My Cousin's Keeper (15 page)

I couldn't think clearly the next day. I was tired from lack of sleep and exhausted by the thought of what had happened in the night. Bon had ridden away on my bike. He had refused to say where he had been going, and I worried that he was going to do it again.

“Late night, Kieran?” Mr. Garcia asked, because he could see I was fumbling with the schoolwork I usually completed without any problems.

“Chicken,” Lucas hissed at me at the beginning of recess. “Running off to tell Julia Barrett. Might as well have been a teacher.”

“So you
are
on your cousin's side now,” Mason said. “Some friend you are, writing all that stuff about us for the principal to read.”

I watched as the two of them walked across to the office. I had been given a lecture by Mom and Dad, but Mason, Lucas, and the others were missing recess for a week, and Mrs. Gallagher had also made them write apologies to read in person to Bon. But I knew, from the sneers they had directed at Bon on the playground already that morning, that their apologies meant just about nothing.

Nobody wants me here.
It hurt to hear Bon's voice in my head, telling me exactly what I'd thought and said to him in the weeks since he had arrived in town.

I had made a point of sitting right next to him at breakfast that morning, and I willed him to look at me and say something. But at first he had spooned up mouthfuls of cereal and gazed into his bowl as though it were a mirror. I had felt invisible.

“I want to sit next to Bon!” Gina had protested when she arrived at the table.

“We can share,” I'd told her. “Sit on the end chair, Gina.”

“That's not next to, that's near,” she had grumbled, but she'd sat down anyway.

I'd offered Bon the bottle of apple juice and he took it silently, poured a glass for himself and then one for Gina, and passed it back to me.

“Thanks, Bon,” I had said.

“It's a pleasure,” he'd replied in his precise voice. And then — as though he suddenly found his reply as weird and old-fashioned as it sounded — he had smiled to himself.

My shoulders drooped in relief.

Mom was over at the island fixing our lunches, already dressed in her supermarket uniform. But she stopped the cutting and wrapping to watch what had happened with us over at the table. “It looks very friendly over there,” she remarked. “Have I missed the signing of a peace treaty?”

I glanced sideways at Bon. “Something like that,” I answered, trying to sound cool and relaxed.

“Very good to see,” she had said approvingly, and mostly to me. “I'm really pleased.”

I nodded quickly, and maybe too anxiously. The picture of Bon riding away into the night was difficult to erase. That we had woken no one up was a miracle. After we had pedaled back to the corner of the street, we had lifted the bikes to our shoulders and carried them all the way to the end of our carport. We had climbed back through the open bedroom window, and I had pulled the screen back into place. We had peeled off warm clothes and climbed back into our beds. But I had stayed awake for a long time afterward, because I had nearly lost Bon and it had been my fault. I had nearly lost him, but then I brought him home.

Now, on the playground at recess, I looked for him. Of course he was with Julia and the circle of girls, just the same as every other school day. I wanted to talk to him, but he was part of whatever conversation Julia was leading. There was a soccer game happening on the back field, but I didn't have the energy to run and chase a ball. So I sat on one of the seats outside the library instead. It was the very place where Bon would sometimes sit, drawing or writing in his book.

I had told him about Connor.

I hadn't talked to anyone else about how Connor and I had been best friends for nearly two whole years, before he had simply stopped coming to school. We had played all sorts of games together. We had visited each other's homes and had sleepovers. Connor told good jokes and could draw funny, crazy pictures. His books and some of his artwork had been left behind, along with the seat where he had sat beside me in class. Miss Denny, our teacher, could only say, “Kieran, I'm sorry. It seems Connor and his family have left town. None of us knew, and I'm waiting to find out his new school so that I can send his things on. If I find out, maybe you can write to him. I know you're missing him.”

It had been the year I'd turned nine. Miss Denny never had found out where Connor had gone, but she had given me some of his artwork to keep. It was still stowed away in my bedroom at home. This was the most I had let myself think about him in a very long time.

You want to be popular.

I realized that I was never going to be best friends with Lucas and Mason. There were lots of kids I liked and who I played with, but no one was quite the same as Connor. I still missed him.

“Hi, Kieran.”

The voice startled me. Julia had left her group of friends and sat down on the seat next to me. “You don't usually sit here. Are you OK?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Just tired.”

Julia waited for more of an answer.

“I'm thinking about stuff,” I admitted.

She nodded.

Bon had left the group of girls as well. He looked across to where we sat, but did not walk over. Instead, he wandered around the edges of other kids and their games.

“It's easy being part of a group,” Julia said, “and it's hard to walk away and do the things you know are right. But if it's the right thing, other kids will see that. They'll come to you and be your friend. They'll like you for who you are.”

I frowned. “Why are you telling me this?” I wondered if Bon had told her about riding away in the night.

“Because I've learned it,” Julia said. “And I'm telling you because of Bon. What's happened to him here has been really unfair.”

My heart sank. “I tried to stop it. I told Bon I was sorry.”

