Charlie's Key (3 page)

Miz stands with me at the curb when the van pulls into the parking lot and heads straight for us. Guess I might as well have writing on me too:
Orphan Kid Nobody Wants
. A second before the driver pulls up, Miz puts her hand on my shoulder, like I’m going to jump in front of it or something. You might think I’d yank myself away from her, but it feels kinda nice, and outta nowhere I almost start to cry, my eyes getting full. The weather isn’t helping any since there’s a wind blowing in my face; I haven’t been outside in about a week, so I’m tearing up pretty good. I clamp my eyes shut real tight and turn my face while I mop up any water on my cheeks. I don’t know much about Buses for Boys So Bad They Gotta Be Kept in a Cage, but I know you shouldn’t get on one snot-nosed.

Tubby comes over to talk to the driver, who’s outta the van, lighting up a cigarette.

“Mr. Rogers,” a voice shouts from the van—a shout at the driver. “Billy Rogers! Give us one a them smokes.”

More shouts: “Give us a drag, Billy.” “Let’s all of us have a pull, now!” “If ya don’t got enough to share with everyone, don’t be bringing ’em out at all.”

The shouts shift to Miz when the boys spot her.

“Who’s yer girlfriend, Billy?” comes a call. Then another one, “Miss, miss, show us yer—”

“Enough,” the driver snaps. “Little shits,” he says, real quiet. He gives the van a glare, then seeing Miz pawing around the bottom of her bag for a pen, he tosses a quick finger back at the boys. And it’s like something explodes far off, behind a closed door. Yells, shouts, laughing, the van rocking side to side.

“Jesus,” Tubby says to the driver. “Better you than me.”

“Three more years, b’y. Then I’m done and off to the country.”

The driver looks at me for the first time. “Better get you aboard,” he says, unlocking the back door. “Find a seat and sit down. I’ll do roll call in a minute.”

The hollering stops soon as I get aboard, with everyone turning to look at me. It stinks inside—sweat from big boys and something else I don’t want to think about. There’s one seat left, on the aisle at the very front, where a fat kid’s scrunched up against the window. All the eyes go from me up to the empty seat when I head for it. Then I see what stinks: puke, all over that one seat. I swallow hard just looking at it; no way I’m sitting there.

“Better sit down,” a kid calls out from the back. “Billy can’t move this thing till everyone’s sat down.”

“That’s right,” says a kid across the aisle in the other front window seat—the one who called for the cigarette. “Little runt like you don’t want to get Billy pissed at him.”

“Too late,” says a third kid. “Here he comes, and he’s got that look.”

A minute later the driver’s in his seat, turning round to slide open a plastic panel between the front and back of the van.

“Jesus,” he says. “What died back there?”

There’s a burst of noise as the boys all call out an answer.

“All right, shut up!” he shouts. “If ye crowd aren’t quiet in five seconds, I’ll take the shore road back, and it won’t just be Pillsbury here pukin’ his guts up.

“Now,” he says once they settle down, “I’ll do the roll. Butt, Corey?”

“Yup,” says a skinny kid who’s holding up a booger he just slid outta his nose.

“Crocker, Danny?”

“What’re ya at?” comes a call back.

It goes on, down to Walsh, Frankie.

No answer. I see the driver turn his head to look at the kid in the front seat, the one across the aisle. Walsh, Frankie turns toward the driver and they stare at each other. The kid is chewing something, his mouth scrinched up in a rat nibble, like when you got a hangnail between your teeth. He tilts his head, pokes the tip of his tongue out and gives a spit—a little pop.

“Present,” he says.

The driver checks off his name.

“And you, new kid,” he says to me. “Sykes, Charlie.”

“Here,” I say. I expect more hoots, but instead there’s just a bunch of whispers.

“Sykes,” says Walsh, Frankie once Billy slides the little window shut. “You really a Sykes?”

I nod.

“I ain’t never heard of a Charlie Sykes.”

“I’m not from here. I’m from Alberta.”

“You’re the kid in that accident—the orphan kid whose old man got killed by the moose. I seen it on the news.”

He nods to himself.

“Gameboy,” he says, turning round to a kid behind him wearing a big pair of glasses on even bigger ears. “Switch seats with him.”

“No way,” says Gameboy. “I ain’t sitting in Pillsbury puke.”

