My Cousin's Keeper (2 page)

Later, when I began to straighten up my room, I noticed that my medieval castle had been moved. Its army of horses and knights was set out in formation across the carpet, the royal family and their wizard on the castle parapets, standing close, as though talking to one another. The castle had been a birthday gift only months before, and I was furious that it had been touched and rearranged. And then, as I frowned and muttered to myself, I discovered that two things were missing — a white horse and an armored knight, the one who carried a sword in one hand and a blue crested flag in the other. And I knew right away who had stolen them and how far away they must be by now.

This was mostly how I remembered my dad's birthday party, the year he had turned thirty-five, and the year I turned nine.

It would be two years before I saw my cousin, Bon, again.

“Come on!” Dad called back to me. He was already halfway up the steep short hill that was Guthrie Street, his regular challenge. The way he called it back to me it sounded more like
“
C'marrnn
!”
— his voice heaving with the effort of his running, but also the effort of trying not to wake up everyone on the street. It was early, sometime between six thirty and seven, and this was the only thing he had said to me since we'd left home. I wanted to tell myself that it was friendly encouragement, but really I sensed he was a bit irritated at how I struggled to keep up.

C'marrnn
!
I could hear those two words, stretched and slurred into one, by kids and grown-ups alike, called from the sidelines of my dad's weekend games. Saturday after Saturday, we cheered and yelled as the Locomotives fought and won match points, as Dad showed his speed and skill at striking the ball into the goal. He was a fast runner, a good aimer and kicker. I was not.

But I wanted to be. I wanted to show Dad — and his noisy teammates and the kids at school — that I could do these things well. I wasn't sure what else I was particularly good at doing.

It was early in the soccer season. The day was light and the sun was already peeking above the mountains at the eastern edge of town. By midseason, it would still be dark at this time of the morning and all the streetlights would still be glowing white or orange above the stores, houses, and the park.

If I woke early enough and got my clothes and sneakers on quickly, I'd catch up with Dad at the front gate, or perhaps a little way along our street, as he began his training run. Just as often, though, he'd go without me. It always surprised me that a week's hard work in the big workshop at Rural Engineering was never enough for Dad to reward himself with a weekend of sleeping in. Early each evening, he'd leave his bicycle under the carport and walk inside, hands and clothes grimy with steel dust and oil stains. And he'd be out the next morning, jogging the streets around town, no matter how dark or cold, windy, and wet it might be. Even when soccer season finished, he would still be out running two or three times a week. But I'd get lazy, and today, after a long, burning summer and the beginnings of autumn, I was paying for missing weeks of morning runs.

Three steep streets in a row turned off Sheridan Street, just near the point where the houses stopped and the shops more or less began. More or less, because our town had once been a bigger, busier place, and there were buildings that used to be stores but that now stood empty. Sometimes I felt curious to know what might still be inside, behind the boarded-over windows, or behind old blinds and shutters.

“Come on!” Dad called once more, his voice clear and encouraging against the early-morning quiet. He was nearly at the top of the hill and I had barely begun. Guthrie was the steepest of the three streets. Fraser and Raymond were a little easier, but only just.

Today, the air was milky with fog. I could feel my face wet and cold with vapor. With all the effort and concentration I could muster, I launched myself at Guthrie Street's asphalt surface and heaved my way to the top, taking short jogging steps and keeping my eyes on my feet. I knew if I stopped halfway that the second part of the climb would feel a lot worse. Dad waited at the top, hands on his hips. Perspiration spotted his forehead and streaked down his cheeks into his beard whiskers. “Now, wasn't that fun?” He grinned. “Let's do it again!”

I dropped my mouth open to say something, but was too out of breath.

“Actually, a good place to stop for a moment,” he murmured beside me, and it was true. This was the highest point in town, and you could see nearly every house and backyard. The streets straggled down to the main street and then the riverbed, the dividing line between shops and houses, between fields and the highway to the west. I could see the silver-and-red roof of Rural Engineering, where Dad worked. After a shower and a change of clothes, he would be cycling away for a day of cutting, welding, repairing, and restoring.

The sun had climbed a tiny bit higher above the mountain range, and I let its warmth settle on my face.

“Beautiful view,” he said. “I never get tired of it.”

I'd heard him say this many times as we'd stood in this very spot, and sometimes I thought I could see a look in his eyes that meant he was thinking of somewhere else altogether. Because this wasn't Dad's hometown; he had come here from a bigger country town for a job he'd wanted. “Then I met your mom,” he'd often say with a smile, “and the rest is history.”

The view reminded me of a few things that I had learned about living here — how in the summer, the heat turned the school playground to dust; that the winters could be numbingly cold; and that whenever it rained heavily, the street gutters quickly overflowed and had the roar of waterfalls.

Dad squished and rubbed a handful of my hair. He wasn't gentle. “You sound winded. Thought
I
was out of shape . . .”

“This street's got the toughest hill,” I reminded him. “We should have started with Raymond Street and worked our way up.”

