by Beth Goobie
“You got it, Mol,” muttered someone, but at an understated shake of the head from Seymour, the group laid off—their bodies quieting, their gaze drifting away from Meredith’s face.
“Looks like your problem is with Sabom,” drawled Seymour. “I’d suggest you go talk to him.”
Then, as if she were a backyard scene across which he had drawn a curtain, Seymour redirected his attention to the laptop. On cue, his friends crowded in, cutting off Meredith’s view of his face. She had been dismissed—and as if to emphasize the fact, some inner switch clicked off, draining the rage from her body. Abruptly, she was confronted with the full reality of her situation—that of a Grade 10, head-banged twerp who had just snarled an utterly false accusation at one of the school’s most popular senior students. Exactly what did she think she was doing here? There was no way to prove Seymour had hired Ronnie to attack her, and, on its own, gut instinct wasn’t enough to go around making enraged, grandiose statements—at least, not in public.
You got it, Mol. The memory of the muttered phrase shifted like a pickaxe in Meredith’s gut. So, she thought grimly—her battle with the Lord of the Underworld was well and truly over. By hook or by crook, his own admitted actions or ones she could only speculate about, Seymour had gotten what he wanted. The throne was now his to claim whenever he chose, and she had been relegated to a back corner desk, floor level with everyone else in Home Form 34.
Silently, Meredith retreated down the aisle.
chapter 20
Afternoon classes had let out for the day. Still numbed with disbelief, her mind on lockdown, Meredith was trudging through the halls en route to her locker when a hand touched her arm.
“Meredith,” said a familiar voice. Glancing right, she saw Gene keeping pace, a puzzled expression on his face. “What happened this morning?” he asked. “Why didn’t you come back?”
Frustration erupted in Meredith, shattering her numbness. “Sabom!” she exploded. “He kicked me out of Home Form 75. I’ve been transferred to 34.”
Astonishment took over Gene’s face. “What for?” he demanded.
“Because I told the cops about Seymour,” said Meredith. “Sabom read my report or heard about it, and now he’s saying there’s so much tension over seating arrangements that he’s got to transfer me for my safety.”
“Why not transfer Seymour?’ asked Gene.
“Because Sabom thinks I’m imagining the tension,” spat Meredith. “He said I just misunderstood something Seymour said, but he was still transferring me so I’d feel better.”
“Whoa!” said Gene. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?” asked Meredith.
“Come over here,” said Gene, guiding her out of the corridor and into a quiet stairwell nook. “Today at lunch, I walked into the music room and overheard Woolger on his cell. He was telling someone about an argument he overheard in the music room last week—said he was in one of the practice rooms and the arguers didn’t know he was there.”
“That must’ve been me and Seymour!” Meredith interjected excitedly. “When Seymour admitted to masterminding the whole gum-wad thing, and said I’d better keep my ass covered. If Woolger heard him say—”
Reluctantly, Gene shook his head. “Woolger said he didn’t hear most of what went on,” he said. “The practice room door was probably closed—those rooms are soundproofed. But he kept insisting that something was going on. ‘You’ve punished the wrong kid, Neil,’ he said.”
“Neil?” asked Meredith, thinking of daffydildos.
“That’s the Phoenix’s first name,” said Gene.
Meredith rolled her eyes. “He named his son after himself,” she muttered. “Figures.”
“Huh,” said Gene, his gaze on passing students as he worked things out in his head. “What comes next, I wonder?”
“Seymour takes over the drums,” Meredith said morosely. “Just like he planned from the start.”
“If he does, I’ll sit in his lap!” declared Gene. “And I’ll suck my thumb! Or I’ll make him suck it!”
Meredith spurted laughter. After six hours, locked into bitter resignation, it was a welcome release. “Bounce!” she hooted. “Really hard!”
Gene grinned. “Hey,” he said. “What’re you doing now?”
A flush blew through Meredith and she took a quick breath. “Nothing,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes.
“A couple guys and I are heading down to Taylor’s Music Store in my car,” said Gene. “I need new strings for my electric bass, and Joe Akinloye has to get some pads for his sax keys. Navasky’s just along for the ride. Want to come with?”
