Julian (3 page)

“I’ll use the pay phone,” the boy said, and he walked away, picking his way among the tables to a phone near the washroom door.

Aidan followed. “You’re not going to call the cops, are you?”

“No way.”

While the kid used the phone, Aidan washed his bloody hand at the washroom sink, not quite believing that he had taken on four guys and left them on the ground. He was relieved that the boy wasn’t going to involve the police, who would make life complicated for both of them. Dark red blood oozed steadily from the gash in the edge of his palm, opposite the thumb. He dried his hand as best he could, then rewrapped it in the bloody handkerchief.

The kid had been petrified by the ordeal, Aidan realized—so scared he’d wet his pants—but had shown no surprise. Most kids his age would have been babbling their heads off once they had their fear under control, wondering who the men had been and speculating as to why they had come after him. Not once had he suggested calling the cops or asking anyone for help. Aidan remembered thinking the kid had street smarts. As soon as the SUV had veered
to the curb he realized he was in trouble, and he had known what to do.

Aidan found the boy standing beside the phone, his call completed. “You don’t have to hang around,” the kid said.

“Well, as long as everything is alright with
you
. What’s your name, anyway?”

The boy replied by walking out of the restaurant. Aidan followed.

Outside it was cold, but the boy still held his coat at his waist, hiding the pee stain. Aidan knew the kid was probably acting like a jerk because he had been humiliated, hunted and terrified, chased through people’s yards. With a high school guy right there, witnessing his shame. Aidan was familiar with the feeling.

“I said you don’t have to wait with me,” the kid repeated. “I can take care of myself.”

At that moment a dark blue car swept into the parking lot and screeched to a stop. The back door flew open and an Asian in a dark topcoat got out. Aidan tensed and reached for the boy, but the man was holding the car door open and beckoning to the kid, who scrambled inside without a backward glance. The man slid in beside him. The car tore away as soon as the door closed, leaving Aidan alone in the snow.

Aidan made his way down to Queen Street and took the streetcar to the west end. As the vehicle trundled along the rails, he sat back and watched the crowded, rundown neighbourhoods scroll by the window. So much for an afternoon to himself. His escape from the art field trip to wander
where his feet took him, to be alone for a while, had gone up in smoke, leaving only the weakness in his limbs from ebbing adrenaline. He had thought he had taken control, if only for an afternoon; then he had been blindsided by events set in motion by strangers, with nothing to show for it but a bleeding hand. He let out a bitter laugh. He had read somewhere that destiny didn’t make house calls, that you had to go out and make your own fate. Whoever wrote that was full of it.

Or was he? Maybe destiny wasn’t one thing or another. Maybe he was looking at the problem from the wrong angle. Yes, the attempted kidnapping had come out of the blue and Aidan had been caught up in it, but he had done something about it, hadn’t he? Aidan reminded himself that he had saved the kid from being snatched—maybe killed. Maybe his thoughts when he was in the gallery mulling over Van Gogh and his art had been legitimate after all.

Be the painter, not the canvas, he had decided. He talked a good game, but could he follow through? How could he manage a change in his life? Waiting for someone or something to alter his direction meant he was the canvas, didn’t it? He had to take some kind of action.

He had tried it once. A foster kid like him had two choices: he could rebel and run away, or try to go along, to be accepted. He had tried the first strategy back when he was taken in by the Foster-McCallums. Aidan had run off and won exactly four hours of freedom, then the cops had picked him up at the nearest mall and marched him to their cruiser under the noses of curious shoppers. He still remembered the sting of humiliation. After this short-lived rebellious period, when he realized that nothing of benefit
ever had or would result from rushing into conflicts or win-lose dust-ups where a happy ending was not on the program, he had changed course.

Charging a brick wall with his head down hadn’t helped, so he had tried to make his foster families like him. He had learned to go along, to agree, to harmonize, to please.

