Ms. Zephyr's Notebook Read online

  Ms. Zephyr’s Notebook

  Also by kc dyer:

  The Eagle Glen Trilogy

  Seeds of Time (2002)

  Secret of Light (2003)

  Shades of Red (2005)

  Ms. Zephyr’s Notebook

  by kc dyer

  Copyright © kc dyer 2007

  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, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

  recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without

  the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested

  from Access Copyright

  Editor: Barry Jowett

  Designer: Erin Mallory

  Proofreader: Marja Appleford

  Printer: Webcom

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Dyer, K. C.

  Ms. Zephyr’s notebook / kc dyer.

  ISBN 978-1-55002-691-7

  I. Title.

  PS8557.Y48M58 2007 jC813’.6 2007-900860-7

  1 2 3 4 5 11 10 09 08 07

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts

  Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the

  Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program

  and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario

  through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program and the Ontario Media

  Development Corporation.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author

  and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits

  in subsequent editions.

  J. Kirk Howard, President

  Printed and bound in Canada

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  Ms. Zephyr’s Notebook

  For M & P

  My reason for everything

  1

  Night never came here. The lights never dimmed and true stillness never really settled. No such thing as rest in peace, Logan thought grimly as he slipped in through the lower entrance door and passed the morgue. In here, even the dead were not given a respectful darkness. Maybe the light was to fool them into thinking they hadn’t started their last, long journey. Logan didn’t think so. But he didn’t have time to ponder the question right now. He had a journey of his own to make.

  The one positive about spending so much time in this place was that he knew his way around. Every closet, every cupboard. All the places where he’d be spotted immediately. And all the places he wouldn’t. At the end of the basement hallway, the door to the supply closet was slightly ajar. Logan slipped through the opening and the door clicked quietly closed behind him. This closet was perfect. Not often used, out of the way, and most important, unlocked. Nothing special in there. Nothing restricted. Not even doctor’s scrubs, which tended to walk out the door if they weren’t locked up. Just gowns and flat sheets and big cardboard boxes of toilet paper.

  Inside the closet, Logan pulled off his gloves and jammed them into the pocket of his coat. He crushed the coat flat deep inside the nearest pile of sheets. Checked his boots. It was safe to leave them on, but only if they were dry. The staff around here would spot a trail of water on the floor as quick as thinking.

  Under his coat, Logan wore a set of green scrubs, acquired before the nurses began locking some of the supply closets. He’d worn them a lot when he was living here and they were pretty threadbare, but that was the idea. He wanted to look like he fit in. The truly sickening part, the part that made his stomach churn, was that he did fit in. Too well. He’d been here before and he would be here again. But not tonight. Tonight he wasn’t here to stay, just to make a brief withdrawal and then be on his way. Miles to go before I sleep, he thought.

  The route up the back stairs was easy. Almost no one used stairs in a hospital, and certainly never at night. The third-floor stairwell was one of the places he had gone in the past when he needed to escape. And that’s where he stood right now, panting only a little. His conditioning was not what it once had been, but it was coming back. A good thing, because speed was his only hope. Speed, and a little luck.

  The door handle snapped downward and Logan’s heart shot into his throat. By instinct he grabbed the opening door. One of the night cleaners tottered through the gap with her bucket, stumbling a little since her passage had cleared so unexpectedly. Logan caught a glimpse of a sprig of holly tucked into her hairnet before he pulled his face back into the shadow of the door.

  “Sorry about that,” he mumbled, keeping his head down.

  “Oh no, it’s all right,” she answered, her accent heavy in the dead air of the stairwell. “It is easier to roll my bucket when someone holds the door. Thank you, sir.” She pulled her dripping mop from the bucket, cranked a handle to wring out the grey stringy mass, and began to mop the floor at the top of the stairs.

  Sir. Logan nodded, his head still turned so she couldn’t see his quick grin. Not too many people around this place called him “sir.” Couldn’t remember it ever happening before, truth be told.

  His grin evaporated as he stepped out onto the third floor, pulling the door closed behind him. Only two wards on this floor — Children’s and ICU — and things suddenly became a lot stickier. His face might be vaguely recognized around the rest of the hospital, but there he had a certain anonymity shared by all the patients. Here he was a known quantity.

  His single advantage was stealth. This was the one place on the planet no one would expect to find him, so if he kept out of the way all should be well. But the next part was the most tricky and he focused his attention on his goal. Deep breath. Move.

  The hallway lights had been dimmed to the usual night-time gloom, but he could still make out two late-shift nurses, busy in the station at the far end of the hall. Logan glanced at his watch. Eleven p.m. As planned, his timing was perfect. The nurses would be assembling pills in tiny paper cups to distribute to the patients during the six o’clock morning parade. His mouth took on a bitter taste and he leaned against the wall for a moment. The thought of years ahead — a whole lifetime of pills in the morning — made a wave of weakness wash over him.

