“Hey, Miss Underwood,” he says, “Dad, er, Mr. Brush wants to have a word with you in his office. Right this minute, he said.”
Grunt stands between Miss Underwood and the classroom door, forcing her to go around him. Then he glares at the rest of us.
Everyone shuffles through the hall and out onto the tarmac, like prison inmates marching to the work yard.
It’s difficult to find a hiding spot on the schoolyard at this time of year; the leaves are gone from the trees and vines, and there aren’t yet any snowdrifts to hide behind. I will try to make my way to the back corner of the playground as unobtrusively as possible, where I’ll stand still against the fence and wait for the bell to ring.
Grum and Grunt and their gang mostly pick on kids like Cecil Bundy, who has a stutter and a lisp and still plays with toy cars in the sandbox, or Adeline Brown, who wears thick glasses and is overweight and reads Bible Stories for Children over and over again during Silent Reading time. Both Cecil and Adeline cry easily, and to Grum and Grunt, their tears are like diamonds to treasure hunters. I never cry.
Today I am a more prized target than either Cecil or Adeline, though, because it is my birthday. Someone pokes me in back. I keep walking.
“Hey, Monkeyface!”
I spin around. It’s Grunt. His brother Grum is standing beside him. A bunch of other kids trail behind them.
Grunt says, “Did you think you were gonna get outta taking your Birthday Beats?”
“Yeah, Monkeyface,” Grum adds. “In 8-A, Mizz Belzehay made us sing Happy Birthday to your stupid brother. Seems only fair that his butt-ugly twin should get a birthday tribute, too.”
“Mr. Packer said that Birthday Beats aren’t allowed anymore,” I say.
“I don’t see Mr. Pecker anywhere, do you, Graham?”
“Nope. No Ass-Packer anywhere. No yard duty teacher, either. I think they’re all in Dad’s office right now.”
“And your kiss-ass brother stayed inside to help Mizz Belzehay put up art on the bulletin board, so don’t expect him to save you, either.”
“Looks like you’re screwed, Monkeyface.”
“Maybe you could just sing Happy Birthday to me instead,” I say, thinking I can win over a few of the other kids by making a joke out of the situation. Thanks to my flattened nostrils and cleft lip, though, my smile looks like a horse baring its teeth, and nobody is charmed.
Grum circles behind me, and Grunt shoves me hard, causing me to trip backward over Grum’s outstretched leg. Grum kneels on my arms and drops his butt in my face, then Grunt straddles my legs, singing, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, you look like a monkey, and you smell like one, too!”
Other kids circle around. Some of them join the song.
“ONE!” Grunt shouts, punching me in the ribs.
“TWO!”
I get one in the stomach.
“THREE! FOUR! FIVE!”
Almost half-way now. Soon it will be over. I clench my teeth. I will not reward them with tears.
Grum and some of the other kids are counting along with Grunt now.
“SIX! SEVEN!”
The punches stop coming as Grunt’s weight is lifted from my legs. Grum stands up, and with his butt off of my face I can see that my brother is here. Michael has dragged Grunt off of me, and holds his arms behind his back.
“Let go of me, Michael!” Grunt hollers.
“Let him go,” Grum says, stepping over me toward Michael and Grunt.
“Back off, Graham,” Michael spits.
Grum turns toward the gathered crowd. “Get this asshole off my brother,” he demands. “Monkeyface has to have the rest of his Birthday Beats.”
The other kids stand paralyzed, unsure of what to do. They want Michael’s friendship, but they fear Grum and Grunt’s wrath. Nobody moves.
“Ow! Ow!” cries Grunt. “Christ, Michael, you’re breaking my arms!”
Michael releases Grunt from the arm lock. Grunt immediately turns around and shoves Michael, who tumbles backward onto the patchy grass.
“Suck-AAAAAHHHH!” Grunt taunts.
Grum points and orders, “Trevor! Turner! Grab Michael.”
The two do as they are told. They will not disobey a direct order.
“Gotta let Monkeyface fight his own battles,” Trevor says to Michael.
Michael knows there is no point in struggling.
