I think I screamed. I’m not sure. Maybe we all did. I remember looking at Meredith, her mouth forming a perfect little o. I’d like to say we took swift action and immediately called 9-1-1, but the truth is, we all just stood there, mesmerized, as Brian’s blood gushed from his neck like a broken fire-hydrant, forming a dark puddle around him. It was exactly like a movie, except that it was real. That was the worst part. It was all real. Brian stared up at the water-stained ceiling, his brown eyes shiny with tears.
I was shaking. I wanted to throw up. I don’t remember sitting down, but suddenly I was on the floor.
It was Daryl who finally called 9-1-1, crying, apologizing to all of us, to Brian, to the 9-1-1 operator, to God.
All of us kids stood at the front window and watched in silence as the paramedics covered Brian with a white sheet, loaded him onto a stretcher, and rolled him into the ambulance. They did not turn the sirens on. That was the worst. That they didn’t even turn them on. We all had our arms wrapped around ourselves as we watched Brian being taken away, as if we could somehow hold the sadness in, if we just held on tight enough. We watched as Daryl, head bowed, was pushed into the back of the police cruiser, turning his face away from us and toward some unknown future. The cherry lights on top of the police cruiser sparkled against the clear blue sky as they drove away.
10
Things were pretty miserable at Bright Light after that. A butt-load of reporters came to the house to get us kids on camera saying how shocking and awful it all was. Of course I wanted to be on TV, but not for that. Not for something like that. When the pretty TV reporter asked me what I thought about the recent stabbing, I said, “It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Would you care to elaborate for us?” she asked, shoving the microphone in my face.
“No,” I said. Then I went upstairs to the boys’ dorm and tried not to look at Dirtbag Daryl’s bunk on the way by. I sat on my bed and threw my red super-bounce against the wall about a hundred-thousand times until I was sure all the reporters had left, then I went downstairs and made myself a bacon and peanut butter sandwich with some leftover bacon I found in the fridge. But then I remembered that Brian had made that bacon for us, just the day before, and I wasn’t hungry at all anymore, so I threw the sandwich in the garbage.
That day and the day after, two police officers came. One man and one woman. The woman had freckles and short blonde hair, and the man was built like a warthog and had a shaved head. They spoke to each of us inside the staff room, which was really just an office with a messy desk, a grey metal filing cabinet, a mini-fridge, and a bookshelf full of child psychology books. There was a poster on the wall with a lighthouse shining out to the ocean. RISK was at the top in big letters and below the lighthouse it read, The greater the adversity, the brighter the light of opportunity. I’m not really sure what that was supposed to mean, but I figured it was probably a secret-coded message to the SODs to not give up on us kids no matter how screwed up we were because we might turn out all right eventually. But when Brian put his hand on Dirtbag Daryl’s shoulder that was a risk, and look where it got him. The lady-cop asked me my name and how old I was and if I had seen what happened that day. While I answered her, I read the other poster behind the desk. It was of a space shuttle taking off with lots of smoke below it. At the top it read, TEAMWORK. Below the picture of the rocket it read, Teamwork is the fuel that allows people to work together toward a common vision. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. Then I started to wonder who these common people were. Were Gina and I common people? Was Brian? Was everyone except astronauts? I didn’t really know what that poster meant either, but I liked the picture of the rocket so I focused on that and tried not to cry in front of the police officers. The lady-cop asked me to tell them in my own words what had happened. I thought that was a stupid thing for her to say because who else’s words would I use but my own? Anyways, I stared at the rocket ship and told them what I’d seen. I told them what I thought: that it was an accident and I was ninety-nine-percent sure that Dirtbag Daryl hadn’t planned it. I was a hundred-percent sure he didn’t mean to kill Brian. I knew that for a fact because of the way he cried afterwards, because of the way he dialed 9-1-1, and how his voice got when he spoke to the operator. And to us. It was just one of those awful things. One of those split-second things that ruins people’s lives forever.
“Everyone makes mistakes,” my voiced cracked as I said it.
“That’s true, Tucker,” the man-cop said. “But most people’s mistakes don’t end in a fatality.”
I stared at the rocket ship and wished I was on it. Going far, far away from Earth and all the terrible mistakes that everyone on it makes every day. I wished I was going someplace peaceful like the moon or Mars, which they say is the planet of war, except that Mars is probably a kajillion times more peaceful than Earth.
The next day, a grief counsellor came to speak to us. Everybody cried a lot. Not just girls, boys too. Meredith was really upset. I think she might have been in love with Brian. I know she really missed him. We all did.
The grief counsellor’s name was Amy. Amy wore turquoise hoop earrings and a lot of mascara. She talked to us as a group and then individually. We talked in the SOD office. She wanted to know how I was feeling.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You can be feeling more than one thing,” she said.
“I know that.”
“Okay.”
I cleared my throat. “I just … miss him. And Daryl too, I guess.”
She jotted a small note on her yellow legal pad. “What else?” she smiled.
“I … I want to go home.”
Amy nodded and squished her lips together. “Where’s home, Tucker?”
I shrugged. “The Niagara Motel, I guess.”
Amy wrote that down on her pad.
