Where's Burgess? Read online

  “It’s a flashier color,” I explain. “Gets people’s attention.”

  The cat jumps down to the balcony railing and tiptoes along it, its gray tail swishing.

  “I lost a pet once,” says the woman.

  “A cat?” I ask.

  “My budgie. It escaped from its cage.”

  “Did you get it back?” I ask.

  “There were sightings,” she says. “People called to tell me they’d seen a white bird flying in and out of the grass along the beach road. It had taken up with a flock of sparrows.”

  “Was it scared?” I ask.

  “Oh no,” she says. “I’m sure it was having the time of its life. It was free, and it was summertime. The living was easy.” She’s looking in the distance as if she can see it, but there’s only a crow sitting on a branch.

  The cat yowls again.

  “I’ll call if I see your frog,” she says, “but my guess is, he’s gone to Beacon Hill Park. They’ve got quite a frog population in those ponds.”

  “Thanks,” I say, “but I don’t think he’s there. Burgess doesn’t like crowds.”

  “Oh,” she says.

  “I’ll just keep looking.”

  “Good luck,” she says. “If you love something, set it free.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I say.

  Walking along, I pass a little kid on a bike. He’s got training wheels and one of those enormous helmets to protect his head if he falls. He hasn’t got the hang of it yet, and he wobbles to one side. His dad rushes up and grabs his jacket. Steadies him. I think about Aaron and his bike problem. Maybe he can’t balance. Maybe he has something wrong with him. When I had an ear infection last winter, my balance was all wonky. I tried to put on my shoes and I fell over. I was a disaster.

  I wonder if Aaron feels like a disaster. Maybe he needs a doctor to look in his ears.

  At school, the teacher hands out cards and asks us to draw ourselves as ninjas. I draw myself in a crouching position, circles for kneecaps. I color a black bodysuit over my whole body, covering my head, arms and legs. Only my eyes show. I look over at Aaron. He sits across the room from me, his head bent. His tongue sticks out as he draws. I wonder if mine does that.

  “Let’s give our ninjas warrior names,” says Miss Ross. On the board, she’s drawn herself as a ninja holding a book. I don’t think she’s quite got the concept. She calls hers Ninja Reader.

  I call mine SPEED.

  I draw my sidekick. A frog, also in full-on ninja gear. He’s got thick legs and can leap really far. I give him those lines that fly out behind him. Action lines, they’re called.

  Aaron comes over to my desk. We’re not supposed to talk, so he points to my drawing and gives me a thumbs-up.

  I write on a piece of paper, DO YOUR EARS HURT?

  He gets a big wrinkle in his forehead, like he’s trying to figure out what I’m talking about. “No,” he whispers. “Do yours?”

  I try again. EAR INFECTION = NO BALANCE = FALL OFF BIKE

  He nods slowly to show me he understands. Then he walks to the bookshelf at the back of the classroom, picks out a big heavy book and puts it on top of his head. Today, he’s wearing his blue bathrobe, his favorite one.

  He floats across the room with the book on his head.

  A few kids laugh.

  When he gets to his desk, he nods. The book slides down his forehead and into his hands. He cracks it open and starts reading.

  So he has good balance. What, then?

  That night I call Dad. He’s in Vancouver, a long ferry ride from where we live in Victoria. “Are you coming to visit soon?” I ask.

  “Fire season is starting,” he says.

  It means he’s going to be in the forest for a long time. I’m not going to be able to call him. He’ll be putting out fires and chopping down trees. Sometimes they even have to start fires before they can put them out. It’s a strange business.

  “I still haven’t found Burgess,” I tell him.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he says. “Your mom told me.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “I can get you another frog,” he says. “We could get it from a pet store. They’ve got some really wild ones. I think we could even get you one that’s blue.”

  “It wouldn’t be Burgess.”

  “No, I know that. But your mom says you’ve been looking for a long time. She’s starting to get worried about you.”

