The Throne Read online

  As she wove her way through the hallway crowds en route to her locker before home form period, Meredith found herself suddenly struck with inspiration. Instead of pulling off her sweatshirt and hanging it in her locker as she had intended, she removed it and tied the sleeves around her waist, allowing the bulk of it to hang down behind her body. The effect was immediate—a sweet, protected feeling that spread out, body-wide, from her butt. Take that, Mr. Bum-Wad Creep! she thought cheerfully. Her sweatshirt was black to match her shorts, and no gum flavor in the world could stain it. With an exuberant swagger, she closed her locker and headed off to home form.

  Upon arrival, she discovered Gene, Morey, and Seymour already in their seats and engaged in animated debate. Climbing into position behind the drums, she leaned forward slightly, trying inconspicuously to tune in.

  “No way!” exclaimed Morey. “Your main competition is yourself. It’s always that way. You start thinking someone else is better than you—you psyche yourself out and take yourself out of the running.”

  “I’ve seen him play,” said Gene. “I swear he has extra knuckles on each finger. His hands are waltzing spiders.”

  Morey shrugged. “Spiders,” he said carelessly. “Octopi. Who even notices?”

  Seymour waved a dismissive hand. “It all depends on how you run your audition, Gene. You’ve got to do this like reality TV. You’re a survivor; everything you do has to be on the edge.”

  “The edge of what?” Gene asked mildly.

  “That’s the point,” said Seymour. “You create the edge. You make the conductor think it exists and you’ve got it, and that’s why he wants you. Otherwise, what are you—just another bass player.”

  Gene frowned. “Thanks,” he muttered. Then, turning his head, he smiled at Meredith. “Hi there, Ms. Big,” he said.

  Meredith lit up. “Hi!” she beamed. “What do you need waltzing-spider fingers for?”

  “I’ve got an audition coming up,” said Gene. “Bass player for the Toronto Youth Orchestra. At least one of the other guys trying out—David Chang—is really good. And these two geniuses here are telling me I have to handle it like a survivor show. What’m I supposed to do—kill my opponents, then dine on their raw, frozen flesh in the Arctic to prove I can play the double bass?”

  Seymour’s chin jutted, and he swiveled in his seat so he sat facing the front of the room. “It’s your audition,” he said huffily. “You don’t want advice, just say so.”

  “Come on!” said Gene, leaning forward to swat his shoulder. “We’re just kibitzing here. Don’t get all wounded on me.”

  Still staring straight ahead, Seymour harrumphed under his breath. Tentatively, Morey raised an eyebrow at Gene. “The Mol,” he said significantly, “is moling.”

  “Moling?” asked Meredith, without giving it a second thought. Instantly, Seymour’s back rigidified, emitting unmistakable disapproval, and in spite of herself Meredith flushed. What? she thought, stung. Now I’m not allowed to speak? I have to turn off my ears and hear nothing if it’s about you?

  If Gene noticed Meredith’s flush, he didn’t let on; neither did he give any sign of having noted the abruptly vertical line of Seymour’s spine. “Moling,” he explained amiably to her, “means like a mole burrowing around the underground. Which is where the Mol lives and breathes—down under, in the dark, where everything germinates.”

  For a moment, the three guys sat silently, as if mulling over Gene’s words, and Meredith tried to absorb what she had been told. Don’t say it, she told herself sternly. Not a damn thing about Lords of the Underworld or mafia kingpins—crime or no actual crime.

  “Keeps me ahead of the pack,” Seymour muttered finally, his spine relaxing.

  “Granted,” said Gene. “But sometimes ... things get too much like Dungeons and Dragons around you. I’m auditioning for bass player in a youth orchestra, not viceroy of the dark realms.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Seymour said impatiently. “The question still is: How do you get what you want? You’ve got to be prepared to make compromises. I say you need an edge. It doesn’t have to be Satan, although you’ve got to admit—the supernatural would be a nice touch.”