Grum and Grunt descend on me again. At least Grum’s ass isn’t in my face this time.
“Now, where were we, Graham?”
“I forget, Grant. I guess we’ll have to start again.”
“Seven,” I say, as if it will matter. “You left off at seven.”
“ONE! TWO! THREE!”
Grunt punches me as hard as he can now, to punish Michael and to show me that nobody can protect me. I gasp for breath.
“FOUR! FIVE! SIX!”
“Fight back, Philip!” Michael cries.
Time slows. Between punches, I hear the children laughing over in the Primary yard, swings creaking and jump-ropes clicking rhythmically against the pavement. I see the clouds changing shape in the sky above me, and the shifting crowd of seventh and eighth-graders who have gathered around us. Some dance anxiously from side to side, like starving men in a soup line, some clench their fists like they are throwing the punches themselves, while the hands of others hang open-fingered at their sides, like they’ve just heard the worst kind of news.
Grant’s meaty knuckles thump against my chest, making a hollow sound like a thick textbook being slammed shut. I feel my ribs flex and compress, feel the quick hiss of air through my nostrils and between my lips. I feel the tingle of arrested blood in my thighs beneath Grant’s knees. I see his eyes narrow to serpentine slits, his top lip curl up. My Grandfather’s jackknife is in my front pocket where Grunt’s knees dig in, and an image flashes through my mind. I flip open the longest blade on my jackknife and slash at Grunt’s face, cutting off his nose, then his lips, then his ears, making his face bloody and grotesque, far uglier than my own. Then Grum shrieks NO NO NO as I turn the blade on him.
“SEVEN! EIGHT!”
“Fight back, dammit!” Michael screams at me.
“NINE! TEN!”
Grunt leans back, the pressure from his knees momentarily released. I could reach for my jackknife now and make them both pay.
“Hey, Grant,” Grum says, “he’s thirteen today, not ten.”
“Oh, right,” Grunt says, breathing hard. “What was I thinking?”
Grunt’s fist hovers in the air, then it dives into my gut, driving the last bit of air out of me. And then he does it again, harder. And again, putting all of his weight, effort, and spite into it. I taste blood in my mouth, and I nearly black out.
Grum stands up. “And a kick for when you’re sick,” he says, booting me in the ribs.
Grunt, who is still kneeling on me, adds, “and a punch to eat your lunch,” and he drives his right fist into my left eye socket.
The bell rings, ending recess. The other kids run toward the building, reminding each other that nobody witnessed anything.
Michael kneels beside me in the now-empty schoolyard. “Come on, Philip, let’s get you inside.”
I am too sore to move. I can’t draw enough breath to speak.
“I’ll go get some help,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”
I lie on my back, under the grey sky, the cold air drying the back of my throat. I reach into my right pocket and grip my grandfather’s jackknife. It feels warm in my hand. I draw out the longest blade.
The muscles in my stomach are ripping apart strand by strand as I force myself to sit upright. My legs wobble as I stand up. I hobble toward the school, gripping the handle of the knife.
I will stride right into Classroom 8-C, past Miss Underwood, right up to Grant Brush’s desk, and I will start slashing. And when I’m finished, I will cross the hall into Classroom 8-A, and his brother Graham will meet with the same fate.
No, I
won’t. I won’t do that. I can’t. I can see my grandfather’s eagle eyes, reading my thoughts. I can’t do it. I won’t.
I close the blade, slide the worn, slender tool back into my front pocket, and lean back against the cool brick wall of the school. Did I just feel the air temperature drop, or am I just about to pass out from the pain? Has the wind stopped blowing, or have I just lost my senses from the beating?
The first snowflakes of the season drift down from above. I look up and watch them descend from the grey. They tickle my cheeks, collect in my eye sockets and slowly melt, following the trails my tears would have taken if I had allowed any to escape. But I didn’t cry. I didn’t give them that.
I walk away from the school. It always snows on my birthday. Everything around me is turning white.
Escape From Faireville
The wind blows harder now, and it’s getting colder. It bites at my hands, face and ears, needles between the buttons on my green windbreaker, freezes the little hairs inside my nostrils. It stings my cheeks and eyelids, but I can’t complain; I was the one who wished for snow.
