From Above

by Norah McClintock

  “No.” Ethan hadn’t mentioned it. Nor had anyone else.

  “Apparently it was a football accident.” Aunt Ginny looked around the kitchen like a dog sniffing out more treats. I took the hint and cut her another piece of meatloaf. “He took a bad tackle. I think he was even more broken up than the father when I told them about Ethan.”

  “What about the person on the roof?”

  Aunt Ginny polished off the last bite of meatloaf and the last blob of potato and sat back in her chair. “Tell me exactly what you saw,” she said. Translation: She hadn’t found him. Or her.

  I repeated what had happened in as much detail as I could recall.

  “Could you tell if it was a man or a woman? Young or old?”

  “The sun was directly behind the person’s head. All I saw was a shape.”

  “Long hair, short hair?”

  “Not long. At least, not long and loose. It could have been pulled back though.” I knew how all this sounded—my description, such as it was, fit almost everyone.

  “Did you find anything on the roof, Aunt Ginny? Did anyone at the rec center see someone go up there?”

  “The security guard at the front desk left right after his shift finished at three thirty, before it happened. He got called out of town. His mother had a bad fall. He’ll be back the day after tomorrow. I’ll talk to him then.”

  “There was a swim meet going on. There were lots of people inside. Someone must have seen something.”

  “If anyone did, I haven’t heard from him or her yet. I haven’t even found anyone who saw Ethan go up to the roof in the first place. We’re making an appeal to the public tomorrow. Maybe that will turn up something.” She sighed. “It’s been a long day. I’m going to bed.”

  THREE

  My grandpa Jimmy, who mostly raised me, was a rock-and-roll musician from the old days. He’d had some big hits in the sixties, faded out during the seventies when disco music was big, made a brief comeback in the eighties, faded again in the nineties (faded from the airwaves, that is), but through it all kept right on touring. Jimmy had a lot of fans, and they had stayed loyal to him no matter what else was going on in the world of music. He had also made new fans everywhere he went because he put on a great show. Jimmy and his band had been together since forever, and Jimmy had an unshakable credo when it came to going onstage: he put on the best show he possibly could, because in every audience, he said, there might be someone who was seeing him for the first time, and Jimmy wanted that person to come back. There also might be someone seeing him for the last time, and Jimmy wanted to make sure they went away with something to remember.

  Jimmy had loved to sing and play music. People who had seen his grizzled face, too-long hair and too-scruffy jeans and concluded that his brain was as wooly as the rest of him would have been mistaken. There was a lot to Jimmy that you’d never guess from a casual glance. For example, he had loved going to museums and art galleries. And because he’d toured not just in North America but around the world, and because I’d always gone with him, we’d gotten to see a lot of art.

  There was one picture we’d both loved. It was in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Paris. It was painted hundreds of years ago by a man named Pieter Brueghel. In the foreground of the painting, a man is plowing a field, while in the distance a ship sails by. Near the bottom right-hand corner of the painting, there are two legs sticking out of the water. They are the legs of a man who has plunged into the sea. I didn’t notice them at first. Jimmy had to point them out. That’s Icarus, he said. Icarus’s father, Daedalus, was a slave in ancient Greece. He desperately wanted freedom, so he made wings out of feathers held together by wax for himself and his son. He warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, because its heat would melt the wax and destroy the wings. But Icarus didn’t listen, so instead of gaining his freedom, he fell into the sea and drowned. But here’s the real point of the painting. The people in the gallery looking at the painting see Icarus as he plummets to his death. But no one in the painting notices him. The ship sails on, its crew and passengers oblivious to the boy. The farmer plows his field without even a glance at the sea below. Chickens and dogs go about their business. Life goes on. Jimmy said that’s what the painting was about. Life goes on, no matter what.

  That’s what it felt like the next day at school.

