by Ria Voros
Scholastic Canada Ltd.
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Scholastic Inc.
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Scholastic Children’s Books
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ISBN: 978-1-4431-1977-1
Text copyright © 2012 by Ria Voros.
Cover photograph: Laura Stanley
Author photograph: Théodora Armstrong
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first eBook edition September 2012
For Pender, whose pawprints are all over this story, both in the lessons he taught me and the love I was privileged to give him.
— R. V.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Chapter 1
The car turns over three times. Hits the curb, goes up on its side like a stunt in a movie. Rolls down the bank, crashing through trees and bushes that break windows and scratch the doors and roof. It’s loud and close, happening in my brain, not outside it, but then we stop, upside down, and everything gets quiet. Something creaks, drips. A small motor whirrs on and on, like it forgot to break. I think, That was fast. It’s hard to breathe — the seat belt holds me tight. I think, What? What was fast? Someone groans in the front seat. Mom. Dad. I think about speaking. Drip, drip, whirr. I forget what I was going to say.
It flies right over my head. Up there in the bright blue sky, the final evidence that I’m alone. This is the last time I’ll see my only friend, and I can’t even see him — only the white airplane I imagine him sitting in, probably eating peanuts and watching the city disappear below. I stare at the white puffy trail until it blurs and fades and the plane is gone behind the mountains. My neck hurts from looking up so long.
Around me, guys yell at each other, play scrappy basketball, girls giggle in groups like it’s a normal day in their normal lives. I guess it is. School just let out on the fourth last day before summer break. Everyone’s got plans to brag about, classes to skip. This year, my first year of high school, started all right because I at least had a friend to hang out with. But then there was the accident. Everything stopped. For a while, that included my brain. I had to go to a psychologist, Dr. Tang, twice a week so he could tell me how broken I was and how I could get fixed. I didn’t make a lot of progress with him. Or with anything else. You could say I checked out for a while, and I got excused from a lot of stuff. Don’t worry, Jakob. We understand, under the circumstances, teachers would tell me. Just do what you can. Or as my dad used to say when he drove us home on rainy winter nights after a movie, Just keep it between the ditches.
I take the short route, straight past the playing fields and park. I picture Grant in his airplane seat, writing a play-by-play of the journey for me, which he’ll send as soon as he gets to London. His family’s moving there for two years and he only found out about it a few months ago. We didn’t have much time to say goodbye or do all the things we’d planned for this summer. We crammed things into weekends and after school, but I still felt like there were hundreds of things we didn’t get to do.
Grant and I became friends in September when we were in the same gym class. Neither of us could do more than ten push-ups. That was our first bonding moment. After Coach Slater shook his head sadly at me as he passed by with his clipboard, Grant slapped my shoulder and said, “Hey, me too. Want to form a perpetual disappointment club?” I’d had a few friends in elementary school, but somehow they’d moved on, found other kids to play with, and by grade seven, I was playing alone most of the time. I did my own thing, but it sucked to see them — my old so-called friends — hanging out with kids we’d always thought were jerks. So when Grant and I started hanging out and found we had stuff in common, things just got easier. We liked the same music and junk food. We started skateboarding together, though we were both terrible. We were going to try all these crazy stunts when we got the guts or when the summer came, whichever happened first.
My parents were always worried about me being a loner, but they hid it well. Not well enough, obviously. I could tell they were relieved that I was going to the park with Grant. They loved Grant. They wanted Grant to live with us. I couldn’t imagine what they’d be like if I had ten friends.
But then everything changed. My parents and I were driving to the airport to go on Christmas vacation. Dark out. Wet, cold December streets. My dad and I were talking about something — then the memory goes to pieces and I wake up in the hospital with beeping machines and a really bad headache. Aunt Laura, my mom’s sister, sent me to Dr. Tang, but I guess my brain was too messed up even for him. He tried a bunch of different things that were supposed to get me to remember — he said that was the only way I would be able to move on — but things stayed jumbled up and locked inside. Everyone kept expecting me to have clear memories of the accident, to suddenly know exactly what happened. All I got were separate, floating pieces of a puzzle, and a numb feeling, like my emotions were broken. In the end he told Aunt Laura it would take time. Then he gave her the bill and she hit the roof. She didn’t send me back after that.
I didn’t like thinking about it anyway. First I was a loner who finally had a friend, and then I was a loner with no parents and a hole in his memory. It felt easier if I imagined it happened to someone else. I didn’t talk with Grant about it and he didn’t ask. Actually, after the accident, when we hung out it was like letting air into a stuffy room. We’d skate or chill in the park or just surf the web and I’d get a break from the black hole in my memory. With Aunt Laura, everything is uncomfortable — neither of us wants to talk about it, or talk about not talking about it. Grant and I have our own language. He calls me J instead of Jakob. J’s like my alter ego — me in a different world. He’s braver and better at sports and talking back to adults. J doesn’t care what others think. When Grant and I hang out, J’s there. But when I’m not with Grant, the other me comes out, the me I’ve been from kindergarten — Jakob Nobody. My last name’s Nebedy, so it was easy for kids to make that jump. “Hey, Nobody,” they’d shout. “Nobody to play with? Nobody cares!”
