Hit and Run (2 page)

I spent the next fifteen minutes walking around, trying to decide whether to go back to school. And if I did, should I go back to Riel's class or should I wait and go to my next class? Right, like math was going to be more thrill-packed than history. If it were day two, if I had music or gym, maybe I'd have gone back. But to show up and get ragged on by Riel and laughed at by everyone else in the class and then top off the day by sitting detention, what was the point?

I walked up my street, right past my house, and kept
going until I reached Danforth. From there I headed west, trudging past dozens of bars and restaurants until I reached the Bloor Viaduct. I walked across it, over the Parkway and the river, and kept on hiking until I hit Yonge Street. Then I headed south to the Eaton Centre. I groped in my pocket. Enough for a Big Mac and fries. And when I went to work tonight, my pay would be waiting for me. Considering my financial situation, though, it would probably be a good idea to talk to Mr. Scorza about getting a few more hours.

I worked Friday nights and all day Saturday at a grocery store on Danforth. Box-boy/stock-boy/you-need-something-done-just-tell-me-boy. On Saturday I kept glancing up at the tiny, elevated office that perched in one of the front corners of the store. The glass was frosted so that it was hard to look in, but I'd been up there and I knew it was easy for Mr. Scorza to look out. The office was above the main floor, so he had a good view of the whole store, from the produce section to the left of the front doors to the dairy section in the back and all the aisles in between. I knew he was in there, too. I saw the boxy shadow of his body. I must have glanced at the door to that office a hundred times on Saturday, hoping Mr. Scorza would come out. If he did, I could check out what kind of mood he was in. If it seemed like a good one, I'd ask about the possibility of more hours. But Mr. Scorza
didn't come out, not once in the whole day, which was unusual. Did that mean he was in a rotten mood? Would his mood get even worse if I knocked on his door during my break?

I decided to wait. I guess that makes me some kind of coward, afraid to go talk to the boss. But by the end of the day I'd bagged maybe five hundred sacks of groceries. My feet were sore. I'd been standing in practically the same place since I started at eight in the morning. Saturdays were always the worst. People just kept coming through, and they were all in a hurry. Some of them wanted their groceries delivered, which meant I had to pack them in cardboard boxes and staple order numbers on the boxes and carry them out to the delivery van. The rest of the people had to have their stuff packed in plastic bags. A lot of the bigger stores were strictly bag-your-own. The customers had to stand at the end of big metal counters and scoop their own groceries into bags. Some places even charged for the bags. But not Mr. Scorza. His place was too small to have customers standing around. And a lot of them came to the store because we delivered. That made Mr. Scorza's store special in the neighborhood. It also meant that he needed a lot of help around the place.

When my shift was over I took another look at the frosted glass. I knew he was in there. But the store was crowded. Everyone would see me climb those stairs, which meant that everyone would see me come down again, and if I didn't look happy when I did, everyone would know.

Vin and Sal were waiting for me out on the sidewalk. Sal was sucking back root beer from a can. An unlit cigarette dangled from Vin's mouth. The story he told everyone was that he was trying to quit. The real deal was that smoking made him sick. But cigarettes made you cool, according to Vin. Even better, he said, girls admired a guy who was trying to quit.

Vin—Vincent—Taglia is my best friend. I've known him since kindergarten. He used to steal my toy cars, right up until the day I hauled off and punched him in the eye. After that he stole other kids' stuff, and he and I played with it. Salvatore San Miguel is a newer friend. His family came here from Guatemala a few years back. Sal's dad was a university professor back home, only he got on the wrong side of politics and got himself arrested and tortured, according to Sal. Sal says the family had to run away in the middle of the night. They had to leave behind everything they owned. Sal's dad was so messed up by prison and everything that happened to him in there that he never managed to get his act together and start teaching again. He works nights as a cleaner in an office building downtown. Sal's mother has a job teaching other immigrants how to use computers. They get a lot of help from Sal's aunt, who came here a long time ago to go to medical school. She's a doctor now.

“What's up?” I asked.

Vin grinned but said nothing.

“He's got a big night lined up,” Sal said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I looked at Vin, who smiled again. As we walked down Danforth he told me about a girl he had met at a party at his cousin Frank's place. Vin comes from a big family. He has a couple of dozen first cousins, and they all live in Toronto. They all seem pretty tight, too.

“She's in a play at Frank's school tonight,” Vin said, his eyes gleaming. “She invited me to come.”

“She probably invited everyone she knows,” Sal said. “You know, fill up all the seats so she can feel like a big success.”

Vin punched him on the arm.

“What about you?” I asked Sal. “What're you doing tonight?”

Suddenly he didn't look so happy.

“My aunt is having a party for my father,” he said. “It's his birthday, and she wants to cheer him up. Probably it'll just make him suicidal. One more year when he isn't teaching.”

“Yeah,” I said. If I'd been a girl, maybe I would have given him a hug. Sal always talks about his dad like it was no big deal—yeah, my dad's kinda nuts, yeah, he's always reading books of Spanish poetry, always mumbling poems under his breath, so what? Sal's dad is a short, wiry guy who has this strange, sort of haunted, look in his eyes, like maybe he sees things that other people don't and those things are scary. But when Sal
talks about him, what he says sounds like it's just life, just the way it is. Maybe that's what he really thinks. Except that if it is, how come you can always see these tight little lines at the corners of his mouth when he mentions his dad? And how come, when he says those things, he never looks you in the eye? Never.