After that I went up to the boys’ dorm. No one was in there so I took out my box of special stuff and got my little dog Charlie out and put him on my pillow. I lay down next to him and petted him a little bit and told him that everything would be okay, that he shouldn’t worry, that he was a good dog, a good boy. A while later, Shawn came into the room, and I tucked Charlie under my pillow so he wouldn’t see him, and, for the zillionth time, I wished that I had a real dog.
11
About a week after that, I sat on the outdoor couch with Meredith. It was that time after the day is over but before night has come, when the sky is sort of purply-grey and everything moves slower. We both had blankets over us. Not because it was cold out but because sometimes blankets can make you feel like everything’s okay, even when you know it’s not.
“I can’t do it,” Meredith said.
I looked over at her.
“I thought I could. I wanted to, but now I just know I can’t.”
I nodded.
“In the same way that you know you’ll never kick an animal.” She lit a cigarette and took a big sigh as she exhaled.
“Maybe if it’s a boy, you could name him Brian,” I said.
She wiped away a tear that had leaked out the side of her eye.
Car tires screeched a few blocks away. The group home was dark behind us, but we could hear someone crying in the downstairs bathroom. Whoever it was sounded like a wailing puppy.
“I need to get out of here,” Meredith said. “I need a vacation.”
“Yeah.”
“Even if it’s just for a little while, a weekend even.”
“That sounds nice,” I said.
“Where would you go if you could go anywhere?” Meredith asked, curling into the corner of the couch.
“Boston.”
“Why Boston?”
“Because I need to go to the Cheers bar.”
“Why?”
“To find my real father.”
Meredith raised an eyebrow and took a hard drag.
Since by this time, Meredith was pretty much my best friend, I told her about Sam M
alone. At first she laughed and told me I was insane, but then I explained to her the very good reasons I had for believing that Sam Malone could be my actual father, and if I could just see him, just meet him, just once, I would know.
She said, “Yeah, and my real dad is probably MacGyver because I have a Swiss Army knife and so does he.”
I picked at a scab on my elbow.
“Haven’t you ever asked your mom about your father?” she said.
“Of course! All the time!”
“And?”
“And nothing. She won’t tell me diddly-squat. All I know is what I told you. Brown hair. Bartender. Recovering alcoholic. Womanizer. That’s it.”
“Does your mom work around a lot of guys in show biz?”
“She works around a lot of guys, period.”
“I guess it could be him.” Meredith shrugged. “It could be anyone.”
“Plus, our last name is Malone.”
“But that’s not—”
“But it’s a pretty big coincidence, don’t you think?”
Meredith rolled her eyes, took a slow drag off her cigarette. “All right. So?”
“So, what?”
“So, you want to go to Boston?”
“Yeah!” I jumped off the couch and leapt into the air.
Meredith laughed. It was the first time I’d heard her laugh since before Brian was killed. It was a good sound. “All right, let’s go then,” she said.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Let’s do it.”
“For real?
“You’ve got some money, don’t you?” she asked.
“A little bit.”
“But you could get more, right?”
“Probably,” I said.
She nodded and tapped the ash off her cigarette. “That’s what I thought,” she said.
I hadn’t told Gina about Brian getting stabbed which was hard because I don’t usually keep secrets from Gina, but I knew that it was a terrible thing to have happened and that it would make her worry and make her upset and then her heart wouldn’t heal properly. Heather, the nice nurse, knew about it because she’d seen it on the news, but I knew that Gina hadn’t or else she would’ve mentioned it already.
The next time I saw Heather, she gave me a Long John. I knew they were her favourite so I asked her if she was sure. She said they were actually her second-favourite after Hawaiian donuts and also that I needed it more than she did.
“How are you holding up, kid?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Okay, I guess.”
“That’s good, that’s good,” she nodded.
“But, listen, Gina can’t find out, okay? It will make her worry too much, and then, you know—”
“She won’t hear it from me,” Heather said.
“Thanks.”
Then Heather hugged me. She had big pillowy boobs the size of couch cushions and it was really nice because she was so warm and big around me that I felt like I could almost disappear right into her. Fat people give the best hugs.
After that, Heather went back to the nurses’ station and I went to see Gina. I knew that I had to tell Gina I was going away for a little while because she would wonder why I wasn’t coming to visit her and then she’d get super-worried and that would be super-bad. So after Meredith and I figured out all the details of the plan to go to Boston, and I believed it was really going to happen and wasn’t just one of those things that people talk about doing but never actually do, I went to see Gina. It was a P.A. day, which meant I didn’t have to go to school, but I skipped watching cartoons and eating cereal in my pyjamas and instead got dressed and went straight to the hospital.
Mrs Jorgensen wasn’t in her bed, which was made up all tight and neat. Gina held her arms open, and I ran to her and hugged her. She smiled and kissed me on top of my head and smelled my hair.
“Where’s Mrs Jorgensen?”
Gina patted the side of her bed, and I scooted down to where I could sit without hurting her. “She didn’t make it, lovey.”
“Didn’t make what?”
“She passed.”
“She died?”
Gina nodded.
