by Ken Kwek
Mr Pong was glued to his phone, tiptoeing like a hunter closing in on his prey. Timothy skidded down the corridor. Mr Pong was headed for the toilet: the girls’ toilet.
“Dad! Stop!” yelled Timothy in alarm. But Mr Pong was too absorbed in his phone to hear him. He pushed open the door to the toilets and strode in like a warrior about to claim his victory.
Timothy rushed in after his dad, praying there was nobody inside.
But there was somebody inside.
Miss Chin was just remerging from a cubicle and adjusting her skirt when Mr Pong held up his phone at her and shouted: “PIKIPEK!”
Rudy was pacing back and forth backstage, wondering what was taking so long. Darren and Bella were starting to get mushy, but the Pongs were nowhere to be seen. He peeped through the curtains from the wings.
Mrs Pong and Tara were still in their seats, watching the play like two madly devoted puppies, gushing at the action on stage. Romeo cupped Juliet’s cheek and pulled her towards him. Rudy could see the tears in Mrs Pong’s eyes and her false eyelashes beginning to flap as they lost their stick.
Just as Darren and Bella’s lips were about to meet– DDDDDDDDRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGG!
Miss Chin had squared up nose-to-nose with a terrified Mr Pong in the girls’ toilets.
“INTRUDER!” she screamed. She screamed so loudly, it shattered the glass cover of the fire alarm on the wall and set off the siren.
Pandemonium ensued in the audience as hundreds of confused people stampeded towards the exits, falling over each other as they scrambled to escape.
Bella and Darren looked on at the chaos with gritted teeth. Bella had spent all day preparing for the kiss by brushing her teeth twelve times and puckering her lips with Lip Smacker gloss.
Darren had put on his father’s deodorant and eaten nothing for dinner but a tube of Mentos. But two panicked stage-hands pulled the actors apart at the sound of the alarm and dragged them off stage.
A convoy of police cars and sirens screeched into the school gates.
“OVER THERE, OFFICERS!” ordered Miss Chin, pointing an accusing finger at Mr Pong.
Three policemen seized Mr Pong, whilst a fourth slapped handcuffs on his wrists.
“Sir, we have reason to believe you’ve been loitering in the female toilets and shouting ‘peekaboo’ at female staff members,” said the officer with the handcuffs.
“YES, HE’S A FILTHY––” Miss Chin went on to call Mr Pong various names reserved for the worst offenders in the annals of crime.
Mr Pong was stunned into a catatonic silence, too terrified of Miss Chin to say anything as he was marched towards a squad car. The escorting officers forgot to press Mr Pong’s head down and he knocked his temple against the door frame before tumbling into the back seat.
14
Purgatory
The June holidays felt more like what the Catholics call “purgatory”, a halfway house between heaven and hell, where heaven was a day when no one in the Pong household had an emotional breakdown, and hell was a day when more than one person did.
Mr Pong was a nervous wreck due to the police inquiry into his alleged offence against Miss Chin’s modesty. He was constantly checking his phone for updates from the Investigating Officer.
Mrs Pong and Tara were upset by the thought that Dad could go to jail, and that they might soon have a convict for a husband or father. They spent most of their days either sobbing or shopping, or both at the same time.
Even Christina Aguilera stopped singing upbeat songs and instead switched to tragic Filipino ballads. She rarely had to clean up Casper’s poop from the kitty litter after Casper developed a case of tension-induced cat constipation.
Timothy was relieved he would not have to see Miss Chin again for another four weeks. He wasn’t sleeping well and some nights he’d wake up in a cold sweat, the echoes of Miss Chin screaming, “INTRUDER!” haunting his dreams.
When the misery of the Pong household got too much for him, Timothy asked if he could go and hang out with Rudy and Uncle Russ Tee. Since no parent responded to his verbal request, he went anyway.
“At least you tried doing something about the perhubbers’ phone addiction,” said Uncle Russ Tee, when the boys showed up at his shop.
“Phubbers is pronounced with an ‘f ’,” Rudy corrected him. They had taught Uncle Russ Tee the word and he liked using it whenever he could.
“Ruining the school play was probably not the best approach to the problem, though,” continued Uncle Russ Tee. “Whose idea was it?”
Timothy and Rudy pointed at each other. Uncle Russ Tee chuckled and tossed them a packet of prawn crackers that had passed their sell-by date in 1999.
“Well, it didn’t work anyway,” said Timothy as Rudy chewed on a shrivelled cracker. “They’re even more addicted now and Dad has vowed never to attend any of my school events ever again.”
“That’s classic Tian, all right,” said Uncle Russ Tee, laughing. “Always missing the wood for the trees.”
“Go ahead, laugh,” sulked Timothy. “You don’t have to live with him.” He sat down on a beer crate and flicked at peanut shells strewn across the carrom board.
Rudy finished the prawn crackers and proceeded to nibble on any peanut shells that were flicked in his direction.
Uncle Russ Tee looked at the two boys slumped on his beer crates.
“I know what’ll cheer you up,” he said. “You boys know what vinyl is?”
“No,” replied Timothy. “Wait, yes. It’s a kind of paint, right?”
Rudy thought he heard a gecko chirping but it was actually Uncle Russ Tee going “tchk tchk tchk” as he tutted in disapproval.
“This is a vinyl record,” said Uncle Russ Tee, showing the boys a flat black frisbee that he’d pulled out of a large cardboard sleeve. He placed the frisbee on an old record console and set it spinning with the turn of a knob.
“Hey, I’ve seen one of those,” said Rudy. “It plays music.”
The boys jumped to their feet to get a closer look. The console looked cool but they were not holding out for Uncle Russ Tee’s choice in music. Knowing him, he was probably going to play something that was composed at least two centuries ago.
Uncle Russ Tee swivelled a metallic arm beside the deck and lowered the needle onto the spinning record.
“Do you have any Imagine Dragons?” asked Rudy. The boys folded their arms, looked at each other and sniggered.
They were anticipating the insipid strains of Western classical music, something played on strings or, more likely, an ancient harpsichord. Instead, their hearts jumped and their eyeballs popped as the speakers blasted a roar of a hundred baritone singers belting at a zillion decibels.
RAAHAAWAAAAAH! ROOBEE HAI-YO ROOBEE HAI-YO HAI-YO ROOBEE HAI-YO! HWAH HWAH HWAH HWAH HWAH HWAH Hwah!
The boys jabbed their fingers into their ears and stared open-mouthed at Uncle Russ Tee, pumping his fists in the air and jerking his body, out of time, to a chorus of Mandarin chants, and bizarre clangs and strums.
Timothy and Rudy stood stock still, gawking at Uncle Russ Tee who was now hopping on one leg and then the other like an ostrich that had stepped on hot coals.
Noticing his two guests hadn’t joined in, Uncle Russ Tee shimmied back to hit a knob on the console. The music wobbled down to silence and the boys slowly unplugged their fingers from their ears.
“What’s wrong?” asked Uncle Russ Tee, a little miffed. “You don’t like ‘The Yellow River Cantata’?”
The boys said nothing but kept ogling Uncle Russ Tee. A single drop of blood trickled out of Timothy’s left nostril.
It was remarkable that Timothy would later look back on this moment as the second best event of the June holidays.
15
An Ear for an Ear
The best moment of the June holidays was when Timothy’s dad received a phone call from his Investigating Officer, telling him they would not be pressing charges.
Having consi
dered Timothy’s witness statement, and performed a thorough search of Mr Pong’s phone, the Investigating Officer found a thickly populated Pokédex, but no photos or videos of Miss Chin.
The final report from the Police concluded that there had in fact been a misunderstanding. A copy of the report was sent to Mr Pong. Timothy flipped to the last page. It read:
Mr Pong was exonerated, though he was advised to seek professional help for “irresponsible use of his mobile device”. It was advice that he immediately disregarded.
In fact, true to form, the Pongs celebrated the end of the investigation with some precious family time: they returned to their devices with a vengeance. Only they were too traumatised to go back to Pokémon Go.
“Collecting Pokémon is just too stressful,” said Mrs Pong.
“Dangerous,” agreed Mr Pong, “very dangerous.”
“We have to walk, it’s too physical,” added Tara.
So, the family turned to a new game called Zen Koi, which involved controlling a slow-moving goldfish to eat thousands of even-slower-moving goldfish. Casper caught a glimpse of his master and mistresses’ screens and licked his whiskers with glee.
Rudy also spent most of the June holidays with his family. Mr and Mrs Baptista made him help out at their hawker stall, even though business was bad, and Rudy spent most of his time either twiddling his thumbs, or holding his nose. The Baptistas sold a total of three bowls of devil’s curry in a month, and then issued three refunds to three unhappy customers.
When Timothy arrived at school on the first day of term, Rudy grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the large drain just outside the school gates.
“What the heck is wrong with you?” cried Timothy.
Rudy put a finger to his lips and pointed. From a crouching position, Timothy peered cautiously over the edge of the drain. Big Burt, Tsai Koh and Darren swaggered past through the gates.
Timothy crouched back down and heaved a sigh of relief. “Thanks,” he said.
“They’re probably still furious with us. I mean with you. I mean with your dad, for ruining the play. Meaning, also with you,” said Rudy. There was a toad in the drain and Rudy grabbed it.
“You’re not going to eat that, are you?” asked Timothy, feeling a little queasy.
“Don’t the Chinese eat frogs’ legs?”
“That’s a toad, not a frog. And we don’t eat frogs raw. It’s not sashimi.”
Rudy sighed and let the toad go. He turned to Timothy. “They’re gonna be looking out for us. They’re gonna do everything they can to hurt us. We have to be very careful.”
Timothy nodded. He knew Rudy was right.
But the first week of term passed without incident. The boys kept a keen lookout for the enemy, but no one seemed to be hunting them. Rudy didn’t receive any rude heckles at football practice. And Timothy didn’t have any of his books nicked off him when he walked out of the library. The calm was unsettling.
By the second week of term, Timothy and Rudy noticed that the bullies were needling another group of first years – three boys who were in the school choir. They saw Big Burt pounce on the choir boys in the amphitheatre. Darren emptied their pockets, whilst Tsai Koh inflicted paper cuts on their noses.
Meanwhile, classes resumed with mind-numbing monotony. Miss Chin had stopped wearing calf-length skirts in favour of ankle-length ones and she now began every class with a thorough search of every student’s uniform and bag to eliminate any chance of illegal phone-use in lesson.
Thankfully there was progress on the Triple S project. The team managed to fix the last remaining bugs in their robot. Eat-Z could now feed the class pets the right types of food and the right quantities. Although, there were still no hamsters to eat the hamster food.
“We did it!” cried Gilbert ecstatically.
“But we need to replace Duke and Orange,” said Wacky.
“Duke’s here,” said a voice coming from the doorway of the classroom.
There stood Bella, cradling Duke in her hands.
“Dukey!” cried Wacky happily.
“What do you want?” asked Timothy. He suspected Bella was up to something.
Bella blinked her long eyelashes and flashed them a coy smile.
“I’m sorry for taking Duke,” she said. “And I’m sorry about what happened to Orange.”
She walked towards the hamster cage, still smiling sweetly like a Disney princess on parade. She lifted the lid of the cage and popped Duke next to the mountain of hamster muesli that Eat-Z had deposited there.
“He’s fatter now, ’cos I think I’ve been overfeeding him,” said Bella.
“He seems healthy,” said Wacky as Duke did a nosedive into the muesli.
“Well, Eat-Z’s left plenty of food for him, too,” said Gilbert.
“Eat-Z? Oh, your robot!” Bella cooed.
“Yup,” said Gilbert.
“Gil—” Timothy sensed danger and wanted Gilbert to stop talking.
“He’s all done,” continued Gilbert. “He can feed all the animals automatically without us having to lift a finger. We’re gonna be the best project among the first years!”
“That’s great,” Bella said. “That’s really great.” The twinkle in her eyes dulled as she rubbed the palms of her hands together like an evil villain.
Darren, Tsai Koh and Big Burt appeared at the door. They walked into the classroom, clapping their hands and cheering: “Bravo! Bravo!”
“An ear for an ear, a toe for a toe,” snarled Tsai Koh.
“It’s ‘an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’, moron,” said Big Burt.
“You didn’t think we’d forgotten, did you?” said Darren.
