Pluto's Ghost

by Sheree Fitch

  j

  Rathburn’s chalk stopped its tip-tap dancing on the board. I can still see his hand pausing between the H2 and half the O. “Pardon?” he said, spinning around. Then Rathburn licked his lips, placed the chalk down on his desk and clapped his hands together a few times. Small, smoky clouds appeared and then disappeared. My chest was all wheezy and tight.

  “I said, can I be excused?” I repeated, hoping no one could hear how ragged I was feeling.

  “There’s no excuse for you, Jake,” he said, a lame joke no one laughed at for once. “Dude with an attitude,” he said as he stopped brushing off his palms and placed one hand on his hip. “You’re more than welcome to get out, Jake,” he said. Lowering his chin to his chest, he peered over the top of his glasses at me like I was some sort of cockroach.

  Evan Meehan, a square-headed dufus in row three, coughed into his hand. “Cold,” he hacked out. “Cold cold cold.” There were a few snickers.

  “Enough from you, Evan,” said Rathburn, his eyes still locked with mine. “Go on, Jake, just get out.”

  Then it happened. With the Rat Bum standing there towering over me like some god from Mount Olympus, my safety valve blew.

  And there it was: The Rage. The all-too-familiar, mind-numbing, eye-prickling feeling. That rubber-band feeling tightening around my chest. I pictured my ribs pressing in against my heart, every beat like the warning thump of a drum. Badab­umpba­dabum­pbada­bumpB­oom. The pulse in my throat double-skipped. I jackknifed out of the chair.

  My desk catapulted in Rat Bum’s direction, then hit the floor so hard the armrest split up the middle, looking like a tree felled by lightning I’d seen once after a storm. Splintered kindling, perfect to get a fire going. The room crackled with a white hot silence. Everything slowed down.

  “Rat Bum,” I spat out. There were a few shocked gasps from the girls, like they were taking gulps of air after holding their breath.

  “Pick up the desk, NOW, and did you say something, Jake?” Rathburn’s pitch, for once, actually lifted a notch. He might have been a little scared.

  “No, arsehole, not a thing nothing nada mole man but I am so ready to squish you into your own equation or formula and smash that periodic table over your head so you just better get out of my way.”

  Teddy jumped up and down in the hallway, making violent slit-throat signals at me, a warning to shut the hell up. So I got hold of myself. I paused, breathed and employed yet another one of the many anger-management strategies available to a person at any time, although it requires some practice. This was a direct quote from the online course I’d been forced to take for a few years. H.a.a.l.l.t! Help for addicted, angry, lost, lonely teens. I was, at one time, all of the above. Anyway, the stress-relief strategy I used that morning was simple: collarbone thumping. Three taps each side. Thump thump thump on the left. Then thump thump thump on the right. Instead of calming me down it made me feel like a geedee Neanderthal. I almost grunted out baboon noises but I didn’t. I just thumped and continued staring at Rathburn with the hard icy glare I’d practised often enough. A look that shot a thousand poison darts into the breast pocket of Rathburn’s corduroy blazer. The left pocket. Right over the Rat Bum’s heart—if he even had one.

  k

  “So just leave,” he said.

  With one hand, as if it were a pencil I’d dropped on the floor, I picked up my desk, and in my best cowboy-cool I moseyed on towards the door. I felt like a phantom of my old self. It’s like I shrank into a little boy wearing pants too big for him, a kid you’d feel sorry for if you saw him walking down a dirt road dragging a stick along and you were passing by on a train. So okay, I felt damn lonesome right then if you want to know the truth but I didn’t want any pity, can you understand that?