  “I still might find him.”

  “Yeah, that’s true,” he says.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “Okay, buddy. You know I’m just making us some money, right? When fire season is over, I’ll be able to visit more.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  That night when I’m lying in bed, I hear Burgess. I know it’s him. I fly to my bedroom window and listen real hard. It’s dark, and there’s a big round moon in the sky. I hear a cat yowling. I hear the neighbor next door rolling out his garbage cans. I don’t hear Burgess again. But I know he’s out there.

  Chapter Four

  Watching my mom ride her exercise bike gives me an idea. So far, all Aaron can do is fall over when he takes both feet off the ground. What if it is all about the feeling of pushing hard on the pedals? With an exercise bike, you can’t fall over.

  “Mom, can Aaron come over after school?”

  Her T-shirt is sweaty under the armpits. She takes a swig from her water bottle. She pedals faster. “Aaron’s a friend?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure. He can stay for dinner, if you like.”

  “I don’t know if we’re that good of friends,” I say. “It’s kind of new.”

  “Whatever works for you.”

  “Can he ride your exercise bike?”

  She wrinkles her forehead. “Does he want to ride it?”

  “I think so,” I say.

  “As long as it’s something he wants to do,” she says.

  Aaron slings his blue bathrobe over a chair. Without it, he looks skinny. He has freckles on his long arms. I try not to stare at them, but sometimes when you tell yourself not to stare at something, it’s like your eyes have magnets in them.

  I adjust the seat and push a few buttons. I set the level on four. He climbs on. “Just pedal,” I tell him. “Hard.”

  “What about music?” he asks.

  I put on the television and flick it to the channels with music on them.

  “Pump up the volume,” he says.

  I give him something dancy. Mom likes it because it gets her heart rate up. It seems to be working for him too. Aaron’s knobby knees are pumping up and down.

  “Do you have any water?” he asks. “I need to stay hydrated.”

  When I come back with a glass of water, he’s going uphill. He’s panting and pushing. He’s sweating.

  “You want the fan?” I ask. “Mom sometimes turns it on.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I’d like to feel the wind in my hair.”

  I'm not sure what I had expected. Maybe a few turns around the imaginary block, but Aaron seems to be getting into it.

  I go and get my pencils. I spread my stuff on the floor and draw comics. It’s kind of nice being in Mom’s bedroom with the music playing. It isn’t so bad being with Aaron either.

  After a while I look up. He’s doing the cooldown, his legs slowing. His eyes are closed.

  “You probably want to keep your eyes open the whole time,” I tell him.

  “What for?” he says.

  “I mean when you do the outdoor version,” I say.

  “I like the indoor version,” he says. “No cars to worry about.”

  I didn’t know he was worried about cars. Now I do. “Do you want to stay for dinner?” I ask.

  He gets off the bike and puts on his bathrobe. “I have to go home.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “But thanks,” he says. “It felt good to ride.”

  “A
nytime,” I say.

  “Tomorrow?” he asks. “If it’s okay with you?”

  I shrug. “Sure.”

  That night I lie in bed staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling. Usually I fall asleep before they fade, but not tonight. I’m thinking about Burgess and how it was this time last spring that we found him.

  Dad and I were camping on Salt Spring Island. It was our annual trip, just us two. We took a tent, sleeping bags, wieners and beans. We wore the same clothes every day, stinking like the campfire. We hiked the trails. Dad said it was forests like these that made him proud to be a firefighter. We were walking along a creek, and Dad saw him first. Little brown guy, he said, pointing to him.

  The frog’s body blended in with the mud. He didn’t move, even when I stood just a few inches away. I cupped my hands around him and picked him up. His belly was soft, and I felt his heart beating.

  Can I take him home? I asked.

  He paused. If your mom was here, she’d probably remind us that we aren’t supposed to take animals out of their natural habitat.

  Yeah, I said. But I still want him.

  Hard to argue with that, he said.

