Beyond Repair

by Lois Peterson

  Beyond Repair

  Lois Peterson

  Orca currents

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Copyright © 2011 Lois Peterson

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Peterson, Lois J., 1952-

  Beyond repair [electronic resource] / Lois Peterson.

  (Orca currents)

  Electronic monograph in PDF format.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-818-9

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca currents (Online)

  PS8631.E832B49 2011A JC813’.6 C2010-907996-5

  First published in the United States, 2011

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010942100

  Summary: Cam, still grieving over the death of his father, is worried that he is being stalked.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  10% of the author royalties of Beyond Repair will be donated to youth programs at the White Rock Hospice Society

  Cover design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover photography by Dreamstime

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, Stn. B PO BOX 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6s4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  14 13 12 11 • 4 3 2 1

  For Doug, my first and best reader

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Even from my bed, I can tell it has snowed outside. All around is a soft silence.

  But not for long. “Cam?” Leah thumps on my door.

  “Buzz off.”

  “Cameron!”

  “Okay, okay. Come in if you must.”

  In the morning my sister always looks much younger than seven. She is fresh and clean, and her tantrums from the day before have washed away.

  I sometimes wish I could get away with her hissy fits. I’d love to dump my cereal bowl on the floor just because we’re out of Shreddies.

  Mom keeps threatening to take Leah to a psychologist. I don’t get to freak out. Too many people telling me, “Your mother and sister depend on you. You’re the man of the house now.”

  Real men don’t throw cereal bowls.

  “Can I come in?” Leah stands in the doorway in her purple jammies.

  “You’re in, aren’t you?”

  “I’m hungry.” She walks to my bed and shoves her face into mine. She runs her finger across my top lip. “You’re getting a mustache!”

  I leap out of bed and peer into my mirror. I tip my head one way, then the other. There is a glimmer of hair above my lip. If I wasn’t so fair, I’d have been shaving months ago, like my best friend DJ.

  “You could have Dad’s razor,” says Leah. “If Mom hadn’t thrown it out.”

  When she starts to snivel, I do the only thing that can stop her. “Snap out if it!” I yell. “Or you’ll make me cry too.”

  “You’re mean. It’s okay to cry.” She rolls her bottom lip up over her top lip and sticks out her tongue to lick the snot creeping toward her mouth.

  “Don’t do that. It’s disgusting. And you don’t have to cry every time someone mentions him.”

  “What’s that noise?” Leah asks. She climbs on my bed and pushes the curtain aside. “It’s snowing!” she screeches. She bounces back down. “Let’s get dressed so we can go out in it.”

  “We’ve got school. Anyway, it won’t last.”

  “I want to stay home and play in the snow.” Leah’s already headed to her bedroom. “If we’re out there when Mom gets home, she can’t stop us.”

  Wanna bet? When Mom gets back from her night shift at the hospital, she expects to find us dressed and eating breakfast, with our lunches packed. Some days she’s so tired, she can hardly say hello before she heads to her room, still in her coat.

  I look outside. Then I lean closer. So close I can feel the cool air on the other side of the window. It can’t have been snowing that long. There’s hardly enough to shovel.

  But someone is out there already. And the driveway being shoveled is ours.

  The shoveler is wearing a green parka with the hood pulled up. It’s not Mr. Lyon from next door. He has emphysema. Our neighbors on the other side are in Disneyland with their four kids.

  I pull on a sweatshirt and drag yesterday’s pants over yesterday’s underwear. I hop across the room, first on one leg, then on the other, as I pull on yesterday’s socks.

  Leah is sitting in the middle of the hallway struggling into her snowsuit. “Hurry up,” she says. She frowns down at her zipper. “I wanna make a snowman.”

  “Idiot. There’s not enough snow. Anyway, you’ve grown out of that.” As I push past her, I hear the muffler on Mom’s car. It’s been growling for six months. I can hear it from a block away. “Mom will be here in a minute. Quick. Get to the table.”

  Leah trails after me into the kitchen with the top half of her snowsuit dragging behind her. “Can we have French toast?” she asks.

  “It’s not Sunday.”

  “If Dad was here, he’d make me French toast if I asked.”

  Oh, sure he would! I think. Just like he’d help you do your homework or fix your bike.

  “I don’t want French toast really,” says Leah. “You make it all sloppy.”

  “Quit jabbering on about it, would you!” I say. Can it be possible that she’s a bigger pest now than ever?

  “I want Mommy,” she whines. She struggles out of the snowsuit and drops it in a pink puddle by her chair.

  “Stuff it, will you.” I set out a box of cereal and a jug of milk in front of my whiny sister.

  “You’re mean,” she wails. “You’re the worstest brother in the world.”

  “It’s worst. Not worstest. Eat your breakfast.” I go into the living room and pull back the curtains.

