by P. D. Kalnay
“Do you have any family?” I asked.
“Just my folks, and they passed almost twenty years back in a car accident. I was out of the country at the time. No brothers or sisters. Some cousins I never see. The guys in my unit were my family for the last twenty years. I visit some of them when a job brings me close by.”
“So you’re like Kwai Chang Caine,” I said.
Mr. Ryan laughed.
“If you’re going to reference bad old television, The Littlest Hobo might be more accurate.”
“I’ve never seen that,” I said. “Is it like Kung Fu?”
“Not really, you can Google it later. Get your hands up higher.”
Mr. Ryan answered questions. It was a novel experience for me. I decided to ask his opinion about something that’d been bothering me.
“What do you think’s wrong with Ivy?”
“How do you mean? You two appear to be getting along well.”
“Mentally.” I wondered if he was messing with me. “She thinks she’s an actual princess and you’re a knight. How can you live fourteen years and not know what a movie is? Let alone never see one!”
Mr. Ryan considered before answering.
“I don’t know anything for certain,” he said. “And your grandmother refuses to discuss Ivy, but I believe she comes from an abusive environment. She shows signs of having been abused, and the things she doesn’t know speak to extreme isolation.”
I hadn’t considered any of that.
“Do you think I should do something?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine what that might be.
“Be her friend. When she trusts you, she may open up.”
Now, I felt extra bad about fighting with Ivy at the start of the summer. I hit the bag a few times and determined to be nicer to her from then on.
Chapter 15 – Friendship Lost
Following my talk with Mr. Ryan, I did my best to be nicer to Ivy. That wasn’t always successful because we both had strong, and if I’m being honest, somewhat abrasive personalities. Two hotheads jammed together all the time are bound to have arguments, but I did try to keep my cool. Unless I was imagining it—Ivy did the same. The garden grew far beyond what I’d have believed possible, and we were already harvesting and eating some of the vegetables at mealtimes. One Tuesday evening I discovered that my family doctor would be staying at Gran’s for the last weeks of my summer holidays. I’d forgotten my annual physical until I saw him sitting at the dinner table. Dr. Davis was old. He was so wrinkled, he made raisins and elephants look smooth by comparison. For all of my life, Dr. Davis had been my physician, and it didn’t matter if I was staying the year at my mother’s or my father’s. When I got sick, Dr. Davis showed up, old-fashioned black bag in hand. I was ten or eleven before I realised most doctors don’t make house calls, and none travel cross-country to do so. I chocked it up to being wealthy.
Every summer, for as long as I could remember, Dr. Davis had showed up out of the blue to give me a detailed physical examination. Then, minus some bout of illness, I wouldn’t see him again until the next summer. Since I was the last person to arrive for dinner, Ivy, Mr. Ryan, Gran, and Dr. Davis had all started without me.
“Hello, Jack,” Dr. Davis said. His raspy voice sounded like he’d just risen from the crypt, but he was nice enough.
“Hi,” I said, sitting between Ivy and Mr. Ryan. “Annual physical time again?”
“I’ve become predictable,” Dr. Davis said with a chuckle.
“Isn’t it unusual for a healthy boy Jack’s age to get a physical every year?” Mr. Ryan asked.
I’d asked my mother the same question last year. No answer.
“It’s required by his father’s… insurance policy,” Dr. Davis said. “To keep the premium down.”
Why couldn’t my mother tell me that? I wondered.
“I see,” Mr. Ryan said.
A little small talk about the weather, and how good the fresh vegetables were, followed. Ivy gave the good doctor more than a few suspicious looks over the course of the meal. Dr. Davis informed me he was taking a short vacation at Gran’s and would work in my examination sometime over the following weeks. The physical was never a big deal, and I moved on to thinking about other things.
