The Monkeyface Chronicles

by Richard Scarsbrook

  I descend into the cool darkness of the basement, and I close the door behind me. I leave the lights off, and let the blackness enclose me. The total absence of visible radiation; no wavelength, no colour, nothing.

  You ever wonder why your twin brother got everything — the looks, the body, the talent, the brains — while you got shafted?

  I feel my way through the darkness to the edge of the cistern.

  Why do you think he walks around being Mr. Happy-Ass, Mr. Let-Me-Help-You-With-That, Mr. Humble, Mr. Perfect? Because he knows. He knows he can’t lose. He’s built to win.

  Shut up, Dennis. My hands sliding along the edges of the tables full of my father’s trophies and toys.

  You and me will have to work our asses off for everything we get in life, everything will just fall into place for him. And he knows it.

  With my left hand, I find the plug for the power cord that connects to the series of high-voltage transformers.

  You’re not gonna give a shit about Michael any more.

  Please, Dennis. Shut up. My right hand traces the edge of the plate around the electrical outlet, and I slide the plug in. The Jacob’s Ladder comes alive, illuminating the room with flashes of blue-white electricity, scorching the air, buzzing and hissing and snapping angrily, so loud that it almost drowns out the sound of Michael and his friends screaming in frustration because their hockey game has been interrupted again. During overtime. How awful for them.

  As I watch each single electric arc rise upward, I remember what Adeline told me: In the Book of Genesis, Jacob had a dream about a ladder extending toward heaven.

  I will have to get there on my own. God helps those who help themselves.

  Part Two

  If dreams were lightning, and thunder was desire,

  This old house would have burned down a long time ago.

  — John Prine

  Spring, 2006

  Metamorphosis

  In elementary school, one was either In or Out, but in high school there are dozens of overlapping subcultures.

  At the top of the social pyramid are the Jocks, who play on multiple varsity sports teams, and the Socialites, who date only Jocks and other Socialites, and who invariably have wealthy parents and compete with each other to be elected President of the Student Council.

  The middle and largest segment of Plympwright District High School student society includes the Keeners, who congregate in the library and belong to the Yearbook and School Spirit clubs, the Music Geeks, who play in the jazz band or sing in the school choir, and the Computer Dorks, who build and program computers, or obsessively play violent video games on them.

  At the base of the PDHS Social Pyramid, closest to the ground, are the Goths, the Rockers, the Speds, and the Druggies.

  There are, of course, those few kids who exist outside the pyramid, the random loners who disappear as soon as the bell rings at half-past three, the ones in the PDHS yearbook with No Photo Available printed above their names, and the kids from the Tabernacle of God’s Will, who cower together in their pioneer outfits and try their best to avoid contact with the rest of the Hell-bound student population.

  And then there is my own motley band of friends, brought together not by any common bonds or shared interests, but because you’ve got to eat lunch at somebody’s table in the cafeteria. In grade nine, some of the other kids called us The Scaries, right to our faces. Probably the main reason was my deformity, but I’m sure Caleb Carter’s Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder didn’t help, either. It only worsened as he twitched and jerked and babbled through puberty, inadvertently annoying and offending almost everyone.

  Cecil Bundy’s eyes were permanently bloodshot from crying over the taunts from the Little-Brain Boys and their new allies. As he sought solace in the bins in his father’s bulk food store, he got heavier and heavier, his second-hand trousers got shorter and tighter, his stuttering increased, and the teasing became relentless.

  Adeline Brown, of course, was expected to spend her time at school with the other Tabernacle kids, but she eventually drifted away from them and wound up eating lunch with us.

  Anthony Caldwell-Wheelwright’s parents were rich enough for him to be a Socialite — his downhill-skiing medals would have qualified him as a Jock, and he was certainly a good enough student to ease into any of the Keener groups — but he chose to hang around with The Scaries. When I asked him why, he told me, “I’m a misanthrope, Philip. I hate people. You guys are just the least offensive.”

