Rex Zero, King of Nothing Read online

  Voices.

  Mum and Dad?

  Then somebody runs up the main staircase to the second floor. A second somebody runs after the first somebody. Now somebody is running back down the stairs. More voices.

  I throw back my covers and climb out of bed. I look out the window. Snow has piled up along the sill. The car isn’t back yet.

  I go to the top of the attic stairs and listen. I hear low voices arguing.

  Creeping down the stairs and peering over the railing, I can just make out Cassiopeia and Annie Oakley halfway up the main staircase below.

  “I was not,” says Annie.

  “Yes, you were!” says Cassiopeia.

  “Prove it,” says Annie.

  “Your bedtime was ten-thirty and I found you in the study. You were snooping and I’m telling Daddy.”

  Annie is holding on to the railing with both hands, probably trying to stop herself from wringing Cassie’s neck. She’s in her cowboy pyjamas with the lariats, cactuses and rattlers on them. Cassie is all dressed up, as if Mr. Odsburg might be dropping by any minute.

  And then a strange thing happens. When I think about it later, back in bed, I’m sure I must have telepathic powers because Annie starts to laugh as if she knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “Stop that!” says Cassie. “You sound like a lunatic.”

  “I’m not a lunatic. And if you tell Daddy I was snooping, I’ll tell him about you and Mr. Odsburg.”

  I have to clap my hand over my mouth to stop from whooping with laughter.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” says Cassie, but you can tell from her voice she’s going to back off.

  “About what you were doing,” says Annie.

  “We weren’t doing...”

  Cassiopeia stops and in the silence I hear what she is hearing: the car pulling into the driveway. I scoot back to bed and my warring sisters split up: Cassie down the stairs, Annie up to bed. I listen but there are no more angry words. No one hurries up to Annie’s room to give her what for. The fight is over and all that’s left is another mystery.

  What was Annie doing in Daddy’s study after her bedtime?

  I try to count up all the mysteries, but the other ones are now completely buried in snow, and I fall asleep trying to find them.

  10

  Speed Bonnie Boat

  WHEN I WAKE UP the next morning I make a list before my brain knows what’s happening. I feel smart, just like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz when the wizard gives him a diploma. Morning is like a diploma.

  I sit at my desk, my teeth chattering from the morning cold, writing out all the mysteries in my life:

  1. Why has my father been acting so strange?

  2. What is the story my mother thought he was going to tell me on Armistice Day?

  3. Why was Annie snooping in Dad’s study?

  4. Who is the beautiful Natasha Lavender and why is she so sad?

  5. Why is she called “Nate” in some guy’s address book?

  6. What is Kathy going to do about Doctor Arnold Schwartz?

  7. What is my class going to do about Miss Garr?

  Pheww! That’s a lot of questions.

  Now I allow myself to look out the window. I didn’t want to look until I’d made the list because I was sure my brain would explode.

  Boom!

  It explodes.

  My head has nothing in it but snow. Everything is white except for the tire tracks on the street. There are tire tracks leaving our driveway, so Dad has already gone to work.

  The sun’s not quite up yet, but there isn’t a cloud in the sky and everything is sparkling. I think of my friends back in Vancouver walking to school in the rain.

  Ha ha ha.

  When I get downstairs to the kitchen, I can’t talk to Mum because she’s too busy with breakfast, and I can’t talk to Annie because Mum is there. I don’t want to get anyone else in trouble.

  Besides, Annie hardly notices me. She is too busy watching Cassie dabbing teensy specks of Marmite on little triangles of dry toast. Marmite is this stuff English people eat that looks like tar smeared on the bottom of your shoe.

  Annie is watching Cassie like a rattlesnake at a gopher’s hole. She’s got her hands in her lap and I bet she’s got a weapon there. If Cassie says one word about last night, it will be the last thing she ever says.

  But who cares!

  All I really want to do is get out into that snow. I eat my breakfast quickly because I have a feeling it’s going to take a while to get my winter gear on.

