Bishan was being a pain today. After breakfast she kept hogging the TV, wanting to see the Bugs Bunny and Road Runner Show when he wanted to see the Super Friends and the Godzilla Power Hour.
He liked Bugs Bunny and the whole cast of Looney Toons, but they were a little young for him now. His tastes were more sophisticated, and he wanted more than just slapstick comedy and smart aleck remarks. The super hero shows had plot lines that lasted a whole half hour, with cliffhangers dangling just before well timed commercial breaks or, even more titillating, ending the half hour with "To Be Continued." Those were the most dreaded three words in the Saturday morning cartoon lexicon, and when he saw them he was left with an itchy, frustrated feeling he wouldn't know how to name until a couple of years later: delayed gratification. It was so irritating when he was left without a resolution at the end of the episode, but when he saw the next's week episode, which mercifully brought the story to a conclusion, it was so satisfying that he wouldn't be able to duplicate that feeling until he masturbated for the first time.
He tried complaining to Mom about it, that he wanted a turn at least halfway through the morning, but she was unmoved. "You're twelve years old now, Sunil," she said. "You don't need to watch cartoons anymore. Let your sister have this time. Why don't you see your friends and play outside, it's a beautiful day. Then you can come home for lunch and play with her for a while."
He looked forlornly at the TV and then at his sister, who stuck her tongue out at him. "Bishan can play with herself today," he said, unaware of the double entendre that would have made the teenage Sunny blush with embarrassment.
"Sunil, you know she's just going to hang off my apron if she's left to her own devices. I need her out of the kitchen today, I'm cooking dinners for the week."
He sighed in frustration. "Fine."
Mom raised one eyebrow at him, that one expression enough to chill his blood, and he knew he was this close to being punished. She didn't like attitude from him, but she wouldn't get it from him if she sided with him instead of the little princess every once in a while. All this deference to the younger child, which kept him from seeing the one movie he'd wanted to see his whole life, and his Saturday morning cartoons, was making him feel like he wasn't real anymore, like his parents saw right through him to the pretty little girl sitting on the couch watching Porky Pig stutter his way through another sentence.
He put on his shoes and left the house, unable to stand the sight of his smug sister for one more minute. He stormed down the stairs, crossed the bridge over the ditch, and walked up Lawrence Street, where he noticed Joe was just leaving his house and walking his way. The two met at the end of his driveway. "Hey, Joe," he said. "What are you up to today?"
"Just some free time before I help out in the fields later." He gestured to the field of beans thick and lush next to his house. "Where are Al and Rachel?"
They looked back down the street at Al and Rachel's respective houses, didn't see them, then looked toward Ewen Avenue. There they were, the two of them, looking down on something, oddly enough. Rachel had a stick and was using it on the something they were looking at.
"Huh," Joe said. "I wonder what they're doing?"
"Should we go check it out?" Sunny asked. "I'm suddenly intrigued."
They strolled down Lawrence Street; if they'd bothered to look back behind them, they would have noticed the door of the upper apartment of the building Rachel lived in with her dad opening, and a stranger stepping outside, but their focus was entirely on the two friends they knew, who were so engrossed in what they were doing that they didn't even hear Sunny and Joe approach.
"Hey, guys," Joe said. "What's going on?"
Rachel and Al turned to see them. "Dog got hit by a car," Al said.
"Is it dead?" Sunny asked, a little excited. Here was a plotline out of his favourite Saturday morning cartoons, and he was right in the middle of it!
Rachel, frowning, offered him the stick. "Poke it and see."
Sunny took the stick with pincered fingers, suddenly feeling a little too close to the action. Still, he approached it and, ever so slowly, prodded it, a little worried it would suddenly come to life. He made a noise of disgust and offered the stick to Joe. "Wanna try?"
Joe crossed his arms over his chest. "Uh, no thanks."
"We saw it happen," Rachel said. "It was awful."
"What were you guys doing when you saw the dog?" Joe asked.
"Not much," Al said. "We were thinking of going behind the driving range and collecting golf balls to sell back." That was a common way they, mainly Rachel, made enough pocket money to go to Spagnol's; that and collecting bottles and cans to return for the deposit. When the drainage ditches in Queensborough went dry in the summer, they were able to find a lot of them, discarded there by careless litterers when the water was up.
"If you two want to make some money this summer," Joe said, "my dad's bean fields will need picking soon."
"Sure!" Rachel said, then blushed a little, embarrassed by her eagerness. Sunny knew she was always looking for ways to make money, but she didn't want to let on that she needed it.
"Hey, what's that there?" asked another voice.
They all turned and saw another kid, dressed in bib overalls over a green t-shirt, with brown hair cut in a bowl-shaped bob. Where in the world did this person come from? It was as if he... or was it she... had appeared out of thin air.
"You're the new kid," Rachel remarked. "You live in the unit above us."