  Now that we are in grade twelve, only a few people still call us The Scaries, mostly behind our backs. Some of the meaner kids dropped out or were expelled. Caleb’s parents finally shelled out for the Ritalin he needed, and his calmer, more focused state revealed a thoughtful, intelligent young man with a knack for creative writing.

  Cecil signed up for Plympwright Idol, the school’s annual talent competition and when he took to the stage, shaking and on the verge of tears, it turned out his big, round torso contained a thundering, operatic baritone. By the time he finished singing “My Way,” a capella, without stuttering once, the clapping and cheering were for real. Since then, he’s been recruited to perform in every school musical. His inability to dance means the other actors dance around him, but he hardly ever stutters now, only once in a while when he’s talking to a girl.

  Perhaps the nickname for our little group started to fade when I won the First in Class plaque for grade nine Chemistry, then for Chemistry and Physics in grade ten, then for Chemistry, Physics, and Biology in grade eleven. Suddenly Socialite girls were coming to me for help with their science homework. And then the Faireville Blue Flames beat the Barleyville Harvesters three to two to advance to the division finals, and it was my hat trick that won the game. Unlike my brother, Michael, none of these accomplishments came because of any genetic advantage; I just worked my ass off.

  Speaking of girls, Adeline won the grade eleven public-speaking contest on the topic of the contradictions in interpretations of the Bible. She caused a minor stir at the Tabernacle of God’s Will when they congratulated her for her “God-given talent,” and she responded that nobody had given her anything, she had worked for it. To quell their outrage, she used my favourite quote, which has become something like a mantra to me: God helps those who help themselves. The quote is actually from Benjamin Franklin, not the Bible, but nobody in the Tabernacle congregation called her on it, not even the Pastor.

  Ever since we started high school, I’ve been sharing my lunch with her, a bagged version of my father’s “nutritionally perfect midday meal,” and we began our habit of walking home to Faireville together, all six kilometres. In the winter, she sneaks away and goes skating with me on the frozen creek behind our house. Adeline lost twenty pounds between grades nine and eleven; calling her Fat-a-line and tormenting her in other ways about her weight became a lost cause, so the Little Colour Girls and their new Socialite friends turned their fickle attentions elsewhere — mostly to Jock boys.

  So, while none of us is ever going to win any popularity or beauty contests, each one of us has got something. And I think we’re all okay with that.

  It is end of the school day now, and Adeline meets me at my locker as usual. “Hi, you,” she says.

  She’s not dressed in her Tabernacle uniform. This past September, she began showing up to school early, heading for the girls’ washroom, and changing out of her church-regulated outfit and into a nondescript T-shirt-and-jeans combo she’d picked up at a second-hand shop. Bradley Miller snitched on her to Pastor Patrick, and she was Officially Censured by the Tabernacle Elders. There was a whole ceremony at the Tabernacle where everyone had to chant “Shame!” over and over, and then turn their backs on her for exactly one minute. Her mother freaked out, doused her forbidden T-shirt and jeans in kerosene, and burned them in their back yard.

  To show how sorry she was for breaking the Tabernacle’s Rules of Conduct, Adeline went out and bought several more T-shirts and another pair of
jeans, this time from a yard sale a few doors down from her house in Cardboard Acres. Again, Bradley squealed, and Adeline was censured a second time. Her mother again burned the offensive clothing, and slapped her so hard that she had a bruise on her face for days. On the recommendation of the Tabernacle’s Council of Elders, her mother installed a padlock on the outside of her bedroom door. But she just slipped in and out of the house at night through her bedroom window instead; nobody had thought to padlock that.

  So Adeline is back to wearing jeans and T-shirts. She leaves home in the morning in her Tabernacle outfit, appears at school in her ‘street clothes,’ then reappears at home in the evening in full Tabernacle regalia. So far, nobody has asked any questions. If a member of the Tabernacle is censured three times, there is an official Shunning Ceremony, and the offending member is ejected from the congregation. Adeline is desperately hoping for this to happen, but she assumes that the Tabernacle Elders are reluctant to set that precedent; other teenagers of the Tabernacle might follow her out the door.

