From Ant to Eagle

by Alex Lyttle

  Raquel, followed by Aleta, walked in.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Raquel said, walking up to the table. Aleta held back a few steps looking at her favourite spot—the floor by her feet. Raquel turned around and grabbed her by the sleeve of her shirt, pulling her over. “Aleta’s ready.”

  After a few warning words from Raquel on riding safely and watching for cars, we were on our way. Raquel held Chloe while we rode down the driveway. I looked back once and saw a dark figure lurking in the upstairs window and felt relieved when we were a few hundred feet down Thornton Road and the house was out of sight.

  For the first while we rode in silence, Aleta and I side-by-side in front, Sammy close behind. The air was muggy and hot, the sky a pale blue between scattered clouds and above us two hawks circled, looking for unsuspecting field mice. All in all it was a good day for a bike ride.

  “So you used to live in London, huh?” I asked, trying to start up a conversation.

  I think maybe Aleta didn’t hear me over the sound of rushing air or else she had nodded and I’d not seen.

  I tried again.

  “We used to live in London too. What school did you go to?”

  “Ryerson,” she replied without elaboration. This time I heard her clearly.

  “Oh yeah, that’s downtown right? We went to Blythewood. Well, I did, Sammy wasn’t in school yet.”

  I turned around to see if Sammy had heard this only to find that he had already fallen way behind.

  “Hurry up, Sammy!” I yelled.

  Aleta looked behind too and we both slowed to let Sammy catch up. When he got close, I noticed he was already out of breath. It was unusual—Sammy was chubby, sure, but he wasn’t usually that slow.

  “You’re riding like a turtle with four broken legs,” I joked, then stole a look at Aleta to see if she had smiled.

  She hadn’t. Instead she looked concerned.

  I was kind of annoyed that Sammy was already slowing us down. “Come on, Sammy, we can stop for water when we’re halfway.”

  As we continued riding, I tried again to get Aleta to talk.

  “So were you on any teams at Ryerson?” I asked.

  “Cross-country,” she replied.

  “Oh, so you like to run?”

  She nodded.

  I waited for her to ask me what sports I played so I could tell her how good at basketball I was but she didn’t say anything. I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere asking questions so I started just talking.

  “I think you’ll like Huxbury. I mean, the school itself isn’t much—it’s pretty small and all the classrooms are in portables—but the teachers and most of the kids are nice. The only ones you’ve gotta watch out for are Tom and Joey. You probably saw them in church—the two boys with really short, black hair? They sit with their dad who always looks angry?”

  I looked at Aleta but she made no sign that she knew who I was talking about. She was still staring straight ahead but I could tell she was listening.

  “I’ll point them out next Sunday. They’re the meanest kids in Huxbury and maybe even the meanest kids on the face of the earth. Tom will be in our class. Don’t worry though—you’ll learn to ignore him. Plus, I’ll be there to make sure he doesn’t bother you.”

  Aleta smiled at this. It flashed quickly and then was gone, but it was definitely a smile.

  From then on, things seemed a little bit lighter. We were still a few kilometres from Huxbury but Aleta didn’t look so nervous or angry or whatever it was anymore. She stopped staring rigidly ahead and started looking around over the cornfields with a sort of half-smile on her face. She reminded me of Sammy when he was in church trying not to laugh. Her lips were still tight but her eyes had little crinkles beside them that told me she was in a happy place.

  Even I was beginning to appreciate the countryside. Sure we were surrounded by nothingness, but right then that nothingness meant we could ride down the middle of the road without having to worry about getting hit by a car or a truck. If we’d still lived in London, there’s no way we’d have been allowed to ride down the middle of the road.

  We were about halfway to the school when we were torn from our peaceful daydreaming by the harsh sound of metal on gravel.

  I turned around to find Sammy buckled over on the side of the road, his legs still wrapped around his bike that now lay on its side, wheels spinning in the air.

  “What happened, Sammy?” I yelled, jumping off my bike and running back to where he lay.

