A Skeleton in the Family

by Leigh Perry

  “Give it up, Georgia. You’re never going to learn to call me Allen.”

  “It’ll just take some time,” I said stubbornly. “I only found out your real name a little while ago.”

  “My real name is Sid. I don’t remember being Allen, and I’ve been Sid longer than I was Allen, anyway.”

  “If you’re sure,” I said, though I was kind of relieved. Calling him Allen made it feel as if I were talking to a ghost. Which I was, maybe . . . Oh, coccyx! I’d grown up with Sid the skeleton, and I didn’t want to change his name or my perceptions of him.

  That’s when I noticed how late it was getting. Since it was theoretically a school night, I said, “Madison, you’d better hit the sack.”

  “I will if you will.”

  I yawned. “No arguments here—I’m beat.”

  “I’m sleepy, too,” Sid said.

  Madison didn’t react, but I sure did. “Excuse me? Since when do you sleep?”

  “I feel tired, Georgia. I think . . . I think I’ve done what I was here to do. It’s time for me to go.”

  “Go where?” Madison demanded.

  “Good-bye, Madison. Good-bye, Georgia. Have a great life, and thanks for everything.” Sid laid himself down on the rug, and then his bones slowly loosened, falling apart so that he was nothing but a pile of isolated bones.

  52

  “Sid? Sid!” Madison said. “Mom! Do something!”

  I shrugged. “Sorry, sweetie—I think he’s gone. But on the good side, there’s all that space up in the attic up for grabs. You know how you’ve been wanting a TV in your room? You can have his!”

  “Hey!” Sid said, swiftly coming back together. “You keep your ossifying fingers off of my TV.”

  “Sid!” Madison hugged him as hard as she could without breaking anything. “You’re alive.”

  “More or less.” He gave me a dirty look. “You could have at least pretended to be upset.”

  “Please! You call that acting? Madison played a better death scene than that when she was eight years old.”

  “Hey, that was a great death scene!” Madison countered. “Sid, you’d have loved it. Hey, I know! I’ll see if I can get my drama coach to let us do Hamlet—you can play Yorick!”

  Over the next week or so, life settled out. I found out Dr. Parker had a long-standing rivalry with JTU, and was so pleased with the school getting a black eye that he’d already promised me another year at McQuaid. Madison might graduate from Pennycross High after all.

  Of course, eventually my parents would return and want their house back, meaning that I’d have to find somewhere else to live, and it wouldn’t be easy to find an affordable three-bedroom apartment that allowed dogs.

  Yeah, three bedrooms. Madison and I had decided that Sid was going to stay with us from then on. Byron, too, even if Sid wasn’t overly fond of him.

  As for Fletcher, I hadn’t told him about Sid and never would. We’d broken up. He’d stuck around just long enough to get the interview for the Gazette that I’d promised him, but with those journalistic instincts of his, he could tell I was leaving out parts of the story. He hated that. If it had just been personal pain about my lack of trust, I might have relented, but he was just mad because he’d wanted more of a scoop.

  Apparently he was particularly annoyed that I hadn’t let him take pictures of Sid when he was thinking about his funky-things-found-in-people’s-attics feature. Since Sid had supposedly been destroyed, he’d had to sweet-talk Sara into letting him use one of the photos she’d taken of him. Not only was the resolution dreadful, but he’d had to give her a photo credit. One evening of him pouting about that was plenty. I got one last look at his butt as he left, and that was enough for me.

  Of course, Deborah thought we were crazy—me for letting Fletcher get away and Madison for accepting Sid into the family—but she’d resigned herself.

  As for Sid, to make sure he got the message that he was part of the family, we’d taken a photo of Madison and me with Sid between us. Then I framed it and added it to Mom’s picture wall.

  Even then, I could tell he didn’t completely believe that he wouldn’t be left behind like Andy’s toys in Toy Story, but if there’s one thing being a mother and a teacher has taught me, it’s patience.

  One night a couple of weeks later, Madison was out with friends and Sid and I were watching TV, when he suddenly asked, “Georgia, how did you know?”

  “How did I know what?”

  “How did you know I hadn’t really died? Again. More. How did you know that I hadn’t died that night after we solved my murder?”

  “Because I remember the night you came to life. It wasn’t to catch a murderer or get vengeance—it was because I needed you. Right?”

  He nodded.

  “That’s why you didn’t leave. I still need you.”