by Tish Cohen
The Break-In
TISH COHEN
The
Break-In
Copyright © 2012 Tish Cohen
First published in 2012 by Grass Roots Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
Grass Roots Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies:
the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Grass Roots Press would also like to thank ABC Life Literacy Canada for their support. Good Reads® is used under licence from ABC Life Literacy Canada.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Cohen, Tish, 1963-
The break-in / Tish Cohen.
(Good reads series)
ISBN: 978-1-926583-82-2 (Print)
ISBN: 978-1-927499-42-9 (ePub)
ISBN: 978-1-927499-43-6 (Kindle)
I. Readers for new literates. I. Title.
II. Series: Good reads series (Edmonton, Alta.)
PS8605.O3787B74 2012 428.6’2 C2012-902309-4
Printed and bound in Canada.
For Max and Lucas
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Discover Canada’s Bestselling Authors
Good Reads Series
Coyote’s Song
About The Author
Chapter One
Alex watched a cricket creep along the baseboard and disappear. He didn’t feel strong enough to go after it. Not today. Besides, why try? Seven more crickets were on the loose, and he’d lost the plastic lunch bag they came in.
He sat with his elbows on his knees. His suit jacket didn’t fit anymore. It bunched up and hurt him under his arms. All around him, grown-ups sipped tea and ate tiny sandwiches and cookies. As if he couldn’t hear them, they whispered about the tragedy. Of course it was a tragedy. Alex’s dad was the best police constable on the force, everyone said so. Two days ago, he had stopped a guy for speeding. While he was writing the ticket, another driver hit and killed him. Who could imagine anything worse? Not his son, that’s for sure.
“Poor fellow was too young to die,” a woman said. Alex knew her; she worked at the main desk of the police station. “Barely fifty. Makes no sense.”
The constable beside her nodded. “That’s the thing about life. Does its best to mess us up.”
Alex hated this little house on Poplar Avenue. Everything about it was bad. His dad had wanted to live closer to work. That’s why the family had moved here from the other side of town a month ago. Four crappy weeks. In that time, Alex had had two teeth filled and his mother had had the stomach flu. Now his dad was dead. Loose crickets didn’t matter compared to that.
His mother looked sadder and taller than ever in her borrowed funeral dress. “Honey,” she said, “you need to eat.” She held out a plate of salad.
Alex stared at the lettuce, making a face.
“You need to keep your strength up.”
Using the smallest amount of air he could, Alex said, “L-l-lettuce is for c-c ... crickets.”
His mother’s hand went to her throat and started to play with her pearl necklace. His stutter was getting to her. She couldn’t handle that it had come back after three years. Alex felt guilty as hell. His mother didn’t need to worry about her son not being able to speak, on top of everything else.
Alex flipped a piece of lettuce behind the sofa. “B-b-b-b ... b-bait.”
“Did the whole bag of crickets escape? Or just a few?”
He didn’t answer.
“Alex, how many crickets escaped?”
He just shook his head. Knowing that eight crickets were loose in her house wasn’t going to make her feel better.
“I still don’t understand why I had to buy you a pet spider right now,” Alex’s mother said. “You can’t even hug it and get any sort of comfort.”
Alex stared at the ceiling. How many times did he have to tell her? The Mexican palomino spider was not poisonous. Well, not very poisonous. Boris the spider’s bite was something like a bee sting. He was extremely gentle and easy to handle. And— bonus!—his hair didn’t give humans a rash, like the hair of some spiders did. No itching. No killer biting.
“He’s not p-p-p ...” Alex tried to let the word escape. “Not p ... p ...”
His mom’s sadness made her face droop. “It’s the stress of what happened. Losing Dad. You’ll feel better once you get back to your old routine. That’s what you need.”
That wasn’t what he needed. What he needed was to get back at the guy who killed his father.
Sergeant Hines walked across the room with a black box in his hand. He sat in the chair next to Alex while Alex’s mother watched, wiping her nose with a tissue. At the funeral, Alex’s dad’s police hat had been placed on the coffin. Then, at the end of the funeral, the sergeant gave the hat to Alex’s mom, the widow. She’d cried. Man, had she cried.
“A few things from your dad’s desk,” Sergeant Hines said to Alex as he opened the box. The World’s Best Dad mug Alex had given his dad for Father’s Day. A framed picture of Alex with his parents in front of the fireplace in their old home. An award for bravery.
Alex said, “W-w-w-what d-d-d ...?”
The sergeant leaned closer. “What’s that?”
Alex’s mom answered for him. “He wants to know what his dad did. For the award.”
“Took on an armed suspect all by himself during a home invasion. Saved a young mother and her three little ones. Your dad was quite the cop, Alex. He will be sadly missed.”
The sergeant meant to make him feel better, but Alex only felt worse.
His mom took the box and held it to her chest. Alex could see she was blinking back tears. “Thank you, Sergeant.”
“I know who d-d-did i-i-i ... who d-did it.”
Sergeant Hines smiled sadly. “Who would that be, son?”
