My Cousin's Keeper

by Simon French

  I raised my shoulders in a slow shrug. “Yeah . . . I guess.”

  “How come you don’t hang around with Bon?” she asked. “He’s your cousin, after all.”

  I shrugged uncomfortably, glancing across to where Mom was searching through boxes of odds and ends.

  I was disappointed that the conversation had turned to Bon. Because he’s weird. Because he steals things, I wanted to say.

  “I thought you guys would be friends,” Julia told me. She raised one eyebrow a little and waited for me to reply.

  “You’re already his friend,” I said.

  “But I’m not his cousin. And you live here. You’ll always be here, even if I’m not.”

  “Kieran!” Mom called from nearby. “We’ve finished looking. How about you?”

  “I’d better go,” I said, a little relieved I’d been called.

  “Bon told me about his cousin Kieran, so I knew about you before I’d even met you,” Julia said.

  “How?” I asked.

  Julia ignored the question. “Bon needs someone who cares about him,” she told me. “And that’s you.”

  I opened my mouth to ask what Julia meant, but she looked at me as though I should already know. Mom and Gina were waiting at the roadside for me. “I have to go,” I told her, sighing. “See you at school.”

  Suddenly, Julia’s hand was gently grasping my arm. Her other hand held the seat of her new bike, and in a whisper she added, “You should buy something, too. Before you leave. I think these people really need the money.”

  She let go and watched as I rummaged in my pocket for coins. It was as though one of my parents had told me to do something, rather than a girl about my age. I chose a plastic robot that transformed into a truck and then back again, and gave Troy Pearson more of my precious spending money than I really wanted. By the time I’d paid, Julia was walking toward the gate with her purple bike. I realized then that it was actually an OK bike, and with a cleaning up it could even look pretty cool. But Julia already knew that, because she had paid her money and was launching herself onto the seat. She turned to me and raised her hand in a single wave — and smiled. Surprised, I waved back and watched her ride away down the street. She had smiled at me.

  So — she didn’t live on a farm with rich parents. There was no fancy car, or a pet horse in a paddock. A camper at the trailer park didn’t seem right to me, somehow, but then neither had her mom when I’d first seen them at school. It was as though they didn’t fit together the way my family did. I didn’t know where Julia had come from, and how long she was going to stay. Somehow, she and Bon had met before they both started school on the same day. Then I realized they would easily have found each other at the trailer park.

  Bon needs someone who cares about him. I didn’t want to understand why she had said this.

  I thought you guys would be friends. I didn’t want to be told this. Talking with Julia hadn’t quite gone the way I’d expected.

  “That’s a face I haven’t seen before,” Mom commented as we climbed into our car. “Is she new at school? Does she have a name?” Working at the only supermarket in town meant Mom got to know most of the faces from around town.

  “Julia,” I replied.

  “Julia? Julia who?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Julia Someone.” But I was tumbling last names around in my head. Barrie, Barlow . . . Barrett. Julia Barrett.

  Without looking, I could tell that Mom had found something humorous and was smiling at me. “Julia Someone,” she repeated. “Hmm.”

  I tried to ignore her, staring out the window as we left the streets of Dodge City and headed back into the main part of town. I thought of Julia’s wave and that single last smile, and I wondered if she would have anything to say to me back on the playground at school.

  I knew, though, that I wasn’t about to start looking after Bon. And I sure wasn’t going to be his friend.

  Dad was leaving me behind again.

  Once more he had chosen Guthrie Street, with the steepest hill, and I launched myself at the slope with all the energy I could muster. Dad stopped long enough to smile at me before jogging away toward the old train station, leaving me to catch my breath and then stumble after him. I was determined to keep up.

  Finally, after jogging past the old bridge alone, I caught up, but only because Dad had paused to talk. Lenny and Danno, who worked for the town, were on their early-morning rounds and had stopped to empty the sidewalk trash bin outside the convenience store. I could hear their laughing voices above the utility truck’s idling engine.