"My name is Lauren Hasegawa," the girl, apparently, said. "My father, Toshiro, was interned with his family by the Government of Canada in World War Two. My mother, Ellen, is an English-born Canadian who fell in love with him and married him against the wishes of both their families." She recited this as if it had been drilled into her by her parents, but also with a certain amount of pride.
"Oh. Okay," Rachel said. "I'm Rachel McWilliam. My dad, Henry, works at the Queen's Hotel down the street. I don't know where my mom is. She left when I was five."
She pointed to Al. "He's Alistair Mackenzie. He lives at the dead end of the street with his mom and dad and two Dobermans that I'm afraid of, Hunter and Duchess."
Joe and Sunny cracked up. "Alistair," they said, as if the name were a joke.
Al's cheeks reddened, and he spun on them furiously. "You should talk, Jee-you-sep-pee! Soon-eel!"
Joe sniffed in disdain. "I go by Joe. My family's Italian, so my given name is Giuseppe. It just means Joseph in Italian."
"And Sunil is a fine name in India," Sunny said, grinning, "but there's no English equivalent, so I just went with something that sounded closest to it. Call me Sunny."
Lauren took all this in with no emotion. "My uncle on my mother's side is named Alistair," she said. "My mom hasn't talked to him in a long time."
"See? Not so crazy a name after all," Al said.
Lauren turned her attention from them to the dog. "Is that dog dead?"
"Yeah, hit by a car," Rachel said.
Lauren stepped over and squatted down beside it. "It has a collar," she said, "so, not a stray."
And then she touched it. Well, touched the collar, anyway.
"Ewwwwww!" Sunny said, echoed by Al and Joe. Rachel looked sick to her stomach. Sunny couldn't blame her. He'd never touched anything dead before.
Lauren's delicate fingers manipulated the collar to reveal something round and metal. "It has tags," she said. "Somebody owns this dog. Or owned it. Maybe someone is looking for it."
"How do you know?" Rachel asked.
"The tags have identifying numbers issued by the City. See?" She pointed to the numbers on the tags. Sunny looked askance at it, still a little amazed that a girl would touch something dead. He didn't have many reference points for girl behaviour. He couldn't imagine princess Bishan doing this, and even though Rachel was a little feral, she too had her limits. Lauren was something else entirely, and he found himself impressed by her nerve.
"Oh," Rachel said, "so, the City has a list of dogs and who owns them, so they can reunite them if a dog gets lost, like now."
"Oh, wait, my dogs have those!" Al said. "I just never knew what they were for until now." He snapped his fingers as a new thought occurred to him. "It's like the license plate on the car that hit the dog!"
Lauren looked up at Al. "Did you get the plate number?"
"No," he said sadly.
"We were too shocked to think about it," Rachel said.
"Too bad," Lauren said. "We could have solved the mystery."
"Mystery?" Sunny said, suddenly excited at a new twist in this plot line.
"The mystery of who hit the dog."
"Yeah..." Rachel breathed. "But, maybe, we can at least find out who owns this dog, so we can let them know it's dead."
"How do we do that?" Joe asked. "Do you know who to call?"
"Maybe my dad does!" Al said. "If he got the tags for Hunter and Duchess from the City, he can maybe let them know we found the dog, and the City can let the owner know."
Lauren stood up and walked over to him. "Good idea, Alistair," she said.
Al swelled with pride, and appeared to grow two inches. "Call me Al," he said.
Suddenly a voice called out. "Yoo-hoo! Kids! What are you up to today?"
They all turned to see Mrs. Anderson standing in her front yard, wearing a large sun hat and gloves, clutching some plant by the stem, its roots shedding dirt. She'd obviously been in the middle of gardening when she noticed them. Her house faced on to Ewen.
"Hi, Mrs. Anderson!" Rachel called. "We were figuring out what to do with this dog."
"What dog?" Mrs. Anderson couldn't see it at their feet from her angle.
Rachel pointed to it. "It got hit by a car and died."
"Don't touch it!" she exclaimed in alarm, dropping the plant and hurrying over to the gate that separated her property from the road.
Sunny found Mrs. Anderson's reaction out of proportion to the situation. Sure, he wasn't going to touch the dog, but why the alarm? He could tell the others felt the same way; Rachel looked at Lauren, who smirked at her, eliciting a big grin from Rachel. He thought those two might become good friends just from that one look.
Mrs. Anderson knelt at the dog's side and, with gloved hands, checked it over. "Oh, poor thing," she said. "I'll call Animal Control. Can you kids stand guard until they come and pick it up?"
"Yes, ma'am," Rachel said, speaking for all of them, as usual; because Mrs. Anderson used to look after her a lot when she was younger, she of all of them had the closest relationship to the older woman.
Mrs. Anderson rushed back inside her house to make the call. When she was out of earshot, Lauren and Rachel burst out laughing.
"What's so funny?" Joe asked.
