That summer when the four of us would don our navy pencil skirts and reddish, brownish silk ties and conspire around the wood table in our fan-cooled basement office, at least two of us were virgins. The season was hot and mosquito-ridden, and I had just pierced my ears, one tiny diamond embedded in each lobe, often on the verge of inflammation.

C was the closest to my age, then R, then D older than all of us. I was the baby, and they called me “Gracie.” We each had our little grey locker, and in the morning some of us would just change right then and there, while the rest of us would slip into the change room. Then, we would refill our paper pouch with pins of the province (flag, owl, prairie crocus, white spruce, golden boy) and the first of us would head up the marble stairs to greet the rare visitor of the day’s first tour.

The rest of us would read, talk, have breakfast. We had two supervisors, two women who were in their womanhood, one who occupied the private office in the back and one who shared a room with us girls (although D was a woman, definitely). A, the latter supervisor, loved to hear about our lives—the gossip, the boys. I was fresh from my first of year of undergraduate in the big city, one unrequited crush and no first kiss to recount. C, beautiful, boisterous, was turning circles about this one guy—they had made out but he was flaky. I remember that he might have skateboarded, might have been lanky. We laughed a lot, raised our voices a lot. V, our other supervisor, would read quietly, and sometimes she rolled her chair to her door to say something in solidarity.

The visitors were mostly old, or families, or school children. There was one intern whom we set our eyes upon, but without much digging we discovered he was engaged. Our uniform did not do us much service, but I think we were praised regularly for being intelligent young women. We knew and understood the building and were good at pinpointing—earlier than later—what people would be interested in; we could be light-hearted and we could be serious. Once during a group tour, when an elementary student asked my why the Golden Boy wasn’t a Golden Girl, I smiled and praised her. Overall, we did our job well.

When the weather was nice we would have lunch outside on the green trimmed grass. C loved the sun and R and D had pale skin so we would settle by a tree’s half-shade. C usually changed back into her sleeveless or off-the-shoulder top with short shorts; she would lean her arms back, squint her eyes with contentment, her skin glowing warm. Most of our chats escape me now, but I remember near the end of the summer, C and I became obsessed with the way Edna Mode introduced herself in The Incredibles, and we would watch the video and repeat after her, giggling, soaking up the sun.

Afternoons were busy and languid. We tried to stay in air-conditioned areas (the ballroom and the assembly room) as much as possible, and the visitors were grateful too. As soon as we came back to the office, our burgundy vest was off and we’d gulp down water and hog one of the fans. I mean, I am unsure if the state of our bodies was always so visceral as my recollection, but I remember washing my white button downs—stiff cotton polyester, hemmed at the sleeves by A’s cousin—quite often.

So the day would pass like this and we would wait until a couple of minutes to five o’clock to slip out of our uniforms because in a previous year the girls had changed earlier in the four o’clock hour and gotten reported by a security guard. V and A didn’t care, but they also told the girls they didn’t want to aggravate anyone else, make them believe the visitor tour program was not doing its job properly.

D drove or walked home, C walked or bussed home, R bussed or got a ride home, and I got a ride or occasionally biked home. On the majority of days where my mom and I would drive back together, I sat in the passenger seat of the car and turned the channel to Classical 107 or Bluetooth connected to my Spotify. We must have often listened to hers and my dad’s favourite Chinese songs, which had become my favourite Chinese songs early on in life. After 30 to 45 minutes our suburban neighbourhood would greet us, and I would go shower, and my parents would make dinner, and we would watch Dream of the Red Chamber on the big screen. It was summer, and the sky was bright until late.