I stared at her. “Those were my exact suggestions.”
She ignored me. “We have a serious housing crisis in this city. Prices are through the roof. Our homeless population is already big, and continues to grow. So instead of just throwing out statistics, I was thinking”—she took another bite of her sandwich and kept talking with her mouth full—“every day when I walk from the bus stop to school, I see the same guy sleeping in a storefront. He calls himself Bob the Bard. I’d like to interview him. Ask him what it’s like to be homeless.”
I felt nauseous all of a sudden, and it wasn’t Winnie’s sandwich.
It may sound nuts, but it was the first time it hit me that, technically speaking, I was homeless. Astrid and I had a van, but we didn’t have a home. It hadn’t bothered me before because I’d never thought it would last.
Now, after yesterday, I wasn’t so sure.
* * *
—
I went straight home after school.
Or should I say, straight van.
Astrid was still in bed.
“Have you been lying there all day?”
“No. I’ve been out.”
I peeled her sleeping bag back. “No, you haven’t. You’re still in your pajamas.”
“I got out of my pajamas. I went out. I came back. I put my pajamas back on.”
“Liar.”
“Felix. Back off, please. I can’t take it.”
I wanted to plead with her. I wanted to tell her that the longer this Slump lasted, the longer it would take for her to find another job. But I also knew that when she was in the middle of a Slump, there was no point. “Fine. But you have to get up now. We need to fold away your bed to get to the stove. I’ll cook.”
She did as she was told. I heated up two tins of stew. She only had a few mouthfuls. I ate the rest. Then she dozed on the backseat while I sat up front, doing homework. I let Horatio out of his cage and he ran up one of my arms and down the other.
When I was done with my homework I dug out a packet of instant oatmeal. I put the kettle on to boil. I poured the water over the oats and stirred.
Before I’d left the school cafeteria, I’d taken a pat of butter from the condiments counter. Now I took it out of my backpack, unwrapped it and placed it on the porridge.
Mormor had told me that you could appease an angry tomte by giving him a bowl of porridge with butter on top. So I put the bowl on the dashboard, in front of Mel.
“This is for you,” I whispered. “I’m sorry if we offended you in any way.”
Hey. It was worth a try.
* * *
—
Astrid’s Slump lasted three days.
I made sure to put out clean clothes and make lunch the night before and set my own alarm. I left plenty of time to go to school early so I could wash up in the handicapped washroom.
On the fourth day, Astrid got up with me. She drove us to a community center so we could shower for the first time in six days. “Why is there a congealed bowl of porridge on the dash?” she asked, but I pretended I hadn’t heard.
Our membership had expired long ago. So we did what we always did: we waited until the receptionist at the front desk was occupied with other people, then we strode past, Astrid waving her expired membership card in his general direction.
It had worked every time, until today.
“Excuse me, ma’am!” the receptionist called after her. “I need to see your card.”
“Oh, sure.” Astrid walked back to the desk and handed it to him.
The receptionist studied it. “This expired over a year ago.”
“What? Are you sure?” This time my mom’s lie fooled no one.
She bought us a new membership. “We have money,” she said as we headed for the changing rooms. “Just not a lot. I don’t like to spend it unless I absolutely have to.”
That night we moved the Westfalia to a quiet street near Kits Beach. We made mac and cheese and ate it wearing our coats because it was raining, and cold air seeped into the van. I let Horatio hunker down in my coat pocket. And I finally let out a thought that had been looping over and over in my brain. “Maybe we should tell someone.”
“About what?”
“About our situation.”
Astrid put down her plastic camping spoon. “Who would you suggest we tell?”
“Daniel?”
She shook her head. “Absolutely not.”
“Soleil? If she knew our situation, maybe she’d let us stay at her house for a while, just until we get back on our feet.”
“Felix. Soleil has been texting me, asking when we’ll be moving our things out of her basement.”
“Yes, but that’s because she doesn’t know the truth—”
“And she’s not going to.”
“Why?”
“Because. If she knew the truth, she’d go into help mode.”
Exactly! “Would that be so bad?”
“Yes, it would. She’d get the Ministry of Children and Family Development involved, I guarantee it.”
Some kids grow up with scary stories about monsters, or ghosts, or bogeymen under the bed. My scary stories were about the MCFD. And unlike the ones about monsters, ghosts and bogeymen, these stories weren’t make-believe.
As I already mentioned, I’d had one brief encounter with the MCFD. But that was nothing compared with Astrid’s experience.
When Astrid was ten and Original Felix was twelve, their father gave Felix a particularly bad beating. My mom couldn’t take it. She snuck away and called the police. Fredrik and the kids were questioned in separate rooms. Then a social worker from the MCFD arrived. Astrid and Felix were removed from the house and sent to foster homes.
Different foster homes. For two whole months they didn’t see each other. They lived with strangers, in homes with other foster kids. Astrid’s foster parents were kind, and the other kids weren’t too bad. Original Felix wasn’t so lucky.
When they were finally able to go back home, they both agreed: getting the odd beating and verbal smackdown from a mean dad was better any day than the so-called help they’d received.
