Ghost of Spirit Bear (2 page)

“It’s kind of sad knowing we’ll never see him again,” Cole said.

“You’ll always see him,” Garvey said.

“Not in Minneapolis,” Peter argued.

“Yes, you’ll always find the Spirit Bear if you look.”

Chapter 1

(TWO WEEKS LATER)
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

W
ALKING TO SCHOOL
the first morning was strange and different. On the island, Cole had hiked the rocky path to the pond each morning at daybreak. Around him had been the sounds of seagulls calling, the screech of owls, and twigs snapping in the underbrush. The pungent smell of pine trees, salt water, and rotting seaweed had filled the air. Sometimes the chuffing sound of killer whales broke the stillness as they breached. And always Cole had felt the hidden eyes of the Spirit Bear calmly watching him from deep in the trees.

Here, walking on a smooth sidewalk in the city, Cole smelled car exhaust. He heard dogs barking, a garbage truck loading trash, and the traffic going by. A siren screamed in the distance. He missed the Spirit Bear. The city felt like some foreign planet. Cole wanted to cover his ears and close his eyes to it all. He didn’t fit into this world.

Cole noticed his reflection in the window of a parked car as he walked. He had grown taller and thinner on the island. His skin was weathered and rough, and his muscles had become strong and lean. His old clothes no longer fit him, but he felt uncomfortable in his new ones.

As he neared the school, Cole hugged his injured right arm against his waist and tried not to limp. If he let the arm hang, it swung awkwardly because of the bone and muscle damage. He dared not let his injuries show. Around the bullies, he’d be like a wounded rabbit with wolves.

Cole blinked back his feelings of fear and frustration. On the island he had learned to control his emotions. He had learned from Garvey and another Tlingit elder, Edwin, that he could never fully get rid of anger because it was a memory. But he had also learned to focus on the good. A good day wasn’t a day without clouds but rather a day when one focused on finding the sunlight behind the clouds.

Cole wondered if he could keep that same focus back here in the city. The very moment he stepped onto the plane heading for Minneapolis that concern had begun eating at his gut. What would happen when the island was simply a memory and the Spirit Bear was only a ghost from his past? What would happen when he returned to the bullies and gangs? The students would remember only the old angry Cole who once prowled the hallways looking for fights. And maybe that old angry Cole still existed, a monster who would one day return without warning.

As he approached the school, the knot tightened in Cole’s throat and kept him from swallowing. A statue of the Minneapolis Central bulldog mascot seemed to snarl at him from its familiar pedestal on the front lawn. The dog had one leg broken off and one ear missing. Cole remembered spraying graffiti on the marble pedestal himself. Now it was tagged with gang symbols, some that Cole no longer recognized. Looking at the ratty bulldog made his memory of the proud and magical white Spirit Bear seem like a distant dream.

Groups of kids hung around outside the school, shoving and slapping at one another and shouting names. Most wore baggy pants and T-shirts. Some wore bandannas or jackets with gang colors. Already candy wrappers and soda cans littered the lawn.

Cole recognized some of the kids, but they seemed like strangers. The cliques and gangs had already begun gathering: the preppies, the jocks, the Goths, the red groups and blue groups, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and a dozen more. Each group eyed the others with disdain and distrust.

Cole felt like he was outside a fishbowl looking in. None of it made sense anymore. He had been fifteen and in tenth grade when he had beaten up Peter. Now he was coming back at seventeen but only starting eleventh grade because of the classes he’d missed. He felt a lifetime older.

Cole noticed one plain-looking white girl with long straight brown hair approaching the school.

“Hey, slut!” shouted a girl sitting on the steps near the door.

The girl kept walking, looking down at the sidewalk.

“Look who’s calling who a slut!” shouted one of the jocks.

“Shut up, jack—!” the girl yelled back.

“Shut up yourself, b—!” the boy answered.