  Mum bought everything at the Hadassah Bazaar. I lay it all out on the floor in the living room: a big fat quilted bright blue snow jacket with a hood, fat black snow pants, mitts, heavy socks, boots, a scarf and a Toronto Maple Leafs bobble hat, except they call them toques here. I already have on a turtleneck sweater that Mum knitted for me. It’s white with black spots. I look just like a Dalmatian.

  I’ve heard stories about people freezing to death and I’m not taking any chances.

  Mum decides to be funny.

  “Rex? Rex, where are you?”

  I laugh but she can’t hear me because my scarf is wrapped eighteen times around my mouth. She has to open the door for me and I step out like a zombie pod person. It’s the morning of the living dead.

  The sun is up and it’s so bright, bouncing off the snow, I can’t see a thing. I clump down the stairs to the path and turn west on Clemow. Now the sun is behind me and I can see what I was already beginning to guess, because I’m sweltering inside my winter clothes.

  The snow is melting.

  In the time it took me to eat a bowl of Cap’n Crunch and get dressed, winter is almost over. I turn and waddle back home and take off just about everything. I head off again with just my toque and my Dalmatian sweater on.

  * * *

  In class, Miss Garr is as nice as can be. You’d think yesterday never happened. I stare at her whenever she’s not looking my way wondering if maybe she isn’t Miss Garr but her twin sister – the nice one who the other Miss Garr usually has tied up in the basement.

  She doesn’t even look so bad. She’s wearing an apple green suit with a dragon’s blood red blouse under it. She has a pink ribbon in her hair, which clashes, but it makes her look young.

  We have art this morning and we are supposed to draw animals for a poster contest sponsored by the SPCA, which Buster thinks stands for the Society for the Presumption of Cruelty to Animals. I’m doing three Canada geese flying through the clouds with the caption “Don’t Shoot Me!” It’s a pretty good poster.

  Looking around me, I think I’ve got an excellent chance of winning. Kathy is drawing a squirrel that’s been run over by a car. Sami is drawing a bear caught in a leghold trap. His page is covered with blood. Rhonda, who sits in front of me, is drawing a kitten, except it looks more like a toy than a real kitten. Her caption is “Wouldn’t You Like to Take Me Home for Christmas?” which is pretty barfy and not about cruelty. Except having to live at Rhonda’s would be cruel.

  I’m working away at the honkers when suddenly Miss Garr is standing beside me. She’s got her hands on her knees and she’s bending down so that she can look closely.

  “Well done,” she says.

  Whatever my part was in yesterday’s melt-down, she seems to have forgiven me.

  “Thanks,” I mutter. But I haven’t forgiven her.

  Then she bends closer and whispers directly in my ear.

  “Do you know what I think, Rex?” she says, her voice full of happy surprise. “I think we all could do with a little song.”

  Oh, no!

  I look at my picture.

  “I was just working on the eyes,” I say very quietly, so it doesn’t sound like I’m arguing.

  “And the eyes are very good, very good indeed. You are a very talented artist. But it would make the whole exercise so much more enjoyable for the class, don’t you think, if you sang us something? How about ‘Speed Bonnie Boat’?”

  No! Not
“Speed Bonnie Boat”!

  I clear my throat. “Actually, I think I caught a chill on the way here this morning.”

  Miss Garr laughs in a tinkly way.

  “Now, now,” she says. “You can’t fool me.” Then she leans in close so her lips almost touch my ear. “You don’t want to let your classmates down, do you?”

  It isn’t really a question. I think for just a moment whether it would be worth saying no, I won’t sing, and getting the strap.

  I stare one last time at the three geese. Don’t Shoot Me! Then I sigh and lay my pencil carefully in the trough at the top of my desk.

  “Class,” says Miss Garr, clapping her hands three times. “Rex has volunteered to sing us a song to help us along with our artistic endeavours.”

  My face goes bright red. Beet red.

  “Come along now, Rex. How about ‘Speed Bonnie Boat’?”

  Speed Bonnie Boat. About two days after Miss Garr took over our class, I put up my hand when she asked if anyone knew that song. Her favourite song. How was I to know she would make me sing it? How was I to know she would make me sing it again?

  I stand in the centre of the classroom with my hands folded in front of me. Where is the guy to put on the blindfold? Where is the firing squad?