  Suddenly, a third nurse stepped out of the room nearest to him and shut the door quietly behind her. Logan ducked back into the shadows. She headed down toward the station and he closed his eyes with relief. If he hadn’t paused, he would have arrived at the door just in time to walk right into her face. All his work would have been for nothing.

  He could see from her brisk walk that it was Nurse Takehiko. Cleo called her Medusa. Or Cyclops… or something like that. Logan couldn’t really remember; Cleo had weird nicknames for each of the nurses. One time she had told Logan that they were all the names of mythical monsters, but he still couldn’t keep them straight. Logan didn’t feel Takehiko was so bad, actually. All the same, he didn’t want to run into her — or anyone — right now.

  There are times when long legs are an asset and this was one of them. Logan peeled a strip of duct tape from his pant leg and crossed the hall in three lan
ky strides. As he opened the door he slipped the tape over the latch so the door slid silently into place behind him.

  The room was in darkness, apart from the blinking LED lamps of the equipment that buzzed and hummed along one wall. The darkness was an asset here, as Logan knew this room more intimately than any other in the hospital. There was space for only a single patient, and it was here he’d spent some of the worst days of his life. It was a place he’d vowed never to come back to. Not for the first time that evening, he thought about turning on his heel and bolting. The smell of the place made him sick. But if he left now, he might as well just go home. And he almost had what he needed — just a few moments more and he could leave. He took a deep breath and waited until his eyes adjusted to the dim light.

  The other half of the room had been emptied of its patient furnishings years before. Instead, a tiny, cluttered desk was crammed into one corner of the room. For some reason Logan didn’t understand or care about, cutbacks meant that space was at a premium. So this room was shared — by a patient, and during the day, a teacher. Still, thinking back, Logan knew there were worse roommates he could have been stuck with.

  Abigail Zephyr had been the in-hospital teacher for extended-term patients since long before Logan had moved in. And Abbie’s desk was where he was headed now. She had something he needed — enough to bring him back here to the one place on earth he never wanted to see again. He stepped easily though the dark interior of the room, curtained off from the bed, but not locked. Never locked, because she wanted the kids to be able to find her — or whatever else they needed — at all times.

  Logan stepped up to the desk. This side of the room had no beeping or sighing equipment. No window, beyond the glass wall that separated it from the hall outside, and that was heavily curtained to allow the patient what darkness there was to be had. But Logan didn’t need light. What he needed was under his hand — and then in his hand. He had the notebook. Time to go.

  When the glow came from the bed on the other side of the room it was sudden enough, and bright enough, to make Logan gasp aloud. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, so the face illuminated in the light from the open computer screen looked brilliant, so white as to be almost blue in the glare. The only other thing Logan could see was a single, pale hand holding a red button on a cord.

  “So what’s it going to be, Logan? Are you going to tell me why you’ve got Abbie’s notebook, or am I going to call the nurse? Your choice.”

  2

  Logan spoke slowly, trying to keep it casual. “Oh, hi Kip. Sorry, buddy, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “You didn’t,” said Kip. His eyes still looked huge in the light from the computer screen. “I had a game going on my computer when the nurse came in to tell me to go to sleep. I was going to wait five minutes and then start it up again, but you came in first.”

  Good. He could work with that. “Cool. Which game?”

  “Logan, who cares? What the heck are you doing in here? It really scared me when I heard someone sneak in while the lights were off.”

  Logan’s mind whirled. There was no time for talking to Kip — the kid was supposed to be asleep. He had work to do and the last thing he needed was to have to include this kid in his plans. It was going to mess up everything. But Kip held all the cards right now. The power was in his hands — literally.

  “Geez, I’m sorry I scared you, dude. I just forgot something when I left last week and this seemed like a good time to come and pick it up. This used to be my room, remember?”

  Kip rolled his eyes. “Oh, right. That makes a lot of sense. Yes, I remember that this used to be your room. I also remember what you said last time you were here. You said if you came back to this hospital, they’d be carrying you on a slab, because you weren’t ever going to walk in here on your own two legs again. And so now you break into Abbie’s office in the middle of the night and I’m supposed to believe you forgot something?”

  Logan chewed on his lower lip. This kid was pretty smart for his age. But he’d set down the call button, and Logan was almost sure the kid wouldn’t turn him in. Almost. He shot a sideways glance at the clock on the wall. Every minute he spent here slowed him down. But if the kid gave him away, he’d be far worse off.

  Logan stepped closer to Kip’s bed. “Did I ever tell you the story about how I got here the first time?”

  Kip still looked sceptical, but his eyes softened a little. “No.”

