Short for Chameleon

by Vicki Grant

  “I just realized something,” I said to her. “He’s got the same tie on he had that night.” It was worth a try.

  Raylene looked at him, then shook her head. “No. Sorry. I’m pretty sure he had a green tie on that night. There’s that shot of him, munching on that itty-bitty tiny little drumstick? You know the one. I distinctly remember a green tie.”

  I conked myself on the forehead. “You’re right. It was Len Pineiro in the blue tie . . . hold on. Is Len the bald guy? Or is that Dave Leibowitz? Anyway, it was the bald guy in blue . . .”

  That wiped the smile off his face. The security guy got us each by the elbow again and had almost frog-marched us out the door when Schmidt went, “Stop. Stop. Bring ’em here.”

  He looked back and forth between the two of us, then he said, “All right. What’s your angle?”

  “How do you know there’s an angle? Maybe we just want to see you squirm.” Raylene was loving this.

  “I’ve been in this business since before you were born. I know how this works.”

  “Well, then, why aren’t you getting out your wallet?”

  “Are you blackmailing me?”

  “Why, yes, we are.” Raylene turned to me and smiled sweetly. “Wouldn’t Granny be proud?”

  CHAPTER 44

  The ceremony was pulled together pretty fast but there was still a reasonable turnout from the press. The restaurant was almost full. (The free wine and appetizers might have helped.)

  Some PR lady introduced him, then Wade Schmidt sauntered up to the microphone, big game-show-host of a smile on his face. He welcomed everyone, especially Raylene and me for making this possible, then launched into his speech. He talked about his humble beginnings and how he owed so much of his success to the older people who’d given him money to get started in business.

  “Given isn’t quite the word I’d use,” Raylene whispered but we let it pass.

  “That’s why I’m so delighted,” he went on to say, “to be able to present this award today to someone who cares so deeply about the welfare of our older citizens. Ladies and Gentlemen: Ms. Janie Aikens!”

  Janie hadn’t even realized she was in the running for the Albertina Legge Small Business Award but, she explained, it couldn’t have come at a better time. The money was enough for her to buy a permanent spot for her adult daycare centre. She talked a little bit about how she’d grown up without elders in her life and how she regarded it as a privilege to be able to live with and learn from them now.

  Her boyfriend, Neill, was in tears by the end. So were a couple of the cameramen. The media finished up the hors d’oeuvre tray, then got on their way, but Schmidt insisted that we stay for dinner afterwards. On the house, of course.

  We decided that some day, we’d tell Janie who her grandmother was, but not yet. We wanted her to enjoy her big night. And I think she did. We all did. Janie was funny. Neill was cool. They both played in an indie band called Not Exactly as Pictured. I’d worn my best funeral suit. Raylene was in her bridesmaid dress. We held hands under the table where no one could see. Everything added up to me being cautiously optimistic about getting my kiss that night.

  Even though we were stuffed after the prime rib, Raylene and I shared a piece of blueberry cheesecake. (We forced ourselves to. It was ten dollars a slice and neither of us could see having that type of cash to blow on dessert for a while.)

  “You look like you’re wearing purple lipstick,” I said, which I actually kind of liked but she got all goofy about it. She excused herself to clean the blueberries off her lips, but I wouldn’t let go of her hand.

  She looked at me and laughed, then leaned down and whispered, “Don’t be dumb. I’m coming back.” She still hadn’t let me see where she lived, but she’d promised she would that night. She maybe sort of kissed me then—I don’t know, her lips touched my ear, anyway—and left but I kept watching her all the way to the washroom.

  That’s why I was looking when the two cops walked up to her. She turned to see who it was, big smile on her face, then her eyes went huge and her mouth opened and she suddenly stuck her arms out straight and rammed right into them. The cops didn’t even budge, so she tried to scramble past them, but those steampunk shoes of hers couldn’t have had much of a grip. She slipped and took a table down with her. She was trying to crawl away on all fours when the bigger cop caught her by the hem of her skirt, then got an arm around her waist and pulled her off the floor. After that, her legs were just spinning in the air like a cartoon character’s.