  “Now, Rex,” she says. “Don’t be shy.”

  I look out at the class. They’re all looking down at their desks, except for Randy Mooney who is sneering at me and Tanya McCurdy who is rolling her eyes and Polly who is frowning as if I’m a traitor. It’s so unfair!

  I glance over at Donnie. Does he think I’m a traitor? Donnie’s looking out the window.

  “We’re waiting, Rex,” says Miss Garr, and her voice isn’t as sweet as it was a minute ago. Soon she’ll be looking for rocks.

  Frantically, I look over at Kathy Brown who is staring right at me. Her eyes seem to say, “It’s okay. We know it wasn’t your idea.”

  Oh, well. Might as well get it over with.

  Speed Bonnie Boat like a bird on the wing,

  Onward the sailor’s cry.

  Carry the lad that was born to be king

  Over the seas to Skye.

  And then the bell rings. Just one verse too late.

  * * *

  I go straight home at the end of the day. I don’t wait for the others. Mum is in the kitchen having a cup of tea. The Sausage is sitting in his highchair having a cup of fairy tea. That’s tea with mostly milk and sugar in it. Dinah Shore is singing a cheery song about “courtin’ in the mornin’” but it doesn’t cheer me up.

  “What did you do at school today?” asks Mum.

  “Miss Garr made me dance on her desk with no clothes on.”

  “Not even your socks?” says Mum. “That can’t be hygienic.”

  The Sausage looks terrified.

  “Don’t worry, dear,” says Mum, patting his chubby little hand.

  “She should be fired,” I say. “She should be electrocuted.”

  Then Mum pats my hand as well.

  “I had a teacher once I thought should be boiled in oil. Other students wanted her hung by her toes or buried in the desert and eaten by fire ants and still others thought she should be fed to crocodiles. We could never agree on the best torture and, alas, I think she lived to be a hundred-and-eighty.”

  I don’t feel like joking. I wander off to the living room and curl up in the settee under the front window. That’s what we call it, a settee. Nobody else in Canada has a settee. They have couches.

  I look out at the already dark. I wish the winter hadn’t taken off like a scaredy-cat. It’s gone. There isn’t a flake of white out there.

  There are newspapers in a basket beside the settee. On the top is a picture of Santa on a rocket ship at a department store downtown on Saturday. Big deal.

  I look at the next page. There’s a picture from Armistice Day. Madame Vitaline Lanteigne from New Brunswick laying a wreath at the War Memorial on behalf of all the mothers of Canada. She had five sons. Three of them were killed in World War II; the other two were wounded.

  Five kids – almost the same as my family.

  I try to imagine Cassie, Letitia and Annie – all dead. “Have you got any more, Mrs. Norton-Norton? Ah, good. Off you go, Rex and Flora Bella. Oops! Sorry about that. We’ll just dig those bullets out and you’ll be good as new!”

  No wonder Dad gets depressed around this time of year.

  11

  Two Birds with One Stone

  LUCKILY, I WAKE UP the next morning invisible. This happens to me from time to time. I wish I could take better advantage of it: sneak into movie theatres for free, steal candy from the corner store, write things behind Miss Garr’s back on the blackboard. But it isn’t the good kind of invisibility. I just feel invisible.

  I still have to show up where I’m supposed to be. So I go to school and I go to lunch and I walk home with my friends.

  This kind of invisibility works best if you don’t say anything. Someone cracks a joke in class – you don’t laugh. Someone asks you a question – you don’t answer. You mind your own business. Someone needs some help – you don’t do anything at all.

  * * *

  The next week, the weather turns completely mild. Winter gives up without even a fight! In the schoolyard, out comes the peewee football again, and the guys choose up sides.

  “Were you away?” says Buster.

  See what I mean?

  “You going to play?” says James.

  “Maybe.” I still feel only half here. I look around and see Donnie Dangerfield leaning against the fence. “You want to play?”

  He holds up his left palm. The blisters are mostly gone. For the first couple of days after he got the strap his fingers looked like boiled frankfurters.

  “What did your parents say?”