He held no resentment toward his fosters. He knew they got paid by CAS for letting him live with them, but he didn’t think they did it for the money. They all tried to give him a home and make him part of their families. But he never was, never could be. He was a boarder. He now lived with Henry, Beryl and the twins, April and May. They were the Boyds. Aidan wasn’t a Boyd. He was “…  
and this is
 …” as in “Hello, I’m Henry. This is my wife, Beryl, these are my daughters
and this is
Aidan.”

If he took off now, where would he go? How would he support himself? He was “in care” until he was of age—eighteen. He could get free sooner, when he was sixteen, if he wanted. But he’d still have the practical problems: nowhere to go, no way to earn money. Living on the street wasn’t an option.

Until today, he had accepted that he was helpless, with no choices.

Sitting in the stuffy streetcar surrounded by strangers, peering though fogged windows at a blurry world, Aidan recognized that he had a lot to think about, a lot to figure out. But he knew that when you cleared away the deep thoughts and fine words, you came down to one basic truth: you’re not what you say, you’re what you do.

T
HE NEARER HE CAME
to the house where he had lived for almost two years, the more worry gnawed on Aidan’s nerves. He had dreamed up a fictional explanation for the throbbing knife wound in his hand, but he planned to tell the truth about slipping away from the art field trip. As was his habit, he composed his facial expression, got his feelings under control, prepared to play the role he had adopted so often in his life. He became The Pleaser. He did not see this attitude as dishonest or hypocritical; he was not acting. Rather, he had trained himself to push down his anger, frustration and rejection—no matter how hard it was—and to sail toward smoother water.

Beryl’s car stood alone in the driveway. Good. At least he could deal with the Foster-Boyds one at a time. He went into the house, shucked his backpack, hung his coat in the hall closet and ducked into the ground-floor bathroom. He
unwound the blood-soaked hanky from his hand and dropped it into the toilet. He flushed, then held his hand under the faucet, working the dried blood from the skin. Wincing, he examined the wound closely for the first time. The blade had slit the thick edge of his palm, revealing red muscle beneath a layer of yellow fatty tissue. He searched the cabinet above the sink, finding a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a box of Band-Aids. The h-p stung when he poured it onto the bloody gash, making a pink foam that dripped into the sink. He covered the wound with a couple of stick-on bandages.

Aidan headed for the kitchen, breathing in the aroma of beef stew. Beryl stood at the stove, a big wooden spoon in her hand. The twins, April and May, were busy at their homework, the table strewn with coloured pencils and books. The eight-year-olds had been born in the middle of the night on the last day of the month, April a few minutes before midnight, May a few minutes after. They took after their mother, inheriting her slight build and blue eyes and personality that sparkled like tinsel.

April looked up from colouring a zebra in green and pink stripes, a gleeful glint in her eye. “You’re in for it,” she said.

“Yeah, Mom’s mad at you,” May chimed in. “Aren’t you, Mom?”

Aidan liked the girls; they were cute and funny, and most of the time they hid their resentment that they had to share their parents with him.

Beryl whacked the spoon on the edge of the pot and laid it on the stove-top. She turned and crossed her arms on her chest.

“Well, well, look what came in on the wind,” she said, then demanded to know where Aidan had been, insisting on a detailed report, and why he had bailed out of the field trip, and did he realize the school had called her on her cell at work in the middle of giving poor Mrs. Quigley her bath, and did he have any idea how worried she had been?

“The art gallery was a colossal bore,” he replied. “I decided to leave.”

“And do what?”

“I just walked around. I kind of lost track of the time.”

“That’s not like you. Who were you with?”

“Nobody.”

“Alone the whole time?”

“Totally.”

Beryl’s eyebrows rose skeptically; the corner of her mouth puckered slightly—an involuntary signal that she was weighing his statement. “You’re going to catch trouble at school tomorrow.”

“Yeah, you’re in for it,” April repeated.

“I can talk Sayers around,” Aidan assured Beryl. “She’s—”

“No you can’t. Your absence counts as a skip. There’ll be consequences. Detentions, probably.”

May nodded wisely. “Consepences. Dimensions.”

“Mom, he’s got bandages on his hand,” April accused, pointing.

“What happened?” Beryl asked, uncrossing her arms. “C’mere. Let me see it.”