Walsh, Frankie turns all the way round in his seat and grabs Gameboy’s ear, pinching the bottom tight. I look to see what the driver’s going to do, but he’s turned the other way, signing some papers. Walsh, Frankie’s got Gameboy pulled close to him now, close enough to whisper something in his ear. Then he pushes him away and swats him in the head, knocking his glasses onto the floor.

“Next time I’ll tear it right off,” he says, turning round to face forward. Gameboy bends over to feel for his glasses, patting the floor till he finds them, then gets up and shoves past me toward the puke seat, where he sits, as close to the edge as he can.

“You’re a real prick, you know that, Walsh?” Gameboy says across the aisle. He just whispers it, in a hiss. Walsh, Frankie doesn’t say anything back. He just nods as I sit in the seat behind him. I figure he knows what he is.

FIVE

I get my first look at The Hollow just after one o’clock that afternoon. It doesn’t seem too bad. Flat roof, red and brown bricks, lots of windows—all of them long, tall and narrow, sorta like a castle with the top chopped off. And lots of lawn running up to it, cut nice, with some flowers and stuff. It looks sorta like a golf course, except for the big chain-link fence around everything. It’s like those screens on the bus: normal, wrapped in steel.

I don’t like it.

At least I won’t have to be here long, I think, as I watch the other kids pile outta the van. Gameboy first, puking on the grass soon as he hits fresh air. Pillsbury’s the last one out, and he flops on the lawn while the other kids line up at the door.

“Serves ya right for eatin’ all a them pancakes,” says Nose Picker. “Disgusting what you shoves in yer face.”

“That’s enough,” says the driver, pressing a button by the door that sets off a buzzer. “You got an hour of class left, so drop your court documents at the office and get to class. Except you, Sykes. You come with me.”

We go down a long hallway that ends at an office with glass walls—I can see right inside to where a guy’s sitting at a big desk. He waves us in.

“Have a seat,” he says to me. Then to the driver, “That’s all, Billy. Thanks.”

He swivels his chair toward me.

“I’ve just been reading your file,” he says, taking off his glasses. “Sorry about your dad. That can’t be easy. And it can’t be easy ending up here, not that here’s such a bad place.”

“Got a nice lawn,” I say.

“Nicer than mine. The boys mow it, weed it. Not that you’ll be doing that. We expect you’ll just be here for a week, maybe two, while we straighten out your family situation.”

“About that, Mister…”

“Delaney. My name is Gordon Delaney. I’m superintendent here—like a principal, with a few more keys.”

He smiles, like we’re buddies. But he doesn’t put out his hand for me to shake.

“You were asking…,” he says.

“About my family thing.”

“The situation,” says Delaney. “It’s…ah…”

He lets out a big breath of air.

“It’s complicated. What do you know about your family, Charlie?”

“Nothing. I got my dad; I had my dad.”

“No cousins, uncles, anybody your dad spoke of?”

“No.”

Mr. Delaney gives his chin a good long rub. I can hear the
scritch-scratch
. It makes me think of my dad, and I feel my eyes getting watery again. But there’s no wind to blame it on now, so I have to figure out some other way to keep solid inside. I listen real close to every word Delaney’s saying, concentrating on that.

“We, or I should say the Department of Child Services, believes you may have some family members here, Charlie. The issue, ah…”

He’s all stumbly when he’s talking, looking at me, looking at the ceiling.

“The thing is, we have to determine…suitability.” He sighs again. “Do you understand?”

I shake my head.

“Your father,” he starts. Then he grunts. Really. Let’s out this old-man grunt, then doesn’t say anything for a minute or two. Long enough that he lines up six pencils in a straight row on his desk. Then he says, “I can tell you this much: Your dad was born in Newfoundland, in St. John’s. He has some family here, and we’re in the process of tracking them down, talking with them, seeing if they’d be willing and able to take in a young boy.”

“Me.”

“You.”

“And if they can’t?” I say.

“Then we’d look for another home.”

“A foster home?”

“Charlie,” says Delaney, “all this is the responsibility of Child Services. They can answer your questions. In fact, they’ve set up a meeting with you for tomorrow morning, here at the school. Maybe they’ll have some answers then. I can’t say much more than what I’ve told you.”

He slips his shirt sleeve back to look at his watch, then presses a button on his desk. It doesn’t make any noise I can hear, but you can bet there’s a buzzer going off somewheres.

“For now, we’ll get you settled in your room. I’ve got an older student who’ll show you where you’ll sleep. Here he is now—Simon.”

