“NO!” I felt the familiar ball of panic rise in my throat. “If you tell, they could take me away. Make me change schools. I might lose my mom forever. She needs me. I need her. I told you because I didn’t want to lie to you anymore, but if you tell…our friendship will be over. I will never speak to either of you again.”
“Remember in third grade, when I wore socks outside for recess?” said Dylan. “And I stepped in dog poop? And we tried to flush my socks down the toilet and flooded the bathroom?”
I nodded.
“We made a pinkie promise that afternoon to never rat each other out,” he continued. “So I won’t tell.”
Both of us looked at Winnie. She hesitated. Then she said, “Okay, fine. But only until you’re done with the show. After that, if things haven’t changed—I make no promises.”
“I can live with that,” I said.
After all, by the time the show was over, our problems would be solved.
I started studying my butt off. I’d never been as focused and driven about anything in my whole life.
Luckily I didn’t have to do it alone. Dylan and Winnie made an announcement in class about my spot on the show, and Monsieur Thibault declared that for fifteen minutes each day, my classmates would ask me skill-testing questions in French. They all got into it, except for Donald, who would ask me stuff like, “Spell testicle backward,” then burst into fits of giggles.
After school I’d head to Dylan’s, where he, Winnie and sometimes Alberta and Henry tested my knowledge on art, novels, scientific discoveries, history, geography, wars, chemistry, math, pop culture, flora and fauna, constellations, current events, spelling—you name it, they’d thought of it.
“Who wrote the 1897 classic Dracula?”
“Bram Stoker.”
“What drug invention drastically reduced illnesses and deaths caused by bacterial infections?”
“Penicillin.”
“What was infamous Chicago gangster Al Capone finally imprisoned for?”
“Tax evasion.”
“Where was he imprisoned?”
“Alcatraz.”
“When was Archduke Ferdinand assassinated?”
“Nineteen fourteen.”
“Be more specific.”
“No idea.”
“June twenty-eighth, nineteen fourteen.”
At five o’clock we put on Who, What, Where, When and I tried to guess the answers before the contestants. Winnie couldn’t help shouting out answers, too, and she’d smile smugly every time she beat me to it.
Dylan let me use his dad’s home office to print out the contract Nazneen had emailed. It was super long and super boring. I gave up reading it after the first page. Instead I forged my mom’s signature for expediency’s sake, scanned the relevant pages and emailed them back to Nazneen.
I also apologized to Dylan about twenty million times. “I love your house,” I said again one afternoon when we were nuking pizza pops in the kitchen.
“Dude—”
“I don’t know what happened, I just wanted to be mean—”
“Dude, it’s okay, I’m over it—”
“You’re, like, the best friend I’ve ever had—”
Suddenly there was a muffled boom! Dylan opened the microwave—the pizza pops had exploded. It was cheese and tomato sauce carnage. “See?” said Dylan. “That was Bernard’s way of telling you to shut up.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that he’d accidentally punched in thirty minutes instead of three to warm them.
I liked Dylan’s explanation better.
* * *
—
Winnie and I met with Charlie Tuyen. “I won’t be able to write anything for the November edition,” I said.
“No probs,” he replied. “We’ll just have a shorter French section this month.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said Winnie. “I’m going to write a feature article. It will require a lot of space.”
“What’s it about this time?” asked Charlie. “Climate change? World hunger? Genocide?”
“All excellent suggestions, but no. I’m going to write about Felix.”
This was the first I’d heard of it. “What about me?”
“About you being a contestant on the most popular game show in Canada, dodo.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” said Charlie, “but that’s a great idea.”
“Goody!” Winnie replied. Then she grabbed my hand and squeezed it. I squeezed back.
She still irritated me.
But she also made me feel warm and happy at the same time.
* * *
—
Most nights I wouldn’t get back to the van till around eight o’clock. Astrid was usually already in her bed, layered up, reading by the light of her headlamp. Our conversations were brief. “Want me to quiz you some more?”
“No, thanks. I’m quizzed out.”
“Understood.”
“How’s the job hunt going?”
“Good, good.”
“Any leads?”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
Her voice had that telltale flatness, and I was pretty sure she was in a Slump. But I couldn’t dwell on it. Not when I had work to do.
Not when I held the answer to our problems in my hands.
* * *
—
Then, with just a week to go before the game show, I got sick.
Really sick.
My cough turned into a fever and diarrhea. Having diarrhea is no fun at the best of times. Having diarrhea when you’re living in a van, well…let’s just say it stinks. Literally and figuratively.
On Tuesday morning I tried to get up and I almost fainted from the effort. Astrid refused to let me go to school. “I’m taking you to a doctor.”
She drove me to a walk-in clinic. “Definitely a nasty flu virus,” the doctor told us, keeping her mask on her face the whole time. “Make sure he gets plenty of rest, plenty of liquids. If it gets worse, call me.”
