Black Chuck Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  BLACK CHUCK

  “A strange, brutal, heartbreaking, and strangely uplifting novel about lies, love, friendship, courage, and the struggle to overcome guilt.”

  —Rob Bittner, Sense and Sensibility and Stories blog

  “McDonell has captured the brashness and insecurity of adolescence in this gravel-splattering joyride. Four teenagers attempt to discern what is real from what is not after trauma threatens to rob them all of their futures.”

  —Karen Nesbitt, award-winning author of Subject to Change

  “A darkly atmospheric story, filled with heartfelt, yet perfectly-flawed characters. I loved it.”

  —Ash Parsons, award-winning author of Still Waters

  “Black Chuck is easy to get lost in, haunting, hard not to think about. This story is compelling, chillingly real and sad. Timeless, yet contemporary. A pleasure to read.”

  —Genevieve Scott, author of Catch My Drift

  “A stunning work of prose—poetic and haunting, tender and gritty—this is a remarkable novel.”

  —Andrew Smith, Michael L. Printz Honor and Boston Globe-Horn Book Award-winning author

  Copyright © 2018 Regan McDonell

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  McDonell, Regan, 1974–, author

  Black Chuck / Regan McDonell.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-1630-5 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1631-2 (pdf).—ISBN 978-1-4598-1632-9 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8625.D774B53 2018 jC813'.6 C2017-904574-1

  C2017-904575-X

  First Published in the United States, 2018

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017949715

  Summary: In this gritty young adult novel, Réal struggles with his guilt over a friend’s violent death and his feelings for the dead boy’s pregnant girlfriend.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover images by Getty Images and Shutterstock.com

  Edited by Sarah N. Harvey

  Design by Rachel Page

  Author photo by Guy Glover

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  www.orcabook.com

  21 20 19 18 • 4 3 2 1

  For the boys I didn’t love And the one I did

  Orca Book Publishers is proud of the hard work our authors do and of the important stories they create. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it or did not check it out from a library provider, then the author has not received royalties for this book. The ebook you are reading is licensed for single use only and may not be copied, printed, resold or given away. If you are interested in using this book in a classroom setting, we have digital subscriptions that feature multiuser, simultaneous access to our books that are easy for your students to read. For more information, please contact [email protected].

  CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AN EXCERPT FROM RODENT

  ONE

  1

  R

  Réal hunched into his old jean jacket, running a cut lip between his teeth and not looking anyone in the eye. Beside him, Alex Janes flicked a silver coin between his knuckles. Eyes pinned to his dirty boots, jaw set so hard it could crack, Alex looked like he could barely keep his lid on. Like he was about to explode. Across the sidewalk, Sunny kicked her heel against a broken chain-link fence, talking with a speed that killed any chance of getting a word in.

  Compared to his friends, Ré felt weirdly quiet, weirdly still—even for him.

  Past Sunny, on the other side of the chain link, mist rose off North Cold Water Collegiate’s pretty green football field. It was a bright, sunny, almost-summer morning just like any other, and Ré was thinking, Nothing. Nothing on earth gonna make this day go easy.

  Sunny shook her long black hair. “I’m not telling her. Hells no,” she said. She’d tossed her backpack in the dust at her feet and was staring down the hill with red, swollen eyes. As usual, it was all about her.

  “And anyway,” she went on, “someone for sure went over there last night, right? I mean, one of her other friends—she has other friends, right? God, I can’t fucking believe this. I seriously can’t be the one to tell her—”

  Réal closed his eyes and pressed his back teeth together, the sound of her voice starting to grate. “Jesus,” he snarled. “I’ll tell her. Just shut up already.”

  Sunny narrowed her eyes on him. “Nice,” she said. “First words you’ve spoken all day. Glad you decided to join us, dickhead.”

  He stared her down, mouth closed, and she just stared back, stone cold.

  “She’s here,” Alex said. He’d stopped rolling the coin and rubbed his thumb across its corrugated edge.

  Down the long hill, Evie Hawley emerged from the mess of yellow buses and kids fighting for parking. Réal could see the big black headphones covering her ears, dark hair like a curtain over her eyes. As she got closer, he saw that dreamy, other-planet look pasted to her face. As if she didn’t already know. As if no one had told her last night, when the kids had found it. Sunny’s words echoed in his head. Somebody got to her before now. We can’t be the first—

  Sunny pounced on Evie, yanking the headphones off.

  “Hey, wha—” Evie pulled back.

  “Oh my god, are you okay?” Sunny blurted out.

  As Evie glanced at each of them, Réal looked away quick. He swallowed. She didn’t know. She really didn’t know. “Câlisse,” he swore under his breath.

  Evie shook Sunny off and pulled her backpack from her shoulder, stuffing her headphones into the front pocket. “What’s going on?”

  Sunny’s eyes widened. “Didn’t your mom tell you?”

  “Mom’s on graveyard,” Evie said, flicking her hair over her shoulder and scanning them all again. “I haven’t seen her in a week.”

