My Cousin's Keeper (12 page)

Bon stared at me for a moment more, as though I had another pair of scissors hidden in my hand and was ready to give him a buzz cut. Then he edged back to the stool and sat down again.

“Homework, Kieran,” Mom said.

“Yeah, yeah, I'm going,” I answered wearily. As I walked away, I heard her say to Bon, “Do you want to tell me what really happened at school today?”

I was grateful for the peace and quiet of my room, to know that I had it to myself for at least a little while, without Bon fidgeting in the background. Even if he had left his clothes and, worst of all, yesterday's underwear, lying all over the carpet. When I thought I'd spent enough time on the math and language assignments Mr. Garcia had given us, I walked back up the hallway.

I could hear Bon's voice. His own homework was spread across the kitchen table, but he was standing over at the kitchen island, next to Mom. Or rather, he was leaning — not against the island, but against Mom, as though expecting a hug. And he was reading from one of her cookbooks.

His voice sounded different as he did this — confident, I realized, which surprised me.

It had the same effect on Mom, because she suddenly told him, “Bon, you're a good reader. Really good.”

“It's because I practice,” he told her, as though stating an obvious fact.

“I mean it,” she answered. “I thought it'd be something you'd have trouble with. Going to so many different schools can affect the way kids learn sometimes. How many schools have you been to?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. A few.”

Mom paused and looked at Bon for what seemed like a very long time. “Well,” she said at last, “you can read to me anytime you like. OK?” And she let the arm Bon was nestling under wrap around his shoulder in the hug I guessed he'd been hoping for.

“OK,” he answered. His hair was brushed and neatly braided, and he would have looked pleased if he hadn't seen me back in the kitchen again. I looked at his homework and made a face. He really did have the messiest writing I'd ever seen. It was scrawled over the lines and answer spaces in a way that I could barely read.

“That looks really gross,” I remarked. “It's like a two-year-old snuck in and scribbled all over the page.”

“Bon's finished his homework for Miss McLennan. How's your homework, Kieran?”

“All done,” I answered. “And it's
really
neat. As usual.”

Mom smiled at Bon. “Put your things away, and then it's your choice for half an hour before dinner — computer or television.” As he slipped away, Mom turned to me. “You and I need to go outside for a little while. We need to talk.”

As soon as we were on the back deck, Mom sat down on a bench and had me sit beside her. “Kieran,” she said, “you're not being very nice to Bon.”

I was expecting a scolding, not this quiet voice.

“No,” I admitted.

“Like we said, this is a big change — for all of us. And I can tell you're not finding it so easy.” Mom waited for me to say something, but when I didn't, she continued. “As your nan put it, this is not about playing favorites. It's about giving Bon somewhere he feels safe and somewhere he can be happy. Everybody deserves that, and it's something Bon needs very much.”

“Why does he have to sleep in my room?”

“We've been through this before. He's your cousin. And now he's very much a part of our lives. You need to share and give a little, Kieran.”

“Why can't Gina and I take turns, then? Or he can go sleep in the shed; Dad's got a couch there.”

“With the lawn mower, the tools, and the beer fridge?” She almost laughed at that. “Kieran, our house is just not big enough for him to be anywhere else. Gina's room is smaller than yours. Bon would have trouble finding space on the floor among all the dolls and toy ponies. Would
you
like to sleep in there?”

“No,” I snorted.

“It's going to be a special thing for Bon to get to know us properly. There's probably a great deal he hasn't had in his life. He and you are the same age, and I think there's nothing he'd like more than for you to be more than a cousin to him.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, looking down at the deck.

“Be a friend, Kieran.”

The silence that followed seemed to last for minutes. I could have stood up and stomped inside, making sure to slam the screen door as I went. But Mom rested one hand lightly on my shoulder, as though anchoring me for something more.

“It's been quite a while since you've had a friend over to visit or spend the night. Like Mason or Lucas, for instance. Is there a reason for that?”

I shrugged and said nothing.

“Is the reason anything to do with Connor?”

I sighed. “Please, Mom —”

“I know you miss him.”

Now I wanted to escape this conversation. “Is that all you needed to say to me?”

Mom squeezed my shoulder; it made me turn and face her. “You've always been kind and considerate,” she said. “I don't want that to change. Please be patient and show Bon a little more understanding. OK?”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I mumbled, knowing the sound of my voice would be telling Mom I hadn't really changed my mind at all.

I ignored Bon and ate in silence throughout dinner. Afterward, I sat as far away from him as I could to watch television.

My bedroom faced toward the sunset, but the sky had darkened early with gray clouds and it had begun to rain. I lay very still in bed, enjoying the rattle of rain on the roof. Imagining that Bon was not here in my room, I willed myself to fall asleep.

Bon tossed and turned. His sheets rustled; his feet stretched and kicked so that the trundle bed creaked and moved.

“The rain on the roof,” he said at last. “It sounds like voices.”

“
What
?”
I grumbled.

“Voices,” Bon repeated. “Men's voices, like there's a bunch of them talking. Listen.”

It was a trick, that soft noise of water falling onto tin. And the darkness was a trick as well, the way it made the shape and feel of things change. So although I wanted to pretend to be scornful of anything that Bon said, I listened carefully. I wanted to be able to tell him,
Nonsense
, because what he was hearing was really the sound of the television in the living room, or maybe some of the neighbors out on their back porch having a conversation. It was neither. There
was
the sound of voices in the raindrops hitting the roof. I remembered thinking of it like that long ago, when I was younger. But I wouldn't tell that to Bon.

“I can't hear anything but rain,” I said. “You're being weird.”