  Rolling up my sleeve, I flashed the tattoo on my left arm. I’d kept it hidden long enough. Not just the tattoo, the fact Skye and me were together, a couple, a real hot item. Except for Teddy being in the know about us, Skye and me kept our under-the-covers relationship undercover. (That’s a little play on words there, see it?) Seriously, Skye and me really were what you might call secret lovers. That’s right. At least up until that morning we were. That wasn’t my choice but Skye’s great idea. Why? Not for the excitement—trust me, it was freakin’ complicated sneaking around and I would have been happier shouting out to the whole damn world we were together. Keeping it under wraps wasn’t that romantic, either. It’s not like we were those star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet in a family feud between the Crapulets and Montapoos, because you wouldn’t see me climbing up any balcony. (Although I did go through Skye’s basement window once, come to think of it. Ripped my jeans and landed on my nose so hard I had a black eye the next day.) The reason we had to lie and sneak around was because Skye was ashamed of me. Period. She denied that, said that wasn’t the case at all, that it was mostly because of her father. I know that’s part of it, too. A girl like Skye couldn’t be seen with a rotten-egg troublemaker like me. Not in a small town like ours when your father’s a big cheese and a God-fearing churchy type and doesn’t want his daughter to be in the wrong crowd or with a guy who’s out of her league let alone one with a past more than a bit sketchy. To Dalton Derucci I wasn’t just the misfit and failure most people, myself included, knew I was. That was just for starters. To Derucci, I was in the same league as a serial killer, leader of a mob or maybe Pluto, god of the underworld himself—at least the Pluto of Poplar Hills. Evil. I’m not exaggerating.

  Anyway, at that moment, in that classroom, I almost wished I was the scary guy Derucci and a few others thought I was. My skin vibrated; my tattoo felt as if it were blinking on and off.

  In blue vein colours. Someone, I’m not sure who, said, “Good luck, Jake,” as if they really, honest to God cared. I saluted back to the whole class, swallowed hard and kept my head high. If you want to know the God’s honest truth, I felt like I was walking death row trying to get to that classroom door. Finally, I reached the hallway. When I turned around to close the door behind me, I glanced in. Rathburn cleared his throat, as if he had a bad taste in his mouth like when you hit the bitterness of an apple seed at the core. I saw him looking around, as if searching for somewhere to spit.

  The moon-faced clock above his head told me it was 1:11 p.m. The sameness of those numbers made me shiver. Creeped me out like it marked some sort of significant moment in my life. A time I’d maybe remember forever. I looked at Teddy as my cellphone vibrated. Skye? Skye? I wondered. Hoped. Held my breath for. But no.

  So daddy-o

  What now?

  I jabbed back my reply.

  Go text yourselves.

  l

  Certain things need saying about my history with Skye Derucci before I’ll be able to go forward with my story of what happened those two days in March when I landed in never-ending hot-lava hell, my heart pinned underneath a pitchfork. (That would be a good example of hyperbole and metaphor to some. To me it is understatement.) In any case, you might find it of interest to know how Skye and me first met. It’s a little embarrassing, but here goes.

  On the first day of preschool, Mrs. Stairs put us in twos. “You’re partners, hold hands,” she said. Okay, Teacher, we said. Skye told me once that even after we went all those years in middle school hardly speaking, she felt she never really let go of my hand. I liked that. I really wish I could have figured out something to say when she told me that but, like usual, I just blinked at her like the stunned arse I can be sometimes and said nothing. But back to kindergarten and how Skye and me became a kind of team. I remember this like it was yesterday.

  That morning Skye wore big floppy blue bows in these two high pigtails. Her hair was the colour of white sand. A humongous happy-faced sunflower decorated the green plastic apron she wore for painting. That flower and Skye smiled at me. All morning. The song the wheels on the bus go round and round played in the background. That day, Mrs. Stairs had arranged it so me and Skye shared opposite sides of the same easel. Sk
ye finger-painted with a sapphire blue colour. I had fire engine red. Gradually we circled around and made our way towards each other and went at the same page. The result? Well, purple, yes. A big purple mess. Mrs. Stairs, who wore a lot of velvet and had a voice that made me think she was always talking in verse, told us it was abbbsollllootulelly beee-you-teeful. “Let’s sign our names,” said Teacher. “Together.” Skye and Kaje. They should have clued in back then I was going to be having a hard time with the two of the three Rs. Reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic. Who thought that up if not someone with a learning variation? Variation or learning difference, not disability, okay? Anyway, we decided Skye would take the masterpiece home. Mrs. Stairs told me and the whole class I was very good at sharing and we sang skinn­namar­inkad­inkyd­ink I love you. Skye pointed at me and I pointed at Skye. So I got three gold stars on the bulletin board for sharing. This was nice because for a while there after my mother died I wasn’t very good at anything except biting and kicking people, and sometimes peeing on them or in my pants or in any corner I could find. So I was “good” at painting with Skye and sharing.

  m

  Now fast-forward five years to one of the very few times I ever went over to Skye’s house.

