Quentin’s snarky tone disappeared. He slid into the seat across from me. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t have any money. My dad was supposed to pay. He was supposed to be here at eleven.” My stomach grumbled loudly.
“Look, you sit here as long as you want.” Quentin stood up. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon. In the meantime I’m bringing you the Lumberjack, okay?”
“But I can’t—”
“Don’t talk back to your elders,” he said sternly.
His kindness made me want to cry all over again.
* * *
—
I was shoveling a fourth piece of bacon into my mouth when Daniel burst through the door, bringing a gust of cold, wet air with him. It was 11:40. He shook the raindrops from his hair, which is curly like mine but black and cut much shorter. “Felix, I’m so sorry I’m late,” he said as he made his way to the table.
I stood up and he gave me a bear hug. He was wearing black jeans and a black leather jacket. I could feel his muscles; my dad works out a lot, and, like Astrid, he’s good-looking. “I texted you that I was running behind. Did you get it?”
“My phone died.”
He sat across from me. “I had a crazy night. Honestly, I’m too old for clubbing until four in the morning.”
“Oh.”
He took off his jacket. “But enough about me. How are you?”
“I’m okay.”
“Tell me everything. How’s school?”
“School’s good. I’m in French Immersion this year.”
“Mais c’est fantastique! Nous pouvons parler en français ensemble. I grew up speaking French and Creole with my parents.”
“I know.” It had been one of my big reasons to want to do the program. Daniel’s dad was from Haiti, and his mom was from Paris. French was part of my heritage, and Daniel’s parents were technically my grandparents. I got the impression that Daniel didn’t see them much, and no one had ever mentioned the possibility that I might meet them one day. I wasn’t even sure if they knew I existed. But if I ever did meet them, I figured speaking French could be a real icebreaker.
“What else?”
My home is a van. We are now officially living below the poverty line. Astrid seems permanently depressed. “I auditioned for Who, What, Where, When. They’re doing a junior edition.”
“That is so awesome! What happened?”
“I thought I did pretty good. But I haven’t heard from them, so I don’t know.”
“I bet you’ll hear from them soon. I wish I could take credit for your smarts, but that’s entirely your mom.” He opened his menu. “What about amour? Do you have a girlfriend? Or boyfriend?”
Like my mom, Daniel makes no assumptions. “No. Well. There’s this girl I sort of like. Winnie.”
He looked up from his menu and smiled. “Winnie. Is she gorgeous?”
“She’s pretty. She’s very bossy, though. And opinionated.”
“Ha! Just like your mother.”
Ew. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Speaking of which.” He closed his menu and gazed at me. “How is Astrid?”
I chose my words carefully. “She’s been better.”
“Huh. I had a feeling. What’s up?”
I put down my knife and fork and took a deep breath.
“Well, the errant father finally makes an appearance.” Quentin stood over our table, hands on his hips, shaking his head at my dad. “Your son was about to have to wash dishes, you know.”
Daniel gave him a dazzling smile. “I am suitably chastened. Could you bring me a coffee and the Hilary Swank omelet please, fruit instead of home fries?”
“No substitutions. But I have the feeling someone else will eat the home fries.” Quentin gave me a wink and took Daniel’s menu. I couldn’t help noticing that Daniel’s eyes followed him as he walked away.
I waited until he’d turned his gaze back to me. “She’s in one of her Slumps,” I said.
“I’m so sorry, Felix. Any particular reason?”
“Well, she’s out of work again.”
“Oh God, don’t I know what that’s like.”
My insides deflated. “You’re not working right now?”
“Depends on what you mean by work. If you mean creating in my studio ten hours a day, sure. If you mean work that makes money, no. But what can I say, hope springs eternal…I keep thinking I’ll get my first solo show any day now.”
“I thought you had a job you liked. At that art gallery.”
“Nope. The gallery folded a year ago.” He saw the look on my face. “Oh, Felix. You don’t need to worry about me.”
I’m not! I’m worried about me! I shouted, but only on the inside.
“I make ends meet, barely. I tend bar, I paint theater sets. I dog-sit for friends. It’s not a bad life. As a matter of fact, what brought me out here was a job interview at another gallery…so you never know. If they offer it to me, and the pay’s decent, maybe we’ll get to see each other on a regular basis.”
“That would be nice,” I said. And I meant it. But my plan to ask my broke dad for five grand had just gone up in smoke.
Quentin brought my dad his omelet with the home fries on a separate plate, which he set in front of me. Then he and Daniel chatted for quite a while. My P.O.O. told me I was watching some serious flirting in action.
When Quentin walked away, Daniel leaned across the table and put his hands over mine. “My job interview is this afternoon, and my flight home is later tonight. But I can change it to tomorrow if you like. I’ll come over and talk to your mom.”
I shook my head. If he couldn’t help us, what was the point? “No. It’s okay. We’ll be okay.”
Daniel drank some of his coffee. “Astrid is tough. She’ll land on her feet. She always does.” He glanced at his phone. “I’m really sorry, Felix, but I’ve got to fly.”
