Brendan looked around at the people in the hall and felt something nagging at the edge of his perception. Something was different. He scanned the hallway but couldn’t figure it out.
Pukh reached the doors and turned. He smiled at them and sketched a bow. “Lovely to see where you spend your days, Brendan. Most enlightening, if not inspiring. I shall see you all later at the Gathering. I look forward to judging your Proving.” Opening the door, he let Lugh and Maya pass through. Then, he casually spoke a word Brendan didn’t understand and passed an open hand before his eyes as if waving away a fly.
Immediately, everyone began to move and talk, picking up conversations in mid-sentence. The entire school came to life without any awareness that they’d been standing in a daze for the past quarter hour. Brendan stood dumbfounded as the students went about their business, girls in giggling groups, boys trying as always to look as cool as possible and failing, all of them completely unaware that their lives had been interrupted.
“No sporting equipment in the halls.” Ms. Abernathy’s brittle voice jarred Brendan out of his thoughts. The viceprincipal stood in the doorway of her office, hands on hips. “I have warned you before. Don’t think because it’s the last day of school before the holidays I won’t keep you for detention tonight.”
Kim lowered her stick. “Yes, Ms. Abernathy. I’m sorry.”
Ms. Abernathy nodded curtly and retreated to her office.
“That guy, Pukh,” Brendan said, “he’s a piece of work.”
“He’s always been what we call a Rogue Spirit,” Greenleaf said mildly.
“He’s what I would call a psychopath,” Brendan remarked.
Kim stuffed her stick into her backpack with practised ease. “He has no respect for authority.”
“In Tir na nOg, he is the authority. He answers to no one,” Greenleaf explained, his eyes on the door where Pukh had disappeared.
Brendan suddenly didn’t want to be in school or anywhere near other people. “I’m going home.”
“They won’t be back, Brendan.” Kim looked concerned.
“I’m not worried about that,” Brendan said.
“You’ll miss the Christmas assembly,” Greenleaf pointed out.
“Well, much as I’d like to hear some Christmas carols sung by the Robertson Davies Academy Glee Club,” Brendan announced, “I think I may just go home early.”
“I’ll tell Ms. Abernathy you were feeling a little under the weather,” Mr. Greenleaf offered.
“You won’t be lying,” Brendan said with a pained expression. “See you tonight.”
Brendan headed for the door. Passing the library, he suddenly realized what had been bothering him.
What happened to Chester? He was standing right there when I went into the office, but he wasn’t there when I came out. That’s weird.
He shrugged and pushed his way through the doors and into the cold. Just one more thing that I can’t explain or do anything about.
He headed for home.
^ 51 On a side note, I wonder why UFOs always appear to people of doubtful credibility-drunk men, the insane, hillbillies, etc. If aliens really wanted to abduct humans and experiment on them, why wouldn’t they abduct articulate people who might elucidate them on the finer points of humanity? Why not abduct authors, scientists, or (yes, it must be said, though I disdain the limelight) narrators like myself? I would like nothing more than to be abducted by interstellar travellers and spend some idle hours shooting the breeze with them telepathically. Let this be your invitation, Starpeople! I will be waiting in an empty field just outside of Poughkeepsie, New York, after 7 P.M. each Wednesday.
^ 52 Though such advice seems obvious, thousands of children are stuck to cold metal pipes by their tongues each year. Please give generously to “Don’t Lick It, Kids!,” a non-profit organization that I have founded.
^ 53 I have to say, I sympathize with Brendan on this point. The washroom is not a place for chatting. One should be allowed to evacuate one’s bladder in peace without any casual conversation or distractions.
NEMESIS
Harold and Dmitri had decided to take the day off. They were both exhausted by their vigil over the past few nights. In the end, Harold had just crashed on a futon in Dmitri’s room. He’d already called his parents and told them that he’d be spending the night. Delia had gone home but made them promise they would meet at noon to confront the person Harold believed was the nemesis.
Dmitri had managed to calm his babka after she burst in on them in the shed. She kept babbling about Princes and Enemies and Little People until Dmitri finally convinced her to lie down on her daybed in the living room. He made her some tea and toast, but by the time he carried them into the living room, she was asleep as if nothing had happened. Dmitri left the tray on the coffee table and went up to bed himself.
Noon found the three conspirators in the BQM Eatery on Ossington Street. Harold had suggested it because he knew that the nemesis lived nearby. They could stake out the streetcar stop. Also, he was quite fond of their burgers. They sat on stools, faces to the window with an eye on the transit shelter across the road.
“How do we know this guy’s going to come?” Delia said. She picked at a salad with a plastic fork. “How do we even know he is the nemesis or whatever? How do we know that the old lady isn’t completely nuts?”
“That isn’t very nice,” Dmitri said sulkily.
“She has a point, though,” Harold admitted. “I just think this is the guy. I can’t think of anybody else who fits the bill.”
“So when will we see him?” Delia asked. “Are you sure he’ll come here?”
“I take my piano lessons nearby,” Harold said through a mouthful of low-fat turkey burger. “I ride the same streetcar as he does lots of times. He always got out here. His mum works in the Pizzeria Libretto across the road.”
“Why do you know all that?” Delia wondered.
Harold shrugged. “I dunno. I’m an artist. Or at least I want to be an artist and one of the things artists are supposed to do is observe people. You know.”
“So he comes here to meet his mum,” Delia said. “What if she isn’t working today?”
“She is,” Dmitri interjected. “I called and asked for her an hour ago. I hung up when they went to call her to the phone.”
“Wow.” Delia nodded, impressed. “You guys are good. And a little bit creepy.”
Before Harold could respond, Dmitri sat up higher on his stool and exclaimed, “There he is!”
Their eyes swung to the other side of the street, where a streetcar had just stopped. The door opened and passengers stepped down onto the road. An old woman was struggling with a shopping cart in the narrow folding doorway when a large, broad-shouldered boy lifted the cart and carried it to the curb for her. The old lady smiled and said something to the boy, who merely nodded and turned toward the BQM window.
Chester Dallaire had changed a great deal since the bizarre episode that had made news headlines. He was leaner and his skin was clearer. His hair was neatly trimmed. The cruel smirk he’d habitually worn when he picked on Harold and Dmitri during their first weeks at RDA was gone. His expression was guarded and his eyes wary.
“That’s the nemesis?” Delia asked. “I was expecting someone… I don’t know, scarier?”
“He was indeed more frightening before the incident,” Dmitri explained.
“Incident?” Delia asked.
“He had some kinda breakdown and ran away. Wouldn’t stop running,” Harold told her. “They say it was like he was possessed or something. It was on the news.”
“That’s the guy?” Delia cried in disbelief. “I remember that story. He doesn’t look crazy.”
“He had therapy and he’s only just come back to school,” Harold said.
“He used to pick at Brendan and us,” Dmitri continued. “But now he’s a different person.”