250 Hours, page 1
Contents
Title Page
Book & Copyright Information
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Acknowledgements
About the Author
© Colleen Nelson, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll-free to 1-800-893-5777.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Edited by Kathryn Cole
Cover designed by Scott Hunter
Text designed and typeset by Susan Buck
Printed and bound in Canada
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Nelson, Colleen, author
250 hours / Colleen Nelson.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55050-641-9 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-55050-648-8 (pdf).--
ISBN 978-1-55050-873-4 (epub).--ISBN 978-1-55050-880-2 (html)
I. Title. II. Title: Two hundred fifty hours.
PS8627.E555T86 2015 jC813'.6 C2015-902919-8
C2015-902920-1
Library of Congress Control Number 2015938973
Available in Canada from:
Coteau Books
2517 Victoria Avenue, Regina, Saskatchewan Canada S4P 0T2
www.coteaubooks.com
Available in the US from: Orca Book Publishers www.orcabook.com
Coteau Books gratefully acknowledges the financial support of its publishing program by: the Saskatchewan Arts Board, The Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the City of Regina, and the Government of Saskatchewan through Creative Saskatchewan.
For my mom, Joan Chappell
Chapter 1
I jerked awake at the sudden silence. Staring at the baby monitor on my bedside table, I waited for Gam’s next gurgly inhalation. It always came, but I worried about the day it didn't. How long can a heart pump in a 450-pound body?
Gam’s resigned sigh echoed, electrified, through the monitor. Glancing at the clock, I realized she was awake and waiting for me to go downstairs and make her breakfast. Morbidly obese, hungry and trapped in a bed a few feet from the kitchen – the irony wasn’t lost on me.
“Morning, Gam,” I said as I stumbled past her room, my face swollen with sleep.
“Good morning, love,” Gam called in her sweet, sing-song voice, just like she had every morning since I could remember. All the family I had left and I wouldn’t have traded an ounce of her, not after everything she’d done for me.
My mom left when I was two months old. I look like her – blond hair, pale skin, blue eyes and slim. But even in photos of her as a child, my mother had a defiant tilt to her chin and a devilish gleam in her eye. My gleam, if I even had one, is more wistful than mischievous.
After so many years, I’d given up on a tearful, apologetic reunion. The realist in me understood why my mom left me here with Gam. She was seventeen. How could she have looked after a baby? Especially in Edelburg, where the probing eyes of neighbours are quick to judge and slow to forget.
After filling up the kettle for tea, I flicked on the radio to the sound of jovial patter about the price of grain and the weather. Gam liked to hear the local news first thing in the morning, even though not much happened in Edelburg, population 1,867, between the hours of 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.
Leaning against the counter, I waited for the water to boil. The view from the window above the sink was like a painting of a summer day. Framed by tall poplar and oak trees on either side, the grassy prairie stretched out behind the house marred only by our dilapidated garage that had paused mid-collapse.
I poured steaming water into two mugs and carried them into Gam’s room, hip-checking the door to open it.
“Thanks, love,” Gam said as I set her mug on the bedside table. “What would I do without you?” It was rhetorical. We both knew what would happen without me.
“Sleep okay?”
Gam nodded. The fat under her chin wobbled, but her head barely moved. She was encased in her own body, a prisoner of its suffocating weight.
When I was little, those fleshy arms encircled me in bed as she rocked me to sleep. I used to cushion myself in the pillowy softness of her stomach for movie marathons that stretched late into the night. She’d done her best to make my childhood a magical time. I didn’t have a lot of friends, but she indulged my imagination, setting up fairy tea parties, complete with hand-sewn costumes and forts, in the living room. She’d never been like other grandmothers in town, spindly and bursting with energy. But Gam’s quiet protectiveness had kept me safe and loved, despite everything. Sometimes, I wished there was still room in her bed for me to nestle against her. I could never love anyone as much as I loved Gam.
She was watching me, her eyes hidden beneath folds of skin. I smiled at her and put my feet up on her bed, leaning back in my chair. Her hand inched forward and rested on my bare ankle. The reassuring weight of her flesh seeped into me.
I slurped my tea, cringing at the scalding heat on my lips. “Aunt Mim will be here after lunch for your bath.” The real appeal to her sister’s visit wasn’t the bath, but the gossip. A regular churchgoer, Mim would be bursting with news. And while they were hooting and chattering, I would be able to sneak upstairs and write in blissful, uninterrupted quiet.
I’d been working on my novel for two years and it was almost finished. A fantasy about a kidnapped princess who discovers she has magical powers, its convoluted story lines sometimes left me shaking my head, wondering how I would draw it to a close. Between school, my boyfriend, Rich, and looking after Gam most days, there wasn’t time left for writing. But I’d graduated in June and summer holidays stretched in front of me, swollen with time. Rich didn’t understand why I’d rather be inside, typing in Grandpa’s office, than spending the day with him at the beach.
