Duck Boy (2 page)

From some distant place, Steve heard an annoyed voice. Oh, right, he
thought. This is a daydream. More like a nightmare. Except during the day. A
daymare.

“Mr. Best?” The teeming crowd faded to black. Even the daymare wouldn’t
stay.

Mr. Pollock stood before him, frowning. His arms folded defiantly over his
ample gut. A tie tied slightly too short. A white dress shirt with blue and red
stripes, with a few straining buttons around his navel. A badly dressed frown
with legs. And the frown was aimed at Steve.

“Mr. Best! You’re traveling again.” The rest of the class laughed. The Frown
marched along the row of desks to Steve. “Mr. Best, you still haven’t answered
me! Well, Mr. Best?”

“Huh?” Steve answered in a weak voice.

“Would you answer the question, please?”

Steve scoured the faces of his ninth-grade classmates for any clues. No one
wanted to help. They seemed more entertained by Mr. Pollock’s tirade, more
interested in what was going to happen to Steve.

“Um, I guess I wasn’t listening, Mr. Pollock,” Steve replied. A tired pair
of words flocked his thoughts. A reminder of an old wound, these words showed
up whenever he felt like a loser.

Duck Boy. Duck Boy.

“I’d like to know where you go when you take these mental vacations. Next
time book a two-way ticket,” the Frown said. “And book it over a holiday. It’ll
be cheaper.”

A tingle of embarrassment burned Steve’s face.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Pollock,” hoping to end the attack. But the Frown hadn’t
finished with him.

“Get out of my classroom,” snorted the teacher. “Principal’s office. Now.”
He raised an arm and pointed dramatically toward the office and waited.

Steve collected his books and shuffled through the door.

The classroom door slammed behind him, leaving him alone in the hallway.

Alone. Finally.

He already had an appointment at the principal’s office, though Mr. Pollock
hadn’t known it. His dad was supposed to talk to the principal to review
Steve’s abysmal marks. The principal and Dad. Double whammy.

Steve detoured to his locker. He spun the face of his combination lock.
After a third try at the combination, it opened, and he placed everything he
didn’t need inside. He collected his coat, gloves, hat, and his binder—he had
homework over the Christmas break.

Thank God the Christmas break starts tomorrow.

Bowing his head, he rested against the locker shelf and closed his eyes. For a few moments, he stood
there avoiding the thoughts pooling in his mind.

I could drown, if I think too much.

The bell rang and classroom doors burst open. Students flooded the hallway.

Startled, Steve slipped on his coat, stuffing his tuque and gloves into the
pockets, and tucked his binder under his arm. He swung the locker door shut and
slid the lock into place.

The short stretch of hallway towards the school door and the outside world
tempted him for a moment. The winter weather would feel tropical compared to
the chill he was about to face in the principal’s office. He fought the urge to
leave everything and walk home.

No point in making things worse.

He crawled through the crowd toward the office. As he passed the entrance to
Mr. Pollock’s class, the class bully crowed his arrival.

“Hey, Duck Boy,” David said in a loud voice. “Duck, Duck, Ducky!”

Steve clenched his teeth, but didn’t look up. As he passed, David lunged for
Steve’s binder and whacked it forward. It flew from under his arm and into the
crowded hallway ahead of him. The binder’s rings snapped open and class notes
feathered the air. A pair of girls squealed with laughter. They turned away as
Steve glanced at them. The brick echoes of their laughter still hit the mark.

“Hey, you—Duck Boy!” yelled another classmate.

Steve forced his eyes down and away from his schoolmates’ faces as he passed
them, away from the paper, and up the hallway. Away, away. The pack of students
kicked and frolicked through his notes, giddy with the thought of Christmas.
David and his cronies eyed him, probably hoping Steve would frantically attempt
to recapture all the paper.

I refuse to pick it up.

Instead, he stomped through his own notes, the paper crinkling and tearing
as he walked over it.

Duck Boy. Duck Boy.

The nearly empty binder lined up with his foot, and in a final act of
defiance, he punted it. It flew between several students, shedding a last few
sheets, bashing against a stretch of lockers. It collapsed to the floor, covers
partly torn, like a robin that had hit a glass window.

