They asked Mom to headline this huge concert at the end of the summer. On the island. You have to take a ferry to get there, but it feels like practically the whole city goes. Or, at least, everyone who''s cool. We went last year, Mom and me. The crowd was unreal, this swarming mass of tattoos and band shirts, Keds and sunglasses. If you turned away from everyone, you could see all the giant buildings and condos of Toronto''s gap-toothed skyline, but if you faced the stage you were completely surrounded by the sound and the sky and the sunburned crowd.It was amazing.

Like the whole city had been swallowed up by music and dancing and people who knew what was important.It was the kind of show Mom used to play. Before I came along.I got all excited when she told me, even though it''s totally not like me to be some doe-eyed fangirl every time Mom books a show. In all that geeky glee I was actually dumb enough to ask her if she thought this was going to be her big break as a solo act, but she just laughed.It was kind of a sad laugh, really. And she shook her head. Her hair swung around her shoulders in that easy way that it does.

There''s more grey in it these days, but she still looks like a kid. Mine doesn''t swing that way--that kid-in-a-sunscreen-commercial way--it just hangs there like it can''t think of what to do with itself. Or maybe it''s just got bigger things on its mind. Its hair-mind. Whatever, you know what I mean."Aw, sweets," she said, ruffling my dirty-blonde mop, "you know it''s not really about breaks. You just hold your head up and keep on working.""Yeah, I know" I said, already embarrassed of my enthusiasm, "But you''re still going to play, right?""Of course.

And it''s great that they asked me. I''ll keep singing as long as they keep calling for more. But you know how it is--just another day at the office.""Uh huh," I said, "I know."Micky Wayne is my mom.She isn''t famous, but she used to be. "Canadian-famous" I heard someone call her once--or maybe I read it, I can''t remember. People write about her a lot.

Or anyway, they used to.She''s a musician: a singer and a guitar player. Sometimes she plays with a band and sometimes just on her own. She used to sing in this band called Dusty Moon, and they were really popular before they broke up. Now she mostly just plays her own songs.People know her name. And because they know her name, some people even know mine. Not that they know anything about me, or even what I look like, but they know whole songs about me.

They know that daisies are my favourite flower, and that my mom calls me Vic--even though she''s the only one allowed to, I''m Victoria to everyone else. And I''m definitely not Vicky--to anyone. For obvious reasons. Sometimes I think Mom chose a rhyming name for me on purpose. She''s always wanted us to be like sisters, like twins, when really we''re total opposites. But I guess she is my best friend, even though I''d never admit it to her.When I was born Mom was still touring a lot with Dusty Moon. And more than anything she wanted to be a mom, but also more than anything she wanted to play music.

She''s never been particularly decisive. So for a while she tried to balance the two--not that I remember, but there are hours and hours of footage of me toddling around Dusty Moon''s tour bus and crying about having to wear my noise-cancelling headphones, that look like giant plastic earmuffs, when the band played shows.I guess it must''ve been pretty hard, even though she had a tour nanny to help her. She never looks too happy in those videos, just exhausted. She wasn''t sure she was doing the right thing by bringing me with her, by continuing to tour, but playing music was the only real job she''d had. And as much as they loved me, the rest of the band wasn''t super thrilled that I was always there with them. It kind of tore her up, I think. She didn''t know what to do.

But then the choice kind of got made for her.But she''s back on the road a bit now, as a solo act. Now that I''m old enough to be left mostly alone while she''s gone. It''s usually just weekends out of town, though, nothing as major as before. She plays a few old Dusty Moon songs in her sets, but it''s mostly new stuff.Mom''s songs are pretty personal. Show-up-to-school-naked-like-in-a-dream-but-it''s-not-actually-a-dream kind of personal, which is a genre I''m pretty sure she made up. I''d shrivel up like a sideshow shrunken head if people knew half as much about me as they do about Mom, but she just puts it all out there--her loneliness and her desire and her frustrations.

