The Guardians by Andrew Pyper Read Free Book Online Page A

coach poked his headaround the corner and told us to hustle out there, that holding on to the lead up our asses wasn’t going to help us beat the Sugar Kings on the weekend. But even as he said this—in the same way he would have at any other evening practice—I thought his eyes lingered on us for a moment. An unreadable expression contained only in the look itself, as the rest of his face was kindly as usual. Yet in his eyes there was sadness, or distress, something he couldn’t wholly contain. Or maybe something he
wanted
us to see. A feeling he shared. Was protecting us from.
    Up in Ben’s room, I learned that I wasn’t the only one to have heard Heather Langham rumours. On the bus rides home from school, in our kitchens, whispered between our parents, we heard versions of a story—or pieces of a handful of stories—beginning to circulate around town.
    First, there was Miss Langham running off with a student.
    Nobody had seen Brad Wickenheiser today, had they? There was an absurd but persistent rumour that he’d done it with Mrs. Avery, the vice-principal, on a school trip to see
Othello
in Stratford. And he was in Heather’s grade twelve music class. French horn. (
French horny
, as he called it, idiotically, to the girls on either side of him.) According to Randy’s source, Brad Wickenheiser and Miss Langham were doing it right now out at the Swiss Cottage Motel on the edge of town. He was in love with her. But she was just in it for the sex with a young stud. I remember that phrase in particular:
young stud
. The way it made meuncomfortable, and a little jealous, like standing in the showers with the older boys after a game.
    “Really?” I asked when Randy was done with his breathless telling. “
Really?
”
    “Bullshit,” Carl said.
    “It’s what I heard.”
    “Carl’s right,” I said. “Brad
Wickenheiser?
No way. He’s a moron.”
    “She’s not screwing his
brain
, Trev.”
    “Still. I’m not buying it.”
    “Neither am I. And I’ll tell you why,” Carl said, jabbing a finger into Randy’s chest. “It’s bullshit because it’s
my
bullshit. Told Andy Pucinik in gym. Born-again Jesus Saves wanker. I
knew
he’d like it.”
    Then Carl told his own story, a more fanciful version of my father’s dinner-table suggestion that Miss Langham had simply left town. But this time it wasn’t her tiring of Grimshaw that prompted her to take off without warning—it was an identical twin sister. A Langham girl just as beautiful as Heather, but without the winning manners. The
bad
Heather.
    “Aha!” Randy said. “Maybe it’s the
twin
who’s banging Brad Wickenheiser at the Swiss Cottage.”
    And then came the horror story. All the more horrific for being the most believable. And for me being the one to tell it.
    An anonymous tip had been called in to the police. Male, gravel-voiced. Telling the cops he’d had “some kinda fun” the night before, taunting them to go see “where that bitch used to sleep.” When they got to the nurses’ residence the police found sticky boot prints onthe carpet outside Heather’s room. They kicked the door down. Inside, walls sprayed with blood. Obscene messages fingerpainted in gore over her Leonard Bernstein and Mozart posters. But no body. Only a necklace laid over her pillow, the heart-shaped locket we had seen her wear in class some days, and wondered whose image might be contained within, impossibly wishing it might be ours.
    According to this version, her murderer was a mysterious lover-turned-stalker, an attractive sociopath who gave her the locket (he gave
all
his girlfriends lockets). She had come to Grimshaw after he started to show signs of being unstable. But he’d found her.
    It was only when I finished that we noticed the snow. The first squall of the season dropping heavy flakes over town, whitening and silencing.
    “That’s not it.”
    Ben’s voice surprised us. For the past while, it seemed like he wasn’t even listening, and we had