  When I first looked at him, his eyes had a vacant stare but then he blinked a few times and seemed to come around. He looked up at me with the confusion of someone who’d just fallen asleep on the couch. “What…what happened…” he whimpered.

  “That’s what I just asked you,” I said.

  Aleta bent down beside him. “You don’t look very well,” she said. “Maybe we should take a break and rest.” She reached out and touched him softly on the forehead. “You feel really hot.”

  It was the first time I’d heard Aleta say more than two words strung together. Her voice was sing-songy, pretty with only a slight accent.

  “Yeah, let’s take a break,” I agreed.

  We pulled our bikes under a small maple at the side of the road and sat down to cool off. I didn’t say it, but I was worried—Sammy really didn’t look good. He was dusty white and beads of sweat were pouring down his face. I pulled out the water bottle he had packed in his knapsack and handed it to him.

  “You feeling any better?” I asked.

  “A…little…bit…” he said, words coming out between short gasps. He was still really out of breath and I was almost sure he wouldn’t be able to make it the rest of the way into Huxbury.

  I looked around for a house to call Mom but we hadn’t passed a house in ages. All around us was just corn and more corn.

  “We could probably make it into town,” I suggested, “it’s not that much further. Then we could call Mom and have her pick up Sammy.”

  Aleta shook her head. “I think we should turn around.”

  “I’m okay,” Sammy said, trying to stand up but looking wobbly.

  Aleta was right—we needed to turn around.

  “Yeah, okay, we’ll turn around.”

  We pulled Sammy’s bike into the first row of the cornfield and lay it on its side so no one could see it from the road, then Aleta helped Sammy up onto my handlebars.

  “You sure you’re okay with this?” she asked skeptically.

  “Yeah, we used to do this all the time before Sammy got rid of his training wheels.”

  It was the truth but when Sammy used to ride sitting on my handlebars, he was way lighter and way less groggy. It was a really slow, shaky ride home but I managed to get Sammy all the way back without falling.

  I helped him into the kitchen and he practically sank into one of the kitchen chairs.

  “Mom!” I yelled.

  Mom came downstairs with a towel wrapped around her head—she’d evidently been in the shower.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, then she saw Sammy slumped over the table.

  Mom may have been the stricter parent but when one of us was hurt or sick or sad, she was also the quickest with a hug. She asked what had happened and I explained in detail, or as much detail as I could, about how one moment we were riding our bikes and the next Sammy was lying in the dirt.

  “Probably the heat,” she offered.

  “Yeah, probably,” I agreed.

  She looked him over for injuries and found only the dark bruises on his shoulder and now, a new set of bruises down his leg.

  “Are these from today?” she asked.

  Sammy wasn’t talking so I answered for him. “No, I think those are from yesterday. He cut his knee when he fell off his bike. That’s two falls in two days—maybe we need to put his training wheels back on.”

  I looked back at Aleta who was still standing by the door to see if she’d found this funny but her eyes had a glassy appearance and sh
e was staring intently at Mom and Sammy.

  “You must be Aleta,” Mom said, looking across the room while she rubbed Sammy’s back. “I hear you and your family just moved to Huxbury. It’s nice to meet you.”

  Aleta didn’t say anything. Instead she stood completely still. She seemed hypnotized by the slow, circular motion of Mom’s hand on Sammy’s back. There was a really awkward silence that seemed to last forever.

  “I hear you have a sister,” Mom said, trying again.

  Again Aleta said nothing.

  I felt my ears growing hot. I felt embarrassed. I took a step toward Aleta and that seemed to snap her out of her daze.

  “Aleta?” I said, trying to urge her to speak.

  Her eyes looked frantically from me then back to Mom again. She looked like she wanted to say something but then thought better of it. Her mouth moved to form words but nothing came out. She stepped backwards, fumbled for the door handle, then turned and ran out.

  Without saying a word—just like that—she left.

