The Book of Us Read online

  Also by Shane Peacock

  Unusual Heroes (2002)

  The Artist and Me (2016)

  Dylan Maples Adventures

  Monster in the Mountains (2003)

  Phantom of Fire (2019)

  The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim Trilogy

  The Dark Missions of Edgar Brim (2016)

  Monster (2018)

  Demon (2019)

  Seven series

  Last Message (2012)

  Double You (2014)

  Separated (2016)

  The Boy Sherlock Holmes series

  Eye of the Crow (2007)

  Death in the Air (2008)

  Vanishing Girl (2009)

  The Secret Fiend (2010)

  The Dragon Turn (2011)

  Becoming Holmes (2014)

  Copyright © 2022 Shane Peacock

  This edition copyright © 2022 DCB, an imprint of Cormorant Books Inc.

  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 1.800.893.5777.

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities, and the Government of Ontario through Ontario Creates, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Culture, and the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program.

  library and archives canada cataloguing in publication

  Title: The book of us / Shane Peacock.

  Names: Peacock, Shane, author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220218269 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220218277 |isbn 9781770866553 (softcover) | isbn 9781770866560 (html)

  Classification: lcc ps8581.e234 b67 2022 | ddc jc813/.54—dc23

  United States Library of Congress Control Number: 9781770866553

  Cover art: Nick Craine

  Interior text design: Tannice Goddard / tannicegdesigns.ca

  Manufactured by Houghton Boston in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in August, 2022.

  Printed using paper from a responsible and sustainable resource, including a mix of virgin fibres and recycled materials.

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  DCB Young Readers

  An imprint of Cormorant Books Inc.

  260 spadina avenue, suite 502, toronto, ontario, m5t 2e4

  www.dcbyoungreaders.com

  www.cormorantbooks.com

  “Everybody worships.

  The only choice we get is what to worship.”

  This Is Water

  For Miranda, who

  was everything to me.

  Contents

  Cover

  Half Title Page

  Also by Shane Peacock

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Big Mistake

  Where to Start

  A Meeting of Mind and Body

  First Dates

  First Trouble

  Home Visit

  Another Home

  Christmas and an Everlasting Love

  What Noah Said

  Descent

  Plateau

  Turning Point

  Two New Friends

  Better Me

  Penultimate

  What Happened Next

  The Answer

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Author’s Land Acknowledgement

  Publisher’s Land Acknowledgement

  Landmarks

  Cover

  Half Title

  Also by Shane Peacock

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  Start of Content

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Land Acknowledgement

  PageList

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  Prologue

  The truth is, I am writing this to impress you.

  Maybe all novels are like that.

  This is my gift to you: a story about two people who are no longer together, because one of them made a big mistake. He will not give her up, though — not ever.

  What follows is what really happened,1 right up until the ending, which is a mystery to me. You will create that part … and I will add it as the last chapter.

  * * *

  1 I had to make up a few minor things, though, since this is, after all, a novel.

  1

  Big Mistake

  Late in the summer, late in the afternoon , late in the game that it seemed he was surely going to win, Noah Greene destroyed everything. It only happened because he was certain that Miranda wasn’t there. No, that isn’t strictly true. It was actually because of other things, things inside him, not just in his head or his heart but deeper, in his soul.

  From the interior of the little portable change room, plastic and hot, he could hear the waves breaking against the shore, the seagulls and children shrieking, and the dull hum of adult conversation, but they were all just distant noises pinging around in another world, an outside reality. He could hear Rosie and Walker, Constance and Bruce, no more than the flip of a Frisbee away, but it was the irresistible words of the young woman who was in there with him that were real. They were penetrating his brain.

  “I like you, you know, a lot.”

  Everyone wanted Lisa Ann Bordeaux. All the guys, that is, or at least most of the guys — the guys who liked girls; and some of the girls wanted her too — the girls who liked girls. It was said she would do things that not many others would do, but not with just anybody. Brown eyes, shaggy blond hair, discriminating in the right way. She was cool. Amazing one-on-one, when she decided you were it.2

  Noah was it that day.

  Ten minutes earlier, he had not even known Lisa Ann was there, anywhere on the beach. It was only supposed to be the six of them.

  “Where’s Mir?” asked Constance.

  Back in those days, Noah always thought her haircut should be short and severe. It was long, though, and luxurious, hanging down past her shoulders in shining black ringlets, a perfect contrast with what she called her “white colonial skin.” He also thought the fact that Constance wore makeup didn’t fit, but she did, lots of it.

  “She said she’d be here at six,” said Noah.

  “5:33:33,” said Bruce, head down at his phone, lisping through his retainer. “Thirty-three minutes and thirty-three seconds after five o’clock, August 27, in the year of Anno Dom —”

  “We get it, Brew,” said Walker. “She’ll be here in a bit less than half.”

  “She can get here whenever she wants,” said Constance. “You guys can’t tell her what to do.” She looked at Noah. “‘Boyfriend’ doesn’t mean ‘master.’”

  Walker frowned and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Uh, not saying any of that, Connie.”

  “Constance! Stop calling me that … Walkie!”

  They spread their beach towels out on the sand. Rosie had a hamper full of food. She had volunteered to bring the whole dinner.

  “I made some of your favorites, Noah.”

  He could never figure out how she knew what he liked. He must have let it slip some time and she had memorized it, seized on it like the combination for her lock.

  Rosie set the butter tarts out first, laying them down on her big blue towel beside what she called her “stumpy legs,” which were bulging as she knelt to unload the hamper. She wore her cut-offs long, nearly halfway down her thighs.

  “Thanks,” said Noah, looking away from her for a change room. He tossed his backpack down and dug around in it. “Forgot to wear my swimsuit underneath.”