  “I don’t think the conductor would go for it,” said Gene as the bell went, signifying the start of home form and the inexorable blare of the national anthem. Tuning it out, Meredith sank into a studied contemplation of the back of Seymour’s head. A cymbal was blocking the right side and she had to lean to the left to get a clear view, but once she had it, she let herself go into a flat-out stare. What is it with this guy? she wondered, analyzing the shaggy black mop of hair, the casual slouch, and the blue-and-white rugger shirt. Resting on one knee, Seymour’s left hand continually flipped a pen end over end. If it was an indication of the speed at which his mind worked, his thoughts burned rubber, all right.

  With an impatient sigh, Seymour glanced at the clock, bringing the left side of his face into view. Immediately Meredith homed in on it—the jaw motion, its slow, regular chew. Wordless, she watched, her mind working so quickly there was no time to form actual thought. But by the time the national anthem had drawn to a ponderous close, she had put two plus two together to form the inevitable four, and had her mystery equation; x and y had surrendered their unknown quantities and presented her with drum + bum = gum. Whether or not Seymour had been the actual offender in either attack, the message was now clear: Get your bum off my drum.

  And, thought Meredith, it was a message designed to be abundantly clear only to her. There was no way to prove his involvement; no one in their right mind would demand a DNA test on gum-wad saliva to pin down someone else’s guilt on something like this. No, Seymour had simply known in advance that she would eventually figure it out through osmosis.

  And then what? she pondered, glaring at his oblivious left ear. How many more gum-wad attacks did he have planned? And how long did he intend to keep it up—until she was finally overwhelmed in sticky, gum-wad butt-stains, and retreated to a front-row seat in defeat?

  Screw that! she thought. So what if you’re a poet. I’m not living out your King-of-the-Underworld fantasies. You’re not controlling me.

  At the same time, she couldn’t just up and accuse him without proof. She was going to have to think her way through this carefully—very carefully. Giving her own impatient sigh, she slouched down in her seat and waited out the end of home form.

  “You think it’s Seymour?” Dean said disbelievingly. “Really?”

  “A complicated grudge,” murmured Reb. “I told you, Mere.”

  “I know,” sighed Meredith. “But how was I supposed to know it would be something like this? I mean, Seymour Molyneux—a bum-gum pervert?”

  Dean let out a sharp laugh. “I doubt he’d think of it like that,” she said.

  “I don’t know how he’s thinking about it,” replied Meredith. “But I’ve got him now. He’ll never get through this sweatshirt.” Smugly, she patted the sleeves tied around her waist.

  It was Monday lunch and they were lying on the school’s east lawn, munching sandwiches. The sky was an effortless blue, the weather warm enough for shorts, and the air, thought Meredith, breathing deeply, smelled of that clear September, going-on-forever happiness. “What d’you think—” she started to ask, but was interrupted by a voice calling from a nearby basketball court.

  “Hey!” shouted a boy she recognized from her math class. “You three want to join us for a game of pick-up?”

  “Sure!” Dean called back, and the girls were on their feet and moving toward the court.

  “Great!” grinned the boy—Barry was his name, realized Meredith. “One of you come onto our team and two of you are on that team.”

  Quickly Dean crossed to join his team, and Meredith moved to the sidelines to discard her sweatshirt. Then, giving Reb a high-five, she shifted into position on the court. Their teammates were all from Grade 10—guys she knew well enough to nod at vaguely on the street—but still the invitation to play surprised he
r. It’s Reb, she thought, sizing them up. One of these guys has the hots for her. Nevertheless, as the play began, the first pass came not to Reb but to her, and when she managed a respectable bounce-pass back, she was passed the ball again. This time she fobbed it off to Reb, who lost it to a guy on the opposing team. Runners squeaked, eyes squinted against the noon sun, and Meredith was soon pulling out the front of her T-shirt and flapping it to cool off.

  “Hey!” grinned Reb, slapping her butt as she passed.

  “Hey!” cried Meredith, pivoting to return the favor, but Reb was already halfway across the court, chasing a guy who had the ball. In spite of their best efforts, however, the score gained rapidly in favor of the other team and, to Meredith’s relief, the warning bell rang before the end of the game.

  “We’ll call it a win for us!” one of her teammates proclaimed grandly—a tall nerdy-looking guy with a mop of curly brown hair.