  Skye’s tenth birthday party and I’m the only boy invited. This meant for at least a month other guys called me a queer. I wasn’t really 100 percent sure what that meant at the time and not sure any of them did either. Still, if you have ever been to a party with nine ten-year-old girls this is not any heterosexual boy’s idea of a good time. (Put a few years on ten and maybe it’d be heaven.) Anyhow, back then I was shy and red-faced enough as it was, not really into pin the tail on the donkey, so I did like I always do when I’m not where I want to be. Zoned out. Eye-surfed around the room and there it was: the picture, our crazy purple picture—matted and framed and hanging in the Deruccis’ dining room above this really shiny dark wooden table set with a silver tea service and fancy crystal goblets. There were other paintings, too, throughout the rest of the house. Kaje and Skye. Skye and Akej. Skye and Ejak. My printing improved some. Not the spelling. Seeing them hung like that knocked me out. Stunned me silly. I felt like part of their family somehow. Almost as if my head’d suddenly been pasted into those silver-framed family photos on their mantelpiece. Can’t explain it, but I got real comfortable, especially after Mrs. Derucci (who I thought was almost as pretty as Skye except she was old) hugged me and ran her hand through my hair and asked me if I wanted to take one of the paintings home. She’d found me on the landing, spaced out and twirling my hair, gawking at a sunflower painting like I was under a spell. Mrs. Derucci smelled like spearmint gum. I sniffed long and deep. Then I shook my head and said, “No thank you but I appreciate you offering, Mrs. Derucci.” Manners. My father was big on manners and I realized why just then.

  “You are such a polite young man, Jake,” said Mrs. Derucci.

  “Good at sharing, too,” I wanted to add, pretending for a minute she was my mother. I fantasized being tucked safely under her spearmint-smelling armpit for the rest of my life. She ruffled my hair some more and left. I got curious. A sign of intelligence they say but in my experience my insatiable need to explore, as my father puts it, can also be the cause of various catastrophes. “Curiosity killed the cat,” he’d warned me often enough. Still, I decided to explore the house a bit.

  The place was so clean I saw my reflection in tabletops. The smell of soap and furniture polish hung in the air like lemony perfume and every goddam thing in the place matched. Even the lace-edged towels in the bathroom were folded perfectly, colour-coordinated with the walls. There were little angel-faced soaps in a heart-shaped dish by the sink’s edge and dried flowers in a rose-coloured vase I was pretty sure they would pronounce as a vahhhhhze. How could anyone take a dump in a place so nice? I wondered. Me, I’d have permanent constipation.

  With the bathroom door locked, I turned the faucets up full blast and opened the small shuttered closet beneath the sink. My heart pounded. I didn’t have a jeezlus clue what I was looking for, but I kept snooping. In the third drawer I scored. Some of Skye’s doodads, all the thingies she wore in her hair, were there, glittering up at me. I palmed a barrette and a hair ribbon before washing my hands, turning off the faucets, flushing the toilet. Turned out I still had chocolate on my hands, and didn’t I make a goopy mess of those embroidered whiter-than-white hand towels. I panicked but then I folded them inside out and put them back, finished wiping my hands on my pants and opened the door, ready to rejoin the party. As I crossed the hallway to go back downstairs, there it was: Skye’s bedroom. The door was open like a grin—this big “hello come on in Jake Upshore” invitation. The coast was clear. What else was a boy to do?

  n

  I looked in. A room for a princess, I thought, and if Skye were a princess, then I’d be her frog. Even compared to Buckingham Palace, the room was way over the top. It was like peeking into a cloud, a perfect simile if I do say so myself. Ruffled curtains, white frilly bedspread, lace everywhere. The walls were painted the colour of pink cotton candy. On one wall was a row of life-sized photos of synchronized swimmers. There was Skye, always in front, in the centre of her team. On another wall was a shelf of trophies and awards, stuffed animals and dolls. A girlie-girl’s room, and maybe I was a little queer at ten, because I was completely…enchanted seems to be an accurate word here. Captivated. Enthralled. (According to my thesaurus, I could also have been bewitched, enraptured or merely delighted. Under a spell.)