  Outside, Mom is standing on the driveway. There’s some snow on the ground, but hardly enough to stop traffic—or to need clearing yet.

  She’s yelling at a man who is leaning on a shovel. She’s probably mad because the shovel is making a great gouge in her daffodil bed. As she waves her arms, her purse swings to and fro. When it hits the man’s leg, he moves aside. Then he leans toward Mom, talking right into her face.

  He holds up one hand. He’s keeping Mom back, or calming her down. I can’t tell from here.

  I can only make out a bit of what she’s saying. “You have no business…!” she yells. “I’ll report you. If I catch you…”

  The man steps closer, as if he’s begging.

>   Let him go, I think. They’re only flowers, for Pete’s sake.

  Mom turns her back on him and heads for the house. As she flings open the front door and rushes inside, a gust of cold air swirls into the room. The door slams behind her.

  Her face is very pale. Her eyelashes glisten with tears. She’s breathing hard.

  “What was that about?” I ask. “Who is that?

  She takes a deep breath in, then lets it shudder out of her as she stares through me. She opens her mouth, but no words come out. Tears wash down her face.

  She takes another ragged breath. “That…” She waves toward the front door and gulps. “That’s the man who killed your father.”

  I rush back to the window. “What? What do you mean?”

  All I see are exhaust fumes as a blue pickup disappears from sight—and a snow shovel sticking out of my mother’s favorite flower bed.

  Chapter Two

  It takes me a while, but I finally manage to get Leah out of the house and dropped off at school.

  I’ve never seen Mom quite so riled. She was a savage mixture of mad and desperate as she stomped around the kitchen. I was glad to get out of there.

  “Talk about spooky,” says DJ when I tell him who showed up. “That guy must be some kind of creep.” He slaps his locker door shut and it flips open again. “He really said he was helping out? Just doing what your old man would be doing if he was still here?” He slams the locker shut again. It bounces back.

  “You ever see Dad shovel a driveway?” I ask. Like DJ—or anyone—ever saw my father do anything that didn’t involve the financial pages of the newspaper or computer spreadsheets. I doubt he even knew how to use a shovel.

  “And we’d have run him off soon enough, wouldn’t we?” DJ grins and slams the locker door one more time. It finally closes.

  After a big snow last winter, DJ and I roamed the neighborhood offering to shovel people’s driveways. For free. He figured that if we didn’t ask for payment, people would be so grateful, they’d give us more than they would if we set a price.

  It worked.

  Most people gave us ten or fifteen bucks when I thought the job was worth five, maybe ten for very long driveways. One woman even gave us a fifty-dollar bill. She wouldn’t take any change. Later, on my way home, I shoved a twenty in her mailbox.

  I didn’t tell DJ though. He’d think I was soft.

  Even better than the hundred and eighty bucks I made that day was that, when I got home, wiped out and freezing, Dad was actually there. He set his stacks of papers aside and turned off the computer. He even made me tomato soup and a bologna sandwich. And he sat at the kitchen table with me while I ate it. It was some kind of a first. I knew better than to make a big deal of it. I just ate slowly to make it last. We talked—although I can’t remember what about.

  “What do you think I should do?” I ask DJ.

  “What’s to do?” he asks. “The guy wants to shovel your driveway. Your mom sends him away. End of story.”

  “What if he comes back?”

  “Want me to deal with him?” DJ asks.

  “Like how?”

  “I dunno. Put sugar in his gas tank. Graffiti his house. You do know who he is, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say. That is not something I’d forget. The man’s name was all over the paper for a couple of days after the inquest.

  DJ pushes off from the locker and heads down the hall. “That’s settled then. Next time he bothers you or your mom, you tell me. I’ll sort him out.” He flexes a puny arm.

  DJ talks like a tough guy. He’s the biggest chicken I know. And he knows it. So we’re both laughing when we head into homeroom.

  Sad Sack Stacie in her weird clothes looks up at DJ. “What’s so funny?” she asks.

  DJ thinks Stacie has a crush on me. I hope she has a crush on him.

  “Did you know the Inuit have a thousand words for snow?” he asks her. She yanks up her tights by dragging on her plaid skirt. Very classy. Her tights are yellow. Her skirt is short. Very short. Like I’d notice.

  She nods. “Actually, that’s an urban myth. It’s not that they have so many words. It’s just that they have so many dialects.”

  That stuns DJ for a second. But he recovers quickly, shakes his head and walks away. “I asked for that,” he mutters as we head for our seats. “Didn’t I ask for that?”

  “Mom says that the guy showing up on our driveway amounts to stalking,” I tell DJ. “It’s even spookier when I think of it like that.”

  “What would you do if you ran into him?” he asks.

  “Punch him.” It’s a stupid thing to say. I’ve never hit anyone in my life—at least not since I was Leah’s age.

