The Monkeyface Chronicles (7 page)

Brush takes another step closer to Cecil, towering over him. “You
think
you thaw . . . ”

Grant snickers.

Mr. Brush glares at his son, then turns his crocodile gaze back on Cecil. “You
think
you saw
something,
Cecil?”

A tear dribbles from Cecil's eye, and he sniffles. Grant snickers again. Graham elbows him.

“I
th-th-thaw
what happened, thir.”

“You
saw
Philip lose his temper and attack Grant? And you
saw
Graham trying to help defend his brother?”

“No,” Cecil says, drawing a deep, shaky breath, “I th-th-thaw Gwaham holding Philip down while Gwant gave Philip b-birfday beats.”

“Well,” Mr. Brush says incredulously, taking a step back from Cecil, “Did anyone else in the class see what Cecil saw?”

The other kids just sit there looking down at their desktops.

Mr. Brush taps his toe on the floor for what seems like an eternity, scanning the top of each downturned head with his bulging eyes. Finally, he says, “Well, then, it really doesn't seem that there is enough . . . ”

Adeline Brown raises her hand.

“Yes, Adeline?” Mr. Brush says impatiently.

Like most of the kids who attend the Tabernacle of God's Will, Adeline hardly ever talks; but, unlike the rest of them, when Adeline does speak, it's difficult to get her to stop. The words spray out of her like bullets from a machine gun with a stuck trigger.

“I saw what happened, too. I watched the whole thing. Graham and Grant told Philip they were gonna give him Birthday Beats, and then they held him down and started punching him because it's his birthday today, even though Birthday Beats are against the rules. Grant called Mr. Packer Mr. Pecker, and Graham called him Ass-Packer, and they said they didn't care about the no Birthday Beats rule at all, and no adults were there to see what happened because Miss Underwood was in your office, and Grant and Graham punched Philip twenty times, even though it should have only been thirteen times because Philip turned thirteen today, not twenty, obviously, but they started counting the punches all over again after Michael tried to make them stop, but Graham and Grant's friends held onto Michael, and, like . . . ”

“All right, Adeline,” Mr. Brush interrupts, but she keeps right on going until the dismissal bell rings. Usually all the students would immediately spring from their seats, but today nobody moves.

“So,” says Mr. Brush, after the echo of the school bell has faded, “is there anyone else who has the same story as Cecil and Adeline?”

One by one, other students raise their hands.

Mr. Brush slouches a little. “Grant, Graham,” he says to his sons, “go to the office, please.”

“Gonna walk with us, Dad?” Grant wonders.

“No, Mr. Packer will escort you. Mr. Packer, please see that an Official Notice of Suspension is filled out for each of them, and call their mother to come pick them up.”

Grum and Grunt look stunned as they are led out of the room by Mr. Packer, whose clenched-lipped, wrinkled-brow expression fights to conceal a slight grin.

Mr. Brush turns to the class and says, “You are dismissed.” He leaves the room without saying another word, with the Incident Report still clutched in his hand.

Yellow to Blue

T
he screech of the whistle echoes through the gymnasium.

Sneaker soles honk and squeak as we stop running around the gym and freeze in position.

“SQUAD FORMATION!” Mr. Packer barks.

We scramble to form four straight, parallel lines facing the coach, who stands beneath a basketball hoop like a Roman warrior in track pants. When Mr. Packer is sporting his navy blue T-shirt with the word COACH stenciled on the front, you're dealing with the real man, and you had better fall in line. The whistle chirps again.

“INSTRUCTION POSITION!”

We drop to the floor on our behinds, cross-legged, backs straight, hands in our laps; no talking, no fidgeting, no nonsense. “TODAY. WE. WILL. BE. PLAYING. FLOOR HOCKEY!”

Mr. Packer enunciates each word succinctly. It comes as no surprise to anyone that we are playing floor hockey again. Mr. Packer is the head coach of the Faireville Blue Flames Triple-A Bantam Hockey Club; when he's not playing Vice Principal, he is always in his blue leather club jacket with “HEAD COACH” emblazoned on both sleeves. In fact, our Phys. Ed. classes are devoted exclusively to playing floor hockey, except for a couple of weeks in early September when we play soccer, to justify the soccer goalposts donated to the school by the club to which Mr. Brush belongs.

