by Avi
How stupid could I be? I should have accepted what I had always known was true: Uncle Charlie’s supernatural talk was just a joke.
At least, that was what I told myself.
But since I couldn’t get Uncle Charlie out of my mind, my parents took me to a psychologist. Her report: “Your son, Anthony Gilbert, was deeply disturbed by his uncle Charlie’s death. He’s depressed.”
“What’s wrong with thinking about Uncle Charlie?” I asked Dad. “And what’s depressed mean?”
He said, “It’s like being half dead.”
When I remained sad, not happy with anything, my parents kept reminding me we were about to move to San Francisco in the fall.
Dad kept saying, “New jobs for us. Cool new school for you.”
“That is,” Mom cautioned, “if you can get in. Hope there’s space.”
Then I had to start back in my old school. Mid-September in the middle of packing for the move to San Francisco—we were told that the Penda School, the very place Uncle Charlie had wanted me to go, could enroll me as soon as I could get there. They would hold a place.
Delighted, my parents found an apartment near the school. That’s why, October 5, a Sunday morning, the three of us were on the sidewalk, looking at the Penda School for the first time.
And that’s when Uncle Charlie showed up again.
He looked exactly the way he had at those family gatherings: a small, old guy with a lean, pug-nosed face, dressed in a frayed checkered shirt, suspenders, torn jeans, and, yes, those tasseled loafers. A couple of differences: his eyes were bright, and he was smiling at me.
Let me make it clear: I did not believe in ghosts. I simply told myself that Uncle Charlie and I had spent so much time together, talked so much, done so many things, and had such fun, that I had never stopped thinking about him.
In other words, as far as I was concerned, I was not seeing Uncle Charlie. I was seeing my memory of him.
Think about memory. You can’t slice a memory like a loaf of bread, but you can smell it, taste it, and see it, right? Even though memories can’t talk to you, memories are real. It was his idea that had brought us to San Francisco. I was standing by the school he’d wanted me to attend. How could I not remember him?
Of course, my parents didn’t see him. Uncle Charlie was my memory.
The main thing was, seeing him made me happy. I felt it would be great to have him around to help me in my new city, new home, and new school. What’s more, I figured I’d need his help, because the Penda School was not like any school I had ever seen before.
The Penda School sat atop San Francisco’s Pacific Heights, half a block wide and two stories high. It was built of dark red wood; massive stone steps led to double doors with thick glass I couldn’t see through. There were multiple steep-pitched roofs, linked by a spiderweb of crests. There were gray slate shingles, bulky redbrick chimneys, plus tall windows bracketed by posts and moldings. It also had four towers, the tallest much higher than the others. Topping that tower was a weather vane.
Though the building appeared to be more than a hundred years old, right next to it was a gigantic tree, higher than the big tower. The tree had to be even older than the school. The school reminded me of the haunted houses in those ghost movies I’d seen with Uncle Charlie. “That building,” I said to him, “is totally fake.”
Of course I didn’t expect an answer, but I was happy when he just offered that sly smile of his.
Dad, however, assumed I was talking to him. “It’s anything but fake,” he said. He opened the brochure the school had sent us and read:
The Penda School came into existence in 1897, when Mrs. Penda, a wealthy widow who owned redwood forests in Northern California, established the school soon after her only child, a boy, died. So great was her grief that shortly afterward she too passed away. All the same, she left her mansion and an endowment for a boys’ and girls’ school so that they might “Respect the past and protect the future.”
Mom, smiling, said, “So make sure, Tony, in school, to show a healthy respect for history, and protect the future.”
Remembering that “Respect the past and protect the future” was something Uncle Charlie had told me, I asked him, “Protect who from what?”
All Mom said was, “Just a motto. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
I took the brochure from Dad and flipped through it. It was stuffed with pictures of laughing, hugging students. “That’s so fake,” I said.
“Do you know how often you say fake?” said Mom.
“Do you know how many things are fake?”
