Tom Finder
Tom Finder
Tom Finder
Martine Leavitt
Red Deer Press
Copyright © 2003 Martine Leavitt
Published in the United States in 2003
Epub edition copyright © June 2011
5 4 3 2 1
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Red Deer Press
A Fitzhenry and Whiteside Company
195 Allstate Parkway
Markham, ON, Canada, L3R 4T8
www.reddeerpress.com
Credits
Edited for the Press by Peter Carver
Cover design by Duncan Campbell
Text design by Dennis Johnson
Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens for Red Deer Press
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge with thanks the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF).
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Leavitt, Martine, 1953â
Tom Finder
ISBN 0-88995-262-0
I. Title. II. Series.
PS8573.E323T65 2003Â Â Â Â Â Â Â jC813'.6Â Â Â Â Â Â Â C2002-910278-2
PZ7.L3217To 2003
My sincere thanks goes to the Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, both of which provided financial assistance so I could write this novel. I would also like to thank these people for sharing their wisdom: Ross McInnes and the people at StreetTeams; Mickey at Avenue 15 Shelter for Homeless Youth; Marie and the kids on the Streetlight bus; Colin at Exit Community Outreach; and Jesse at WISH. Thanks also to Kerri Walters, Shawna Cordara, Sarah Bates, Valerie Battrum, and Dr. Keith Spackman for timely help.
A special thank you to Peter Carver, my most excellent editor.
All chapter headings are quoted from
Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute),
music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Emmanuel Schikaneder, as translated by Susan Webb in
The Metropolitan Opera Book of Mozart Operas,
executive edition (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).
“Words! Theywl move things you know
theywl do things. Theywl fetch.”
â from
Riddley Walker
by Russell Hoban,
Summit Books, New York, 1980
For my Greg
T
HIS BOOK BELONGS TO
T
OM
F
INDER
Contents
Other books by Martine Leavitt
Where am I? Is it my imagination that I am still alive?
â Act 1, scene 1
Tom had forgotten who he was.
Something had happened to him, but that was the first thing he forgot. He remembered he had started walking because he couldn't run anymore. His back and rear end hurt all the way through to his stomach.
He forgot if he had a friend as he walked down the steep hill. As the streets became busier he forgot if he'd ever passed Tadpoles, and if he'd ever known what you say to a girl when you like her. By the time the shops began, he forgot what his mark was on his last spelling test, and if he knew what it felt like to get punched in the face, and what his mother looked like. By the time the shops were shadowed by the high downtown towers, he'd forgotten his last name.
No one asked him his name anyway, or looked at him.
He was a little shaky on his feet. Once he bumped into someone.
“Loser,” the person said without looking at him. It was the first thing in the world anyone had ever said to him as far as he knew. He thought it was strange that the person who said it hadn't looked at him.
Tom began to think he was invisible.
He didn't mind. Invisible was good. Maybe if you were invisible, gravity had less effect on you. Tom did feel lighter, but that could have been because he hadn't eaten in a while. He'd forgotten when he'd last eaten, and what it was.
Tom hadn't forgotten his fear of gravity. Or maybe it was new, the newest thing about him since he forgot everything. It was a sensible thing to be afraid of, he thought. Gravity held you down. Sometimes it was so heavy on you that even though you struggled you couldn't get up. He remembered that. He remembered that no matter how hard you try, gravity wins.
He said to himself,
Tom, Tom, Tom
as he walked, so he wouldn't forget. He thought that if he forgot that his first name was Tom, he might be invisible even to himself.
Help! Help! Or else I am lost.
â Act 1, scene 1
The people in the city core thinned out as dusk came on. The streets echoed. They smelled of tar and fries and spilled pop. The smells made his mouth fill up with spit. Tom walked until he came to a paved bike path lined with trees. He had forgotten what day it wasâwhat month it was, for that matter. It was early summer, probably. The leaves on the trees were still a new green. There were people jogging and walking and in-line skating on the path. There were people pushing their babies in strollers. He wondered where they were all going and decided to follow the bike path. He checked his pockets. No money. Probably lost it, like he'd lost his house and his memory.
Loser.
He came to a good place, a river, a mall lit up, a Hard Rock café with people laughing and eating on the balcony. There were geese on the water with their yellow-green babies. He sat on a patch of grass and watched them a long time. He wondered what to do next. There didn't seem to be any next when you didn't have a past. He drew his knees to his chest and rested his elbows on them. He was hungry, and a bit lonely. After a while a woman came out of a nearby condominium with another woman. They glanced at Tom. Only then did Tom realize his patch of grass was a small lawn.
“Why these people gravitate to the best parts of town, I'll never understand,” one woman said.
Gravitate.
The massive skyscrapers must have brought him here. He still remembered that the force of gravitational attraction depends on mass: the greater the mass of the two objects, the greater the force pulling them together. Wow. Maybe he was good in science at school.
Tom moved away from the tiny lawn.
He couldn't remember what was in his backpackâmaybe a sandwich or a chocolate bar. He looked in. All there was, besides a paperclip and a
YOU'RE NICE
candy, was a coil notebook.
Tom studied the candy for a long time before he ate it. He hoped it was true, that he was nice, but he couldn't remember.
The notebook could have been a school notebook, but only one page had been written on. The notes were about a guy named Mozart. He didn't remember making the notes.
Johannes Chrystostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart
â Wolfgang Amadeus for short
â genius musishan, cumposer
â played for the Emperor at age 5, Emperor called him “little magishan”
Tom studied the notes as if they were a map back to somewhere. Strange that in the forgetting he'd remembered how to spell. MâAâGâIâCâIâAâN.
He closed the book and looked in the pack again.
No pen. He thought he'd like to write his nameâTom, Tom, Tomâjust in case. It might be good to write things down about himself in case he started forgetting again, but no pen. He must have been one of those disorganized students.
“Tom, why aren't you working on your assignment?”
“I don't have a pen, sir.”
Yeah. Maybe he'd write that down, too, when he had a pen. Maybe that was a memory.
He crossed the bridge, away from the mall and the condominiums. Across the bridge was a park. He made it to a bench by the river before his knees gave up. He supposed he should go to the police, tell them he had amnesia or whatever it was, but he felt safe as long as he was invisible. Going to the police would definitely make him visible. Maybe he'd go tomorrow.
He watched the river running. He lay down and positioned his backpack under his head. He thought he would close his eyes for a minute. He didn't mean to sleep.
Tom woke from the cold in the night, but he didn't move or open his eyes. He lay still and listened to the river. As long as he could feel the notebook under his head, he felt safe. It was a clue to remembering who he was. He went back to sleep.
The next time he woke up, it was light out and he could hear moaning. The moaning stopped, but Tom's blood was electric. He lay still. When the moaning started again, he sat up. The bench and the river and the park were inside a cloud of fog.
More moaning.
Tom stood. He took a few steps, following the sound until he saw someone standing on the bank by the river. He went closer. It was a big man with black and silver braids and a big, brown, pitted face. He wore a fringed leather jacket with beads on the fringes which clicked as he rocked from side to side. Now the moaning sounded like it might be a plea for help.