***
Ivy had been hanging out in my room, every night, after my evening practice with Mr. Ryan, for weeks. I wasn’t as tired anymore, and I suspected the movies were her primary motivation, but it was still nice. After I showered, I asked Ms. Mopat if there was any popcorn in the house. She nodded, and made me two huge, butter-covered bowls with an old air popper from one of the kitchen cupboards. I added two bottles of ice tea from the fridge and headed up to my room. Ivy met me on the stairs, and I handed her half of the food. As soon as my bedroom door clicked shut, she set the bowl on her chair.
“Who’s this Dr. Davis?” she asked, looking concerned.
“He’s just my family doctor.” I wondered what had her so worked up. Knowing Ivy, she might not know what a doctor was.
“There’s something about him I don’t like.”
“What?” I sat in my chair and crammed a handful of popcorn in my mouth.
“I don’t know. He’s not what he seems. Like Mr. Ryan, but in a different way.”
“He’s always been nice enough. The way he comes running when I get a cold… my dad must pay the guy a fortune.”
“Be careful around him, Jack.”
What do you say to that?
“OK.”
Ivy picked up her bowl and sat in her chair.
“I must go out again tonight,” she said. “I promised to tell you, but there’s no need for you to accompany me. I’ll be perfectly safe.”
I didn’t want to stay up until the small hours, but I’d be too worried to sleep if I didn’t go with her.
“What time?” I asked.
“Midnight.”
Why doesn’t anything ever happen at ten?
We watched the movie after that, but Ivy seemed preoccupied and didn’t enjoy herself. I told her I’d meet her at the patio door at midnight. I’d never had any friends before, and I wondered if it was always such a pain in the butt. Midnight was only an hour and twenty minutes away, leaving no time for Jack to nap. I gathered my flashlight, and then I looked around for a suitable weapon. I hadn’t given my offer to protect Ivy another thought since the first night. Part of me had believed her late-night sojourn to be a crazy onetime outing. I should have known better. The only actual weapon I knew of in Gran’s house was the sword in the library. Most likely nothing would happen, except me losing hours of sleep, but I remembered the eyes in the forest and how they’d made me feel. Scooping a step stool from the kitchen, I took the big sword down just before midnight. Thankfully, Gran wasn’t around. I pulled the sword a couple of inches out of the scabbard to have a look at the blade. It gleamed shiny-silver and looked plenty sharp.
Ivy was waiting at the back door when I got there. Her eyes went wide when she saw the sword.
“Jack,” she whispered. “Wouldn’t the mistress of the house be angry at you for taking that?”
“Probably,” I admitted. “But if you’re right, and there’s no danger, I’ll put it back after without anyone knowing.”
“We’ll be safe on the property,” she said.
I followed Ivy out. With a cloudy sky, it was far darker than the moonlit night had been. Even Ivy’s white nighty was hard to see.
“So what are you going to do?” I asked.
“I will ask the garden to give more of its fruits, before it returns to slumber.”
Ask a silly question.
“How long do you think that’ll take?”
“Less than an hour.”
Ivy hummed to herself and slowly walked the rows of the vegetable garden over and over. It got boring quickly, and I started scanning the edge of the forest for eyes. I didn’t see any, so I went further back in the yard. Animal eyes don’t actually glow, they reflect, and there was no moon to provide the light. I clicked on
my flashlight. It’s a powerful one that takes six D-cell batteries. The beam of light shot to the back edge of the yard, and I swung it in an arc across the property. I swear in that first swing, a whole crapload of eyes looked back at me. When I moved the light more slowly a second time, I saw nothing but trees and bushes. I felt sure I hadn’t imagined the eyes. With the library sword’s scabbard in one hand and flashlight in the other, I kept sweeping the treeline until Ivy tapped me on the shoulder and informed me she’d finished.
***
The next morning, Mr. Ryan and I did our workout in the backyard. I couldn’t resist glancing toward the back of the property.
“What are you looking for?” Mr. Ryan asked. “You’ve been checking the property line all morning.”
“I thought I saw something in the woods last night,” I said. “It was probably nothing.”