I’d explained to him how, after Grandpa died, losing myself in another world filled the space his death left in our lives. But I don’t think Rich understood. Coming from a family of seven, he was an uncle three times over before he was twelve. His life was spent in a dizzying array of family celebrations: marriages, births, graduations, anniversaries, birthdays with a whirlwind of relations.
He’d never watched sickness strip someone he loved of their dignity until there was nothing left but a small, shriveled shell of a person. And the emptiness afterwards, when you cried so much you wondered how there could be any tears left. Rich had never been through that, either. I wondered if he ever would. You have to love someone a lot to know that kind of sadness.
Rich and I started dating the year Grandpa died. He said he’d never noticed me before, a typically blunt Rich thing to say. But all of a sudden, that year, I was on his radar. He’d seen me at the store, walking home from school, at church. I was probably mysterious to him, a girl removed from the social workings of Edelburg, and ripe for the picking. In a strange twist of fate, my body finally started to develop, curves replacing baby fat, at the same time as I lost my grandpa. I became someone worth looking at in a town of fresh-faced blonds.
He was a distraction too, at first, taking my mind off the sadness that pressed on my chest and made it hard to breathe. Gam was nervous about me dating. Rich was a few years older than me, and she'd eyed him warily when he first came over. But he’d worn her down and never once commented on her weight. I loved him for that, gratitude shining so bright it blinded me to other things. He was part of my life. An installation. Rich was comfortable and loyal and all the things a boyfriend should be.
“Sara Jean.” Gam turned her eyes to the colostomy bag hidden under the sheets.
Sighing, I put down my mug. What would she do without me? My heart lurched at the thought of leaving Gam, but one day it would happen. Now that I’d graduated, she had to know it was only a matter of time. It was one of the few things we never spoke about. Maybe Gam thought if she didn’t bring it up, it wouldn’t occur to me.
Someone knocked on the screen door. Gam frowned at me and I shrugged. “Maybe it’s Mim?” I hoped it wasn’t some other relative or neighbour performing their monthly do-gooding. I’d have to invite them in for tea and a chat, and my whole morning of writing time would b e wasted. Or was it Rich, surprising me with a trip to the beach? I groaned and hoped not. Telling him I couldn’t go because I had to write would start an argument.
But, it wasn’t a relative, or Rich. It was a tall, good-looking boy, on the cusp of being a man. He had dark brown eyes ringed by long eyelashes and looked at me as if I should know what he was doing on my front steps.
Chapter 2
Jess had planned on leaving this summer, hitchhiking to the city and saving enough to get somewhere good, like Vancouver. But last week, his plan had changed. The judge had glared at him from her desk as she reminded him he’d been caught for arson once before. If he hadn’t been a minor, she would have recommended jail time. As it was, she added a lot more time to his community service hours. He shook his head at the total. Two hundred and fifty hours community service and twelve months probation. Jess wouldn’t be going anywhere until his time was done.
His grandmother had stared at the floor when he told her about the punishment, disappointment etched on her face. He’d listened to her about staying away from other things, like booze and sniffing. But sometimes the urge to light a fire was too strong. It was like a snake slithering up his throat, desperate for escape. His whole body relaxed as the first weak flames licked at the wood. Watching the fire twist and crackle and gain strength was a release. He’d walk away able to handle life again, the snake sleeping contentedly in his belly.
The old shed had been irresistible, sitting in the middle of a field and set to be torn down the next day. He’d ridden his bike to it, a jar of gasoline sloshing as he swerved to avoid potholes in the gravel road. A crop plane had radioed down and before the fire had been able to take hold, a cop car, its siren blazing, had cornered him.
For 250 hours this summer, he’d be picking up trash on the highway, painting the high school, and clearing old shingles from the retirement home. Jonathan Fontaine was his social worker, eager to make a difference, one juvie at a time. He called Jess names such as Buddy and Dude, as if they were pals. He had even tried to do some weird fist-bump handshake thing the first time they met.
Jonathan had carried a blue file folder with Jess’s name, spelled out with a Sharpie in capitals, the first time they’d met. He’d pulled out papers with signatures and a schedule for the community service hours and shown it to Jess. Two hundred and fifty hours, meant more than twenty hours a week for the entire summer. So much for hitching west. The first job was to clean out a garage for some old lady. Jess had shaken his head and groaned when he saw it was in Edelburg.
Walking through the town set him on edge. Everything was too perfect. Across the street, a sea of green front lawns and a few sprinklers spit blasts of water over flowerbeds – weeded and fertilized. A woman walking a dog on the sidewalk crossed to the other side as he approached.
He pulled the crumpled paper from his pocket and checked the address Jonathan had given him: 31 Winchester Lane. Set back from the road, the house had white siding and a porch that wrapped around the front and side. Some dried-out, gangly petunias grew in pots out front, but weeds had taken over the garden.
