The Mealworm Diaries (6 page)

Silence.

Jeremy could almost hear her take a breath before she went on.

“Anyway, Jeremy was out front, waiting. Dan was supposed to come home early to take him, but he was late.”

I was playing with Henry.

Jeremy remembered tossing the Frisbee, the dog sprinting back and forth, leaping to catch the flying disc, until they were interrupted by the sounds of a motorcycle turning into the driveway.

“It was bad enough that he was late”—his mother's voice was louder now—“but he showed up on a motorcycle. One of the guys he worked with had this big black Harley. Dan thought he'd give Jeremy a thrill and ride him to his practice on it.”

Jeremy could picture his father tugging off the helmet, smiling, shaking his head, running his fingers through his tousled hair. “Know anybody who wants a ride?” he had said.

“Jeremy!” He remembered the sound of his mother's voice from behind the screen door. Short. Sharp. Angry. “Put the dog in the run,” she called, and he knew what else she was going to say.
She was going to say no. She was
going to say I couldn't go.

“Aw, Mom! Please?”

His father's face, hard now, the smile gone. “Do what your mother says.”

He ran to the back, Henry bounding beside him. The dog still wanted to play. Didn't want to be locked up
.
Jeremy had to go into the run first, coaxing Henry to follow. Then Jeremy squeezed out, leaving the dog behind.

“And he only had one helmet,” his mother was saying, the words sounding raw as they came out of her throat. “‘You can't take him without a helmet!' I was yelling. I was furious with him.”

Jeremy stood, an angry shiver coursing through his body.
You shouldn't have yelled,
he wanted to tell her.
That's why he gave me the helmet. He gave it to me.
He
should have been wearing it.

“He shoved that huge helmet right over Jeremy's head. It was way too big and too heavy. It sat on his shoulders and wobbled. Jeremy could hardly see.”

I could so. I saw. I saw everything.

He heard his mother sob. The sound made his knees buckle, and he slumped to the stairs.

“It seemed like they were hardly gone before I heard the first sirens, and I thought, ‘No. Can't be.' And after a while there were more of them, wailing past the house, and it was like I knew. I knew. I was already outside, running up the driveway when Officer McKendrick pulled in.” Her words burst out between more sobs. “I thought…I thought both…”

Jeremy's hands slipped over his ears.
Stop! Stop
crying! Stop crying!

It was a while before she spoke again, and this time her words were muffled by his hands. “They took me… Jeremy's leg was…operation…two metal plates…He missed the funeral. People came to see him. He wouldn't talk to anybody.”

They were crying. They cried and felt sorry for
me
. They
felt sorry for
me
. I hated that they felt sorry for me.

“He won't talk about it.” She blew her nose again. It was a while before she went on. “…some nights… terrible dream…”

There was a soft murmur from Milly.

“I don't know…something triggers them…wets the bed…the doctors…something about the accident. Something he hasn't talked about. He could tell me. He could tell me anything. Why doesn't he tell me?” She cried again.

Jeremy slumped against the railing.
Can I tell her?
Not this. She'll…

He heard Milly make comforting noises and after a while the crying stopped. The sound of chairs scraping and cups clinking brought him to his feet. He was under the quilt with his eyes closed when his mother came in. He heard her soft footsteps, felt her breath warm on his face, her lips on his forehead. More steps. Only the shadows and his memories stayed.

ELEVEN

This will be perfect,
Jeremy told himself as he walked with his mother to the streetcar stop. She had a day off. The sun was shining, and they were going to spend the time together. At the corner she pulled two streetcar tokens from her purse and slipped them between her lips to hold them as she fumbled to close the clasp.

“Milly says the Queen car runs across the whole city,” she said, her voice high and thin as it came from the side of her mouth. “We can go anywhere.”

“Anywhere?” Jeremy squeaked back, and his mother hurried to take the tokens from her lips. She laughed then, and Jeremy laughed too, and something lifted from his chest. He felt good.

“We could get off at Yonge Street and walk up to that big shopping mall Milly was telling us about. The Eaton Centre?” She passed him a token. “Or we could go all the way to the other end of the city and see High Park. We could spend the afternoon there. We have time to decide. Let's make it an adventure.” She smiled.

When the streetcar came, he got on first and led the way to the back, where he settled on the bench seat. He liked this spot. He could look out through the center aisle and watch people get on, or he could turn and see what he was leaving behind.

The streetcar rumbled and bounced along, picking up passengers at every stop. There were old ladies clutching purses; women with plastic shopping bags; students with backpacks; moms with little kids clutching their hands; old men with tired eyes; and teenagers with headphones plugged into their ears, their heads moving to an unheard beat. Most of them got on in silence, scanned the car for a seat, swung into an empty spot and then stared out the window.

It was a quiet ride until a bunch of bigger kids streamed on, laughing, joking, jostling, shoving each other in a friendly sort of way. A couple of the girls dropped into seats near the front, but all the others stood, straddling the aisle to keep their balance as the streetcar rocked along. Some of the passengers glanced at the noisy group, then looked away. Jeremy didn't think that these city kids looked any different than the teenagers back home. They wore jeans with tattered hems that trailed threads and T-shirts covered with words, or pictures, or both.

At the next stop the driver called, “Clear the doors,” and a few of the kids drifted toward the back, but they kept calling to each other. Then, out of the jumble of voices, Jeremy heard, “…and after the mealworms… after the mealworms, can we see the mummy? I want to see the mummy.”

He cringed. Aaron? Yes. There, beside a tall boy who was gripping the upper rail with one hand. His other hand was on Aaron's shoulder as if to keep him grounded. Aaron had said he was going to the museum with his brother. This had to be him.

