The Throne

by Beth Goobie

  The Throne

  Beth Goobie

  This book is dedicated to Kevin Hogg.

  chapter 1

  On most days, Polkton Collegiate was a snake pit, and the first day of the year was no exception. As Meredith came through the east tech-wing entrance, the halls closed in with their familiar mayhem, catcalls and laughter ricocheting off the walls. Short for her age and slight of build, she instinctively braced herself against the oncoming flow of students, many of whom towered a full head above her. One of these months, she thought resignedly, she was going to hit a genetic-defying growth surge and her eye level would finally pop up above other kids’ nipples; for now, she was condemned to fending off the occasional Slurpee cup that had been placed on her head by some out-and-out moron.

  Ducking to the right, Meredith sidestepped advancing traffic and headed past an overhead security camera and on down the corridor. Ten meters in from the outer entrance was the door to her home form—the school’s only music classroom—and, as she approached, she quickened her step. Anticipation surged through her, tingling her palms; glancing to either side, she swallowed once and slipped through the open doorway. Ahead, the room sat empty, not even Mr. Woolger, her home form teacher, to be seen, and for a moment Meredith stood motionless, surveying what lay before her. Then, striding past shelves of numbered instrument cases and tubas positioned upside down on their stands, she began to climb the risers that contained the students’ chairs. At the third and highest riser, she paused and scanned various nearby percussion instruments before turning her attention to the drum set. A smile hesitated in one corner of her mouth, and, almost disbelievingly, she touched a fingertip to one of the cymbals. Here it was—the moment she had been pondering for weeks—and now, with one last glance around, she stepped behind the drums and parked her butt.

  For a second, she felt disoriented. Having spent the previous year seated in a floor-level, front-row chair, the view from the third riser felt surreal—three descending rows of chairs and music stands, and a full seven meters away, Mr. Woolger’s front-of-the-room conducting podium and desk. There was so much space, Meredith wanted to stretch out her arms and holler. The drum set was, simply put, the place to be in Home Form 75, and the fact that she had snagged it for her Grade 10 year was sweet.

  Last year, the drums had been claimed by Eddie van Holst, a Grade 12 muscle-building fanatic, and many of Meredith’s Grade 9 memories were haunted by the secret mind codes Eddie had tapped onto the largest horizontal drum’s surface whenever he had gotten bored with the PA announcements. From her position in the front row, those codes had sounded restless, seductive—a quiet but tangible undercurrent calling her toward the unknown. In addition, a year’s experience had taught her the utter inadvisability of allowing herself to get stuck anywhere near Mr. Woolger’s desk again. Close to retirement, the teacher teetered constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown and kept the world adamantly at bay with a conducting baton that he seemed to have glued permanently to his right palm. Whether standing in front of a music class or not, Mr. Woolger conducted nonstop, keeping time even when seated alone at his desk and muttering only to himself.

  One morning last spring, he had grown so upset while lecturing the home form class about the gum wads he kept finding stuck to various objects around the room, that he had shattered his trusty baton by pounding it hysterically on his desk. While Meredith had been sympathetic—particularly about the still fresh, OOZING! (as Mr. Woolger had put it) Double Bubble wad that he had recently discovered affixed to the inside of a tuba bell—still, without having to be told, she had shown up the following morning along with the rest of the home form class, methodically chewing a stick of Wrigley’s Spearmint gum.

  Recalling the incident now, Meredith gave the drum set a cautious once-over, checking for anything damp, squishy, or OOZING!, then straightened just as several guys entered the room and started toward her. Engrossed in loud guffaws, they didn’t notice her until, glancing up out of a shared joke, one of them fixed on her sitting bolt upright behind the drums and came to a dead halt.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, as if he had never seen her before. Last year, his seat had been one row below and slightly to the right of Eddie van Holst. If he had noticed Meredith at all, it would have been only as the rear view on a decidedly diminutive head of short black hair. Warily, she assessed him, then his buddies. Of the three, two were now in Grade 11 and the third in Grade 12, and all of them had spent last year’s home form periods clustered around Eddie and his secret drum codes. So they probably figured they had put in their apprenticeship, and one of them was now due to inherit Eddie’s position—presumably Seymour Molyneux, the oldest, and the one most likely to have left a trail of moist, illicit gum wads all over Mr. Woolger’s joie de vivre. Like the other two—Morey Jampolsky and Gene Bussidor—Seymour had grown a lot over the summer. These were guys, Meredith thought, observing them carefully, who ruled.

