by Don Aker
“My Illyana,” said Mr. Brejovic. “Much so smarter than her papa.” He smiled broadly, and Jared recognized the same expression his mother often wore when she looked at Jared.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Brejovic,” said Jared.
“We’ll be working at the kitchen table, Papa,” Ellie said. “If you need anything—”
“I am being fine here,” he said. “But excuse me, please, if I’m starting to snore. The pain pills the doctor is giving me—” He yawned.
“You should be in bed now,” Ellie told him.
“Not before my news,” he said.
Ellie turned to Jared. “He’s hooked on news programs,” she explained.
“There is so much to be learning about the world,” her father said, yawning again. “You two go and be working, please. I am being fine.”
Jared and Ellie sat down at the kitchen table. Even before Jared had opened his math binder to the homework Mr. Keaton had given them that day, he could hear Mr. Brejovic snoring gently. Jared glanced at Ellie, who shook her head.
“There is so much to be learning about the world,” she said.
Jared chuckled.
“So four-fifths plus a sixth is still less than one whole,” said Jared.
“You’re sure about that?” asked Ellie.
He frowned and was in mid-shrug when he caught himself. He smiled. “Yeah. I am sure.”
Ellie gave him a thumbs-up. “You should be. You know this stuff now.”
A loud, guttural snore filtered through the doorway off the kitchen, and Jared was suddenly conscious of the dark beyond the windows. “Gee, I should be going,” he said. He got up from the table and slid his binder into his bag. He was glad he’d brought his warm jacket with him. The nights were a lot colder now.
Ellie followed him down the hallway. Zipping up his jacket, Jared turned to her. There was something he wanted to say, but he didn’t know how. “I want—” He stopped.
“Did you forget something?” she asked, looking around.
He shook his head. “I really want to thank you for all the help you’ve been givin’ me,” he said, embarrassment forcing the words out in a rush. His tongue felt like it was hinged on both ends, but he forged on. “You’re real good at this, Ellie. You ever think ’a bein’ a teacher?”
Now she was the one who flushed, embarrassed. She smiled shyly, nodding toward the photographs. “My mother was a teacher,” she said quietly. She seemed about to say something else, but stopped.
“So you’re gonna follow after her?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I like it, but it’s not what I think I want to do.”
Jared was surprised. “What’s that?” he asked.
She looked down. “You’ll just laugh.”
“No, really,” he said. “What is it?”
She looked at him for a moment, as if deciding something. “Do you have time to look at something?” she asked.
He nodded. “Sure.”
Ellie led him into the room where the iguana still lay sprawled on the back of the sofa and through a doorway beyond. “Wow!” he said, frozen in mid-step, his eyes widening.
On three sides of the room were the largest aquariums he had ever seen, not counting the enormous tanks at the Fisheries Museum in Lunenburg, where he’d gone on a class trip when he was in grade four. Although the curtains were drawn, the room was far from dark, lit softly by the light cast from the aquariums’ underwater lamps.
“Wow,” Jared repeated as he stared at the illuminated fish and plant life. “Can I look?” But he didn’t wait for an answer, his feet drawn like magnets to the aquatic displays. “Those are sailfin mollies,” he said, his voice filled with awe as he pointed at several bulb-eyed creatures. “And look at the size of that pleco! Jeez, it must be half as long as my arm. You musta had him forever!”
“You know a lot about fish,” Ellie said. He could hear the surprise in her voice, but she seemed pleased that Jared had noticed. “This guy was my first,” she said, pointing at the pleco. “All the others in my first aquarium died. I didn’t know how to take care of them, but this one survived. He’s a tough one.”
“What’s his name?” he asked.
“Calypso,” she replied.
“After Cousteau’s ship.” It was an observation, not a question.
Now it was her eyes that resembled those of the mollies. “How’d you know that?”