“I know that. But if Bon needs you again, are you ready?”

“Ready for what?”

“To be yourself. To say if something is wrong and to stand up to people. Even people you think are your friends.” She added, “I don't think I'll be at this school much longer. You know that, don't you?”

I began to feel even worse, remembering the overheard conversation in Mrs. Gallagher's office.

“I don't have cousins or brothers and sisters,” Julia said. “You and Bon are lucky to have each other. Maybe it's taken you a while to get that. And you've made a promise. To me, anyway. Now you have to show Bon it's a promise. OK?”

The bell rang for the end of recess and Julia stood up.

“OK,” I replied.

Julia smiled. It was a warm smile that I struggled to return.

“See you, Kieran. See you again sometime.”

It was the last day that Julia would be at school.

She had told her friends the same thing.
See you again sometime.

The other girls probably thought it was a strange thing to say, but once a few days had gone by and Julia did not return to school, I could see and hear them beginning to worry.

Amy and Amber had gone down to the trailer park one day after school.

“She wasn't there,” Amber said on the playground. “The people who run the place said she had left. That's all they'd tell us.”

“And we couldn't believe someone like Julia would live in a place like that,” Amy added.

From what the girls went on to say, I started to find out that no one had actually visited Julia at the trailer park, that she had always said things like,
No, I'll meet you in town.
She had not wanted anyone to see where she was staying.

I knew Bon was the one I needed to ask. “Where's Julia?”

He was sitting on the seats outside the school library, reading a book. His shoulders dropped at my question. “She's gone.”

“Gone? But what happened? Where has she gone?”

“I don't know for sure. Not yet.”

The girls marched up to Bon and asked him the same questions. “But you
must
know something,” Amy told him in a demanding voice. “You and Julia were always hanging around together, and not just at school. More than
we
ever did.”

And Bon replied in much the same way he had to me. Except when the girls persisted, he added angrily, “Leave me alone!” and went away into the library to avoid their questions.

I followed him. “Do you know something you're not telling?” I asked when I found him over at the fiction shelves.

He was frowning at the book spines. “I only know what I know,” he answered.

I thought about this a moment, but didn't feel any less worried. “Bon? Is Julia OK?”

“Yes,” he replied, his voice a mixture of sadness and certainty. “I know she's OK. Things have worked out right, the way she told me they would.”

“You need to tell the other kids what you know. They need to know she's OK. Amy and Amber and all those girls are worrying. They'll start making up stories and it won't all be the truth. You have to tell them.”

He sighed. “I suppose,” he said. “If they want to believe
me
, that is.”

But Bon didn't say anything to the other kids, and by the end of the week, stories were being told at school. That the police had visited the trailer park. That someone had seen Julia's mom driven away in the back of the local patrol car. That Julia and a man had walked out of the police station together, and that was the last time Julia had been seen in town.

On the playground, Julia's friends worried and speculated until Mrs. Gallagher came over from her office and explained a little of what had really happened. Both fifth-grade classes sat on the carpet in my classroom, and Mrs. Gallagher — who always stood to speak when it was the whole school — borrowed Mr. Garcia's chair and sat down.

“Julia is fine,” she began. “I need to start by reassuring you all about that. Unpleasant things can happen in families, as some of you might know and understand only too well. Ignore any rumors that might be flying around town — Julia
is
safe and with her family. She was only with us a short while, but she was a very good member of our school community.” Mrs. Gallagher paused. “I've almost lost count of the number of children who have come to our school for only a short amount of time, but let me tell you, I won't be forgetting Julia and her ideas and her generosity toward others.” At this point, I saw Mrs. Gallagher look over to where Bon was sitting. “If you were friends with her, I know that you will be missing her.”

I looked around the classroom and saw lots of things: Lucas and Mason and a few of the boys yawning and acting bored, Amy and a few of the girls looking lost and sad, Amber Hodges looking cranky. Other kids were gazing intently at Mrs. Gallagher and hanging on her every word, which made me wonder if some of these were the kids Nan talked about, the ones who had unhappy family lives.

And last of all there was Bon, who sat on the floor staring at his feet, trapped in his own air bubble. Bon, who I knew missed his friend probably more than anyone else in the room.

Back at the village, Julia the Fair was preparing for her own journey.

I saw Bon frown then, and it was as though Mrs. Gallagher hadn't said everything he needed to hear. Something was not finished, and still not right.

At the very end of the day, as we waited at the school gate for Gina, he abruptly said, “Julia told me to look in my bag.”

“What?” I asked, not understanding at all.

“My bag,” he answered. “It was one of the last things she said the other afternoon, before she left.
Look in your bag
.”

“And?” My head was still full of Julia not being around.
See you again sometime
.

Bon had an envelope in his hand. He pulled out a folded piece of paper and held it, floating, in front of me. “I found this in my bag,” he said.

“What is it?”

He dropped it lower, unfolded it carefully. “I need you to read it,” he said, and then looked steadily at me. “I need your help.”