* * *
Sleepy Lake Elementary Middle School sat on a grassy plain a few miles off Sleepy Lake, the town’s most popular water body. The school’s facilities included elementary and middle school classrooms situated in three massive architectural masterpieces with wide corridors, ceiling-hugging windows and unhindered illumination. The elementary and middle school classrooms were separated by a large field, which served as the school’s outdoor sports arena for track and field events. The K-8 school also prided itself in having an indoor gym housed in the largest of its three facilities and hosting the basketball court and swimming pool.
Matthew was two classes above his younger sister, Stephanie, in middle school, but unlike most of the other guys, he didn’t mind being seen around her during break, because she was his sister and the best any boy could ask for. To him, she was better than Nora, because there were so many qualities he could see in her which he’d failed to see in his older sister. For one thing, Stephanie was careful while Nora was careless. Stephanie was bright while Nora was average. Stephanie was selfless, but Nora was selfish. Stephanie was no snob. . . . He could go on and on and on. Stephanie would never call him ‘Noise.’ Stephanie adored him. He adored Stephanie.
“Hi,” she now said, coming up to him during break.
Matthew sat outside with Anderson, his best friend, chatting and watching the other kids play around the field. Anderson was a lively African-American kid whose Dad worked at the Post Office in town. His mom taught Mathematics at Sleepy Lake High, and he often topped that subject in Matthew’s class. “Hi, Steph,” Matthew returned, smiling as he shifted for his sister on the wooden bench he and his friend were sharing. They’d just finished their lunch and were feeling energized and ready to take on their art classes after the break.
Stephanie shook Anderson’s hand like a grown-up before sitting next to her brother. Dropping her backpack, she brought out her lunchbox, opened it, and reached inside for a sandwich.
Matthew nudged her. “Hey, what happened yesterday at the mall?”
“The usual?” she said, shrugging. “Prada shoes, Dior undergarments and Louis Vuitton.” She bit into the sandwich and munched away.
“Gosh, Matt, you never told me your sister was a fashionista,” Anderson said. “Really? At this age?”
“Not her, stupid,” Matthew told him. “Nora?” Then he turned back to Stephanie with excitement. “Guess what, Mom’s buying the bicycle for me today! She called me on my phone.”
“Oh, Matt, can I ride, too?” Stephanie pleaded in-between mouthfuls.
“Why not?”
“You know the one my Dad bought for me last Christmas?” Anderson began, studying Stephanie as if he was seeing her for the first time. “Hope your new toy is not that brand, Matt, really.”
“The one you couldn’t ride?” Matthew chided him.
“It had bad brakes, remember?”
“Yeah, it sure did,” Matthew agreed, “but you guys could have insisted on changing it.”
“Mr. Goodfellow refused to take it back, he did,” the African-American said, falling into a playful mood that caught his friends off guard. “Said he got no more bicycles to replace it with, you know, and when my dad got his heavy glasses for him and showed him all those beauties displayed in his shop, the bicycle suddenly lost its guarantee. Could you believe that?”
The three kids could not contain their laughter. Anderson was mimicking his father after he returned from the old man’s shop that fateful Christmas day with the same bicycle. It was a memorable story the three could never forget.
“You know you can come and ride mine whenever you want to,” Matthew finally said and his friend nodded with a smile.
“Thanks, Matt . . . but the good news is that I’ll soon get new brakes for mine. Dad’s promised.”
“I hear Mary Ann once had a bicycle, Matt,” Stephanie began, taking a sip from her water bottle.
“And what happened to it?” Anderson asked. “I’ve never seen her on one.”
“She got injured trying to ride it,” the little girl conveyed with satisfaction.
“Yeowww! That hurts,” Matthew quipped, laughing cheerfully. He stood up to brush breadcrumbs from his pants.
“No one deserves a bicycle injury, you know, not even Mary Ann,” Anderson said. “Though I wouldn’t go near her bike for all the money in the world,” he reasoned, frowning. “She’s old enough to be in a class ahead of us, don’t you think?”
“She’s a girl bully,” Stephanie observed correctly. “She took Katie’s fruitcakes yesterday.”
“Her parents are rich, so what do you expect from an only child?” Matthew suggested.
“She treats everyone with disdain and enjoys spreading rumors about anyone as long as it catches her fancy,” Anderson said, trying to define this particular classmate of his.
“I’ve never escaped her fancy even when I fell ill with the flu,” Matthew mused out loud. “I wonder who fills her with all those lies about me? She’s got so many friends.”
Stephanie wanted to say something, but cut herself short. Her brother would fall apart if he knew who was helping Mary Ann against him.
“I bet it’s Rupert,” Anderson said. “Those two are inseparable.”
“They often come to our class during lunchtime to exchange ideas for their next tale,” Stephanie revealed. “I sometimes wonder who gossips more between them.”
“It must be Rupert,” Matthew agreed. “He’s Fat George’s sidekick.”
“I hear he wets his bed,” Stephanie helped.
“I hear his grandfather was a Nazi,” Anderson helped.
“I hear his name is Jewish,” Fat George bellowed behind them, causing them to jump out of their seats. He reached for their lunchboxes, but luckily, for them, these were empty. Stephanie hid behind her brother, peeping out now and then.
A slightly older, obese fellow with bulbous eyes and a bully’s attitude, Fat George had only one trusted friend he called his sidekick, and that was Rupert. His father was a civil engineer who worked for a construction company in the city and his mother had a shop in Sleepy Lake’s central mall.
Fat George passionately hated Matthew due to the wealth he knew the Quentins controlled, and he often told Rupert, his sidekick, what a waste of time and money Matthew was for his parents. Rupert never argued with Fat George.
“You all sound like Mary Ann,” the fat boy grumbled, glaring at Matthew with clenched fists.
“What do you want, George?” Anderson demanded from him, making sure he omitted the ‘Fat’ before the name, or else there would be trouble.
“Nothing,” the bully snapped with a smirk, pushing the other boy out of the way as he walked past. “Another mention of my name, Quentin, and you’ll smell your grave,” he threw back at Matthew as he walked away.
Again, Stephanie knew that Barbara was the girl in the silent question between her brother and this blob of fat. Tall, slim, dark-haired and beautiful Barbara, who never knew she was causing so much trouble just as Matthew never knew she envied his ‘riches’ deep within her. Stephanie knew this because Barbara was Mary Ann’s friend and told the girl bully all that Matthew was telling her in confidence.
Mary Ann hated everything nice as long as it wasn’t hers and she always made sure any girl who refused to heed her warnings concerning pride and behavior saw the right side of her fist. Barbara was her one exception to this rule because she told her things about Matthew and he wasn’t the wiser for it. ‘Poor Matthew,’ Stephanie thought.
The bell went, bringing them all back from their thoughts.
“Phew! That was close,” a sweating Anderson said as he watched Fat George’s overbearing figure recede in the distance. “Who would’ve known he was behind us?”
Matthew shrugged and bent down to start packing Stephanie’s lunchbox for her.
“I hear he once set his shoes on fire ‘cause they were too small for him, Matthew,” Stephanie told him.
“
Oh, gross,” Anderson exclaimed.
“Don’t listen too much to Mary Ann or you’ll end up being like her, Steph,” Matthew warned his sister and shooed her off.
“Race you to class,” Anderson announced.
Barbara was just entering their class.
“Yeah, sure,” Matthew agreed. “Race you to class.”
He quickly re-laced his shoes.
The Black Book Page 6