Mercy on These Teenage Chimps (2 page)

"I could have been honored tonight," Joey said wistfully.

"Ah, Joey, it's no big deal." I offered to be his practice dummy if he wanted to keep up wrestling on his own. I promised to go down in less than nineteen seconds. He could even jump on my chest if he felt so inclined.

"You're the best friend ever," Joey claimed. He poked a finger around his eye and felt for a tear. He found only sleep and a dab of moisture. Still, he meant it. Ronnie was the best friend ever.

Eventually the first honorees and their guests—mainly parents with circles under their eyes from working long hours—began to arrive. Soon we discovered that only cookies and punch were being served. Joey and I were presented with white gloves to wear while we passed the trays of refreshments.

"But we washed our hands already," I argued.

Coach Bear glowered at me. He told me that I had been touching stuff and that maybe some germs were on the tips of my fingers. He asked how I would like it if some monkey kids like us were serving food when just a few minutes ago they'd been scratching an armpit or maybe using a fingernail to poke at foodstuff on a dirty tooth.

"We wouldn't like it at all," Joey volunteered.

I agreed with Joey. Why debate the matter? Coach Bear's fur would bristle and his hollering would fill the cavities of our ears if we didn't heed his suggestion. He was under pressure to make the awards banquet a success. I slipped on the white gloves, hiked up my pants, and maneuvered through the thickening crowd with a tray of cookies. Joey, the one of us with better balance, had hoisted a large platter onto his shoulder. He shadowed my steps, calling out, "Punch, anybody. Tasty punch."

We circulated with our sugary provisions and soon returned to our workstation to replenish our supplies. It was then that Joey punched me in the arm, beckoning for my full attention, or as much as I could give with my mouth stuffed with cookies.

"Did you see her?" Joey whispered.

I looked about, confused. I mumbled, "See who?" I swallowed my cookie, cleared my throat, and asked again, "See who?"

"
Her!
" He pointed to a pretty girl whose face was as sweetly pink as our punch. She was dressed in a pink dress and her knees were pink, too.

"Adorable," I agreed. Truthfully, my tongue was too busy working a cookie into a delicious paste to be impressed. But Joey, I could see, was smitten big time.

"I wonder who she is," Joey said dreamily. "I've never seen her at our school."

"Let's go find out," I said.

I scooped cookies onto my platter, and Joey splashed a new round of drinks into clear cups. We hurried over, glad that we had not only washed our hands but also misted ourselves with air freshener. We needed all the help we could get.

"Punch!" Joey crowed brightly.

The girl, alone at the moment, whirled around.

"No, thank you," she said with a beauty queen's wave of the hand. But she offered us a smile and looped her hair behind her ears.

"I'm Joey Rios," Joey said. "And this is my best friend, Ronnie Gonzalez. We go to Washington Middle School."

The girl blinked at us.

I could see that Joey, the less experienced of the two of us when it came to girls, was faltering badly. She was cute, this much I admit, and I scolded myself for giving so much attention to the cookie I had been pulverizing a few minutes earlier. What was wrong with me?

Because my best friend had been kicked off the wrestling squad and wasn't being honored that evening—the unfairness!—I was committed to helping him succeed. I picked up for him and added, "We had detention today, but Coach is letting us work off our time by helping tonight."

I recounted the history of our tardiness and the bike ride over to Lincoln. I forged ahead with a lot of sentences, mentioning Joey, my happy-go-lucky chimp friend, as much as I could. I tried to exude nice vibes, and Joey then jumped in and informed this girl that we were wrist deep in white gloves because no one could tell where germs lurked. Germs didn't have faces, he added philosophically, but if they did they would be really ugly faces.
Joey,
I thought,
don't demonstrate.

"Like this," Joey said. He scrunched up his face into a version of ugliness, arguing that that was what a germ might look like under a microscope. He then advanced his theory about germs. Although no scientist, he believed that they could get hold of you, bend you this way and that way, and lay you low for weeks.

"Enough, Joey," I butted in. I shifted the conversation to the adorable girl. "How come you're here?"

