A Matter of Life and Death or Something (11 page)

THE DAY after Maple Day I was on my way to investigate the second house. When I was halfway there I saw Victoria Brown, the girl that lives up the street who Finch is always trying to french, walking on the other side.

“Hey Arthur!” She crossed the street.

“Yo.”

“How are you today?”

“Good.”

“Where are you going?”

“Secret. I'm investigating. Where are
you
going?”

“
I'm
going to play at Simon's.”

“Finch's?”

“Yeah, Finch's.”

“You're lying.”

“I'm not lying!”

“You already passed his house. It's right over there.”

“I wanted to see if you wanted to come too. I was going to
your
house.”

“Oh. Well, I'm really busy.”

“Maybe later?”

“Maybe. No.”

She played with her white barrette, to make sure it was still holding her hair together. I was kicking rocks around. My thermos was already in my hand so I opened it and took a drink of cold milk and then shaved my moustache. I wanted to get going.

“That shirt is very
hand
some,” she said.

“I always wear this.”

“It's nice. I like the stripes.” She straightened her dress a bit.

“Why are you going to Finch's?” I asked.

“'Cause he phoned me and said to come play.”

“He just wants to try and
french
you.”

Her face blushed and she tugged at the sides of her dress.

“Do you let him?”

“No!”

“Good.”

“He doesn't even try.”

“I
knew
it,” I said. “He told me he asked you to be his
girl
friend, for crying outside.”

“He did.”

“What?”

“He
did.
”

“What did you say?”

She was getting redder.

“You said no.”

“No... maybe. What's in your knapsack?”

“Did you say
yes?
”

“Fine,
maybe
I did.”

“You're weird.”

She looked at me and smiled. Her eyes were brown but I imagined them as blue for fun, and then I thought I probably liked brown better anyway.

“Simon is a really nice boy,” she said.

“Mmm-hmm.” I rolled my eyes so far that they ached.

“You should come play.”

“He's just so
annoying.
What am I supposed to do, come over and watch him try to make dominoes fall over? And listen to him tell me how he's the king of dominoes or whatever? I can't think of anyone who gets farther on top of my nerves. He's the
king
of my nerves.”

“He's
nice.
”

“Well anyway, I've got people to see.” I took a step forward to leave. She laughed at me.

“Okay. Well you look
hand
some today.”

“You already said that. Why do you keep saying it like that?”

She looked at her feet. They were zig-zagging as she kind of danced them around. I looked at my watch and just as I saw the 2:26, she attacked me. She kissed me, kind of like how Simon would on my cheek, but she was doing it on my mouth and she was sort of not stopping. Also, it's gross, but her lips were all wet and small. I think I stepped on her foot or something, and she hopped off of me. By that time it was probably 2:27.

Then it was stupid because we were both just standing there, and what are you supposed to say when someone just slobbers your face up? And it was even stupider because we both had to walk the same way up the street. But luckily she yelled “Bye Arthur!” and started running to Finch's, and I waited for her to disappear and then I walked and took my time. What the
heck.
Girls are the one thing I'll never understand.

At probably 2:28, Simon drove up in our little red car while I secretly wiped my lips off on the back of my hand. He pulled over and rolled the window down, which took a long time, because our car is awfully stupid and old and rusty.

“Hey chief. I'm just going to pick up a few things for bridge, you coming?”

“Nah, I don't really like playing bridge.”

“No, are you coming to the
grocery store,
smart-guy.”

“Nah,” I said. I had forgot it was bridge night. Simon and Uncle Max had this bridge club that happened on Sunday nights, which was just a thing where Max and Simon and their guy friends would go to one of their houses and play a card game called bridge, which is a game that's not even worth talking about. Once one guy had to leave early so I tried to play for five minutes and then I woke up in bed the next morning. Simon said I fell asleep so hard there was drool on my cards, and I asked him if I at least had good cards and he said not really. That's bridge club. Anyway it was going to be at our house that night.

Simon asked me if I was sure I didn't want to come to the grocery store.

I said, “I'm really busy.”

“Alright, just be home before dark, and be careful, alright?”

“Obviously.”

“Actually, be home for supper, okay?”

“Ohh-kay.”

“C'mere.”

He messed up my hair a bunch and said “I love you.”

I looked in the mirror on the side of the car and tried to straighten my hair a bit.

“Yep.”

“See you at supper then. You still haven't changed those sheets.”

“I will. See ya.”

“See ya.” He pushed up his glasses and drove away.

I stood and drank milk from my thermos and made sure to watch our car until it was all the way around the turn in the road and there was no way he could see me, then I started walking again. I unscrewed the lid of my thermos and looked under it, and carefully poked my messy haircut to check for tiny microphones and spy cameras you can barely see with a naked eye. I was clean.

The second house I had to investigate was the house right after Finch's house, on the same side of the street. It was technically Finch's next-door neighbour, but you could have fit four houses in the woods between them. From where I was standing at the end of the driveway, the whole place looked grey. It wasn't, of course: the house was pale blue with white shutters, the small car parked out front was something in between gold and green, and the grass and hedge and trees were green, obviously. But the day itself was another grey one, where the sky was bright but who knows where the sun was, and I didn't have a shadow, and it was making the whole house and yard and everything look grey.

I didn't even know who lived there. I guessed it was someone I'd never thought about in my life, and someone I'd never heard anyone talk about. I figured that this meant they must not be a dangerous person, or else they'd be famous like the hermit. I also figured this meant they must be a not-very-interesting person. Then I thought, maybe I was being too mean.