With the boys of the three academically segregated classes put together like this twice a week, Mr. Packer has made the progressive educational decision to divide us into four “squads” — blue, white, red and yellow — based on what he supposes our athletic abilities to be. Our squad assignments are permanent for the entire year; each of us was required to purchase a blue, white, red or yellow T-shirt as part of our official Faireville Public School gym uniform.

“BLUE SQUAD! WHITE SQUAD! FACEOFF POSITIONS!”

My brother, Michael, is on the Blue squad, along with Graham and Grant Brush, Brian Passmore, Trevor Blunt, and Bernie Wall. It's not a coincidence that all six of these boys play for the hockey team Mr. Packer coaches, and that their gym T-shirts are the same colour as the navy-blue jerseys the Blue Flames wear for home games. Michael centres the top forward line on the team, with Grant Brush on the right wing and Graham on the left. Blunt and Passmore (a great name for a hockey player, I think) are the top defensemen on the team, and their starting goaltender is Wall (maybe the best name ever for a goalie). Passmore is one of Michael's best friends, but my brother doesn't care much for Grum, Grunt, or Blunt; nevertheless, you play with whoever the coach tells you to.

White squad consists of Billy O'Malley, Sam Simpson, Toby Frenier, Jake Burns, Turner Thrift and Brandon Doggart, who make up the number two forward line, the second defense pair and the backup goalie for the Blue Flames, who just happen to wear white jerseys for their away games.

“RED SQUAD! YELLOW SQUAD! ON THE BENCH!”

All four squads are supposed to get equal time playing during gym class, but Mr. Packer's stopwatch functions in such a way that the Blue and White squads spend the majority of the class playing while the rest of us sit on the bench and watch. Mr. Packer wants “his boys” to get all the practice they can; they made it all the way to the regional finals last year, only to lose in game seven to their arch-rivals, the Gasberg Pipefitters. Mr. Packer wants to win that cup this season; you can almost
smell
the desire burning inside him (or maybe it's just those bean burritos he eats for lunch).

When I started attending Faireville Public School in September, I was shoved into the appropriately named Yellow squad, most of whom spend gym class cringing and ducking to avoid getting hit by the floor hockey puck. It doesn't help that our bright yellow T-shirts make us even easier targets.

During the rare moments when Yellow squad is actually out on the floor (usually when the guys on the Blue and White squads are taking a break to visit the water fountain), I play Centre. So far this year, we've been outscored one-hundred-ninety-six to twenty by Red squad, who, despite the colour of their T-shirts, are not exactly the Detroit Red Wings. Of our twenty measly goals, I've scored nineteen of them myself, and assisted on the other one. It's a pretty big accomplishment when you consider my teammates.

My right-winger is Anthony Caldwell-Wheelwright. He's the best student in 8-A, a prize-winning classical pianist and a gold-medal-winning downhill skier. He's also got the best pedigree of any grade eight student; his parents are from two of the wealthiest Old Weller families in Faireville. I got to know Anthony at this year's County Science Fair; my project on genetic mutations won first prize in the Biology category, and his demonstration on the sound waves produced by musical instruments took top honours in Physics.

Since Anthony is already The Best in every category that matters to him, he couldn't care less about hockey. Once, while we were sitting on the bench, he told me that “the function of team sports in society is to provide a niche for the individually unremarkable.” I didn't bother bringing up the individual achievements of hockey players like Wayne Gretzky or Martin Brodeur. Despite his distaste for the game, Anthony has earned assists on all eighteen of my goals, since we've got a system where I pass the puck to him, and he rolls his eyes and immediately fires it right back at me.

Team Yellow's left-winger is less predictable. Caleb Carter suffers from severe Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, but his elderly parents refuse to believe he has any sort of medical problem; in their minds he's merely “a bit rambunctious.” They refuse to shell out any of their old-age-pension money for the Ritalin he's been prescribed to help him stay focused, so Caleb spends most of his shift running around in circles and tripping over his plastic hockey stick. He has scored two goals this year; one was the result of a shot I took myself that deflected off his stick when he randomly galloped between me and the net. Caleb's second goal of the season, which didn't get recorded on the sheet on Mr. Packer's clipboard, was an accidental shot over our own goalie, who had fallen down after becoming tangled in his own untied shoelaces.

