The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing Page 9

  “You’d have thought it was him too, if you’d seen him,” I insist. My heart sinks as I process Morgan’s doubt. Now he’s making me doubt it too, even as I tell him otherwise.

  “Maybe I would.” Morgan nods diplomatically. “But it’s freezing out here and whoever it was is gone. Let’s get back inside. They’ll think there’s some kind of emergency.”

  I’ve managed to step in some gum and I feel it sticky underfoot as I head for the gallery with Morgan. Inside Ariel gazes at us with concern. “She’s fine,” Morgan says with a hint of please don’t ask in his voice. Grover returns to Ariel’s side with two glasses of red wine in his hands. Ariel thanks him as she takes one.

  After a couple of seconds, during which Grover silently absorbs the undercurrent between the three of us, he turns to Morgan and says, “Your boyfriend’s paintings are really interesting. I feel … unsettled but intrigued at the same time.”

  I’m glad he didn’t use any of the more intellectual words I’ve heard tonight. I guess I’ve missed my chance to impress Ariel, and I don’t know why I should want to measure up to Morgan anyway; none of that matters. I’m not sure whether the person I saw on Queen Street was really Devin or not, but the more I think about it, the more I realize whoever it was gave me hope. Devin’s not dead and he’s not a zombie. He’s out there walking around like the man in the green jacket, waiting for me to spot him.

  “Morgan.” I involve my oldest brother in my giddy, distracted state by steadying myself against him and plucking gum from the bottom of my right shoe.

  “People are disgusting, dropping their trash like that everywhere!” Jimmy says from behind us. He hands me a linen napkin to deposit the icky green-grey gum in. “Sometimes I wish I lived in the country.”

  “Who’re you kidding?” Morgan quips. “You know how much dirt there is in the country? And remember how bored you were when we were at Orla’s for the weekend?”

  Jimmy and Morgan squabble playfully over the merits and disadvantages of rural living, but my heart’s still galloping, thinking about the guy on the streetcar who may or may not have been Devin. Anyone’s findable. No one can hide forever, especially someone like Devin who didn’t have much money when he left and probably doesn’t have much now. I want to talk to Morgan about it, ask him where the streetcar ends up and why we can’t follow it, but I guess we’re too late, and anyway, my oldest brother has obviously already pushed the matter out of his head.

  ***

  By the time Morgan drives me home hours later I’m angry. Jimmy, exhausted from the success of his opening, has gone home to bed and I tell Morgan that we should’ve jumped in his car and tailed the streetcar along Queen Street until the guy in the green shell coat hopped off.

  Morgan screws up his eyebrows and says, “You’re telling me I should’ve run off in the middle of Jimmy’s show to chase down a streetcar, which would be gone by the time I reached the parking lot by the way, just in case the guy you think you saw was someone who doesn’t want our help in the first place?” Morgan sighs like he’s exhaling cigarette smoke and eyes me warily. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  I shake my head in frustration and slide down in the passenger seat.

  “Devin knows where to find us,” Morgan continues. “It’s not like any of us have disappeared. If he wants to get in touch, he can do it at any time.”

  “He needs help,” I snap. “Do you think it’s so easy to ask for help after everything that happened?”

  Morgan rubs the side of his face and keeps his gaze on the road. “He doesn’t want our help. That’s why he’s not calling.”

  “Wait. Do you know something I don’t?” Is that why Morgan’s in such a hurry to throw me off the scent? Does he think he’s protecting me somehow? “Have you seen Devin in Toronto before? Have you talked to him?”

  “No.” There’s a prickle in my brother’s tone, and an expression to match it. “Of course not. I haven’t seen or heard from him since he left home. Do you really think I’d keep something like that from you?”

  “If you thought it was for the —” I begin, before Morgan cuts me off.

  For the best.

  “But I haven’t,” he counters. “That’s not what this is about.”

  “Promise me,” I insist.