He stormed through the office door, stopping in front of the secretary’s
desk. The secretary looked up sharply, as if he had startled her, but her
surprise melted into a smile when she saw him.

“Hello, Steve,” she said. Membership has its privileges. Frequent fliers
were greeted personally at the door. “Your dad and Mrs. Wilcox are discussing
your school performance. I’ve got to get some photocopying done.” She picked up
a thick file and stepped from behind the counter. “Just wait until they finish
their meeting, all right? They know you’re waiting for them.” As she stepped
into the hallway, Steve sat down next to the principal’s office. A clock
whirred and clicked just above his head.

Steve felt ice close in around him as he sat. Life was such a drag. His
nickname flew circles in his thoughts.

Duck Boy. Duck Boy.

As he waited, his thoughts migrated back to his foolish duck rescue—the day
he earned the name “Duck Boy.”

It was in November that the pond outside the junior high school had frozen
over for the first time that season. The pond looked black under the smooth
polish of the first coat of ice. But the day seemed cold enough for the ice to
hang on until the rest of winter arrived.

In the middle of that frozen pond sat a mallard duck, frozen to the ice. It
had probably fallen asleep while the ice formed around it. When it awoke, it
was frozen to the pond’s surface. It flailed and screamed for freedom, but the
ice wasn’t listening.

As Steve stood gazing at the stranded bird, a few of his classmates gathered
by the pond.

“That’s hilarious,” David said. “So much for the mighty duck.”

“It’s a dead duck,” one of David’s minions added. “A frozen dinner.”

David bent down, found a stone and hurled it at the duck. The stone hit the
ice in front of the bird and scuttled into the bird’s side. The duck stopped
trying to free itself from the ice for a moment and began to flap up a new
panic. David carefully selected another rock from the pond’s edge.

“Stop it, jerks!” Steve yelled towards his classmates. “Can’t you see it’s
stuck? It’s utterly defenseless.” He rushed at David to stop his throw.

Another spectator caught Steve and pushed him to the ground and sat on him
before he could reach his nemesis. “Pinhead,” Steve spat in David’s direction.

The rock missed.

“That duck has more happening in its brain than you do,” Steve yelled with
the last of his breath.

His comment earned him a slug in the gut. “Stupid animal lover.” Steve
fought to bring air back into his lungs. “Mind your own business.”

“He’s the ugly duck,” David said, pointing at Steve. “So ugly that even his
mom couldn’t stand him.”

The group laughed. “He’s the Ugly Duck Boy!”

“Leave the duck alone!” Steve wheezed.

“The newspaper says there are too many ducks around, doofus,” David snarled.
“That duck was stupid. It got itself frozen into the pond. Survival of the
fittest.” David stopped talking as a fist-sized rock bashed the duck’s back,
and the duck stopped its fight to look up towards the bank with a dazed look.

“Nice shot,” a minion remarked.

Steve heaved his captor from his body and ran, without a thought, to the
pond’s edge. He focused on the dazed duck, mulling his choices, and then
stepped gingerly onto the new layer of ice. For a moment he stood on the pond’s
surface. But the ice snapped loudly, and in an instant the polished black
surface around his feet burst into shards.

He stood in ankle deep water, the pond filling his new Nike hightops.
“Crap,” he muttered to himself. Somehow he remembered to remove his backpack,
throwing it onto the shore behind him.

Then step by soggy step he marched toward the duck, making pieces of the ice
as he went.

“Look at the idiot. He thinks he’s a duck,” shouted someone. “He’s ugly, and
he can’t swim.” It was true. Steve couldn’t swim at all, and he sure felt ugly.
The four on the shore laughed hysterically and mocked.

“Why am I doing this?”

His steps broke the ice until he was up to his thighs. Once the water was
too deep to use his feet to break the ice, he began to punch the pond ice with
his fists.

“Get the Duck Boy! Get the loser,” David commanded. The group on the shore
hurled anything they could find at Steve, showering him with ice and water.
Another picked up his backpack and hurled it into the pond, where it floated,
sort of.