Jeremy slid lower in his seat. Between the bodies of the passengers, he stared at the tall boy. He was wearing a black T-shirt with the image of a gleaming motorcycle, the rider crouched, his head forward, his hands clutching the grips.
A Harley,
Jeremy thought. The rider's helmet was black and shiny, the visor down. Only his green eagle-eyes showed.

“Dad's eyes were brown, weren't they?” he said.

“Yes,” his mother said.

He jumped. He hadn't realized he had spoken aloud.

“This is Yonge Street coming up,” she said. “If we're going to shop at the Eaton Centre we have to get off now.”

“Let's just go on,” he mumbled.

“Can we see the dinosaurs too? I love the dinosaurs.” Aaron's voice carried through the streetcar. The tall boy smiled down at him with that happy but tired smile people use with a barking puppy. When he leaned down and said something to Aaron, Jeremy noticed a metallic gleam in his mouth—a silver stud buried on his tongue. Without thinking, Jeremy lifted his hand to cover his own mouth.

The movement must have caught Aaron's attention because he stretched his neck and peered toward the back. “Hey, Jeremy!” He called and waved as he wove his way between passengers. “I'm going to the museum with my big brother. We're gonna see the mealworms and the darkling beetles. Yeah. And the mummy, even.”

“Tell everybody, why don'tcha,” somebody called, and there was laughter.

The boy with the motorcycle shirt trailed Aaron to the back. “This is Jeremy,” Aaron said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “He's my friend.”

“Hi, Jeremy,” several voices called.

Jeremy squirmed at the laughter that followed.

The tall boy finally caught up. He smiled and said, “I'm Paul. Aaron's Big Brother. I get to take him out once every two weeks. He can always think of some place he wants to go on our days together.”

Jeremy's mother smiled back. “It's nice to meet you, Paul. You too, Aaron,” she said. Then to Jeremy, “The museum's a great idea. Would you like to go?”

“Not today,” he said quickly.

“It's pretty neat,” the tall boy said. “Go if you get the chance.”

“It's way neat. Way neat. It's got everything.” Aaron nodded.

“University! University Avenue,” the driver called.

“That's us. C'mon, Aaron. Let's roll.”

When the tall boy turned, Jeremy could see the back of his shirt—a motorcycle leaving, trailed by a funnel cloud.

“There's even totem poles,” Aaron called before he stepped down into the street.

“So that's Aaron,” his mother said with a grin.

“Now you know why he's called Aaron Cantwait. And just so you know, we're not friends or anything,” he added.

From the rear window, Jeremy watched the group on the sidewalk, a heaving shifting mob with Aaron bouncing in the middle.

TWELVE

High Park was filled with people—moms and dads and kids, grandparents on lawn chairs and babies in strollers. Some people had pulled together two and three picnic tables and raised canopies to keep off the sun. They had portable barbecues and coolers. Some had covered the weathered tables with brightly patterned tablecloths. All of them seemed to be talking and laughing. They looked happy.

“It's nice here,” his mother said.

“Hmmm.” Jeremy nodded. It was nice.
But it's not
home
, he thought.
Not enough trees, not enough water.
And people—so many people—all of them strangers.
He yearned to be home in his corner of Nova Scotia where he knew everybody. Where everybody knew him. He glanced at his mother and saw his sadness reflected in her face. That only made him feel worse. He looked around for something to cheer her up. Then he saw it. “Look,” he said, pointing to a green dragon kite with a rainbow tail that hovered above a tree across from them. “See it? Right up there.”

His mother smiled, and Jeremy did too as they watched the kite float on the wind. They saw it jerk sharply, first left, then right, and then it spiraled down.

“Oh! It's going to get snagged,” his mother said. She was right. The kite dropped to a branch and hung with its dragon's head on one side, the tail on the other. On the ground below, the small boy clutching the string started to cry.

“Poor little guy,” Jeremy's mother said.

She began to rummage in her bag, but Jeremy's gaze stayed on the boy and the kite. He saw a man hurry across the grass and put his hand on the boy's head. The man wiped the boy's nose with a tissue before he scrambled up the trunk and hoisted himself into the tree.

“Jeremy,” his mother said, “there's something we have to discuss.”

Jeremy heard, but he wasn't listening. He was watching the man in the tree belly-crawl along the branch and stretch out his arm. The man tugged on the kite string, pulling gently, this way and that, until the kite floated free, right down into the waiting arms of the boy.

An unexpected wave of feeling hit Jeremy. The muscles in his face stretched, his jaw tightened and he found himself blinking away tears that stung the back of his eyes.

“Oh, Jeremy!” his mother said. “We don't have to go.”

“What?” He recognized the sound of worry. “What?” he said again.

“We can stay with Milly. She's invited her daughters and their families, and she said we're welcome to join them. So if you'd rather stay here, we don't have to go home for Thanksgiving. Nana and Grampa will understand.”

“Thanksgiving?” Jeremy stared at his mother.
What
was she talking about?

“Nana phoned last night and asked if we wanted to come. We could leave a couple of days early and make a small holiday of it. We won't have time for another one until Christmas. I thought I'd ask you before I said yes. But we don't have to go. We can stay here if you'd rather.”

A peacock's haunting cry drifted up from the animal pens at the edge of the park. “No,” he said, “I want to go. I do.” He wasn't sure if that was true, but he thought it was what his mother wanted to hear.

THIRTEEN

“I do not! I do not!” Aaron's shrill voice rang out as Jeremy and Horace rounded the corner of the school. They almost bumped into Tufan. The bigger boy was towering over Aaron, one hand on the wall above Aaron's head, his face spitting close.