The Guardians by Andrew Pyper Read Free Book Online Page A

charges, old people
discovered a few days dead on their linoleum floors.
        Yet
that night, I could tell my father had a scoop when he took his place at the
head of the kitchen table. Hands placed on either side of his dinner plate,
staring down at what my mother had spooned out of the casserole dish with the
sombre look of a judge reading a jury's verdict to himself before announcing it
to the court.
        "Langham,"
he said finally. "She's a teacher of yours, right? The pretty one?"
        "Music,"
I said.
        "She
wasn't at school today."
        "No."
        I
watched him use his knife to bulldoze food onto the back of his fork. Slip it
into his mouth. Chew.
        "What
about her?" I asked once he'd swallowed.
        "They're
looking for her."
        "They?"
        "It'll
be in the paper in the morning."
        "She's
not just sick or something?"
        "That's
what I'm hearing. The cops. Asking if anyone's seen her."
        "The
police think she's a missing person after one day? Don't they usually wait
seventy-two hours or something?"
        "They've
got information. Suspicions." My father raised his hands, palms out. A
gesture to signal the limits of his insider's knowledge.
        "Do
they think she's all right?"
        My
father lowered his fork. Pretty. That's what his eyes said to me, man to
man across the table. I don't blame you.
        "My
guess?" he said. "She found some fella and got the hell out of here.
Struck me as a sensible sort of girl."
        Then he
told my mother this might be her best shepherd's pie ever.
     
            
        After
hockey practice that night, we gathered at Ben's house. Sitting on the mouldy
pillows and atop the books that towered around his bed. And on it,
cross-legged, was Ben himself. I remember he wasn't wearing shoes or socks. His
feet oversized, patchy with hair. Nasty feet for such a slight, dream-prone
boy.
        I had
told them earlier what my dad had said. We were lacing our skates in the
dressing room, and I had to whisper to keep from being overheard by any of the
other players. Once I finished, there wasn't a chance to hear their reactions,
as the coach poked his head around 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 me uncomfortable, 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