Pluto's Ghost Read online

  All Skye did that day was look at me with incredible kindness, the same light in her eyes I’d seen in her mother’s. “I want you each to take one of the shells from my collection to remember this day.” As if I’d forget. “Jake, you pick first.” Sucky as it sounds, I still have the shell. (And those hair ribbons and barrette.) I still hold the shell to my ear.

  Anyhow, that was the day I felt Skye was in my corner. Forever. Well, I was wrong. Things changed a lot between me and Skye by the time we got to high school. But that’s history lesson number two, and I’ll get to that soon enough.

  Here’s what I saw when I peeked into her diary that day at the birthday party. This picture kind of made my heart leapfrog over itself. I started thinking maybe she was seeing something in the future. Me and her. Her and me. Skye and Jake. Jake and Skye.

  p

  So back to that Wednesday morning. The halls of Poplar Hills High.

  “Yo, cuz, you look like you’ve been hit by a monster truck,” Teddy began. Teddy’s obsessed with trucks because his father, your classic deadbeat dad, is a trucker. The guy sends Teddy a birthday card and twenty bucks every year from somewheres. Teddy acts like it’s a million, so grateful his dad remembered it’s downright depressing. “Always on the road with his rig, on an adventure,” he says all proud. Yeah, what rhymes with trucker? I want to say. But I don’t. Least Teddy can pretend he’ll see his dad again someday. Not an option I have with my mother.

  “Yeah, so maybe it’s not what they’re saying, you think? Like maybe it’s not an abortion, dude.” He gave me a playful shoulder punch and I bumped him back as we started down the stairs. “I mean, she would never do that. Without telling you, right?” I said nothing.

  “Maybe she’ll change her mind,” Teddy continued, then he perked right up. “Or—I know—sell the baby! Yeah, like my cuz from Tidnish, you know, Geraldine, you met her once, well she did that, surrogates, that’s what they’re called,” he said, stumbling to catch up with me, thinking he was being helpful.

  “You know, gave the baby up for adoption—kind of—to this really nice family who couldn’t have none of their own and it was really great. Happily ever after. Like in that movie. Well, Geraldine, after, she sort of freaked out there for a spell, had a nervous breakdown’s what my mother said,” and his voice trailed off like a balloon disappearing in the sky when he realized what he’d just said.

  “Me. A father? No way like NO way, man,” I kept repeating. “Couldn’t be.”

  Teddy punched my shoulder again. “Now come on, Jake, you don’t want to go pulling a Bill Clinton on me,” he said, and he pulled the flesh down over his cheeks and started making birdlike humming noises in his throat. “Erm, errrrrum.” He fine-tuned his vocal cords until he found the note he wanted. “I did not. Have. Sexual relations. With that woman.”

  A perfect imitation, an act Teddy perfected on our class trip to Washington, D.C. At that moment, his timing couldn’t have been worse. I shot him the bird.

  He only grinned wider. “You have, haven’t you? Done it? With Skye?” He rocked his hips back and forth and made grunting sounds.

  “I need you to shove off just now, okay?” I said, pushing him aside. “Gotta hear myself think, bud.”

  Teddy held up his hands like stop signs and backed away. “Take it easy,” he said, and flashed me the thumb and pinkie cellphone salute. “Call if you need me for like…whatever.” Teddy searched my face one last time, like a concerned parent might, and retreated with a fist bump goodbye.

  I swallowed hard and gave him a thumbs-up. As soon as he was out of sight, I phoned Skye. Ring ring ring ring. Ringing forever. “Answer, answer, answer,” I said. “Would you please answer?” Last time I had the shakes that bad, I was detoxifying my liver.

  “Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail of Skye Derucci. Please leave a message after the beep. Ciao.”

  I took a breath and paced the hallway and spat my words into the phone.

  “Don’t know what’s going on. Am kind of going crazy, eh? Talk to me, babe! Are you pregnant? Please call.” I snapped shut my phone and bowed my head. I wasn’t praying exactly but I wasn’t not praying either. “Please, Ma, if you’re up there, get her to call me. Please.”

  q

  I ran like a guy with a snarling, hungry sabre-toothed tiger at his heels. Or maybe a ghost or the devil at his back. I ran past the cafeteria and looped round by the gym. I ran down one set of steps and past the staff room. I ran in circles. Circles of thought, too. A never-ending journey in concentric circles. I raced, flew, tore, sprinted (and every other thesaurus word here—fill in the blank with your own synonym if you can even say the freaky word, comes out of my mouth simanon or cinnamon). Yep. I charged like a gored bull through the halls of Poplar Hills High.