“Holy crap.” I looked over at Mrs Jorgensen’s bed. She had only ever yelled at us and coughed and hacked and spat wads of phlegm into her little glass jar, but it didn’t seem right that she wasn’t there anymore, that she would never do any of those things again.
“I think I miss her,” I whispered.
“I think I do too,” Gina said.
Then I carefully lay down next to Gina so that I wasn’t touching her broken ribs. She smoothed my hair, and I turned my face away from her and let hot tears spill out onto the green sheets. Gina stroked my hair, and after a while I fell asleep and when I woke up again, my eyes were sticky with eye-crusties and hard to open. I rinsed my face in the sink in Gina’s little bathroom and then we watched Family Feud. The one family was sort of stupid, and none of them guessed the right answers to anything, and the other family was super-smart and were probably all doctors and lawyers and scientists, so it didn’t really seem fair. But no one gets to choose their family. The best you can hope for is that they don’t forget about you when it’s your turn in the Isolation Booth. After Family Feud, The Golden Girls came on. We watched it for a bit, but then Gina didn’t want to watch it anymore because she said Sophia reminded her of Mrs Jorgensen and she was getting sad so we went down to the cafeteria to get hot chocolates with whipped-cream on top. Gina wanted to go outside, but it was raining and I didn’t want her to get all wet and cold, so I said no deal.
“Tucker, come on, take me outside. I want a cigarette.” She pulled a crumpled pack from her purse.
“Where did you get those?”
“Mrs Jorgensen.”
“She gave them to you?”
“Not exactly.”
“You stole them? You stole cigarettes from a dead lady?”
“Shh, calm down. They were just going to throw them out anyways. And besides, she would’ve wanted me to have them.” Gina pulled a cigarette from the pack and tapped it against the box. “Please take me outside.” She rocked back and forth in her wheelchair so that it rolled a little bit forward.
“Gina, you have a collapsed lung. Do you really think you should be smoking?”
“Look, it’s just something I have to do, okay? When someone dies, you smoke a cigarette. You think of them and blow the smoke up to guide them on their journey. It’s a tradition.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
“Don’t get smart.”
“Can’t help it,” I said, and rolled her outside.
“And don’t you dare tell Dr Chopra. She’ll be livid.”
Gina smoked and we listened to the rain. “Here,” she said, holding out the cigarette to me. “Take a little puff. Not too big.”
I did and coughed a lot so she would think I’d never smoked before. I handed it back to her. “So I won’t be able to come visit you this weekend,” I said, feeling my heart speed up.
“Why not?”
“My friend from the group home invited me to her family reunion. And it’s in Toronto. It’s at her uncle’s place and he has an indoor swimming pool and a hot tub, and she has lots of cousins my age and everyone’s staying for the whole weekend. I really want to go. Please, can I? Please?” It felt weird and wrong lying to Gina, but, just like I thought, it got a little bit easier every time I did it.
Gina sighed. “What’s your friend’s name?”
“Mary.” I don’t know why I said that, it just came out.
“How old is Mary?”
“My age.”
Gina looked at me with her squishy face. “Is Mary your girlfriend?”
“Ew! No! Come on, Gina! She’s just my friend who’s a girl!”
“Okay, okay. Take it easy.”
“So, anyways. Can I?”
“How are you going to get to Toronto?”
“Her aunt is going to drive us.”
“Both ways?”
“Yep.”
“Will you call me every day and let me know you’re okay?”
“Yep.”
“You promise?”
“Promise.”
“Pinky swear,” she said, and held up her pinky.
We pinky swore, and I made a mental note to remember to take the number of the hospital with me so I could call her. A mental note is not actually written out on paper like a real note. It’s a note that you write just to yourself on the walls of your own brain.
“Want another hot chocolate?” she asked, tossing her cigarette into the gutter.
“Yeah.”
“Me too.”
I wheeled her back to the cafeteria.
“Do I have to sign anything?” she asked.
“For what?”
“For the group home. So they know you have my permission to go with Mary for the weekend?”
“Um, I don’t think so. I’ll ask.”
“Okay.” She squinted at me.
A herd of wild horses galloped through my chest. My tongue throbbed. She knew I was lying, she knew everything. It was all over.
Then an old guy with red spots the size of coins all over his face hobbled past us. “There’s a sight for sore eyes!” he said and winked at Gina.
“Hi, Mr Hanson.” She gave him a little wave.
“Is that your new boyfriend?” he said, pointing to me. “You cheating on me?”
“This is my son, Tucker. Tucker, this is Mr Hanson.” Gina smiled.
Mr Hanson and I shook hands. His hand was cold and felt like a paper bag.
“Good-looking fella. Wonder where he gets that from?” He winked at Gina again. “I’m on a hunt for rice pudding. See you folks later.”
Gina and I had a little laugh after he left. Not that we were laughing at him, at least I don’t think we were. Maybe just a little bit. But not in a mean way. You can laugh at people and you can laugh with people, and sometimes you can do both at the same time. We finished our hot chocolates, and I got up to get us some water. When I came back to the table, Gina was picking at her nails. I sat down across from her and took a big drink from my water. She looked up at me and gave me a small smile, then went back to her nails.
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