Pointing to the school’s highest tower, I said to Uncle Charlie, “Do they have classes up there?”
“Astronomy,” suggested Mom.
“Religion,” offered Dad. “Because I’ll bet that weather vane on top is Gabriel.”
I said, “Who’s Gabriel?”
“A big-time angel. See his trumpet? His job is to announce the end of the world with a toot of his horn. When he does, all the dead arise.”
There’s a lot of death attached to this school, I thought as I stared at the building and said, “It’s . . . weird.”
“Nowadays,” said Dad, “weird means ‘strange.’ Know what the word used to mean?”
“No.”
“Fate.”
“Whose?” I asked Uncle Charlie.
Dad said, “Yours, I guess.” And he laughed.
So did Uncle Charlie, silently.
“Just remember,” said Mom, “Uncle Charlie left money so you could come to this school. You heard him say how much he loved it when he went.”
To which Dad added, “Just don’t try to live up to Uncle Charlie’s expectations. Accept the fact that he’s gone and you’re on your own. But—no harm in enjoying the fact that he went here.”
“Think the school is still good?” I asked Uncle Charlie.
Mom said, “I guess that’s why he wanted you to come here.”
Dad added, “We were lucky they found a place for you.”
“How’d that happen?” I asked Uncle Charlie.
The old guy gave his biggest grin yet, but it was Mom who said, “I gather someone suddenly left. And maybe Uncle Charlie put in a word.”
“Does the school know I’m related?” I asked Uncle Charlie.
Dad shook his head. “We didn’t tell them, and with your different last names, they won’t know. You’re here on your own.”
Mom, not thrilled by how much I still went on about Uncle Charlie, said, “Let’s get some frozen yogurt.”
Dad used his phone to tap in a search. “Yogurt place right down the hill.”
I said, “Everything is downhill in San Francisco.”
As we started off, Mom put an arm around my shoulder. I shrugged her off and looked back. Uncle Charlie had disappeared, but I saw the face of a girl—at least I thought it was a girl—staring out at me from one of the school’s first-floor windows. “Do they have school on weekends?” I asked.
“Doubt it,” said Dad.
I said, “There’s a girl looking out.”
“Really?” said Mom, turning. By the time she looked, the girl’s face was gone.
“Maybe not,” I had to admit. Even so, I looked at the school again. Not seeing anyone, I gazed higher, to the window in the tallest tower. Another face was there, a boy with blond curly hair. He was also staring at me. At least he was until he too vanished.
I thought, Weird.
Which naturally made me think about what Dad had just said about the word weird: that it didn’t just mean “strange” but also “fate.”
Turned out he had it right—both ways.
My first day at Penda—Monday the sixth—was to begin at eight thirty. Before my alarm buzzed at seven thirty, I was yanked from restless sleep by a sharp crack of lightning. Bolting up in bed, I listened as thunder and rain lashed against our apartment building. It reminded me of the night Uncle Charlie died.
I flipped my pillow to the cool
side, drew up my blanket, and lay back. When I had asked Uncle Charlie why he wanted me to go to the Penda School, all he’d said was, “It’s . . . full of life.” So, not knowing much about the Penda School, I was uneasy.
A private school: Would the kids be snobby rich? Was it going to be hard? Would I have to play a sport? Would I have any friends? I suppose my worries explain why I hadn’t unpacked my junk yet—as if I might go back east.
Like a good memory, Uncle Charlie was standing at the foot of my bed, eyes full of fun.
I said, “You wanted me to go here, so it’s going to be okay, right?”
He offered a smile and faded away.
Reassured, I got up. Still, what I really wanted to do was walk my slackline. I had strung it up in my room from my closet door to the bureau. But I knew I had to go to school.
Over my desk chair Mom had laid out my new clothes: ironed tan pants and a white collared shirt, along with one of Dad’s red-and-blue-striped ties. The Penda School had a dress code.
Once dressed, I joined my parents for breakfast in the small kitchen. Nodding toward the storm, I asked, “How am I going to get to school?”
