Puppet Wrangler (2 page)

When I got off, she fake-punched me in the arm and said, “Hey, Telly, don't hold supper for me. I'm going to be a little late tonight.” It was the first thing she'd said to me all day. The Mountie snorted and said, “You're right about that, Bess. C'mon. Your mother's waiting for you in the squad car.”

Waiting for her.

Mum arranged for Jenna's parents to take me home.

¹
From now on just assume that everyone means everyone but me and Adrienne Handspiker, who didn't seem to be screaming any-more. By this time, she was curled up on a backseat, chewing on the strap to her knapsack.

2
JUST SO YOU KNOW…

It doesn't run in the family.

I'm not like Bess. At all. I never wanted to cause trouble. I never even wanted to be noticed. I just wanted to fade into the background. I wore beige clothes, let my hair hang over my eyes and slouched.

That was the only thing I ever did that seriously bugged my mother. The slouching, I mean. I felt bad about it, of course—Mum had enough problems without having to worry about my posture—but I just couldn't get myself to stand up straight.

Maybe that was because I was twelve years old and five-foot seven and nobody that age likes to be five inches taller than the teacher.

But I don't think so.

I think it was because every time I stood up straight, this voice in my head would start screaming, “Get down! Get Down FOR GOD'S SAKE!” like I was going to get shot by some sniper or something.

I know that's a crazy over-reaction, but that's really what I used to think.

3
WHAT DID I DO?

You never know what people are going to do. Sometimes it's the so-called normal ones who surprise you most of all.

I figured my parents were going to go crazy. This bus thing was way worse than the tattoo Bess got on her neck or the words she sprayed all over her ex-boyfriend's father's Winnebago. Mum and Dad went ballistic then.

But here it was, two days later, and there was nothing. No yelling. No slamming doors. Not even any of that loud laughing Bess fakes to drive them nuts.

The quiet was making me nervous. Maybe this was going to be more like the time she got caught with a stolen credit card on her way to Sudbury. (She wanted to see the World's Biggest Nickel.) That time no one raised their voices at all. The family counselor got everyone talking, but even then Mum barely moved her lips. (It was creepy. I'd rather she'd just gone snaky and got it over with.)

I don't know why the whole thing was bugging me this time. It's not like it had anything to do with me. Just the same, I decided to crawl under my bed.

I make that sound as if it's something I only do in emergencies, like Dorothy and Toto heading for the storm cellar or something. But it's not like that. I really like it under there. I always have. You can still see where I painted the word “Dreemland” on the plywood ceiling. I must have been about seven. It was the brand name on my mattress, but it seemed like the perfect thing to call my little hiding place, at least until I realized that dreamland is spelled with an “a.”

It's not as if it's anything special under there. It probably looks like most kids' beds, from the outside anyway. It's got a pink-striped ruffly thing that hangs down to the floor and behind that the usual junk you'd expect: a couple of old shoe boxes, a gym bag, a stuffed monkey. I put them there as decoys so my mother wouldn't get suspicious.

It's set up really nicely in back. Very neat. No dust. I've got a pillow and a little lamp. (It's an old bed so it's high enough.) There are books lined up against the back wall, a couple of games, my Discman and a picture of Snowball before she got run over. (Duh. Who'd have a picture of their cat after it got run over? Other than Bess, I mean.) Just below the headboard is my “kitchen”: some juice boxes, some granola bars, two cans of ravioli and the can-opener my mother tore the house apart for. I don't actually eat anything under there, but I like to keep some nonperishables just in case. I also keep a change of clothes, though for the longest time they were size 6x because I forgot to update them as I grew. It didn't really matter. It's not as if I actually needed them. I just like the feeling of having my own little world that's got everything I could ever want, right there.

What's so bad about that?

