Downside Up Read online

  ALSO BY RICHARD SCRIMGER

  Viminy Crowe’s Comic Book (with Marthe Jocelyn)

  Ink Me

  The Wolf and Me

  Zomboy

  Me & Death

  Into the Ravine

  From Charlie’s Point of View

  The Boy from Earth

  Noses Are Red

  A Nose for Adventure

  The Nose from Jupiter

  Of Mice and Nutcrackers

  The Way to Schenectady

  Text copyright © 2016 by Richard Scrimger

  Tundra Books, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Scrimger, Richard, 1957-, author

  Downside up / Richard Scrimger.

  ISBN 978-1-77049-845-7 (bound)

  I. Title.

  PS8587.C745D69 2016 jC813′.54 C2015-905752-3

  Published simultaneously in the United States of America by Tundra Books of Northern New York, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, a Penguin Random House Company

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015954161

  Edited by Tara Walker and Lara Hinchberger

  eBook design adapted from printed book design by Kelly Hill

  Cover illustration © 2016 by Matt Forsythe

  www.​penguinrandomhouse.​ca

  Ebook ISBN 9781770498440

  v4.1

  a

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Richard Scrimger

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  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

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To my daughter Imogen, who helped me plot this one out. I was typing, she was jumping on the bed.

  Love is strong as death

  Song of Solomon

  It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been looking down. I think about that sometimes, what it means. Down. I was looking down, all right.

  I walked out of school bouncing Casey’s old tennis ball, like usual. Until Lance Levy kicked it out of my hand and I ran after it.

  “Yesss!” Lance called. “See that? See the way I kicked Berdit’s stupid tennis ball right out of his hand? Yesssssss!”

  His voice chased me across the playground, then passed me, fading into the distance as Lance raced away down the street. He was the fastest kid in sixth grade. Yesss he was.

  I was holding onto the ball when I came up to Velma Dudding, who was on the sidewalk in front of the school. I thought about saying hi to her. Or bye. Or see you tomorrow. But I didn’t. Her mom drove up and Velma slipped into the front seat of the SUV. I walked on.

  Izzy was waiting for me at the top of Sorauren Park.

  “Hey, Fred,” she said.

  “Hey.”

  Now that I was closer to home I was bouncing the ball and catching it again.

  “I changed my screen saver. Wanna see it?” said Izzy.

  “Nah.”

  My eyes were on the ground. Cracked pavement. Weeds. Ants. Dirt. The tennis ball made a flat, hollow sound when it bounced.

  “Come on, take a look. Harry has a new hat.”

  “Nah.”

  She’s my big sister. Isabel. We both go to Sir John A. Macdonald Public School. She’s in eighth grade, two years ahead of me. We cut across the bottom of Sorauren Park, crossed Wabash Avenue and headed down toward Wright Avenue. I bounced my ball off the paved path and caught it. Off the grass. Caught it again.

  Izzy walked ahead of me. Her runners were broken at the back. The red heels flapped up and down. They looked like little mouths, opening and closing.

  “Race you home, Fred!” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Race you! Come on. From here to the back door. Ready…set…go.”

  I gave up after a few steps. She stopped, turned back for me.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Give me your backpack. Let’s keep racing.”

  She held out her hand.

  “Nah,” I said.

  “Fred! This sad stuff is getting lame. Don’t keep being a dope.”

  She grabbed my arm and pulled. I almost fell.

  “Stop it,” I said.

  “Fine, be miserable!” She took off. I kept walking and bouncing the ball. I knew I was being an idiot. I didn’t want to feel this way, but I couldn’t help it. You can’t help how you feel. I kept my head down.

  The tennis ball took a funny bounce off bumpy ground. I ran after it. The ball stayed ahead of me, bouncing off garbage, stones, more bumps. It bounced over to a drain and disappeared.

  No.

  I didn’t say anything, but that’s what I was shouting inside. No. No. No, no, no. I went down on my knees. The drain was your regular city sewer grate—square with rusty metal bars. There was a wider space between the end and the first crossbar. That’s where Casey’s ball had gone. Usually a tennis ball wouldn’t fit down a sewer grate, but his was bald from him chewing on it, smaller than a normal ball.

  Pitch-dark in the drain. Pitch is tar, did you know? But tar-dark doesn’t sound right. Anyway, it was really dark down there—and then a light flashed. Just a quick on-off, like your mom checking on you at night, opening and closing your door. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been looking down. In that second of light, I saw Casey’s ball, sitting on a concrete floor, near a puddle. I stared after the light went out. Like staring would bring the ball back to me. My heart was going bump in my chest.

  —

  Casey’s my dog. Sorry—was. He was my dog. He died during March break. That was two months ago. I came downstairs for breakfast and he was lying on the floor by the front door. We took him to the animal hospital on Roncesvalles Avenue, and the vet told us his heart had given out. I wanted to know why.