My left eye is almost swollen shut from Grant’s punch, and the pain in the side of my ribs from Graham’s kick makes me limp. The entire left side of my body feels like it’s dying a melodramatic death, but my right side pulls forward, somehow invigorated.
I won’t wait around for Michael to return to the schoolyard with a teacher. I won’t go back into the school, either. They can all go to hell.
I gather my breath, clench my teeth, and move my right foot forward and then my left, slipping through the gap in the school fence, then dragging myself past the line of sagging old huts along the railroad tracks where most of my 8-C classmates live.
Momentum carries me along. I am so numbed by the freezing air that I’ve almost forgotten my injuries. Almost.
Goodbye, Faireville Public School. I won’t be back.
This is my plan: I will walk home and slip into the house without being seen by anyone. Then I’ll tiptoe upstairs to the room I share with Michael. I’ll pack a change of clothes, sneak some survival rations from the kitchen, and slip out through the back door. From there I will just disappear. I won’t have to face any of them.
I will walk along the highway until I get to the crappy little city of Gasberg, and I’ll make my way to the deserted downtown core, where I’ll blend right in. I’ll be one of those greasy, ragged kids who sit on the sidewalk begging for change from passers-by. I should make a fortune, since I definitely look pitiful enough, and my recently acquired black eye just adds to the effect. When I’ve collected enough cash for a train ticket, I’ll take my act all the way to Toronto, where there are lawyers and bankers who toss twenty-dollar bills like quarters into beggars’ hats. And from there, who knows.
There is no danger that my father will catch me sneaking into the house. He follows a strict routine every weekday: he locks himself into his windowless basement laboratory at six AM, and doesn’t open the door again until nine, to receive a biscuit and a cup of Earl Grey tea from my mother. He opens up again at noon, when Mom brings him half a roast-beef-and-tomato sandwich and half a peanut-butter-and-banana, along with a sliced apple, three broccoli florets, and a glass of two-percent milk (a “nutritionally perfect midday meal,” in my father’s exacting scientific opinion). He emerges again at exactly 6:00 PM, closing the heavy steel door behind him and double-checking the multiple locks. He must have a washroom in there, but I’m only guessing. None of us but Mom has ever seen inside the lab, and none of us is allowed to ask about the work he does in there. My father’s projects are Top Secret, and that’s that.
If Michael gets the chance, he will try to make me feel better about everything. It’s easy to be so optimistic when you’re as perfect as he is. His cheerleading is always sincere, and it has turned me around before, but it’s not going to happen today. The school bus won’t deliver him home until around four o’clock, and by then I’ll be long gone.
Dennis is a variable in the equation, as usual. Being unpredictable is his modus operandi, his raison d’etre. If Dennis has chosen today to skip school, he’s probably either shooting pool or buying illegal drugs in the back of Jackie Snackie’s, or drinking cheap, watered-down draft at The Sergeant-at-Arms, a way-past-its-glory-days saloon on the main street with a reputation for serving minors. If Dennis is heading in or out of one of these places and he sees me, I’m screwed.
Mom, of course, is the most dangerous variable. She is mild-mannered and soft-spoken, but she feels distress in her children the way a soaring falcon senses prey on the ground below; the slightest twitch, and she’s got you. If she catches me limping into the house in the middle of the day with blood and bruises all over me, there will be no escape. She’ll trap me in an embrace, and then the questions will begin.
I don’t want to relive it. I just want to disappear.
I turn from the railroad tracks onto Faireville Street, the one street through town. It’s going to be a long walk home. The school is on the far east end of town, and our house is just west of the town limits. I grit my teeth and force myself to walk faster.
The east end of Faireville Street is a desolate stretch of abandoned history: weed-covered, junk-strewn vacant lots, slanted, moss-covered stables and crumbling, ancient warehouses. Dennis and his buddies sometimes hide out in these old buildings when they’re skipping school to drink beer and smoke pot. They may have been responsible — accidentally or not — for burning an abandoned tannery to the ground earlier this year, but nobody was able to prove anything.
