I shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
“He takes good care of you?”
I shrugged again. Mrs. Jhun didn’t know Billy very well, but that wasn’t her fault. She had tried. She had gone back to Korea after Mr. Jhun died. Then, about eight or nine months ago, she had returned. That’s when she found out that Mom had died. She came over to our house to tell Billy and me how sorry she was. Billy didn’t even ask her in. He made her stand out on the porch on a cold February afternoon. He listened to her, scowled when I invited her in, and looked relieved when she declined the invitation. After she left, he said people who talked the way she did should stay back where they came from. I don’t know why he was so mad. She was just being nice, and besides, she spoke pretty good English.
While I worked on her step, she asked me about school and told me that she was going back to Korea again soon for a visit. Mr. and Mrs. Jhun didn’t have any children, but Mrs. Jhun had a sister and some nieces and nephews back there. One of her nieces was expecting a baby. She told me that she liked it there and she liked seeing all her relatives. But she also liked Canada. Besides, Mr. Jhun was buried here in Canada. He had tried so hard to make a life here, she said. She didn’t think it was right to leave him here all alone. She said when she died, she wanted to be buried next to him.
“Don’t talk about dying, Mrs. Jhun,” I said. “You’re way too young for that.”
She smiled serenely. She looked so much better than she had this afternoon that I decided to ask her about what she had said.
“Hyacinth?” she repeated, frowning.
“You were looking right at me when you said it.” Suddenly she smiled and nodded.
“Your eyes,” she said. “They are exactly the color of hyacinth. Your mother’s eyes were the same.”
I felt a little better. It made sense in a Mrs. Jhun kind of way. It wasn’t crazy. It reminded me of the time she said Billy had a mule on his head. I thought she got a word mixed up. Then she said, “He pushes it and pushes it, but it never goes where he wants it to go.” And that was true. No matter what he did, Billy always ended up with his hair in his eyes.
“You remind me so much of your mother,” Mrs. Jhun said. She smiled again, but there was something sad behind it. I knew how she felt. I felt the same way.
I stayed and drank another cup of tea with her, and promised I’d come back to see her again soon. Then I headed home to an empty house.
On Sunday I hung out with Vin. Then, when I was walking home along Danforth, I passed Mr. Scorza’s grocery store. I stopped and doubled back. We were short of milk. At least, that’s the excuse I gave myself when I went in. But as I was walking back to the dairy section, I scanned the aisles.
“Looking for something, Michael?” a voice said. It was Mr. Scorza, and he actually smiled at me. It was kind of a gruff, crooked, half-hidden-behind-his-moustache smile, but it gave me enough courage to say, “Could I talk to you for a minute, Mr. Scorza?”
“Sure,” he said. “Step into my office.”
I followed him up the narrow stairs and stood wedged in the small box-free area of floor space between the door and his desk, which was piled with invoices, bills, and shipping papers.
“What can I do for you, Michael?” Mr. Scorza said. He always called guys by their full names. I was Michael. Tom was Thomas. Steve was Stephen.
“I was wondering, Mr. Scorza,” I began. All of a sudden my mouth turned dry and my tongue got tangled up in my teeth. I must have sounded like a kindergarten kid on his first day away from mommy, all nervous and shy. Spit it out, I told myself. So what if he says no? It’s not going to kill you, is it?
“I have some extra time,” I began, rushing the words out.
Mr. Scorza’s eyes were fixed on mine. The smile had vanished from behind his moustache. I backed up a little without looking where I was going. My foot hit a box and I started to topple backwards. My hands flew out and I grabbed at another box to stop myself from falling, but the one I grabbed must have been empty or filled with feathers or something because when I grabbed at it, it lifted easily and I kept falling. Mr. Scorza started to get up from his desk. He looked worried. I sat down hard on the box behind me. Then, with him still watching and still not saying anything, I stood up and tried not to look like a major goof.
“Relax, Michael,” Mr. Scorza said. “I don’t bite.”