  The vet shrugged. “They just do sometimes,” she said.

  Mom put her hand on my shoulder. “Sorry, Fred,” she said. “So sorry.”

  The vet said she’d take care of Casey.

  “Take care of him?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “Take care of him. He’s dead. You said so. How are
you going to take care of him? Will you make him better? Will you cure him? Get him a new heart?”

  The vet looked away.

  “Fred.” Mom sounded shocked. “This isn’t like you.”

  I shook off her arm. “So you won’t cure him. How will you take care of my dog, then? My dead dog. Will you bury him?”

  I was crying now. The vet shook her head. She still wouldn’t look at me.

  “Time to go, honey,” said Mom. She asked if I wanted to go for ice cream on the way home, which she usually doesn’t. I said no.

  I figured that when the vet said taking care of she meant burning.

  —

  Have you ever been sad? So sad you didn’t want to talk to anyone. Or eat? Or get out of bed? That’s how sad I was. Days and days. Mom made sure I got out of bed, and ate, and went to school. But I didn’t talk much, after yelling at the vet that time. Lisa Wu started calling me Mouse—’cause I was quiet as a mouse, right? It was a joke. Hey, Mouse, how’s it going? Hey, Mouse, look, we got the same kind of sandwiches for lunch. You want to play, Mouse? Lisa is a loudmouth, so I guess everyone is a mouse next to her. Dr. Nussbaum said it was okay not to talk very much. He said I’d talk when I felt like it.

  —

  A streetcar rumbled along Roncesvalles, a couple of blocks away. I kept looking down through the sewer grating. The weird light flashed again. Like a reminder. Casey’s ball was still there.

  You’d like Casey. He’s a medium-sized black-and-brown guy who likes to jump and always looks like he’s smiling. He’s a good runner too. You should see him go. Sorry, was. He was a good runner. Was. He was gone, and now his ball was gone too. I wanted to get it back. But the grating was too heavy for me to lift by myself.

  “You want a lever,” said a voice from behind me. I turned. A teenager smiled at me. “A hockey stick or something to lift off the top. Usually these kind of sewers are just for storm overflow, but this one goes all the way down to the main line. There’s steps and everything. You can climb down. I’ve done it.”

  I’d never seen this girl before. Where’d she come from? She had a long face and a nose that curved to one side. Her hair was white, like cake frosting. She put up one hand to scrunch it around.

  “Do you have a hockey stick?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Well, then, there you go.”

  I scrambled to my feet and ran home.

  I wanted to go right back to the vacant lot, but I couldn’t. Mom marched me to the piano.

  “Practice, young man,” she said. “Fifteen minutes, starting now. You have a lesson in half an hour, and you’ve hardly practiced all week. At least do your scales. Get your mind off things.”

  “Yeah, things,” said Izzy. She was across the hall in the living room, watching TV and texting. “Things like dead dogs,” she said.

  “Isabel!”

  “I’m just saying.” Izzy turned up the volume on her TV show.

  —

  I sat on the piano bench and put out my piano fingers. Curved, like claws. Miss Lea said this was the only way to play the piano. I found a D and went up the scale, hunting the right notes. White, white, black, white, white, white, black, white. And down. Up and down. I thought about Casey chasing his ball across the backyard, struggling to keep hold of it as I pulled it out of his mouth. You’d like Casey. He’s a good dog. Sorry, was.

  Up and down.

  —

  I didn’t go to my piano lesson. I took my hockey stick from under the back porch and ran to Sorauren Park. No one was there. I found the storm drain and slid the stick blade between the narrow slots. I couldn’t lever the grate up, so I rolled a big rock over and leaned the stick back against the rock. Now I had a teeter-totter with the rock in the middle. I pushed down on the butt end of the stick, and the blade end lifted the metal grating. I kept pushing down until the grating came right out of the drain and flipped over. It made a noise like a gong. Clang-ang-ang-ang.

  Okay then.

  I took off my backpack with my music book in it, twisted round so I was on my hands and knees, and slid myself into the sewer drain. I didn’t decide to do this, any more than I decided to miss my music lesson. It was like I was acting on orders. I had to do it.

  My feet found the metal rungs of the ladder on the wall, and I started down. The smell was water and mud. I lowered myself until I ran out of rungs. I was used to the dimness by now. Peering down through my legs, I could see Casey’s ball, just a jump away. I let go and dropped to the floor. Only I didn’t. Didn’t land, I mean. I kept expecting to hit bottom, and I kept dropping. It was like when you are almost asleep and your legs fall off the world, and you wake up with a start. Only I kept falling. Around me was darkness. Seemed like I was falling fast. I was afraid to reach out in case I hit the side of the sewer and burned my hand.

  I thought, Am I dreaming?

  I thought, Am I crazy?

  And kept falling.