  Logan tossed the notebook casually on the bottom of the bed. “Mind if I join you?”

  Kip grinned and pulled his legs in to his chest. Logan made it a policy to never sit on anyone’s bed. He hated the freaking hospital beds. But Kip was just a kid. And if Kip thought they were just hanging out, maybe things could work out the way they were meant to. Maybe.

  So Logan hopped up on the bottom of the bed, reached over, and yanked up one of the side bars to lean on. He had a moment’s fear as the thing clanged into place, but both he and Kip sat very still and no nurse’s feet approached, so all was well. Kip pulled up the blanket and gave a sleepy grin. He was ready to hear a story.

  “I hated this place when I came here,” Logan said, and Kip nodded his understanding. Anyone who had stayed here would understand. It wasn’t the hospital itself, or the people who worked here, or even the stinking smell of the place. Sickness and pain were in these walls. No amount of ammonia could ever scrub that away, and any kid who had to live here awhile knew all about it.

  Logan reached over and pulled the notebook into his lap. He’d never told a story to a kid before, and he had to make this one good.

  “I don’t remember a lot about that first day. I didn’t know who Abbie was or what she wanted. All I knew was that I needed to get out of here, and fast.”

  He opened the cover of the notebook and a flimsy piece of paper fluttered onto his lap. The tape that had stuck the page onto the cover of the notebook adhered to his fingers. He peeled the tape off and smoothed the e-mail back into place.

  “What’s that?” asked Kip.

  Logan shrugged and glanced again at the page.

  To: Abbie Zephyr

  From: Tom Dangerman

  Re: Your Request

  Dear Ms. Zephyr,

  I have given your somewhat unusual request a great deal of consideration over the past few days. As you know, it is district policy to ensure all student progress remains entirely private. However, after viewing your arguments and taking into consideration the unique teaching environment at Evergreen Hospital, I have decided to waive the standard practice, providing that student grades continue to be submitted electronically. Your students may submit their work to you in a centralized file folder or notebook as you see fit, providing the grades and comments are available only to the individual student and their parent and/or guardian.

  Tom Dangerman

  District Administrator,

  Evergreen School District 36

  Logan began to turn the page, but the tape from the e-mail caught his fingers again and the flimsy paper tore in half. He swore under his breath and ripped the rest of the page out of the notebook.

  “It’s just some piece of school-board junk. No one will notice it’s gone. It’s not like anyone reads that crap, anyway.”

  He tossed the crumpled wad under Kip’s bed and flipped through the pages of the notebook. “Here it is,” he said softly. “My first day.”

  November 1

  Logan K.

  After breakfast sometime, if I was eating, which I’m not.

  Life sucks and then you die.

  L.K.

  November 1

  Logan K.

  Some time after noon.

  Apparently truth is not acceptable, at least not around this place. Here everything has to look clean and smell clean, and bad language is not tolerated. Man, I could really come up with some bad language if I felt like it right now, but
I don’t. So just forget it.

  L.K.

  November 1

  Logan K.

  (Bag empty but no one has noticed yet. L.K.)

  Ten minutes later.

  Okay, Abbie, I give up. You win. Hope you’re happy. I’m writing the stupid paragraph, but only so I can get my Xbox back, understand? The days around this place are so totally long and boring that I’ll do anything to get back to my gaming. And you get the journal entry that you’ve been bugging me for. This isn’t even real school — I can’t believe you expect me to do school work if I’m in the freakin’ hospital.

  I don’t even know why I’m here. I thought the worst thing about today would be a Halloween-party hangover. I don’t get this. I’m gonna be out of here by the weekend.

  And hey, I’ve noticed that I’m supposed to have ethical standards and not use bad language and all, but for some reason this doesn’t apply to everyone else. Like you, for example, Teach. Swearing is out but bribery is allowed? Well, whatever you say, because know what? You’ve got your paragraph, and then some. And if you want to know how I’m feeling, well, just read between the lines, okay? Because I’m done.

  L.K

  November 4

  Logan K.

  (10th bag in 3 days, Abs. All I do is pee. L.K.)

  Morning, I guess.

  Geez, you’d think if a person is sick enough to be in the hospital they wouldn’t have to do school work. This is going to be one cheerful journal, Abbie. I hope you enjoy it. Here’s the information you’re after, not that you really care or anything. Let’s see… Logan Kemp, age 15. Loves: Rugby, cars, computer gaming. Hates: School, this place, and most of all, my own guts. Yeah — pretty freakin’ cheerful. Always looking on the bright side, that’s me.

  You find a bright side for me to look at and I will, Abbie. I’m supposed to be at rugby practice after school today. Instead, I’m stuck in here for who knows how long. My gut is killing me and nobody can tell me why.