Sagaria (6 page)

Leaning against the wall of the gym as the pain in his chest slowly ebbed away until it was merely agony, Sagandran saw that half the kids didn't even do as well as he had done, but nobody seemed to notice. Grunts certainly didn't make any comments about their performance, except encouraging ones. Sprode fell off one of the boxes and twisted his ankle, which was pleasing; he couldn't even get as far as the rope.

Fortunately, by the time everyone else had their turn, it was too late for
Sagandran to try again – the school bell was ringing. His hands felt as if he'd plunged them into a hornets' nest, and it was difficult getting back into his street clothes without hurting even more. Hauling up his jeans – which he did by pinching the waistband between his thumbs and index fingers – was the worst. If he didn't know better, he'd be certain the insides of his thighs had been flayed. The hard weave of the denim rubbing against the raw flesh felt like a blow torch.

Sagandran was the last to leave school, his satchel on his back. The school was a couple of miles outside town, but even so, he was glad he hadn't brought his bicycle today. Just the thought of sitting astride it and pedaling made him wince. The walk wasn't too enticing a prospect either, but it was better not to think about it and just do it.

Wrapped up in his pain, he was half a mile down the road when he remembered the frog. He stopped and gently put his satchel down. Pulling open the flap of the pocket, he peeped in nervously, fearing the worst.

The frog stared back at him. It gave a little croak.

Sagandran forgot his miseries. A big grin stole across his face.

He scooped the frog up in his hand, which didn't seem to hurt so badly any more, and talked nonsense to it as he carried it a couple of hundred yards to where the road bridged a little stream. Pausing before the bridge, Sagandran set the frog down in the long, damp grass.

With a final croak, it hopped away and was lost to sight.

For a while, he strolled along quite cheerfully, not minding that his legs hurt with every stride. Then he came around a bend and found Webster, Blunkett and Sprode dawdling on the road ahead of him. It was too late to turn back and hide until they'd gone. Sprode – who Sagandran saw with some happiness was still limping – had turned and spotted him.

“Hey, look, it's Frogface!” cried Sprode.

The other two stopped as well, waiting for him to catch up.

Sagandran's pace got slower and slower as he approached them.
Just don't antagonize them, that's all,
he thought. It was what he told himself every time he got into a situation like this with the Thickwit Trio, and it never worked.

“Good evening, Mr. Frogface, sir,” said Webster. “Are you hurrying home to mommykins to blub and blub and blub because the nasty-wasty gym teacher was so
howwid
to you today?”

There were snorts of mirth from Blunkett and Sprode. You'd think Webster was some kind of latter-day Oscar Wilde.
Actually,
mused Sagandran
, you wouldn't. I'd be astonished if any of the Thickwit Trio even recognized the name.

“What would I want to do that for?” he said. “Sport isn't everything.”

“I saw you put that frog in your satchel,” Webster continued. “Wait 'til I tell Bodily Fluids what you done. He'll come down on you like a ton of bricks when he learns you fibbed to him.”

An empty threat. Bodily Fluids has probably got his feet up in front of the TV by now with Mrs. Fluids sitting beside him, and we'll not be seeing him for another month. When school opens again, everyone will have forgotten about it. Besides, I'm pretty sure Bodily Fluids sees right through Webster O'Malley, and doesn't much like what he finds on the other side. Still, best to try to get off this subject.

“What are you doing for the summer vacation, Webster? Where are you going?”

“None of your business,” said Webster with a sneer, but he couldn't resist telling Sagandran anyway. “My dad's bought us a big summer house up at Eagle Lake, and we're going to be spending the summer there. He's building us a swimming pool too; it should be just about finished by now.” His voice took on a note of mock-rhapsody. “Oh, it's going to be so nice to have a long, cool swim after a hot game of tennis on our private court. Then, I think I'll relax with my latest PlayStation game or maybe my Xbox, my Wii or my Nintendo DS. My dad promised to pre-order the next new game console that comes out.”

Blunkett and Sprode made appropriate chortling noises. Sprode opened his satchel, took out his iPad and made a great show of checking that he'd switched it off. Sagandran knew it was just Sprode's way of reminding Sagandran of his poverty status.

Webster's face twisted into a scowl. “What about you, you little down-and-out? You going to be spending your days down at the soup kitchen, scrounging for scraps?”

More sycophantic jollity from the two cronies.