  It wasn’t that Ethan’s death went unnoticed. It didn’t. There was an announcement first thing that morning. But by then it was day-old news. There had been fifteen hours’ worth of texts and calls back and forth among his friends and acquaintances. There had been tears, judging from the puffy eyes of a lot of girls the next morning. Serena showed up at school, which apparently stunned her friends. She didn’t last long. She burst into tears in the middle of her first class of the day and didn’t stop—couldn’t stop, some people said—even after a friend took her to the office, where her parents were summoned to come and get her. The table in the cafeteria that was deemed property of the football team was quieter than usual. In fact, it was eerily quiet. But school went on. Teachers droned on. Kids took notes to stay awake.

  Before the day was out, kids—even kids who’d known Ethan all their lives—had started acting more like they usually did, because they were still here even if Ethan wasn’t, and they still had to get through the next class and then rush to their after-school jobs or meet their boyfriends or whatever. Even Ashleigh, who had spent the first half of lunch dissecting what she had observed or heard about Serena’s behavior (Uncontrollable crying? Her? She’s in control, all the time. If you ask me…), paused to give Charlie a hard time, the way she always did. Life goes on.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you,” she said when he showed up, lunch bag in hand. “This is the first time in ages that I haven’t had to reach for my sunglasses.”

  Charlie’s response: “Huh?”

  “Your jacket. You’re not wearing it.”

  At the end of summer, Charlie and his mother had visited Charlie’s aunt in Toronto. Charlie had come back with new clothes for school. His prized acquisition was a bright-yellow jacket. And by bright, I mean as bright as the sun overhead at noon. You could see Charlie coming from clear across town when he was wearing that jacket. Ashleigh had started in on him right away, and so far hadn’t let up.

  “It was time for a change,” Charlie said. He dropped down in the chair next to mine and tossed his lunch bag onto the table. He didn’t open it.

  “I hope you didn’t let Ashleigh’s opinion stop you from wearing it,” I said.

  “Liar,” Ashleigh declared. “You hope exactly the opposite. That jacket is so loud I actually hear it before I see it.”

  She wasn’t the only person to tease Charlie about his jacket. Some people said he looked like a bumblebee. Or a giant canary. Some said he should be a crossing guard, because he was more visible than a set of traffic lights. Or that he could go hunting with absolutely no fear of being mistaken for a deer. Mike Winters and his buddies, who used to call Charlie Lightbulb because his last name is Edison, now called him Yellow Light, like a traffic signal, and made jokes about him being slow.

  Usually Charlie ignored all the comments—except for Ashleigh’s. Usually he told her that she had no taste (to which she’d respond, And you’re colorblind) or chided her for acting like a self-appointed fashion cop. Today he just slouched in his chair.

  “It’s okay, Charlie,” I said quietly. “I’m not mad at you.”

  “Mad at him?” Ashleigh’s antennae quivered at the possibility of juicy news. “Mad at him for what?”

  “That’s between Charlie and me.” I looked at him. “How’s your hand?”

  Ashleigh’s attention darted to Charlie. She waited for him to answer.

  Charlie stood up and jammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

  “I gotta go,” he said.

  “But you haven’t touched your lunch.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “What’s eating him?” Ashleigh asked as
she watched him go. He hadn’t even taken his lunch bag with him. “With Ethan out of the picture, you’d think he’d be happy.” She snagged his lunch bag and pulled it toward her.

  “That’s an awful thing to say. Charlie would never be happy because someone died.”

  “I don’t mean happy like he’s going to dance in the streets or anything. I just mean, you know, relieved. Because now he doesn’t have to worry about Ethan.” She opened Charlie’s lunch bag and let out a squeal. “Score!” She lifted a small container from the bag and opened it. Inside was a butter tart. “Charlie’s mom makes the best butter tarts I’ve ever tasted. Want a bite?”

  “No. And for the last time, there was nothing going on between Ethan and me.”

  “There must have been something for Charlie to get so upset. You saw what he did to his hand, didn’t you?”

  “Did he tell you how he hurt it?”