  “Watch out, Tony, the young fella’s catching up!” one of them said, laughing. They both wore official town hats and fluorescent safety vests, and I could never remember who was who.

  “Time to get going, then,” Dad replied, glancing back at me and making it sound like a cheerful family joke.

  Lenny and Danno cheered me on as I jogged past, and I managed a wave and a grin that I hoped made it look as though I had buckets of energy left over. I was so close behind Dad now that I could smell his sweat and hear his puffs of breath. And then I spotted Bon.

  Although the Tealeaf Café still had a CLOSED sign on its front door, Bon was inside and seated at one of the tables. A tall mug steamed gently on the table in front of him. He was reading something, a comic or a magazine, and lifted a slice of toast to his mouth. He didn’t see me outside, although I’d come to a stop to look at him and try to size up what was happening. There was no sign of his mom.

  “He’s having breakfast,” I mumbled. “The café’s not even open yet.”

  Bon kept reading, taking slow bites of toast and then a sip from the mug. Though he sat at an angle away from the front window and the sidewalk, I could see that his silly braid was frizzed out from being slept on, and the clothes he was wearing were the same ones he’d worn to school yesterday. How, I wondered, can Bon’s mom afford café breakfasts for him, but not a new pair of sneakers without worn-out toes?

  Then Kelsie Graney, who worked at the café, walked over to the table beside Bon. I could see her asking him something and then his head shake an answer. Kelsie sat at the table alongside Bon. She didn’t talk, but simply watched him as he read his comic and ate his toast. Her eyes found mine from across the road, and she raised a hand to me and waved hello, before walking to the front door and turning the sign over so that it read OPEN.

  I jogged away before Bon looked up and saw me. At the end of the next block, Dad turned briefly and waved a Come on! hand to me. I found one last burst of energy and began to sprint the length of the shops until, at the corner of our street, I caught up with him.

  It would have been easy to say, Guess where I just saw Bon!

  Except I didn’t.

  In our kitchen, Dad was goofing around with Gina. “You don’t want to be hugging me yet, princess,” he told her as she danced and jumped around him in her pink pajamas. “You’ll smell like an old soccer player.”

  “Yuck!” She laughed. “Then I’ll hug you when you’re nice and clean.”

  Mom held her nose and said, “This kitchen smells of sweat and old socks. You males need to go and shower.”

  “That’s me first, then,” Dad called back as he headed up the hallway to the bathroom.

  I lay down on the kitchen floor with my arms and legs spread wide. The tiles and my damp shirt were cold against my back.

  Mom stood above me and shook her head. “I presume you’re starving by now. Have something to eat, then go and get yourself cleaned up and ready for school.” She paused. “You don’t have to put yourself through this every time your dad goes off jogging, you know.”

  “But I want to.”

  Guess where I just saw Bon! I looked up at Mom, but said nothing about my cousin’s breakfast at the Tealeaf Café before it had even officially opened for the day. I wondered if Bon ate there every morning, and I wondered where his mom was. The idea of Bon sitting down to eat breakfast in a camper with her didn’t seem t
o work, no matter how hard I tried to imagine it. Something about what I’d seen that morning didn’t have the feel of OK about it. I ate my own breakfast slowly, our kitchen filled with the noise of Mom and Gina laughing and joking around together.

  I watched them from across the table. It looked like an easy job being six years old and the cute little sister. Sometimes, being the eleven-year-old big brother seemed a lot harder.

  Nan called Gina a lovely surprise when she was born, though I didn’t think of my sister in those terms when I was responsible for walking with her to and from school, or whenever I was teasing her to make her scream and yell. Pulling the heads off her Barbie dolls and sticking them onto my fingers like puppets had seemed like a good idea on at least two occasions. At first, Gina had loudly charged around the house after me, shouting and complaining. But once I started using silly voices and wiggling my fingers for each of the Barbie heads, she got a dose of the giggles instead. I could be good at making my sister laugh, but she was also good at following me around when I wasn’t in the mood.

  I wondered what it might be like to have a brother instead.