  Poplar Hills. Not to be confused in any way with Beverly Hills. Or Halifax. Who needs that big-city shit anyhow? Skye was in the big city of Halifax—without me—and how could I get there the fastest way possible? I started asking myself. I admit, from the get-go, I hated the thought. I’ve never been one for the city. I have everything I’ve ever needed in Poplar Hills. There’s salmon fishing in a tidal river that runs by our place and empties into the harbour. There’s coves that feel like secret hideaways, and you can walk for miles by the ocean and never see another living soul. There’s a rope swing underneath the old iron train bridge where swimming’s great in summer. Our summers snap by like the flick of a wet beach towel, and winters hang around like the guys girls can’t stand who never get the message they’re not wanted. In Poplar Hills, we wave to every stranger passing through but take note of licence plate number, year and make of car and could tell any cop not just the colour of your hair and eyes but also if you wore socks in those designer shoes or brand-name sneakers or were the kind who sported those Jesus kind of toe-ringed leather sandals, and also which hotel you checked into (there’s only one hereabouts anyhow), what credit card you used and whether you rolled over, shouted out or farted in your sleep. I kid you not. In “Popular” Hills neighbours bitch and natter like crows, complaining and gossiping about each other, but they take care of each other, too. Most’d be there in a pinch and a blink of your eye if a barn door came unhinged in a storm or a cow got loose. But…what if you were in high school and got your girl pregnant? Who’s really on your side then?

  Right then, the halls of Poplar Hills High had morphed into the alleyways of a city and it was like I was lost in a freakin’ maze, and the labyrinth from that Greek myth popped into my mind, so then I imagined that Minotaur monster or a one-eyed Cyclops waiting for me in the middle of Mayor Redding’s Poplar Hills Hallowe’en hay-bale maze. I hurtled on towards my locker, my feet leading the way. All the while I was wondering, How the hell do I get out of this? What am I going to do? Inside I was screaming her name:

  SKYE!

  r

  “Zy-gote. Is it (a) a newly formed life just after fertilization of the egg by the sperm, or (b) the diploid (2n) cell resulting from the union of the male and female gametes, or (c) a trick question, or (d) all of the above? Sorry, time’s up!” Sometimes I felt my whole life had been a multiple-choice quiz I kept failing.

  By the time I reached my locker I remembered basic biology tests and how I’d failed all those, too. A loop of tape played forwards and reverse in my head: surround sound of me and Skye, our arms around each other, the tangle of bed-sheets, her nakedness, the smell of her skin, her indescribable beauty, her swan-like neck, those perfect cherry-coloured lips, the soft suede of her earlobes, her warm and cool minty tongue searching for mine. Sometimes when we kissed I forgot I had whiskers and I’d scrape her chin red and I’d want to stop but she’d keep right on going. Sometimes, I felt like I was with her swimming in a soft, warm puddle of water. Enough already. You get the picture, she made me crazier than I already was.

  I pressed my cheek against the cold metal locker and suddenly found myself smiling. Carved into a miniature heart, scratched there for all to see if they lo
oked close enough, were the words:

  Skye and Jake forever

  I traced the letters with my fingers. Maybe I couldn’t hold hands with her walking down the main street of Poplar Hills, but I had my own ways of claiming she was my girl. Jake Upshore: wannabe singer-songwriter and lovesick graffiti artist.

  On impulse, I took my penknife and carved an even bigger heart and the sign of Pluto. Our sign. Something like this:

  See, it never once occurred to me how bonkers that might look later. And violent, too, if you were looking for evidence. I worked fast, and blinked a lot, trying to remove some sort of logjam in my eyes. Couldn’t swallow easy either, not past that wad of what seemed like a super-sized roll of toilet paper in my throat. Then SLAM! Slam! Slam Slam! I opened and closed my locker door. Kicked it. (Incidentally, this was all caught on video. More incriminating evidence.) I reached for my coat, but then I remembered it was stuffed in the backpack still on my back. As I started to close the door one last time I spotted something on the shelf where I usually stashed my gym clothes. Skye’s ruby red binder! The one decorated with warthogs and sequins. Warthogs, not doves or dolphins like a lot of girls I knew.