  Bruce had worn his to the beach. It was a loud, stars-and-stripes item at least a size and an era too snug, and he hadn’t bothered to wear pants over top. His body was ninety-nine percent dark skin and one percent swimsuit. But the others were just now wriggling out of their clothes. Walker Jones was standing to take down his jeans and reveal his knee-length, one-color orange Nike-swooped suit that he had carefully chosen at the best store for the beach in town. Constance lay down and emerged out of her black track pants in her gray one-piece, pulling it down at the crotch and the back to make sure nothing was exposed. Noah stood up and looked around. The portable change rooms were bright blue and spaced on the beach about a hundred strides apart, all unisex.

  Rosie soon had all the food out and stood up too, the shortest of the group. She looked around. Noah was maybe three feet from her. She could reach out and touch him. She pulled off her tee, doing that thing the attractive girls do when they cross their arms at the front and pull upward. Rosie didn’t count herself as attractive, so it felt like an act. She didn’t have the balls to shake her hair when she unveiled her suit top. There wasn’t much to her hair anyway, dark brown and in a ponytail. Her eyes caught Noah looking around. He wasn’t noticing her. She took off her jeans, wondering if he’d see that, sliding them down with a wiggle, but not bold enough to turn around to do it, butt to the fore.

  “Are you sure you want that one?” Rosie’s mother had asked her when she’d purchased her swimsuit a few months ago. “It’s kind of small.”

  “And kind of red,” said her little sister. “It will look like a light on the beach, beckoning the boys.”

  Rosie had rolled her eyes at her, but she’d bought the suit. It actually wasn’t very revealing, not that she thought she had a lot to reveal. It was just that it wasn’t quite her style. Whatever her style was. She promised herself she wouldn’t be self-conscious in it, but she was, the instant she was exposed. That was how she felt. Exposed.3

  Noah was turned the other way. He’d spotted the closest change room and from where he was standing could tell that it was unoccupied, the image of the green traffic light evident in the handle you slid across once you were inside.

  Rosie could feel Walker’s eyes on her, and Bruce’s too. She wasn’t sure if their attention4 was a compliment or not. Boys got weird about bikinis. You would think they’d never seen a girl in the flesh before, or at least in a lot of flesh. Noah wasn’t weird about it, at least, not about her standing there in one, exposed. That was understandable, though. He had Miranda. Just months ago, it was all different. He hadn’t seemed like he was in her league. But then, what boy is, really? Rosie had known something most girls didn’t, though. Noah Greene had always been in Miranda’s league. He was in all of their leagues. She could have told anyone that.

  “I’m gonna change,” he said, walking toward the blue cubicle in the hot sand with his bathing suit in hand, which Rosie had known was loose-fitting but ti
ght in the right places, perfect on him … and red. He didn’t turn back to her at all when he said it, didn’t turn his brown eyes on her or sweep back his longish, light brown hair the way he always did when he looked at you and started a conversation. He did pull off his shirt, though, as he walked. There was something about boys’ torsos, certain boys, that made Rosie look.

  So, it was just the five of them there at first. The spring on the change room door creaked, Noah stepped inside and the door slammed behind him, and he slid the image of the red light into place. Occupied.

  “No rude comments about the girls or I’ll brain you,” said Constance, settling onto her blanket, not even glancing at Walker when she said it.

  “How about I put on your sunscreen, Connie?”

  “I’d rather ask Heinrich Himmler.”

  “Nazi figure,” said Bruce. “Second World War; Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, the SS, and the Geheime Staatspolizei, known as the Gestapo; architect of the final solution, destruction of the Jewish people; perhaps more ruthless than his leader, DER Führer, Adolf Hitler, father’s original name Schicklgruber, erstwhile crappy painter, racist, good speaker. Himmler began as a chicken farmer and —”

  “I think we get the picture, Brew. She’d prefer that I didn’t apply the sunscreen.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Rosie.

  Walker looked the other way, across the beach. He was staring again, but it was more intense than when he had glanced at Rosie. Miranda was coming and he had spotted her a mile away. Constance looked up too. Rosie turned. Miranda was like that. People always noticed her arrival. All the girls knew she deserved it too. She was gliding toward them in her quiet way, wearing a yellow sarong wrap over her suit, a book in hand, a thick one, of course.5 All four watched her approach.

  None of them saw Lisa Ann Bordeaux.

  The spring on the change room door magically made no sound and neither did it slam as she let it close. In a breath, Lisa Ann was in there with Miranda Owens’ boyfriend. That status was a big part of his attractiveness, that and the fact that Noah Greene had been revealed over these last few months to be exactly what Rosie Gonzalez had always known he was.

  The change room, that place where you took off your clothes, was barely big enough for one person.

  “Hi,” was all Lisa Ann said to him at first, but there was a world of meaning in that word.

  Miranda had begun to run when she saw her friends, somehow negotiating the sand as if it were a vulcanized track. She could fly. She seemed to get to them in no time. Three hugs and a nod at Walker, the thud of her book down onto her blanket, and she wanted to know about Noah.

  “Where is he?” she asked with a smile, fixing her short, strawberry blond hair. Rosie was always amazed at how sensible, humble, and attractive she was, all at once. It seemed impossible. Miranda wasn’t perfect. Her nose was a little too long, her figure probably too boyish, maybe a bit taller than many girls wanted to be, but there was something about her that drew you to her and shut up all the boys the instant she was nearby. It was some sort of charisma. It was in her sparkling, pale blue eyes, and in the way she moved, and it came from somewhere inside her. Miranda popped her sunglasses up, undid her sarong in one motion, letting it fall, and put her hands on her waist.