  Well, she decided, so did she! And if she didn’t let them know that right off, they would be crowding her all year. So, picking up a drumstick that was lying on one of the smaller drums, she pointed it at Morey, the guy who had asked the question, and said, “My name, for your information, just so happens to be Meredith Polk. As in Gus Polk, great and illustrious founder of the pukey, poky megalopolis of Polkton.”

  For a moment, the guys just stared at her. Then Gene broke into an easy grin. “You know how to play the drums?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “But I know how to sit on one.”

  His grin widened. One of a handful of Cree students attending Polkton Collegiate, he had shoulder-length black hair and deeply tanned skin. “You get a good rhythm going,” he said, “and you won’t need sticks.”

  Then, without seeming to think twice about it, he climbed the second and third risers and sat down next to her, behind the xylophone. “Come on, you guys,” he said to Seymour and Morey. “What’re you waiting for?”

  Narrow-eyed, Seymour’s gaze flitted between the two of them. His answer was obvious—for her to get her ass out of there—but he didn’t say it. Gene played double and electric bass in the school’s Concert, Jazz, and Greaser bands; he was popular, respected, and from a distance appeared to be utterly lacking in a mean streak. While he might have taken to chewing gum daily during home form period for several weeks after Mr. Woolger’s Double-Bubble outburst, Meredith couldn’t imagine him depositing a gum wad anywhere on school property except in a wastepaper basket.

  “Charlie Watts would be turning in his grave,” Morey said disgustedly.

  “I doubt it. And anyway, he’s not dead yet,” said Gene. “You ever read anything about the guy? A Stone, and he’s never cheated on his wife. Not even once.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” demanded Seymour.

  Gene shrugged. “Never stereotype anyone,” he said. “Not even a Stone.”

  “A philosopher,” muttered Morey as Seymour stood, his gaze neutral, almost blank, eyeing Gene. Assessing, thought Meredith. He’s assessing Gene for something. But before she could nail down what that something was, Seymour’s gaze had shifted and was sweeping the rear-riser row of empty chairs positioned behind the various percussion instruments. From the looks of it, he was considering taking up home form residence in one of them—probably the chair dead center, one over from Gene. The moment passed, however, and with a grimace he dropped into the second-riser seat directly in front of the drums.

  Following his cue, Morey ducked past Seymour’s knees and parked his butt in front of Gene. Chubby, with gold wire-rim glasses, he had a habit of patting his thick blond frizz of hair, and he did so now, nervously—as if trying to keep it from flying off his head. “Hey!” he said, turning to Seymour. “You heard anything about the new football co
ach?”

  To Meredith’s right, Gene leaned forward, instantly absorbed into a discussion about this year’s football roster—a discussion, she realized with a sinking feeling, to which she was obviously not expected to contribute. She had been dismissed, and while this more or less solved the question of who was to occupy the drum set, at least for the present, it left her feeling as if she didn’t exist. This wasn’t something she had considered when she had made her beeline for the most cherished seat in home form—that she would be surrounded by great hulking male seniors, none of whom saw themselves as engaging in regular chit-chat with an undersized, nondescript Grade 10 twerp.

  At that moment, Mr. Woolger entered the room, gave it a quick scan, and fixed on her with a look of surprise. Behind him, Meredith could see several students coming in—Sina Sun and Kirstin Rawls, two girls she had sat with last year, as well as a few terrified-looking minor-niners. For a second, she considered admitting defeat, handing over the drums to Seymour, and descending to the comfort of relative obscurity in a front row seat. But then she ditched the idea. Maybe she hadn’t been welcomed to the back row riser with open arms, but time would tell. And for now, she had it—the epicenter, Nerve Central of Home Form 75.