Sagandran felt his face flush with rage. His family had never had any money to spare – they weren't rich like the Thickwit Trio's folks and he didn't have any game consoles – but at the same time, Sagandran never felt he went without anything worth having. Well, not until recently, anyway. Not until a few weeks ago, when his dad had moved out after a particularly big quarrel with Mom. It wasn't that Dad wasn't giving them any money, Mom kept stressing that to Sagandran. In fact, if anything, there seemed to be a little more money around than usual. But at the same time, Sagandran definitely did feel poorer now that Dad wasn't around any longer. He couldn't understand why Mom and Dad were behaving this way, with one of them having to move out. Sure, they argued a lot. They always had, for as long as he could remember, and that last row had been a real biggie. You could have heard it ten blocks away. Mom had smashed half a set of dishes and two porcelain shepherdesses Sagandran had thought were
True Pukesville and been glad to see the last of. But how were people supposed to settle their arguments and solve their differences if one of them wasn't there any longer?

Webster interrupted his thoughts.

“You! Frogface! I asked you a question.”

“I'm going to be at Eagle Lake as well. I'm going up there to stay with my grandpa.”

“Oh, no!” cried Webster theatrically, clapping a hand to his forehead and making a face of dismay so grotesque that his bubblegum fell out of his mouth and landed in the dirt (not that it made much difference to its appearance, because he'd been chewing it so long it had gone gray). Sagandran was surprised Webster didn't just pick it up and stick it back in.

“Not your ever-loving grandfather,” Webster was saying. “That old bozo. Him and his shack – it looks like an outside lav'. Why doesn't he sell it so someone can knock it down? It's like a great big zit getting in the way of our view of the lake.”

“You should hear what he says about that country house of yours,” growled Sagandran. “He calls it a total eyesore. Says it looks like it was designed by Liberace.”

“Who's Liberace?”

“Besides,” Sagandran carried on, ignoring the question, “my grandpa's been living out on Eagle Lake for years and years, long before that summer place your dad bought was even built. He's got more right to be there than you people have.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Webster, spreading his arms as if to appeal to the judgement of the other two, who were nodding and leering, egging him on. “But your grandfather's a loonie man. That's what my dad says. He says your grandpa should be locked up in a home somewhere, and the key thrown away.”

“Grandpa's not a loonie!”

“Sure, he's not.” Webster raised his palms as if to show he was only repeating what other people had said, not that he believed a word of it, you understand. “Sure, your grandpa's as sane and normal as they come. Every normal person builds strange machines that spend half their time exploding. Every normal person walks around in the middle of the night dressed in nothing but his long johns, muttering to himself. Every normal person leaves food out in the evenings for the gnomes and the trolls. Every normal person—”

“He just likes to do things his own way, okay?” shouted Sagandran. He could feel tears welling up. If this taunting carried on much longer, he was terrified he was going to shame himself by starting to cry.

“You mean he
is
crazy?” said Webster earnestly, rubbing his chin. “So my father was right after all.”

This dialectical coup de grâce sent Blunkett and Sprode into howls of laughter. Blunkett doubled over and clasped his thighs so that he could laugh all the louder. Sprode tried to imitate him but, because of his bad ankle, almost fell. He started glowering at Sagandran instead, as if the twisted ankle was all his fault.

Once the other two had quietened down a bit, Webster, his hand still on his chin, kept on talking as if he'd been thinking things through. “'Course, at least I
have
a father, Sacks. I hear yours has run away with another woman.”

“That's not true!” screamed Sagandran.

Before his inner voice of caution could stop him, he'd launched himself at the bigger boy, arms outstretched, hands forming claws. He wanted to rip this bully into shreds. He wanted to smash his ugly face so he'd never be able to smirk again. He wanted to—

In fact, he stumbled and came down heavily on one knee. A sharp stone tore through the denim of his jeans and into the flesh beneath.

Blunkett, the least rotten of the Thickwit Trio (which was rather like saying some tarantulas are better than others) took half a step forward, as if to help Sagandran back to his feet, but then reason got the better of instinct and he was joining in the uproarious mirth of the other two.

“Couldn't have done it better myself,” said Webster once he had his voice under control. He stared down for a moment or two longer at Sagandran floundering on the ground, then kicked Sagandran's spectacles out of his reach, turned on his heel and trotted off down the road. Blunkett and Sprode followed him.

It had been a pretty typical school day for Sagandran.

Except for the frog.

He'd saved a frog's life.

That was something.

CHAPTER 2

E
AGLE
L
AKE

he Sackses lived on the third floor of a dingy apartment building on the unfashionable side of town, in Waterslab Street. Most of the time, Sagandran would go bounding up the stairs on his return from school, but today he opted for the elevator.

From outside the door, he could hear his mother talking loudly on the phone. It sounded as if she was angry with somebody. She usually was these days, ever since Dad had gone off to live somewhere else. In fact, Sagandran thought, listening closely at the door before opening it, it was probably Dad she was angry with right now. As if to prove it, he heard her shout “Hamish!” in her sternest Ice Queen voice.