  CHAPTER 8

  BY THE TIME I HAD RUN OUT THE DOOR AFTER ALETA, SHE WAS at her bike, picking it off the ground. The once white clouds were now dark and grey and ominous.

  “Hey, wait up!” I yelled, jogging up to where the bikes were. “Is everything all right?”

  I knew the answer as soon as I saw her. Her green eyes were bigger than ever and tears were streaming down her cheeks.

  She looked away.

  “Everything is fine,” she sniffed, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve. “I just need to get home before my dad starts to worry.” Her bad excuse became worse when her voice broke down at the final few words, but before I could offer any comfort she was off, pedalling hard down the driveway toward the road.

  “Hey! Hang on, I’m coming with you!” I shouted, grabbing my bike off the ground nearby. “It’s going to start to rain soon. Maybe we should wait for my dad to get home so he can drive us.”

  Whether she was too far ahead to hear or just didn’t care to answer, she rode on, not acknowledging me.

  I pedalled hard to catch up but she must have been pedalling hard too because we were a good ways down the road by the time I caught her. A light drizzle had started and I knew from the humidity in the air that it would only be a few minutes before that drizzle turned into a torrential downpour.

  “Aleta, I really think we should turn back, it’s going to start to rain really hard soon.”

  She looked defiant—like it would take a hurricane to make her turn around. We carried on in silence and as I’d suspected, the rain picked up with every minute. The road became wet and slippery, and the visibility rapidly worsened.

  I saw a thick grove of trees ahead. “Aleta…” There was no need to finish; she was already veering off the side of the road toward it. The rain was coming down like a waterfall and I could hardly see her though she was only a few metres in front of me.

  We dropped our bikes and ran into the woods, clothes sticking to our bodies like paint.

  The trees offered good shelter so the ground was still dry. Aleta sat down, eyes red, hair matted like the first time I’d seen her in church. She was crying still, and the only noises in the forest were the rain hitting the canopy and her soft whimpers.

  For a moment I just stood there watching her, unsure why she was crying, unsure what to do about it. But then I thought about Mom and what she did when Sammy or I were sad so I sat down next to her and wrapped my arms around her. I thought she might pull away—I’d only met her two days before—but she didn’t. Instead she moved closer into my arms and rested her head on my shoulder, and that’s when she broke down. Her quiet whimpers turned to loud sobs and her tears began to flow. I held her tight, not saying a word.

  I don’t know exactly how long we sat there, I was lost in my own thoughts, but my daze broke when I realized Aleta had stopped crying. I let her go and she slid from my arms and sat back.

  “Sorry,” she said. Then, more to herself, she whispered, “I promised myself I wouldn’t have a sad day.”

  “A sad day?” I asked.

  For a moment she sat chewing her bottom lip and though she was beside me, I could tell her mind was somewhere else. Judging by the way her nose crinkled and her eyebrows turned in—she didn’t like where she was. The sleeves of her shirt were wet and bunched up around her elbows and I noticed rows of faint lines running down her forearms. I reached out and touched one of the lines and that seemed to snap her back to the present. She pulled her arm away and rolled down her sleeve.

  “Never mind,” she said quickly. “We should probably get going. The rain has stopped and I don’t want my father to worry.” She stood up and walked to the edge of the grove with an urgent look on her face. I wanted to ask her again why she was crying but I knew she didn’t want to talk about it, so I stood up and followed.

  As we rode silently back toward her house, the clouds cleared and the sun came back out. It was weird, one moment it was raining like we were going to need an ark and the next the sky was blue and clear as if it had never rained at all. The only evidence was the puddles pockmarking the road and we zigzagged to avoid them.

  When we got to the end of Aleta’s driveway I stopped my bike. I looked at the upstairs window expecting to see a shadow watching but there was no one. Still, I didn’t want to go near the house. “I should probably just say goodbye here.”

  Aleta glanced at her house then back to me.

  She grinned and nodded.

