Review, Revision, Edit and Update
Thankfully, there was only a modest amount of revision to be done, completed with the addition of detail for clarity of the setting and the removal of a few typographical errors.
Joey's Rewind
Sixteen year old Joey Tucker didn’t really think the people at the Beaufort Estate were weird. He said that to his friend Steven for no reason. It just came out of his mouth without thinking. He had watched them all carefully. Just like he did at Christmas times when there were relatives there he didn’t know. He guessed what was strange about them was that he didn’t sense any meanness in any of them. Not even Digby, the butler. He really had known Digby’s name. He just didn’t want Steven to think he was paying attention to any of them. But he was. If anyone was weird it was Digby. He was pretty buttoned up but real nice. He treated Joey like a real grown up. Seems he and the Housekeeper, Martha - she didn’t like being called Mrs. Haverstock - had a thing. They were getting married! At their age! Joey thought they looked old enough to be his grandparents.
The only person Joey knew, but only a little bit, was Brigitte Smithson from across the street. He saw her frequently, waved and they would sometimes talk. He liked to call her Motorcycle Brigitte because she rode a pretty sweet motorcycle. Didn’t seem to have any regular guys. She was the one that hooked him up with the cleaning job that she had done for years. Now she was too busy with some different job with his new boss. She suggested him to Mrs. Beaufort and to Digby. Good thing his mom had just cut his hair. He never would have got that job with the dreads. After the argument with this mom and dad about his hair and his earrings and his tatts, he took out his earrings. When he went to the interview he wore his long sleeved shirt and long pants to cover them up. He was trying to look presentable. His mom said ‘It’s not perfect, but you look like a respectable young man rather than a hoodlum.’
There was something else that seemed strange to Joey. Mrs. Beaufort lived all by herself but had four people working for her. With him it would be five people. She didn’t have any kids, her husband was dead and her sister lived in Hartley. Joey’s family lived in a two bedroom bungalow. Both his mom and dad worked and he had to do most of the housework and yard work. Her sister Dez was pretty rad though. She just talked to him like a human being. She didn’t ask all kinds of nerdy questions like ‘How’s school going in this pandemic?’ ‘Do you like computer school or classroom school?’ Or the worst one ‘Do you have a girlfriend?’
But that wasn’t the strangest. It was the ghost. A little girl? On a swing? He had asked what kinds of things she did. Did she walk at night? Make strange things happen? What time of day or night did she show up? If he was going to do the cleaning upstairs where this ghost Sarah was, then he told them that he had a right to know. The night he was invited and stayed for supper with them, he asked right out about this ‘ghost’. They all started to talk at once. Martha had only seen her once, but knew that Sarah would set the dining room table sometimes. Dez saw her twice on the same evening. A figure standing upstairs in the living room window when she was driving in to the Estate. Dez assumed it was the little girl ghost. The second time, Dez saw her stood inside at the the same living room window. The ghost was on the swing outside on the big tree at the front. Her boyfriend, Matt, was there but only saw the rope scars on the tree. Brigitte had never seen her but had heard her. She said she would talk to Sarah sometimes when she was cleaning. Digby didn’t try to get in on all the over-talking, but told Joey later on that he had ‘known’ Sarah for many years. He had first seen her when he was just starting to work at the Beaufort Estate. Even Miss Emelina - that’s what he was told to call Mrs. Beaufort - saw Sarah and together they moved all the furniture around. Cook - Joey told his friend, Steven, she put on a real good spread - didn’t say a word.
Joey decided that he would like working with all these people. The evening that Joey stayed for supper, Brigitte drove him home on her motorcycle. It was a great night for a ride. Clear. Full moon. On that same bright night, Brigitte said something Joey thought strange. Out of the moonlit dark with the motorcycle rumbling, Brigitte said she would introduce him to Sarah soon. “She needs to know that you’re ok.”
“That’s what getting to know someone is about. Judging them.”
~ Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts
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