When I get home from school, Aunt Laura’s car isn’t out front, which means she’s working. Even though I can never keep her shifts straight, I know she’s home if her car’s there. She’s an emergency room nurse, so she sees all the really screwed-up stuff right when it gets out of the ambulance, and gets home from her shifts exhausted and cranky. I’m not sure if this is what it’s like for nurses in other parts of
the hospital because she’s been there for years. She even has a nickname for it — Emerg, which sounds like emerge, like it’s something you come out of. Her friends come over once a month for a movie night and they all talk about how terrible their jobs are.
After the accident, Aunt Laura moved into our house. My house. Her house. It doesn’t matter anymore. My parents left it to her, along with me, in their will. She’d always lived across town, but we didn’t see her all the time. My mom never talked about it, but I knew there was something going on between them. I got the feeling Aunt Laura was jealous of my mom, like she’d never quite measured up when she and my mom were kids. It kind of made me glad I didn’t have any siblings.
Last Thanksgiving I heard them talking in the living room. Aunt Laura was staying over because it was late and they were a little drunk. Dad had gone to bed and I sat with my door cracked and listened to them talk about guys they’d dated and places they had or hadn’t travelled to. My mom was trying to convince Aunt Laura to move into the house. We had a suite downstairs that Dad had finished fixing up. He said that it was where they’d put me when they got tired of me leaving my dirty socks everywhere.
“I don’t want to live under you,” Aunt Laura said to my mom. “That’s so — I don’t know — shades of high school.”
“Not at all,” my mom said. “We had rooms at opposite ends of the house.”
“Melissa, you know what I mean. I like where I live now.”
“I know, but we’re closer to the hospital. You could even bike to work. And you’d spend more time with Jakob. It’s so important that you two are close.”
Aunt Laura didn’t reply.
I opened the door a little wider.
“Look, you’d be doing us a favour. Can you at least think about it?”
“You know, this is so typical,” Aunt Laura said. There was an edge in her voice that made me want to stop listening, but I couldn’t. Nothing could have made me move.
“Here we go again.”
“No, you need to listen to me.” Aunt Laura lowered her voice a little. “You’ve never had to pay for anything in your life. You got pregnant — Mom and Dad helped you. You had a shotgun wedding — Charlie’s parents paid for it. I went into nursing because it was practical — such a smart choice according to everyone else — and I’m still in debt for it and I hate my job half the time. You wanted to study poetry for the love of it and you got the biggest scholarship in town.”
“Don’t be petty, Laura. And it wasn’t that big a scholarship. This is ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not.”
“What does it have to do with anything?”
“It’s just part of the pattern.”
“Right. The pattern.” My mom didn’t sound angry. She sounded tired. Like she’d heard all this before. I hadn’t.
“You’ve had this charmed life that magically worked out while I struggled for everything, and I just don’t think I should feel guilty if I don’t want to save you. I don’t want to live here. I have my own life.”
My mom didn’t say anything.
My heart drummed in my ears and I hoped it wasn’t too loud to hear whatever they’d say next.
“I’m going to bed,” my mom finally said. “Happy Thanksgiving, Laura.”
“Melissa, don’t be like that. I didn’t mean it to sound harsh. I just —”
“How did you mean it, then? I can’t help it if you feel hard done by. I didn’t set out to have a better life than you. I don’t think I do. I guess it’s really about perspective. I see you as family and you see me as competition.”
Aunt Laura didn’t say anything for a moment. “I have goals too, you know.”
“And I guess they don’t include being an aunt or a sister.”
“Don’t say that — you know I am.”
My mom walked toward the hallway and I had to scramble back from my door. She spoke in a low voice, in a voice that said she was sad to be proved right. “Just not in the way I’d hoped you would be.”
I walk over to the spot where Aunt Laura’s car would be parked and across our scraggly front lawn that never grows, so it never needs mowing. If it did it would be my job, so I’m happy it’s brown stubble. There are no lights on upstairs, but in the basement, where our tenant lives, a bedroom light shines yellow. Soleil moved in last month with her daughter, Libby. They’re kind of odd, but Aunt Laura had interviewed so many awful people, she was just happy Soleil didn’t have a drug problem and wasn’t in a rock band.