That was Mom: always wanting to be the Ice Queen. Dad was totally different. He was a cheerful man, laughing a lot of the time. He liked playing with Sagandran and thinking up tricks with him, plotting terrible pranks. Once they put a big plastic spider in the shower and Mom had screamed the place down. Sagandran had thought he would die laughing, and Dad hadn’t been in much better shape. Dad later apologized profusely to Mom and produced a bunch of flowers he’d bought, and finally he’d coaxed a watery smile out of her. It was as if she’d forgiven him, but still wrote down the details of the crime in a notebook for future consultation, should evidence be needed. Which maybe it would be. Maybe she’d stand up in divorce court and, choking back the occasional sob, tell the world how her brute of a husband had planted a plastic spider in the soap dish, under the soap.

She had told Sagandran the other day that Dad was a wonderful father and a wonderful friend, but a complete disaster as a husband. Sagandran thought this was probably the truth. But he still wanted Dad back. He hung up his jacket and kicked off his shoes, not making too much noise but not trying to be especially quiet. Mom didn’t like what she called “sneaking around.”

She finished her call with a harsh “goodbye!” that had a horribly terminal
sound to it. Then the receiver was slammed back in its cradle.

“Hello, darling,” she said, coming out of the kitchen and finding him in the hall. “I didn’t hear you come in.” She folded him in her arms the way she always did when he got home from school, and he hugged her back. He was glad Webster and the others couldn’t see him, but at the same time, he basked in the comfort of being held by her. He smelled the clean smell of her white blouse and the unmistakable warmth of his mother beneath it.

She held him out at arm’s length for a better look at him, and that was when she saw the rope burns on his hands and, her eyes drifting down, the bloodstained tear at the knee of his jeans.

“Oh, my darling,” she cried. “You’ve been in the wars.”

“It’s nothing much,” he said, trying for a nonchalant shrug. He had the feeling it wasn’t very convincing, because her gaze did not waver.

“Was it that ghastly bully, Webster O’Malley, again?” she demanded. “I’d like to wring his neck. He’s a little toad. I could think of a lot worse words to describe him, Sag, but I’ll spare your delicate ears.”

“Okay,” he said lightly.

She glanced toward the kitchen. The phone, probably still red-hot from the call she’d just finished, sat on the counter. “I’ve a good mind to speak to his mother, even though I know you never want me to.”

“I can handle it, Mom. Honest.”

The ethic of schoolboys. Bullying was a sin, true, but telling tales to adults was a worse one. Mom had told him many times how stupid this was, how kids had even died because of bullying going unchecked, but that didn’t make any difference. It was a matter of honor. Besides, he had the shrewd idea that Webster’s mom, Mrs. O’Malley, would probably side with her darling son. He’d met her once and reckoned that she was, if anything, even viler than Webster, however impossible that may seem.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Mom. I told you, I can handle it. In my way.”

Mom didn’t usually take much persuading to leave things be. She was a busy woman with her career as a lawyer, and even more so now Dad wasn’t here to help out at home. But this time, Sagandran saw a harder determination in her eyes. It was a good thing that this was the last day of term. He guessed that one more day of him coming home roughed up and she’d start making good on her threats. Perhaps after the summer holidays, it would be different at school.

Perhaps Webster will fall off a cliff and die or something
, he thought, and then felt guilty about it.

“I’m really sure I can cope with it, Mom. One of these days, I’m going to bust him on the nose real good, and he’ll never come near me again.”

“All right, then.” There was still some doubt in her voice, but not enough to drive her to the phone.

At her insistence, he took off his jeans. She gave a little hiss when she saw the redness of his thighs, and he told her as much as he thought she needed to know about the gym class.

“It was just that my hands slipped on the rope, Mom. Could have happened to anyone.”

She took him into the bathroom and bathed the wound on his knee with warm, soapy water and then hydrogen peroxide, which made him let out a yelp. Then she sat him down on the couch in front of the television set for a while to watch
Scooby-Doo
–which he despised but never had the heart to say so–while she rustled up some hot chocolate.

Hot chocolate at the end of a scorching summer’s day? Well, that was Mom for you. All the best intentions in the world, but clueless about carrying them out. Like her cooking. Most nights she produced sandwiches for dinner, or they went and got pizza or Chinese takeout, and it was a blessed relief that this was so. Some nights when he couldn’t sleep, Sagandran thought he could still taste the sardine soufflé she’d once made.

Later, after a plateful of peanut butter sandwiches, he sat in a hot bath watching his toes bob like two rows of little pink ducks – two mommy ducks each leading four progressively smaller ducklings. His thoughts turned to Grandpa Melwin.