  I carried him back to the campsite and put him in our cooler. We gave him some rocks and water from a stream so he’d feel at home. It was our last night at camp. I knew I wasn’t going to see my dad for a while. He had packed up all his things, and they were sitting in a truck outside our house. Mom and he were doing a trial separation. Not a divorce. I hated that word. Divorce. A trial meant they might get back together. After fire season.

  That night Dad rubbed his hands together over the campfire. I poked my head out from the tent. We posed with Burgess for a selfie.

  Those were some good times.

  Chapter Five

  The next morning, I tell Mom we need to go to Salt Spring Island. I put the map in front of her.

  “This is Ruckle Park?” she asks.

  “You’ve got it upside down,” I say.

  “Oh yeah,” she says, turning it. “This is where you and Dad went camping last spring?”

  “That’s the trail,” I say, pointing to the dotted line that goes along the coast. “And that’s the creek where we found Burgess. I think he’s gone back there.”

  “And how exactly did he catch the ferry?” asks Hazel, her hands on her hips.

  “Hush,” says my mother, studying the map and chewing her lip.

  “Maybe he hitchhiked,” I say.

  “With his thumb?” Hazel asks.

  “Frogs return to their streams,” I say. “It’s a fact. They use their sense of smell.”

  Hazel throws her hands in the air. She thinks Mom should do something about my obsession. I heard them talking the other night, but Mom said I was just going through a phase. A phase is something you grow out of. Burgess is not a phase.

  “Can we go, Mom?” I ask.

  Mom looks at me like she’s thinking hard. Her eyebrows get all close together, and she gets a wrinkle between them. “Okay,” she says. “We’ll go Saturday. We’ll take the VW bus and camp. We’ll take a good look around. But that’s it, okay? If we don’t find him, we have to let him go.”

  I get a warm feeling in my gut. I love Salt Spring Island. Now if only Dad could come too.

  The ferry to Salt Spring takes thirty-five minutes, enough time for me to put up some posters on the boat. “Don’t be long,” says Mom, as I slide open the door of our bus.

  In the latest poster, Burgess’s eyes have red veins.

  “Hey, man,” says a guy with a guitar. “That’s a rad picture.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “He looks freaked out,” he says.

  “He’s been missing for a while.”

  “Rough,” says the guy. “I could help pass the word on the island. I’m going to set up outside the liquor store. Lots of people go in and out.”

  I look at his beat-up guitar. “Does that thing work?”

  “Yup,” he says.

  “We could write a song about him,” I say.

  He picks out a few chords. “How does this sound?”

  I look around to see if the other passengers are listening. A few of them have turned and are looking at us. It’s a good sign. No one is running the opposite way. “Okay,” I say. “You’re no Usher or anything, but you’ll do.”

  I take out a pen, flip over a poster and start writing. In a few minutes I have it all written out for him. The chorus goes like this:

  I like frogs, yes I do

  Doo bee doo bee doo

  Small brown frogs, yes I do

  YES I DO.

  He strums a few chords, bends his head over the guitar and the words come out—slower than I thought they would.

  I look around. “Maybe a bit more up-tempo.”

  He strums faster.

  I slap my thigh. “That’s it.”

  He sings the chorus twice and ends with one of those big flourishes. All the strings jangle on the YES I DO!

  The passengers around us clap, and I know we’ve made an impression. A girl comes up and takes a selfie of the guitar player and her. She takes a photo of the poster. “I’ll tweet it,” she says.

  “I have you guys on video,” says her friend. “I’ll YouTube it.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  An announcement comes over the ferry speakers that we’re pulling into the harbor. I need to get back to my vehicle.

  “I’ve got to get going,” I say to the guitar player.

  “Hang in there, man,” he says.

  When I get back to the bus, Mom says, “I was going to send out a search party.”

  “Yeah,” says Hazel. “We were ready to hire a private eye.”

  “For Burgess?”