  I got used to it. You can get used to anything. I kept thinking I’d land, and I didn’t and didn’t and didn’t, so I stopped expecting it. I saw another flash of light below me, like the kind I saw before. On-off. Just when I was starting to wonder if I would actually fall forever, I landed with a bump that shook my brains like dice. My knees telescoped up to my chin. I rolled over and over and lay still and thought, well, that wasn’t so bad. Considering I’d fallen for who knew how many thousand miles, not so bad at all.

  First thing I saw was Casey’s ball, inches from my face. I grabbed it and squeezed. The feel of the thin fuzz and bald rubber brought me back to reality. I sat up and looked around. I was sitting on the floor of the sewer. Above my head was the metal ladder I’d come down, and at the top of that was a square hole showing blue sky—the sewer drain opening at the bottom of Sorauren Park. I hadn’t fallen thousands of miles after all. More like a few feet. Weird or what? The whole falling thing could only have taken a second. I stood, put the ball in my pocket and reached for the lowest rung of the ladder.

  I saw another flash, like the kind I’d been seeing, only this one was overhead, so I saw it looking up. Sun glinting off an airplane or something.

  Climbing was no fun. I felt light-headed and pukey. Seriously pukey. The ride where the teacups whirl around does this to me too. Sweat on my forehead and hands. I took deep breaths because that sometimes helps. Popped my head over the rim of the sewer, and promptly threw up. Like pushing a button. No heaving and gasping, just blatch! I held tight to the top rung of the ladder while everything inside me came out.

  I was upside down.

  I thought I was climbing up out of the sewer, but it turned out I was climbing down to ground level. I had my head out of, well, the ceiling of the world.

  That doesn’t sound right—let me try again. You know the cartoon where they fall right through the world and end up in Australia or someplace, walking around upside down? Like that. Exactly like that.

  I was upside down. No, that’s not right. The world was upside down. Which is why I’d felt so pukey on the ladder. Why I blatched.

  This wasn’t Australia or China, like in the cartoons. It was my neighborhood. I recognized everything. The drain. The park between Wabash and Wright. The houses, the fences, the street signs. Everything just as I remembered it, except upside down.

  I wasn’t crazy—just sick. Something wrong with my eyes, my brain. That’s why I felt like I was falling forever.

  Still, it did look super weird.

  My puddle of puke lay on the ground beside the sewer drain. I let go of the metal ladder for a second, worried that I might float away. I didn’t. Gravity worked. I just had to get used to everything looking wrong.

  Okay then.

  I climbed slowly out of the drain, feeling lighter than normal, almost floating. I heard screeching and looked down—looked up, that is. I looked into the sky. Seagulls. I saw their white bellies, yellow feet. I couldn’t understand. I was upside down and right side up too. Right side down.

  The w
orld spun. I vomited again, and again my sick fell upward to the ground. The world spun some more. I closed my eyes and put my hands over my ears.

  Was I dreaming?

  But you don’t throw up in dreams. You don’t smell how bad it is, don’t feel the burning on the inside of your throat and nose. So this was not a dream. I really was sick. I fell and hurt my head, and now I was sick. Home, I thought. Must get home. I walked carefully, eyes level, afraid to look down or up. My steps were slow; my feet taking a long time to get down to the pavement.

  Home. I went right to my room and lay on my bed. The ceiling below me spun around and around. I closed my eyes.

  “Freddie?” said Izzy.

  I squinted. She stood in the doorway.

  “What are you doing here?” she said. “I saw you outside a minute ago.”

  I moaned.

  “You sick? Aw, poor baby brother.”

  Usually Izzy made fun of me, but she sounded sort of serious here. Jokey, but she meant it.

  “You don’t look too good and that’s a fact,” she said. “Do you have a headache? Do you want me to bring you a cold cloth or something?”

  Also, she hadn’t said anything about me not going to my piano lesson. Also, she was calling me Freddie. Everybody calls me Fred, always has. Weird.

  I shook my head, no.

  “Okay, I’ll go away. Hey, I like your shirt,” she said. “Were you wearing that before or did you change just now? I don’t think I’ve seen it. It’s cool.”

  I was wearing my blue sweatshirt. I’ve had it forever. Since last year. I wore it to school today. I wear it a lot. Izzy has seen it a hundred times. A thousand.

  “And look who’s come to see you, Freddie!” she said. “Maybe he’ll make you feel better, hey, boy?”

  She held the door open so he could come in.

  Casey.

  I was out of the bed in a flash, falling forward, tripping across the floor to wrap my arms around him. My dog. He barked, just once, quietly, like he does. He stayed still, letting me hold him. I was on my knees with my arms around him. I had my head buried in his soft, dark fur. I could feel his warmth, feel him panting, feel him.

  Casey.

  It was him, all right. My dog. The thing I missed as much as I’d ever missed anything. More. He licked me and I could feel his rough tongue and smell his dog breath. It was just like all the other times he had licked me. Just like.