  “Yeah, a win like rocks swim,” retorted a guy from the other team.

  “Hey, who you calling a rock?” demanded the curly-haired guy, and they moved off, arguing amicably.

  “See you two—I’ve got to get to my art class,” called Dean as she took off for her locker, leaving Meredith and Reb standing on the sidelines.

  “That was fun,” sighed Reb. “No one fouled me—I mean my boobs. They kept their hands off. It was a boobs-free game.”

  “And we took up space!” grinned Meredith. Leaning down, she scooped up her sweatshirt and draped it over one arm, then thought better of it and began to tie it around her waist. “It’s too hot for this,” she grumbled. “I’ll be a sauna by 2:00, but if I don’t—”

  Behind her a gasp sounded, followed by a tugging sensation at her back. “Don’t tie it,” Reb said tersely. “Let go of it. Just let me take it.”

  Mystified, Meredith let go of the sweatshirt’s sleeves, and Reb pulled it away from her body. “Like I thought,” she said as Meredith turned to face her. “Look.” Holding up the front of the sweatshirt, she showed Meredith what she had been about to place next to her butt.

  The sweatshirt displayed an image of a large horseshoe waterfall and the words I LOVE NIAGARA FALLS. But the logo wasn’t what had attracted Reb’s attention—it was the sticky, stringy network of purple gum tendrils that had been worked all over the picture, the end of each tendril ground deeply into the fabric. There was no possible way the action hadn’t been deliberate. Open-mouthed, Meredith stared at the mess. She was speechless—not at the fact that it had happened again, but at the sheer meanness of the act.

  “Whoever it was, he sure was thorough,” said Reb.

  “It wasn’t Seymour,” said Meredith. “I would’ve spotted him.”

  “I wasn’t paying attention,” said Reb. “I didn’t think of it.”

  “Me neither,” Meredith said glumly. “That was stupid. I’m going to have to be more careful.”

  “Oh, Mere,” said Reb. “Don’t blame yourself. You can’t be on guard all the time.”

  “Seymour is,” sighed Meredith. “Right now, it’s like his whole life is this grudge. Did I get any gum on my shorts?”

  “No,” said Reb, checking. “Your shorts are fine.”

  “Do you think,” asked Meredith, gingerly taking the sweatshirt, “the guys in the game were in on it? Could Seymour have gotten them to ask us to play so I’d take off my sweatshirt, then be too distracted to notice anything else?”

  She reviewed the game in her mind—the surprising number of passes she had received, the guys’ unusual friendliness. Before today, she had barely known their names.

  “No,” stammered Reb, her mouth falling open. “I mean, it’s just the Mol and some of his mangy friends, not everyone. Don’t let this make you paranoid, Mere.”

  A tremor ran through Meredith’s mouth, and she sucked in her lower lip. “I guess not,” she muttered. “This is real life, not Dungeons and Dragons, right?”

  Shoulders slumped, they walked toward the school.

  Setting her knapsack on the kitchen table, Meredith opened it and pulled out her Niagara Falls sweatshirt. Balled-up, with the gummy area on the inside, the sweatshirt was stuck together so thoroughly that when she placed it on the table, it remained in tight, crumpled formation. With a hiss, she pulled it apart and surveyed the mess. An afternoon’s fermentation in her locker had done nothing to improve the sight; if anything, the purple tendrils appeared to have taken permanent root in the fabric.

  What kind of mind works like this? she wondered bleakly. You’d have to get some kind of fun out of it to do it. What kind of fun would that be? Brow furrowed, she studied the sticky mass of gum. Radiating outward, it thinned into tendrils, as if someone with massive Neanderthal jaws had removed a three-gumball wad from his mouth, pummeled it into the center of the waterfall image, then pulled out the tendrils to affix to the picture’s outer edge.

  Five tendrils, to be exact, realized Meredith, counting them up. Five stretched-out tentacles of glee, assuming the jerk had enjoyed the process. Also, she reminded herself, assuming it was a he; Seymour had plenty of female friends. But male or female, what could possibly have possessed one of those friends to do something like this? It wasn’t, after all, something he or she would benefit from directly—only Seymour could eventually ascend to the throne ... if, Meredith reminded herself, he succeeded.

