The Mystery of the Graffiti Ghoul

by Marty Chan

  “I’ll be out in a minute,” I yelled. “I have to find the pants.”

  I could hear Mom walk toward the kitchen. My chance! I balled up the corduroys, jammed them under my Hong Kong tourist T-shirt, which doubled as my pyjama top, and cracked open my door. The coast was clear. I stepped into the hallway and crept to the best hiding spot in the grocery store.

  On a shelf of unsold oatmeal raisin cookies, I hid the stuff I didn’t want my parents to find: UFO magazines, my walkie-talkie; now I could hide the corduroy pants there. Not many people shopped at our store since the IGA had opened a couple of blocks away, but even our long-time customers knew better than to buy the stale cookies that had been around since even before my parents bought the store. The yellow packages were like the Great Wall of China, hiding forbidden treasures behind them.

  “Marty, where you going?” Mom asked. Like a silent ninja, she had snuck up behind me.

  “Uh, I don’t feel well. I have to use the bathroom,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?” Mom spun me around. “Aiya.”

  She poked at my swollen belly that stretched out the drawing of a Chinese junk on the front of my T-shirt, but I stepped back before she could sink my plan. I clutched my stomach and doubled over.

  “I think I ate too much rice last night,” I said.

  “I can fix that,” she said, coming toward me. “I rub your stomach with Tiger Balm.”

  Tiger Balm stunk like the inside of my belly button and felt like warm jook when the thick ointment was slathered on my skin. Mom used the stuff whenever I was sick and threatened to use it whenever she suspected I was pretending to be sick.

  “Let’s see your belly, Marty.”

  “Mom, I could explode any minute.”

  Before I could get away, she lifted my shirt. The pants fell out and plopped on my bare feet. I wanted to crawl under them.

  “You feel better now?” Mom asked.

  “Oh, that’s where the pants are. I was looking all over for them.”

  “Good thing we find them. Hold your leg up. I put them on for you.”

  “Mom, I can get dressed myself.”

  “Do it,” she barked.

  I put a hand on her shoulder to balance myself and lifted my leg. Within a few seconds the pants were on and my fate was sealed.

  On my way to school I decided to dull the pants’ nerdy shine. I jumped in a puddle just outside the Bouvier Drugstore. Then I rubbed myself against the side of a muddy pickup truck until I noticed the driver was still inside. I ran down the Main Street sidewalk before she could get out of the truck. When I reached the chain-link fence that surrounded the school, I tried to snag the pants on a stray wire, but those corduroys were made to last. Taking the long way around the school fence, I looked for anything to destroy the pants, but found nothing. I was running out of hope.

  In my dark hour, I turned to the Church. The red brick building, crowned by the tall silver steeple, sat beside the school, and I remembered our town priest, Father Sasseville, saying that the Church had answers to every problem. The answer to my problem lay in the shadow of the steeple: a flowerless garden bed.

  I mashed my knees in the frosty soil until the pants started to stain. Hallelujah! My plan was working. I ground my knees into the dirt harder. Then the church doors swung open. Father Sasseville stepped out onto the cement porch, adjusting his white collar. He spotted me kneeling in his garden.

  “My son, if you want to pray, better to do it inside the church.”

  I stood up. “Yes, sir.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for a miracle,” I mumbled, stepping off the dirt.

  “Did you find it?”

  “Just about,” I said. “See you later, Father Sasseville.”

  “Wait. Your pants are filthy.” He pulled out a large handkerchief. “Don’t worry. This will take the dirt out.”

  “I like my pants this way,” I said.

  But before I could run off, Father Sasseville stopped me and wiped the grime that I had worked in between the corduroy ribs.

  “So why were you really in the garden bed?” he asked.

  “I tripped,” I lied, remembering he had an out-of-this-world alliance with my parents and that anything I said to him would probably get back to them.

  “Watch where you’re walking next time, Marty.” He folded his handkerchief. “There. Almost as good as new.”

  The stains looked like freckles — dirty but not quite dirty enough.