I don't know. But Mum caught me crawling out of Dreemland once when I was nine, and I knew I'd never let her catch me again. Not that she was mad—what was there to be mad about?—but she didn't like it. She got that worried “how-unusual-dear” look on her face and then tried to make it sound as if I was playing under there or something. Like I was doing it for fun! I started pretending I didn't go there anymore.

No one knows I go there—though I figure the cleaning lady must have her suspicions.

Anyway, two days after the “bus incident,” I was lying under the bed, wondering whether I should get one of those little pots to pee in,
²
when Mum knocked on the door.

“Telly?” Way too sweet.

“Just a minute!” I tried to sound calm but I was freaking. I thought she was going to walk in on me scrambling up to the surface.

“Are you changing, dear?…I won't come in.” Luckily, respecting each other's privacy was one of the counselor's big things. Mum went on from outside the door: “When you're ready, could you come into the sunroom please? It's …important.”

Important.

The Mercer family code word for seriously bad. But what had I done? Nothing. I figured it must be about Bess. Why did I have to get in on it then?

It hit me as I was walking down the hall. They were going to punish Bess and they needed a witness! They had to make an example of her. This was going to be like a public hanging or stoning or something. (Mum had been reading a lot of history books lately.)

No. It didn't take me long to delete that idea. My parents don't agree with “corporal punishment,” so I doubted they'd go for an actual execution. (That would be overkill anyway. All they really needed to do was haul off and smack Bess— even once. It might have helped. At least Mum wouldn't be needing all that wrinkle cream now.)

(Don't tell anyone I said that. About the smack, I mean.)

(Or the wrinkle cream.)

I realized it was more likely to be an exile kind of thing. We were all going to stand at the door, pointing into the distance, and send Bess away. About time.

I was almost right.

Dad took my hand and patted it and talked in his nice doctor voice.

“Telly, we're going to send you away for a while.”

²
Toilet facilities were the only thing I needed in Dreemland that I didn't have there. My big problem was I couldn't figure out how I was going to pee lying flat on my back. I must have known how to do it at one point because I wet my bed till I was nine.

4
SPARE ME.

Kathleen was way late picking me up at the airport, which kind of strained my relationship with the flight attendant.

Josette had really liked me on the plane. Why wouldn't she? Braden, the other kid flying by himself, was such a pain. He kept on asking for more pop or a different Lego set or if he could trade in his half-eaten chicken meal for the lasagna.

Me? I was the perfect passenger. The quiet type who'd never ask for anything.
³
Josette could just smile as she went by and get on with handing out her headphones.

When she got stuck waiting at the airport with me, though, I knew Josette wished I was someone else. Maybe not Braden, but at least someone who talked. Even one of those kids who never stopped talking. In fact, given a choice between Bess mouthing off in handcuffs and me, I bet she'd have taken Bess any day.

I can't blame her. It would have made killing the time a whole lot easier.

In the twenty minutes we'd been sitting there on my luggage, Josette had found out I was in Grade Seven and from teeny, tiny Beach Meadows, Nova Scotia, and had a dead cat. She was running out of questions to ask. (The dead cat was kind of a conversation stopper anyway.)

She was going on again about how excited I must be to visit Toronto when I saw Kathleen come flying in the door. You couldn't miss that new red hair of hers.

I grabbed my fleece and started stuffing my book into my knapsack. I was psyching myself up to give Kathleen a kiss—Mum said I absolutely had to—when I realized I had a little more time to prepare.

Kathleen was about ten meters away, heading right for me, when she suddenly stopped and swung around. She stood there with her back to me, waving an arm in the air like she was Bugs Bunny conducting an orchestra or something. She stomped her foot a couple of times too, then leaned against the glass wall, that arm still flailing away.

I couldn't believe it.

Kathleen was on her cell phone!

Luckily, Josette didn't notice. She just kept going on about all the wonderful things to do, restaurants to visit, places to shop—like I was some little hick kid
⁴
who'd never been to the big city before.
⁵
I turned down the sound and disappeared into my head.

I started thinking about how different Kathleen and Mum are.