The screen door rattled in its frame when he knocked. A blond girl peered at him. She was tall and pale, like the underside of a reed. There was a moment of silence as they stared at each other. It could have been the heat, but Jess preferred to think her cheeks flushed because of him.
Her almost invisible eyebrows wrinkled together. “Can I help you?”
“Uh, yeah,” he said and cleared his throat. “I’m Jess Sinclair.”
“Oh, right,” she sighed. “Sorry. I forgot you were starting today. Can you go around the back? I’ll be there in a minute.”
“It’s the kid doing community service,” he heard her call to someone inside. I’m not a kid, he thought indignantly. Probably the same age as she was. “Remember, the firebug?” There was a pause. “Gam” – she sounded exasperated – “he’s not going to set fire to a place he’s working in… I know, I will be.”
Jess gritted his teeth. He jumped off the porch and walked around to the back. It was going to be a long 250 hours.
Chapter 3
I hadn’t been in the garage for years. Dust exploded around us as Jess heaved the door open. The earthy smell of damp cardboard and newsprint floated in the air. One window was broken, and the other two were so dusty they repelled the sun’s attempt to shine in. There were boxes stacked on top of each other in towers as tall as me. I’d forgotten how much stuff there was.
“Anything worth keeping can go over there,” I said, pointing to the windbreak of poplar trees separating our property from the neighbour’s. “The rest can go to the dump.”
He nodded and wiped his arm across his forehead. “Hot one today,” he said and took off his shirt. I stared at him in horror and felt a crimson flush spread up my neck and over my cheeks. What was he doing? It was bad enough to have a delinquent working in the garage, but now he was parading around half-naked. All the neighbours would see him.
He tucked his shirt into the back pocket of his shorts, pushed some boxes out of the way and moved past me to see farther into the garage. Was that a smirk on his face?
“So, uh, I guess you can get started,” I said without looking at him. “I’ll be back later.”
“Hey, what’s your name?” he called after me.
“Sara Jean,” I said, turning around. “Do you want anything? A glass of water?” A shirt?
He gave me a cocky smile. “Nah, I’m good.”
I continued walking to the house.
Neighbours, full of concern, would be calling to inform me that a shirtless boy, who looked like he might be from the reserve, was working in the garage.
I dug around in a closet and found a stand-up fan and an extension cord and marched back to the garage. I plugged it in and the whir of the blades cut through the stillness of the air.
“What’s that for?”
“To cool you off. So you can put your shirt back on.” His tanned skin glowed like melted caramel. He looked at me like I was joking.
“I’m serious,” I said. “You don’t know my neighbours.” I could feel the flush spreading up my cheeks.
He shook his head but yanked the shirt out of his pocket and pulled it on. “Better?” he asked.
“Thank you,” I said, satisfied.
“I’m supposed to…” He pulled a folded paper out of his pocket. “Do you have a pen or something?”
I took the paper from him. His full name ‘Jesse Augustine Sinclair’ was printed in bold letters across the top. A chart below had space to record the date and hours worked. There was also a box for comments. Needs to wear a shirt.
“It has to be signed every day,” he mumbled without meeting my eyes.
I pushed back a wave of sympathy and reminded myself why he was here. He’d committed a crime. But with the paper in my hand and the mountain of boxes behind him, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. This wasn’t how he wanted to spend his summer holidays.
It wasn’t how I wanted to spend mine, either. “I have work to do inside,” I told him. “Just knock if you want me, uh, need me. Or anything.” Turning on my heel before I could make a bigger ass of myself, I left him with the whir of the fan and the smell of disintegrating cardboard.
So much for writing, I thought as the screen door slammed behind me. It was mid-morning and I hadn’t even turned on my computer yet. Gam needed breakfast, and the kitchen had to be tidied before Aunt Mim arrived.
“Love?” Gam called. “Did he start clearing out the garage?” Her eyes widened with curiousity. Her skin, once pale like mine, now stretched red and shiny across the fat. Years of neglect had left her light brown hair a stringy, greasy mess shot through with grey. Fingernails, ears, eyebrows had all stayed the same as the fat had taken over and all her appendages now looked comically small, dwarfed by her body.
I’d found her on the couch one day after school, damp with sweat, the colour drained from her cheeks. At first, I’d thought she was having a diabetic attack, that she’d forgotten to check her insulin. But no. It was the effort of lugging herself the few steps between the kitchen and the living room. Human bones, lungs, and heart aren’t made to carry 450 pounds.
When Grandpa came home from golfing, he set up a bed in the TV room and called Aunt Mim. It took all three of us to propel Gam those few feet to her new room. As the days stretched into weeks and then months, the temporary bed became permanent. Gam filled the small room with her bulk and chirpy voice, glossing over the reality that she’d never walk again – not unless she lost some weight.