  By that time, I’d shaken Neill off me and I was up and running towards her, but the other cop had his hand out in a stop sign and was going, “Stand back, son,” like he meant it. “This has nothing to do with you.” Even though it clearly did. Raylene was screaming, “Cam! Cam! Help me! Cam!”

  Then Janie and Neill were behind me, trying to talk sense into the cops (at least they were on my side now) and Raylene was still screaming and struggling and biting, but it wasn’t stopping them. They muscled her out the door and I heard Janie say, “What’s happening? Do you know what’s going on?” I turned around and there was Schmidt, all calm and concerned. “There seems to have been a warrant out for her arrest,” he said. “How unfortunate. She was such a nice girl.”

  He ushered us back to our seats and waved for more wine, then he smiled and whispered in my ear, “A word of advice, son. Never scam a scammer.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Dalton arranged for his limo driver, Fred, to take me.

  Suraj had volunteered to come, but he couldn’t afford to miss another shift at the deli. Dad said he’d come too. In fact, for a while, he’d kind of insisted on coming, but he eventually clued in to the fact that this was something I had to do myself.

  “And, anyway, how much trouble can she get you into when she’s under house arrest?” That was a joke. I tried to laugh. He said sorry and let me go.

  It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive. Dalton had made sure I had lots of food and the latest Grand Theft Auto, but I wasn’t interested in either.

  Her name, apparently, was Hannah.

  Hannah Jean Sutherland. Jean, after her grandmother. Who she’d lived with. Until she’d taken off, that is. She was back there now.

  Suraj was the one who’d found out. I went crazy after the cops took her. I called the police station but they wouldn’t tell me anything, and there was nothing on the news, other than a couple lines about a teenaged girl being arrested for car theft and several counts of break-and-enter. She was a minor so they didn’t give her name.

  Some time later, Suraj’s mother had her regular bimonthly hissy fit and made him clean his quarter of the bedroom. He came across the files we’d taken from Albertina’s. There was a MISSING poster in the pile, with the staples still dangling from when she’d torn it off a telephone pole. The girl in the picture had long, dark hair, no glasses, and no nose ring. Suraj only looked at the poster because he thought she was pretty, not because he thought it was her.

  He also wanted to know if there was a reward, so he read the fine print. He saw that bit about the brown eye with the green stripe. He called me.

  I called Dad. Told him everything. He lost it, big-time. Getting into a stolen car with a girl who couldn’t drive and playing chicken with a well-known psychopath apparently fell into the stupid-things-I-warned-you-never-to-do category. (To be fair, I didn’t remember him ever saying anything about psychopaths.)

  He screamed. He cried. He grounded me until I was twenty-one. And then he ate a whole tray of lasagna and calmed down.

  He came into my room without knocking. He sat next to me on my bed. He put his hands around my neck and pretended to strangle me.

  “You and me,” he said, “we only have each other. Believe it or not, I can’t just go out and rent myself another son—so you are not allowed to torture me like this. Get it?”

  “I get it.”

  He repeated himself several times.

  “Yeah. I know,” I said.

  H
e flipped my duvet over me, then rolled me up like a big breakfast wrap and sat on me.

  “Why are you doing this? Would you quit it? I told you. I get it.” My voice was all muffled.

  He didn’t move.

  “Why am I doing this? Why?! Because I don’t know what else to do. It’s awkward, I know, but this is how I express my love, and also, of course, how I punish you for the hell you just put me through.”

  He sat on me for way longer than was funny or reasonable. It kind of hurt. Neither of us spoke. He always used to say, “No one gives you an instruction manual on how to be a parent.” That much was clear.

  I finally said, “Seriously. Would you get off me?”

  “I’d sit here forever if I had to. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure. You’re a real Horton Hears a Who.”

  “And you’re a lippy, hare-brained, inconsiderate, ungrateful kid who almost got himself killed several times. But I love you more than anything in the world.” He got off me. “I got to go to work.”