  I’m the man of the house now. My grandparents, aunts, Mom’s friends are always saying that. I’m supposed to fix things and take care of everyone. I thought they meant grocery shopping and helping Leah with her homework. I can do that. It’s not like it’s any different than when Dad was alive.

  But now am I supposed to chase off this guy too?

  “So you tell me,” I say. “What would you do if the guy who killed your father showed up and wanted to help around the house?”

  “I’d invite him in. Trade my old man in for the new model.” DJ’s father is always on his case. About his schoolwork—Bs aren’t good enough. His girlfriends—he hasn’t got any. His hair—it’s never combed.

  At least his dad notices this stuff.

  What would I do if the guy showed up again? I wonder.

  Bryan Klausen, 43. A millwright. What’s a millwright? Klausen is a family man with two kids and a wife who teaches social studies. Not at my school, that would be too spooky.

  I already know too much about this guy from the article about the inquest. No one knows I keep all the newspaper clippings under my bed.

  Chapter Three

  “Hey, Cameron,” says Stacie a few days later when I get to work. It is ten after five. I’m late thanks to Leah. She made a big fuss when I dumped her at the sitter’s. Thankfully, Marcus the Midget Manager is not around.

  “You’re on returns,” Stacie says. “I covered for you.”

  I mutter, “Thanks.”

  When I head for the drop box, she’s right behind me. “I bet working helps out at home,” she says. “Like, now that your mom’s the breadwinner.”

  “My dad was insured.” As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I know it’s a dumb thing to say. But my mouth often moves before my brain’s in gear. “And my mom’s a nurse. You know how much they make these days. Hey, maybe you could be a nurse when you grow up. Oh, wait—you need good grades for that.”

  I can tell by her face I’ve gone too far. She turns away and slinks off.

  Jeez. A couple of months ago, I’d never have been so mean.

  I drag the returned movies out of the box, cracking my head as I back out to pile them on the cart.

  “Is that what you call a uniform?” The Midget Manager is in my face, breathing licorice fumes at me. He lives on red Twizzlers that I bet he doesn’t pay for.

  I look down at my pants and Oilers sweatshirt. I’ve forgotten to put on my work shirt. Smocks, they call them here. It’s a stupid name for stupid clothing. “Oops.” I fake a laugh. “I’ll head right back to the staff room and put it on.”

  “You do that. After you’ve taken care of these.” He gives the cart a shove.

  I’m about to do just that when he says, “And one more thing.”

  “Yes, Marcus.”

  “I know it’s been tough. Your dad and all. And I’ve made allowances.”

  I try to edge past him, but he takes a step sideways so he’s blocking my way. “You’ve had breaks no one else gets,” he goes on. “I give you shifts that work with your mom’s schedule. Overlook lateness. But it can’t go on forever. You’re part of a team. We all pull together.”

  This sounds like something he heard at one of the managers’ team meetings he’s always going to.

  Then he adds, “
Don’t think I don’t know how tough things are for you.”

  I stare at the dvds jumbled on the top shelf of the cart. I’ve learned that it’s best to avoid eye contact with people who feel sorry for you. Even mini-twits like Marcus.

  “But I expect you to be on time for your shifts from now on,” he says, all business again. “Wear your uniform. And don’t upset the other staff.”

  Either Sad Sack Stacie’s been telling tales. Or our great leader has been keeping tabs on me, despite his phony compassionate pitch.

  “Capiche?” He taps his pen against his teeth.

  “Oui, monsieur. Is that all?” Capiche? Someone should tell him that Canada’s second language is French. Not Spanish. Or Italian. Whatever that was.

  When he stands aside to let me pass, I push through the swinging door that separates the customers from the checkout counter.

  I decide to make nice with Stacie. Even the unpopular girls at school don’t include her in their airhead talk about nail polish and The Bachelor. And there’s not a guy in his right mind who would make a pass at her. Could be something to do with the short, short skirts. And the tights. Today they are green.

  I hold up a copy of Lip Sync. “Seen this?” I ask her. “It must be new.”

  “It came in weeks ago.” She rings up chips and pop for a mom with about eight kids scrabbling around her. “Would you like a bag?” she asks the customer. Even though the woman says no, Stacie shoves her videos and snacks into a bag and passes it across the counter.

  How’s that for customer service?

  She starts handing me movies off the cart so I can check them in. “You’re supposed to know the stock,” she says in a prim voice. Then, in case I’ve forgotten, she adds, “I recommended you for this job, remember. I’m going to look stupid if it doesn’t work out.”

  You’d have thought she saved me from an icy death in the Fraser River. Not just gave me the lead on a lousy job at Video Mart, which she won’t let me forget for a minute.

  I’m saved from any more lectures by a customer leaning across the counter. “Excuse me. I’m looking for a copy of Hamlet.”