  My brother’s voice softens despite the impatience in his face. “I promise, Serena. I haven’t seen or heard a word. I’m only saying, you remember how it was before Devin took off. All the shouting, the stealing, and the lying. Even if that was him outside the gallery, do you think he’s any different now? You know you can’t help someone if they don’t want it, and when you insist on trying they drag you down with them.”

  Morgan’s pupils plead with me. “I really hope you won’t say anything to Mom and Dad. You can do what you want, obviously, but just think about it. They’ve been through enough.”

  I think about that but don’t make any promises. Odds are that Morgan’s right and Devin’s still hooked and wants nothing to do with the rest of the LeBlancs, but the next day at school I can’t stop going over the moment on Queen Street in my mind. If it were me in Devin’s place, what would he have done?

  I think about how when I was young Devin seemed to be the first person to notice whenever I was upset, like the time when I was ten and went trick-or-treating with some friends on Halloween. At one of the houses a woman with no hair and a baby on her hip answered the door. Her face wasn’t wrinkly but the baldness made her look older than she probably was. She was really skinny too, the way Devin is in my dreams now, and my friends and I stared at her and forgot to speak.

  “All I have left now is bubble gum,” she said apologetically, reaching towards our bags to deposit the tiny packages. The baby on her hip seemed too chubby and healthy to belong to her, and the woman didn’t seem to care that we were seeing her without her hair. We went to a lot of houses that night — I ended up with two jumbo bags full of chocolate bars, potato chips, gummies, and concentrated sugar products — but the bald, fragile-looking woman stayed in my head.

  When I got home I was quiet and Devin asked if I’d gotten into a fight with my friends or something. I told him about the woman and the baby and he said she was probably going through chemotherapy for some kind of cancer.

  “Cancer?” I repeated. So maybe she’d die and the baby wouldn’t have a mother?

  “Yeah, but she’s lucky she’s getting the chemo,” Devin continued. “In the old days mostly people just died when they got cancer. Now she’s got a fighting chance.” He bit his lip like he realized he wasn’t calming me down any. “But you know, it could always just be something like alopecia, that can make people — women too — lose their hair when there’s nothing else wrong with them. I bet that’s what she has.”

  “Really?” I asked suspiciously. “You’re not making that up?”

  “What? Like I’m going to make up a word like alopecia?” Devin shook his head at me. He would’ve been sixteen at the time and a master at rolling his eyes, but he usually saved that for Mom and Morgan or people he didn’t like. “You can look it up on the Internet and read all about it if you don’t believe me.”

  I can’t remember whether I looked it up or not but what I do remember was that neither of my brothers ever tormented me the way other people complain that their older siblings often do. There’s only a year between my brothers, so you’d think they’d have been close to each other growing up, but it was always Devin and I who were close. Morgan just never seemed to take that much notice of either of us.

  A few months after that Halloween incident, and not long after a record-breaking snowstorm and cold spell left Glenashton covered in white, two boys who took the same school bus home as me pelted me with snowballs three days in a row. Some of the snow was closer to being ice and on that third day I slipped and fell while trying to avoid the pain of being hit. I got the wind knocked out of me,
and when I told Devin my face was still red from trying to catch my breath. He was waiting for me when I hopped off the bus on the fourth day and he fixed a death glare at the boys. Their heads dropped down towards their chins as they turned slowly away, like any sudden movement might provoke him.

  If my mom knew about the snowballs she probably would’ve said one of the boys liked me (as though no one ever has a mean motive for singling someone out) but Devin advised that I should give “idiots like that” withering looks and build up a force field of anger around myself that wouldn’t let them get near me. I guess that’s what Aya, Genevieve, Nicole, and I have done lately. Sixteen-year-old Devin would’ve approved but he’d also count Gage out on looks alone. Does that make him wrong, or am I the one who’s wrong now?