“No worries.”
“I wish we could see each other more often.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
When we stepped outside, Daniel pulled out his wallet. “I know this isn’t much, but I want you to have it.” He handed me two fifty-dollar bills. “Let’s keep it between us, okay? You know how touchy Astrid gets about me being involved in any way.”
I nodded. Thanked him. We hugged. Then he walked away.
The door to the diner swung open. Quentin stepped outside. “Glad I caught you. This jerk just sent back a perfectly good Denver sandwich because the bread was ‘too toasted.’ I gave him a piece of my mind.” He held out a paper bag. “Sandwich is just going to go to waste. I was hoping you could help me out.”
I took the bag. “Sure. Thanks.”
We both looked down the block, watching my dad get smaller and smaller.
And I wanted to cry all over again, because something kind of big and enormous and overwhelming hit me for the first time:
Astrid and Daniel were great people…but they were not great parents.
* * *
—
I walked all the way home. It was a long walk, but I needed to clear my head.
I felt the two fifty-dollar bills in my pocket. A hundred dollars would do absolutely nothing to help us out of our current situation. So I made a decision. I walked over the Burrard Bridge and up to West Fourth Avenue. I stopped at Purdy’s Chocolatier and bought a small bag of Himalayan salt caramels, Astrid’s favorite.
When I got back to the van, which was on a street near Carnarvon Park, she was sitting in the passenger seat, still in her pajamas, reading Middlemarch. Her face looked drawn and pale. “Well? How did it go?”
I shrugged. “It was fine.”
I could feel her anxiety. It filled the van.
“I didn’t tell him anything.”
Her face relaxed
. I handed her the Denver sandwich, which she insisted on splitting with me. It was delicious.
When we were done, I told her we needed to go to the community center and have proper showers. “Why?”
“Surprise.”
Astrid loves surprises—good ones, at least—so she did as she was told. After we’d showered, we drove to the Wolf and Hound, a pub on Broadway near Alma. I ordered bangers and mash and Astrid ordered a curry. She had a pint of beer, and I had a Coke. Our waitress let me plug in my phone behind the bar so I could recharge it.
I gave Astrid the chocolates at the end of our meal, which we stealth-ate while drinking tea. After paying the bill, I still had a bit of money left over.
I picked up my freshly charged phone on the way out. I had a bunch of texts from Daniel, plus three missed calls and one voice mail, all from the same 416 area code.
Four-one-six was Toronto, I knew. But it wasn’t Daniel’s number.
I listened to the voice mail as Astrid drove the van back to Carnarvon Park. “Hi, Felix, this is Nazneen Iravani from Who, What, Where, When. I’ve been trying to reach you. Please call me tomorrow at your earliest convenience.
“I have good news.”
I barely slept. I made lists of the state and provincial capitals, Roman emperors, UNESCO World Heritage Sites—none of it helped. At six a.m. I gave up. I took Horatio out of his cage and we had a snuggle. Then I farted, over and over; my stomach wasn’t used to all the rich food I’d eaten the day before.
At 6:15 I heard my mom stirring below. “Good God, Felix, it smells like a rotting corpse in here.”
“Sorry.”
She cracked a window. “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“What time is it?”
“Six-fifteen.”
“You could probably call her. It’s nine-fifteen in Toronto.”
It was still pitch-dark outside. We put on our headlamps and put away my bed and folded up Astrid’s. “I’d like some privacy,” I said.
“I’ll go do my ablutions.” She grabbed her toiletry bag and squeezed my hand before she left for the park’s public washrooms. “Good luck.”
I punched in the number. Someone picked up after the third ring. “Nazneen Iravani.” She sounded very businesslike.
“Hi, Nazneen. This is Felix Knutsson calling you back.”
“Felix, great to hear from you. I’m happy to inform you that you’ve been selected as a contestant for our junior edition.”
I opened my mouth. No words came out.
“Felix? Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Are you pleased?”
“Very.”
“Good. We were really impressed with your knowledge, and also with you as a person. Now, I’m going to email you a lot of paperwork to fill out, and a contract; it will need to be signed by you and your parent or guardian and sent back to us ASAP, okay?”
“Okay.”
“We’re going to tape the inaugural run of the junior edition in Vancouver. If it’s a success, we’ll make it annual, and bring it to other parts of Canada.”
“Okay.”
“We start two weeks from today. The shows will be live and they’ll be broadcast around the nation.”
“Okay.”
“A driver will pick you and your parent or guardian up on Sunday the twenty-seventh of November at noon. Just let me confirm your address.” She read the address I’d put on my original online form, the same one Astrid had put on my school application.
“Yes,” I said. “That’s right.” Astrid and I could wait outside Mr. Poplowski’s law offices two Sundays from now.
