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Authors: Richard Scarsbrook

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BOOK: The Monkeyface Chronicles
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“Now, where were we, Graham?”

“I forget, Grant. I guess we'll have to start again.”

“Seven,” I say, as if it will matter. “You left off at seven.”

“ONE! TWO! THREE!”

Grunt punches me as hard as he can now, to punish Michael and to show me that nobody can protect me. I gasp for breath.

“FOUR! FIVE! SIX!”

“Fight back, Philip!” Michael cries.

Time slows. Between punches, I hear the children laughing over in the Primary yard, swings creaking and jump-ropes clicking rhythmically against the pavement. I see the clouds changing shape in the sky above me, and the shifting crowd of seventh and eighth-graders who have gathered around us. Some dance anxiously from side to side, like starving men in a soup line, some clench their fists like they are throwing the punches themselves, while the hands of others hang open-fingered at their sides, like they've just heard the worst kind of news.

Grant's meaty knuckles thump against my chest, making a hollow sound like a thick textbook being slammed shut. I feel my ribs flex and compress, feel the quick hiss of air through my nostrils and between my lips. I feel the tingle of arrested blood in my thighs beneath Grant's knees. I see his eyes narrow to serpentine slits, his top lip curl up. My Grandfather's jackknife is in my front pocket where Grunt's knees dig in, and an image flashes through my mind. I flip open the longest blade on my jackknife and slash at Grunt's face, cutting off his nose, then his lips, then his ears, making his face bloody and grotesque, far uglier than my own. Then Grum shrieks NO NO NO as I turn the blade on him.

“SEVEN! EIGHT!”

“Fight back, dammit!” Michael screams at me.

“NINE! TEN!”

Grunt leans back, the pressure from his knees momentarily released. I could reach for my jackknife now and make them both pay.

“Hey, Grant,” Grum says, “he's thirteen today, not ten.”

“Oh, right,” Grunt says, breathing hard. “What was I thinking?”

Grunt's fist hovers in the air, then it dives into my gut, driving the last bit of air out of me. And then he does it again, harder. And again, putting all of his weight, effort, and spite into it. I taste blood in my mouth, and I nearly black out.

Grum stands up. “And a kick for when you're sick,” he says, booting me in the ribs.

Grunt, who is still kneeling on me, adds, “and a punch to eat your lunch,” and he drives his right fist into my left eye socket.

The bell rings, ending recess. The other kids run toward the building, reminding each other that nobody witnessed anything.

Michael kneels beside me in the now-empty schoolyard. “Come on, Philip, let's get you inside.”

I am too sore to move. I can't draw enough breath to speak.

“I'll go get some help,” he says. “I'll be right back.”

I lie on my back, under the grey sky, the cold air drying the back of my throat. I reach into my right pocket and grip my grandfather's jackknife. It feels warm in my hand. I draw out the longest blade.

The muscles in my stomach are ripping apart strand by strand as I force myself to sit upright. My legs wobble as I stand up. I hobble toward the school, gripping the handle of the knife.

I will stride right into Classroom 8-C, past Miss Underwood, right up to Grant Brush's desk, and I will start slashing. And when I'm finished, I will cross the hall into Classroom 8-A, and his brother Graham will meet with the same fate.

No, I won't. I won't do that. I can't. I can see my grandfather's eagle eyes, reading my thoughts. I can't do it. I won't.

I close the blade, slide the worn, slender tool back into my front pocket, and lean back against the cool brick wall of the school. Did I just feel the air temperature drop, or am I just about to pass out from the pain? Has the wind stopped blowing, or have I just lost my senses from the beating?

The first snowflakes of the season drift down from above. I look up and watch them descend from the grey. They tickle my cheeks, collect in my eye sockets and slowly melt, following the trails my tears would have taken if I had allowed any to escape. But I didn't cry. I didn't give them that.

I walk away from the school. It always snows on my birthday. Everything around me is turning white.

Escape From Faireville

T
he wind blows harder now, and it's getting colder. It bites at my hands, face and ears, needles between the buttons on my green windbreaker, freezes the little hairs inside my nostrils. It stings my cheeks and eyelids, but I can't complain; I was the one who wished for snow.

My left eye is almost swollen shut from Grant's punch, and the pain in the side of my ribs from Graham's kick makes me limp. The entire left side of my body feels like it's dying a melodramatic death, but my right side pulls forward, somehow invigorated.