  I expected her to ride away and that to be the end of that. I figured after the disaster of a day there wouldn’t be any more bike rides but to my surprise she stood there looking at me as if waiting for me to say something.

  Finally, I broke the silence. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to see the school and that Sammy kind of ruined our bike ride and that you… well…that you were feeling sad or whatever. I guess this whole day turned out to be a trainwreck.”

  “No,” Aleta said, shaking her head, “it was fun.”

  “Fun?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I haven’t been out in a while. It was nice.”

  “Then maybe we could hang out again? We could go for a run or something—you said you liked cross-country. I’m not sure if you noticed but there happens to be a lot of country to cross out here.”

  I gestured toward the fields around us, and Aleta smiled.

  “Sure, we could go for a run.”

  A part of me had hoped she’d say no and suggest something else. I only suggested the running idea because she’d said she liked cross-country. When we’d done cross-country at school in London, I’d hated it. I was not a long distance runner by any means but if it meant I’d get to spend more time with Aleta—I could suck it up.

  I made Aleta repeat her phone number a few times, memorized it, and promised I’d call her soon to figure out a plan. As I turned to ride home Aleta said, “Tell Sammy I hope he’s feeling better.”

  And that’s when I realized I’d completely forgotten about my brother.

  CHAPTER 9

  WHEN I GOT HOME, MOM SAID THAT SAMMY STILL WASN’T FEEling well and had already gone to bed. Later that night when I climbed into my top bunk, I could tell he was awake. I could always tell when he was awake by his breathing.

  After a few minutes I heard his voice from below.

  “Cal? Are you awake?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I waited for him to say something but he didn’t. Instead the room went back to silence and I realized he hadn’t wanted to talk, only to check if I was awake.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  I felt him shift again in his bunk.

  “Hot,” he replied.

  The room was a little warm—it was summer and we didn’t have air conditioning—but it wasn’t much hotter than usual.

  “Want me to grab you the fan?” I asked.

  “No, I’m okay.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to fall asleep again. I’d put the quilt back ove
r the window so it was pitch black. I was nearly asleep when Sammy’s voice woke me again.

  “Cal, do you think Elligators live in the river?”

  “Sammy, I was almost asleep,” I groaned. The room went quiet and I could tell Sammy thought I was mad. “What river?” I mumbled.

  “The one by the house.”

  “You mean the creek in the woods?”

  “Yeah.”

  Normally I would’ve said yes. I liked teasing Sammy. It was so easy because he believed everything I said but he’d had a rough day and I was feeling nice. “Nah, I’m pretty sure they only live in Africa.”

  “Oh.” He sounded disappointed rather than reassured.

  I smiled.

  To Sammy, alligators were made of soft plush and were cuddly. There was so much he didn’t know. During the day all his questions annoyed me—like I was supposed to be some sort of grade one teacher—but at night, when we’d lay awake talking, I didn’t mind so much. I kind of liked that he was still a baby. I kind of liked that he didn’t know anything.

  “Night, Sammy,” I said, rolling over and facing the wall.

  “Night, Cal.”

  IT WAS THURSDAY morning and the house was empty. Dad had left for London to meet with someone from work and Mom had taken Sammy to the doctor. After two days of barely getting out of bed, headaches and a thermometer that said fever, Mom was suspicious that Sammy had the flu. I’d have been dragged along for the trip had it not been the morning I’d planned to meet Aleta for our run. I’d argued and argued until Mom had given in and said I could stay.

  T-shirt, shorts, basketball shoes—I was ready for what I thought would be an easy jog. Over a brief phone call earlier that morning, Aleta and I had decided to run toward each other’s houses through the corn fields. We figured we’d eventually cross paths and spot each other but after fifteen minutes of sluggish jogging, I realized it might not be so easy. The corn was waist-high and the fields were infinite. Visions of dying from heat exhaustion in some remote field began to cross my mind when I finally spotted Aleta a few fields over in a bright orange shirt.