The Simple Wild (Wild 1)

Simon eases himself off the step and heads toward the waiting garbage can. “I suppose I can manage this last one for you. Just this once. After all, you have had quite the day.”

He charges forward in a funny shuffle that sends Tim and Sid scurrying into the hedge before struggling to wheel the can into place. For all that makes Simon endearing, he is neither coordinated nor strong. Mom has tried and failed to get him to a gym to add some muscle to his spindly arms.

A thought strikes me. “What are you going to do about garbage day if I go to Alaska?”

“Well, of course your mother will take care of it.” He waits a beat before turning to meet my doubtful smirk, and mutters in that dry British way he has, “That would be a bloody cold day in hell, now wouldn’t it?”

Chapter 3

“You have to go!” Diana yells over the throbbing bass, pausing long enough to flash a pearly white grin at the bartender as he sets our drink order on the bar. “It’s beautiful up there.”

“You’ve never been to Alaska!”

“Well yeah, but I’ve seen Into the Wild. All that wilderness and the mountains . . . Just don’t eat the berries.” She makes a dramatic show of placing a ten-dollar tip down so that the bartender notices. A trick for priority service the next round.

Meanwhile, the bartender’s eyes are busy dragging over the plunging neckline of my cobalt-blue dress, the first thing I yanked out of my closet in my rush to change and get out the door. He’s cute but short and brawny, with a shaved head and a full sleeve of ink—not my tall and lean, clean-cut, inkless type—and, besides, I’m not in the mood to flirt in exchange for free shots.

I humor him with a tight smile and then turn my attention back to Diana. “It’s not like that on the western side of Alaska.”

“Cheers.” We down our shots in unison. “What’s it like?”

The sickly sweet concoction makes me grimace slightly. “Flat.”

“What do you mean? Flat, like the Prairies?”

“No. I mean, yeah, it’s probably flat like there, but it’s really cold. Like, arctic cold.” Whereas our midwest provinces are home to the vast majority of our country’s farmland, nothing thrives where my dad is from, the growing season’s too short. That’s according to my mom, anyway, and the woman has a bachelor’s degree in Plant Science from the University of Guelph. If anyone would know, I’d think it would be her.

“Arctic?” Diana’s cornflower-blue eyes widen with excitement. “Seriously, think how amazing that could be for Calla & Dee. You’re the one who said we needed to find an original angle. You said we need to get out of the city.”

“I was thinking more a trip to Sandbanks or Lake of Bays.” New pretty and picturesque places that we can get to within a few hours by car.

“What’s more original and out of the city than a lifestyle blogger in the arctic?” Diana’s matte mauve-colored lips curl into a hopeful smile as no doubt a spiderweb of ideas is spinning in her head.

Last year, we started a small website aptly named Calla & Dee, an avenue to share our passion for the latest lipstick shades and shoe styles, just for fun. I should have known when Diana asked me to split the cost of a website designer that she already had lofty goals and that this hobby was going to grow legs of its own.

Now we exchange texts about the site all day long—ideas for future posts and who’s doing what that seems to be working. Instead of a simple blog, we have entire sections—fashion, food, beauty, entertainment—and a strict weekly schedule to adhere to. I spend my commutes and lunch hours scrolling through newsletters and blog posts in order to educate myself on the latest—retailers announcing sales, fashion industry leaders announcing the latest trends, other lifestyle bloggers who we befriend online in the name of networking. My evenings are for updating links, loading content, tweaking aesthetics—tasks that Diana abhors but I don’t mind and am actually good at.

Diana and I meet up in a new restaurant every Thursday night to bounce around ideas and taste-test appetizer menus for our “Grazing in the City” section. One Saturday a month is for scouring discount racks for trendy clothes to style ourselves with, and every Sunday afternoon we hunt for the perfect settings in downtown ­Toronto—colorful graffiti in alleyways, the spring cherry blossoms of High Park, the Distillery District’s picturesque Christmas Market. We take Simon’s pricey Canon with us, swapping out cute outfits in the backseat of Diana’s Tahoe and taking turns pretending that we’re not posing for the camera. I’ve learned far more about sight lines and shutter speed and the rule of three than I ever expected to, and it’s all in the name of grabbing that perfect lifestyle snapshot—nice outfits on park benches and in city streets, with blurred backgrounds and feel-good captions about love and happiness and spirituality.

We get caught up in “what if” conversations all the time. What if we hit a hundred thousand followers? What if companies started sending us clothes and makeup samples to promote so we don’t have to spend half our paychecks anymore? What if we become Instagram famous?

It’s a daydream for me.

A goal for Diana.

But we have a long way to go before we’re being featured on any “best of” lists, and more and more lately, I fear that all our efforts have been a waste. After a year of hard work, we have a frustratingly modest following of almost four hundred returning visitors to our website. Our separate Instagram profiles—the two halves of Calla & Dee—have more. Diana’s is triple mine, which isn’t surprising given she is obsessed with learning the latest expert tips and tricks about building an audience and curating photos and tagging appropriately; about how to word captions to be upbeat and inspirational. She responds to every last comment on her posts and spends her lunch hour interacting with strangers, hoping to attract their attention and their following.

Still, even with all Diana’s die-hard efforts and determination, we can’t seem to gain any traction. At this point, it’s nothing more than a forty-hour-a-week hobby, grappling with finding ideas for “how to’s” and “top tens” that haven’t been done before, that people might want to read.

My gut says we’re missing a key ingredient—originality. Right now, we’re just two more attractive city girls who love to pose and talk about makeup and clothes. There’s a sea of us.

“It’s not really the arctic. Not where he lives, anyway. It’s . . . somewhere in between the arctic and normal civilization. It’s like . . . the last frontier?” I echo something I read about Alaska once, silently admitting that I don’t know much about where I was born.

“Even better! And you’ll have a bunch of planes at your disposal!”

“I doubt they’ll be ‘at my disposal.’ And I’ll be alone. How am I going to get any good shots?” We cringe in unison at the thought of a selfie stick.

Diana’s not to be swayed, though. “Someone there will be willing to take pictures of a beautiful Canadian girl. Maybe a hot American pilot.”