We already know a lot about Soleil. She’s kind of an open book — the kind that invites you to find out everything about her. She’s been coming upstairs a lot recently, and Aunt Laura doesn’t seem to mind. If I didn’t know better I’d say my aunt might actually be getting along with someone outside the hospital. Soleil’s an actor but she works at a pet groomer’s while she looks for acting gigs. I’ve never seen anything she’s been in, although she says she’s done three commercials. Libby’s twelve and completely different from her mom. She’s skinny and bug-eyed and quiet. The kind of quiet that’s weird — like the person’s always watching you, seeing more than you want them to. Sometimes I catch her staring at me in a way that makes me feel like something under a microscope. She either thinks I’m scary or fascinating. I’m pretty sure she’s embarrassed by her mom’s crazy clothes. I guess I would be too — Soleil loves anything bright, short or tight. Libby always wears black and one other colour — each time I see her it’s a bright green shirt or orange socks to her knees with black everything else. The other thing I know is Libby loves drawing. I find pieces of paper in the backyard or on the steps off the deck. I don’t look at them because I don’t want to encourage anything. I never know when she’s watching me.
I let myself in the front door and go straight to my room. It’s the only place in the house where I can relax and do what I want. If I hang out too much in the living room, Aunt Laura tells me to go outside, or worse, clean something up. But in my room, I have full reign. My walls are sky blue, like a day in July, and there are glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling that my dad put up years ago. He arranged them in actual constellations so I would know how to look for the real thing. Dad had an astronomy obsession. He told me once that he wished he’d stayed in science instead of doing math like his parents wanted him to. The stars don’t really work anymore, but I’m too lazy to take them down. And I guess I’d feel weird. Plus, if any ceiling came off with the stars, I’d hear about it. Aunt Laura kind of took over when she moved in. Took out all my parents’ stuff and wanted everything just like she had it at her old place. She painted all the rooms in the house. Except mine. She kind of acts like the house is hers now, after all that time of not wanting anything to do with it.
I throw my bag onto the bed and turn on my computer. It would be great if there was an email from Grant. He said if I paid him a hundred dollars he’d moon a flight attendant.
My email inbox is empty, so the next thing I check is Dogzone. Nothing new since this morning. I go to Poochfinder. Two new entries. I lean back in the chair and click on the first link.
When I was five, I started asking my parents if I could get a dog. Any dog was fine, although since then I decided on some breeds. Big dogs — German shepherds, huskies and rottweilers. But they always said no. Next year, maybe when you’re older, maybe when you’re in grade nine. Since I’ve basically become an orphan, I’ve been pretty obsessed with getting a dog. Sometimes I get the feeling it’s about more than that — like I’m trying to prove something to my parents. My dad just didn’t get how important it was to me. I’ve been checking dog blogs, websites and forums for two years. Every day I check all the shelter websites for new dogs and imagine taking one of them home. A dog to be my buddy, always with me. Someone who’d never leave and wouldn’t care if I did stupid things. I’m hoping if I can save up some money, I might be able to convince Aunt Laura to let me get one. Since she’s not home a lot, it would keep me company. But first I have to find
a job to make some money. If I show her how responsible I am, she can’t use that as an excuse.
While I surf around, I crunch the last stale bites of a cracker left from yesterday. The phone rings beside me. For a second I think it’s Grant.
“I’m going to be late,” Aunt Laura says even before I say hello. “Make yourself some dinner, okay?”
This is nothing new. She’s always slaving away in Emerg, as she says.
“No problem,” I say. I’d rather be on my own anyway.
“Hey, didn’t Grant leave today?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry, Jakob. I know you’ll miss him.”
I realize this might be a good time to score some sympathy for the dog situation. “Yeah, I really will. I was wondering, actually, if I could talk to you about dog adoptions again. I know you said no way last time, but I think I might have a better plan now.”
“Jakob, we’ve been through this —”
“I know, but it’s different this time.”
“Jakob, I’ve got to go, okay? We’re slammed here. We’ll talk later, I promise.” She hangs up before I can answer.
* * *
Today’s Most Adoptable Dog:
* * *
Hi, I’m Laddy, a shepherd–lab cross. I’m four years old and still full of energy. My last home didn’t have room for me, but if you take me home, I’ll keep you entertained with lots of ball-chasing, running and as many tricks as you can teach me. Note: Laddy isn’t good with small children and should go to a cat-free home.
* * *
Later, as I’m making myself Kraft Dinner in the microwave, Soleil knocks on the back door. Libby’s there too — she says something to her mom I don’t catch.
“Helloooo? Jakob?” Soleil presses her face to the window and her nose goes flat.
I let her in.
“Smells delish in here.” Soleil steps inside in some kind of dressing gown with her hair all slicked back. It makes her look like a movie star waiting in her trailer. Libby follows, looking embarrassed. Her hair’s in braids and she looks six years old.