“I fell and landed on a piece of glass.”

She cradled his hand in her own and peeled back the bandages, her professional manner taking over.

“May, honey, bring me my bag,” she said, leading Aidan
to the table. She examined the wound. “It’s clean but it’s deep—and it’ll need stitches.” She looked into his eyes. “A broken glass wound, eh?”

Aidan remained silent as Beryl removed the materials from her bag and bandaged his hand properly.

“We’ll have to have it seen to after supper. Henry should be home soon. You have a game tonight. I hope you’ll be able to play.”

“The playoffs,” April said, her coloured pencil in motion.

“He’s not going to be happy,” Beryl said ominously.

“You’re in for it,” May added.

Beryl was right.

Henry had worked later than usual. He burst into the noisy dressing room, stuffing his gloves into his overcoat pockets, eyes scanning the room as he counted heads. He went to Aidan, shedding his coat and murmuring quiet replies to boys who tossed him a “Hi, Coach,” as he passed.

“How’s your hand? Can you play? What did the doctor say?” Henry snapped.

Aidan was awkwardly double-knotting his skate lace. “She told me I’d know for sure when the freezing wears off.” He didn’t add that strenuous activity might open the wound and delay healing.

Henry consulted his watch. “We’ve got lots of time. Hit the ice, see how it goes.”

Aidan jammed his gloves under one arm, grabbed his stick and made for the door.

Henry called out, “You had to pick a playoff game day, didn’t you?”

——

On the way home that night, Henry’s displeasure with Aidan was eased by their win. The Mustangs had taken the game by one goal, scored late in the third period. Aidan had managed only two short shifts, his hand throbbing wickedly as he stickhandled. The team’s place in the tournament final round was now assured, and they had two days off before the gold medal game.

If “off” was the right word. Henry had already laid out a practice schedule that filled every minute of the weekend—long distance runs through the streets, drills on the ice, analysis of plays—and had forbidden any social life for the players until after the final game.

No problem, Aidan thought. I don’t have a social life.

Later that night, Aidan lay in bed, a dull ache pulsing in his bandaged hand. He thought about the upcoming playoffs and what they meant to him. He could still recall the early days of his career and the first time he had managed to stickhandle the puck from one end of the ice to the other without losing it. He was ten years old, and from that moment he was hooked. He was a latecomer but soon made up for it. He practiced hard, developed his skills, strength and timing. For him, nothing could match the thrill of a rush down the ice, the exhilaration of dodging an opposing forward and laying off a perfectly timed pass that whizzed up the ice and intersected the path of his teammate, ready to flip it into the net.

Aidan kept one secret to himself. When a play unfolded
like that, when the pass connected or when he himself shot the puck and the red light flashed, the goal was secondary. It was the perfection of the play, the rightness of it, that thrilled him, goal or no goal.

He was good—his record proved it. His teammates liked to play on his line because he passed more often than he shot, sometimes even when he had a clear shot on the net. His unselfishness made him popular on the team—even if they thought he was a little strange, with his long silences, his books, his reluctance to join in pranks and horseplay.

He kept himself apart for a reason. Making friends or becoming attached to his fosters had led to pain and grief when CAS moved him to another household. He had learned to insulate himself from loss. The ice was the only place where he allowed himself to dare, to take risks, knowing that, unlike his life, a hockey game was predictable. There were rules and patterns he could rely on.

Lately, or for the last year or so if he was honest, he had begun to tire of hockey and its demands on his life and attention. The game was a good friend, but one who never gave him time to do—or be—anything else. Even before the day at the gallery, when he had felt something shift inside him, his attitude to the game had changed.

As Henry had hoped and predicted—although Aidan’s injury had shaken his confidence a little—the tournament trophy was carried off the ice and into the dressing room by the Mustangs’ captain, Sebastian Vaughan. Aidan was pleased and excited for the guys on the team and for Henry,
who had two loves in his life—his family and his team. Although Aidan’s wound had kept him from playing his best—he had fumbled more than one pass that night—he had managed to score two points, both assists, and had shone at forechecking when the Mustangs had to kill penalties.