  Placing her hands tentatively on the largest horizontal drum, she tried tapping out a few secret thoughts.

  Later that day, as Meredith headed along a crowded hall en route to her afternoon history class, she saw Seymour again, leaning in an open doorway and talking to a girl. Instinctively, she homed in on him, sizing him up the way she would a tennis or debating opponent—not that there was any reason to see Seymour as an enemy combatant, she told herself reassuringly, but something about the set of his back that morning as he had sat down in the seat one riser below her, and the way he had kept his head turned carefully away, refusing to acknowledge her presence, had communicated loud and clear that he hadn’t accepted the situation as it currently presented and would be seriously mulling things over.

  So, as Meredith approached, she mulled him over—the conspicuous height that placed him two to three heads taller, the broad, almost rough-looking face and dark collar-length hair, and the energy that ran constantly through him like a current, drawing in everyone in his vicinity. Although Seymour wasn’t what most girls would consider good-looking, and was more likely to be found in a heated cafeteria game of laptop poker than shooting baskets with the jock crowd, still, he was popular; both girls and guys liked him. In fact, he was the sort of person Meredith would have chosen as a friend, given the chance—quick, verbal, and at the center of things. Consequently, when Seymour happened to glance up out of his conversation and meet her eye, she didn’t look away, but met his gaze head-on and continued walking.

  Briefly his eyes narrowed, and then he said something to the girl he had been talking to and started toward Meredith. Startled, she glanced around, looking for someone nearby from the senior cool crowd, but found herself surrounded by a flood of short, bewildered-looking minor-niners, who had probably all just been let out of the same class.

  “Well,” said Seymour, coming to a halt in front of her. Raising a hand, he placed it against the wall and leaned in, effectively cutting her off from hallway traffic. “If it isn’t Charlie Watts.”

  His dark eyes studied her—so casually, it felt as if he was sitting well back inside himself and observing a situation that might or might not have something to do with him. Inexplicably, a soft warning sensation crept up Meredith’s back, lifting the hair on her neck. “My name,” she said carefully, trying to suss out what he was after, why on earth he would have crossed a busy hall to talk to her, “is Meredith.”

  To her dismay, she felt a flush heating her face. Backed into a wall, with Seymour looming vampire-like over her, Meredith found it difficult to hold his gaze ... something of which he was well aware, she realized, reading it in the slight curve of his lips.

  “Meredith,” he said slowly, as if tasting her name on his tongue. “Meredith Polk. The Polk.”

  Meredith was starting to get it—Seymour’s reason for backing her into the wall was becoming more obvious by the second. “Seymour,” she said, imitating his tone syllable by syllable. “The Molyneux.”

  One of his eyebrows lifted. “Come on now,” he said, his voice taking on a coaxing tone. “Charlie Watts isn’t really your style, is it? I mean, the progeny of a founding father and all. Don’t you think, all things considered, tomorrow you would rather be sitting in the front row with your buddies from last year?”

  Nothing changed in his gaze as he spoke; he didn’t bare fangs or start breathing ominously, but still Meredith felt it—something unspoken, vaguely threatening, leaning in.

  “No!” she shot back, her voice cracking nervously. “I don’t think that. I don’t think that at all.” Stepping backward, she tried to move around him, but unexpectedly he reached out and took hold of her arm.

  “Come on,” he repeated, his voice still coaxing, but with a harder edge. “When you think about it, Meredith—can’t you see yourself walking into home form tomorrow morning, catching sight of your old buds smiling at you in the front row, and going over to your old familiar seat and sitting down where you belong?”

  Where you belong? Full-out dumbfounded, Meredith could only echo the phrase in her mind as she stared, open-mouthed, at Seymour. Still nothing changed in his gaze; it remained cool and remote, as if he had yet to decide whether or not the conversation included him. By contrast, there she stood—heart thudding, palms sweaty, her voice stuck halfway down her throat. It was the size of him that did it, she thought, gazing upward. The guy seemed to grow taller by the second. Without warning, it made her angry—the way Seymour assumed he could just stand there towering over her ... as if that was where he belonged. Surging onto her toes, she shoved her face up at him.