In a way, Webster’s taunt was right. Grandpa Melwin
was
a crazy man, if by “crazy” you meant he wasn’t boring, like most people. He was different, that was for sure. He was the best friend Sagandran had ever had. Although he had been retired a long time now, in the old days he had worked for nearly forty years as a ranger in the Eagle Lake Forest. Now he devoted his time to his inventions, which were numerous and varied. Despite what Webster had said, only a very few of them actually blew up, and even then, it was probably because Grandpa had intended them to do just that. Sagandran knew some of the townsfolk thought Grandpa Melwin was a senile old crank, and possibly a dangerous one. Some of them went further than this and said that he was probably involved in something mysterious – probably illegal – and that they wouldn’t be surprised if they opened up their newspapers over breakfast one day and discovered that he’d been arrested for treason, murder or worse. Sagandran regarded this gossip as a positive recommendation; Grandpa Melwin was interesting.

Eventually, Mom started banging on the bathroom door. “Hurry up in there. You’ll get as wrinkled as a prune.”

“
Coming
,” he said, and started getting busy with the soap. His hands and legs didn’t hurt nearly so much after a long soak.

By the time he got to his bedroom, the big blue towel wrapped around him, Mom had finished packing his bags. He looked at the two of them, both probably filled with stuff he didn’t want, in the way of moms everywhere. He had to be up early tomorrow to catch his bus, which left at seven, so she’d decreed he should be in bed in good time tonight. Sagandran hoped he’d be able to sleep.

Before he climbed into bed, he carefully took off the chain he always wore around his neck and put it on the bedside table. The chain had come from the store, but the stone on it was something special: a big rainbow-colored crystal Grandpa Melwin had given him for his last birthday. Grandpa said he had found it in the forest somewhere, but didn’t know anything more about it than that. For all Grandpa knew, it could have been left there by the fairies, though on the whole he thought it had more likely come from a volcano that had been active millions of years ago. Either idea was pretty exciting, Sagandran thought, and the stone had become his favorite treasure.

Mom tucked him in carefully, as if he were still about three years old, not fourteen, so he knew she was going to miss him while he was away. Although he mildly resented her fussing over him, it also had a soothing effect – or maybe it was the long bath that had done that. Either way, he felt waves of sleep beginning to steal upon him. Even so, he reached up a hand to stop her just as she was turning away toward the door.

“Uh, Mom?”

“Yes, dear?”

“Is it true Dad’s met up with another woman?”

She stared at him as if he’d punched her.

“What on earth makes you say that, Sagandran?”

“I was just wondering, is all.”

The pillow against his cheek was soft and cool and comfortable. The gentle haze was closing in, but he was still awake enough to want an answer to his question.

“Has somebody been saying things to you?”

“No, Mom. It’s just … well … why isn’t he here any more?”

She stroked his wispy hair. He could tell she was thinking through her answer before saying it.

“You know, Sagandran,” she began, “sometimes people just have to spend some time apart if they’re going to try to sort out their problems.” She paused,
thinking, then carried on. “Imagine you’re walking along with a friend, a good friend, someone like Jennifer. You’re chatting away nineteen to the dozen, telling jokes and laughing. Then you and Jennifer come to a fork in the road. Jennifer wants to go one way, you want to go the other. You could argue about it and maybe have a fight, or you could both just agree to take the road you want to take, the one that’s best for you. You know you’ll be meeting again soon enough if that’s the way it all works out, but for the moment, you have to go different ways. You see what I’m trying to tell you?”

“I guess so, Mom.” He held back a yawn.

“Well, it’s like that at the moment with me and your father. He needs to go one way, I need to go the other. Sooner or later, we’ll find we’re back on the same road. We just don’t know exactly when that will be.”

It seemed to make sense. Anyway, it was reassuring. Even if it hadn’t been, he was too slee

eeeee

eeeee

eeeeeepy to answer …

It was a beautiful, clear morning – one of those mornings when you can taste the air as if it were fresh water from a spring. Sagandran went with his mother to the bus station.

“… and try not to stay up too late and give Grandpa a big hug from me and don’t forget to write and make sure you wash behind your ears each night and—”

“Yes, Mom. I’ll remember.”

She kissed him goodbye and gave him a lunch box containing soda, candy bars, comics and a couple more peanut butter sandwiches, her culinary specialty. Then she told him all over again the long list of things he mustn’t forget while he was staying with Grandpa, adding a few new ones as she thought of them. The driver loaded Sagandran’s bags into the storage space at the side of the bus and gave him a sympathetic grin when Mom wasn’t looking.