Steve hobbled on his tiptoes in frigid water almost up to his chest. The
freezing water burned his ribcage, making it hard to breathe. He was still a
few feet from where the frantic duck sat locked in its frozen seat. As he
bobbed closer to the duck, he realized that if he wanted to free it he’d have
to confront water that was over his head. And he really couldn’t swim.

The school bell rang, and a few more rocks and sticks spattered around Steve
and the duck before the group of students headed to school, leaving Steve, the
duck, the pond, and the ice to battle it out.

Steve struggled to keep his chin above the water. The chill numbed his mind
and stole his breath.

He lunged towards the duck, smashed down with his fists, hoping to crack the
ice around the duck without having to attempt to swim. But the ice broke around
his hands, leaving the ice around the duck intact.

Steve allowed his body to sink under the freezing pond water so he could
give a strong push to where the duck sat. His head slowly dropped beneath the
surface, falling into a world of black water.

He looked down. The chrome skeleton of a shopping cart shimmered under him.
He looked up at the frantic, frozen mallard—its webbed feet paddled in terror,
still imprisoned. Feathers flashed, were they red? and a wink of sunlight
turned the ice gold. Steve stood on the cart and prepared to push himself up to
the surface.

But somehow his right foot slid into a small gap in the shopping cart’s
metal grid. When he realized what had happened, he tried to pull his foot
through. He planted his left foot on the outside of the cart and pushed, trying
to muscle his foot through the cart’s grate.

The last of his dry breath bubbled through his mouth. His lungs burned. He
tried to spin his body, but the hole in the cart’s shell wouldn’t allow it. The
burn in his lungs became a raging fire. He thrashed mindlessly as the pain in
his lungs and leg became unbearable.

Hope left him alone in the black water. His body stopped fighting and hung
above the shopping cart, now quiet.

This is it. Dead Duck Boy.

The icy black water seemed to leak through his skin, inside, taking his last
moments.

What a way to go.

As his trapped foot relaxed, the shoe loosened and dropped away, belching a
bubble before see-sawing to the pond bottom. Now smaller, his foot slowly slid
through the grating, and he thrashed to the water’s surface.

His face broke through the pond ice and he stuffed his burning lungs with
bright morning air. The terror returned. Steve floundered his way towards the
shore, leaving the duck behind.

As he flailed to save his own life, a foot inadvertently broke the ice underneath
the duck, freeing it from the pond’s surface. Frantic wings beat around Steve’s
head as the bird took to the air. And the duck, probably feeling attacked,
snapped at his hand. He would have hollered, except breathing and floating
seemed more important.

He felt like a 1000-pound rock. Flailing arm over arm, he tried imitating a
front-crawl stroke he’d seen on TV.

His TV swimming tired him, so he dropped down under the water again, trying
to regain strength. He eyed the cart, which was now behind him. He bicycled his
feet forward until he was standing.

“Yes,” he said to himself, discovering the water was only up to his chest.
“Yes, yes, yes.” With each step toward the shore, terror ebbed from his mind.
He stopped for a moment, freezing water up to his chest, heaving, wondering if
his lungs would ever be the same again.

He realized for the first time since he entered the water that he was
freezing. He reached instinctively for the house key he wore around his neck.
It was gone.

“Ah, crap,” Steve said angrily to himself. “Do I have to go to school LIKE
THIS?” he shouted. He climbed out of the pond and noticed his missing shoe. “MY
NEW SHOES!” he screamed. He kicked off the remaining Nike and hurled it into
the pond. “This day sucks!”

Home or school?

He debated. His frozen thoughts moved slowly. He was probably almost a mile
from home, and he had frozen feet slopping in wet socks. He had no house key.
School was much closer. The choice seemed to come slowly and with great effort.
His decision was a practical one, though humiliating.

Up the steps, and through the main doors of the school. His wet socks
slapped on the linoleum as he walked to class, leaving a trail of small
puddles.

I can barely think.

He entered the Frown’s class, mid-lecture, and to the surprise of nearly
everyone, plopped into his seat with a splat. The room went silent. A slow
drip, drip, drip pattered onto the seat from his elbow.

Just be normal.