  In my defence, think of it. I lived alone with my dad and to this day our idea of home decor includes lobster trap end tables, a polished tree stump for a coffee table, and a big fat old torn leather La-Z-Boy chair that takes up the entire front room like a stuffed brontosaurus. Our lamps come from flea markets and we own a television that works when it wants. We have an antique dining room table I’ve never seen the top of. We use it for puzzles. This was once our favourite father–son pastime. We actually frame the puzzles and consider them Upshore masterpiece works of art. The one we did of Niagara Falls is still my favourite. Maybe the most impressive thing we own is a Hudson’s Bay blanket. Hercules sleeps on it. Herc’s our old and forever flea-bitten dog.

  So it’s not like I even made a decision that day. See me enter Skye’s room like some sleepwalking zombie.

  The room smelled like strawberry, the same as Skye when I got up close. Made my mouth water. I shut my eyes like I was in heaven and opened them again. Those marble-eyed dolls dressed in costumes from all around the world stared down at me, looks accusing as hell—no kidding, like they knew I was intruding.

  And then there were all the books.

  By fifth grade I knew Skye was a brainiac but still, it freaked me to see almost as many books in there as in the library at school. The book on her bedside table was thick as a brick of gold. A dictionary. What kind of person reads a dictionary before she goes to sleep? I wondered. Someone with a report card filled with Es for excellent, not U for unsatisfactory, that’s who. Unless…I opened the dictionary. Sure enough, she was hiding another book! Nothing smutty. Her diary was there, tucked and hiding in a page of Ss. What a find. Skye’s diary. Her innermost secret thoughts.

  I couldn’t resist.

  Her bed was a four-poster canopy bed, the pillows huge and comfy and poofy. So, yeah, little fruitloops me pulled a Goldilocks. I had myself a little lie-down and settled in to read, which is not an activity I did voluntarily very often. When you read words upside down and backwards, it’s pretty slow going. But that’s all I was doing, just trying to read. Nothing in the least indecent. It wasn’t like I was lying there diddling myself. Still, when old man Derucci yelled at me I felt like some kind of peeping Tom pervert.

  “What do you think you are doing?” His voice ripped through me before I’d even read a word of the diary.

  o

  I jumped off the bed, turning pink as the walls, and said, “Ummm. Umm.”

  “Speak up!” he commande
d. I looked up at him. A giant of a man with a bulldog face. Hair black as boot polish and almost that shiny. I was scared shitless.

  “Uhhhh.” I looked at the book in my hand like it was a dirty magazine and slipped it back onto the table. “Only trying to improve my vocabulary, sir,” I said, faking a smile.

  “Are you being smart with me?” he said, entering the room.

  “Guuurgh,” I said, instead, a sound halfway between a burp and a mouth-farting sound.

  “Daddy! He felt a little sick—ate too much cake—and I told him he could come up and lie down. Daddy…”

  There was Skye, in the doorway, her gaggle of girlfriends behind her, all wide-eyed as that shelf of dolls, their hands cupped over their mouths in looks of fake horror. A few of them smothered giggles.

  Old Man Derucci’s eyes reminded me of some kind of reptile. A bearded dragon lizard maybe. He glanced at her, then back at me. “Well, don’t be throwing up on anything in there!” he said.

  “No, sir,” I said. At the moment, I wanted to barf my brains out. Instead, I stood at attention and damn near saluted. He thumped downstairs and I heard him ranting in the kitchen, the soft soothing words of Mrs. Derucci in reply. A door slammed. A car started up and gravel spun as he roared away.

  Skye skipped into the room, not missing a beat. I’m pretty sure she never knew I’d peeked at her “dictionary.” I couldn’t find my voice to thank her from rescuing me from her father’s interrogation. “Want to see something secret?” she asked all of us. Nodding yes like some kind of bobbleheaded dashboard ornament, I joined in the hysterical giddy laughter, trying my best to be Jakie, as some of them were calling me. Ja-kee. Just one of the girls.