Goodbye, East End! Watch out for those teenaged arsonists.
Now I’m approaching the official town sign, which was erected well inside the town limits, away from the bad first impression a traveller might get from the East End.
Welcome to
FAIREVILLE
Population 2849
“The Cradle That Rocked the Natural Gas Industry”
Last year, as part of the town’s Official Millennium Celebrations, the Faireville Town Council held a contest to come up with a new town slogan, and this one was the winner. At least it’s better than Dennis’ entry, “Faireville: We Gave the People Gas!” Before Western society’s odometer rolled over from 1999 to 2000, Faireville’s official slogan was “The Victorian Era Boomtown.” It was created during my grandfather’s twenty years as mayor, and he was not pleased when the new council decided to change it.
London has Big Ben, Paris has the Eiffel Tower, New York has the Empire State Building and Toronto has the CN Tower. Faireville has a few abandoned wells that ran out of natural gas thirty years ago.
So long, Faireville, you Tourist Mecca! Keep on rockin’ the natural gas industry.
I’ve passed the Eastern Subdivisions, which are known by the more highfalutin locals as “Cardboard Acres.” The Downtown Business District is marked by special Millennium streetlights, erected by the aforementioned Town Council. The frosted-glass fixtures, shaped like candle flames, were made at a scandalously high cost by a now-abandoned glassware factory in the East End. They were supposed to symbolize the blue flame that natural gas makes when burned, to remind everyone yet again of the First Natural Gas Well in North America that put Faireville on the map. Unfortunately, at night the special blue light bulbs made the downtown core look like a creepy black-and-white German Expressionist film, so, after an emotional debate in the Town Council Chambers, ordinary white lights were put inside the fixtures. So much for symbolism.
The slate-grey December clouds have thickened overhead, tricking some of the Millennium streetlights into lighting up early. Many of them buzz to life just as I pass underneath, which is quite unnerving. I want to float through the shadows of Faireville like a phantom, not by running out from under spotlights like a prison escapee.
I’ve already slipped past Jackie Snackie’s with no sign of Dennis, so I am extra wary as I approach The Sergeant-at-Arms. I cross to the opposite side of the street, just in case, and . . . shit!
The scraggly hair, the slouching lope, the battered leather jacket and the drooping, size-too-big jeans — it’s him! I freeze, hoping he’s drunk enough to miss me. I stand motionless behind a Millennium streetlight, snowflakes tickling my nose, melting on my cheeks. Don’t see me, don’t see me, don’t see me . . .
Then I see the guy’s three-day growth of white beard; Dennis can’t produce more than a few wispy threads on the end of his chin. The guy also has a large, dark stain on the front of his pants. Although Dennis frequently gets drunk enough to piss off my parents and grandfather, he would never get so loaded that he’d piss his pants. I start breathing again and continue walking, wishing that Faireville’s Teen Rebel and Town Drunk didn’t dress so much alike.
Goodbye, Sergeant-at-Arms. Goodbye, pissy old drunk. Goodbye, Dennis; if you’re in there, have a drink for me.
As I reach the only stoplights in town, at the intersection of Faireville Street and Gas Line Avenue, I take a detour a couple of blocks north to say goodbye to Church Square. Three of the corners have churches on them: one Catholic, one Anglican, one Baptist. On the fourth corner stands the King George Playhouse. All four buildings are enormous, made of brick and stone, with arched wooden doorways and stained glass windows, their spires reaching up higher than anything else in town, and all four were constructed with donations from Jeremiah Faire, the town’s founder, first mayor, and wealthiest gas property speculator. A larger-than-life statue of Faire stands in the middle of the cemetery at Church Square, saluting the four splendid buildings, the only monuments to Faireville’s boomtown past that aren’t crumbling into dust.
What’s wrong with me? “Splendid buildings?” “Monuments to the boomtown past?” It sounds like I’m trying to invent a new slogan for the stupid town sign. What am I getting all sentimental about? I hate this town. I’m halfway home, halfway from leaving Faireville forever. No time for detours.
The Monkeyface Chronicles Page 2