The Fire Tower

Perched on the granite spine of the Canadian Shield, two young artists stage a theatrical debate about the terrifying necessity of leaving home. As the northern summer heat presses down, their performative words fail to mask the impending heartbreak of adulthood.

"To remain is to fossilize, Simon. Surely you perceive the calcification already setting in at your ankles?"

Betty did not look at him when she said it. She was busy peeling a strip of birch bark from a fallen log, her fingers stained with the dark residue of the forest. She held the white strip up to the sun, inspecting it like a grand curator examining a rare manuscript. It was typical of her to turn a humid Tuesday in July into a scene from a tragic opera. The heat was a physical weight, a wet wool blanket thrown over the world, pressing the smell of heating pine needles and dry lichen into the back of Simon's throat. He wiped sweat from his upper lip, the grit of the granite dust scratching his skin.

"Calcification implies a hardness, Betty," Simon replied, matching her cadence, pitching his voice to carry over the incessant, electric whine of the cicadas hidden in the jack pines. "I feel more like I am liquefying. Melting into the Precambrian shield. By September, I shall be nothing but a puddle of anxiety and acrylic paint for the tourists to step in."

"A tragic end for a painter of your potential," she countered, finally turning her gaze toward him. Her sunglasses reflected the distorted image of the black spruce treeline and Simon’s own hunched, sweating form. "But we are not discussing the thermodynamics of your dissolution. We are discussing the train ticket. The departure. The Great Escape."

Simon shifted on the rock. The stone was hot enough to burn through his denim shorts, a radiant heat that felt like it was cooking the marrow in his femurs. They were sitting on the highest point of the ridge, the town of Kenora sprawled out somewhere to the south, hidden behind the rolling green carpet of the boreal forest. Below them, the lake was a sheet of hammered tin, blinding and still. It was too hot for the boats. It was too hot for anything but this—this endless, circular dialogue they had been rehearsing for three years.

"The ticket is a symbol, not a solution," Simon said, gesturing broadly with a hand that still bore a smudge of phthalo blue near the thumb. "One does not simply purchase a ticket to Toronto and cease to be a product of the North. We are made of rock and mosquito larvae. You cannot wash that off in Lake Ontario."

Betty sighed, a sound of immense, theatrical fatigue. She dropped the birch bark and picked up her sketchbook, fanning herself with it. "Your fatalism is becoming derivative, darling. It lacks the freshness of your sophomore year. In 2025, geography is a choice, not a sentence. We have the internet. We have the hyper-loop proposals that never happen. We have feet."

"And money? Do we have that?" Simon asked.

"Pedestrian concern. The starving artist is a cliché, but a necessary one. We shall eat ramen and spiritual fulfillment."

It was a lie, and they both knew it. The urgency in Betty's voice was real, beneath the layers of affectation. Simon watched an ant navigate the intricate topography of his running shoe. He felt a sudden, sharp pang in his chest—not from the heat, but from the realization that she was actually going to do it. She wasn’t just performing the role of the Restless Youth; she was inhabiting it. The realization made the saliva in his mouth taste metallic, like sucking on a penny.

"You applied," Simon stated. It wasn't a question. "To the conservatory. You sent the portfolio."

Betty stopped fanning herself. The silence that followed was heavy, filled only by the distant, rhythmic thrum of a transport truck engine braking on the Trans-Canada Highway miles away. A crow called out, three sharp caws that sounded like mocking laughter.

"The deadline was imminent," she said, her voice dropping an octave, losing a fraction of its stage quality. "To deny the impulse would have been an act of creative suicide. I require the friction of the city, Simon. I need noise. I need to smell exhaust and overpriced coffee. Here…" She gestured at the pristine, brutal landscape around them. "Here, the silence is too loud. It drowns out the music in my head."

Simon looked out at the horizon. The sky was a pale, washed-out blue, bleached by the intensity of the sun. He loved this place. He loved the way the light hit the water at 8:00 PM, turning the lakes into pools of liquid copper. He loved the rough texture of the bark and the smell of wet asphalt after a thunderstorm. But he knew that loving it wasn't enough to sustain a life. Not for them. The town was shrinking, the mines were automated, and the gallery downtown had closed last month to become a vape shop.

"So you leave," Simon said, feeling the words catch in his throat. "And I remain. The curator of the silence."

"You could come," Betty said, leaning forward. The movement was sharp, urgent. "Do not pretend you are anchored here. You complain about the winter from October to May. You despise the small-town gossip. You said, just last week, that if you had to paint one more erratic boulder you would drink turpentine."

"That was hyperbole," Simon muttered, picking at a scab on his knee.

"It was a cry for help!" Betty stood up, her shadow falling over him, long and distorted against the rock. She paced back and forth, her movements jerky and animated. "We are twenty-two years old, Simon. The world is collapsing, yes. The climate is erratic, the economy is a joke, and we might not retire until we are ninety. But right now, in this micro-second of history, we have the energy. If we stay, the moss grows over us. We become part of the scenery. 'Look, there’s old Simon, painting the same pine tree for forty years.' Is that the legacy you desire?"

Simon looked up at her. She looked fierce, her hair frizzed by the humidity, her eyes wide behind the dark lenses. She looked like a Valkyrie in a thrift-store sundress.

"I am afraid," Simon admitted. The admission felt like vomiting. It broke the rules of their game. They were supposed to be witty, cynical, above it all. Admitting fear was pedestrian.

Betty stopped pacing. She crouched down in front of him, invading his personal space. He could smell her—sunscreen, stale sweat, and the peppermint gum she chewed incessantly. "Define the fear. Give it a name, a shape. Is it the failure? Or the success?"