"I'm being honored," she replied. "For gymnastics. I took third in the state championships. I've been practicing since I was six. I'm on the team at Adams Middle School."

"Like, wow," Joey crowed.

"Like ditto wow," I responded gleefully. Not only was she pretty, but she could tumble, do splits, and vault onto the beam without banging her head. I was impressed.

"Joey used to wrestle," I said, patting my friend's rock-hard shoulders.

Joey grinned.

"He used to be really, really good."

Joey's smile lost its luster, though, when she asked, "You aren't wrestling anymore?"

"He hurt his back," I answered anxiously. I was filled with more hot air than the balloons hovering over the tables. I concocted a story about how Joey had lost a bunch of weight and then had to put that weight back on. His vegetarianism had affected his equilibrium. His opponent was none other than a state wrestling champ called Igor, who a few months before had become addicted to white powdered doughnuts. Joey had pinned this flabby state wrestler just seconds after the bell gonged.

The girl's hands came together and applauded.

"Ronnie is exaggerating," Joey said. He was touched by my fabrication.

I didn't have time to build on this story because across the gymnasium Coach Bear was weaving between the guests like a football player through defenders. He was headed toward us.

"Congratulations," I stuttered to the girl, and pulled on Joey's arm. We had to get back to plying the guests with sweets. "What's your name?"

"Jessica." She covered her mouth as she laughed. Why she was laughing was a mystery. Maybe she was just happy.

Joey and I made our exit. But Coach Bear tracked us down and warned us not to mingle with the guests. We were the refreshment crew, as well as the two knuckle heads who would sweep up afterward.

"Right," Joey said, bowing slightly.

But just as we started to again spread the gospel of cookies and punch, the master of ceremonies tapped the microphone with a finger. Lights dimmed. Latecomers hurried to their seats. The awards ceremony began with the Pledge of Allegiance. Then the crowd was dazzled by a six-year-old baton twirler, and next was moved by the testimony of a college basketball player whose life had turned around when he discovered that he wasn't starter material after all. He had learned that it was okay to sit on the bench. What mattered was that he had made the team and got to know some interesting people.

The individual awards began. The audience applauded for a long-distance runner, two swimmers, a tackle, a quarterback whose neck was propped up by a brace, a skateboarder with punched-out knees, and a forward on the regional soccer championship team. When Jessica's name was announced, Joey and I leaped to our feet, applauding wildly.

As she rose and acknowledged the applause with a big smile, the balloon at her table wiggled free from its tape and started a slow climb toward the ceiling. I followed its flight and was thinking,
Oh, well, that one's lost.
But was I wrong. Joey stripped his gloves from his hands and leaped up on the bleachers. Before anyone could tell what was happening, he was up on the ledge of a tall bank of windows.

"Careful, Joey," I muttered. I was touched by his chivalry, and then mad for not thinking of it first—shoot, I could have been the hero. I envisioned Joey capturing the balloon from the rafters; scaling down the side of the wall (notched with bolts for an easy descent); and on one knee, returning the prize to Jessica. But this image popped like a balloon when I heard Coach Bear's blaring voice.

"Mr. Rios!"

Coach Bear had taken over at the podium. His eyes flashed as he gripped the microphone and ordered, "Get down from there!"

Joey scurried across the rafters toward the balloon, which had nested in a joint. He snatched the string and straddled a girder. The audience gasped.

"In a minute," Joey bellowed from a tremendous height.

"Get down! You're gonna give me a heart attack." Coach Bear's anger had undone the noose of his tie.

Joey fiddled with something and patted at the balloon, which began to descend. Anchoring it was a badminton shuttlecock, lost up there for years and smartly put to use as a weight.

Spritelike, Jessica danced toward the descending balloon and caught it in her palms like a bouquet. She smiled at Joey's valiant gesture.

I would have been jealous right on the spot—
God, Joey thinks of everything!
—except for what Coach Bear yelled next.

"Who do you think you are? A monkey?"

Words do hurt.
Joey climbed meekly from the rafters to face Coach Bear, who yelled at him in front of Jessica and a whole load of people, some of whom had returned to munching cookies and gulping punch. Joey's face drooped like an old heavy sunflower and his shoulders slumped. And was that a tear that splashed between his shoes?