  “I like where I’m sitting in home form,” she said, heated but slow. “And I got there first, so it’s my seat for the rest of the year. What’s it to you, anyway?”

  With an audible intake of breath, Seymour took a step back, and his gaze lost some of its remote quality. Finally the conversation had grabbed his full attention. “I ... want to sit there,” he said. “That’s where the oldest guy always sits. It’s a tradition.”

  “Too bad,” Meredith said flatly. “That tradition just got broken.”

  Seymour’s eyes narrowed, and something flickered in their depths—surprised, maybe even a little mean. “What’re you after, Polk?” he asked, his mouth twisting. “Power?”

  Taken aback, Meredith stared at him. Power had been the last thing on her mind when she had headed for the drum set that morning. Or had it? Epicenter, she thought. Nerve Central.

  “I thought ... it would be a fun place to sit,” she said, feeling oddly guilty. “That’s all, just fun. No big deal—”

  Her voice trailed off and they stood, faces centimeters apart, observing each other. Knowingly, as if he had read her mind, a smile crept across Seymour’s mouth. “Tomorrow,” he said quietly, not so much coaxing this time as giving a matter-of-fact command, “you are going to walk into home form, go over to your old front row seat, and sit down with your buddies, where you will have a rip-roaring good ole time for the rest of the year. Right, Polk?”

  Without waiting for a response, he pushed out from the wall and set off down the corridor. As Meredith watched him go, an unexpected wave of fatigue passed over her and she felt sucked dry, as if something giant and invisible had been vamping her. Confused, she glanced around, but saw only a nearby security camera implacably filming and other students streaming past, oblivious to what had taken place. So, with an inner shrug, she filed the conversation for later consideration and headed off in search of History 201.

  chapter 2

  The first day of Grade 10 officially over, Meredith was lying around with her best friends, Dean Matsumoto and Rebecca Looby, in the Matsumoto family’s back yard. More specifically, the three girls were lying under the willow tree near the rear fence, t
he crowns of their heads resting against the base of the trunk. That was their rule—the tips of their heads all had to touch the trunk, and then they had to lie in complete silence, cell phone ringers off and contemplating the way the light invited itself through the willow leaves for at least five minutes before they began to talk. “Invited itself” was Dean’s phrase, but it had become part of the texture of Meredith’s thinking the first time she had heard her friend say it. Light always invites itself, she now thought lazily as she observed the sun spark here and there through the willow branches. Invites itself like a smile, the scent of a flower, or the beginning of a new year. Yeah—the very beginning.

  As if in response to her thoughts, Dean sighed, the sound wafting from her in pure pleasure. An instinctive echo, Reb sighed too, and then Meredith threw one in for good measure.

  “A long summer it has been,” murmured Reb. “Nothing, nothing in Kapuskasing or anywhere in the whole wide world, smells as good as it does under this tree.”

  “Uh-huh,” the others murmured in reply, and then they lay simply watching the shift of a thousand leaves against sky. Two full months had passed since the three of them had been together like this, Reb having deserted Polkton at the beginning of July to spend the summer with her father at their lakeside cabin. Several weeks later, Dean and her family had taken off on a month-long camping trip to Florida.

  “Disney World!” Dean spat abruptly, her tone filled with contempt. “I am telling you—never go there. Brouhaha and whiplash—I’d have more fun if someone threw me into a washing machine.”

  “Fun fascists,” agreed Reb. “We had them up at the lake, too. Every second of the entire summer, they had to be out water-boarding and kicking up waves. If there wasn’t a lot of noise, they weren’t interested. Unless, of course, they could put in time staring at my boobs.”

  Reb was well-endowed. It was a Looby family trait and got her a fair amount of attention. Last year, several guys had asked her out, but she had turned them all down. “They weren’t asking me out, they were asking my boobs,” she had explained flatly. “Date me, date my face.”