  “They’re nice pants,” he continued. “I’m sure you’ll turn a few girls’ heads,” he called after me.

  Father Sasseville was right. I’d be turning a lot of girls’ heads. They’d be turning and laughing. I shambled toward the school. Outside the fence gate, I scanned the school ground, hoping it would be empty. No such luck.

  French and English languages split my school in two, with the French classes on the north side and the English classes on the south side. Even the schoolyard was divided. The French kids played on their end of the schoolyard and the English students stayed on their own turf. An invisible French-English border started at the crack in the wall between the windows of Mrs. Riopel’s classroom, stretched across the lawn between two prairie dog holes and ended at the stone statue of Jesus in the middle of the schoolyard. Everyone called this border “The Line.”

  In the past the French and English kids had gathered on either side of The Line to wage snowball wars or chicken fights every recess and lunch hour, but Principal Henday ended the schoolyard battles with the threat of instant detention. Now The Line represented an uneasy peace between the English and the French. On one side of The Line, the French boys played tag, trying to impress the French girls, while on the other side English boys took turns jumping into a pile of fallen leaves, trying to impress the English girls.

  My big break. With no one looking my way, I scooted through the fence gate and hustled toward the school. I willed everyone to look away, trying to become as invisible as The Line.

  From across the yard Trina Brewster bellowed, “There he is!”

  I picked up the pace, but it was too late. The English girls rushed toward me, followed by the guys. The French kids turned and gawked.

  Eric Johnson cut me off. “Gross! It looks like someone puked on your legs!”

  The French kids moved closer. Jean and Jacques Boissonault, the twin bullies, closed in on me. They were Father Sasseville’s altar boys and guardians of his secrets, but they behaved more like devils than angels, teasing and torturing me every day. No day was complete until they’d shoved me into a locker, dumped worms down my shirt or washed my glasses in toilet water.

  Jean laughed. “Chinaboy’s got celery legs!”

  Jacques slapped his stocky brother. “Good one.”

  Jean’s green eyes lit up. He had more than one insult in him this morning. “It looks like a Chia Pig exploded on his legs.”

  Giggles rippled through the crowd.

  Eric scratched his spiky blond hair and asked, “What’s a Chia Pig?”

  “It looks like a tiny piggy bank,” Jacques explained, “but little plants grow on its skin.”

  Eric muttered, “I still think his pants look like puke.”

  Stanley Ross, the class clown with elephant ears, pointed at me. “You’ve got broccoli butt.”

  The kids laughed loudly.

  Stanley’s ears flapped as he chanted at me, “Broccoli butt! Broccoli butt!”

  Soon everyone was chanting, “Broccoli butt!”

  My face burned bright red, but there was no escape. The kids surrounded me, laughing and pointing. I tried to remember the advice Ms. Hawkins, my grade four teacher, once gave me. If I laughed at cruel jokes about me, she said, people wouldn’t find the jokes so funny. She said a smile could be a force field against the worst insults. I twisted my lips into a smile.

  “Broccoli butt, broccoli butt!” the kids chanted.

  “That’s funny!” I shouted.

  T
he chanting stopped. The kids looked at one another, unsure of what to do. I started to laugh.

  “Broccoli butt,” I said. “It’s hilarious.”

  My force field was working. The kids stopped laughing now that they saw the teasing didn’t bug me. Of course their teasing did bother me, but I couldn’t let them know it. I kept laughing. Trina stepped out from the crowd. Here was the true test; I couldn’t let my force field drop.

  “Did you know that Marty’s mommy picked out his special pants?” she said.

  Her laser beam insult sliced through my shield. My smile weakened.

  “She dresses him too. Doesn’t she, Marty?”

  If Trina had said this any other day but today, it wouldn’t have been true. My force field dropped lower.

  She chanted, “Mommy’s boy! Mommy’s boy!”

  The other kids repeated the chant until my force field shattered into a million pieces around my broken smile. My eyes started to well up with tears, which would wash away the last bit of my protection against the kids’ taunts.

  “Hey,” a boy called out. “How does Trina know Marty went shopping with his mom?”

  Remi Boudreau stepped out of the crowd. He was a star hockey player, the coolest French kid at school and my only friend in the galaxy.

  “I saw them in the store,” she replied.

  “Oh?” Remi folded his arms over his Montreal Canadiens hockey jersey. “What were you doing there?”

  “Shopping,” Trina said.

  Samantha McNally backed her friend. “Why don’t you keep your big nose out of Trina’s business, French Fry?” she said.

  Actually, Remi was built more like a baked potato; Samantha was the one who looked like a french fry — a french fry covered in ketchup lipstick with mustard pigtails.

  Remi ignored Samantha’s insult, his force field stronger than mine. “Marty, did you see Trina shopping at the store?”

  What was he up to? I said nothing.

  “Was she following you?” He cracked his neck to the left, then back to the right and yawned, covering his mouth with both hands — his signal to play along.

  “I think she might have been,” I said.

  The other kids gasped. Trina squirmed as she looked around at the crowd.

  Remi paced around Trina. “So, does she follow you everywhere?”

  “Yes,” I declared, starting to grin.

  “I do not,” Trina protested.

  “Then why were you at the store?” asked Eric.

  Samantha piped up. “It’s called window shopping, Eric.”

  “Why does she want to buy windows?” Eric wondered.

  Remi shook his head. “Duh. It’s a lie. She wants Marty to be her boyfriend.”

  “What?” Trina coughed. “Him? No way! I’d rather go out with someone from the trailer park.”

  The kids gasped. Lawrence Bennet, the king of trivia, said, “But only criminals live there.”

  “And single moms,” Samantha added. “And I heard that the people in — ”

  “Forget those lies,” Remi snapped. “Marty turned down Trina, and that’s why she’s being a monkey butt.”

  “No one turns me down,” Trina said.

  Samantha screwed up her face. “Ew, you want Marty to be your boyfriend.”

  “No,” Trina said. “The French kid’s making stuff up.”

  Eric shook his head. “I don’t get it. Who wants to buy windows?”

  Samantha swacked Eric on the arm. “There are no windows. Trina was following Marty.”

  Trina shouted, “It was a coincidence that we were at the store at the same time!”

  Remi shook his head. “Is coincidence another word for following?”

  Trina’s face turned purple. “I was not following him!”

  Jean Boissonault laughed. “Anglais girls are crazy.”

  Anglais was what the French kids called the English kids, and no one ever used the word in a nice way.

  “I’m not crazy,” Trina protested. “I don’t even like him. He smells like garlic and he picks his nose when he thinks people aren’t looking.”

  No one listened to her. They were too busy chattering among themselves. The kids broke off into small groups, gossiping about Trina’s crush. She chased after her friends, trying to tell her side of the story, but no one was interested; rumours sounded way better.

  Remi flapped his arms three times — a signal for me to go with him — then jogged toward the far end of the school. Because Remi was French and I went to school with the English, we had to pretend that we weren’t friends. Last year some kids spotted us hanging out together and decided that anyone who was caught “Crossing The Line” would be punished. The Boissonault brothers tortured the French traitors, while Eric Johnson dealt with English turncoats. Line Crossers received ninety-nine nurples, but no guy could stand more than twenty-three nipple twists before he begged for mercy. After Remi and I paid the painful price for Crossing The Line, we decided to hide our friendship at school. When I was sure no one was looking my way, I joined my pal.

  “I owe you one,” I said.

  “The monkey butt had it coming.”

  “She’s going to get you back for what you said,” I warned.

  “She doesn’t scare me.”

  “Well, she scares me,” I said.

  “All Trina does is make up stories about people. They’re just words. You know that saying? Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words’ll never hurt me.”

  I couldn’t agree. “You can say that because no one ever says bad things about you.”

  “Forget Trina. We have bigger things to worry about,” Remi said. “Check this out.”