Pillsbury comes through the door, wearing a new shirt, face washed, hair wet.

“Simon, this is Charlie Sykes. He’ll be here a few days, up in Brookside. Room three. Thanks.”

It doesn’t take long for Pillsbury to work up a sweat. By the time we walk down a couple of hallways and up a flight of stairs, he can hardly talk. When we pass through a big set of doors into an open area that’s got
Brookside
written at one end, he’s puffing worse than Tubby.

“Here ya go,” he manages, opening the door to Room
3
. “You sleep in here.”

Room
3
is long and narrow, shaped just like the window that sits at the far end of it. On one side there’s a little bed, and across from that there’s a chair, a desk and a lamp. Everything else is bare: the walls, the floor, the closet and hangers—like nobody’s ever been in it before, except I can tell they have because there are chips on the paint and scuffs on the floor. But there’s nothing else to let you know another kid ever slept here or read a book here or laughed at a joke.

Hollow.

“Unpack your stuff,” says Pillsbury. “Class’ll be out in a bit; then there’ll be a buzzer for supper. Everybody’ll head down to the cafeteria—just look for me if your wondering which way to go.”

Yeah, I think, you’ll be at the head of the line—though I don’t say anything but “’Kay.”

Pillsbury heads off, and I start to unpack. A pair of jeans, a couple of T-shirts—just what I had when we left Fort Mac.

It’s weird looking at the stuff, because it makes me think how my dad was alive the last time I saw it. And that makes me sad, thinking about putting it away in a closet or a dresser, which I know is kind of stupid. I mean, it’s not like my dad folded it up for me or anything soppy like that. I mean, my jeans are rolled up in a ball in the pack, and I did the laundry myself before we left. Still, the last time the clothes were in fresh air my dad was breathing it. It’s a funny feeling.

I decide to keep one T-shirt folded up, just like it was when I packed it. It’s an Edmonton Oilers T-shirt my dad wore to work until it got a hole in the armpit. After that I wore it to bed whenever he worked a night shift. I put the rest of the stuff in the closet, which I kinda hate doing. Putting stuff away is like staying at…I don’t know, a grandma’s house at the ocean, I’d guess, when you go for the summer. I’ve never done that, but I’ve imagined doing it sometimes, usually just before school lets out for the summer. And now maybe I could have a grandma out here. I can’t imagine that, though, because I never seen a picture of anyone in the family except my dad. Not even my mom.

“Didn’t have a camera,” my dad said the one time I asked about it. “Didn’t want one,” he added on, when it looked like I had a few more questions bubbling up.

Without a picture, I don’t even know what my mom looked like, though I’ve got a way to try and guess how she might have looked. It works like this: I get a quiet time, like after school when my dad won’t be home for a while. Then I get up close to a mirror and look at my face. And in my mind I take away the parts that look like my dad. Then I try to put together the pieces left over and see what my mom musta looked like. Try it sometime. It’s hard. Sometimes I can’t even see the parts of me that look like my dad, except we both have dimples and lips that look kinda the same. And a forehead that goes a long way up before it hits hair.

There’s a mirror in this room, so I look in it. For a sec I can’t see anything that looks like my dad, but then I see the dimple. Some day I’ll start shaving and my chin will have that
scritch-scratch
sound like my dad’s when I rub it.

“Oh, you’re real pretty,” comes a voice from the doorway. A big kid strolls in. Other kids are coming into the common area behind him. Class must be out. He gives me a bump as he walks in front of the mirror and bends his face close to it.

“Not as pretty as me though.”

He tilts his chin up and squeezes a zit—
bam
—all over the mirror.

“That’s better,” he says, flopping onto the bed—my bed, I think about saying. But he’s big, with hair on his knuckles and his chin. Sixteen at least, I figure.

“What’s yer name, new kid?”

“Charlie.”

“Little Charlie Tucker,” he sings out, like it’s a nursery rhyme, “was a nasty little…”

He spots the Bible on the desk.

“What’s this?” he says, sitting up to grab it.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing, my arse,” he says, flipping it open.

“Hey, Brother Ribs,” he yells to a kid in the hallway. “Come in here. We’re going to have us a little reading.”

A skinny kid comes in, T-shirt down to his knees. He’s smaller than me, the shirt hanging off him like something a crazy old man would wear, all pulled outta shape and droopy.