  “Yeah.” She bit into the tart. A beatific smile crossed her lips. “Oh, this is so good. If you want a bite, you’d better say so now.”

  “What did he say, Ashleigh?”

  “He said he punched a wall.”

  “He told me he fell. He made it sound like an accident.”

  “That’s not an injury from a fall, Riley. It’s what happens when someone smashes his fist into something much harder.”

  “Like a wall,” I said.

  “That’s one possibility.” Ashleigh gave me a meaningful look.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked. “Do you think Charlie lied to you about how he hurt his hand?”

  “He lied to one of us,” Ashleigh said. “Maybe he lied to both of us. He looked kind of shifty when I asked him what happened, as if he didn’t want to talk about it.”

  He’d done the same thing with me too.

  “Ashleigh, you don’t think Charlie and Ethan—” I broke off. What was the matter with me? What was I thinking? There was no way Charlie would hurt anyone.

  “All I’m saying is that something is definitely bothering him. Even with Ethan out of the picture—and believe me when I tell you that no one wanted Ethan away from you more than Charlie did—something is still eating him.”

  “You know him better than I do, Ashleigh. Are you worried?”

  “I don’t know. You think I should be?”

  We looked at each other and shook our heads in unison.

  “He must have punched a wall,” Ashleigh said. “Charlie isn’t the kind of guy who punches people—especially not a person on the football team.”

  I wanted to agree with her. According to Ashleigh, Charlie had always been a kid other kids picked on, mostly because he was smaller than most guys his age. He was certainly smaller than Ethan. But then I thought back to the summer, when I had first met Charlie. Some guys had been giving him a hard time at a beach party. Charlie had handily disposed of one of them, flipping him onto his back in the sand with one neat move. He’d been so pleased with himself. He’d announced to everyone that he’d been taking martial arts. I had no idea how much he had improved. Or how much confidence he’d gained. It was possible he’d learned enough and had gotten confident enough to take on Ethan. And if that was the case, what else might he have done?

  I like to be active. I ride my bike almost everywhere. I love to go hiking. If there’s a lake or a pool around, I like to swim. Some girls, it turns out, don’t like phys ed class because they get all sweaty and their hair gets ruined. I’m not one of those girls. I don’t mind phys ed. The phys ed teacher in Moorebridge though—that was another story.

  His name was Bob McGruder. Fortysomething and clean-shaven, with a military-style buzz cut, bulging biceps and impressive pecs under a tight white T-shirt. Mid-priced sneakers peeked out under his track pants. He had a bark like a drill sergeant’s. He was also the football coach.

  A shrill whistle cut the air, and action died on the soccer field.

  “You!” Mr. McGruder thundered at me from the side of the field while I and twenty-one classmates waited to see whom he would point to with his short blunt finger. “Donovan!” Right. Me again. “Are you blind?”

  Blind? Me?

  “No, sir!” I shouted back.

  “I beg to differ, Donovan. You missed that opening. Your lack of focus is hurting your team.” I glanced at my teammates, who were scattered across the prickly brown grass and who were, for the most part, looking hot, winded and bored. “You’re in this game to win, aren’t you?”

  “Well…” I was in it because, frankly, I had no choice.

  “If you’re not in it to win it, you have no business being on the field,” Mr. McGruder bellowed.

  Maybe if it had been my first encounter with Mr. McGruder, I would have shrugged off his comment. But it wasn’t. He was picking on me. Looking for things to criticize. Inventing them, if he had to. Like when he barked at me in the very first class of the year that I’d better learn to put my heart and soul into running laps or he would make sure I got extra practice. This while the rest of the class jogged leisurely in bunches, chatting to each other. When I protested one of his calls in team sports, he handed me more laps and lectured me on how the referee was always right, no matter what. When I said that even referees make mistakes, as has been proved time and again by instant replays on television, he added yet more laps and wouldn’t let me go to my next class until I finished. That got me into trouble with my English teacher, who was within sight of retirement and had no time for any book or poem written after the end of the Victorian era. I didn’t have a problem with that. I like Dickens. Shakespeare too. Unlike my classmates, most of whom seemed bored out of their skulls.