“Usually, you’ll walk,” said Mom. “But we’ll take a cab today. Showing up soaked on your first day would look odd.”
I said, “Uncle Charlie once told me he didn’t get even. Just odder.”
Mom patted my hand. “Now that we’re in San Francisco, how about some cheerful thoughts?”
“I like remembering him,” I said, and turned to my oatmeal and raisins.
Dad punched out a number on his smartphone. “We’d like a cab.” He gave our address and looked a question at Mom.
She answered, “Twenty minutes.”
Into the phone, Dad said, “Twenty minutes.”
Mom said, “Your dad and I will be at work, so at the end of the day you’ll need to walk home by yourself. Okay?”
I said, “Uncle Charlie will come with me.”
Mom, exasperated, said, “Tony, Uncle Charlie is no longer with us.”
“For you, maybe.” I pushed my empty bowl away and gulped some milk. “I don’t ever intend to forget him.”
Dad said, “Let me do your tie.”
I stood before him.
Dad said, “Nervous?”
“No,” I lied.
“You’ll have a great future there,” said Mom.
“‘The distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion.’”
“Where’d that come from?”
“Albert Einstein. One of the last things Uncle Charlie said to me.”
Mom sighed. “For the present, please get ready.”
I grabbed my empty backpack, flung in my cell phone, and was ready to start at the Penda School.
As Mom and I stood inside the apartment-building lobby waiting for the cab, Uncle Charlie looked on.
“You coming to school with me?” I asked him.
Mom said, “I’ll make sure you’re settled. Then I’ll have to get to work.”
The taxi pulled up. As if to announce its arrival, there was another leap of lightning. Rain strafed the pavement.
Mom, her umbrella open, said, “Go!”
I ran to the cab, yanked the door open, and jumped in. Mom followed, swiveled to close down the umbrella, got in, and slammed the door.
“Penda School,” she said to the driver, who, already tapping into his meter, looked around. “I know. Only six blocks but you’ll get a good tip. It’s this young man’s first day.”
“What about lunch?” I asked Mom.
“There’s a school cafeteria. We were told it’s good.”
“School food always sucks.”
“Someday you might actually like something.”
“Uncle Charlie said people used the word someday like it was a wish.”
“Tony, please . . . Uncle Charlie is just a memory.”
“Exactly,” I said. The window on my side being steamy, I rubbed it clear and peeked out. Uncle Charlie was standing across the street, watching and smiling. I gave him a quick thumbs-up.
The cab ride was very short.
I looked out at Uncle Charlie. “Thanks for coming,” I told him.
“You’re welcome,” Mom said, and reached out to smooth my hair and adjust my tie. “You’re going to love it.”
I said, “People in marketing want everybody to love everything.”
Mom muttered something, handed seven bucks to the cabbie, unlatched the door, poked her umbrella out, opened it with a snap, and stepped from the car. I messed my hair, pulled my tie crooked, and followed. Outside, I paused to gaze at the school. The rain had turned its redwood siding the color of dark blood.
I must have looked like a new kid, because a few polite students held the main doors open for us.
“Here we go,” said Mom as we went in.
To which I replied, “That’s what Uncle Charlie said right before he died.”
We stepped into an enormous reception hall. No cement-block walls painted tan and plastered with NO BULLYING! posters. No school-spirit streamers. No kids’ bad art. No bulky display cases full of fake silver trophies or soft footballs with winning scores stenciled in white.
Instead, walls were paneled with fancy dark wood, each section framed by carved moldings. A tiled floor of deep sea blue was covered by a water-absorbing red carpet. The carpet made me think of a scab. In one corner stood a clump of potted plants with large glossy leaves, a reminder of long-gone summers.
In my old school, kids charged in as if it were pizza-giveaway day. Here the kids were quiet, self-controlled, like at a school dance with too many chaperones. Overhead, a large chandelier was hanging from a high ceiling, its million glass bits shivering like a delicate wind chime.