Suddenly Cole wanted to scream, Stop it! Everybody just shut up! Garvey’s words came back to him: “Diminish anything around you and you diminish yourself.” Did these kids know they were destroying themselves with every word?

Students who recognized Cole turned and stared openly. His pulse quickened and his face warmed when he heard their whispers. In the past, he would have challenged any kid who dared to stare. Now he drew in a deep breath and lowered his eyes, afraid of what he might do if confronted.

A familiar voice interrupted Cole’s thoughts. “Hey, you,” Peter called, hurrying over in his stumbling gait. “H-h-how are ya?”

“Good. How are you doing?”

The smile left Peter’s face. “Two kids have called me a retard already. I wish we were still on the island. I want to go back and soak in the pond.”

Cole studied his friend’s troubled face. The beating and the brain injury had left Peter superemotional. Sometimes he laughed and cried at the same time. Cole remembered Peter’s first nights on the island, waking up screaming as if he were still being attacked. With time, his fears had calmed, but Cole worried that those haunted thoughts would return here in the city.

Cole knew he was responsible for Peter’s injuries, but he also knew he had helped him. After Peter attempted suicide the second time, Cole had suggested that the fearful boy visit the island. He wanted to show Peter that the monster he feared no longer existed.

At first, Peter’s parents had refused, but in desperation they finally agreed under the condition that Garvey accompany the two boys to help protect their son.

On the island, Cole had struggled hard to help Peter discover that he, too, was a part of something much larger than himself, like a strand woven into a blanket or a brushstroke in a picture. Peter learned to be aware of but not to focus on his own self.

Standing now on the school grounds watching the other students, emotions welled up in Cole. A thought kept haunting him: Maybe the monster that Peter once feared still existed.

In each class, Cole picked a desk near the back, trying not to be noticed. During lunch, he sat alone, eating slowly, chewing, tasting, and appreciating each mouthful before he swallowed. Kids around him stuffed food into their faces, arguing and complaining.

“These hamburgers suck!” one girl grumbled.

“So do the french fries,” another student added.

Cole watched kids dump tray after tray of half-eaten food into the garbage can. He wondered how everybody would behave if they had almost starved on an island. What if they had been forced to eat vomit, insects, and mice just to stay alive, as he had? What if they, too, had touched the Spirit Bear?

An assembly was called for the last period. Cole couldn’t find Peter, so he sat alone in the bleachers, ignoring the shouting and shoving. The teachers bunched together against the wall under the mural of the vicious bulldog mascot. They visited with one another and ignored the students.

On the gym floor, a short, neatly dressed woman stepped up to the podium and tapped the microphone. “Okay, listen up everyone! I’m Ms. Kennedy, the new principal,” she said in a monotone, as if her voice were a recording.

“Hey, witch, you listen up!” a student screamed back.

The woman pulled the microphone closer. “Welcome! I’m Ms. Kennedy, your new principal. I’ve called this assembly to welcome you back to Minneapolis Central High, home of the proud Bulldogs. I appreciate your being here.”

“What choice do we have?” another student shouted.

The principal droned on over the shouting and laughter. When the assembly finally ended, Cole braced himself for more shoving. A student shouted, “The b— won’t last a week!”

They were probably right, Cole thought. He spotted Peter leaving school through a side door and ran to catch up. “Hey, what did you think of the new principal?” he asked.

“I th-th-think she’ll get munched for lunch.”

Cole nodded his agreement. “How was your first day?”

Peter stared at the sidewalk without answering.

“Did more kids trash you?”

Peter shrugged. “It’s no big deal. How ’bout you?”

Cole pretended to be the announcer at a circus. “Come one, come all,” he shouted. “See the freak boy who was attacked by a bear!”

Peter laughed and chimed in, “See the boy who got his head smashed and had to go to Alaska so he wouldn’t commit suicide.”

Cole spoke bitterly. “We’re both in trouble when everybody figures out that fighting will send me to jail.”

