Two weeks before Megan left home she began a clear-out of her room. She put her suitcase (the biggest she could find, purchased from Hudson's Bay) on the bed and a large cardboard box (free of charge Marshall's Grocery) on the floor beside it and anything that wouldn't fit into the one had to go into the other. She was ruthless about it; she intended to travel light. Out went any items of clothing she hadn't worn for a year or more, any shoes ditto, any odd socks or underwear with holes in it that she had saved for days that didn't matter, in full knowledge of the fact that none of her days mattered, or at least not in a way that required respectable underwear. Out went the debris left in the bottom of drawers: safety pins, bobby pins, fraying hair ribbons, a beaded bracelet with half the beads missing, the remains of a box made of birch bark and decorated with porcupine quills, ancient elastic bands looking so much like desiccated earthworms that she had to close her eyes when she picked them up and a quill pen fashioned from an eagle's feather, made for her by Tom when he was at the eagle's feather stage.

From The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson ©2013. Published by Vintage Canada.