The hall extended to a place I couldn’t see. But forty feet in, left and right, were massive, matching curved stairways. Built wide like a wrestler’s arms, the steps met at the second floor. Right under where the steps joined, brass letters proclaimed: RESPECT THE PAST—PROTECT THE FUTURE.
Though that was what Uncle Charlie had said to me, I still didn’t understand it. The school was so quiet, so plush, I was reminded of that funeral parlor where Uncle Charlie’s service had been held.
Mom moved me toward a door that said SCHOOL OFFICE. As she opened it, she whispered, “Try to look as if you’re glad to be here.”
She must have read my mind, because by then I was already thinking, This school is weird.
The school office was a room cut in half by a long counter and desk. Walls were fine wood, the deep carpet golf-course green, the air smelling like fake pine air.
Sitting behind the desk was an elderly woman clutching a landline phone in her knuckle-knobbed hand. Her thin, gray, and straggly hair and wrinkled face and neck made her look as if she had been roosting behind that desk for a hundred years. Either she was using eye shadow, or she had trouble sleeping. Her thin white lips grimaced while saying into the phone, “Thanks for calling, Ms. Morris. I’m sure Emma will be better soon.”
The second she hung up, another call rang.
“So sorry,” the woman said to us, and took up the phone again.
I gazed about the room. A big leather-covered couch—like a partially deflated rhinoceros—stood against one wall. On a nearby table, maybe a hundred school yearbooks were neatly lined up, the dates on their spines reminding me of a row of tombstones. School brochures were spread out in a fan.
On the wall over the table was a huge gold-framed painting of an old lady sitting in a bulky, throne-like chair. Her fierce, dark-eyed, jut-chinned face was long and narrow with high cheekbones. Her lips were tight and pale. Black hair was piled atop her head, while her neck was encased in a stiff collar. Black-gloved hands were clutching armrests. It was as if the chair were plunging down and the old girl was not happy about where she was headed.
Finding the image unsettling, I turned away. On the opposite wall hung another large framed painting. This one was of a bo
y—maybe twelve years old like me—with blond curly hair. His jacket and trousers were dark green. A white lace collar circled his neck like a fancy noose. His shoes were high-buttoned and polished. His hands were by his sides, balled in tense, tight fists.
But what really held my attention were the boy’s pale face and eyes, eyes full of dread, as if something awful was coming right at him. And oddly, I had the sensation I’d seen him before.
Not that I could recall where.
The woman at the desk hung up her phone and with sarcasm thick as old pancake syrup said, “Forgive me: bad weather, sick children. May I help you?”
Mom pulled me from the boy’s painting. “I’m Ellie Gilbert,” she said. “This is Anthony, my son. He’s starting school today.”
For a moment the woman stared at me with great intensity, until her face abruptly softened. “Oh yes, Tony Gilbert. Of course. Our new student. Welcome to the Penda School,” she said, as if embarrassed by her first reception. “We’re so glad you’re here. I’m Mrs. Zabalink, or Mrs. Z, as the young people have been calling me for more years than I wish to count. Dear me, what a day to begin. I assure you, storms like this are so rare in San Francisco.”
Abruptly, she stopped talking and went back to considering me as if I were a specimen on a dissecting table.
Breaking the awkward silence, Mom said, “I guess Tony needs to get to class.”
Mrs. Z yanked back to life. “Forgive me. I’m sure you’re eager. But Ms. Foxton, school head, likes to welcome new students. This way, please. She’s expecting you.”
I hated school officials. Back in Connecticut, after Uncle Charlie died, they’d had only two things to say to me: “Lighten up.” “Smile.” Fake cheer by the garbage-truckful.
Mrs. Z guided us into a large office with a fireplace on one side, full of fake logs. Antique-looking wooden file cabinets stood against the opposite wall. Each drawer had brass numbers for a span of years—the earliest 1897—up to the current year. Sitting on one cabinet was a red plastic flashlight. I liked that. Plastic is honest fake.