I tried to smile. My lips trembled. It was too late to back out. I had already started.
“What I mean is, if you needed someone to work a few more hours, I’m available,” I said. “I’m a hard worker, Mr. Scorza.” It was true. I didn’t spend any time out behind the store like some guys who said they were going back to the storeroom to get another case of peanut butter or margarine or whatever, but who slipped out into the alley for a smoke first. I never did that. I don’t even smoke.
“I know you are, Michael,” Mr. Scorza said. “You’ve been working here how long?”
“Almost a year,” I said.
“Ten months, two weeks,” Mr. Scorza said. For all I knew, he was right on the nose. “I had to let Thomas Manelli go today,” he said. “You know Thomas?”
Sure I did. Thomas was two years older than me and a real jerk. Where some guys would slip out for one smoke, Thomas would settle in for three or four, and he’d go on about how stupid Mr. Scorza was, how easy it was to put one over on him. Guess not, eh, Tommy?
“Thomas worked for me three days a week, four to nine. His shift is available,” Mr. Scorza said.
I stared at him. “You mean, me?”
“If you think you can handle it.”
“You mean, on top of what I already do?”
“If you think you can handle it,” Mr. Scorza said again. “I like to see a boy get a good education. Your schoolwork is important, Michael. You don’t want to let it suffer.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t thinking about school. Instead I was calculating how much more money I would make. Five hours a day times three days a week would add fifteen more hours to my paycheck. I’d have more money than I’d know what to do with.
“I can handle it, Mr. Scorza,” I said. “I know I can.”
“You can start Tuesday, Michael. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, right after school. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, and before I knew what I was doing, I had thrust out a hand. Mr. Scorza smiled at me as he shook it.
“Your mama used to come in here every Friday night and buy her groceries for the week,” he said. “From the time you were this big.” He held his hands barely a shoulder width apart. “She always had you with her. She would be proud of you, Michael, if she could see you now.”
“Thank you, Mr. Scorza.”
I was careful not to trip over any more boxes as I let myself out of Mr. Scorza’s tiny office. And I had done it! I had asked for extra hours, and I had got them. Now I was going to be making more money, which meant maybe I could buy a couple of pairs of new jeans and some new sneakers, and I’d still have enough money left over to take Jen out.
I grabbed the cordless phone and carried it back to the living room, dialing on the way. It was stupid. It was like stepping up to the self-serve counter and asking for an order of trouble—supersized, of course—but I wanted to tell someone my good news. I flopped onto the couch and listened to the ringing on the other end of the line. Then:
“Hello?” It was a woman’s voice. I recognized her right away—Jen’s mom. Her voice sounded cold and suspicious.
“Can I speak to Jen, please?”
“Who is this?” she demanded. I never called Jen’s house, and I was beginning to wish I hadn’t picked up the phone now. Then I thought, Where did she learn her phone manners, anyway? I’d been nice, said please. She was snarling at me without having any idea who I was. One more thing that money didn’t buy, I guess.
“I’m a friend of Jen’s. From school.”
“She’s never mentioned anyone named Wyatt,” she said, even though I hadn’t said my name—which is
n’t Wyatt. That was Billy’s name.
Then I realized that she had call display. Still, she had no right to quiz me. Jen wasn’t a baby. She could decide for herself whether she wanted to talk to me.
“Look, is she home or what?” I said.
In the background I heard a man’s voice. Jen’s dad. A big-deal Bay Street lawyer. “Who is it, Margaret?”
“She’s not available,” Jen’s mother told me. I imagined her smiling as she said it, looking like Cruella de Vil or Snow White’s nasty, nasty stepmother.
Then I heard another voice, a female voice, say, “Who’s not available?”
I wished I could shout over Jen’s mother to get Jen’s attention, but I couldn’t. So I hung up. A few seconds later the phone rang. Jen, maybe? I pressed the on button.
“Who is this?” a voice demanded. Jen’s mother again. “Who is this? Why are you calling my daughter?”