  Sunny turned to Réal, and he felt something dark and poisonous whirl up in his gut. Goddammit, Sunny, he thought, flashing her a look of pure evil. She just twisted her jaw and glared at him, pressing him to step in. You promised.

  He shoved his fists deeper into his jean-jacket pockets, pulling his shoulders to his ears, hoping to disappear. Nothing, he thought, not even Sunny, is gonna make this day go easy.

  He took a long breath. His eyes fell back to that field. And then, because there was nothing else he could do, he just opened his mouth and said it. “Shaun is dead.”

  E

  Evie buzzed like a bell struck by a hammer. She stared at Réal, but he just l
ooked away over the fence, bomb dropped.

  She turned to Alex, whose face crumpled instantly as the words all tumbled out—the bloody grass, Shaun’s belly torn open, the police dog, the kids all coming across that field at twilight, screaming. “He had no shoes on, man,” Alex said, his voice a broken mess. “Who would take his fuckin’ shoes?”

  The backpack slipped from Evie’s hand. Her eyes went wide, but she saw nothing. Her ears rang—she heard nothing. “No way.”

  She’d been with Shaun just days ago. Nursing fries and bad coffee at the Olympia, talking about—what? It all left her head the instant that word came out of Réal’s mouth. A blown fuse, a bulb burned out.

  Pop.

  Crack.

  Dead?

  Shaun Henry-Deacon? Fearless frickin’ Shaun Henry-Deacon?

  A picture of him across the table from her, lips mid-sentence, sea-colored eyes set on hers…He couldn’t die. It wasn’t possible.

  Shaun was invincible.

  A picture of him leaping from the fire escape at the Grains, throwing himself, weightless, into the night—he’d done it a hundred times. Never so much as scraped his knee. It wasn’t in his nature. Every step he took was total blind confidence, on air or solid ground. That’s just who he was.

  Shaun Henry-Deacon.

  Evie’s chest squeezed tight. Her scalp pricked with needles and pins, and the world spun, though she stood perfectly still.

  Impossible.

  Alex dragged a grimy sleeve across his eyes. “Fuck it,” he said. “I’m not going to school today.” He jumped up and flicked the coin into the road, where it skipped off the pavement and thwacked into the side of a parked car. “I feel like getting bombed,” he said, heading away from them down the hill.

  Evie looked to Réal again and realized then that he’d been crying too. Maybe for hours. It had been hard to tell before—dark purple stained his eyes, and the bridge of his nose was swollen and scabbed from some days-old fight. Ré had four brothers, and he was tough as hell. She’d seen him beat up and black-eyed plenty of times. She had never seen him cry.

  “Come on,” he muttered, pushing past her and heading down the hill.

  Burned oil and sour milk. That was the smell of Réal’s old Buick. Evie stared out the dirty window in the back seat, watching telephone poles slide by, trying not to breathe. The car’s soft suspension lurched and bounced over every bump, every hill, as Ré stomped the gas.

  In the front seat, Alex lit the bowl of a small pipe, and a moment later skunky, blue smoke filled the car as he exhaled. Evie gagged. She opened her window an inch, and smoke sucked past her face and away. She began to feel carsick, the rotten-upholstery-and-pot-smoke smell nagging at the back of her throat.

  At Mill Road, Réal peeled off the highway too fast. Sunny shrieked as the Buick fishtailed dangerously through the dockyard. At the end of the yard, Ré stood on the brakes, locked tires sliding through gravel till the rubber butted up against the low wooden barrier at the edge of the riverbank.

  Evie looked for a trace of the grin Réal usually wore when he did stupid stuff in his car, but his jaw was set hard and tucked to his chest like he’d really meant to drive them all off the bank into the black water below.

  “What. The. Fuck, Ré!” Sunny screeched, kicking the back of his seat with her pointy boot. She jumped out of the car and slammed the door with a hollow clang, black skirt swirling as she stalked away.

  “Jesus, man.” Alex laughed. It was a reedy, fearful sound. He punched Réal’s thigh lightly, then got out to go after Sunny.

  The car’s engine ticked as it cooled. Colorless dust whirled around them. Neither Evie nor Réal spoke. She sat gripping the vinyl under her, eyes locked on a broken bit of piping on the passenger seat that barfed up yellow stuffing. She could hear Sunny’s complaints bouncing over the concrete past the car.

  Suddenly Réal punched the dash hard with his fist.

  She jumped like he’d hit her instead. “What the—”

  “Shut it, Evie. Don’t say it.” He flexed his hand as blood began to ooze from his cut knuckles.

  “I was just—”

  “Don’t,” he growled. Then he softened. “Please. Just don’t talk, okay?”

  Evie sighed. She slumped back against the seat and looked out at their pretty, red-brick-and-wrought-iron town. The train bridge over the Ohneganohs River cut a black slash through her view. She’d lived in Cold Water for six years, in four different, equally crappy houses. Always on this side of those tracks.

  Réal ran a thumb over his bloody knuckles, smearing rust across the back of his hand. Almost too low to hear, he said, “I saw him.”

  “Uh-huh.” Evie was not really listening.

  “No. I mean, I saw him,” he said. “After.”