I didn’t want the MCFD to take me away from my mom and put me in a home with mean strangers and possibly violent kids. But still. “Maybe, if we asked the right people, there might be some sort of social housing we could get into—”
“You and I are not living in social housing.” That was her strange snobbery at work. Somehow we were too good to live in social housing, but living in a van was okay.
I fed Horatio another piece of lettuce.
Astrid put an arm around me. “I’ll find another job, Böna. It’ll be fine. I promise.”
I wanted to believe her. I really did.
But I was pretty sure she’d just told a Give Peace a Chance.
“Want to sleep over on Friday?” Dylan asked me midweek. His hair was smooshed to his skull on one side and puffed out on the other in a particularly spectacular case of bed head.
“Sure!” I said, a little too enthusiastically. The thought of a real bed, indoor plumbing, heating and, most of all, Dylan’s fridge, made me feel positively giddy.
On Friday morning I packed an overnight bag. “Are you going to be okay while I’m gone?” I asked my mom.
She smiled. “Yes, Lilla Gubben. I’ve been wanting to do my yearly reread of Middlemarch, so I might just do that.”
“Promise me you’ll get out.”
“I will. I’m going to go to the library. Polish up my résumé.” I knew polish was probably code for “embellish.” But if it meant she was looking for work, I didn’t care.
* * *
—
“I have a hankering for a game of Monopoly,” Dylan said at the end of the day. “We can have an epic session. Plus my mom went to Costco y
esterday, so we have epic snacks.” I thought I might burst from too much happiness.
We were no more than ten seconds from the front doors of the school—so close, and yet so far—when Winnie approached. She was wearing her green beret. “I was wondering if I could ask you guys a favor.”
Uh-oh.
“I’m going to try to interview Bob the Bard. And I’m embarrassed to admit to my own biases and fears, but I’m a little nervous. I mean, he might not be happy if I try to talk to him, he might be unstable—I just don’t know. Would you mind coming with me?”
“Does it have to be today?” I asked.
“If I don’t do it today, I won’t get the article done on time.”
Dylan and looked at each other and sighed.
Bob the Bard is a Kitsilano institution. He was on the same corner when Astrid and I had our condo, and he was there now as we approached. He had a little jar in front of him that had some coins in it, and a sign that read POEMS FOR SALE. TWO BUCKS.
“Hello,” Winnie said, a slight quaver in her voice.
“Afternoon. Want a poem?”
“Um. No—” Winnie began, but I gave her a nudge. “I mean, sure.” Winnie handed him two dollars. Bob the Bard flipped through a notebook, which was covered in spindly handwriting. He tore out a page and read it aloud. “ ‘A child laughs, clutching a red balloon. A girlfriend laughs at something her boyfriend has said. An old man laughs at a voice in his head. The crow laughs at them all from its perch on the tree, above.’ ” He held out the poem. His hands were dirty, his skin cracked. Winnie’s mouth made a little O of horror.
I reached out and grabbed the poem. “Thanks. That was very nice,” I said.
“I call it ‘Laughter,’ ” said Bob the Bard.
“Deep,” said Dylan.
Winnie cleared her throat. “I was also wondering if I could interview you for our school paper. About, um”—she coughed, embarrassed—“homelessness.”
Bob the Bard squinted at her. He held out his hand. Winnie looked at it, confused. “He wants more money,” I whispered.
Winnie handed him another two-dollar coin. Bob the Bard gave her a withering look. “Interviews cost more than poems.”
Winnie dug into her satchel and handed him a ten-dollar bill. “If I could have five back—”
Bob the Bard pocketed the ten. “Ask away.”
Winnie pressed Record on her phone. “How long have you been homeless?”
“Almost twenty years. I’m fifty-one now.”
Dylan and I glanced at each other; Bob the Bard looked much, much older.
“What did you do before you lived on the street?”
“I was a regular guy. University degree. Job in middle management. Wife, kids.”
“What happened?”
“Company downsized. I lost my job. We were in a recession. Couldn’t find work. Got depressed. Started drinking. Wife left me. Kids and I grew apart. I was too educated to get a McJob, and when I did manage to land one, it never lasted very long because I was like a fossil, the young kids were so much better at handling all the computerized systems than I was.” As he kept talking, I felt goose bumps on my arms, even though I was wearing a jacket. “Lost my apartment. Lost my friends…started sleeping in shelters. But shelters are awful. Full of crazies and bedbugs and thieves. I feel safer out here than I do in one of those places.” He gazed up at Winnie. “You think it’ll never happen to you. Well, guess what. It can happen to anyone.”
I knew he was telling the truth. Because Astrid and I were already halfway there.
* * *
—
Winnie gave Bob the Bard a sandwich that she’d made especially for him before we said goodbye. As we walked away, I saw him take a bite, spit it out and toss the sandwich in the garbage. Clearly some beggars could be choosers.
“So. Where to now?” asked Winnie.
“Um, we’re going to Dylan’s house—” I started.