Astrid parked the van at Spanish Banks so I’d have a view of the ocean. She put me into her bed and piled all the sleeping bags and blankets we owned on top of me. It was a cold, rainy day. She forced me to drink a ton of water and Gatorade, and placed a bucket on the floor. “For any bathroom emergencies,” she said. “Don’t think twice, Felix, I won’t mind emptying it.” She started putting on her shoes.
“Where are you going?”
“To buy us a new space heater.” She placed her hand on my feverish forehead. “I’ll be back in half an hour.” She climbed out of the van, locking the doors behind her.
I took Horatio out of his cage and put him on my chest. He sniffed my face. He’d seemed off lately, too—like he was in his own miniature Slump. He was lethargic and hadn’t been eating much. I kissed his furry head and slipped him back into his cage.
I drifted in and out of sleep for the better part of the day. I had crazy dreams. Astrid and I were in a palatial mansion, wandering through the vast rooms with Horatio Blass himself. He told us it was ours. But then he turned into Horatio the gerbil, and the whole house started to sink, because it was built on a swamp. Soon we were walking through oozy muck and trying to escape but the muck was like quicksand, and then I heard a creepy laugh. It was my tomte. He’d come to life, and he looked gleeful as we continued to sink—
I woke with a start just as the muck reached my waist. “Astrid?”
She wasn’t back yet. I managed a glance at my phone. It was past one in the afternoon. Had she come back, and left again? I had no idea. I glanced over at Horatio’s cage. He had buried himself under some of his wood shavings. “I hope you don’t have what I have,” I murmured. Then I dropped back into feverish sleep.
This time I dreamed about my dad. All
three of us were living in a loft in what I think was supposed to be Toronto, though I’ve never been there. I just remember that I felt happy. When I woke up again, I was feeling a bit better, like the fever had broken. The light had faded; it was almost dark outside. “Astrid?”
She still wasn’t there. I looked at my phone. Four p.m.
I called her. It went straight to voice mail.
My P.O.O. told me something was very wrong.
A wave of fear rose up in my stomach.
I tried to send her a thought message. I tried really hard.
I sat up. I’d managed not to use the bucket all day and I didn’t want to use it now. I still felt weak, but I pulled a sweater on over my pajamas and made it to the washroom.
Back in the van I called her again.
Again, voice mail.
She’d left to get a space heater and she’d been gone for five hours.
A bunch of thoughts ran like ticker tape through my head, and none of them were good.
She’s been hit by a car and she’s in a hospital somewhere in a coma.
She’s been raped and murdered and her body is lying in the woods.
She’s left me. She got fed up and she’s left.
She’s killed herself.
I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I had to do something. I thought about calling Dylan or Winnie, but they would have to tell their parents. I thought about calling the cops, but I imagined how angry Astrid would be if I did. Then I thought, Dead people can’t be angry, can they? And that made me start to cry.
I lit our battery-powered lamp and unlatched Horatio’s cage so I could get a bit of comfort from my furry friend.
With Mormor, it had taken me a while to figure things out.
With Horatio, I knew right away.
His little body was cold and rigid.
Horatio Blass was dead.
* * *
—
The door to the van slid open five minutes later.
“Mom!” I wailed, not caring that I’d called her that. I fell into her arms. She held me close, stroking my hair.
“Felix, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.” She was crying, too.
“Horatio is dead.”
“Oh, God. Oh, Böna. Poor Horatio. I’m so sorry,” she repeated.
“Where were you?”
“I went to the hardware store to get the space heater….” Her voice trailed off.
“Oh, Astrid. Did you try to steal it?”
She nodded. “The owner caught me. I tried to reason with him. But he wouldn’t hear any of it. He called the police. It took them forever to get there, and in the meantime he had one of his employees watch over me in the back office. My phone had died. They wouldn’t let me use their landline to call you….They treated me like I was a piece of garbage. When the police came, the owner said horrible things about me, that I was probably a junkie or a nutbar.”
“What did the police do?”
“They looked me up in their system. They saw I didn’t have any priors, so they told me I was banned from the store and let me go.” She blew her nose loudly. “I’m so sorry, Felix. For everything. I’m such a terrible mother.”
“No. No, you’re not.” And in the moment, I meant it.
“I’m so sorry about Horatio. I know how much you loved him.”
“We should bury him.”
She nodded. “As soon as it’s light out. We’ll find a special place.” She put a towel over his cage. Then she made me hot chocolate from a tin of powdered mix. When I managed to keep it down, she made me more.
“Could I read to you?” she asked. She had read to me every night when I was younger, even during her Slumps.
“Yes.”
She found my dog-eared copy of Tales from Moominvalley. “You know this used to be mine as a girl.”
“You’ve only told me a million times.”