  We’re brothers, we are.

  It was a voice I didn’t want in my head.

  And then Gina asked, “Is Bon coming to visit again today?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Mom told her. “You were a good girl to be out playing with him the other day.”

  Gina was dividing her attention between eating toast and drawing something in her sketch pad. “I like Bon; he’s nice.”

  “I agree,” said Mom. “Don’t you, Kieran?”

  It was the last thing I wanted to talk about. “No,” I mumbled.

  Mom sighed. “You know, you and Gina have each other. Bon has only himself.”

  “And his mom,” I pointed out. “He has her.”

  Mom shook her head. “I wouldn’t say that, exactly. I think Bon has had to look after himself a great deal. A brother or sister could have been a good thing, or it could have made things more difficult than they are.” Her face was serious, and she added softly, “She may be his mom, but she can’t always give him the things he really needs. So there’s something for you to think about. Especially when Bon is here, and when I ask you to spend time with him.”

  “But I don’t like him. . . .” I muttered, feeling trapped in a stifling place where I was expected to be friendly with my only cousin.

  “He’s new in town and new at school,” Mom said. “Imagine how you’d feel. It’s important for Bon to make some friends.”

  “Well, he doesn’t need me. He’s got Julia Barrett. They’re always hanging around together at school.”

  “Julia?”

  “The girl who was at the garage sale. And Bon’s already friends with her. He doesn’t need me as well.”

  “School is different, Kieran. Bon is your cousin.”

  “He stole some of my things, don’t forget.”

  “Kieran, he brought them back. Maybe you need to forgive him for that.” She added, “I don’t think Bon has much to call his own. We can only guess what he’s left behind each time Renee has moved somewhere different. Or even who Bon has had to leave behind.”

  Without really wanting to, I found myself thinking of Bon saying good-bye to friends before he and his mom had gotten into their little car and driven all the way to our town. I wondered what sort of kids would put up with him. What I did know was that his silly hair and ratty clothes hadn’t stopped him from being friends with Julia. I wanted to be friends with Julia.

  “I don’t like him,” I said again, but my voice was a grim whisper to myself.

  I was jealous.

  When Dad took Mom out to dinner for their wedding anniversary, Gina and I had a Friday-night sleepover at our grandmother’s.

  Nan’s house was very much Gina’s and my territory; it was where we visited every Tuesday and Wednesday after school, until Mom finished her afternoon shift at the supermarket on Sheridan Street. It was where we stayed if our parents wanted an evening out.

  Except now I wasn’t the only grandson in town.

  I knew right away that Bon had been there, because an unfamiliar piece of artwork was stuck to the fridge in Nan’s tiny kitchen, just beneath the magnetic frame with its photo of Bon, aged nine. In colored felt-tip pen, the picture showed an underwater scene with a shipwreck, schools of fish, and hammerhead sharks. There was enough detail to fill the entire sheet of paper. Bon had scrawled something at the top, which I couldn’t be bothered to try reading.

  “Bon did that,” Nan remarked. “Good, isn’t it?”

  “It’s very good,” Gina agreed, which was about three more words than I would have offered.

  “He stayed here Wednesday night,” Nan said, taking ingredients from the fridge. Gina, her assistant cook, knelt on a stool and lined up the ingredients in a neat row on the counter. “The first time he’s ever stayed,” Nan said with a smile. Her smile dropped to a serious line and she added, “Actually, the first time he’s ever been allowed to.”

  I scowled at the artwork on the fridge door before taking my overnight bag into the spare room where I slept whenever Gina and I stayed over. Nan kept a collection of old kids’ things in the spare room — comics, jigsaw puzzles, toy cars, dolls, and books — that had belonged to my mom and perhaps Aunt Renee when they were young. Sometimes I found something interesting to look at and play with, but not nearly as often as Gina did. Nan’s computer was off-limits to us both. “You spend far too much time on your own computer as it is,” she had told me, and her backyard was too small and steep to kick a soccer ball or ride a bike around. Bon must have found the spare room interesting, because nearly everything had been pulled out and then put back differently and haphazardly.