In the darkness came a sigh. “There is, you know. You just have to listen.”

“Shut up. Go to sleep.”

But he didn't, and so neither did I. He rustled and moved, he rolled over onto his stomach, then onto his back. Whenever I thought I felt my mind and body slowing and my eyes closing, I could hear that Bon was still awake. Beyond my room, Mom and Dad switched off the television and the lights, ran a tap and brushed teeth, and murmured their voices along the hallway and behind the closed door of their bedroom. Everything in the house became still. Except for Bon.

Finally, I became too fed up. I desperately wanted to sleep, so, picking up my pillow and blanket, I left Bon to his tossing and turning.

“Where are you going?” I heard him ask behind me, but I ignored him and walked in bare feet to the living room, hoping he wouldn't follow and that my parents wouldn't hear me and make a fuss. I sank into the sofa cushions, pulled the blanket over my head, and fell asleep very quickly.

I woke again to the same stillness and darkness. I spent a while thinking and hoping that Bon would finally be asleep, before padding back to my room and finding the outline of my bed.

I was wrong. As I settled down under my own blankets again, I could see him. He was kneeling up on the trundle bed now, perfectly still and quiet. From the moonlight that shone through the window, I could see his hair a little frizzed and messed up. He was gazing out the window, and from behind, it was hard to know exactly what he was looking at: Our backyard? The neighbors' houses? The town? The moonlight showing through the last of the rain clouds? I wondered for a moment if he was even fully awake.

“Go to sleep,” I grumbled, but it was as though Bon didn't hear.

In the morning, he was awake before me, sitting on his bed and still looking outside. I couldn't tell if he'd slept at all.

Usually, I slept soundly.

“Thunderstorms, explosions, rock concerts,” Dad had told Ant and Split Pin one afternoon down at the Guys' Room, “Kieran could sleep right through it all without batting an eyelid.”

But I wasn't sleeping like that whenever Bon came to stay. Having him share my room changed everything.

After lights-out, he would fidget and be restless; he seemed to stay awake a long time. I began to sense that he was not only awake, but out of bed during the night — and not just for a walk down the hallway for a pee, either. Once I woke to see Mom guiding Bon back into my bedroom. He shuffled like a sleepwalker, and Mom sat down on the mattress beside him for a while, stroking his forehead and resting a hand on his shoulder as he lay back under the blankets.

Another time, I woke to see his shadowed shape standing at the window, and I was sure that he was wearing sneakers and outdoor clothes. When I heard his fingers picking at the window latch, I woke enough to whisper, “What are you doing?”

He jumped and I heard his breath catch.

“What are you doing?” I hissed. “Go back to bed. And don't touch any of my things, either.”

I had surprised Bon enough to make him not say a word in reply. In the moments that followed, I heard him get quickly back into his bed, with more rustling and fussing than usual.

“Stop making so much noise,” I hissed again, sure that he was wriggling out of shoes and clothing under the covers. Where had he been about to go? “I'm telling Mom on you,” I added. “I'm sick of you and your noise.”

“It's not fair,” I told her the next day. “He keeps me awake.”

Mom was busy with Gina and Bon, attending to braids and ponytails. Our three lunch boxes were lined up on the kitchen island, ready for school.

“I don't keep you awake,” said Bon in a flat voice. He avoided looking at me.

“You do. He does, Mom.” I wondered whether to mention being certain that Bon had not only been awake this time, but dressed in more than pajamas.

“Are you still having trouble sleeping?” Mom asked Bon.

“He's
never
still,” I continued. “I can hear him. It's like he does it on purpose.”

Mom glared at me. I glared at Bon, and this time he looked at me, guilty and uncomfortable.

“I don't,” he protested again. “Usually, I don't go to bed so early,” he added, and then corrected himself. “I
used
to not go to bed so early.”

“How late was your bedtime?” Mom asked.

“Midnight. And sometimes I stayed up nearly all night if there was good stuff on television.”

“Sure,” I said, disbelieving.

“It's true,” he answered, and I could hear that he wasn't boasting. I knew it probably was a truth that belonged to whatever life Bon had led before he'd come to live at Nan's house and started the regular sleepovers with us.

All the things I'd heard about my aunt and Bon were beginning to piece themselves together into a jigsaw puzzle, and now there were more pieces that fit — the faded clothing Bon had first arrived in; Kelsie Graney giving him free café breakfasts; a camper at the trailer park to call home, and then a room at the Imperial Hotel.

“Sometimes,” Bon added, “my mom wouldn't sleep. I had to stay awake to make sure that she was OK.”

There was another puzzle piece: the sight of my aunt's hand clenching Bon's face tightly as he looked away, pretending that nothing was wrong. I flinched as though the pain had found my own face. In that moment, I felt a cloud of anger drift away, and knew something I wasn't ready to admit out loud.

I felt sorry for my cousin.

The skirt was Mason's idea, but as soon as I laughed, it felt as though it had almost become my idea as well. I felt guilty and reluctant, but for Mason, the tripping, hair pulling, and name-calling was getting boring. And one day at the lost and found near the school office, when Mason retrieved the jacket he'd left on the playground the previous day, he found one of the girls' sports skirts as well. It had
AMBER HODGES
printed clearly on the inside name tag, but Mason wasn't about to let Amber know right away that he had it.

“Wait till he's over near the bathroom,” Mason said to us during the first half of lunch. We had our sandwiches and drinks balanced in our laps, and Mason had the sports skirt neatly folded and hidden. “He'll have to go sooner or later. Then surround him and kind of walk him inside so that the teacher on playground duty doesn't notice.”