"It is the erasure," Simon whispered. "Here, I am Simon the Artist. I am known. I have a context. There, in the city... I am data. I am a rounding error in the census. What if I go there and realize that I am not actually talented? What if I am just... big fish, small pond? What if the pond was the only thing making me special?"

Betty reached out and poked him hard in the chest. "Then you find out. That is the tragedy of the human condition, you fool. You cannot live in the Schrödinger's box forever. You have to open the lid and see if the cat is alive or dead. If you are mediocre, fine. Then you deal with mediocrity. But staying here to protect your ego from the truth? That is cowardice. And you are many things, Simon—pedantic, overly sensitive, prone to melodrama—but you are not a coward."

He swatted her hand away, but without force. The heat was making him dizzy. Or maybe it was her. The urgency in her voice was contagious. He felt a restless energy twitching in his legs, a desire to run, to jump off the cliff and see if he could fly or just splatter.

"It costs three thousand dollars just to secure an apartment," Simon argued, retreating to logistics. "I have four hundred dollars and a collection of unsold watercolors."

"Money is a construct!" Betty shouted at the sky, throwing her arms up. "We will work. We will scrub toilets. We will serve drinks to bankers who tip poorly. That is the romance of it! You want the bohemian life? That includes the poverty. You cannot have the garret without the hunger, Simon. It’s a package deal."

Simon laughed, a dry, cracking sound. "You romanticize suffering because you haven't done it yet."

"I am preparing for it!" She sat back down, crossing her legs. "Look, the bus leaves on Thursday. The morning express. It stops in Thunder Bay, then Sault Ste. Marie, then down. I bought two tickets."

The air between them suddenly felt very thin. The cicadas seemed to screech louder, a rising crescendo of static noise.

"You bought two," Simon repeated. He stared at the grey lichen pattern on the rock, tracing the intricate, map-like shapes with his eyes. It looked like a map of a country that didn't exist.

"Non-refundable," Betty said, her voice trying for casual but hitting a tremolo of nervousness. "It was a gamble. A strategic investment in our shared destiny. If you don't come, I shall be forced to put my bag on the empty seat and look incredibly mysterious and lonely, which might attract a serial killer. So, really, my safety is in your hands."

Simon looked at the lake again. A motorboat was cutting a V-shape through the water, a tiny white speck disrupting the perfect surface. The wake spread out, reaching for the shorelines, disturbing the reflection of the clouds.

He thought about his room in his parents' basement. The smell of the damp carpet. The stack of canvases in the corner that he was too afraid to finish. The comfort of it. The suffocating, warm, deadly comfort.

"Thursday," Simon said.

"08:00 hours. Sharp. If you are not there, I leave. I will not look back. I will channel Lot's wife and refuse to turn into a pillar of salt, or in this case, a pillar of granite."

"You would leave me?" Simon asked, looking at her profile. She was staring at the sun, squinting.

"I have to," she said softly. "We are not symbiotic, Simon. We are parallel lines. We can run together for a while, but eventually, the geometry has to change. I cannot stay here and watch you paint the same sunset until we are forty. It would break my heart more than leaving you will."

The truth of it hung in the hot air. It was a violent thing to say, but necessary. Simon felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes, hot and embarrassing. He blinked them away quickly.

"It is... a compelling argument," Simon managed to say, his voice thick.

"I thought so," Betty said. She reached into her bag and pulled out a warm can of soda. She cracked it open, the hiss sounding like a snake. She took a sip and passed it to him. "Drink. You are dehydrated. Your lips are chapped and it ruins your aesthetic."

Simon took the can. The metal was warm, the liquid inside sugary and flat. He drank it anyway. It tasted like childhood. It tasted like the summers that lasted forever, before time started speeding up, before the year 2025 arrived with its drones and its climate anxiety and its crushing weight of expectation.

"If I go," Simon started, "I am not scrubbing toilets. I will be a barista. There is a hierarchy."

Betty smiled. It was a real smile, wide and gum-showing, lacking all her usual irony. "Acceptable. As long as I get free coffee."

They sat in silence for a long time. The sun began its slow descent, shifting the light from harsh white to a bruising purple. The shadows of the pine trees lengthened, stretching out like dark fingers reaching for them across the rock.

Simon watched a hawk circle overhead, riding a thermal. It looked so effortless. He wondered if the hawk knew it was flying over a dying town, or if it just saw mice and movement. He wondered if he was the hawk or the mouse.

"Do you think we'll make it?" Simon asked, his voice barely a whisper against the wind that was picking up.

"Statistically? No," Betty said, putting her sunglasses back on top of her head. "But narratively? We are the protagonists, Simon. We have plot armor until at least the end of the second act."

"And then?"

"Then it's up to the critics."

She stood up and brushed the dirt off her dress. "Come. The mosquitoes are rising. The vampiric horde approaches. We must retreat to the safety of indoors before we are exsanguinated."

Simon stood up. His legs felt shaky. The horizon looked different now. It didn't look like a wall anymore. It looked like a ledge.

He followed her down the path, the soles of his shoes gripping the uneven rock. The air was cooling rapidly, the humidity breaking as a dark bank of clouds rolled in from the west. The wind shifted, carrying a new scent—not pine or dust, but something sharper. Sulfur. And the smell of wet charcoal.

Simon looked back once at the ridge. The fire tower stood silhouetted against the darkening sky, a skeletal metal finger pointing accusingly at the heavens. A sudden gust of wind rattled the metal frame, a sound like bones shaking in a bag.

"Hurry up, Simon!" Betty called from the treeline, her voice swallowed by the rising wind.

He turned and ran to catch up with her, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He had agreed to go. He had agreed to leave the rock and the water. But as they plunged into the dark tunnel of the forest path, the sky turned a bruised, sickly green, and the first heavy drop of rain hit his cheek like a cold, wet bullet. It felt less like a beginning, and more like the first note of a funeral dirge.