I won't wait around for Michael to return to the schoolyard with a teacher. I won't go back into the school, either. They can all go to hell.

I gather my breath, clench my teeth, and move my right foot forward and then my left, slipping through the gap in the school fence, then dragging myself past the line of sagging old huts along the railroad tracks where most of my 8-C classmates live.

Momentum carries me along. I am so numbed by the freezing air that I've almost forgotten my injuries. Almost.

Goodbye, Faireville Public School. I won't be back.

This is my plan: I will walk home and slip into the house without being seen by anyone. Then I'll tiptoe upstairs to the room I share with Michael. I'll pack a change of clothes, sneak some survival rations from the kitchen, and slip out through the back door. From there I will just disappear. I won't have to face any of them.

I will walk along the highway until I get to the crappy little city of Gasberg, and I'll make my way to the deserted downtown core, where I'll blend right in. I'll be one of those greasy, ragged kids who sit on the sidewalk begging for change from passers-by. I should make a fortune, since I definitely look pitiful enough, and my recently acquired black eye just adds to the effect. When I've collected enough cash for a train ticket, I'll take my act all the way to Toronto, where there are lawyers and bankers who toss twenty-dollar bills like quarters into beggars' hats. And from there, who knows.

There is no danger that my father will catch me sneaking into the house. He follows a strict routine every weekday: he locks himself into his windowless basement laboratory at six AM, and doesn't open the door again until nine, to receive a biscuit and a cup of Earl Grey tea from my mother. He opens up again at noon, when Mom brings him half a roast-beef-and-tomato sandwich and half a peanut-butter-and-banana, along with a sliced apple, three broccoli florets, and a glass of two-percent milk (a “nutritionally perfect midday meal,” in my father's exacting scientific opinion). He emerges again at exactly 6:00 PM, closing the heavy steel door behind him and double-checking the multiple locks. He must have a washroom in there, but I'm only guessing. None of us but Mom has ever seen inside the lab, and none of us is allowed to ask about the work he does in there. My father's projects are Top Secret, and that's that.

If Michael gets the chance, he will try to make me feel better about everything. It's easy to be so optimistic when you're as perfect as he is. His cheerleading is always sincere, and it has turned me around before, but it's not going to happen today. The school bus won't deliver him home until around four o'clock, and by then I'll be long gone.

Dennis is a variable in the equation, as usual. Being unpredictable is his
modus operandi
, his
raison d'etre
. If Dennis has chosen today to skip school, he's probably either shooting pool or buying illegal drugs in the back of Jackie Snackie's, or drinking cheap, watered-down draft at The Sergeant-at-Arms, a way-past-its-glory-days saloon on the main street with a reputation for serving minors. If Dennis is heading in or out of one of these places and he sees me, I'm screwed.

Mom, of course, is the most dangerous variable. She is mild-mannered and soft-spoken, but she feels distress in her children the way a soaring falcon senses prey on the ground below; the slightest twitch, and she's got you. If she catches me limping into the house in the middle of the day with blood and bruises all over me, there will be no escape. She'll trap me in an embrace, and then the questions will begin.

I don't want to relive it. I just want to disappear.

I turn from the railroad tracks onto Faireville Street, the one street through town. It's going to be a long walk home. The school is on the far east end of town, and our house is just west of the town limits. I grit my teeth and force myself to walk faster.

The east end of Faireville Street is a desolate stretch of abandoned history: weed-covered, junk-strewn vacant lots, slanted, moss-covered stables and crumbling, ancient warehouses. Dennis and his buddies sometimes hide out in these old buildings when they're skipping school to drink beer and smoke pot. They may have been responsible — accidentally or not — for burning an abandoned tannery to the ground earlier this year, but nobody was able to prove anything.

Goodbye, East End! Watch out for those teenaged arsonists.

Now I'm approaching the official town sign, which was erected well inside the town limits, away from the bad first impression a traveller might get from the East End.

Welcome to
FAIREVILLE
Population 2849
“The Cradle That Rocked the Natural Gas Industry”

Last year, as part of the town's Official Millennium Celebrations, the Faireville Town Council held a contest to come up with a new town slogan, and this one was the winner. At least it's better than Dennis' entry, “Faireville: We Gave the People Gas!” Before Western society's odometer rolled over from 1999 to 2000, Faireville's official slogan was “The Victorian Era Boomtown.” It was created during my grandfather's twenty years as mayor, and he was not pleased when the new council decided to change it.

BOOK: The Monkeyface Chronicles
6.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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