Amphibian (23 page)

This morning while I was getting ready for school and while my mother was in the shower, the phone rang. It was only 7:33 a.m. Whenever the phone rings that early, my heart does a somersault. The only person who calls that early is my dad.

I ran to the phone and glanced at the call display before picking it up. Dad has a cellphone and it always comes up
Walsh Will
. But as my hand was on its way to the receiver, I noticed that the call display didn't say that. I jerked my hand back. It said a different name. At first I thought I must be seeing wrong. I blinked and looked again, and yep, that's what it said all right:
Gaskell Brent
. BRENT!

Do you know what it feels like to be expecting one of your most favourite people in the world and to get one of your least favourites instead? It's crueller than cruel. It's like biting into what you think is a big, sweet, juicy purple grape and getting a mouthful of bitter, gross black olive. Or like if you think you won a million dollars in a lottery but it turns out that all you won was a lousy box of Glosette raisins. And raisins make you gag.

I let the phone ring three times and then I picked it up and put it back down. I felt a little bit powerful when I did that. I imagined Brent's confused face. I imagined him thinking that my mother didn't want to talk to him. I imagined him deciding, ‘Oh well. I'll just call that other woman instead – the one who doesn't already have a husband.'

Then after a few minutes, I heard another phone ring from inside my mom's coat pocket. I pulled it out and pushed the Answer button on and then off again.

I would have rather my mom got a call from Mrs. Wardman. Or from Lyle. Or from Satan, for that matter.

At school today a bullying expert came to talk to us … again. This time it was a woman.

She picked a good day because just before she arrived, Ryan borrowed a pen from Lyle but it turned out not to be a pen at all.
It was one of those things that looks just like a pen but it's really a shocking device. When Ryan clicked down on it, it shocked him and he screamed and flung it up in the air and it landed on Mitty's head. Mrs. Wardman was super mad. She grabbed the pen, threw it in the garbage and sent Lyle to Mr. Legacie's office.

This meant, though, that the biggest bully missed the anti-bullying presentation. The expert talked about how bullying is wrong and that if we're being bullied, we should:

1. tell an adult

2. stay in a group

3. join clubs or activities where we'll meet other kids

4. if we're being bullied online, don't reply and tell some-one we trust.

She also said that bullies often will pick on kids who are shy, quiet or seem different from other kids. That was the part that made the most sense to me. Scientists have this theory called the ‘oddity effect' that says that fish who stand out are more likely to be chased by predators. This explains why fish prefer to school with other fish who are just like them. Obviously I picked the wrong school.

Just as the bullying expert was getting ready to leave, Lyle came back into the classroom. As he was walking to his seat – and right in front of Mrs. Wardman and the expert – he flicked my eraser off my desk. He did that right in front of everyone just after we had a session on bullying and nobody did a thing! Isn't that bullying? And isn't it also an example of irony or something? As I got up to get my eraser lying in the middle of the floor I was super, to-infinity angry.

After the woman left, Mrs. Wardman told us to each draw a ‘Bullying-Free' poster. She said we're going to put them up all around our classroom. She told us to include some of what we learned from the bullying expert.

I sat looking at my blank page for a long time. I didn't know what to draw. I looked at Kaitlyn's poster and it was of a girl talking to a teacher. In a speech bubble above her head it said, ‘I am
being bullied.' I looked at what Gordon was drawing and it was kids playing in a Lego club together.

I thought some more about what I could draw. I didn't want it to be anything that would belong better on my List of Lies than on the classroom wall. Finally, I picked up my pencil and drew a picture of a kid trying to get his hat back from another kid who was holding it way up in the air and laughing. I made the bully look as much as I could like Lyle and the other kid look like me. Then over top of my drawing I wrote ‘Free Bullying.'

When I passed it in, Mrs. Wardman didn't say anything. Not a thing. But I know she's going to talk to my mother again. Oh well.

This evening I called my grandmother. I got right to the point. I said, ‘By the way, Grammie, do you know why my parents got separated?'