  After school Genevieve drops me off at Total Drug Mart for my shift. Ki can’t stop throwing up in the bathroom, so we’re down a cashier. I barely have time for a break, but that’s good because it stops me thinking about Devin on Queen Street — or Devin, wherever he may be. Ki’s mom picks her up and says her brother’s already home with the stomach flu and now she’ll have two patients on her hands. I don’t want to pick up the stomach flu before my date with Gage; I buy chewable Vitamin C and coat my hands with liquid sanitizer every chance I get.

  As I count the contents of my register at the end of the night my mind flips back and forth between tomorrow’s date and what my parents would say if I ignored Morgan’s wishes and told them that I thought I saw Devin downtown. My best guess is that Dad would agree with Morgan that I was imagining things and Mom would go into hysterics and get straight on the highway. She’s taken Devin’s disappearance worse than anyone; I don’t want to be responsible for getting her hopes up again only to have them shredded worse than ever. There’s not enough left of my mother to handle that right now.

  Drug addict Devin would break her heart. Who else could we hope to find but him, and why then do I insist on thinking there’s some hope left?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ~

  IN CIVICS CLASS THE next day Nicole wants to know if we’re hanging out after school. She keeps talking about ordering pizza at her place later and pondering various topping configurations, never mind that we just had lunch last period. Almost all of Nicole’s pizza ideas include pepperoni, but my favourite pizza of all time is Pizza Pizza’s Bacon Chicken Mushroom Melt with Italian sausage added on (my mouth tingles with desire at the thought of the Italian seasoning and mesquite chicken).

  “I can come over but I can’t stay for pizza,” I tell her. I have an alibi at the ready and I act extra casual so she won’t suspect I’m lying about tonight. “My parents have a new bed on order. The delivery guys are coming anytime between five and nine and guess who’s stuck waiting for it?” I grimace like this is highly vexing. “I’d ask you to come over instead but my mom’s been in a really bad mood lately — like even more so than usual — and doesn’t want anyone around.”

  “She doesn’t want anyone around even when she’s not there?” Nicole says, wriggling her eyebrows.

  “We had a fight the other night and I’m not sure what time she’ll be home from her work thing tonight. It could be, like, seven or it could be nine-thirty.” Nicole’s mouth sags in sympathy for me. “But I can hang out at your place for an hour or so,” I add brightly. “Is Genevieve coming?”

  Sure enough the three of us lounge around Nicole’s living room after school. Hiding my plans from the two of them gives me a tickly sensation at the back of my throat, like maybe I’ll cough up a furball. I still haven’t mentioned my Queen Street drama either, and it’s not that I don’t want to confide in them — because I do, I want to relive the entire incident and get their opinions on it so badly that I feel like a fake talking about anything else — but it’s easier to keep the news from my mother when no one on the planet aside from Morgan has a clue what I suspect.

  We officially agreed over the phone last night, Morgan and I. It’s better not to upset my parents unless we have “further evidence.”

  “Did you tell Jimmy?” I asked him.

  “Of course,” Morgan replied as though I should’ve taken that as a given. “But he’ll keep it quiet too.”

  So there are multiple things I’m keeping quiet lately — one of them Morgan knows, another would make my friends scowl, and the third is my obsession with weight, which is something I don’t like to talk about, although I never stop thinking about it. Maybe it wouldn’t sound like a big deal to naturally thin people, but I wish that I hadn’t finished off half my gourmet fries at the restaurant the other night because I have yet to drop the extra pound I picked up there. A pound is nothing, I know. But I swear I feel heavier, which is the last thing I want to feel when I’m about to go on a date. And why did Nicole have to go and mention pizza?

  I need to fill up on water more from now on. That’s what I’ll do tonight; chomp on iceberg lettuce and guzzle calorie-free fluids. Being thin is almost as bad as being fat if you have to spend all your time thinking about food rather than eating it. And not only thinking about food but pretending to yourself that you’re not thinking about food. It’s so exhausting that it makes me want to break down and order Bacon Chicken Mushroom Melt pizza with Italian sausage.