A good cop looks at the clues. The hit-and-run driver who killed Alex’s dad left almost none. Only chips of dark red paint on the door of the car Alex’s dad had pulled over. The guy getting the ticket couldn’t describe the other driver’s car. All he knew was that it was an old red clunker.
Old Man Morrison, Alex’s one and only suspect, lived across the street. He and Alex were enemies. As the new boy at school, Alex got picked on, of course. Two weeks ago, bullies had stolen his backpack. Alex couldn’t care less about his school books, but in his backpack he’d had a bendable pen from Disneyland. Now he’d never get it back. The day after the bullies took his backpack, Alex saw them again. To get away, he cut through Old Man Morrison’s yard.
Morrison had trimmed his shrubs into crazy shapes: a swan, a giraffe, a rocket ship. He was nuts about those bushes. He threw a fit when Alex cut through his yard. Alex, he said, had broken some of the lower branches. He demanded that Alex fix them. Which was impossible. How do you put a broken branch back together?
Alex’s dad went to calm the guy down, even offered to pay him, but Morrison wouldn’t listen. He said he’d get even. That alone didn’t make the old man a suspect. But this did: Morrison drove a very old, very red clunker.
Alex decided to tell Sergeant Hines the name of his suspect. “M-M-Morr.”
“Excuse me?”
“He t
hinks Mr. Morrison, across the street, did it,” said Alex’s mom. “He drives a red car.”
“O-o-old red car.”
The sergeant, like about ten other people that day, tapped Alex under his chin. “Every dark red car is being looked at. If the paint matches, we’ll be talking to Mr. Morrison in the next few days. Don’t you worry.”
But Morrison could leave town. Every good cop knows the bad guy will try to run. “In the next few days” wasn’t soon enough. Alex shook his head angrily.
The sergeant leaned close and smiled. “You just leave the policing to the police. You’re the man of the house now, son. It’s up to you to take care of things around here.” He stood up to leave, and a puzzled look crossed his face. “Do I hear a cricket?”
Chapter Two
The next morning, Marcus sat across from his doctor and rubbed at his new beard. Strange that it took him until age twenty-seven to finally grow a bit of hair on his face. He wondered if stress could do that. Make a person hairier.
Dr. Ling yawned into her hand. “Excuse me,” she said as she opened his file.
He leaned back into his chair and tried not to yawn back. He’d had a bad night. Didn’t fall asleep until three or four o’clock. Then he slept through his alarm and raced out the door without even showering. He didn’t want to be late for therapy. It was all that was keeping him sane since Lisa walked out.
The doctor looked up. “You were starting to tell me about your sadness. How you’re coping with it.”
Marcus looked down at the photo in his hand. It was taken three years ago, back when he and Lisa were in their last year of art college. God, she was beautiful. Her freckles, her wavy brown hair. It blew across her face and got in her mouth. That drove her nuts. She was so pretty it wasn’t fair. No one could hold on to such a woman. And no one could get over her once she was gone.
They’d been living together. Planning to get married. To move down to Australia, where he could surf and she could paint sunrises. They would take a few years off from career-type goals. Work in a beach bar, mixing fancy drinks. Find themselves. That was the plan. It wasn’t a plan their parents loved, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was each other.
Everything changed a couple of months back. Marcus had still been working at the liquor store. One day, he came home to find Lisa’s things gone from their tiny house on Poplar Avenue. Not just her clothes and makeup, either. She had really cleaned the place out. She took the sticky, halfempty shampoo bottles from the back of the bathroom cupboard. She even took the hair dryer. That dryer could kill a person. You had to unplug it when you left the room because it sparked even when it was off.
What could he do? He sobbed into his pillow for a day, or ten. Then he realized he couldn’t possibly afford to rent the house all by himself. So he, too, moved out. Moved in with his mother, back into the bedroom he slept in when he was a child. Where he could sob into the pillow of his childhood for another day, or ten.
Finally, his mother suggested that he go for therapy.
“Marcus?” said Dr. Ling. “Can you tell me about your sadness—how it feels?”
“It’s kind of stupid.”
“Nothing is stupid in this office. I promise.”
“I feel like I’m not even here. Ever since Lisa left, I feel like I’m on the outside of life. Like I’m watching from the corner, you know?” Dr. Ling shifted in her chair. “This sadness is so bad I can no longer work. I don’t sleep.”
Dr. Ling nodded.
“Sometimes it feels, well, it feels almost like. you’re going to think this is weird,” Marcus said.
“I won’t think anything you say is weird, Marcus. I promise.”
Marcus felt his cheeks heat up. “Okay. This sadness, it’s almost as if the stinging lives in my skin. When I think of her, my entire body feels as if it’s covered in paper cuts. I would do anything to stop the pain. I have to get her back.”
“I thought we agreed the other day that Lisa isn’t good for you,” said Dr. Ling.
Marcus hadn’t agreed to anything the other day. His skin had just hurt too much for him to set the doctor straight. “That’s not true,” he said now. A garbage truck outside made a whining sound. Trash cans smashed together like thunder. The noise made Marcus feel brave. “I’d take Lisa back in a second. Any man would. She’s perfect.”
Dr. Ling checked her watch. “I’m afraid our time is up for today.” She stood up. “Some things we can’t change, Marcus. You’ll learn as you get older that life is going to happen, whether we like it or not. Sometimes we get scratched up, sometimes we don’t. The best we can do is learn how to cope and soldier through.”
Chapter Three
Like Marcus, Alex had a hard time getting up that morning. He lay in bed and pretended not to feel his mother shaking his shoulder.
“Alex, wake up,” he heard.
He opened his eyes and stared at Boris’s tank. The spider was pawing at the glass almost as if he were waving hello. Even with the silky blond hair, Boris was terrifying. Of course, terrifying was the point.
“You don’t want to be late for school.”
What was Alex supposed to do? Get up, pull on his jeans and sweatshirt, and get on the bus, as if everything was fine? Nothing was fine. Nothing would be fine ever again. His dad was dead, his dad’s killer was free, and Alex was in charge of the family.
“I’m s-s-s ...” He stopped, shook his head, frustrated. “I’m s ... s ...”
“It’s okay, honey. It’s been a tough few days.”
He rolled his eyes back and stuck his tongue out one side of his mouth.
“You’re sick?” His mother put a hand on his forehead. “You don’t have a fever. You seem to be fine.”
Not on the inside, he didn’t say.
She stood up. “Okay. But I have to go to work. You’ll have to fend for yourself. Know what that means?”
Cereal for every meal. He nodded.
“And maybe you’ll try to gather up some of those bugs before they get into the walls. Those beetles chirped all night long.”
Crickets, he didn’t say.
“Otherwise we’ll have to call in a pest control guy. Remember Grandpa’s snails?”
Alex’s dad had told him a story about his grandfather. Back in the 1950s, Grandpa and his three brothers ran a fruit and vegetable store. One day, Grandpa had a great idea. The store already sold unusual foods, like avocados and purple potatoes. “Classy restaurants serve snails now,” Grandpa said to his brothers. “Escargots, they call them. We should get some snails to sell.”
“Snails?” his brothers said in horror. “We’re not investing a single dollar in snails.”
But Grandpa was certain he was onto something big. He ordered the snails anyway from a snail farmer in northern Africa. A few weeks later, on a hot day, three long, narrow containers arrived at his house. They looked like giant baskets with lids, and each weighed about as much as a ten-year-old child.
But Grandpa had a problem. The snails had to be kept in a cool place, like the cellar. But there was no way he could get the containers down the stairs. So he had a bright idea. He put the snails in paper grocery bags and taped the tops shut. Then he set bag after bag on the cellar floor. In the morning, he would drive them to restaurants and sell them. He figured he’d make about $2,000. If his brothers didn’t want to share in it, that was their loss.
The next day, Grandpa dressed in his best suit. Then he went down to the cellar to collect his little money-makers. When he turned on the light, the bags were gone. He looked around and saw snails everywhere—on the dirt floor, up the shelves, on the ceiling. The entire cellar was wiggling with snails.
Turned out, snails ate paper.
Yesterday, Alex had made Grandpa’s mistake. He thought that an air-filled plastic bag was a safe home for his crickets.
Turned out, crickets ate through plastic.
“I’ll f-f-f ...”
“I know, sweetie. You’ll find them.” She
stood up and playfully shook a finger at him. “You behave, hear me?”
He cupped a hand to his ear as if he didn’t hear her.
“Very funny. See you at five-thirty.” She pulled on her jacket and headed for the door. “School tomorrow, for sure.”
He didn’t look up.
“Alex?”
He rolled over and faced the wall.
Her voice was soft now. “Staying home won’t bring your father back, sweetheart.”
So far, the morning had been pretty decent, Alex decided. He’d put his baseball cards in order. He’d watched cartoons. He’d even filled Boris’s drinking sponge with water. Now it was after eleven o’clock, and he hadn’t even had breakfast. With his stomach growling, he grabbed a carton of milk and the Life cereal. Then he reached into the cupboard and took out two bowls.
He stopped. Stared at the bowls.
It had been their routine. Every morning, while his dad was shaving, Alex poured the cereal and set it on the table. His dad would finally arrive in the kitchen, still buttoning his police shirt or smoothing wet hair. Only then did Alex pour the milk. With cereal, you couldn’t pour the milk too early. The cereal had to be soft, but not too soft.
Alex put the bowls away. Cereal at lunch time was a lousy idea anyway.
What he really needed to do was find at least one of the escaped crickets for Boris’s next meal. Not that the spider would be hungry just yet. He’d had a cricket yesterday, before the great cricket escape. He didn’t really need to eat for another week, but Alex wanted him to keep his strength up.
Standing in the hallway, Alex tried to imagine where he’d go if he were a cricket. He glanced at the open window in the living room. Outside, that’s where he’d go. Especially if he knew he was meant to be food for a big, hairy spider.
He looked closely at the window for signs of a cricket break-out. But nothing had chewed through the screen. There wasn’t a crack wide enough for a cricket to wiggle through, either. Which was a good sign. It meant the crickets might be in the house still.