse game Joe played with his mom. He had absolutely nothing to worry about; his girlfriend Valeria was everything Mom wanted, and it didn't hurt that she was gorgeous. But even though Joe appreciated Val's qualities, he'd never aspired to have a relationship with someone like her. Lauren had enchanted him from the beginning.

He was so confident that nothing would come between them, that he could work with the distance, that he didn't even worry about making sure she had his new phone number, something Lauren had been frantic about ever since Rachel had moved away and Lauren had never heard from her again. "I don't understand!" Lauren wailed into his chest on more than one occasion as he comforted her. "Does her family not have a phone? I don't think I wrote the number wrong! Why doesn't she call me?"

One time he got so irritated by this refrain that he made the mistake of saying, "Why does it matter so much to you that she calls?"

She pulled away and scowled at him. "She's my best friend, Joe. I still want to hear from her even if she doesn't live here anymore. I want to know how her life is going."

"You still have me. And Sunny. We don't even see him that much anymore and he still lives on our street!" Sunny was busier nowadays, occupied with graduating from Khalsa school and applying to universities. He was wicked smart, and had told Joe, on one of the rare occasions they saw each other, that he wanted to eventually go to law school. He also did a lot of volunteer work at the gurdwara in Queensborough, and was getting serious about his religion. Their paths rarely crossed anymore, but he still considered Sunny a friend.

She sighed and shook her head. "You don't understand. You're a boy. You don't have friendships like girls do. I loved her, Joe, like, really loved her."

"I don't understand. Do you mean like you love me?"

"No," she groaned. "Not like that at all. I can't explain it. We shared everything about ourselves. She was the only girl who accepted me as I was, who wanted to be my friend. I miss her so much."

Joe still didn't understand, but he accepted Lauren felt that way and it wasn't his place to dissuade her from feeling it.

He did make sure she had his new address, in case she ever wanted to drive his way. Her dad was teaching her, and soon she would be taking her driving test.

Then, one day, Lauren told him her mom had gotten a job as a teacher with the Burnaby School Board. "We're moving too," she said excitedly. "Dad's on disability because he got injured on the boat, so he doesn't need to be close to Steveston anymore. Mom wants to be close to her work, so we're going looking for houses in Burnaby."

"Really?" he blurted, unable to believe the coincidence. "Maybe you can find one close to where we're moving."

"Don't worry, I'm already looking at issues of Real Estate Weekly and comparing the listings to a road map of Burnaby."

"You're what?!"

She smiled mischievously. "My parents need places to look at, so I thought I'd be helpful and do the work for them; and if, by chance, the places we look at happen to be close to the school where my mother will be working as well as close to the house to which you'll be moving, wouldn't that just be the best of both worlds?"

Joe chuckled in amazement. "Where did you find this Real Estate Weekly?"

"There are free issues at Spagnol's. I saw them all the time and never gave them a thought until we knew we were moving." Lauren worked as a cashier at Spagnol's, full time in the summer and part-time during the school year. She enjoyed having an income and saved it for her own post-secondary education.

"Hey, by the way," he said, "have you decided where you're going to go for college?"

She shrugged. "Not sure yet. I might just work for a year and then go. I want it to be the right fit; I don't want to go to college just to go to college."

Joe could see the logic in that, even if he wouldn't have let himself linger. It might have helped that he knew construction was what he wanted to do, and he was eager to learn the trade. "Well, it looks like you enjoy doing the legwork of finding houses for your parents. In a way it's kind of like the work we did with the LSDC. Maybe you can find something equivalent to that in college."

Lauren gave him that appraising look that reminded him of when they first met, and it made him shiver with pleasure. "Huh," she said. "Like, detective work. Maybe joining the police? Wait, I don't think my dad would be too happy if I joined the police."

"I wouldn't be either," Joe said. "I'd be worried every day you went to work that you might not come home."

Her face softened, and she placed a hand on his cheek. "You big softie. You're like a big, cuddly bear, you know that?"

He leaned in and kissed her, and she melted into him. When they unlocked, she said, "I like your idea, though. I might do a little more research and see what's out there."

"You're good at that, and maybe your real estate research will work to our advantage."

It did. Joe never told anyone in his family that Lauren was looking at real estate listings in the area around their new address, because he was sure his mother would have a conniption if she learned of it. They had to know eventually that Lauren's family was moving, though, because they were tenants, and Lauren's dad had to give them notice as per the terms of their lease.

Joe never discovered if his parents got a hint that Lauren's family was moving to Burnaby, but they had to know something was up when it didn't seem Joe was spending any less time with Lauren after their move.

When Joe moved away, he never got the chance to say goodbye to Sunny. Sunny was away somewhere, some kind of retreat, Sunny's mom was hazy on the details, and he wouldn't be back until the next day. Joe had to be content with passing his well wishes to Sunny's mom, as well as his hopes he would run into him again. He thought the chances were pretty good; if his dad kept driving to Queensborough to work on Mrs. Anderson's garden, Joe would go with him and see if Sunny was around.

He did go the first couple of times, but both times Sunny was away. He felt like he'd let Sunny down somehow, and it so disheartened him that he couldn't make himself go anymore; it was too depressing returning to his old home and not seeing anyone he knew, apart from Mrs. Anderson, and she just seemed to be getting older with every visit. 

Queensborough had become a ghost town by degrees, he realized; first Al had moved away, and that had hit him harder than he'd expected; then Rachel had moved away, and that had been like a punch to the gut, because in his head he'd always thought he would be living next to that girl he'd met when he was five, the one with the scraped knees, matted hair and dirt-streaked clothes, munching on a carrot she hadn't washed; the one who'd claimed, when she was seven, that she would marry him one day. He couldn't admit this to Lauren for two reasons: one, he didn't want to upstage Lauren's despair over losing her best friend in the entire world, whom she apparently loved; two, he was a little afraid Lauren would mistake his sadness for romantic feelings for Rachel and get jealous. 

He didn't think his feelings were romantic, although when he'd witnessed Rachel and Lauren hugging, the day Rachel had moved away, and seen how their hands had lingered below their waists, he couldn't help the tingle in his loins. Had it been because he'd been witnessing his girlfriend in an almost sensual clutch, even if it hadn't been his clutch? Or had it been seeing how Rachel had almost sunk into Lauren, even though Lauren was smaller than her, and imagining that body in his arms? 

He'd never wanted her the way he wanted Lauren, never masturbated while thinking of her (that first scary episode had given way to many, many more mundane ones, as soon as he'd read up on it and discovered it was a completely natural thing to do, even if it was technically a sin, and he confessed that and every time he and Lauren had premarital sex every Easter and Christmas). He did miss Rachel, though. Her presence next door had just been comforting; he could always count on her to be around. But she was gone, with no communication, and they didn't even know if she was alive or dead.

Now their family was gone, and when Joe looked at the empty house that had been his home almost as long as he and his family had lived in Queensborough, he felt a sadness he'd never expected to feel, and knew that if Lauren wasn't going to be moving close to him, he would also be feeling a loneliness that would have eaten him from the inside out.

As soon as Lauren's move was finished, and he found her at her new house, a small post-war with a big lawn, which to his relief was very close to his new house, he drew her to him and held her much longer than he normally did.

"Are you okay, Joe?" she asked.

He wiped his eyes while holding her so she didn't see his tears, and said, "I am now."

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