  I remind myself that I’m stronger than that and think about how much better I look in my jeans when I’m not filling up on things like pizza and fries. After about an hour at Nicole’s place, she and Genevieve drop me off at home, completely buying into my alibi. “You know you should’ve gotten your folks to buy you a new bed too,” Nicole says as we pull into my empty driveway. “You’re too old for a twin.”

  “I have a twin,” Genevieve reminds her with a pointed expression. “If there’s no one sleeping next to you there’s plenty of room.”

  I laugh in agreement to cover my guilt at lying to them. “So exactly what are you getting up to in your double that we don’t know about, Nicole?”

  “I don’t have any secrets,” Nicole reminds me, smiling ironically. “Whatever I’ve gotten up to in the past, everyone knows about. I’m like a teenage cautionary tale.”

  Genevieve flicks her hair back over her shoulder with a toss of her head. “If you were a cautionary tale you’d be pregnant or have gonorrhea — we’re not cautionary tales, any of us; we’re just new and improved versions of ourselves. We got smart, unlike a lot of people we go to school with.”

  Nicole and I nod at this. I desperately want to be a new, improved version of myself but the new me and the old me are trapped inside the same body. Genevieve honks as she and Nicole pull away from my house in her Honda. Thankfully today’s not one of Mom’s “sick” days so I don’t have to explain what she’s doing home when she’s supposed to be conducting unspecified late business, serving as my cover story.

  Inside my bedroom, I slide open the closet and stare longingly at my silk floral-print wrap dress but reach for a dark denim skirt instead. I pull grey ribbed tights on under it and tug my arms into a matching tight grey sweater. Jacob always said I had great breasts. Well, most of the time he used other words instead but that wasn’t one of the things I minded about him.

  Stop thinking about Jacob, I lecture. I don’t want my mind hanging on him as some kind of bad example to avoid. Better to start fresh, with the sky as the limit.

  Dad has a container of deli-bought ravioli with him when he arrives home but Mom has already started on a homemade rice and vegetable medley. “I’ll grab dinner while I’m out,” I tell them. “I’m going to a movie with a friend.”

  Dad’s head swivels on his shoulders. “A friend?” he repeats. “Do you already have Jacob’s replacement lined up?”

  I pin a smile onto my face, the mention of Jacob turning my stomach sour. “I’m not looking for any replacements. This is just a friend, a work friend.”

  “A friend with a male name,” Mom surmises, dragging a wooden spoon through her ric
e and veggies.

  A friend with a male name and male appendages, but I know Mom will only be interested in this revelation for a few more minutes. If I spilled the news about my possible Devin sighting any questions about what I’m doing tonight would instantly evaporate. I’d go back to being supporting cast for Devin, even in his absence.

  “His name’s Gage,” I confirm, still smiling. “You’ve heard that men and women can be friends, right? I think that was legally decided in the 70s.”

  My parents would probably let me leave with Gage even if I admitted that he doesn’t work at Total and that we’re about to go on an actual date together but I don’t want to watch my mother and father cobble together some manufactured additional concern when I know that their true priority is their missing second son.

  As it is, my parents take my word for it and don’t insist on coming to the door when Gage rings the bell at a quarter after seven. He stands on my doorstep in black cargo pants and the same light leather coat he was wearing the day he drove me home from work. “Sorry I’m late,” he says, his face creasing apologetically. “There was something I had to take care of at home.”

  “Fifteen minutes isn’t really late,” I tell him, wondering why I’m already making excuses for him.

  Gage eyes my body up quickly, like he doesn’t want to be caught doing it. “I’m usually on time,” he continues, his almost dirty blond hair fluttering in the wind.

  “You’ll catch cold in that jacket,” I lecture to make up for letting him off the hook about the fifteen minutes. “You’re going to get hypothermia, which will be a much bigger deal than being fifteen minutes late.”

  I wait for him to make some joke about sharing my body heat, like Jacob would’ve done. Instead Gage nods like I could be right and that he’s not surprised to have his mistakes pointed out to him. “It’s all bad, isn’t it? Should I drive home and get another coat?”