  He messed up my hair and pushed my face into my pillow. I let him do it, then I said, “Dad, I need to find Raylene.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said and he left.

  That night, he called Ryan Sumner, the cop I’d nephewed for last summer. Ryan did a little digging around and called back with info the next day, even though it meant he could lose his job. (Sometimes Almost Family people turn out to be better than family.) Raylene was apparently a runaway from somewhere in Guysborough County.

  That’s where I was heading now. I’d never been this far out in the country before. I didn’t know if Fred was taking the scenic route or if all roads in the boonies were like this. There were actual cows in actual fields, walking around like they owned the place. I knew she drove a tractor, but it had just seemed like the type of quirky hobby someone like her would pick up, not something she’d have to do to survive or whatever. I couldn’t believe that she was a real farm girl. It sounded so primitive, like saying she was a milkmaid, or a wench, or a druid high priestess (although that, frankly, I could sort of picture.)

  Ryan had told Dad her last known address in the city was St. Cuthbert’s Youth Shelter. When I’d heard that, everything sort of came together for me. I went to Reverend Muncaster’s office.

  I sat down across the desk from her and she pushed a tray of Nanaimo bars at me. “Eat. Sally Fenton’s funeral. Enough for an army. Now, what can I do for you?”

  I told her.

  She looked at me funny for a sec, then she nodded. I think that’s when she sort of figured it out too.

  “I thought I saw Raylene out back after Albertina’s funeral, but then I said to myself, couldn’t be. They didn’t know each other, and anyway, that dress! The kid I knew from the shelter would never wear something like that . . .”

  She always starts her sermons with a little joke. Loosens people up.

  “I didn’t know much more about her until the police called. I’d thought she was Raylene Butler. Just another runaway with a sad home life. I shouldn’t say just—but you know. Raylene didn’t give much away. I certainly didn’t realize she was one of the Gooderham twins until the cop gave me the lowdown.”

  I went, “Gooderham?”

  “Long story.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Okay. But have something to eat, then.” She pushed the squares at me again. “You’ve gotten so thin.”

  I ate. She talked.

  “It was a famous court case around here, must have been almost fifteen years ago now, I guess. There was a car crash. The father was driving. He survived, just barely, but the mother was killed. Utterly tragic. The only thing worse was what followed. The two sets of grandparents got into a knock-’em-down drag-’em-out custody battle over the babies. The mother’s side blamed the father for the death. Wanted to keep both children. The father’s side felt it was an accident and so were, of course, enraged. Everybody was heartbroken. Everybody needed someone to blame. The judge eventually decided to divide the twins. The boy went to the father’s people and stayed a Gooderham. The girl went to the mother’s and became a Sutherland.”

  “Why did the girl”—I couldn’t call her Hannah—“run away? Did they beat her or something?”

  “Don’t know. She never told me. They rarely do. And I don’t ask. My job is just to make kids feel safe and loved while they’re here.”

  “Do you know what happened to the brother?”

  “I do now. After the Bounce Back fundraiser, I realized she’d lost someone to suicide, but I didn’t know the details. When the cops told me who she was, I googled the case just to refresh my memory. An obit came up along with the other stories. Jacob. That was his name. He was only fifteen.”

  She shook her head.

  “Terrible. That family faced so much suffering. First the crash and the mother’s death. Then the court case. Then the father, who’d been left paraplegic by the accident, died about ten years ago. And now the son kills himself.”

  “Do you know why?”

  She shrugged. “Can you ever?”

  Fred’s voice came over the speaker into the back of the limo. “Last gas station for a while, sport. Need to take a leak?”

  “Nah.”

  “Sure? By the looks of things, could just be outhouses after this.”

  I said, “Okay.”

  We pulled in. He filled the tank. I peed, washed my face, bought some Mentos, then almost laughed at myself.

  Like she was going to kiss me now? Would she even be happy to see me? I had no idea. I got back in the car.