There''s not much I can do about it, that''s just who she is--transparent. Her heart''s not so much on her sleeve as it is on a plate--chipped, and from Value Village--that she''s passing around for everyone to take a bite out of.Okay, maybe I''ve been playing too much Undead Underground.Anyway, it was the middle of July when Mom found about the concert on the island. During the kind of sticky, stinky summer heat-wave that makes you feel like you''re living in someone''s armpit. The people who collected the city''s garbage had gone on strike for some reason, and all of Toronto was mad at the mayor. Everywhere you went it smelled like a pile of rotting corpses. It was kind of fun pretending to be in some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland like in Endtimes, but mostly it just stunk and I stayed inside playing video games as much as I could.

Even though our air conditioner was busted--the landlord kept saying he''d fix it, but it was pretty hard to believe a guy with a comb-over could ever be sincere--it was still better than being outside.After Mom made her big island announcement she had to leave for band practice. She zipped her acoustic-electric guitar into its bag and put the straps over her shoulders like a backpack. Then she picked up her bike and carried it down the stairs--she was almost able to make it look graceful."I''ll be back in time for dinner, okay?" she called over her shoulder."Yeah, if you don''t roast out there in the sun!"I texted Luce and asked her if she wanted to come over instead. And she texted back like a minute later to say she''d be right over, and what colour freezie did I want. Me: BlueLucy: Obviously ;)Lucy''s parents own a convenience store, the one at the end of our street.

That''s how we first met.It''s sort of a funny story, I guess. This was just after we''d moved to the city, Toronto, two years ago. When Mom realized that if she wanted to get back to playing music and touring that we might have to move to a slightly bigger city. And be closer to the one person she could count on to look after me while she was out of town, her mother, who''d moved to Toronto after my grampa died. We''d been living in Moncton before that, and in Halifax, with Gran and Grampa, when I was little. Mom used to joke that I''d have my first cross-Canada tour under my belt by the time I turned eighteen. I told her she might want to polish her standup routine.

So we''d found a new apartment, a tiny little two-bedroom with perma-dirty linoleum floors an inexplicably large closet that Mom said would be perfect for a mini-studio. She signed the lease immediately. It was in Parkdale, which it wasn''t all that far away Gran''s house, so dirt aside, it seemed pretty ideal. Gran and I don''t get along super well, but she''s okay. Most of the time. Even when I was a little kid we didn''t really understand each other--Grampa sort of translated for both of us, and without him things didn''t really work. I was really sad after he died, but Mom was worse. She stopped writing songs, she barely left the house, and she and Gran were fighting all the time.

Which I guess is why Gran decided to pack up and leave Halifax. For a while Mom and Gran weren''t even speaking, but I guess they eventually got over it. Still, after thirteen years of living on the other side of the country, it seemed pretty weird to be moving so we could be close to someone I hardly knew.We''d driven Mom''s van--The Grimace, it''s big and purple like that old McDonald''s character--all the way from Nova Scotia to Ontario with all of our stuff in the back. Well, not all of it, some of it was being shipped over. But the shipment was delayed or something, and for about a week we were just squatting in the new place with almost nothing. And Mom was so exhausted from the drive and the unpacking we''d done that she squeezed my shoulders and whispered in my ear "What do you say we go lazy shopping?" which is what she calls it when she''s too tired to go to the grocery store and we shop at the closest corner store instead.So we trooped down the flight of stairs from our apartment to the street.

And she took my hand in hers and we went inside the first little shop we found. She was wearing an old band shirt stretched at the seams and she stunk of sweat from the long drive. I had insisted on her buying me real deodorant, not the hippie crystal stuff she used, ever since I was old enough to need it--I was frazzled and frayed, but at least I smelled all right."Lynn''s Convenience," Mom whispered as we passed through the door. "Oh, look, Vic, we chose right." She pointed to a fat orange tabby cat that was prowling near the potato chip rack. Mom is such a cat lady, she loses her mind around anything with pointy ears and whiskers, even though she''s allergic and we can''t actually have one in our apartment. Within moments she was down on her knees, tickling this strange cat behind the ears and baby-talking like there was no one else around.

"Oh, what a handsome boy you are. Yes, yes, yes, so handsome. Such a beautiful boy."I was used to this kind of performance, but it was still mortifying to see her acting like that in public. My face flushed, and I made my way to the back of the store to find some chocolate milk. And it was right there that I found Lucy, sitting on a folding chair with a little mini TV propped up on the counter in front of her. She''d stop.