Charlie's Key (5 page)

Dez starts to say something but has to stop to clear his throat with a noise that sounds like a cat puking up a hair ball. He tries again.

“Nick is, ah…not able, at this time, to take you in.”

“How come?”

There’s a long pause, with Miz finally throwing out an answer. “He doesn’t have a home right now.”

“How come?”

“He’s in a supported-living environment at the moment,” says Dez.

“A what?”

“A supported-living environment,” he says again.

“Like, on a machine?”

“No, no,” Dez says. “In a place with some other people, so he doesn’t have a room he could put you in. That kind of thing.”

“So will he be getting one—a room? For himself?”

“Not,” says Dez, who’s not talking as smooth as when we first sat down, “in the foreseeable future.”

“So not for a while,” I say.

“No.”

“So what happens to me?”

“Well, your cousin may be able to help there—to take you in.”

“But what if she can’t?”

“Then you’d stay here—just for a bit, till we arrange a foster situation for you.”

“Like a fake family?”

“Not fake,” says Miz. “Temporary.”

“Like, just for a bit,” I say.

“Charlie,” says Dez, leaning toward me and getting his smooth sound back again. “I know this is difficult, but we’re doing the best we can—making sure you’re safe and cared for.”

I think about telling him about the fight last night, but figure no, I’ll just say nothing. Let him go on.

“You really are our top priority. That’s the bottom line for us, and we’ll let you know about any change that’s coming just as soon as we know it ourselves.”

He looks over at Miz when he finishes, like he’s expecting a grade for something.

“Do you have any questions?” he says.

“No,” I say, which isn’t true. I got about a million, starting with who Nick Sykes is, and why he hasn’t got his own room when he’s forty-five years old? Maybe he’s retarded, living with a bunch of other retarded guys who drive around on a bus— probably without any writing on it either. If he’s not retarded, then how come he can’t go live with that old aunt and look after me from her house? But I figure I won’t get a real answer to any of that, so I don’t say anything.

“Well,” says Dez, “that’s it for today. Child Services will be in touch as soon as there’s any news. In the meantime, you can take my card and call me anytime you need anything. My number’s at the bottom.”

Which is fine, I think, putting the card in my pocket, except that’s one thing I haven’t seen in here—a phone. Not on the wall, not on a kid. Which makes the number about as good as a parachute on a space shuttle.

“You okay, Charlie?” Dez asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“You thinking about your dad?”

“No.”

“Because if you are, you know, thinking about him, or feeling sad or angry or want to talk to anyone, we can arrange that.”

“No.”

“Well,” says Mr. Delaney, “if we’re done here, I’ll show Charlie to his class.”

A minute later, me and Mr. Delaney are at another door. Mr. Delaney gives it a knock.

“Mr. Aikens,” he says, sticking his head in the class. “Sorry to interrupt. I’ve got a new student for you— Charlie Sykes, just here for a few days. I’d like him to sit in on classes.”

“Sure,” Mr. Aikens says to me. “Find a seat.”

“Watch out for the puke,” calls a kid I recognize from the bus. They all laugh, but quiet, down into their books. I sit down and see why: there’s Frankie, turned around in his front-row seat, giving them a glare. His knuckles are two shades of red, deeper in the middle, no bandages or anything. And he’s got a bruise on his face that I don’t remember from yesterday.

“All right,” says the teacher. “Back to you, Mr. Walsh. The first word again.”

Frankie starts reading from a book, “Wh…wh…”

He’s got one hand on the book, the other in his hair, twirling it around so it’s a big heap on top of his head—like something Dez would pay a lot of money for.

“Jesus,” Frankie says after another couple of tries. “It ain’t no word I ever seen before.”

The teacher takes the book from him and drops it on my desk. There’s a red smear where Frankie’s been holding it.

“You try, Mr. Sykes.”

“Winter comes early to Newfoundland,” I read. “Snow is often recorded in early October and usually covers the island by mid-December.”

Frankie comes up to me when class is over, half an hour later.

“You read good,” he says.

“I guess.”

“No, b’y, you do. Quick, like. You make them sentences sound good. How they go up and down, like you were really talking. That’s good.”

“I like to read.”

“I hates it,” says Frankie. He gives me a nod to come over closer.

“So listen,” he says. “I needs you to do a favor for me— after I done one for you last night, right?”

I nod.

“But I don’t wants ta talk here—too many teachers. We’ll meet up this afternoon. Outside.”

“We can meet outside?”

“Sure,” says Frankie. “Just tell ’em you wants to go landscaping in third period. Tell Aikens—he don’t care what ya do. I’ll be out there, keeping an eye for ya. By the Catwalk.”

“The what?” I ask, but it’s too late. He’s already off down the hall.

I go outside after second period, but there’s no Frankie around, so I ask Nose Picker if he’s seen him.

“I’m looking for Frankie,” I say. “He said to meet him at the Catwalk.”

“I bet he did,” says Nose Picker. He gives a nod back behind The Hollow. “Catwalk’s out back. He’ll be down on all fours, sniffing round.”

The kids standing around Nose Picker start giggling, and one lets out a howl like a wolf might do. Weird bunch, but they’re right about Frankie—he’s around back, talking to Gameboy, each of them holding a rake.

“Cowboy,” Frankie calls out when he sees me.

“Hey,” I say. They’re leaning against a wood railing that runs along a boardwalk. It’s a nice boardwalk, the wood all cut square. And it’s clean, like nobody ever walks on it. It goes up the hill behind The Hollow, toward a back fence, and ends at a gate with a bunch of streetlights above it.

“This the Catwalk?” I say.