“Well, I started with Raymond Street last week.” He smiled. “One of the days you slept in, kiddo. You want to play on a team, then you've got to put in the training time. Hmm? No use being a bed zombie or a couch potato.”

He'd used that phrase on me before, and now he ignored my shrugged shoulders, my wondering if sports were something I might only ever be average at.

“Come on,” Dad said at last. “We've done the tough uphill part. Let's go downhill.”

After the hill peak, Guthrie Street curved away and down to the old railroad station. No trains had run to our town for years, and there was only a museum of photos and models inside to show what a busy and important place it had once been. A couple of old restored train cars sat in the siding beside the empty platform, but at a short distance from the station, the rail lines disappeared under dirt and grass. I could keep up with Dad on the flat ground and it was a little easier now, knowing as well that we were past the halfway mark and more or less heading for home again.

We came to the very eastern end of the main street, the point where the railroad line had once led onto the old bridge and away to other towns and, eventually, the city. The bridge was wooden and had grown wobbly with age, too unsafe to walk on these days. A fence ran across at the sidewalk where the bridge began. Sometimes this was another of Dad's stopping places, but not today. As my stomach and legs began to hurt even more with the effort, he gradually got farther and farther ahead of me. Once or twice he turned to check that I was still somewhere behind him. He raised one hand in a wave, and so did I as I slowed to a walk. We would meet up at home.

The very first time we had ever run together, I had been so excited about being allowed along that I'd spent the first ten minutes telling him everything I knew about everywhere and everybody in town.

“That's the house where Lucas lives. And that's Mason's place. His brother owns that really cool car parked in the front yard. And the Imperial Hotel is where Liam's mom does the cooking. And that blue house is where Ms. Tabor, the librarian at school, lives. And —”

“Kieran!” Dad had exclaimed, his breath puffing. “This is training. You have to focus!”

Now, I stopped outside the thrift shop, where Nan volunteered several times each week. Here, she was not Nan, but Erica, the lady with the unruly dyed hair and interesting earrings. She chose the things that were displayed in the front window. She listened to local gossip and told the customers jokes.
This is my grandson Kieran and my
granddaughter, Gina
, she'd tell everybody and anybody if Gina and I stopped at the shop on our walk home from school.

I never heard her mention my cousin, Bon, but sensed that she thought about him more than she ever said. By now, there was a newer photo of Bon in a frame on Nan's fridge, one taken two years before at Dad's birthday party. Once or twice, I had seen Nan lift the photo away from its frame and look at it for a long time.

I stretched my T-shirt up to wipe my forehead and then stared at my reflection in the window. My hair was flattened and wet with perspiration, my arms and legs as skinny as a stick insect's. There were other people out by now, walking their dogs and making their way in and out of the convenience store, always the first shop open in the morning. Dad was nearly a full block ahead of me, and so I began to jog again, picking up speed until I'd almost caught up with him near the corner of Sheridan Street. I could hear the light slap of his running shoes and his steady breathing.

“You caught up,” he said warmly. “Well done.”

I smiled. The run home would be easy.

When Mom was in a daydreaming mood, she'd talk about moving to the coast. It made me wonder what it would be like to be the new kid at school. How would it be to arrive on the playground at a new school and know absolutely nobody, or to step into a classroom and have twenty-five kids stare at me as though I were a museum exhibit? I had always lived in this town and gone to the one school, and I felt a little sorry for the new kids who arrived from time to time.

Some of them fit in and made new friends right away. Some of them looked shy and lost for days after they'd arrived; they sat alone on playground seats, or walked anxiously beside any friendly teacher that happened to be on playground duty.

I remembered one new kid who had arrived at our school, an older boy who brought his anger with him every day. For a while, he turned the playground into a battlefield, fighting other kids and being rude to the teachers. Everybody learned his name very quickly, and a gang of kids began to follow him around — which caused even more trouble. But as suddenly as he'd arrived, the boy left our school and moved on to some other place. Everyone felt relieved, and things on the playground got back to normal again.

New kids often appeared after a school break, and that was how it happened in the fall of the year I turned eleven. By the end of that first morning back at school, I knew I'd remember the date and year, because of precisely
who
the new kids were.

I saw her first, long before Mason Cutler or Lucas Xerri or any of the other boys in my class began the familiar routine of making comments loud enough for the new girl to hear once she was on the playground.

“Woo, she's a honey,” remarked Lucas.

“Go on, big man,” said Mason. “Go and ask her out!”

“You know where she lives?”

“Never seen her before. Go and ask her name.”

“No way. You go!”

But I saw her first.

Because Gina had managed to lose not one but two school sweaters, I was rummaging through the lost and found in between the main front door and the school office. Gina had forgotten exactly where she'd left her things, and Mom had told me to go looking. The school office before class time began was always a busy place — parents dropping off notes or paying for schoolbooks or field trips, kids coming in from the playground with bleeding knees or elbows that required either a Band-Aid or a phone call home. And big brothers like me searching the lost and found for things that annoying little sisters managed to lose. Most of the usual commotion I ignored, but the front door opening and the sound of strangers' voices distracted me from my search.