"'Don't touch it!'" Lauren shrieked, witch-like, mimicking Mrs. Anderson's voice only a little. Rachel looked shocked at the other girl's impersonation of her surrogate parent, but stifled a laugh. Sunny thought this new girl was funny, and he liked her willingness to do what others wouldn't. He thought she would fit in with them nicely.
"Well, at least now we know it's called Animal Control," he said.
"That makes a lot of sense," Al said. "I'm going to look it up in the phone book when I get home."
Rachel looked at Lauren. "You're really brave for touching the dead dog."
Lauren shrugged. "It's not like it's going to wake up and bite me."
"You might want to wash your hands when you get home," Joe said. "You might catch something."
Lauren smirked. "Maybe I'll turn into a werewolf?"
Sunny chuckled nervously, picturing her doing just that, like the superheroes in his Saturday morning cartoons, but unlike the animated drawings he knew weren't real, he didn't think he would like seeing someone really growing hair and teeth. Al and Joe seemed unnerved by the idea, too.
As if she knew they were scared of her, she howled like a wolf and reached out to them with the hand that touched the dog. The three boys backed away, chuckling nervously, unwilling to cede ground to a girl. Sunny even lifted the stick he still had in his hand to ward her off. This girl made him nervous. Maybe he didn't want her in their group after all.
"Hey!" Rachel shouted. "Stop fooling around! Mrs. Anderson said to guard the dog!"
They stopped and blinked as if waking up from hypnosis. Even Lauren looked a little sheepish, as if she knew she'd gone too far. That was good. Maybe that wasn't how she normally acted. Sunny hoped so. He didn't want to fear her.
It took over an hour for the Animal Control people to come, and in that time they got to know each other better, and by the time the dog was gently lifted into the back of the truck and taken away, they were chatting like old friends, and Lauren actually seemed normal; maybe she was nervous about meeting new friends, and had just tried too hard to get them to like her. Sunny wished she wouldn't bother, they were all easygoing, and he hoped she'd come to realize that over the hour they'd spent chatting.
"We need to go to Spagnol's sometime," Rachel said as they walked back down the street to their shared home. "They have so much candy and pop and chips and other junk food. I could live there, I love it so much."
"Maybe we'll go next time I get my allowance," Lauren said.
"You get an allowance?" Rachel asked, amazed.
Lauren shrugged. "Sure. Don't you?"
Rachel blushed, and her face hardened. "Hardly ever. Money's tight most of the time."
"Oh. Sorry."
Rachel shrugged and brightened. "Don't worry. We'll get there somehow. Joe's family is picking beans again this summer, and I'll make money then."
Lauren turned to Joe. "You pick beans?"
Joe pointed to the fields to their right. "By late August they'll be ready. We do it every year, and we make some good money. We're already growing them anyway for ourselves, so why not grow a few more and sell them?"
"Huh."
At the two-unit building, the five of them stopped. Lauren said, "Hey, if you guys ever want to come to my place, you're welcome, I'm just upstairs here."
"Cool," Rachel said. "You can always knock on my door here, too. Usually there are no parents to bug us here."
Lauren nodded and made a move to her stairs.
"Hey, you don't have to go home yet, do you?" Joe asked, surprising Sunny. He thought Joe had to help in the fields soon. He didn't put off chores for any of his other friends, but this new person was already inspiring him to stretch his free time out a little.
Lauren looked at Joe with interest. "You want me to stick around?" she asked.
"Sure," Al said. "We could play Star Wars, or build a fort, or whatever."
Lauren smiled. "You know, before I ran into you guys, I was going to pretend I was walking on the moon by jumping over the ditch."
"Cool!" Sunny said. "We love jumping over the ditch!"
So that was what they did, and had another hour or two of fun before Lauren's mom called her in for lunch, and Rachel had to go take piano lessons with Mrs. Anderson, and Joe finally trudged back home to face his work.
Sunny knew he had to go back, have lunch and play with Bishan, but he didn't want to. She only wanted to play with her dolls in her room, and the dolls were all white and blonde like Rachel. Something about that bugged him; were his parents unable to find dolls that looked like them, or did Bishan want them this way, as if she saw something advantageous in looking like that? He hoped not. None of his friends were any better than he was, nor did they act that way, and they even defended him in the schoolyard when Francis O'Rourke and Paul Baxter, the class bullies, called him Paki, which wasn't even accurate. Joe took particular responsibility in persuading them that continuing their racist taunts were not in their best interest, and Sunny considered him the best of his friends, if he ever had to choose.
This new one, though, Lauren... she was at least half not white, so Sunny wondered if she'd ever faced bullies where she used to live. Maybe they might end up having more in common than he had with the others.
He took that thought with him as he went home.
Thanks for reading this far! In my other three titles of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club series, I wrote this scene from the points of view of Rachel, Lauren and Joe. This time it's Sunny's turn. If you liked what you just read, hit "Vote" and leave a comment. To return to the present day, and how Lauren finds a new way to investigate Lauren's case, click on "Continue reading."