I hit off and didn’t answer when the phone rang a third time. Jeez, how could Jen stand living with parents like those?
CHAPTER THREE
Mr. Morrison, my homeroom teacher, wagged a finger at me as I came through the door on Monday morning.
“Mr. Gianneris wants to see you in his office,” he said. “Right now.”
Mr. Gianneris was the vice principal. He motioned me into a chair as soon as I stepped into his office. I glanced at the picture of his wife and kids that he kept on his desk for everyone to see. I wondered what vice principals were like when they weren’t at school, chewing out kids. Did they do a quick brain transfer at the end of the day? Or did they go home and chew out their kids the way they did everyone else? My personal opinion: Mr. Gianneris was like the dad in one of my mom’s favorite movies, The Sound of Music. Line them up and march them to breakfast, Maria. After inspection, of course, and only if they pass.
He peered solemnly at me across his desk. It was one of those moves that was supposed to make me sweat or confess or something. Then he opened a file folder, glanced at the contents, and asked me if I knew why he had called me down. When I said I didn’t, he gave me his best vice-principal glower and said, “Really?”
I thought about giving him some wiseass answer, but what was the point? I was already in trouble. Jazzing Gianneris was only going to make him double whatever punishment he had already decided to dish out.
“This is about history class, right?” I said.
“Specifically, it’s about ditching history class,” Mr. Gianneris said. He glanced at the file folder again. “In fact, it’s about ditching the whole day on Friday.”
Blah, blah, blah. End of story: a week of detentions.
“Three-thirty to four-thirty, every day this week, Mike,” Mr. Gianneris said, “starting this afternoon.”
This afternoon was no problem. But what about the rest of the week? I thought about all the extra hours Mr. Scorza had just given me and about how he thought I was a hard worker. What kind of hard worker showed up for work forty-five minutes late because he’d been sitting in detention?
“But I have a job after school, four days a week,” I said.
“You should have thought about that before you decided to take some unscheduled time off.” Mr. Gianneris didn’t even look up from the detention slip he was filling out.
It was decision time. I had three choices. I could suffer in silence, take the detention, and probably lose my job as a result. Of all the miserable luck. I could explain the situation to Mr. Gianneris, get down on my knees and beg, if that’s what it took, make him understand exactly what was at stake and how important it was. The thought was humiliating. Mr. Gianneris didn’t like me. What chance did I have that he’d give me a break? Or I could ditch the detentions, just like I’d ditched school on Friday. I’d probably end up suspended, which would free me up for work, but would kill my school record. I watched Mr. Gianneris fill out the slip.
“Sir?”
The word worked magic, like I’d said “Open Sesame.” Mr. Gianneris looked up at me.
“Look, I know I messed up,” I said. I worked at sounding sincere. It wasn’t hard. This mattered more than almost anything else I could think of. “But I just got this after-school job, and I’m supposed to be there at four o’clock Tuesday through Friday. It’s real important to me. I’ll do the detention, Mr. Gianneris. Only, maybe I could do it for five Mondays instead. And I swear I won’t ditch again. If I mess up one more time, you can do what you want. Okay?”
I stopped talking then and held my breath.
Mr. Gianneris peered at me for what seemed like days. At first I couldn’t tell whether it was the fact that I had a job, or the fact that I was asking for a favor, that accounted for the look of surprise on his face. Then surprise gave way to suspicion. Finally I saw on his face the same look I had seen on Vin’s face back in sixth grade health class, when we had started studying human reproduction—a look of intense curiosity.
“Where do you work?” Mr. Gianneris asked.
I told him.
“Tuesday through Friday?” Mr. Gianneris said.
“And all day Saturday.”
“I can call and check, you know.”
My heart raced. “The manager’s name is Mr. Scorza. I’ve been working Fridays after school and all day Saturday for almost a year.”
“Five Mondays in a row instead of every afternoon this week,” Mr. Gianneris said slowly, as if he wasn’t sure. Then he said, “A job is a good thing. It teaches a person responsibility.” He studied me again. “Are you a good employee?”