“Great. While you two are partying, I'll be sitting home watching TV,” I said.

“No Jen?” Vin said.

I shook my head. An old school friend of Jen's mother was visiting for the weekend. The friend just happened to have a kid Jen's age so, of course, Jen had to be there to entertain. If I knew Mrs. Hayes, she had made it clear that entertaining did not mean introducing the kid to me. But there was no point in explaining that to Vin, not unless I wanted him to go on and on about how I was probably missing out on a threesome, like that was something Vin knew anything about as opposed to just something he had read in a magazine.

We turned off Danforth and fanned out across the sidewalk. Vin was telling us about the girl again. She was fashion-model hot, Vin said. He'd met her at the party and she had flirted with him. Sal laughed so hard that root beer shot out of his nose.

“Yeah, right,” he said. “Some model is gonna flirt with you.”

“Hey, I'm telling you,” Vin said. Either it had really happened, or he had managed to convince himself that it had. Maybe
he
should be trying out for a part in a
school play. He definitely had sincerity nailed. The girl had hung around him all evening, he said. She'd danced with him almost exclusively.

“Yeah, right,” Sal snorted. “You. Dancing.”

“
Slow
dancing,” Vin said. The dreamy look in his eyes was also convincing.

We were heading over to Vin's place when I heard a clattering sound. I looked across the street and saw a metal shopping cart crash to the sidewalk, spilling cans and vegetables and fruit everywhere. Mrs. Jhun was standing midway up the steps leading to her porch, one arm outstretched, one hand clutching the railing. She was staring straight ahead but didn't seem to be looking at anything. Then her whole body wavered like an unsteady pile of boxes that was about to topple over. I dashed across the street. I probably should have looked both ways first. A taxi honked at me and zoomed by so close that I swear I felt the door brush my arm.

“Hey!” Vin yelled after me.

I bounded up the steps and caught Mrs. Jhun by the arm. She was tiny. The top of her head barely reached my shoulder. I could have picked her up like a sack of groceries, there was so little to her.

“Mrs. Jhun?” I said. She was still staring out into space. I don't think she even knew I was there, and that scared me. Her whole weight rested against me. I can't be sure, but I think if I hadn't grabbed her when I did, she might have tumbled down the stairs right after her cart. “Mrs. Jhun, are you okay?”

She turned her head and looked straight at me. After a moment she said, “Hyacinth.” Now she was really scaring me.

“Mrs. Jhun?”

She drew in a deep breath. She was still looking at me, but now her eyes came into focus. She seemed surprised to see me.

“Michael,” she said. “What brings you here?”

I was totally confused. She was acting like nothing had happened.

“Your groceries, Mrs. Jhun,” I said, nodding at the bags that lay scattered on her cement walk.

She gazed at them as if she hadn't noticed them there before. I glanced around the porch, spotted a chair, and dragged it over.

“You sit down, Mrs. Jhun,” I said. “I'll pick up your stuff.”

She sat without argument. I straightened the cart and began to gather up the food—cauliflower, broccoli, a lot of other vegetables that I couldn't name. Mrs. Jhun did most of her shopping in Chinatown. She also hauled her cart across town to the west end, to Little Korea. I picked up boxes of things—some of them pretty squashed—that had writing on them in a language I couldn't understand. Chinese, maybe. Maybe Korean. I set everything back into the cart.

“Too many groceries,” Mrs. Jhun said as she watched me. “Too many steps. And too many years.” I laughed at the last part. Mrs. Jhun was always talking
about how she was old, but she didn't look that old. Billy says that's because Chinese people and black people don't show their age the way white people do. But if you heard half the stuff Billy says about Chinese people and black people, you wouldn't pay attention to his theory on aging.

“Your eggs are toast,” I said. By the amount of goo leaking from the cardboard box, I guessed all twelve were smashed. “You want me to get you some more?”

She sighed at the yolky ooze on her front walk.

“Hey, Mike!” Vin called from the other side of the road.

“Your friends are waiting,” Mrs. Jhun said. “I can manage the rest. Thank you, Michael.”

I waved to Vin—wait or go, the gesture said, it's up to you. I carried everything into the house. Then I folded the cart and tucked it into a corner of the porch for her. It was only when I went back down the wooden steps that I noticed that one of them was broken.

“Did you trip on this going up?” I asked Mrs. Jhun. “Is that what happened?” It probably wasn't. She'd almost reached the porch when I first saw her. But a broken step—she could trip on it next time even if she hadn't this time.

“I'll come back after supper,” I told her. I had nothing better to do. “I'll fix it for you.” I didn't know everything there was to know about home repairs, but I knew the basics. For sure I could fix a broken wooden step.

“You don't have to do that,” she said, which is exactly
what I expected. Mrs. Jhun never wanted to be a bother.

“You could hurt yourself,” I said. “You sure you don't want me to get some more eggs for you?”

Mrs. Jhun smiled. “Eggs can wait,” she said. Then she reached up and touched my cheek. Her hand was as soft as velvet. I knew what she was thinking without her saying a word.