  “Warthogs?” I’d asked her once.

  “Because they are so ugly someone has to love them,” she replied.

  “Am I like your human warthog?” I teased.

  “Jake Upshore, you are too good-looking for your own good and you know it!” she snapped back, trying to scowl, but then I kissed her long and hard and that scowl gave way to a smile. We played a little tonsil hockey. But that’s private and all you need to know.

  I grabbed the binder. There was a note on top. Written in a hurry, I could tell, because the strokes of red marker were more like gashes in the paper.

  Look for truth inside. Tell no one and do not try to find me!!!! Please. Explain all soon. Skye

  s

  Truth inside? I opened the binder and thumbed through the pages like a freaking lunatic. For the second time in my life, Skye’s diary was in my hands. I flipped the pages and flipped out. Inside the binder, on every page, she’d written in cursive writing. Goddam hieroglyphics to a dyslexic like me. Cursive writing? Cursed writing. Impossible for backassward me to decipher. See, if you add all those little curlicues and slants to letters and join them loopedyloopdeloo together, then you get a page full of Greek to me. Seriously. “I’m fucked,” I said. “So fucked,” I said, and there’s no word in the thesaurus I can substitute at the moment for that one. Staring at those sentences was like looking at rows of wiggling centipedes line dancing across the page. Reading and decoding would take all day and time I didn’t have. Can you blame me, really, for going nuts after that, for getting so ballistic? Well, even if you do blame me, put yourself in my shoes right then, and ask yourself what you would have done if it were you. And you were me. A brain-kinked kind of reader. Reluctant readers they call the lot of us. As opposed to what—eager readers? Reluctant. Another adjective to make me feel like such a winner. Reluctant. Refucktant readers. Pissed-off readers? I stood there more frustrated than I ever remember being at the weird wiring I’d been cursed with. Jake the Fake. Jake the Flake. Jake the Jake-Ass Dumb-Ass Shithead.

  Just then, the late lunch buzzer belched out its long steady growl. I shoved the binder under my arm, put my head in my hood, and hightailed it to the stairwell.

  “Band practice has been cancelled,” barked Mr. Pritchard, the principal, over the intercom. “No, my whole life’s just been cancelled,” I yelled back and steamrolled my way towards the nearest exit. My brain swirled with a million questions.

  Skye. Pregnant. So. Well, she might have told me first. And having an abortion. What right does she have? Why leave so fast? Why leave the binder? Guess I don’t even deserve a say, I muttered. Why’d she do this to me? What the fuuuuuug’s goin’ on? I admit this much, I was getting myself pretty riled up and so I tried some deep-breathing exercises. Little spots appeared in front of my eyes. I damn near hyperventilated. Dizzy as hell, I stopped to rest under a stairwell, punched Redial and left another voicemail.

  “Skye—jeez. Call,” I said. “I’m here for you, you know?” My voice cracked. I hung up fast.

  Next, as my rotten luck would have it, I rounded a corner and bumped smack into Brett Manderson. Of all the dipsticks to meet just then. He was tormenting Ridley Bernard again. Ridley’s a harmless sweet kind of guy with black-bean eyes, a kid born with fetal alcohol syndrome. A prime victim for bullies like Brett.

  “Ah, Brett, you’re pathetic, man, and when you gonna learn to pick on someone your own size?” I said as I gave him a shoulder slam to get him off Ridley.

  “Thanks, BuddyJake,” said Ridley.

  “No problem, BuddyRidley, but skedaddle on out of here now,” I said. Ridley did just that, running down the hall saying, “BuddyJake’s gonna beat up Brett buddy jake buddy jake, hey, hey.”

  “Watch it, man,” Brett spat out. “What’s this about you and Skye, anyhow?” he said, flashing his cellphone.

  “Eat shit,” I said and shoved him into the corner.

  “Make me,” he said, squaring off.

  “Out of my way, numbnuts,” I said.

  “You idiot!” he said, coming at me. I dodged past him.