“Yeah!” exclaimed Meredith, a grin taking over her face. “Sure!”
“My locker’s one floor down,” said Gene. “I have to stash some books and then we’re outta here.”
Together they headed down the stairwell.
Ensconced in sleeping bags and toques, the Philosophical Feet were lying under the Matsumotos’ willow, watching its stripped branches ride a brooding sky. Heavy winds had dominated the past few days, and only the odd leaf still proclaimed itself brilliantly against the sullen clouds. Fixing her gaze on one lone leaf-soul, Meredith sighed. Cold, wet weather was in the forecast; this looked to be the last day available for willow-communing until spring.
“Hey,” she said, breaking their initial five-minute period of silence. “I talked to Gene today at lunch.”
“What—again?” demanded Dean, her tone teasing.
On cue, Meredith flushed. “As a matter of fact,” she said primly, “I ran into him outside the music room.”
“Oh, yeah,” Reb said knowingly.
“Come on, you guys!” protested Meredith, half-laughing. “You know my locker’s down the hall. Anyway, he told me about something that happened this morning in Home Form 75. He said it was like watching the inside of Seymour’s mind put into action. I guess Seymour has been biding his time, hoping everyone would forget about me, and this morning he sauntered in like it was any old day. Gene said Woolger was on him like a hawk, though—just sat at his desk, eyes glued as Seymour moseyed over to the third riser and stepped up casually behind the drums. Then, just as Seymour was about to park his butt, Woolger jumped up from his desk. Gene said he damn near exploded—his baton was possessed. ‘No one is allowed to sit behind the drums anymore!’ he shouted. ‘They’re too easily damaged. Now that this classroom has an extra seat, no one will sit there at all.’”
“Sweeeeet,” Reb drawled appreciatively. “So what did King Mol do then?”
“Froze,” said Meredith, relishing the image. “With his royal butt midair—centimeters from the throne that’s never going to be his. Gene said, for a second he thought Seymour was going to cry. Then he hauled his sorry ass down to his old seat.”
“Where he belongs!” pronounced Dean in an immensely satisfied tone.
“Yeah,” said Meredith, the enthusiasm fading from her voice. “But he’s still getting away with everything he did to me. Today makes it two weeks since Ronnie attacked me, and it looks like the cops aren’t going to charge Seymour—even though Ronnie used my yearbook to identify Frank Yockey as the guy who hired her to attack me. Of course, Frank denied it, and Ronnie’s say-so on its own isn’t worth much. Besides, Frank isn’t buds with Seymour; there’s nothing to connect them. And ...”
She paused, poking around the tumble of thoughts in her head, then burst out, “I know Seymour hasn’t gotten what he wanted in the end, but Ronnie and Lana are left carrying all the shit and he walks. What kind of crappy world is that? Then there’s what they did to me—just picked me up and moved me to another home form as if I was some sort of thing. And even though lots of people stuck up for me, it didn’t change anything. Woolger tried; Aunt Sancy went in and talked to Sabom; even Gene went to the office, but Sabom wouldn’t listen to him, either. It’s just so wrong. Don’t any of us matter unless we’re at the top of the heap, running things? On the throne?”
To eithe
r side, she could feel Reb and Dean silently working their way through everything she had said. “D’you think,” Dean asked tentatively, “Sabom really believes what he told you—that Seymour is completely innocent?”
“Nah!” declared Reb. “If the Phoenix thought Seymour was innocent, there wouldn’t be a need to cover up anything. And he’s sure working overtime to protect the Mol’s butt. At least, that’s the way it looks. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? We don’t know. And there’s no way to find out for sure.”
“Well, there is one thing we know for sure,” said Dean. “Seymour Molyneux is a complete shit.”
“You got that right,” muttered Meredith.
“No argument there,” agreed Reb. “But that’s him—not us. Not the Feet—we’re still best friends, and we will be through thick and thin. And tomorrow night, Meredith’s aunt is cooking a heroes’ dinner for us, and Gene and Carl ...”