  It was almost two months since the thing at the restaurant. I’d phoned every Sutherland in Guysborough until I got the right one. I kept calling, but she wouldn’t come to the phone. I was hurt at first, and worried too, but then I was just mad. It wasn’t my fault her brother died. Raylene had lied to me from the beginning about stuff. She’d ditched me over and over again. And, fine, she probably hadn’t gotten herself arrested on purpose, but still. The least she could do was talk to me about it. The least she could do was explain.

  I got the feeling that wasn’t going to happen. I gave up calling.

  But then Suraj reminded me how she’d thought Dalton sending me an actual paper letter was charming or quaint or something, and I couldn’t get that out of my head. I wrote her a letter.

  Dear Raylene—

  I’m coming to visit you next Tuesday. I won’t stay long.

  Yours truly,

  Cam

  It was only four lines but it took me ages to write because I agonized over every word.

  Dear—too formal? Maybe, but I wanted her to know I was serious.

  Raylene—or Hannah? No, it had to be Raylene. I knew lots of Hannahs. She wasn’t a Hannah.

  I’m—Okay. I didn’t actually agonize over the pronouns or prepositions but the rest was torture.

  Should I say I’m coming or ask if I can come? I wasn’t going to give her the chance to say no.

  Should I tell her the date? She might take off if I did. Might not be there if I didn’t. I flipped a coin and I told her. At least she couldn’t say she didn’t know when I’d be there.

  I won’t stay long. I added that later. I wanted to make it sound like it didn’t matter that much to me. Like I had better things to do. This was just a courtesy call.

  Yours truly. That was the part that really got me. What else could I say? Sincerely? After everything she put me through, it sounded sarcastic. Love? No way.

  We’d just turned on to a dirt road. The potholes made my fillings rattle.

  So yours truly it was. That was fair. That’s what I’d always been, even if she hadn’t. She got the good, bad, and ugly of yours truly all the way through. I never lied to her. I told her the truth. I stuck to my end of the deal.

  I poured myself a glass of juice and tried to calm down. I was so mad at her.

  Then, I don’t know why, I remembered her at the restaurant, her lips purpl
e from the blueberry cheesecake, whispering in my ear, smiling as she got up to go to the washroom.

  Fred came over the speaker again. “This looks like the place, sport. Want me to go up the driveway or leave you here?”

  That’s when I realized I wasn’t mad at Raylene. I’d never been mad at her. I was scared.

  CHAPTER 46

  Fred parked at the side of the road and I walked up the long dirt lane alone. I hadn’t known what to wear to a farm. Dad suggested a bunch of stuff but, seriously, what was he thinking? (Suraj summed it up best: Old-MacDonald-goes-a-courtin’.)

  I put on my regular jeans and a clean blue T-shirt with “Restless Sidewalk” written in dark green across the chest. I had no idea what that meant. It was probably a bad translation from Korean or something, but it didn’t sound offensive.

  Suraj had dropped by before his lunch shift to see me off. He’d taken one look and said, “Average-teenage-boy-puts-on-something-comfortable.” I’d nodded. That was more or less what I was going for.

  Then I thought, “No.” Not this time.

  All my life, I’d just faded into the background. That was my job. To be the chameleon. Raylene was the first person who’d ever really seen me for who I was (other than Suraj and Dad, of course, but they don’t count).

  I was finally going to stand out. I was going to say to the world, or at least Raylene, that this is me.

  I put on a red shirt. It looked stupid.

  I went through our entire wardrobe department, a.k.a. the hall closet. I tried on a leather jacket, a vintage bowling shirt, a souvenir football jersey, a sweater that looked like a smaller updated version of the one Nu Luv had given Bloat, a striped shirt, and a tie.

  I took them all off and went back to the nondescript Restless Sidewalk T-shirt.

  I just had to hope my inner beauty would be enough for her.

  I was almost at the farmhouse when a lady wandered out from around the side. Her grandmother, I figured. The one who’d said over and over again, “I’m sorry but Hannah can’t come to the phone. May I take a message?”