  Adeline is on her third and final strike at school as well, for fighting in the cafeteria. First she fought Lara Lavender, who made the snide comment, “Better be careful hanging out with all these boys, Adeline . . . you don’t want to wind up with an unwanted pregnancy like your mother did.”

  And then, a few months later she fought Carrie Green after Carrie said, “I guess getting pregnant at sixteen pushed your mother over the edge. I guess it made Candy Brown crazy enough to join the Weirdo Church.”

  Both times Caitlin Black just sat there eating her yogurt, saying nothing.

  Adeline was suspended from school for a full week. Carrie and Lara originally got three days each, but when both their mothers appealed to Mr. Lewis, the sentence was reduced to three days of after-school detention, with no mention of the incident on their permanent records.

  Now she’s back at school, but her mom has enrolled her in a Tabernacle-approved, non-accredited Bible study college in the Southern United States, for when she graduates from PDHS. Adeline, however, has secretly applied to several Canadian universities.

  At the moment, though, she doesn’t look worried. Her hands are behind her back, holding on to something.

  “So, Philip,” she says, light dancing in her eyes, “did you know that today marks the end of an era?”

  While her left hand remains hidden behind her back, she extends her right, which holds Volume XYZ from my Encyclopedia Britannica set. She smiles triumphantly.

  “A symbolic day,” she says. “I’ve finished the last volume. There’s a coded message inside.” Tucked in the front cover is a handwritten note.

  Adverb: day after today

  Secundum schola,

  where eriaf haimerej lies,

  mutual oral pleasure (grave number)

  “So, I’m to meet you tomorrow after school at Grave 69 in the Jeremiah Faire Memorial Cemetery?”

  “Wow, you’re good!”

  “Now that I’ve finished reading both of your encyclopedia sets,” she says, “I think it’s time that we found something else to exchange.” She brings her left hand out from behind her back and presents me with a copy of The New Illustrated Art of Sex, then grins slyly as I fumble inside my locker for my backpack and quickly slip it inside. “Now you can also know in the Biblical sense of the word,” she laughs.

  “Um, thanks,” I say.

  “Can you imagine how my mother would react if I brought The Art of Sex into our house, where encyclopedias aren’t allowed?” Adeline says. “She’d padlock more than the door to my bedroom, that’s for sure.”

  From the chorus of female voices echoing through the hallway, I can tell that my brother Michael is approaching: “Hi, Michael!”, “Hey, Michael!” they sing out, “See you Saturday, Michael?”

  Michael sits comfortably atop the social pyramid at Plympwright District High School. Because he is the Captain of the Faireville Blue Flames Junior B hockey team, he is a respected senior member of the Jock subculture. All of the Jock and Keener girls harbour secret crushes for him, but he has dated Socialite girls almost exclusively since grade nine, since they tend to be more overt in expressing their attractions. After working his way through at least a dozen different girlfriends in the past four years, Michael has settled on Caitlin Black as his socially appropriate steady girlfriend.

  This explains why Caitlin didn’t participate the times Lara and Carrie taunted Adeline in the cafeteria; she wasn’t sure how her new boyfriend would react to her participating in an attack on his twin brother’s friend. Michael has never approved of my friendship with Adeline, and has decided to believe the official version of the two catfights. He believes that Adeline is a deranged, violent religious freak.

  Caitlin intercepts Michael in the middle of the hallway, and the other girls retreat to their lockers. “Hey, babe,” she says to him, “want to come back to my place for a while? Mom and Dad won’t be home until late tonight, and I got my cousin to pick up a bottle of wine for us.”

  “I’ve got hockey practice tonight,” Michael says. “You’ll have to save it for Saturday.”

  “Why don’t you skip practice tonight,” she says, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

  Michael smiles and says, “Sorry, babe, duty calls.”

  “You mean you would rather get all hot and sweaty with a bunch of other guys than with me?”

  She tosses her fashionable book bag over one shoulder and walks away with her head down, while Michael strides over to where Adeline and I stand. While robotically dialing the combination on his lock, he asks me, “Going to practice tonight?”