  Furthermore, she thought grimly, gumming up her sweatshirt hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment prank. It had involved forethought, and enough brainwork to chew through several gumballs, then figure out how to get at the sweatshirt. Though the latter bit, she mused, could have been accomplished by Seymour in home form. He had seen then what she was wearing; a bit of “moling” and he had probably germinated a plan before morning announcements had finished. No matter what Reb said, no matter how much Meredith wanted to believe she and her friends had been the targets of random peer friendliness, the lunch-hour basketball game invitation had the Mol written all over it.

  Glumly, she stared at the dried gum. Dull, she thought. Rather than angry, the whole thing made her feel dull and tired. This wasn’t the way she had imagined Grade 10, but it looked as if things were going to continue like this for a while—Seymour had a wide network of friends from which to call in favors, and his intentions appeared to be well-germinated. Was sitting on the throne really worth the effort? So what if she gave up on this one? It didn’t mean she was going to give up on everything that came along in life. Wasn’t it important to pick and choose your battles, to know when you had bitten off something too big to chew?

  Absent-mindedly, she traced out several gum tendrils. Then, without consciously thinking about it, she settled her palm onto the center of the gum-wad mass and aligned her fingers with the five stretched-out tendrils. It was awkward; she had to bend her thumb out of its natural position and skew her pinkie—so much so, it would have helped to be double-jointed. As she realized this, a shiver passed through Meredith, and blood began to beat quietly, insistently, in her throat. The thing was, she thought, staring at her hand, the gum-tendril network on her sweatshirt looked somewhat like downtown Polkton’s main intersection. It wasn’t exact—the north-south and east-west lines were hardly what you could call straight—but close enough to bring the five-cornered junction to mind.

  Just a coincidence, obviously, she decided. No matter how much moling Seymour did, he couldn’t possibly get into her mind and read her from the inside out. There was simply no way he could know how much time she had spent thinking about Gus Polk’s arrogant hand-map, or how that minor historical detail bugged her. Still, creepily enough, it was the left hand that she had just placed on the five-tendriled gum wad, and she was right-handed. So, here it was again—the left hand of darkness reaching up out of the nether realms to mole around her personal life.

  With a grimace, Meredith reclaimed her left hand from the Underworld and washed it thoroughly at the kitchen sink. Germs! she thought briskly. H1N1! Herpes! That thing is OOZING! Pulling out a pair of latex gloves from
under the sink, she got to work picking dried gum bits off her sweatshirt.

  chapter 7

  The next morning, Meredith stood in a school washroom stall before home form, once again pondering the situation before her. A possible solution had presented itself the previous night as she was drifting off to sleep, but it was weird, and following through on it wasn’t going to be easy. A sweatshirt tied around her waist was one thing; this, on the other hand, would target her for immediate attention, gossip, and who knew what else.

  Reluctantly, she pulled a folded bit of plastic from her back pocket. Thin but sturdy, the rain hat unfolded into a pattern of cheery daffodils splayed across a transparent background. Great, she thought. Spring growing out of my butt. Already she could hear the comments. Ignoring their imaginary acid, she stretched the rain hat across her posterior and tied the chin-strings over her abdomen. Fortunately, the rain hat wasn’t the thick, brightly colored type portrayed in children’s picture books, but one more likely to be pulled out of a senior citizen’s purse. Aunt Sancy had given it to her one year in a Christmas stocking; Christmas stockings from her aunt were like that—practicality mixed in with cheap, and a whole lot of warm woolen love.

  Every time Meredith moved, she rustled. Wincing, she sashayed her hips and listened to the crinkling. This, she thought heavily, is going to be a drag. With a sigh, she unlocked the stall door and walked through the empty washroom. Beyond its outer door, the school halls resounded with voices, footsteps, and the clamor of closing lockers. If she changed her mind and took off the rain hat now, she could sidle into that mayhem as one more unnoticed body floating within its slipstream; the next few seconds of her life were about to determine the rest of her Grade 10 year.