"But Coach, that's unfair!" I stepped in to defend Joey's gallant actions. Couldn't Coach see why Joey had risked himself? I assumed that he was married and familiar with love—wasn't that a dull wedding band embedded on his furry finger? But Coach roasted my ears with hurtful words.

I could only take so much. I peeled off my gloves and tossed them over my shoulder. A girl caught them.

"We're gone! We're out of here!" I yelled back. I was upset, but I pledged to worry about the consequences only when we got back to school on Monday. The weekend was ahead of us.

"You're going to clean up first!"

"No, we're not!" I replied heatedly.

We departed in spite of Coach's threats that we would get lifetime detention and that he would make us run laps until we were skin and bones. We rode home in silence. I didn't bark out in pain when the bike dipped into potholes—the handlebars were a cruel ending to a cruel evening. The ride ended at my front lawn with Joey claiming that maybe he belonged in a tree.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"I'm just a monkey, like Coach said."

"No you're not. If you're anything, you're a chimp. Where's your dignity?"

Joey swiveled his bike around and propelled himself away.

Before I went inside—my mother was on the couch laughing at a comedy on television—I sadly dwelled on our lowly status as teenage chimps. I sat on the front step and meditated on the stars shifting ever so slightly in the wide night sky. The moon was creeping up. A neighbors bathroom light went on and seconds later his toilet flushed. A cat prowled in the bushes that separated our yard from the neighbor's yard.

I was thirteen, a chimp by all appearances. What would the stars bring me? A good education? A day job? A chimp girl all my own? I lowered my head and tried to cry a few tears, but nothing would come out.

The next morning I called Joey. His mother informed me that Joey had climbed into the tree in front of their house, and it was fine by her. She wanted him out of the house so she could do some spring cleaning.

I jumped into my clothes, unzipped three bananas with a fingernail, devoured them while I made my bed, and rode my skateboard to Joey's house. Sure enough, Joey was nesting in the tree in front of his house, the same tree where we had built a little platform when we were eight. I shaded my eyes with my hand and circled the trunk. I could see his legs, but nothing else.

"Joey, how come you're in the tree?" I bellowed.

I heard silence except for the sound of birds shifting on the branches and a little breeze that tickled the spring leaves. I begged, "Joey, come on down." The breeze whipped into a strong wind for a brief second.

Joey's mother appeared on the porch. She wore a crown of pink curlers that matched her pink slippers.

"See," she yelled. "He likes it better up there!" She asked me what had happened that would make him skip breakfast and go up a tree.

I shrugged. I wasn't about to spill the beans about Joey falling in love or how he had risked his life to rescue a balloon from the rafters.

After Joey's mother returned inside, I shimmied up the tree. It wasn't much work because I was used to conquering heights. In fact, Joey and I had once scurried up the fifty-foot pine tree at the courthouse park.

"Come on, Joey," I begged as I placed an arm on his shoulder.

He sniffed and wiped his nose. He grumbled that maybe stupid Coach Bear was right.

"Trees are for birds," I argued. I spied the wooden bones of a kite that probably belonged to Joey. "Plus kites."

"I'm going to live up here forever," he retorted adamantly.

"How are you going to eat? Sleep?" I hated to miss a meal and sleep was heaven! And even if I brought him grub every day, Joey risked falling off the platform. We had built it so long ago maybe the nails had begun to loosen.

Joey maintained that he wasn't hungry and would never be hungry again. He had been humiliated in front of a special girl. According to him, she was probably snickering behind her pretty little hands at that very moment.

"She would never do that!"

"How do you know?"

"I just do. She's too nice to laugh at someone's pain."

For a brief moment, my concern for my friend vanished when I noticed a line of ants on a far limb. What were they doing way up here? I had suposed that ants were trekkers of loose soil, flowers, and dropped soda bottles. What could they find useful in a tree where a sad boy was absently peeling bark?

"Coach was mean," Joey babbled. His eyes darkened with tears.

"He was, like, way mean!" I agreed and pounded my fist on my thigh. "I'm never going to inflate balloons for him again!"