  Evie turned to look at him. She said nothing, waiting.

  Réal pressed a thumbnail into his torn skin and picked back the ragged edge. “He looked like hamburger.”

  Evie blinked, not sure what he was trying to say. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “Because, man,” he said quietly, “because it’s my fucking fault.”

  He began to cry. It was a sharp, painful sound, like he didn’t do it too often and didn’t really know how. He covered his eyes with his bloody hand and shriveled into his jean jacket.

  “It’s not your fault, Ré,” she said.

  She got out of the car and left him to cry alone.

  Sunny and Alex were arguing on the far side of the docks, voices lifting like birds in the morning breeze. Evie went the other way, climbing down the rough edge of the riverbank to the flat shale below. She kicked through the patchy grass and garbage till she found a good stone to sit on.

  Hugging her knees to her chest, Evie looked down into the slick, dark water.

  None of this is real, she thought. It’s all just some big, dumb joke on me.

  Ha-ha.

  And instantly Shaun’s voice came floating back: “Why would you say that?”

  She’d laughed. Sitting across from him at the Olympia that day. “Shaun. Come on. You love me? How can you say that now?”

  “How can I not?” He’d chucked his fork down onto his plate. “What do you know, anyway?”

  He’d sat back, crossing his arms over his chest. Despite his nearly elbow-length blond hair and the athletic build of those arms, he had looked exactly like a pouting child.

  “Shaun, we’re in high school. We have our whole lives ahead of us.” His eyes had begged her to shut up, but she’d only looked away. “We’re way too young to get married,” she’d muttered.

  “According to who? Your mom?” He’d sneered.

  Evie had sighed then and picked at her own plate. She hadn’t told her mom yet. She’d been hoping she’d never have to. Lucky Shaun gets out of another jam, she’d thought. I’ll just deal with it, and no one will ever know.

  But Shaun had not followed her script. Shaun was happy.

  She’d thought it would be the worst news he’d ever heard. That he might hate her, maybe even break up with her. Instead, he’d dropped the L word. As if that magically fixed everything between them. As if it fixed this. Abracadabra, girl.

  Shaun had been happy. He’d wanted this. And now he was dead.

  Evie looked down into that smooth, black river sliding over the stones to some better place, far away.

  Alone. Still in high school. Not quite seventeen, and three months late.

  There was no way in hell she was having this baby.

  “I wish I’d never met you, Shaun Henry-Deacon,” she said.

  2

  R

  He couldn’t get it out of his head. Those dusty, bloody tracks trailing out from where Shaun’s belly was ripped open, contents spilling into the scrub grass and staining the sandy earth. He’d been dragged some distance across the field by pretty big teeth, taken down like prey, though the footprints were human. Or human-ish.

  At least, that’s how it had looked to Réal, who was no
great tracker.

  But he didn’t need to be—he’d cut across that field to Shaun’s since he was nine years old, its dirty footpaths worn right into his muscle. Even with the train tracks, he’d never taken the long way around. Hop the broken chain-link fence and go east along the trail. Stop to chuck stones at the rusty rail containers, spray-painted and tagged by people so far away that their marks were like light from dead stars. Then cut down through Baxter Grains—Shaun’s nan lived three blocks that way.

  Réal’s feet had crunched across those dirty train tracks more than twice a week for nine years. His mom maybe would have killed him if she knew, but she’d never asked. Through dark and snow and rain. Lately, coming back from Nan’s drunk and whooping at the moon on Saturday nights. The stones he threw echoing blankly off those rail containers, a sound that made him feel huge and insignificant all at once.

  The distance to Shaun’s was mapped in his limbs, and he’d been headed that way again when he saw it—the waxy blue flesh all tangled in the grass, the gray T-shirt torn and stained dark brown.

  An arc light shone from a pole by the fence along the north side of Baxter Grains. It mostly spilled its cold, blue light into the Grains parking lot, leaving only a thin fringe to fall on the wrong side, the side no one but Réal ever seemed to use.

  At the edge of this light, Ré’s legs had folded under him.

  They’d fought, but that was nothing. They’d fought hundreds of times. Shaun was a fifth brother, a pale fraternal twin. Réal had been coming across the tracks that night to say sorry, that it was none of his business. If Shaun wanted a kid, it was none of his business. He just thought it was dumb. No, maybe just—it was Evie’s decision to make, being the girl and all. Shaun was eighteen, but Evie was just a kid. Sixteen maybe. It was fucking nuts, but it was none of his business.

  When Shaun told him he planned on marrying Evie, Réal laughed at him and got a fist in his ear for it. They’d grabbed at each other, cursing and crashing into the wall of Nan’s front room, Réal’s tight bundle of muscle against Shaun’s lanky, athletic frame.

  Shaun’s fist smashed Réal’s nose, and blood poured out, all down his shirt. Pain tore through his face, and he choked on it. But Réal got a few good ones into Shaun’s ribs. Might have even cracked a few. Then Shaun yanked Réal’s plaid shirt up like a hockey sweater, buttons strangling his throat, and it was done.