Our goaltender, Stevie Underwood, can't really play any other position, since his thick glasses tend to fall off his face when he runs, often to be trampled by Caleb Carter. At least those huge glasses protect Stevie somewhat when he gets hit in the face with the puck, which happens a lot.

Stevie doesn't get a lot of support from Yellow squad's defensemen. Bradley Miller's parents belong to the Tabernacle of God's Will, so he has been exempted from wearing a glaring yellow T-shirt like the rest of us, since the Tabernacle rules require him to wear an itchy, bulky wool suit that looks like it was purchased from a mail-order catalogue in 1890. Bradley can hardly breathe, let alone run, in this outfit, but at least the thick material cushions the blow when the puck hits him. Bradley doesn't have much enthusiasm for sports anyway, probably because of all the weekends he's forced to stand in front of the Faireville Memorial Arena handing out pamphlets.
Music, Movies and Sports — The DEVIL'S DISTRACTIONS!

Yellow squad's other defenseman is Cecil Bundy, who is often already crying before we even arrive at the gym. In the boy's change room before our last Phys. Ed. class, while Cecil was sitting on a bench tying up his gym shoes, Grant Brush danced around in front of him, waving his little penis in Cecil's face, singing, “H-h-hey, B-b-baby Bulk! I'm talkin' to you, Th-th-theethill! I th-th-thee you guys th-th-thell all-day l-l-lollipops at the Incredible B-b-bulk. Well, h-h-here's thomething you can th-th-thuck on all day, b-b-buddy!”

“Knock it off, Grant,” my brother Michael demanded.

“What?” Grant laughed, “You gonna tell the Principal on me, Michael?”

“No,” Michael said, “but I might start shooting at the net more and passing to you less.”

“Whatever,” Grant mumbled, pulling his gym shorts up over his little wiener. He didn't want to jeopardize his chance of winning the league-scoring trophy again this year. Besides, he had already accomplished his mission; Cecil Bundy was sobbing like a grieving widow.

Since Grant Brush and his brother Graham were suspended from school yesterday, Cecil Bundy is not crying at the beginning of gym class today. I sit down beside him on the bench, and pat him on the shoulder. He flinches.

“Hey, Cecil,” I say, “thanks for standing up for me yesterday. That took a lot of guts.”

“I h-h-hate Gwaham and G-g-gwant,” he says, tears welling up in his eyes. “Th-they are s-s-such assholes.”

“I have to agree,” I say.

“Th-they'll p-p-probably k-k-k-kill me.”

“Maybe not. Maybe they won't think they're so untouchable anymore.”

“M-maybe.”

“Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks, Cecil. You were the only one brave enough to speak up first. I owe you one.”

“You're welcome,” he says, without stuttering. His lip quivers a little, but he doesn't cry.

Mr. Packer's whistle screeches again.

“GAME ON!”

“Time out, coach!” Michael calls out.

The whistle toots.

“TIME OUT! What's the problem, Skyler?

“Blue squad is missing two players, Coach. Graham and Grant are, um, absent today.”

“It's a team sport, Skyler,” Mr. Packer says. “When you're missing teammates, you just have to play on the best you can without them.”

Michael motions at the bench. “Why don't we bring in a couple of the other guys? My brother can play on either wing.”

This statement is theoretically true. Although I've never played on an actual ice hockey team, every winter since we were little kids Michael and I have dragged our sticks, skates, and net out to the frozen stretch of creek that runs through the forest behind our house, racing each other, passing the puck back and forth, taking shots on the net. Sometimes Billy, Brian, Jake and Toby from Michael's Triple-A team will come over with a second net, and we'll have a game of three-on-three. They rarely ever talk to me, but they never argue with Michael about letting me play, either. Michael and I have skated together and passed to each other for so long, we can almost read each other's minds.

“No,” Mr. Packer says. “Breaking up the squads will mess up my record-keeping.”

From my observations, it seems that Mr. Packer's “record-keeping” results in the boys on Blue squad automatically receiving A+ grades in Physical Education on their report cards, while everyone on White squad gets an A. Red squad gets Bs, and Yellow squad receives Mercy Cs, except for Cecil and Stevie, who have wept during class and are thus awarded Fs for their failure to “suck it up.”