“There will be four contestants for each day of the week. We’ve randomly selected the order. Your competition day is Monday. The kids who win their day on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday will compete against each other on Friday for the grand prize. So, time to start cramming.” Nazneen said all of this rapid-fire—clearly she’d had to repeat it to every single contestant. “We’ll be putting you and your guardian up at the Sunshine Inn downtown for the duration. And because you live in Vancouver, please make sure you tell your friends and family to come on down and watch as many shows as they can as part of the live studio audience. We want a full house. Maximum energy.”
My mind stuck on certain words. Driver. Sunshine Inn. But they were quickly replaced with the words she said before she hung up: “Congratulations, Felix. You could walk away with twenty-five thousand dollars.”
* * *
—
Astrid stood at a sink in the women’s washroom, wearing her bra and washing her pits when I flung open the door. “I’m a contestant! I’m going to be a contestant!” My excitement dimmed a little when I saw how thin she was; I was so used to seeing her in layers of sweaters these days, I hadn’t noticed just how much weight she’d lost.
Astrid’s face blossomed into a huge smile. She grabbed me and pulled me into a hug. “Felix, that’s wonderful, congratulations!”
“Aagh, my head is touching your bra!”
She let me go and pulled on her shirt. It was one of her job-hunting tops, which made me feel hopeful. “I’m so proud of you,” she said.
“The grand prize is twenty-five thousand dollars! If I win, we could find a place. We could invest some of the money. You’d have time to get back on your feet, and we’d still have money left for a rainy day.”
Her smile vanished.
“And even if I don’t win the whole thing, I get a thousand just for participating. If I’m a finalist, I get an additional twenty-five hundred. That’s three thousand five hundred dollars! Enough for first and last month’s rent. No matter how you slice it, it comes up golden.”
She looked at me in the mirror. “Felix. That’s your money. Whatever amount you get, it’s yours.”
“No. It’s ours.”
She just shook her head.
“Mom,” I said. Then corrected myself. “Astrid. I want a roof over my head. I want a shower. I want a toilet. I don’t want my ears to be cold all the time. I want my own bedroom. I want a door I can close.”
“I want all of those things for you, too.”
This time, I hugged her. “You’re right. It’s my money, which means I get to choose what to do with it.”
“Well, hopefully it’ll be a moot point. I’m back on the job-hunting trail today, so wish me luck.”
“Luck,” I said.
* * *
—
I walked to school with a skip in my step. Yes, I actually skipped. I’d decided not to text Dylan and Winnie with the news. I wanted to tell them in person.
I found them standing by Winnie’s locker, deep in discussion. I hurried toward them. “Guys!”
Their conversation abruptly stopped. They looked like two raccoons who’d just been caught rooting through the garbage. My P.O.O. told me something was up.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
They glanced at each other but didn’t say anything.
“What?”
Winnie nudged Dylan. He began. “I had a karate tournament on the weekend.”
“Yeah, I know, how’d you do?”
“It was in the Main and King Edward area. I was walking to the bus stop and I thought, I’m just going to drop by Felix’s house.”
Goose bumps sprang up all over my body.
“I walked around back and knocked on the basement door,” Dylan continued. “You know. The basement where you said you lived.”
Oh no.
“This woman answered. She was mad. She asked why I was sneaking into their backyard.” Dylan looked me in the eye. “I told her I was looking for Felix Knutsson.”
I looked away.
“She started going on about how she’d been so worried abo
ut you and your mom, that Astrid hadn’t returned her texts, that your stuff had been sitting in their basement for months—and then she said something about your mom breaking into their house?”
Sometimes, when Horatio is scared, or threatened, he will go completely still. Like he thinks maybe no one will see him.
I realized I was doing the same thing.
“She was really worried, Felix. She wanted to know where you guys lived, but I told her I had no idea. Then she asked where I went to school, and how long I’d known you, and how did you seem. She said—she said she was worried you might not be safe.”
That snapped me out of my stillness. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Felix,” Winnie said. “What’s going on?”
I tried to gather my thoughts. “Did you tell your parents?” I asked Dylan.
“No. I wanted to talk to you first.”
Adrenaline was pumping through my veins. Not good adrenaline, but fear adrenaline. I felt like a trapped animal. Fight or flight?
I chose flight. I walked away from them and out of the school. They shouted after me, but I didn’t look back.
* * *
—
I walked along Broadway. I had no idea what I was doing, or where I was going. When I approached Ahmadi Grocery, I saw Mr. Ahmadi outside, stacking oranges into a pyramid.
I thought about crossing the street. But then I had a different idea. I took a deep breath and I walked up to him. “Hello, Mr. Ahmadi.” My voice shook a little.
He looked down at me, his expression stern. “Felix, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you have school?”
“It’s a pro-D day.”
“Really. Isn’t it strange that there aren’t more kids around?”
“I was wondering if I could help you. To make up for—you know. I won’t take anything, I promise.”
Mr. Ahmadi looked into the store. I could see Mrs. Ahmadi, reading a magazine behind the counter. “Okay.”
He let me stack oranges while he stacked apples nearby. We moved on to onions, then yams. At one point Mrs. Ahmadi came out. She nodded at me, then spoke to her husband quietly before she went back inside.