After that day, visiting Tom at the centre after school is my routine. Sometimes I bring him frozen yogurt, sometimes a burger. Whatever he texts that he wants, I bring it. Sometimes he doesn’t want to see me at all, but I still come by.
Winter turns into spring. I help Ed at the house. June comes around. I graduate. Tom starts talking about online business programs that don’t cost as much as university. He crunches numbers and rattles off business names. Sometimes I think he’s going a bit bonkers in there, like a rat in a cage. Other times, I seriously envy him. I still have no clue what I’ll be doing come September but I’m waiting to hear back from Habitat for Humanity, so that’s something.
One early July day, Tom gets all serious and says, “I need to ask you to do something.”
“Okay.”
“So you know how I’ll be going home in a few weeks?” he asks. “There’s some stuff in my room I don’t want.”
“Okayyy . . .” I say, kind of confused. Why not deal with that later?
“Remember when I told you I’m glad I’m not the guy I used to be?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, like, I’m really glad.”
“What are you getting at?”
“It’s time to kill the Worm, man.”
“Huh?”
“Me and some of the people here were talking the other night at our group meeting. We’re going to have this big bonfire. Say goodbye to some stuff. Kill off the parts of us we don’t need anymore.”
“What stuff do you need?”
“My skateboard for one thing.” He looks more determined than I’ve ever seen before. “The Worm dies Friday, and you’re going to help me kill him. Get ready.”
This gets to me. I’m past tears in all this, but it makes me sad anyway. The Worm was my best friend.
“That’s cool,” I say. “Make me a list.”
Ed’s out front, clipping the hedges back, when I pull into the driveway.
“I’m on a mission,” I tell him.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Tom wants me to bring some of his old stuff down to the rehab centre for a bonfire.”
“A what?”
“It’s a therapy thing.” I don’t want to tell Ed that we’re killing off Worm.
“All right. Door’s open.”
He goes back to shearing the hedges around the old house. There’s a lot that I want to tell him — that he’s been a better dad to me than my own, that he’s the guy who taught me to use a hammer, to use my hands and my heart. But it seems cheesy to say it.
Tom’s room has an eerie feel to it. There’s a musty scent like the door had been closed all this time, and I wonder what it has been like for his family to live with this kind of emptiness.
I get out Tom’s gym bag and fill it with soccer cleats, basketball shoes and a baseball glove. There’s the yearbook from grade ten that has a bunch of Worm references and a whole page that Ozzie drew a big long worm on. Tom’ll probably want to at least rip the page out. His skateboard is stashed against the wall and I grab it, shoving it under my arm. I heave it all down the stairs and into the Jeep.
Killing off Worm is really getting to me. It’s like I don’t want to see him go because we have a lot of great memories, but I also understand that Tom needs to do this. Maybe I need to, too. The old Marcus isn’t going anywhere, either. That guy’s doomed. The more I think about what we went through together, the more I see that I have to do exactly what Tom is doing. Out with the old. Make room for the new.
On my way home, I pull over in front of the Toronto Dominion Bank and go in. The branch manager comes right up to me and shakes my hand.
“Hey, Marcus,” he says. “What can I do you for?”
He laughs. I guess he thinks he’s funny.
“I need a favour,” I tell him.
“Sure thing.”
Minutes later, he fobs us into a room upstairs. He produces a little key to my family’s safety deposit box. I glance at my grandmother’s diamonds, and for just a second, it makes me sad that such shiny jewels live in this dark little tomb.
I take what I need.
“Thanks, man,” I tell the branch manager.
“Any time,” he says. “Say hi to your dad.”