Carl Rueda, thought Meredith. A short, skinny minor-niner with glasses, he didn’t look the type to fling himself into harm’s way for a complete stranger.
“And after that,” Reb continued determinedly, “there’s still most of Grade 10 to go, and it’s going to be great. Beware, Polkton Collegiate—the Feet are here, and we’re going to take up space! This morning, Mr. Canilang talked to me in my French class, and asked me to join the yearbook committee. He said they needed help on layout. It’s going to be so much fun! And you’re going to be super busy working on the new auditorium mural, Dean ...”
“Yeah!” chimed in Dean. “I’m psyched. Mr. Mattar just asked me yesterday, and I’m still flying. I hope I get to do some of the actual painting—more than just tracing the design onto the wall.”
Temporarily forgotten, Meredith lay listening to the eager chatter of her friends. The yearbook committee, the new auditorium mural, she mused. Direct personal requests by teachers for extracurricular student participation seemed to be going around; earlier in the day, she had also been approached by an instructor—Ms. Vorona, the drama teacher—and asked to help out with set construction for the school’s December production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Excited, she had immediately agreed. And when Gene had told her at lunch that Mr. Woolger had just appointed him assistant conductor for the Concert Band, she had been elated for him, too.
Now she wasn’t so sure. All four of them approached and offered plum extracurricular positions within two days—could it be a coincidence? Or was it, rather, the basic, ultimate law coming into play: action and reaction. Together, the four of them had become aware of something that normally remained hidden from view. What that something was exactly, Meredith wasn’t certain, but she knew it was connected to power and its under-the-surface machinations—who held the reins, who was allowed to reach for them, and who was not.
And so, it seemed, they were being targeted. Previous to the assault, the Feet and Gene Bussidor had gone largely unnoticed by the powers-that-be; their spare time and how they chose to spend it hadn’t been viewed as significant by anyone at Polkton Collegiate but themselves. But now, suddenly, their leisure time—or more exactly, the leisure time they spent together—appeared to have become a matter of importance to ... someone.
Not that she believed for one second that Mr. Woolger, Ms. Vorona, Mr. Canilang, and Mr. Mattar, Dean’s art teacher, were in some kind of conspiracy. No, this “conspiracy”—if that was what it was—was Mr. Sabom’s and Mr. Sabom’s alone. Probably the Phoenix had approached each of the teachers individually, and suggested they invite a particular student to participate in an extracurricular activity in order to help get that student’s mind off what had, no doubt, been a traumatic event. It was even possible Mr. Woolger had been intending all along to ask Gene to take on assistant conductor status. Like Reb had said, there was no way to know for sure. Meredith’s head had been bashed with a rock and the throne stolen out from under her butt, and she would never know with absolute certainty if Seymour had, indeed, been the one behind the scenes, holding the reins.
Was that the way things worked? she wondered. Kids in families with connections screwed up, and then someone in a position of authority covered up for them? That was the way things appeared to have gone for her father and her Polk grandparents. What about the Phoenix—had he, too, sometime earlier in his life, needed something smoothed over, and now he was passing on the favor?
Well, she thought determinedly, the Mols and Saboms of the world weren’t the only ones making things happen. They weren’t the only ones capable of causing actions and reactions. And the name Polk belonged to her, too. Her father, grandparents, and Ancestor Great Hand were now dead; she was currently the only Polk left in poky-ole-poke Polkton, and she was going to make that surname mean Meredith. Yeah—Meredith Polk was going to take up space, and she was going to make that space mean her.
“You’re quiet, Mere,” said Reb, breaking into her thoughts. “What’re you thinking about?”
Meredith hesitated. “This morning,” she said slowly, “Ms. Vorona asked me to help out with set production for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Breath held in, she waited for her friends to clue into the significance of what she had just revealed, but all Reb said was, “Sweet!”
“What d’you want to do?” added Dean. “Paint or build?”