  You’d think I’d get used to the fact that every time I opened my mouth to Mr. McGruder, I ended up running more laps. A Labrador retriever could figure it out—if you don’t want to get whacked on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, don’t bark. But the thing with bullies—and Mr. McGruder was bullying me for some reason—is that they never let up. Ever. So the choice wasn’t shut up or run laps. The choice was stick up for myself or let him get away with bullying me again. The upside of sticking up for myself? (There’s always an upside.) I was developing excellent cardiovascular capacity thanks to all the laps I ended up running.

  Mr. McGruder stared at me and waited for my response, even though he hadn’t actually asked a question.

  “Just keep your mouth shut and play,” Ashleigh hissed into my ear. “We have fifteen minutes until the bell rings. You don’t want to do more laps, do you?”

  I didn’t.

  But Mr. McGruder wouldn’t let it go. “Did you hear me, Donovan?”

  “Yes, sir! I’m either in it to win or I have no business being on the field.”

  “Please, please, please don’t say anything else,” Ashleigh said.

  And I didn’t. Not a word. Instead, I walked off the field.

  “Where in the blue blazes do you think you’re going?” Mr. McGruder roared.

  “You said if I wasn’t in it to win it…”

  I heard Ashleigh groan behind me.

  Mr. McGruder turned red in the face. “Get back to your position, now!”

  “But you said—”

  “Of course you’re in it to win. That’s what sport is all about. Play hard. Play to win.”

  “That’s not what it’s about to me,” I said.

  “Some people never learn,” Ashleigh said in a voice just loud enough for me to hear.

  “Get back to your position or I’ll give you a detention,” Mr. McGruder said.

  “Detain away.” I actually said that. “But everyone out here heard what you said. Unless I’m in it to win, I don’t belong on the field. And since I’m not in it to win—”

  He blew his whistle so long and so hard that the sound was still ricocheting around inside my head a full sixty seconds later. “I don’t like your attitude, Donovan. I haven’t liked it since day one. To the office, now.” And in case I had lost my sense of direction along with my spirit of competition, he pointed t
he way.

  I was happy to march off the field and take a place on the bench in the office. Ms. O’Shea, one of the school administrative assistants, held out her hand. I looked blankly at it.

  “You were sent here?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “I’ll need the explanation slip,” she said.

  “I don’t have one.”

  She sighed. “Who sent you?”

  “Mr. McGruder.”

  “Ah.” Apparently this changed things. She lowered her hand. “Your crime?”

  I told her.

  “Take a seat. Mr. Chen will see you when he’s free.”

  A few minutes later a door behind the counter opened, and Ms. O’Shea waved me into the vice-principal’s office.

  “Mr. McGruder sent her,” she said.

  Mr. Chen looked at my empty hands. “No slip, huh?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You want to tell me what happened?”

  I gave him a rundown. I tried to be objective, as if I was reporting on the incident instead of having been the aggrieved party. I’m not sure how well I succeeded.

  “Mr. McGruder gave me a choice,” I said by way of conclusion. “Everyone out there heard him. You can’t give someone a choice and then punish them when they don’t make the one you want. That’s not fair.”

  Mr. Chen surprised me by saying, “No, it’s not.” He leaned back in his chair. “Mr. McGruder was a professional athlete. Football. CFL. He’s serious about his sport. He played two seasons before a knee injury benched him permanently. He started coaching after that, and it’s thanks to him that we have the best football team in our division. We’ve won the provincials half a dozen times in the past ten years, and we’ve made the national semifinals twice. He knows how to motivate players and get the best performance out of them. That does, however, carry with it a certain… enthusiasm for competition that may not be everyone’s cup of tea.”

  “I’m not a football player, sir,” I said. “And it was just a PE class.”