The Guardians

their reactions, as the coach poked his head around the corner and told us to hustle out there, that holding on to the lead up our asses wasn't going to help us beat the Sugar Kings on the weekend. But even as he said this—in the same way he would have at any other evening practice—I thought his eyes lingered on us for a moment. An unreadable expression contained only in the look itself, as the rest of his face was kindly as usual. Yet in his eyes there was sadness, or distress, something he couldn't wholy contain. Or maybe something he wanted us to see. A feeling he shared. Was protecting us from.

Up in Ben's room, I learned that I wasn't the only one to have heard Heather Langham rumours. On the bus rides home from school, in our kitchens, whispered between our parents, we heard versions of a story—or pieces of a handful of stories—beginning to circulate around town.

First, there was Miss Langham running off with a student.

Nobody had seen Brad Wickenheiser today, had they? There was an absurd but persistent rumour that he'd done it with Mrs. Avery, the vice-principal, on a school trip to see Othello in Stratford. And he was in Heather's grade twelve music class. French horn. (French horny, as he caled it, idioticaly, to the girls on either side of him.) According to Randy's source, Brad Wickenheiser and Miss Langham were doing it right now out at the Swiss Cottage Motel on the edge of town. He was in love with her. But she was just in it for the sex with a young stud. I remember that phrase in particular: young stud. The way it made me uncomfortable, and a little jealous, like standing in the showers with the older boys after a game.

'Realy?' I asked when Randy was done with his breathless teling. 'Really?'

'Bulshit,' Carl said.

'It's what I heard.'

'Carl's right,' I said. 'Brad Wickenheiser? No way. He's a moron.'

'She's not screwing his brain, Trev.'

'Stil. I'm not buying it.'

'Neither am I. And I'l tel you why,' Carl said, jabbing a finger into Randy's chest. 'It's bulshit because it's my bulshit. Told Andy Pucinik in gym. Born-again Jesus Saves wanker. I knew he'd like it.'

Then Carl told his own story, a more fanciful version of my father's dinner-table suggestion that Miss Langham had simply left town. But this time it wasn't her tiring of Grimshaw that prompted her to take off without warning— it was an identical twin sister. A Langham girl just as beautiful as Heather, but without the winning manners. The bad Heather.

'Aha!' Randy said. 'Maybe it's the twin who's banging Brad Wickenheiser at the Swiss Cottage.'

And then came the horror story. Al the more horrific for being the most believable. And for me being the one to tel it.

An anonymous tip had been caled in to the police. Male, gravel-voiced. Teling the cops he'd had 'some kinda fun' the night before, taunting them to go see 'where that bitch used to sleep.' When they got to the nurses' residence the police found sticky boot prints on the carpet outside Heather's room. They kicked the door down.

Inside, wals sprayed with blood. Obscene messages fingerpainted in gore over her Leonard Bernstein and Mozart posters. But no body. Only a necklace laid over her pilow, the heart-shaped locket we had seen her wear in class some days, and wondered whose image might be contained within, impossibly wishing it might be ours.

According to this version, her murderer was a mysterious lover-turned-stalker, an attractive sociopath who gave her the locket (he gave all his girlfriends lockets).

She had come to Grimshaw after he started to show signs of being unstable. But he'd found her.

It was only when I finished that we noticed the snow. The first squal of the season dropping heavy flakes over town, whitening and silencing.

'That's not it.'

Ben's voice surprised us. For the past while, it seemed like he wasn't even listening, and we had come to nearly forget he was here. But now we were al looking at him. Watching his head slowly shake from side to side.

'It didn't happen that way,' he said. 'Or not exactly that way.'

'How would you know?'

'Because when I saw her, she was alive.'

That's when we al went ape shit. Demanding to know why he hadn't told us this sooner, how he could know anything from a dream.

'You never said it was Heather when you told me in music class,' I said.

'I didn't know then.'

'When I know something, I know it.'

'I'm happy for you, Trev.'

'Okay. Back up. This monster—'

'I never caled it that.'

'Fine. This not-a-tree-but-looks-like-one has someone in its arms. Heather. And she's trying to get away.'

'I just said I could tel she was alive.'

'For fuck's sake,' Carl said.

'I'l second that,' Randy said.