She read aloud for a long time. She has a good reading voice. For brief moments I was lulled into feeling like a little kid again, with no cares in the world.
Then I’d remember Horatio and start to cry again.
She read to me until I finally fell asleep.
Of the one hundred or so nights we’d spent in the van, it was the worst by far.
But it wasn’t the worst.
That night was still to come.
Astrid and I buried Horatio under a weeping willow near the duck pond the next morning. We shared some favorite memories. “Remember the time he escaped from his cage in the basement apartment? And we found him two days later behind the furnace?”
“Remember when I snuck him to school in my backpack and a girl screamed ’cuz she thought he was a rat?”
We laughed. We cried.
In total I missed three days of school. When I wasn’t dozing, Astrid quizzed me for Who, What, Where, When. I texted Dylan and Winnie and let them know I was getting better and would be back soon. They wanted to visit, but I didn’t think I could bear it. So I just neglected to tell them where we’d parked the van.
I felt Horatio’s absence in a big way. He’d been a part of my life for a few years, and a part of our Westfalia life from the beginning. Even on the days when I’d dreaded coming home to the van, I’d always looked forward to seeing him. Now I didn’t even have that. Without him, things felt even more uncertain.
I finally returned to school on Friday.
“You look like death warmed over,” Winnie said when she saw me.
“Thanks a lot.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” asked Dylan.
“Yes. No. Horatio died.”
“Oh, Felix,” said Winnie. She and Dylan wrapped me in a group hug.
“Maybe you should stay at my house till the show,” Dylan said.
“Thanks. But I can’t. I can’t leave my mom, not right now.”
“How’s she doing?” asked Winnie.
I shrugged. “I’m not sure.”
Later, in the cafeteria, they passed me a bunch of food from their lunch bags. I knew they’d both started packing extra stuff, just in case.
During math I fell asleep at my desk.
When the final bell rang, Monsieur Thibault asked if I could stay behind.
After the last student was gone, he perched on my desk. “Everything okay, Felix?” he asked in English.
“Yes, sir. Everything’s fine.”
“You seem awfully tired lately. And you don’t look well.”
“I caught a bad flu. And I’ve been working hard, getting ready for the show.”
He gazed at me. “You’re sure that’s all it is?”
“I’m sure.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. “How are your living arrangements, Felix?”
That’s when I knew someone had spilled.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He just kept his gaze fixed on me. “I’d like to have a chat with your mom.”
“Why?”
“Let her know I’d like to speak with her at her earliest convenience.”
“But I told you. Everything’s fine.”
He started scribbling a note. “I know you have the show next week. But ask her what day works for her the week after that. We can meet before or after school.” He handed me the note.
“But, sir—”
“No buts, Felix. If I don’t hear back by the end of next week, I’ll have the school get in touch with her.”
* * *
—
Winnie and Dylan were waiting for me just inside the front doors. I glared at Winnie. “You told. You said you wouldn’t tell anyone, and then you went ahead and did it.”
Winnie looked at Dylan, who took a deep breath. “Actually, Felix,” he said, “we sort of both told.”
I gaped at him. I felt like Julius Caesar when he realized his old friend Brutus had just stabbed him. Et tu, Brute?
“Monsieur Thibault approached us,” Winnie continued. “While you were away. He’s noticed stuff. He asked us some questions. We didn’t tell him much. But we didn’t lie, either.”
“He’s worried about you,” said Dylan.
“Well, he can stop worrying! You can all stop worrying, and you can all stop butting in!” I pushed open the front doors.
“Come on, Felix,” said Dylan. “You know it’s not fair to be mad at us.”
“No. No, I don’t know. I never want to see either of you, ever again.” Even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew how ridiculous and childish they sounded. But I just kept on walking. I had to stay focused. It was Friday, the twenty-fifth of November. On Sunday, Astrid and I would be taken to a hotel. On Monday, I would appear on Who, What, Where, When. After that, one way or another, things would change.
Or so I thought.
How could I know that Saturday would be such a colossal disaster? How could I know we would wind up at the police station?
Even though we are not the bad guys.
Even though Abelard is a liar.
You’ll understand why I am freaking out.
Here is my version of what happened, Constable Lee.
Saturday was beautiful and sunny, rare for November, so Astrid and I gave the van a really good clean. Then we drove to a Laundromat and washed everything: clothes, bedding and towels. It was long overdue. I felt ninety-five percent recovered and I was ravenous, so Astrid bought us a box of day-old doughnuts. She ate one; I ate five.
I’d planned on having one last marathon day of studying at Dylan’s house, but since I wasn’t speaking to him or to Winnie, I let Astrid ask me questions instead.
By the time we got back to Spanish Banks, the sun was already low in the sky and the parking lots were starting to clear. We packed our bags for the week with freshly laundered clothes, the side door open to make our movements easier.