“Why don’t we check for tracks? You’re not paying attention anyway.”
This was perfect. I was a little nervous going into the forest on my own, but with Mr. Ryan…
“OK,” I said. “If you don’t mind.”
“Show me where you think you saw something.”
I led Mr. Ryan to one of the spots where I thought I’d seen eyes. The forest looked less scary in the daytime. Mr. Ryan examined the ground and looked back at me.
“There are tracks,” he said. “Right up to the grass. Quite a lot of them.”
He squatted down and poked the ground with a finger.
“Fresh too. These might be from last night.”
“What kind are they?”
“You’ll have to come closer to see,” Mr. Ryan said.
That’s when I realised I’d been hanging a fair way back from the edge of the property. I came over to look. I didn’t know much about animal tracks, but thought they looked like big dog prints.
“Dog?”
“Wolf,” Mr. Ryan corrected me. “More than one. You see the different sizes.”
I looked closer, and sure enough I could distinguish at least three distinct sets of prints.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Mr. Ryan said. “Wolves leave people alone. They’re only monsters in stories and movies.”
Mr. Ryan had been right about everything since we’d met, but I felt less confident in his assessment this time.
“Hey, what’s that?” Mr. Ryan pointed into the forest.
He went in to look and answered his own question. When he came back he was carrying the left wing from my model plane. It was crushed and chewed, but recognisable. A single decal was still intact and unmarred.
“An animal must have dragged this here,” Mr. Ryan said, handing me the wing. “You lost this on the other side of the property didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
We were a long way from where the plane had gone down.
***
I had my physical a few days later. It was nothing exciting, just the usual listening to my heart, turning my head and coughing sorts of things. Dr. Davis pronounced me in good health and predicted I might have a growth spurt in the near future. My mother and father are both tall, so there wasn’t likely any science involved. Outside of dinner, I never saw Dr. Davis around the house, but a lot of Gran’s guests stuck to their rooms.
The same night as the physical, Ivy and I had a fight. She came up for our evening movie while I showered, which was no big deal, since I always dressed in the bathroom after. Ivy had let herself into my room. Also no big deal. Unfortunately, I’d left my current sketchbook sitting out on the writing table.
I always had a sketchbook on the go. Sometimes, I did proper sketches of real things for art class at school. Other times, I drew fanciful stuff I hoped to build someday. They’d mostly consisted of forts and spaceships when I was younger. More recently, I’d added designs for swords I’d forge out in Gran’s smithy. Most recently… I’d been drawing pictures of Ivy. Lots of pictures of Ivy. When I opened the door, and I saw her flipping through my sketchbook, I lost it. Embarrassed, I overreacted, racing across the room and tearing the book from her hands.
“Jack, what are you doing?” Ivy looked shocked.
“You can’t just go digging through peoples private things,” I said.
“It was sitting out. I was only looking at your pictures while I waited.”
Had she gotten to the ones at the end? I couldn’t tell.
“Get out of my room!” I shouted.
The look of hurt on her face made me regret it immediately. Before I could take my words back—Ivy had fled in tears. I felt like the biggest jerk on the planet, but I didn’t know how to fix things. Ivy stopped coming in the evenings and we didn’t talk for the next week out in the garden or at meals. With a few words, I’d lost my first friend.
Mr. Ryan showed me the way forward.
Chapter 16 – Mended Fences
The week after my outburst was as miserable as the month before had been wonderful. I still did the martial arts with Mr. Ryan, but it didn’t seem as fun anymore. All that had changed was talking to Ivy every day, and it surprised me how losing that one thing could diminish the quality of my life. I also felt guilty over being such a jerk. Mr. Ryan probably noticed something was off with me right away, but he waited a week before asking about it.
“You and Ivy have a fight?”
We were putting away equipment in the gym. Rainy weather had returned, forcing us inside for the day.
“Yeah,” I said. “I sort of yelled at her.”
“How do you sort of yell at someone?”