Briefly, Meredith teetered on the edge of voicing her suspicions, and then she let the moment go. Reb and Dean were true friends; unquestionably they had put themselves on the line for her, but now they wanted to move on and believe in what the world was offering them. She didn’t have the right to interfere with that. Odd, she thought. She had always assumed that when she came flat up against the truth, it would be a friend, someone to share a smile with. Now, for the first time, she felt the bleak aloneness of it—the way it moved in and changed things ... important core things.
Everything changes, she reassured herself half-heartedly. Doesn’t it?
“I don’t think I will, though,” she replied in answer to Dean’s question. “Probably I’ll wait a while, and rest my head. It could use the break.”
Above her clung several last dandelion-yellow leaves, trembling in the breeze. Hang on, she thought at them fiercely. Hang on.
Aunt Sancy leaned the Harley onto its stand and they slid their helmets over the handlebars. Then, Meredith leading, her aunt following, they walked up the incline that led to the bridge. A sidewalk ran along the west side; together they proceeded to the bridge’s center and stood looking out over the water.
They didn’t speak. Without glancing at her aunt, Meredith laid her forearms along the top of the guardrail and rested her chin on them. Below her, water streamed past, quiet and unperturbed. Eyes narrowed, she watched its flow, trying to imagine her parents’ fatal crash, but the event didn’t come to her, erupting into her mind the way it had three weeks previous. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t call it into her thoughts; the episode was somehow now over for her in a way it hadn’t been the last time she had come here.
I’m not living in the land of the dead, anymore, she realized. This is goodbye. Whoever you were, Mom and Dad, and whatever the reason you chose to do what you did—it doesn’t really matter anymore. At least, not so much that I’m desperate to find out. I’ve got a home, and someone I know really loves me, and I’m okay. It’s enough. I guess I thought I had to live inside what you did—that your lives would somehow always be my life, too. Now I know I don’t; I’m a completely separate person and I like that. I like me.
A sigh meandered through Meredith; she felt her entire body lift with it, then slowly, gently, release. Turning her head, she glanced up to find her aunt smiling at her.
“Okay?” asked Aunt Sancy.
“Okay,” said Meredith. Tired—she felt hugely, sweetly, softly tired. At peace. “Let’s go home,” she said, and led the way back off the bridge to the Harley.
Epilogue
It was mid-afternoon, ten minutes into the last class of the day, and Meredith was barreling along a corrido
r, sent by her History teacher to the library to pick up an instructional DVD. In both directions, the hall stretched empty—classroom doors closed, the linoleum and pale yellow walls reflecting back the overhead fluorescent lighting. Then, ten meters ahead, the door to a guys’ washroom opened and a student stepped out, turned, and started toward her.
It was Seymour. Split-second recognition shot through Meredith and her stride faltered. Suddenly, her heart was thundering; the shock of seeing him—close-up, personal, and alone like this—ricocheted through her like a bowling ball. For the first time since she had started at Polkton Collegiate, she felt a rush of gratitude for the school’s hallway security-camera system. Swallowing, she forced herself to maintain her gaze as Seymour’s passed casually across hers, then returned with what looked to be a gasp of incredulity.
No, realized Meredith, contempt. The expression taking over Seymour’s face as he strode toward her was undeniably one of scorn. And along with it, as clearly as if he had spoken aloud, she could hear his thoughts.
Nothing! he hissed at her in his mind as he passed by, one meter to her right. You are nothing!
And then he was gone, his steady footfalls receding down the hall. Grimly, Meredith forced herself not to turn around and watch him go. By the time she reached the library entrance, her heart had eased up on its pounding and her sweaty armpits cooled to damp patches. Leaning against the corridor wall, she let her whirling thoughts calm. Though this wasn’t the first time she had seen Seymour since her transfer out of Home Form 75, it was the only one, other than their library encounter, in which they had been close enough for conversation.
Conversation hadn’t happened and probably never would, she realized. Seymour just wasn’t the kind of guy who got off on reconciliation. All things considered, he was probably a lot like her father—made allowances for, pampered, unchecked. Someday, perhaps, he would face his own bridge—but, unlike her mother, Meredith knew she wouldn’t be along for the ride.