One of the times he showed up we went on my home computer and he went on a bunch of porn sites. It's not like I didn't have the pre-pubescent interest in porn too, but I did find it weird that he wanted to do that with me in the room. My mom found them after and I got in trouble. Another time, he came and I just hid from the windows and pretended I wasn't there.
During the summer after we graduated and before we started high school, he again came and talked to me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to go to the movies with him. We took the bus together, something I was about to start doing multiple times every day, but wasn't comfortable with yet. I had been to the movies by myself with friends tonnes of times already, but we had always been driven there by our parents, so the autonomy of not just going to the movies, but getting there by myself was alluring. Recently turned 13, this bus trip on the Bellamy 9 to the Eglinton Town Centre* Cineplex was the first thing I did that made me feel like a teenager.
*To be re-named the Eglinton Warzone in the future, when it became Scarborough's premier wrestling pay-per-view venue.
It was nice that Derek knew where he was going and could lead me through the process of transferring bus routes at Warden Station. Despite normally finding him annoying, and kind of weird in the cloying way he approached the girls in our class, on this day I found the conversation with him easy as we walked across the parking lot to the movie theatre. Compared to the version of him I saw every day in school, he seemed more relaxed and down to earth, free of the social pressures of a class full of pre-teens. Maybe it was actually me that was responding to that lack. It's hard to know.
When we got into the theatre, we bought tickets to see the 2003 remake of The Italian Job, which was Derek's choice, and our reason for coming. It wasn't something that I would have ever picked, as I was deep in my phase of only watching comedies starring Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, and Martin Lawrence, but at this age I also curtailed to mostly whatever anyone else wanted. Venturing out of my comfort zone, as much as seeing a blockbuster summer movie filled with movie stars can be qualified as leaving my comfort zone, proved to be great. It's hard to properly describe how a general crowd pleaser like The Italian Job hits when you've never seen that sort of movie before. The action! The quick jokes! The sexless romance! Is this the best movie I've ever seen? Why isn't every movie centred around a heist?
I left the theatre feeling like I was walking on air. Free of our parents shepherding us towards the parking lot having finished their parental task of taking us to the theatre, we went and hung out in the arcade, not playing any games because we didn't have the change too, but just drifting around and looking at the demos playing on the machines. Derek put a loonie into a small mechanical vending machine and received a cheap fake silver chain in a clear plastic container. While we again walked across the parking lot to the bus stop, Derek spoke about giving the chain to a girl that he liked at the trailer park that he went to with his parents in the summer.
Less than a month later, I started grade 9 at St. Mike's and took the TTC for two hours every day. Over the next four years, I basically lived on the transit system and it became my key to unlocking and learning about the city of Toronto. I was usually the person among my friends who knew how to get to places and the way that subways, streetcars, and buses connected was a language that I understood well.
I never saw or spoke to Derek ever again.