The mailbox right beside me actually
was
grey, and said “PETERSON.” I thought, “Oh yeah, I guess I've seen that name before.”

Just like when I went to the Beckhams' house, I got super nervous. Walking down the street to someone's house was simple. But going
inside
was completely another thing. I stood there literally shaking in my boots just like last time.

So I turned around, because if I hadn't even heard of whoever lived in the Peterson house, then they must not be very useful. They must not know anything. I was so shaky that that made a ton of sense. I started walking away, and my stomach felt relieved. I made it probably about two whole footsteps without thinking about Phil and then I thought about Phil.

“Ahhh fuck,” I thought, but I didn't say it because I don't really swear. I stopped walking. My arms and legs and everything were shaking because I was being sawed in half again and needing to go to two places at once. I was going to go home and make a list of
All the Things in the Universe That Have Nothing to Do With a Person Dying Close to You
but whenever I took a step towards home I felt like I was being lazy and I took another step in the opposite direction. When I stepped towards the Peterson house I felt like I was being mentally insane but not lazy and that seemed better but it felt worse. There was something inside the Peterson house and even if it wasn't Phil maybe it was. My brain didn't even know what it was talking about. My feet were actually walking back and forth on the edge of the stupid driveway. At least there was no one around to see me acting so moronic.

Eventually I slowly walked towards the house. I thought, maybe whoever lives there is a very nice ten-year-old boy or girl, or a few of both, and I can ask them all simple questions and get simple answers and be on my way. My finger rang the doorbell. A tall grey-haired man with giant glasses answered the door in a few seconds and I thought, “Get
real,
Arthur.”

“I beg your pardon,” he said.

Then I thought I said my “Get real” out loud because of how I say things out loud by accident, and I said:

“Uhhhm, sorry?”

And he said, “Can I help you?”

And I said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” he said.

My knees felt almost as confused as my brain.

“My name is Arthur Williams. Are you... Mr. Peterson?”

“Precisely.”

“Can I come inside your house and ask you a question?”

He looked at his gold watch, as if he was asking it for per-mission.

“It's a bit of a bad time, I'm afraid.”

“Why? What time is it?”

“No, I mean I'm right in the middle of something. Would you mind coming back another time? It's not terribly important, I hope? Boy Scouts or something like that?”

“No,” I told him. I said “It's not important,” but I was lying—it was only about the most important thing in the world. But I could tell the only thing he was “right in the middle of” was an excuse, and that meant that he was lying first, so that meant I had to lie too. That's how it works with grown-ups.

“Alright?” he asked.

“It's okay I guess. Thanks.”

There I was,
thanking
him for making my life more terrible. I turned to leave, but he must have seen my gigantic frown and angry eyebrows before I was all the way turned around, because he said “Wait.”

I stayed where I was, with my back facing him instead of my face.

“Well, I guess I've got time. Okay, come on in.”

I wasn't expecting him to change his mind like that so I felt really shaky walking into his house but I did it anyway. I took off my boots in the hall and my feet smelled really sweaty, and a lot like extra-old cheddar cheese, and that didn't help.

“No socks?” said Mr. Peterson.

His house was small inside, smaller than the Beckhams', and much smaller than ours. The hall was barely a hall at all it was so short, and there weren't a lot of walls, and I felt like I could see everything in the entire house, with the kitchen on the left, a bedroom and a small bathroom on the right, and a living room up ahead. It seemed like everything important was on the bottom floor, and even though I saw stairs to the second floor, I couldn't figure out how anything else could really fit up there. Also, everything looked a lot newer than our house did. In the kitchen the counter was cold black marble and the chairs had no decorations and were really simple looking, like I could've built them myself with some broomsticks. The walls inside matched the walls outside: everything was light blue with white, except the kitchen.

Even though it was a new house Mr. Peterson had it smothered in old things, so it seemed fuzzy and dusty. The walls were covered all over the place with ancient maps of the world, maps of Canada, the U.S., Russia, Africa, and other places. There were black and white photos of boats hung up everywhere, too. Tall sailing ships, army boats, the
Titanic
I think, a couple tiny sailboats. The photos and maps and things had all turned different shades of yellow and brown from being so old, and the house kind of smelled like a basement full of rotting wood and human saliva.

“What's this?” I picked up a tiny rock off the shelf on my way into the house.

“Ohhh, that!” Mr. Peterson rushed over as if I was dropping it on the floor or something. He took it from my hand but held it for me to examine.

“
That,
is a fossil.”

“Yeah, I know. But what's it of?”

“It's a trilobite. Well, it's just a portion, of course. You see the corner? I believe that's part of the cephalon, its head if you will, and then here there's a bit of thorax. Do you know what a trilobite looks like?”

“Obviously.”

“Well there you go.” He placed it back on the shelf exactly where it was when I picked it up, facing exactly the same way.

“How'd you get it? Because I thought they were really rare.”

“A friend. Yes, they're very rare. Not unfindable, but rare. A friend, actually, a retired palaeontologist, gave it to me for my birthday one year.”

“Amazing. When's your birthday?”

“May 17th.”

“That's soon, kind of.”

“True. I suppose.”

“Mine's December 5th.”

“Really.”

Then me and Mr. Peterson stood in the hall for a little while not knowing what to say to each other. I glanced around the house more, and felt shy, and then felt shy about feeling shy, and I was trying to figure out whether it would be rude to say “uhmmm” or not but then he told me to “make myself at home” and he went in the kitchen.

I walked into the living room and circled it in detective mode, as Mr. Peterson started to boil some water.

“Something to drink?”

“No thanks.”

“Are you hungry?”