The Hero Next Time: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 4)

Chapter Twenty-Four: Sunny, Summer, 1986

Expo!

Sunny hadn't looked forward to an event so much since the release of Star Wars had first captured his imagination, and this event was running for six whole months! The theme was "Transportation and Communication: World in Motion – World in Touch," and his brain fizzed when he saw the commercials. Movement! Space exploration! Star Wars in real time! Even Expo Ernie, the robot, reminded him of R2D2.

Ever since the Skytrain was completed, partly to accommodate the increasing need for transit from the suburbs to Downtown Vancouver, and partly to show off Vancouver to visitors coming for the Expo, Sunny knew he had to get a season's pass. He already loved taking the Skytrain from their new home, which was just across the bridge from Queensborough in Connaught Heights, disembarking at Broadway Station, and taking the bus the rest of the way to UBC; it saved him at least half an hour each way. Knowing that it was going to take them to Main Street Station, and that they would walk across the street from there into a world of magic, its entrance marked by the golf-ball-shaped Expo Centre (later redeveloped into Science World) made him quiver in anticipation, almost as much as his first time with Tej had.

By the time they went, there had already been controversy around the Expo, one an embarrassing hiccup, one a tragedy.

While opening the World's Fair, Diana, Princess of Wales had briefly fainted onto her husband in a crowded hall in the California Pavilion. She'd recovered quickly in the washroom, and left half an hour later. Prince Charles later said that her fainting spell was a result of heat and exhaustion. However, the Princess confessed several years later that it was actually caused by not having kept down any food for several days, the result of her eating disorder. She was chastised by her husband for not "fainting gracefully behind a door." He might have been embarrassed then, but poor Charles probably never foresaw the shit storm that would fall on his family eleven years later, when Diana, divorced from him by then, perished in a car crash with her lover while being pursued by paparazzi, and maybe if he'd realized sooner how unhappy both of them were, he might never have shown up with Diana that day for her to have that fainting spell, and later stopped in its tracks the series of circumstances that took Diana's life, while being happier himself with his first love, Camilla.

That tragedy was in the future, though. The Expo tragedy had happened only a few days later, when a 9-year-old girl had died at the Canada Pavilion. She'd been crushed while on a revolving turntable connecting two semi-circular theatres in the pavilion. The revolving table had been shut down for some time after the accident but put back in service with a number of new safety measures.

He wouldn't let those events dampen his enthusiasm, though. He knew he had to take Tej, to show her this event, this representation of everything he was passionate about. They just maybe wouldn't take the risk with the Canada Pavilion.  

By this time they'd progressed beyond chaste courtship; she'd relieved him of his virginity with a kindness and tenderness that had made him want to bow down and worship her. She'd had only one other lover, she'd informed him: Sean, the white boy on whose arm he'd first seen her, and that had been a secret that would have scandalized her parents, but she hadn't been so stupid as to not protect herself just because her parents wouldn't take her to get birth control. Sean, bigoted though he might have been, hadn't been stupid either, so he'd always had condoms on hand, and Sunny had made a practice of copying him, to her relief (said condoms bought only when needed and always out of his parents' sight.) She wasn't that much more experienced than he was, so in a way they were discovering the pleasures of it together. And they discovered. A lot.

Of course, neither of their families knew how far they'd gotten. One of them was supposed to bring a chaperone on all their dates, but they found ways to sneak away or get around the rule. Campus was an exception they used regularly, finding creative venues to explore each other while at school.