  “Later, a-hole,” I said, spitting words over my shoulder.

  “You just better watch your back,” he said.

  “That a threat?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It is. Skye’s got a lot of friends.”

  “I’m so scared,” I said. Brett stormed away and I kept going, but it was like flying through a time tunnel, crash-landing to the last time I’d talked to Skye on the phone.

  t

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Not much,” she said. “I…um…am…studying at a friend’s.” The way Skye said it, I thought she was covering something.

  “Brett’s?” I asked, all jealous-like, and wanted to kick myself for being like that. I hated the guy, in case you were still wondering. A phony if I ever met one, but when he plastered on that bleached grin of his, he could charm the bark off a tree and, to hear him tell it, the pants off most girls. A real snake of a guy, and an A student, too. I fantasized gagging him with his jockstrap just because of the way he walks around like he’s everyone’s superior. Shit, I’ve heard a lot of wisdom down at the Cabin Diner and from my dad, who never even finished high school. “I’ve got high standards,” Brett said once in class, defending his taste in music. “By high standards, you really mean my standards, don’t you?” I said back. “Good point, Jake,” said the teacher, one I almost liked, Ms. Edwards. “How do we define objective standards of excellence? What do we mean by taste? Whose taste?” Ms. Edwards let me pass in song lyrics once instead of an essay. She ran a writing club. I always meant to join, but joining’s not my thing. Not a team player, said the lacrosse coach when he kicked me off the team.

  Anyhow, the only thing I shared with Brett Manderson was his taste in girls, and really then, only one girl. Skye insisted they were only friends but I’d seen the way he looked at her.

  “You’re hangin’ with Brett, aren’t you?” I kept at it.

  “No. I’m at Izra’s,” she said. “Relax, Jake. I’ll see you later.” The click of the phone only pissed me off more. I smashed my phone down and damn near broke it in two. The next day she acted sketchy and wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. We were in the basement at my place, after school. Our hideaway.

  “Babe, your eyes are sad. What’s going on?” I kissed the tip of her nose. “It’s nothing,” she said, rubbing her hands by the fire in the wood stove. Her fingers fluttering always reminded me of swan wings. “Nothing?” I said. She nodded yes and continued staring at the fire. Her eyes were normally the shade of blue that lived up to her name but there were storm clouds gathering there that day. Nothing, I thought to myself. Sure. Everybody knows that nothing, when it’s said like that, is usually a pretty big something. But maybe not always. I mean, nothing can al
so mean it’s private and I’m not ready to talk. I totally respect that, so I didn’t want to pry. I just shrugged.

  “Play a tune for me?” she asked. I picked up my guitar and strummed. “Pinocchio, Pinocchio, wooden boy with his pants on fire, a nose that grows, he’s a liar liar. Pinocchio, Pinocchio, why won’t you just tell the truth?” I just made it up on the spot but it sounded mean maybe or sarcastic or something because for once Skye didn’t find my humour very inspirational or funny. She jumped up, tugged on her coat and beret and scarf, said she had to go, she’d phone me later, and then left like an electric blue tornado.

  Me and Herc sat there, stunned.

  “Girls,” said Herc finally. “Very complicated.” “How would you know? You’re a dog,” I said. “I am named after an ancient god, remember? Hercules. He messed with a lot of pretty temperamental women.” Right. Okay, so Herc can’t talk, but I confess, we’ve had some pretty amazing imaginary conversations over the years. We’ve rarely argued. He’s a good listener and extremely forgiving, even when I’m more jerk than Jake. Yeah, I love my buddy. There’s nothing noble about that and it says nothing about my humanity. As the saying goes, even Hitler loved dogs.

  u

  I barged through the hallways, cursing and elbowing past anyone in my way. “Lunatic,” I heard them say behind my back. “Skye,” I heard. “Pregnant,” I heard. “Gone to get an abortion.”

  Finally, I escaped out a side door. The fire alarm went off. So much for not drawing attention to myself. A raging nutbar who set off the goddam fire alarm is what I looked like. I raced across the schoolyard at breakneck speed, not once looking back. At least it wasn’t as bad as the last time I’d triggered the alarm, I told myself. This time the only real thing on fire at Poplar Hills High was my heart. Go, it was shouting at me. Go.