  “For you, knucklehead,” says Mom, starting the bus. It backfires, and the sound ricochets off the metal sides of the ferry. The guy who is getting into his car in front of us jumps a mile. He turns around and gives us a dirty look.

  “Can we please buy a new car soon?” asks my sister. “Something from this century?”

  “Nothing wrong with the ol’ bus,” says Mom.

  “We can’t get something new,” I say. “Burgess wouldn’t recognize it.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” says my sister.

  We drive off the ferry and take the winding road to Ruckle Park. On the way, my sister pulls out her phone.

  “No phones,” says Mom. “We’re off the grid this weekend.”

  My sister groans.

  “It’s for a greater cause,” I say.

  She turns to Mom. “A normal car and a normal brother. That’s all I ask for.”

  Chapter Six

  Ruckle Park has campsites for tents, but it also has eight spots for RV campers or old buses like ours. These sites are close to the hiking trail where Dad and I always set up. I’ve never been camping before with Mom. I’m not sure she knows what to do.

  “You have to hang up the tarp,” I say. “Dad always does that first so if it rains, we can go underneath it.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to rain,” says Mom.

  “Dad says it always rains.”

  She rubs the corners of her eyes like she’s tired. “It’s not going to be exactly like it is with Dad.”

  “Yeah,” says Hazel. “Mom has her own way of doing things.”

  “We cook under the tarp,” I say. “It keeps the food dry.”

  Hazel goes inside and brings out the tent and the sack with the poles in it. She and I are going to sleep in the tent while Mom sleeps in the bus. “Why don’t you put the poles together?” she asks. “You like that job, right?”

  I look down at the ground. “We have to lay a tarp first.”

  I’m not sure they know very much about camping. I wish Dad were here to show them how it all goes together. Hazel hands me the poles, and I snap them into a straight line. She brings out both tarps. When I look around, Mom’s gone inside the bus.

  Hazel shakes out the tarp, and ba
rk flies from its folds. “Is she coming out?” I ask.

  “Later,” says Hazel.

  “When are we going to look for Burgess?” I ask.

  “Tomorrow,” she says. “I think Mom’s had all she can handle today.”

  “I know how to make a Norwegian fire,” I say, my toe nudging the fire pit. “You start with big logs first. You lay them tight, side by side. Then you pile on smaller ones, then sticks, then tiny shavings. Like a pyramid.”

  “Show me,” she says. “We can make Mom a veggie dog.”

  And that’s how we spend our first night looking for Burgess. Not looking. But I figure he knows we’re around. He probably heard the bus pulling in. I crawl into my sleeping bag. My sister’s in the tent beside me, reading on her phone. Not using it as a phone is okay. “I’ll read to you,” she says, not waiting for my answer.

  She reads some goofy book about vampires, but I don’t listen to the words. I listen to her voice. It rises and falls. In the background the frogs are singing. They’re loud. They sound like a thousand frogs all singing the same song. They sound alive.

  When I get up in the morning, Mom’s already frying bacon on the Coleman stove. She’s got her hair tied in a green bandanna. She looks happy. “Slept like a log,” she says. “How about you?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Are we going to look for Burgess today?”

  “You bet,” she says.

  After we eat breakfast, we pack a lunch and hit the trail. We see a lot of things on our hike. We see geese swimming in the water, fluff-ball goslings following behind. We see arbutus trees, their pink bark peeling in the hot sun. We go down to the beach and throw rocks and collect beach glass.

  Hazel puts the glass in a pouch. She makes jewelry and sells it on Etsy. Mom says Hazel is the entrepreneur in the family, and I’m the artist. What are you? I had asked her.

  I’m the one who pays the bills.

  And Dad?

  Yeah, she said. Him too.

  When I see the creek, I recognize it right away. It has a wooden bridge with some kind of steel grate on it so it’s not slippery. I remember crossing it with Dad. I climb down through the ferns to the edge.