Peter wrinkled his forehead. “We have to think like we did on the island or we’ll both be back where we started. I wish we were soaking in the pond right now. We wouldn’t have all these problems.”

“I’ll figure out something,” Cole said.

“If you find a pond, maybe I can figure out how to carry ancestor rocks,” Peter said, looking at his watch. “Hey, I gotta get home.”

Cole watched his friend limp away and then headed for home himself. His mother now worked as an office manager for a trucking company and wouldn’t get off work for a couple of hours, so Cole took his time.

He had walked several blocks when he found himself passing Frazier’s grocery store. Suddenly an idea popped into his head. He used to shop at this store with his mother. Once she had asked the checkout person if they could buy a case of frozen hamburgers for a picnic she was planning with Dad. The man had led them back into a large walk-in freezer where they stored frozen goods. Cole remembered seeing his breath and shivering. That freezer would be cold like the stream.

Cole hesitated, then walked inside and asked a tall woman working behind the meat counter, “Can I speak with the manager?”

“I’m Betty. I manage the dairy and meat department,” the lady said, wiping her hands on a white apron. “Can I help you?”

“I have a weird question.”

“Well, maybe I have a weird answer.”

“I was sent up to Alaska to stay on an island for a year.”

“I read about you somewhere,” she said. “Didn’t you end up spending time with the boy you attacked?”

Cole nodded. “We went every morning and soaked in an ice-cold pond to help us clear away our angry thoughts.” He picked nervously at a fingernail. “Here we don’t have a pond anymore. Could we come and try sitting in your freezer?”

The lady laughed with surprise. “You really want to come and just sit in the freezer to get cold?”

Cole smiled nervously. “Long enough to clear our minds so we’re not angry.”

“You’ll freeze your britches,” she joked. Then she studied Cole. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“We have to find something like the pond to keep us from getting mad again.”

“Why don’t you just decide to be happy?”

“It’s not that easy—please.”

Betty frowned. “This isn’t something I want to advertise. Would you come in before school?”

Cole nodded.

“Okay. I’ll put a couple of plastic chairs back there and let you try it.”

Cole reached over the counter and shook her hand. “Thanks so much. Thanks a million.”

Cole couldn’t wait to tell Peter his idea, so he hiked the six blocks to Peter’s house. Hopefully Mr. and Mrs. Driscal weren’t home—they still didn’t like seeing him with Peter. Nervously, he knocked.

“Wh-wh-what are you doing here?” Peter asked when he opened the door, glancing over his shoulder.

“Who is it, honey?” called Mrs. Driscal, walking from the kitchen with a towel in her hand. Her smile faded when she spotted Cole. “Can we help you?” she asked, her voice suddenly guarded.

“I know you don’t want Peter hanging around me, Mrs. Driscal,” Cole said hesitantly, “but we’re friends now. I’m not going to hurt him.”

“You’ve already done that,” she said.

“What are you doing here?” Peter asked again.

Cole told Mrs. Driscal how he and Peter wanted to soak and carry ancestor rocks again. Deliberately he explained his plan. “Sitting in the freezer would be kind of like soaking in the pond,” he concluded. “Can Peter come with me tomorrow morning?”

Mrs. Driscal hesitated. “We’ll have to discuss this with Peter’s father.”

“Mom, y-y-you know Dad will say no,” Peter said, “but he’s not always right!”

“Let’s just forget it,” Cole said. “I’ll see you in school tomorrow.”

“No! I’ll go to the freezer with you,” Peter said stubbornly. He turned to his mother. “Mom, I’m standing up for myself—you said yourself that was good. Besides, I have an idea, too, how we can carry ancestor rocks like on the island.”

“And what’s that?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you if it works. Cole, do you want to go right now and see
my
idea?”

Mrs. Driscal threw her hands up. “Oh, so now you don’t even tell me what you’re doing?”

Peter started down the driveway.

“We
will
discuss this with your father later,” Mrs. Driscal called.