My grandmother didn't say anything at first. Then she cleared her throat and said, ‘Sometimes, honey, people just don't get along very well.'

‘So?' I said. ‘Does that mean they can't live in the same social group? When chimps fight, afterwards they still live together in the same group. It's not like one of the chimps just gets up, packs his bags and wanders off to another country.'

‘Well, if your mom and dad lived together, that might mean a lot of arguing and fighting and hurt feelings that may not be the healthiest thing for either your mom or your dad … or for you, sweetie,' said Grammie.

I didn't say anything, and then Grammie told me some more things about adults who don't get along. Stuff I've heard before.

After a few minutes I changed the topic and Grammie and I talked some about animals. Grammie mentioned that she saw a snowy white owl while she was walking in the woods yesterday. That reminded me of Jean Craighead George, who wrote that her kids used to have a pet screech owl named Yammer who lived in their bookcase, watched
TV
and even took showers with the kids.
Her son had once made a sign for the bathroom that said, ‘Please remove owl after showering.'

After I hung up the phone, I still didn't understand why my parents had to get separated. It just doesn't make any sense. When two chimps just can't stop fighting with each other, often another chimp jumps in between them and beats them apart. Sometimes when two mountain gorillas fight, an infant will put himself in the middle and the two gorillas calm down.

Maybe I should have jumped in between Mom and Dad that first time they fought. But I didn't. And now it may be too late.

Something happened today with Lyle that gave me an idea. The ironic thing is that the idea came out of something Lyle did that was evil – like the kind of evil that made a man and woman put a dead person's finger in a hamburger in order to get money from the restaurant.

It all started when Ronald McDonald was in our school talking to us about healthy living. I was sitting in a chair between Bird and Gordon and just ahead of Lyle. While Ronald was talking about healthy fruits and vegetables, I all of a sudden really had to go to the bathroom.

When I got back to the gym, I sat down in my chair and leaned back because what had happened in the bathroom sure was a relief. But when I leaned back, I felt something tug the back of my chair and all of a sudden I could feel myself falling back, back, back until
wham! –
my back and head hit the gym floor. Everything after that happened so fast I didn't even have time to think about it. It was as though a part of my brain was on automatic and I couldn't have stopped it even if I had wanted to.

I sat up and screamed something at Lyle that I still can't believe I thought of. I screamed, ‘
Mo chreach
!' and then, ‘Fuck off, you shithead fucking fuckface asshole!' Everybody turned to look at me – even Ronald stopped doing jumping jacks. Lyle looked surprised for about an instant, and then he laughed hard.
He laughed and snorted so hard there was snot bubbling in one of his nostrils.

Bird helped me up and then picked up my quarters and a loonie that had fallen out of my pocket. Then Mrs. Wardman came running over and asked if I was okay, and I said yes even though my head really hurt. She looked at Lyle, who was still laughing with snot bubbling out of his nose.

Mrs. Wardman said, ‘Did you have something to do with this, Lyle?'

Lyle stopped laughing and shook his head no. But then Gordon said, ‘Yes, he did. He pulled on the back of Phin's chair, and Phin fell back.' Lyle looked like he wanted to kill Gordon. His face got kind of red and his eyes looked crazy like one of them might all of a sudden pop out of his head on a spring like in a cartoon. This made me worried because I think Lyle was born without the do-not-kill-people gene, like what some scientists think happened to Ted Bundy and Paul Bernardo.

Mrs. Wardman looked at Lyle and said, ‘Is this true, Lyle?'

Lyle said, ‘No – it's not true!'

That's when Gordon said, ‘Yes it is! I saw him!'

I'm a little worried about Gordon. I'm thinking that maybe he doesn't have a self-preservation instinct. He'd have been much better off being a peacock flounder fish, which turns the colour of its background. Gordon's eyes or brain or something just didn't seem to be working.

Mrs. Wardman believed Gordon over Lyle. She grabbed Lyle by his arm and marched him out of the gym. Lyle gave Gordon a mean look, and then turned and grinned at me. It wasn't a friendly grin – it was more like the grin of an insane kid without the do-not-kill-people gene.