Jared knelt on the floor in front of one of the aquariums, never taking his eyes off the spectacular rainbowfish and gouramis inside. “That’s my dog’s name. I call him Cal, for short. I named him after Jacques Cousteau’s boat that he used to explore—” He suddenly stopped, turning toward her with a wide grin on his face. “Jacques? You named your lizard after him?”
Ellie laughed. “Weird, I know—”
Jared cut her off. “Not weird at all. I think it’s cool.” His gaze wandered back to the tanks. “I always wanted an aquarium, but Mom said a dog was too much already in our small place. If she’d got me one, though, I’d have named my fish after people like Cousteau. Divers, people who explore the oceans…” He trailed off.
“How d’you know all this stuff?” Ellie asked.
Jared stood up, his eyes lingering on the aquariums. “You wouldn’t believe me,” he said softly.
“Sure I would. Tell me.”
He turned to face her. “You promise you won’t laugh?”
“I promise.”
“When I was in grade four, our teacher did an oceans theme. Dolphins, sharks, sea turtles, stuff like that. She showed us one of Jacques Cousteau’s underwater films—The Silent World—and ever since then I’ve wanted to be a marine biologist.”
Her sudden laughter surprised him. Reddening, he looked down at the floor. He’d been an idiot to tell her.
“Sorry,” she said, “I’m not laughing at you.” When he didn’t look up, she continued, “Really, I’m not. It’s just that I want to be a marine biologist, too!”
Jared’s jaw dropped. “No way!”
“Really,” she said. “Since I was old enough to know what one was.” Now it was Ellie’s turn to look down and, when she spoke again, Jared had to strain to hear her words. “You know I don’t really fit in,” she said. “I guess I’ve spent my whole life on the outside of things.” Jared expected her voice to trail off altogether, but instead, it became stronger. “I’ve gotten good at watching people, seeing the way they act, even figuring out why they do the things they do.” She knelt by the nearest aquarium and peered through the glass, gently tracing with her fingertips the languid movement of a rainbowfish. “So when I first read about marine biologists, I decided that’s what I wanted to be. I knew I’d be good at it, studying creatures underwater.” She paused for a moment, and Jared heard her swallow before she continued. “A person couldn’t be alone in the ocean when there’s all that life around you.”
Jared didn’t know what to say. He thought of all the times he’d seen Ellie with a book in her hand and just assumed she was reading. Had she been watching the activity around her all those times? All alone on the outside looking in?
Still watching the movements of the fish, Ellie remarked, “You know, I would’ve thought you wanted to be a professional basketball player.”
Jared nodded. “Me and my buddy Steve, we sometimes talk about that, imagine what it would be like. But only a few players ever make pro. Besides, it’s what I do for fun. I think I’ll always play basketball, no matter where I end up, but I think makin’ it a job would ruin it, you know?” What did Ellie do for fun, he wondered. Was fun even something she ever had? Jared tried to change the subject. “I think it’d be cool to study sea life for a living. I watch those underwater shows on the Discovery Channel all the time. I saw one last week about creatures that live really deep in the ocean. There was this one fish that even makes its own light.”
“I saw that, too,” Ellie said. “The one about the lanternfish.”
“Yeah. Amazin’, huh?”
Ellie stood up. “Did you see the one about the Great Barrier Reef in Australia?”
“Twice,” said Jared. “The part about the sharks was the best!”
They talked animatedly about how the divers protected themselves from the great whites and what it must be like to see one of those predators up close. Ellie was in the middle of telling him about a book she’d borrowed from the library about sharks when she paused. “Jared,” she said after a moment, “why’d you think I’d laugh at you wanting to be a marine biologist?”
He looked down again, self-conscious. “The math.”
“What d’you mean?”
“You need tons of maths and sciences to become one. My mom told me.”
She nodded slowly. “You and the math thing,” she said.
“Yeah. Me and the math thing.” He grimaced. “Look, you won’t tell anybody about this, will you? I mean, my mom knows, but I’ve never told anyone else. Not even Steve. It’d be like a blind guy sayin’ he wanted to be a dri-vin’ instructor.” He managed a wry smile.
“Jared,” Ellie said, “I think you can do anything you put your mind to.”
He just shrugged.
“I mean it,” she said. “Look at what you’ve done so far.”
“But that’s only because of you,” he said.
She frowned. “Does Mr. Jamieson take the credit when you sink a shot?”
Jared blinked. “That’s different.”
“How’s it different? He shows you how to do it and you do it. I haven’t been doing your assignments and quizzes for you, have I? I showed you some things, but you did the rest yourself. Not me.”
Jared felt embarrassed all over again. “Well, thanks…” he began.
“Don’t thank me,” Ellie said. “Just know that you can do this math. The marine biology thing, too, I bet. Really.”
Waiting at the bus stop to go home, Jared replayed his and Ellie’s conversation over and over in his head. Sure, it was easy for Ellie to say he could do whatever he wanted, but she wasn’t inside his head. He knew better. And that bit about becoming a marine biologist? Right. He couldn’t even see beyond Wednesday, when they would write the big math test. The test that would decide for sure if he’d be playing the season with the Cougars.
He tugged his coat collar up against the cold and peered down the street for the familiar lights of the Metro Transit bus. But except for the streetlamps, all he could see was darkness.
CHAPTER 16
“And there were four people who handed in exemplary work,” said Mr. Keaton as he passed back their math assignments. “Kristie, Jared, Ellie, and Rafe. Great graphs, people.”
Rafe was the last one to collect his work from the teacher. He took the long route back to his seat, passing by Jared’s desk. “You’re turning into a real brainer, Jared,” he said, his voice low. Jared was pretty sure it wasn’t meant as a compliment, though. Maybe it had something to do with the hard-edged smile on Rafe’s face. Or the way he crinkled his paper in his hands as he walked by.
Jared looked down at the assignment Mr. Keaton had returned to him and read the comment the teacher had written. Outstanding work, Jared. You definitely know what you are doing here. Keep it up! Was he really turning into a brainer? Or was he just fooling everybody, including himself?
The momentary rush of pleasure he felt was shortlived. Mr. Keaton began discussing the term test they would be writing the next day, how it would consist of various parts to reflect the topics and strategies they had been practising in math so far. Some sections of the test would be paper-and-pencil figuring, some sections would involve mental math and estimating, and some sections would require them to use manipulative materials such as the base ten blocks, Fraction Factory pieces, and two-colour counters they had been working with since the beginning of the school year. Jared listened to the teacher’s explanation with a growing sense of unease, and even the terrific mark he’d just received on the graphing assignment did not keep the ball of lead from forming in his stomach, didn’t keep it from growing and rolling around inside, knocking against the wall of his chest. Surely that wasn’t his heart hammering in there. Nothing short of heavy metal could pound so loudly against his ribs.
Jared gripped the edge of his desk, pressing his fingers against the smooth, cool surface to remind himself that he was sitting in a classroom, not facing a firing squad. He tried to think of other things, things not involving school-work. Like what was going on with his mother, for example. He’d arrived home from Ellie’s last night and found his mother watching television, some ridiculous reality TV program where ex-partners lived together in a sealed warehouse, their actions and conversations recorded and played back over and over so viewers first got to listen to them talk and then, on top of that, got to listen to them talk about what they talked about. His mother ordinarily hated shows like that—she usually made fun of the people on the screen, telling them what idiots they were, how they should get real lives and stop their non-stop whining on TV But this time she’d been glued to the TV when he came in, actually listening to what the show’s participants were saying.
Jared had asked her right off about her date, but her response was vague. “It was nice,” she’d said absent-mindedly, her eyes returning to the screen. Come to think of it now, though, he wondered if maybe she’d just been pretending to be interested in the program so she wouldn’t have to talk to him about her evening. When he’d asked her who her date was, she’d just shrugged off the question and pointed at the television—in other words, Don’t interrupt me.
He wondered who the man was. His mother hadn’t dated since DVD Guy. Oh, sure, she’d gone out with people from work, but those didn’t really qualify as dates, more like friends unwinding, having a good time together. Jared thought for a minute. Hadn’t she mentioned that Jerry guy from the hospital a few times? No, Jared didn’t really think there was anything going on there. After all, what future could there be for a couple named Terri and Jerry? Sounded more like cartoon characters than people in a regular relationship. Of course, after watching a few minutes of that dumb reality TV show, who could be sure what a regular relationship was?
But then he remembered the envelope he’d found in the trash, the one she’d torn the return address off. If she was seeing someone, why keep it a secret? Why would she not want him to know who it was?
Jared had tried to talk to Steve about it on the way to school, but Steve had misunderstood, told Jared he was just being jealous and should butt out.
“I’m not jealous,” Jared objected. “I don’t care if my mom has a guy in her life.” After all, her divorce had been finalized years ago, so there wasn’t much chance of her getting back with the tall guy. Jared didn’t even think of that person as his dad. Too much time had passed, too much of their lives had gone on without him. Besides, ex-partners weren’t exactly good choices for—
Jared froze. He thought again about the program his mother had sat watching, pretending to be mesmerized by it. Or maybe not pretending at all. The show was about people and their ex-partners. Ex-husbands and ex-wives getting back together. Jared tried to shake away the prickle he felt race up his spine. Ex-husbands. It couldn’t be. Could it? Suddenly, it wasn’t just math that was confusing.
“You okay?”
Jared looked up from his lunch tray to see Ellie standing by his table, looking more than a little out of place.
“All right if I sit down?” she asked softly.
Jared glanced around, wondering who else was still in the cafeteria. Most of his friends had already eaten and left, like Steve, whose dad had picked him up and taken him to the dentist. Jared had just been sitting there lost in thought again, puzzling over his mother’s mystery date. “Uh, sure,” he said. He looked down to see he’d barely touched his sloppy joe. Now there was a name that said it all.
Ellie sat in the seat across from Jared. He noticed she’d made the more sensible choice of tomato soup and crackers. How could they go wrong with sou
p? “You feeling all right?” she asked.
Jared raised his eyebrows. “Me? Why?”
Ellie dragged a cracker through her soup. The liquid reminded Jared of red paint. Or blood. Maybe there was a way to ruin tomato soup, after all.
“You’ve been staring at your food for the last five minutes,” she offered quietly. She nodded toward the table across from them. “I was sitting over there watching you.”
Jared thought of her comment last night about watching people. What had she said? I’ve spent my whole life on the outside of things. He thought of her sitting at the other table looking at him, thought about how tough it must have been for her to pick up her tray and come over. Maybe almost as tough as writing a math test was for him. He didn’t know what to say. He looked down, grimaced, and pointed to his plate. “Sloppy joes. They’re not just for breakfast any more.”
Ellie grinned and raised her soggy cracker, but it fell apart in mid-bite, half of it sliding down her chin and onto her shirt. “Oh…” she sputtered. “I probably look like something from a bad horror movie.”
“Ever hear of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes?” Jared asked. He and Steve had rented the movie half a dozen times, hooting at the film’s campy horror. “You’re victim twelve.” He offered her his untouched napkin.
“Really, though,” she continued after dipping the napkin in her glass of water and blotting the soup off her shirt, “you okay? You looked worried about something.”
“Not worried,” he said. “Just…confused, I guess.”
She sighed. “Remember, you just have to read the problems over two or three times first. Don’t jump in till you’re sure you—”
Jared laughed. “Believe it or not, for once I wasn’t talkin’ about math.”
“What then?”
He looked at her across the table, and for the first time he noticed that Ellie had blue eyes. Not the kind of washed-out blue you see on most people, the blue that looks like it wants to be something else—gray, maybe, or green. No, really blue, the kind you see in travel ads where people splash around in water that smacks you in the face with its blueness. Like you’d just seen blue for the very first time and didn’t know what you’d been missing. That kind of blue.