“It is,” says Frankie.

“Why’s it called that?”

“Because of what’s at the other end,” says Gameboy.

Frankie gives a laugh. Then another one when he sees I don’t know what he’s talking about.

“Pussy,” Frankie says, smiling the kind of smile I only ever see on grown-ups. I can guess what he means, even though I’m not sure exactly why.

“Girls,” I say.

Frankie nods and Gameboy gives a howl, just like the kid out front.

“You mean there’s a place like this—a Hollow—for girls?”

“Not like this,” says Frankie. “This here is for kids doing a sentence, for B and Es, assault, selling dope. Over there, it’s more for Emo girls—cutters, pukers, dopers. Sorta like a rehab—a low-end mental.”

“You ever talk to them?” I ask, which gets Gameboy howling again.

“Not allowed to,” says Frankie, aiming a swat at Gameboy.

“But Frankie do,” says Gameboy, dancing away from the swing.

“Sometimes,” Frankie says with that smile again. “But we get in shit if we’re caught up there. We’re a bad influence. Anyways, most of them ain’t worth talking to. They’re crazy, or retarded—worse than us down here.”

“’Cept they smell better,” says Gameboy. “An’ they got tits.”

“All right,” says Frankie, not smiling. He reaches into his jacket and gets out a plastic pencil case. He pulls out a cigarette and tosses it underhand to Gameboy.

“Go smoke that somewheres else,” he says and gives a nod for Gameboy to take off, which he does. He pulls two more smokes from the case and points one at me.

I shake my head. “I don’t smoke.”

“Never?”

“Nope.”

“Wanna try?”

I do kinda. My dad used to smoke when he’d come home late. In winter I’d hear the truck pull in, then the snow scrunching on the back deck, him standing there—“Having a draw,” he’d say—rocking back and forth in the freezin’ cold, one foot to the other,
scrinch
,
scrunch
. In the summer there’d be no noise, but I could smell it, floating through the window. I liked that smell, just after the smoke first got lit. But then we saw this picture in health class of a smoker’s lung—all black and bumpy. There’s more than four thousand chemicals in each puff. Stuff you’d never think would be in a cigarette, which looks sorta clean and safe wrapped up in all that white paper. Stuff like arsenic and lead and tar—just like what comes outta oil sands. Except it goes into your lungs. No thanks, I said after that class. Deep down I think I say no because I’m scared to try, which would make it brave to try. Right? Or would it be stupid? Can you be brave and stupid, all at once? I think maybe you can. But mostly I’m just scared, so I say no again.

“’Kay,” says Frankie. He puts the extra smoke away and bends his head into his hand, flicks the lighter and pulls in that first draw. He lets it out, and the wind takes it past my head. It smells good.

“Okay, Cowboy,” he says. “Remember how I said you owes me one? So here’s the deal. Because of that fight last night, they wants to give me extra time inside, which they can’t do—only a judge can do that. Except they got a way to get around that.”

He takes another pull, squinting when the wind blows the smoke back in his face.

“What they do is, they make you meet your probation rules, exactly. Which for me means I gotta pass a reading test—reading comprehension they calls it. It’s always been in my probation order—that I gotta go to school inside, and that I gotta achieve grade five reading comprehension or something. I never paid no attention to it, and neither did they. Except now, when they wants to let me know who’s boss, they dig this out and say I can’t get outta here till I pass this test, which there’s no way I can do.”

“So,” I say, kinda surprised a kid as big and old as Frankie Walsh can’t read like a grade five, “you want me to help you study?”

Smoke comes pop-pop-popping outta Frankie’s mouth when he starts to laugh.

“No, no, Cowboy, you don’t get it. Listen to what I’m sayin’. There’s no way I can pass that test.”

“But what if we start with some easy stuff.”

Frankie lets out a big sigh. Seems everybody lets out a big sigh when they figure they’ve gotta explain something to me. He flicks the smoke onto the Catwalk. It sits there, still going, in the sun. The smoke curls up a little ways, then gets caught by the wind. I think I should step on it, but figure I better pay attention to Frankie first.

“Listen, Cowboy,” says Frankie, giving me a poke in the shoulder. “I gotta prove I can read to get outta this place. But I
can’t
read. And I’m not gonna learn to read. Right? So you gotta do it for me.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“I mean you gotta write that test for me.”

“Cheat, you mean?”

Frankie gives another laugh.

“Cheat?” he says. “What’s cheatin’, Cowboy? Does you even know what it means? Because I’ll tell what cheatin’ is to me. Cheatin’s when my old man takes the money what’s supposed to buy our dinner and spends it on Black Horse and Pro-line and gives me a smack when he loses all his bets. That’s cheatin’. What I’m talkin’ about doin’ is the opposite— it’s doin’ the right thing. It’s helpin’ him what helped you. I get you outta a hard spot, you get me outta a hard spot. How’s that cheatin’?”

“But it’s me doing your work.”

“That’s right,” says Frankie. “Just like I done your work last night. With this.”

He holds up the bloody hand, then puts it round mine. “And you gotta use this”—he shakes both our hands—“to write that test.”

He lets my hand go.

“Not perfect, mind—I just needs fifty plus one.”

“But how am I going to write a test for you?”

“Don’t worry about that—I’ll get everything to you. You just needs to fill it out and give it back to me. Nobody’ll ever know anything, ’cept me and thee.”

He grabs the rake off the railing.

“I’ll get it to you tomorrow, an’ you can look it over. I’m goin’ back out front now, but you stay here for a bit—don’t want Billy or Delaney to know we been hangin’ out. Okay?”