Mr. Gianneris looked down at the detention slip he had just filled out. Then, finally, slowly, he crumpled it up and tossed it into the blue recycle bin near the door. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out another slip.
“You’d better not disappoint me, Mike,” he said. “And I am going to check with Mr. Scorza.”
I couldn’t believe it. He had cut me some slack. First Mr. Scorza had given me more hours, and now Mr. Gianneris had made it possible for me to keep them. It was the biggest run of good luck I’d ever had.
“Thank you, Mr. Gianneris.” I couldn’t remember the last time I had thanked a vice principal. Probably never.
I spent the rest of the day looking over my shoulder, wondering what kind of trouble I’d be in with Riel on Tuesday—or today, if I ran into him. I had a pretty good idea he’d be harder to deal with than Gianneris. I’m not sure why I thought that, but I did. I even thought that it might be a good idea to get that stupid paper done. Then at least I could wave it in the guy’s face so that maybe things wouldn’t go so bad.
But how do you find time for stuff like that when you’ve got classes all day and you leave every single one of them with another assignment and another deadline?
Okay, sure, I could have gone to the library at lunch-time and worked on that paper. Or headed straight home after my detention and stayed put until I’d produced the right number of words. But Vin was waiting for me like he’d promised, out in the school parking lot. He and Sal were going downtown and they wanted me to go with them, so of course I said yes. We were almost on the sidewalk when someone called my name. Jen. Vin rolled his eyes.
“So now I guess you’re not coming,” he said.
I shrugged and headed over to where Jen was standing. She had a pile of books from the school library under one arm. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Vin and Sal weren’t moving. They were waiting.
Jen’s soft green eyes were as hard as emeralds. “You called my house, didn’t you?” she said, like she had me on the witness stand and was trying to get me to admit to a major crime.
“Yeah,” I said. “So?”
“Why?”
I had only met her dad a couple of times, but all of a sudden he flashed into my head. Jen looked just like him. Had his same crisp lawyer tone, too.
“I wanted to talk to you,” I said. “What do you think?”
“You’re not supposed to call my house.”
Now I was getting flashes of her mom
, too. Jen sounded like both her parents at the same time, telling me what I could and couldn’t do. Like she had any right.
“I missed you,” I said. “I just wanted to say hi.”
“Yeah, well, my mom went ballistic. Who’s this Wyatt person? Why is he calling you?”
“Did you tell her?”
“No!” Like that would have been the dumbest thing she could have done. It made me mad.
Okay, so maybe I hadn’t met her dad under the best circumstances. But I had apologized for what had happened, and not just because I had to. I really was sorry. If I had known that bike belonged to Jen’s dad, I never would have gone near it. And, anyway, I wasn’t the one who took it. I just saw it. I noticed that it wasn’t locked properly. A guy with a bike that cost that much should be a little more careful when he leaves it on the street. I just noticed that the lock looked funny, and I nudged it and saw that it wasn’t locked at all. It was two other guys, older guys who were hanging around, who took it. They weren’t even friends of mine. They grabbed it, but Jen’s dad said I had helped them, so when they took off, I got in trouble. It didn’t help that he never got his bike back. It didn’t help, either, that he could have bought himself fifty more just like it any day of the week.
But Jen didn’t dump me because of it. She said she believed me. But she made me promise never to call her house. She said it would make her parents angry. Now, though, it sounded like she was ashamed of me or something. Why didn’t she just tell her mother to mind her own business?
“Well?” Jen said. “Aren’t you going to apologize?”
“For what? All I did was make a phone call—”
“We had company.”
Jeez, why was she so mad?
“She grilled me for twenty minutes. I could see her friend was feeling uncomfortable. And poor Patrick was wondering what was going on.”
Whoa! “Patrick?”
“My mom’s friend’s son. He just started at a private school here. That’s why his mother was in town,” she said. “I told you I had to entertain him.”
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