“OK, I yelled at her. She was going through my stuff.”
Mr. Ryan set our bamboo swords on the rack and looked back at me with one eyebrow raised.
“You mean she was rifling through your drawers and digging through your closet? Ivy’s a strange girl, but I’ve always found her to be flawlessly polite.”
“Not exactly,” I said.
Mr. Ryan didn’t push for the details.
“So you got upset and said things you wish you hadn’t?”
I nodded.
“And now you aren’t sure how to fix things?”
Mr. Ryan was like a mind reader.
“Yeah.”
“Did you try apologising?”
“No.”
“Is it such a big deal that you’re willing to end the summer without talking to her before she leaves?”
It wasn’t, and hearing Mr. Ryan spell things out, I felt even more of an idiot.
“Friendship is never a one way street,” he said. “Sometimes, you have to give a little.”
***
I went down to Ivy’s room after dinner. Generally, I avoided the second floor altogether because my grandmother lived on it. Ivy had been to my room countless times, but this was the first time I’d gone to visit hers. I knocked on the door. There was no answer, and I turned to leave. I’ll admit that I felt relief. Tomorrow would be soon enough. The door opened before I’d taken a step.
“Did you want something, Jack?” Ivy was dressed in her white cotton nighty, looking ready for bed.
“I wanted to talk to you.” I held my sketchbook tight to my chest like a shield. I didn’t flinch when Mr. Ryan hit me on the head with a wooden sword, but now, I was on the verge of bolting.
“You may come in, if you wish.” Ivy backed into her room to let me in.
I took a moment to check the place out. In keeping with the rest of the house, Ivy’s room was decorated in old lady. The room didn’t look as though Ivy had added a single personal touch to make it her own. It looked like she’d never slept a night there and could walk out without leaving a trace of her existence. There wasn’t as much as a single knickknack on the dresser.
“What did you wish to say?”
“I wanted to apologise for yelling at you.” There—it was out. Admittedly, I hadn’t looked up from the floor when I said it, but it was out.
“You have every right to your privacy. I overstepped. I let myself believe you were my…”
She trai
led off, and I looked up from my feet.
“Your what?” I asked.
“My friend,” Ivy said. Now she looked at the floor.
“I was. I mean, I am… if you want me to be. You’re technically my first friend. I’m not very good at this yet. Sorry.”
“Truly… I’m your friend? Your first friend?”
“Yeah, you don’t need to make such a big deal out of it. Anyway, I came to apologise and stuff. Are we good, or not?”
“We are good. What was the stuff?”
I handed my sketchbook to her.
“You can look at it.”
“If it causes you embarrassment, I don’t need to,” Ivy said. “Though, the pictures I saw were very well done.”
“Think of it as my penance for being a jerk,” I said. I turned to flee, not wanting to be around while she looked at the drawings. “You can just bring it back to my room when you come for the movie tomorrow night.”
***
A few hours later, when I’d almost fallen asleep, there came a soft knocking at my door.
“Hello?” I said.
“It’s me,” Ivy’s voice said on the other side of the door. “May I come in?”
“Yeah, OK.” I turned on the lamp on the nightstand and sat up.
Ivy let herself in, sketchbook in hand.
“I said you could bring it back tomorrow.”
“I wanted to talk to you now,” Ivy said. “If you don’t mind?”
“Sure, I wasn’t asleep yet.”
Ivy sat on the edge of her movie chair, sketchbook on lap, looking serious.
“I looked at all of your drawings,” she said, looking at the book. “Many times, over the last hours.”
Oh crap. I was suddenly wide awake.
“They’re beautifully drawn,” she continued. “but…”
Crap, crap, crap.
“But?”
“May I ask you a question?”
“I think friends are supposed to be able to ask each other anything,” I said. “At least in books and movies.”
“That’s my understanding as well.” She hesitated before pushing forward. “There are many drawings of me in your book, beautiful drawings, and I wondered if…”