“Forgotten what?” asked Timothy, trying to stall them. His could feel his heart thumping in his chest. Big Burt and Tsai Koh stood in front of Timothy and Rudy like a barricade.
“You ruined our show. Now we’re going to ruin yours,” said Darren. He reached for Eat-Z.
“No, please don’t!” pleaded Wacky. She lurched forward to make a grab for Eat-Z. But Big Burt stuck his leg out so she tripped over it and crashed to the floor. Fortunately for Wacky, she fell into Gilbert so she didn’t hit the floor too hard. Gilbert didn’t feel so fortunate.
Darren snatched Eat-Z from the table. He held the robot up by one of its tennis ball legs, between his thumb and forefinger, as if he were holding up a mouse by its tale.
Timothy and Rudy watched in horror as Darren casually let go his grip. Eat-Z fell to the hard floor with a thunk.
16
A Hairdryer?
Uncle Russ Tee was sitting in front of a dressing table mirror. He was trimming his goatee with an old Malay ceremonial dagger called a “keris” when the boys arrived at his shop.
“Yo, Neph Pong,” he said.
“Yo, Unc Rust,” said Timothy, shaking his uncle’s hand.
“Yo, Rude,” said Uncle Russ Tee. “What’s cooking?”
“Nothing edible,” said Rudy.
“You boys look messed up. Who died?” asked Uncle Russ Tee.
“Eat-Z,” said Timothy.
“Who’s Itsy?”
“Eat-Zee, our pet-feeding robot in school.”
Uncle Russ Tee let out a long phuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut. “Excuse me!” he said. “Did you just say ‘robot’?”
Timothy and Rudy explained how the bullies had destroyed their science project as revenge for the Romeo & Juliet debacle.
“I let our teammates down,” said Timothy, looking at his feet. “We have to come up with a new idea but I’m at a total loss. What can we do in just four weeks?”
Uncle Russ Tee finished grooming his beard. He held up the keris and blew bits of goatee stubble off the blade. The wheels in his mind were turning.
“Filming the bullies wasn’t a bad idea, but maybe you weren’t using the right tool,” he said.
“Says the man who shaves with a dagger instead of clippers,” Timothy mumbled.
Uncle Russ Tee clambered gingerly over a pile
of giant Russian dolls, to get to an old Victorian chest. He opened the lid and lifted out a brown leather case, about the size of a shoebox. He blew on the case to give it a rudimentary clean, then sneezed at the cloud of dust he’d created. He sat down at the carrom table and motioned for the boys to come over.
Uncle Russ Tee clicked open the brass clasps of the case and lifted the lid. The boys peered in at some sort of metal contraption inside. It had a grip and barrel.
“Is that a…hairdryer?” asked Rudy.
“Oh, my golly, it’s a gun!” exclaimed Timothy, his voice trembling. “Uncle Russ Tee! I hate the bullies, but I don’t hate them THAT MUCH. I don’t want to kill them.”
“What the heck are you talking about?” said Uncle Russ Tee.
He lifted the contraption out of the box and held it proudly in his hands. Then, in a gruff voice that sounded very much like Lego Batman, he said: “This, my friends, is a Bolex Zoom Reflex 8-millimetre camera.”
The boys stared at the old machine that Uncle Russ Tee was cradling in his arms like a baby. They had never seen a camera larger than a deck of cards. If this was a camera, its size was hardly impressive. It was way too big.
“It looks much longer than eight millimetres to me,” observed Rudy.
“It’s not the camera that’s eight millimetres, silly,” said Uncle Russ Tee. “It’s the width of the celluloid film that goes inside the camera.”
“What’s celluloid?”
Uncle Russ Tee looked at his young friends, shaking his head and clicking his tongue. He pressed his hands together and nodded, remembering these youngsters hadn’t even known what vinyl was.
Timothy and Rudy sat down on their beer crates. They knew this might be a long explanation.
“This camera can capture images just like a mobile phone captures video,” began Uncle Russ Tee. “But it is better than a mobile phone.”
“How so?” asked Rudy.
“Yeah, how?” Timothy chimed in. “My ASUS has 2560 by 1440 quad-HD resolution. What’s the resolution on this thing?”