My Cousin's Keeper

by Simon French

Mom was over at the island fixing our lunches, already dressed in her supermarket uniform. But she stopped the cutting and wrapping to watch what had happened with us over at the table. “It looks very friendly over there,” she remarked. “Have I missed the signing of a peace treaty?”

  I glanced sideways at Bon. “Something like that,” I answered, trying to sound cool and relaxed.

  “Very good to see,” she had said approvingly, and mostly to me. “I’m really pleased.”

  I nodded quickly, and maybe too anxiously. The picture of Bon riding away into the night was difficult to erase. That we had woken no one up was a miracle. After we had pedaled back to the corner of the street, we had lifted the bikes to our shoulders and carried them all the way to the end of our carport. We had climbed back through the open bedroom window, and I had pulled the screen back into place. We had peeled off warm clothes and climbed back into our beds. But I had stayed awake for a long time afterward, because I had nearly lost Bon and it had been my fault. I had nearly lost him, but then I brought him home.

  Now, on the playground at recess, I looked for him. Of course he was with Julia and the circle of girls, just the same as every other school day. I wanted to talk to him, but he was part of whatever conversation Julia was leading. There was a soccer game happening on the back field, but I didn’t have the energy to run and chase a ball. So I sat on one of the seats outside the library instead. It was the very place where Bon would sometimes sit, drawing or writing in his book.

  I had told him about Connor.

  I hadn’t talked to anyone else about how Connor and I had been best friends for nearly two whole years, before he had simply stopped coming to school. We had played all sorts of games together. We had visited each other’s homes and had sleepovers. Connor told good jokes and could draw funny, crazy pictures. His books and some of his artwork had been left behind, along with the seat where he had sat beside me in class. Miss Denny, our teacher, could only say, “Kieran, I’m sorry. It seems Connor and his family have left town. None of us knew, and I’m waiting to find out his new school so that I can send his things on. If I find out, maybe you can write to him. I know you’re missing him.”

  It had been the year I’d turned nine. Miss Denny never had found out where Connor had gone, but she had given me some of his artwork to keep. It was still stowed away in my bedroom at home. This was the most I had let myself think about him in a very long time.

  You want to be popular.

  I realized that I was never going to be best friends with Lucas and Mason. There were lots of kids I liked and who I played with, but no one was quite the same as Connor. I still missed him.

  “Hi, Kieran.”

  The voice startled me. Julia had left her group of friends and sat down on the seat next to me. “You don’t usually sit here. Are you OK?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Just tired.”

  Julia waited for more of an answer.

  “I’m thinking about stuff,” I admitted.

  She nodded.

  Bon had left the group of girls as well. He looked across to where we sat, but did not walk over. Instead, he wandered around the edges of other kids and their games.

  “It’s easy being part of a group,” Julia said, “and it’s hard to walk away and do the things you know are right. But if it’s the right thing, other kids will see that. They’ll come to you and be your friend. They’ll like you for who you are.”

  I frowned. “Why are you telling me this?” I wondered if Bon had told her about riding away in the night.

  “Because I’ve learned it,” Julia said. “And I’m telling you because of Bon. What’s happened to him here has been really unfair.”

  My heart sank. “I tried to stop it. I told Bon I was sorry.”

  “I know that. But if Bon needs you again, are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  “To be yourself. To say if something is wrong and to stand up to people. Even people you think are your friends.” She added, “I don’t think I’ll be at this school much longer. You know that, don’t you?”

  I began to feel even worse, remembering the overheard conversation in Mrs. Gallagher’s office.

  “I don’t have cousins or brothers and sisters,” Julia said. “You and Bon are lucky to have each other. Maybe it’s taken you a while to get that. And you’ve made a promise. To me, anyway. Now you have to show Bon it’s a promise. OK?”

  The bell rang for the end of recess and Julia stood up.

  “OK,” I replied.

  Julia smiled. It was a warm smile that I struggled to return.

  “See you, Kieran. See you again sometime.”

  It was the last day that Julia would be at school.

  She had told her friends the same thing. See you again sometime.

  The other girls probably thought it was a strange thing to say, but once a few days had gone by and Julia did not return to school, I could see and hear them beginning to worry.

  Amy and Amber had gone down to the trailer park one day after school.

  “She wasn’t there,” Amber said on the playground. “The people who run the place said she had left. That’s all they’d tell us.”

  “And we couldn’t believe someone like Julia would live in a place like that,” Amy added.

  From what the girls went on to say, I started to find out that no one had actually visited Julia at the trailer park, that she had always said things like, No, I’ll meet you in town. She had not wanted anyone to see where she was staying.

  I knew Bon was the one I needed to ask. “Where’s Julia?”

  He was sitting on the seats outside the school library, reading a book. His shoulders dropped at my question. “She’s gone.”

  “Gone? But what happened? Where has she gone?”

  “I don’t know for sure. Not yet.”

  The girls marched up to Bon and asked him the same questions. “But you must know something,” Amy told him in a demanding voice. “You and Julia were always hanging around together, and not just at school. More than we ever did.”

  And Bon replied in much the same way he had to me. Except when the girls persisted, he added angrily, “Leave me alone!” and went away into the library to avoid their questions.