Principal Legacie came over to me and took me to his office. He looked worried, but I told him I was all right. My head was still hurting but he looked so worried that I didn't want him to feel even worse. He told me that he would call my mother to come get me as a precaution.

I saw my mother coming into the school before she saw me. She looked around and then must have had the sense of being stared at because all of a sudden she turned around and looked right at me. She rushed over and hugged me and asked if I was okay. When I told her I was, she got really angry. Her eyebrows pointed down in the centre of her head, and her lips went really thin. Then she used her sandpaper voice, which is always a dead giveaway.

She turned to Principal Legacie and said, ‘How did this happen?'

He told her about what happened, but he didn't say who did it. He just said one of the children.

My mom's head whipped over to me and she said, ‘Was it Lyle, Phin?'

I nodded.

My mother's head then whipped back to Principal Legacie. ‘I want this to stop, and I want it to stop TODAY!'

Even though my mother yelled the word
today
, Principal Legacie talked in a really calm voice and said that a procedure would be followed, and the child's parents notified. Then he said, ‘Mrs. Walsh, I am truly sorry this happened to Phin. Please be assured that we'll handle this. Don't worry …'

The first mistake Mr. Legacie made was calling my mom Mrs. Walsh. Her last name is MacKeamish. But worst of all were the words
don't worry
. When he said those words, it was if they were coming out of his mouth in slow motion. In my mind it sounded like
dooonnnnnnnnnn'tttttt wwwoooorrrryyyyyyyy
. I knew he was in for it. And he was.

The thing about my mother is that she has everybody who doesn't know her very well fooled. She has big green eyes – which look even bigger now that her hair is really short – and a big smile, and she laughs a lot. The average person laughs only eighteen times a day, but my mother laughs at least eighty-six times a day. She looks a little like a big, fluffy, smiling, tail-wagging dog. You think you're safe to pat her on the head, but then next thing you know, she's got her jaws around your throat.

My mother said, ‘Mr. Legacie, this has been going on for a long time. If something isn't done and soon, I'll do something about it myself.' She said that in her icy sandpaper voice with acid bursts. That's her worst-ever voice.

I looked at Mr. Legacie's face, but he looked calm. I think he's just a good actor, though, because my mother sounded really scary. If Principal Legacie were a horned toad, he could have squirted blood out of his eyes. If he were a sea cucumber, he could have thrown up his guts at my mother to distract her while he made his escape. My mother, on the other hand, looked like a frilled lizard, which hisses and raises its frill to make itself look even bigger.

Then she turned her back on Mr. Legacie, grabbed me by the hand and we left without saying another word.

When we got home, my mother was a little calmer. She sat with me on the couch and we watched
The Nature of Things
. It was all about the destruction of the rainforest. I had seen this program before. It was about how the rainforests act as the world's thermostat because they control temperatures and weather patterns. More than 20 percent of the world's oxygen is produced by the rainforest and it's home to 50 percent of the earth's plants and animals. Half of the earth's total rainforests have been cleared in just twenty years.

I knew my mother was still thinking about Lyle because she didn't even notice that we were watching a show about the destruction of the earth. Just to be sure she wasn't really watching I asked her if she'd rather be a cuckoo bird or a cuckoo bee. She just smiled and put her arm around my shoulders. And the show didn't even mention cuckoos.

Then all of a sudden my mother said, ‘I think you should write a victim-impact statement.' I asked her what that was, and she said it's a letter that describes how you feel when someone does something wrong to you. She said they're used in courts so that the
person who committed a crime can see how much they hurt other people. Then she said, ‘I'm just kidding, Phin. But really, something had better straighten that kid out now before he ends up a murderer or something.' I think she read my mind.

Even though she was kidding, what my mom said got me thinking. So while she was sitting there not really watching the
TV
, I went to use her office computer. I typed the words
victim impact statement
into Google and came up with 178,000 hits. One of the sites said that in the letter you should write about the emotional, physical and financial impacts of the crime. So I got out my pen and paper and wrote a letter to Lyle. It said: