by Susan Hughes
The Four Seasons
of Patrick
Susan Hughes
Copyright © 2013 Susan Hughes
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Published in the U.S. by Red Deer Press
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Edited for the Press by Peter Carver
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Cover and text design by Daniel Choi
We acknowledge with thanks the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Hughes, Susan, 1960-, author
Four seasons of Patrick / Susan Hughes.
eISBN 978-1-55244-318-7, print 978-0-88995-505-9
I. Title.
PS8565.U42F68 2013 jC813’.54 C2013-904214-8
Publisher Cataloging-in-Publication Data (U.S.)
Hughes, Susan.
Four seasons of Patrick / Susan Hughes.
[80] p. : cm.
Summary When Patrick’s father announces he is going to marry again and bring his new wife’s seven-year-old daughter Claire into the family, Patrick is distressed. He and his friend Harry build a tree house where they can hangout without being bothered by Claire. It takes a while for Patrick to realize that Claire is also feeling out of her element, and he can help boost her spirits by offering her space in the tree house as well.
ISBN-13: 978-0-88995-505-9 (pbk.)
1. Children of divorced parents – Family relationships – Juvenile fiction. 2. Divorce – Juvenile fiction. 3. Stepfamilies – Juvenile fiction. I. Title
[Fic] dc23 PZ7.H84547 2013
For my parents, Iris and Ray Hughes,
with all my love
WINTER
1
Snow Day
It was early Saturday morning. My eyes had just opened. Out my window, I saw the white tree tops. “Yippee!” I cheered. The first snow of winter was here—and on a Saturday, too!
I dressed quickly and raced downstairs. I was off to Harry’s house. He’s my best friend and we love the snow. That’s why we have a winter tradition. On the first snowy day of the year, we play outside together all day long. We have our first snow fight, we make our first snowman, and we make our first toboggan run.
But Dad stopped me at the door. He had a plate of blueberry pancakes in one hand and a pitcher of maple syrup in the other.
“What about Harry and our tradition?” I asked.
“The snow tradition comes after the breakfast tradition,” Dad told me with a grin.
I ate quickly, then bundled up. “See you later, Dad.”
“Sure thing, Patrick,” he said.
I was heading for the door when he added, “Oh, don’t forget, Patrick. Linda and Claire are coming for dinner tonight.”
“Again?” I complained. Linda and her seven-year-old daughter Claire had just been here for dinner two weeks ago. My chest felt tight. “I like it best when it’s just the three of us—you and Trevor and me.” Trevor’s my older brother.
“I like that, too,” Dad said, “but sometimes it’s nice to have other people join us. Like your friend Harry, right? Sometimes you like to invite him for dinner.” He paused. “Well, it’s kind of the same for me with Linda.”
I looked at Dad. It didn’t seem at all the same to me. Harry had been my friend forever. Since before Mom died. When Harry came for dinner, he wasn’t taking someone else’s place.
But there was no way I wanted to talk about it. I didn’t even want to think about it. And I could tell that Dad didn’t really want to talk about it, either. Otherwise, he’d just do it. Talk, that is. Straight out. Like he usually did, no matter what it was, no matter whether I wanted to listen or not.
Plus, there wasn’t time to talk. Not right now. Harry was waiting, and this was the first snowy day of the year. I wasn’t going to let anything ruin that.
So I just shrugged and said goodbye to Dad. And he said goodbye again, too.
And then, finally, there I was, outside! I pulled the toboggan out of the shed. I started across the field of white. Harry lived on the next farm to ours, but it was a bit of a walk, especially through the snow.
Soon I saw him, a tiny dark speck in all that white. When I got closer, I could see more of him. He was sitting where he usually waited for me, on top of a fence rail. He saw me, too. Harry began to wave both arms. He jumped off the fence and ran. He was a comet, hurtling toward me, a tail of snow behind him.
When we were close, Harry yelled, “Take that!” He threw a mittful of powdery snow at me.
I let go of the toboggan cord. I yelled, “Take that!” scooping snow in both hands and throwing it at him.
The fight was on. Snow flew through the air, a whirlwind, a snowstorm. Handfuls of it. Armfuls of it. It was in the air, flying in all directions. It felt like freedom. It was our first winter snow fight.
When we stopped, panting, we were covered from head to toe in snow.
“Ha! We’re snowmen!” I told Harry. “Abominable snowmen!”
Harry and I stalked back and forth like abominable snowmen, our arms stiffly at our sides, our faces menacing. We gnashed our teeth and chanted, “We are Abominables! We are Abominables!”
Then, suddenly, we shook off the snow. “Time for our first toboggan run!” yelled Harry. “Let’s go!”
We hurried across the frozen fields toward the pit.
But when we were almost there, we saw the snow tracks. They always have a story to tell.
I went first. “There are two sets,” I said. “A fox and a rabbit. So a fox and a rabbit come from two directions and they meet here.” I pointed at a trampled area.
Harry pointed into the distance. “Only one set of tracks continues on. The fox caught the rabbit.”
“And off he went,” I said, ending the story.
We wanted to make our mark, too. So we stomped our names in the middle of a field.
P A T R I C K
H A R R Y
“An outer-space alien could read these letters,” said Harry.
“Glad to meet you,” I yelled up into space. “And what’s your name?!”
We reached the steep snowy bank. The pit lay below, deep with snow. We were on top of the world.
“Yahoo!” I cried.
“Yahoo!” cried Harry.
We threw ourselves on the toboggan and shoved off. We swept down the hill. Whoosh! We flew like the wind!
Over and over again, Harry and I trudged up the bank and then hurtled back down the hill.
When our snow day was over, we said goodbye at Harry�
��s laneway.
“It was a perfect snow day,” I said.
“Perfect,” Harry agreed.
“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” I said.
“Yippee! We can do it all over again,” said Harry.
I laughed. It’s great having a friend who thinks the way you do.
2
Star Memories
I didn’t see Linda’s car in the driveway. But maybe Dad had picked up Linda and Claire in our truck. Or maybe they were just late.
“They aren’t coming tonight, after all,” Dad said. “Claire’s stomach is bothering her. They’re going to come tomorrow night instead.”
Dad’s smile was more like a shrug. He was trying to make like he wasn’t disappointed, but I could tell he was. This not showing up happened a lot. Claire seemed to get sudden colds or sore throats or fevers on the days that she and her mom were supposed to come here for dinner.
Anyway, I felt sorry for Dad, but it was fine by me. It meant that at dinner, it was just Dad, Trevor, and me, after all. There was lots of room around the table. There was lots of space to talk. I got to tell Dad and Trevor about my snow day with Harry. About all our firsts.
“Sounds great,” Dad smiled.
After we put away our dishes in the kitchen, I looked out the window. Darkness had settled on the farm.
Dad looked, too. “The sky is clear. Looks like a perfect star evening,” he said. “Let’s go for our walk, the three of us.”
The snow-day tradition belonged to Harry and me. But my family has a tradition, too. The walk under the stars. We do it when the night is clear. We do it when the stars call out to us.
So we all bundled up. Together, Dad, Trevor, and I walked up the lane.
The tree branches stretched like bony skeletons above our heads. A farm dog barked way off in the distance.
Trevor wrapped the scarf around his face. Only his eyes peeked out the top.
I shivered. The insides of my boots were still wet from sledding.
Trevor talked about his first set of high school exams, which were coming up soon. Dad told a funny story about high school. He told about meeting Mom for the first time. He pretended to do her voice, teasing him. We all laughed.
We reached the road, where our world joined the wide world. Then we turned and walked back down our lane. We stood in the open yard outside our farmhouse, looking up at the sky, looking for the star.
Each season, the star moved. As time went on, it circled round and round overhead. It was hard for me to keep track of it. I always wanted to be the first one to spot it, but I never was.
Tonight, like always, Trevor saw the star before me. “There it is. Mom’s star.” He pointed.
Tonight, like always, Trevor told the story.
“It was a spring night and the sky was clear, like tonight. It was April. We didn’t know yet that Mom was sick.
“We were all there, the three of us and Mom,” Trevor went on. “We were all looking up at the night sky, looking at the stars.”
Trevor told about Mom choosing the star. “She said: ‘That star. That’s the one.’”
My heart ached. I liked hearing the story, but I couldn’t remember that spring night. I couldn’t remember Mom before she got sick. I always felt left out, like I wasn’t part of the story. Like there was room enough in that whole huge sky for Mom and Trevor and Dad, but not for me.
Trevor ended the story the way he always did. “And this is what Mom said to us:
‘Wherever I go, wherever I end up in this wide universe …
Wherever you go, wherever you end up in this wide universe …
That star will be our star.
That’s the one that will connect us.’”
The night air was quiet. Far away, the farm dog barked again.
“Okay, boys, time to go in now,” Dad said. We climbed up the porch steps together.
I got ready for bed and, when I went to my room, I looked out the window at Mom’s star. It connected us, sure. But I missed her, and I wished I could remember that night, and Mom not being sick.
3
My Own Words
The next day was Sunday. I looked outside. Yup, the snow still covered the fields and lay on the tree branches. Winter was here to stay.
Again, Harry and I played together all day. We went sledding at the snowy sand pit. We had lunch at Harry’s house. Then, afterward, we played in the woods.
When we got to my house, Dad said I could invite Harry for dinner. He reminded me that Linda and Claire would be there, too.
“Who are they?” Harry asked as we washed up.
“Linda is just a friend of my dad’s, I guess.” I shrugged. “She lives in town. And Claire is her daughter. She’s only seven. She’s a pest.”
Dinner was peas and mashed potatoes and chicken.
Claire threw peas at me when her mother wasn’t looking. She kicked me under the table. She put gravy and potatoes in her mouth, chewed, and then opened her mouth so I could see in.
Harry grinned at her, but he was just being nice. She was so annoying.
“Thanks for the meal, Mr. McAllister,” Harry told my dad. “My mom’s going to pick me up soon. I better get ready.” He said goodbye to Trevor. He said goodnight to Claire and Linda, too.
Linda pushed her chair back. She went round to Harry and held out her hand, all formal. “It was nice to meet you, Harry. It’s good to meet a friend of Patrick’s.” Her voice was soft but steady, like she meant it.
Suddenly, it was too crowded inside. Harry went to put his winter jacket and his snow pants back on, and I put mine on, too. “I’ll wait outside with you,” I told Harry.
“Can I come, too?” Claire asked, suddenly beside me, pulling on my sleeve.
“No,” I said.
“Please?” she asked. Her eyes were bright blue. One of her pigtails had come undone. “Please?”
“No,” I said again.
Harry and I waited outside in the cold night air for his mother. He made a snow angel in the yard, and I did, too. Then we lay still, side by side, waiting, gazing up at the sky.
And now I saw it. I saw the star. I saw it first.
“There it is.” I pointed. “Mom’s star!”
“What?” Harry asked.
”Mom’s star,” I repeated.
“What do you mean? How can it be your mom’s star?”
The winter night was still. Trevor and Dad weren’t there. There were no one else’s memories of Mom, and no one else’s words to tell about her.
I told the star story to Harry. I didn’t use the same words that Trevor always did. They didn’t seem right, now that it was me telling the story.
I chose my own words and I put them together in the way I wanted.
And when I got to the end of the story, it seemed right to use the words my mother had said, the way Trevor always does:
“Wherever I go, wherever I end up in this wide universe …
Wherever you go, wherever you end up in this wide universe …
That will be our star.
That’s the one that will connect us.”
“Wow,” Harry said softly. “That’s so cool.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. It was cool. The star did connect us, and so did telling the story about the star. I couldn’t remember that night, or Mom choosing the star, or her saying those words, but when I told the story about it, the story connected me to Mom and to Dad and Trevor. I wasn’t left out, after all.
Harry and I lay there, two snow angels. We lay in the winter darkness, gazing up at Mom’s star together.
SPRING
1
The Oyster
It was raining again. And cold.
I stared out the classroom window. It had been raining for days. I had pumped up the tires on my bicycle two weeks ago, when the last snow melted. But it was still too rainy and too cold to ride.
When would spring really come?
“Students!” Ms. Dean sounded excited. “Today, on this gloomy
afternoon, we are going to learn something about a very special creature. A creature that always reminds me of winter turning to spring.”
Ms. Dean put a poster on the board. We all laughed when we saw “the creature.”
“A clam?” Harry asked.
“An oyster, actually. Not a clam,” Ms. Dean grinned. “And you’ll see why it reminds me of spring. Maybe it will end up reminding you of spring, too.”
“Is it alive? It looks … dead,” said Jill, with a shudder.
“It does look dead,” Ms Dean agreed, “but it isn’t. An oyster has a hard shell on the outside.”
She showed us another poster. “This shows the shell opened up. Like a snail, an oyster has a soft body on the inside.” She pointed to it. “It also has an organ called a mantle, which uses minerals from the oyster’s food to make a material called nacre. The oyster’s shell is made from nacre.”
We all stared at the squishy oyster body and the shiny shell.
“Sometimes a tiny something gets into the oyster’s shell and irritates it,” Ms. Dean told us. “It’s like … like getting a splinter in your finger, except the oyster can’t get rid of it. It’s there to stay.”
I thought of Claire. She didn’t seem to get sick as often on the days she was supposed to come to our house for dinner. Over the past three months, she’d gone into my room and colored on my star charts. She had hidden in the closet and jumped out at me, yelling “Boo!” She had followed me around the yard in her rain boots. Harry told me a few weeks ago that his family was going to have a new baby and he was excited. He wanted a little sister. I couldn’t imagine anything worse. Another kid in the house? A younger one? It was bad enough having Claire around so much. Each time, after Claire went home, our house always seemed extra quiet, full of excellent empty spaces.