  I followed him. “Do you know something you’re not telling?” I asked when I found him over at the fiction shelves.

  He was frowning at the book spines. “I only know what I know,” he answered.

  I thought about this a moment, but didn’t feel any less worried. “Bon? Is Julia OK?”

  “Yes,” he replied, his voice a mixture of sadness and certainty. “I know she’s OK. Things have worked out right, the way she told me they would.”

  “You need to tell the other kids what you know. They need to know she’s OK. Amy and Amber and all those girls are worrying. They’ll start making up stories and it won’t all be the truth. You have to tell them.”

  He sighed. “I suppose,” he said. “If they want to believe me, that is.”

  But Bon didn’t say anything to the other kids, and by the end of the week, stories were being told at school. That the police had visited the trailer park. That someone had seen Julia’s mom driven away in the back of the local patrol car. That Julia and a man had walked out of the police station together, and that was the last time Julia had been seen in town.

  On the playground, Julia’s friends worried and speculated until Mrs. Gallagher came over from her office and explained a little of what had really happened. Both fifth-grade classes sat on the carpet in my classroom, and Mrs. Gallagher — who always stood to speak when it was the whole school — borrowed Mr. Garcia’s chair and sat down.

  “Julia is fine,” she began. “I need to start by reassuring you all about that. Unpleasant things can happen in families, as some of you might know and understand only too well. Ignore any rumors that might be flying around town — Julia is safe and with her family. She was only with us a short while, but she was a very good member
of our school community.” Mrs. Gallagher paused. “I’ve almost lost count of the number of children who have come to our school for only a short amount of time, but let me tell you, I won’t be forgetting Julia and her ideas and her generosity toward others.” At this point, I saw Mrs. Gallagher look over to where Bon was sitting. “If you were friends with her, I know that you will be missing her.”

  I looked around the classroom and saw lots of things: Lucas and Mason and a few of the boys yawning and acting bored, Amy and a few of the girls looking lost and sad, Amber Hodges looking cranky. Other kids were gazing intently at Mrs. Gallagher and hanging on her every word, which made me wonder if some of these were the kids Nan talked about, the ones who had unhappy family lives.

  And last of all there was Bon, who sat on the floor staring at his feet, trapped in his own air bubble. Bon, who I knew missed his friend probably more than anyone else in the room.

  Back at the village, Julia the Fair was preparing for her own journey.

  I saw Bon frown then, and it was as though Mrs. Gallagher hadn’t said everything he needed to hear. Something was not finished, and still not right.

  At the very end of the day, as we waited at the school gate for Gina, he abruptly said, “Julia told me to look in my bag.”

  “What?” I asked, not understanding at all.

  “My bag,” he answered. “It was one of the last things she said the other afternoon, before she left. Look in your bag.”

  “And?” My head was still full of Julia not being around. See you again sometime.

  Bon had an envelope in his hand. He pulled out a folded piece of paper and held it, floating, in front of me. “I found this in my bag,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  He dropped it lower, unfolded it carefully. “I need you to read it,” he said, and then looked steadily at me. “I need your help.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s from Julia. Please, you have to read it.”

  Kids swarmed past us, some heading off along the sidewalk, others stepping onto the buses that would take them out of town to the farms and homes I was jealous of. I took the folded note, spread it open, and read.

  Dear Bon,

  It was a girl’s writing, upright, curled, and neat. The g’s, e’s, and a’s looped in a rhythm my own writing had never managed without a great deal of effort. The ink was the color of peppermint ice cream.

  I will not forget how I met you. Bad luck became good luck. I learned how to be patient and how to be brave, and now things will be safe and normal again. You have been my best friend and I want to give you the purple bike. I will not need it anymore. Things are going to happen quickly, but I will leave it for you. Show this letter to people so they know the bike is yours to keep. Until we meet again — Julia.

  “But she doesn’t say exactly where the bike is,” Bon explained. “And I don’t know what to do.”

  I didn’t know where to begin either. Finally, I said, “I’ll ask Dad.”

  “No,” Bon replied.

  It was strange — he sounded a little scared, and I wondered about that. So I threw my hands up, exasperated, and asked, “What, then?”

  Bon shrugged.

  “It’ll be at the trailer park,” I reasoned. “Or maybe even at the police station. Dad can help us.”

  I could tell that Bon wasn’t convinced. “Can you think of a better idea?” I was quiet for a moment. “That man,” I said then. “Someone saw Julia leave the police station with a man. Do you know who he was?”

  “It was her dad,” Bon replied. “He’d been looking for her. Julia was a missing person, and now she is found.”

  Bon turned away when I sat down beside him at morning recess. He was drawing in his book, and I tried to make it obvious that I wasn’t trying to peek at whatever picture he was working on. Instead, I looked out at the playground and said, “Hi,” as though I came to sit here every other day.

  “Hello,” he answered vaguely.

  Little and big kids shouted and played around us. It was, I thought, a little like being on a remote island, the seat where we were sitting. I felt distant from the noise and movement on the playground. I could see the boys from my class chasing a ball around. Mason and Lucas ran alongside each other, calling and gesturing to each other, favoring each other whenever the ball had to be passed. It was as though they were a team within a team. A team I was no longer part of. Bon’s seat on the playground had become my seat as well.