  Nan and Gina were cutting vegetables at the island in the center of the kitchen. I stood opposite and watched them a moment before asking, “How come he stayed here?” I knew I sounded grumpy.

  “Because his mother —” Nan began, but stopped to think. Then, in a softer voice, she continued. “Because when Renee came to visit, she asked if he could. I couldn’t say yes quickly enough. It’s been difficult having them living so far away — in all sorts of places. Barely calling or visiting in all those years . . . so it was a wonderful chance to talk with Bon properly and get to know him better. I’ve really missed him all this time.”

  Of course, I knew that. I knew because of the photo, and I knew because of the cards and gifts Nan had tried to send on birthdays or at Christmas.

  “Will he come and stay again?”

  “Yes, he will.” Nan stopped her cutting and murmured, almost to herself, “He will.” She looked up at me. “Come here, Kieran.”

  When I did, she wrapped one arm around my shoulder. Her dangly earrings clunked against my head. “I don’t know how much longer Renee is going to be in town, but Bon could be staying for quite a while. You need to know that.”

  “What do you mean? How long will he stay?”

  Nan sighed. “I don’t know just yet. Weeks, months. Maybe even longer.”

  “Yay!” Gina cheered. Without actually meaning to, I groaned out loud.

  “Kieran, what is it?” Nan frowned.

  “It’s just that . . .” I sighed, thinking of what I had seen on the playground at school over the past two weeks — Bon staying close by Julia and the girls, or else sitting alone reading. Or drawing stuff in a book. I had been careful not to get too close to see exactly what he was drawing or writing.

  “He’s weird,” I managed to say. “The way he looks and what he says and does. And it’s weird having him at my school.” I added defensively, “Other kids say stuff about him. It’s embarrassing.”

  “Do you stand up for Bon when that happens?” Nan asked. “Do you actually speak to him at all, Kieran?”

  I shrugged.

  “I speak to Bon at school,” Gina commented.

  Nan sighed. “He’s had a very different life than you’ve had. He’s not weird, Kieran, just diff
erent. Different and weird are not the same.” She unwrapped her hugging arm and returned to the dinner ingredients.

  After a moment, I had to ask, “So what did Bon do while he was here?”

  “Do?” Nan asked. “He drew that underwater picture, he read books, and he looked at the music files on my computer.”

  “We’re not allowed on your computer,” I said indignantly.

  “You’ve got your own computer at home,” Nan pointed out. “He doesn’t. What else? We talked while I got dinner ready. We ate and then watched television. I made him wash that mop of hair and then dried and brushed it out for him. It took ages, let me tell you. But I had trouble getting him off to bed, because it seems he’s not used to normal bedtimes.” Nan raised an eyebrow. “Are you jealous, Kieran?”

  “No.”

  “I like Bon,” Gina said. “He’s nice.” She looked at me and added, “Bon doesn’t do teasing stuff.”

  “And I like Bon, too,” Nan said firmly. “There’s a lot about him to like. Or that needs to be liked. Isn’t there, Kieran?”

  Sometimes Nan and Mom managed to look and sound exactly the same. In an unconvinced voice, I answered, “I guess.”

  Nan told me, “If other kids are giving Bon a hard time at school, it’s your job to stand up for him, and to let the teachers know what’s happening. And I want to know about it, too.”

  I didn’t wait to be asked if other kids included me as well. Leaving Nan and Gina to cut and cook things for dinner, I took myself back to the spare room. I wanted to clean up every last puzzle, toy, and book until it all looked the way it normally did whenever I came to stay over.

  Gina’s voice echoed from the kitchen. “When can Bon have a sleepover at our house?”

  Mom shook the backpack as though she were weighing it. Then she undid the zipper and stared at the contents.

  “Is this all you’ve brought?” she asked Bon.

  “I just have the essentials,” he told Mom in his odd, precise voice.

  Then Gina dragged Bon away to watch TV with her in the living room. I didn’t follow.