  It isn’t just the conflict between the females in our lives that has caused Michael and I to grow apart. I definitely saw a look of annoyance on his face this season when Coach Packer referred to his line with Grant and Graham Brush as Line One-A, and my line with wingers Billy O’Malley and Toby Frenier as Line One-B.

  He isn’t the only one who is less than thrilled with my promotion to the second line. It has resulted in a demotion for Sam Simpson, who has put on weight from his binge-beer-drinking habit, and is slower on his skates than he used to be. Sam started a fight with me during a scrimmage one practice, but since I inherited my father’s and grandfather’s height and reach, I just held him at arm’s length until he got tired of swinging, then I launched his top-heavy body onto the ice. At that moment, I also replaced Sam as the unofficial Enforcer of the Faireville Blue Flames. I haven’t had to raise my fists very often during games, though; my opponents take one look at my face and assume that it was earned in a hockey fight. They almost always back away.

  Nobody is more annoyed by my existence than Graham and Grant Brush, especially this season. Grant Brush has been the winner of the League Scoring Trophy almost every year he’s been playing hockey. Previously, he only had to compete with Michael, and thanks to preferential passing from his identical twin Graham, he always managed to get a few more goals than my brother. This year, though, with only a few games remaining in the regular season, Graham is frustrated that he’s only ahead of Michael by three goals, but he is infuriated by the fact that he’s behind me by two.

  I didn’t set out to pry the Scoring Trophy from Grant Brush. When I started playing for the Blue Flames, it was merely the thrill of being involved that kept me going. But, as I watched my brother Michael glide effortlessly around the ice, out-maneuvering opposing players as if they were standing still, executing perfect tape-to-tape passes, anticipating where the puck would be moments before it got there, and scoring through the slightest gaps left open by a goalie, I began to wonder if what Dennis had told me was true. I tried so hard not to believe it, but as Michael continued scoring highlight-reel goals, and dating girl after beautiful girl, and receiving almost perfect grades on all his tests and assignments, it began to seem possible: maybe Michael really was designed to be perfect. Maybe I really was made from his genetic waste material. And I began to resent him.
>
  On the ice, where Michael makes scoring goals look easy with his natural athleticism, I find the back of the net by practicing constantly and playing aggressively. At school, I achieve by studying hard and doing homework when Michael is out at parties. Girls practically swoon over Michael’s sky-blue eyes, wavy dark hair, and chiseled-marble features, but, all things considered, I would rather spend time with Adeline than with any giggling, eyelash-batting Socialite girl.

  “Well?” Michael repeats, annoyed that I haven’t answered him immediately, “are you going to practice tonight or not? The bus leaves in ten minutes.”

  “Coach said it’s an optional practice, right?” I ask.

  “Is winning optional to you, Philip?” Michael says coolly.

  “Aren’t you going to walk home with me, Philip?” Adeline says, “We’ve got that new book to look at.”

  “Come on, Phil!” Michael protests. “The playoffs are just around the corner. What’s more important to you — helping your team win the championship, or reading a friggin’ book — with her?”

  “Since it’s an optional practice,” I say, “I think I’ll opt to walk home with Adeline today. If that’s okay with you.”

  “Fine by me,” he says, closing his locker door with a metallic bang and snapping the lock closed. “I only need six goals to beat you for the scoring trophy. Grant only needs three.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me if I win,” I tell him. And it doesn’t. It only matters to me that it matters to him. And to Grant Brush.

  Michael huffs, steps around Adeline, and walks away.

  “Bye, Michael!” Adeline chirps, mimicking the voice of one of his fan-girls.

  And there it is: faced with the choice between hockey practice and a girl, Michael will choose hockey practice. Maybe it’s because he’s got girls throwing themselves at him all the time. Maybe it’s because he sees hockey as some kind of career, whereas I play it mostly for fun. Maybe it pisses him off that his ugly, waste-material twin brother is poised to win a trophy for something he thought belonged to him by birthright.