“Goody.” She skipped ahead of us. Dylan pretended to wrap a noose around his neck and hang himself. I pretended to fall on a sword.
When we got to the Brinkerhoffs’, Dylan and I got Cheezies and taquitos to bring into the living room while Winnie lectured us on the health hazards of eating processed food. We responded by opening cans of root beer, taking big swigs and belching loudly. “You’re both disgusting,” she said. We belched again.
We played Monopoly. Not surprisingly, Winnie was super competitive, and a sore winner; she lorded it over us long after we’d put the game away.
To shut her up, Dylan put on the TV. Who, What, Where, When was on, so we shouted out answers at the TV screen; Winnie knew almost as many as I did.
Just before a commercial break the announcer said, “We’re launching our first-ever weeklong Who, What, Where, When—Junior Edition! Want to be a contestant? Take our online questionnaire to see if you’re eligible.”
Dylan muted the TV and looked at us. “Let’s do it.”
Winnie raised an eyebrow. “No offense, but I’ll crush you both.”
“You’ll crush me,” said Dylan. “But I bet you won’t crush Felix.”
Winnie had her laptop with her and Dylan had his. I used the desktop computer in the kitchen. After we’d filled in some personal information, we were directed to the quiz. It was based on two criteria; the time it took to complete it, and how many questions we got right. There were fifty questions in all. Here’s a small sample:
Who wrote Lord of the Flies? (William Golding)
Where would you find the Great Barrier Reef? (Australia)
What luxury liner did a German submarine sink in 1915? (the Lusitania)
When did America join World War II? (December 1941)
Dylan took eight minutes and forty seconds, and got twenty-six questions right.
Winnie took seven minutes and eight seconds, and got forty-one questions right.
I took six minutes and fifty seconds.
And I got forty-six questions right.
“Holy crap, Felix,” said Dylan. “That’s amazing.”
“Lucky break,” said Winnie.
“It’s not luck,” Dylan said. “I’ve seen him do it before. Felix is really smart.”
“Huh,” she said. “Who knew?”
A few moments later we all got the same email:
Thank you for your interest. Due to the high volume of applicants, it will take two to three weeks to process your entry. If you are chosen for an audition, you will be informed at that time.
“Well,” Winnie announced as she shut down her laptop, “sorry, you guys, but it’s time for me to hit the road.”
“What a shame,” said Dylan.
The Brinkerhoffs came home soon after Winnie left. “Felix!” said Mrs. Brinkerhoff. “We finally get to lay eyes on you.” She pulled me in for a hug and I noticed she still smelled like vanilla. Mr. Brinkerhoff—who is like a carbon copy of his disheveled son, only taller, rounder and without braces—shook my hand.
“Great to see you again. How’s your mom?”
“Good. Really good.”
I told myself it was an Invisible Lie.
* * *
—
The Brinkerhoffs ordered Thai food for dinner. Alberta and her boyfriend, Henry, were there, and the six of us crowded around the kitchen table. Dylan and I told them about the online quiz, and Henry asked us to repeat a bunch of the questions. He got them all right. “You two have a freakish ability to retain information,” Alberta said.
I ate so much I could stick out my stomach in an unsightly way. There was lots of laughing and arguing and the room was big and warm and bright.
That night I lay in Dylan’s lower bunk bed while he told me a story about Bernard. “He moved all my clothes around while I was at school. Put all my underwear into my T-shirt drawer,
and I found my T-shirts under my bed! But he never does anything mean. He’s a good poltergeist.” I don’t remember anything after that because I fell asleep and slept for twelve hours.
We ate a late breakfast of pancakes with buckets of butter and maple syrup. The bubble finally burst when Dylan’s mom reminded him that he had a karate lesson at one.
“We can drive you home,” said Mrs. Brinkerhoff. “I’d love to say a quick hello to Astrid. It’s been ages since I’ve seen her.”
“It’s okay. She’s at work today, and I have things to do on the way home anyway.” A No One Gets Hurt.
You know when you have a really awesome dream, the kind where everything is just perfect and magical? Like, you’ve just found a trunk full of your favorite chocolate bars under your bed? And then you wake up, and the letdown is enormous? That’s how it felt as I trudged the two kilometers to Kits Beach, to our Westfalia and to my mom.
Astrid and I had a Sunday routine. We stayed in bed until ten; then we went to the community center to use their exercise equipment and have a hot shower. Afterward we went for breakfast at the Cozy Café on Dunbar Street, which has a full bacon-and-egg breakfast for just $4.99. When we were done, we did our laundry, followed by grocery shopping at the No Frills.
On this particular Sunday I was loading up the cart with cans of dented soup when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Something I wish I hadn’t seen:
Astrid, slipping a package of sausages into her coat pocket.
My inner voice said, Maybe I only think I saw that. Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe she made a mistake. Maybe she slipped it into her coat by accident. Like that time I put my homework in the fridge.
But in the next aisle, I saw her slip a bag of almonds into her purse. “Astrid,” I said in a voice only she could hear. “I saw what you did.”
“Hmm?”
“You have sausages in your coat pocket and a bag of almonds in your purse.”
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