  He led me between a leafless hedge and a row of pine trees to the school’s equipment shed. I usually avoided the wooden shed because it smelled funky — I thought an old cat had climbed into the building and died. I couldn’t tell for sure, though, because the shed doors were usually padlocked. But today the padlock was lying on the dirt pathway beside a broken beer bottle and a can of spray paint. The doors were wide open.

  “Was anything stolen?”

  “I don’t think so. There’s nothing in there that’s worth taking.”

  Blue high jump mats took up most of the space in the shed. Beside them, the high jump bars leaned against a wall along with a couple of rakes, a bag of deflated soccer balls and some orange pylons.

  “Why did they do this?” I asked.

  “That’s not the half of it,” Remi said.

  He swung the wooden doors shut. A little part of the left door had been broken off, probably from someone ripping off the lock. Across both doors, someone had spray-painted multicoloured squiggly lines, spirals and half-finished star designs. In the centre of the graffiti was a message:

  GHOUL RULE

  The letters were red, outlined with black. “Ghoul” was painted across the left door and “Rule” was on the other one. The words bulged like cartoon tires filled with too much air.

  “Who did this?” I asked.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” a stern voice said behind us. We turned slowly around. There stood Principal Henday and he did not look happy.

  THREE

  “Does one of you want to explain this?” Mr. Henday asked.

  “It wasn’t us,” Remi said.

  “We found it like this,” I added.

  Our principal ran his hand over his bald head and sighed deeply. “I thought you boys knew better.”

  “It’s the truth. We didn’t do it,” I exclaimed. “You have to believe me, Principal Henday.”

  To his face we called him by his real name, but behind his back all the kids called Mr. Henday “The Rake,” because he was tall and skinny and had big feet, which made him look like a human rake. I wondered if he’d find his nickname funny; I didn’t want to be the one to ask. The Rake folded his arms and tapped his index finger against his elbow.

  If Principal Henday wanted someone to confess, all he had to do was keep quiet
and tap that finger of interrogation. One time David Field accidentally kicked a soccer ball through a school window. The Rake lined up all the boys in the gym and told us that someone was going to confess to the crime. Then he stood back and tapped his finger against his elbow. By tap two hundred and eighteen, David broke down and confessed to breaking the window, cheating off my math test and wetting his bed. The Rake’s finger had awesome power against the guilty. So even though Remi and I were innocent, my stomach fluttered and my knees shook. I felt the sudden urge to confess to a crime that I didn’t commit. Remi broke into a sweat. The Rake noticed and tapped faster.

  “Mr. Boudreau, how many strikes do you have against you?” Mr. Henday asked.

  “One,” mumbled Remi.

  The Rake handed out strikes to kids who misbehaved. One strike meant one day’s detention. Two strikes meant a week’s worth of detention. Three strikes and The Rake called the student’s parents. The strike Remi already had wasn’t even his fault. Eric Johnson had dumped a glass of water down my back and Remi had come to my rescue. He soaked Eric with a jug of water just as Mrs. Riopel walked into the lunchroom. When she saw the empty water jug in Remi’s hands and the water dripping off Eric’s blond hair, she freaked out. I told her Remi was standing up for me, but she still gave him a strike. Eric received a strike as well, which brought his total to two. Eric stopped dumping water on me after that.

  “The graffiti will be strike two, Mr. Boudreau.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Remi said.

  “Once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker,” Mr. Henday said.

  It wasn’t fair for him to assume that Remi was a troublemaker because of one strike. That was like kids assuming that I knew kung fu because I looked Chinese.

  “I can only wait so long, Mr. Boudreau.”

  Like a nearsighted umpire, The Rake was about to make a bad call. I had to stop him.

  “Mr. Henday, you’re wrong about Remi,” I said.

  “How would you know, Mr. Chan? Did you have a hand in the crime?”

  If I did do it, my hands would be covered with paint, but the graffiti was dry, and my hands were clean. “Remi couldn’t have painted the graffiti,” I said. “If he did, the paint would still be wet.”