For starters, Mum would have been on time. No matter what. A raptor could have mauled her and left her for dead in the driveway and she'd still manage to drag her legless body to the airport five minutes early. In fact, by the time my bags arrived, she'd have written a note to the cleaning staff in her own blood apologizing for the mess she'd made. She'd also have come up with a home lesson plan on meat-eating dinosaurs. (“You can see by the wound how he was able to tear off my left leg with a single snap of his massive jaws. I wish you'd been there, Telly! It really was fascinating.”)

She sure wouldn't keep anyone waiting to take a cell-phone call.

Even if she approved of cell phones. (Which of course she doesn't. Mum's generally against anything hightech. And that includes two-ply toilet paper and toasters that pop on their own.)

Mum and Kathleen look totally different too. Mum goes for that natural stuff. Her blond highlights look like the sun made them, and you can't even tell when she's wearing makeup. (Though it's kind of obvious when she's not.) Her clothes all come from catalogs in the States that show people chopping wood in their best pants or laughing when someone throws snow in their face. (Like any grown-up would do that.)

Kathleen, on the other hand, is kind of, I don't know, pointy or something. She reminds me of one of those Brain-Buster problems they give you on the so-called Math “Fun” Day. “Can you make a person using just five rectangles, a square and two rhombuses?” There are no circles on Kathleen. There aren't even any semicircles.

I know she looks good because people in magazines look like her. But I always thought she looked kind of scary too. Like the captain of the enemy spaceship in one of those sci-fi movies or something. They always have the perfect face and the really cool uniform. That's how you know they're evil.

Believe me, I'm not saying Kathleen's evil. (Mum would kill me if she ever heard me call her baby sister evil.) But she's certainly got the look down pat.

One last thing. Mum is Ms. Community Volunteer of the Year. If you're a homeless person or an ex-convict or some little sea slug that everyone else in the universe would be delighted to hear is about to go extinct, my mother is there for you.

That's really important to remember.

I know I made her sound kind of bad when I was talking about Bess, but Mum really tries hard. She really wants to believe that everybody (except the people who make artificial coloring and the guy building the condos practically right on the public beach) is basically good and trying to do what's best. She wants to make the world a better place.

Kathleen, on the other hand, is a television producer.

She makes TV shows.

We don't even have a TV.

That's because my mother believes that television is “mulching the minds of our children.” I always figured she'd disown me if she knew how much TV I used to watch at Bethany MacMaster's before Bethany realized that was the only reason I came over. (I know she'd divorce Dad if she found out he rented us a television whenever she went on a yoga weekend.)

Now she was sending me to stay with her pointy sister Kathleen to “help her out in the studio.” She was even making it sound like it was a good thing.

Right.

And having your leg chewed off by a giant lizard is a learning experience.

Dad at least was honest. He did that whole “It'll be fun!” thing, but he also admitted that they didn't have the time to be worried about me right now. (Okay, he didn't say exactly that— but that's what he meant.) They had to straighten Bess out.

I was getting to skip a month of school, go to the big city and work on a TV show.

I was trying not to cry when I saw Kathleen accidentally thwack an old man in the back of the head with that flailing arm of hers and send him sliding across the floor like a big plaid mackerel.

Suddenly, everything started going crazy. Josette rushed to help, but before she could the old man took down a lady eating an ice-cream cone and a pilot who knew a lot of bad words in both French and English. A security guy came running over like this was a national emergency or something. I guess he didn't see the ice cream on the floor. He did this log-rolling-competition thing for a while and then took a major face plant. That's when the next pileup started.

Kathleen, meanwhile, was trying to wrap up her phone call and help everyone to their feet and hand out her business cards to pay for any damage and act all innocent (“Why, Telly, when did your plane get in?”) and thank Josette for looking after me.

People were still slipping around on the butterscotch ripple when Kathleen grabbed my arm and a suitcase and headed out the door.