  He shrugs. “My dad said, ‘That’ll teach you not to be such a smart ass.’ And my mom said, ‘Jesus H. Christ, so I gotta do the dishes?’”

  I wish I hadn’t asked. I’m not sure what my parents would do, but Annie Oakley would have been down here in a flash to scalp Miss Garr.

  “Are you coming, Rex?”

  “Start without me,” I shout. I look at Donnie to see if he minds me hanging around. He just shrugs some more. He looks a little invisible himself.

  I lean against the fence. I can’t think of anything to say. Being visible again suddenly seems like way too much work.

  Then Donnie looks at me and there’s this little worm of a grin sitting on the edge of his mouth.

  “What are the words to that song you like to sing?”

  “I do not like to sing it.”

  “Sure you do,” he says, poking me with his elbow. I know he’s kidding. I poke him back. “Seriously,” he says, “what are the words?”

  Finally, I recite them to him. I didn’t used to hate the song, but now I do. He repeats them after me. He remembers the tune pretty well and hums it through.

  “Who’s the lad that’s born to be king?” he asks.

  “Bonnie Prince Charlie.”

  He screws up his face. “Bonnie is a girl’s name.”

  He sings it again. He’s got a good voice.

  “Got it,” he says. Then there’s that worm of a grin again, like bait dancing on a hook. “Next time she does that to you, I’ll join in, okay?”

  I feel as if someone just gave me a present and it isn’t even my birthday.

  “You’ll get in trouble.”

  He shrugs. “I know. But if everybody learned the words...”

  He leaves the idea dangling in the air between us.

  As if he can tell something is up, Zoltan comes over to join us. He usually stands by himself at recess, watching everything, listening. We tell him Donnie’s plan. He nods. He pokes me in the chest.

  “You write out words to song,” he says. He pokes himself in the chest. “I learn them. Wait and see.” Then he grins. “I have bad, bad voice.”

  We all laugh.

  “Look at her,” says Zol
tan. He nods his head towards the playground where Miss Garr is on yard duty. She’s helping some little tyke climb the stairs of the slide. Another first-grader is leaning against her leg.

  “She got wrong class,” says Zoltan.

  It’s true. The little kids seem to like Miss Garr. Then I remember what she said to me, back when she first arrived.

  “She doesn’t like it when people grow up,” I say.

  “Tough,” says Donnie. “What’s she going to do about it?”

  Zoltan shakes his head. “When she make you sing, it same like the other day. You know, when she pretend Donnie say you are stupid.”

  “How is it the same?”

  His brow wrinkles. He is concentrating hard. “How you say she make word come out of you, you don’t want?”

  “She puts words in your mouth,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says, snapping his fingers. “She puts words in Donnie’s mouth. She puts words in your mouth – says you want to sing when you don’t want to sing. The same thing, yes?”

  “Yes.” He’s right. It is the same thing. And I’m kind of amazed. When Zoltan arrived at school, he hardly knew a word of English. How could you learn anything when you couldn’t understand the teacher? I thought. The thing is, he does understand her. He understands her really well.

  He shakes his head again. “My father is newspaper writer. How do you say...?” He types in the air.

  “A journalist?”

  “Yes. Journalist. Back in Budapest. He support the revolution in ‘56. Write about in paper. Taking back our country from Communists.” Zoltan smashes his fist into his palm. “Yes! Good!” Then he drops his hands to his sides. “But Soviets crush revolution. My father? He go to jail. They say he is enemy of country. In their own newspaper, they make up lies. They put words in his mouth.”

  “Is your dad still in jail?”

  Zoltan shakes his head. “My father get us out of country. Come here. We lucky. Premier Nagy? Not so lucky. He try to make the revolution? They execute him.” Zoltan makes gunshot sounds. Three of them.

  He nods towards Miss Garr. She is kneeling to tie a little kid’s boot. Another kid comes up to ask her something. Miss Garr laughs. The kid laughs, too.

  “Maybe older kids are too hard for her to figure out,” I say. “I mean, tying somebody’s shoelace is easy. Putting a kid on a slide is easy. Maybe we’re too complicated for her.”