  I could hear the rapid scratching of his pen as he drew. Suddenly, it reminded me of the soft noises that had come to me in the darkness of my bedroom before Bon had disappeared into the night. Even now, days later, I swallowed hard at the memory of it, flinching at the pictures in my head — Bon and his wool hat, his backpack, my bike, pedaling out toward the highway with the night traffic of semis roaring past him. It was a troubling darkness I couldn’t shake off, where I tossed and turned to the rhythm of Bon riding away from us.

  “I still can’t believe you did that,” I told him, the thought tumbling out in a rush.

  “What?”

  “The way you snuck out that night. It was freezing cold, and dark. You were out there by yourself.”

  He looked at me then. “I’ve been out at night before.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Yes. When I was at the trailer park, and then at the hotel. I went walking.”

  “How many times?”

  “A few.”

  “But why?”

  “Just to look around. To see what happened in town at night.”

  I stared at him. “Weren’t you scared?”

  “A bit. But it was like a challenge.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I used to be scared of the dark. I thought I could hear noises and voices all the time. I got sick of being frightened, so I made myself go out into it — the dark.” Then he said softly, “But only when my mom had remembered to take her medication and was able to sleep. Then I could get away.”

  I thought about this. “But where were you going on the bike the other night?”

  Bon took a while to answer. “I don’t know. Not really. I wasn’t sure I wanted to come back.”

  His reply made me flinch and want to say sorry yet again. Instead, I asked, “But the nights you went out walking, where did you go? What did you see?”

  He laid the pen against the page of his drawing and closed his book over it. “The people in the bakery, they work at night. Their lights were on and I could see them through the shop window; I could hear a bit of what they were saying. Some house lights were on, and I could hear televisions playing different shows and movies. And some teenagers were sitting under that really old bridge. I heard them talking and laughing together. I could hear cans being opened and bottles clinking, and there was cigarette smoke. One time, someone else was out walking really late at night, and I think he saw me. But I hid, and it was OK.”

  I sensed that Bon was enjoying my surprise.

  “So it was like a challenge. And I met the challenge.” Then worry crossed his face. “Are you going to tell on me now?”

  “No.” I paused. “But would you do it again if I came with you? We could take the bikes.”

  He looked at me a little suspiciously. “Maybe,” Bon mumbled, and I could hear his voice closing down a little. “But why?”

  I wondered why I had even thought to suggest the idea. It was like nothing I had ever thought or dared to do, but suddenly I wanted to see things the way Bon did. I wanted to understand his thoughts, and I wanted to understand Bon.

  That night, in the darkness between Friday and Saturday, the rain woke me, but somehow not Bon. For ages, I lay listening to the clatter of water on the roof while he slept, his shape totally motionless under the blanket. And suddenly, I had been asleep, and he was awake, dressed, and kneeling beside my bed.

  “Kieran.” Close to my ear, he whispered my name. “Are you ready?” His breath had a faint smell of toothpaste, and when I
turned to look at him, he put a finger to his lips. He had a small flashlight in his other hand, which, just once, he flicked on and off. I almost wished I hadn’t made the suggestion, but the challenge teased at me. We didn’t talk the whole time that we climbed out through the bedroom window, found our bikes, and carried them up the driveway. Not until we were some way down the street did we begin whispering.

  “I know which places have dogs that bark,” Bon told me, something I could easily have told him.

  I felt cold and nervously excited. I had strained to listen for any other movement in the house as I’d dressed, and I would have jumped straight back into bed at the first sound of Mom or Dad awake.

  We launched ourselves onto the bikes and pedaled silently along the middle of our avenue, keeping our wheels away from crunching gravel. My watch told me it was a bit after two o’clock. A haze of fog was in the air and my breath came out in cloudy puffs. All the houses I could see had darkened windows and only the soft moon glow to show gardens, fences, and cars parked in driveways or on front lawns. But farther down the hill was the central part of town, bathed in a golden glow of streetlights. Everything was utterly still and quiet, but my heart was pumping quickly. Bon looked from left to right; he looked behind, to where we had come from. He was watchful and cautious.

  We rode in shadow until we reached the edge of the main street shops.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “Listen,” Bon instructed.

  I could hear murmuring voices and small bursts of laughter coming from the direction of the bridge.

  “Duane and Annie and Mitch, Melanie, and Rob. I think that’s all the names I’ve heard from there,” Bon said. “Each time I’ve been out, I’ve heard them sitting there under the bridge. It’s like their secret meeting place.”

  I heard the clink of a bottle and saw a faint drift of cigarette smoke.

  “We should keep moving,” I said.

  “There’s somewhere we need to go to next,” Bon whispered, and pedaled his bike ahead. It was the Imperial Hotel that we stopped at. Not at the main entrance, but at the plain side door marked GUEST ROOMS. Bon fumbled in a pocket and suddenly had a key in his hand. He unlocked and opened the door as confidently as I might have opened our front door at home. We pulled our bikes inside the entrance, away from the streetlight glow.