The Monkeyface Chronicles (9 page)

“
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you
,” she says. “Since I always wish that someone would stand up for
me
once in a while, it was my Christian duty to say something.”

A wave of hot guilt rushes through me. When a crowd has gathered around Adeline or Cecil or some other unfortunate soul, I have always just quietly slipped away, thinking,
better
them than me
.

She dips another handful of cold, dangly fries into the jar of orange goop. “Are you sure you wouldn't like some?”

“Okay, maybe one.” The stuff sticks in my throat like a ball of phlegm. “Mmmm. Thanks.”

I hear giggling behind us. It's the Little Colour Girls.

“Aw, look!” coos Lara Lavender. “Adeline has a
boyfriend
!”

“What a cute couple!” Carrie Green exclaims.

“A match made in Heaven!” Caitlin Black adds.

They skip away, tittering like chickadees. “Oh, no!” she says. “
Now
we're in for it.” Adeline's
Bible Stories for Children
book slips from under her arm and falls in the snow.

“Hey,” I say, “they can't be nearly as bad as Grum and Grunt, and we beat
them
yesterday, right?”

Adeline's eyes widen, an effect that is amplified dramatically by the lenses of her glasses. “Oh, they
are
as bad as Graham and Grant.
Worse
, in fact.”

She starts talking in that machinegun-fire way of hers. “At least all the teachers
know
those guys are jerks, they've just been afraid to do anything about it because Graham and Grant's dad is their boss. But the Little Colour Girls? They're the definition of wolves in sheep's clothing. They've got everyone fooled. They giggle like little goo-goo dolls and bat their long eyelashes and draw little hearts on their test papers with ‘
I
love school'
written in them, and they leave expensive treats from their mothers' shops on the teachers' desks with fancy little cards that say things like ‘
Thanks for being the BESTEST
Teacher EVER!!!!'
and all the teachers think that they're just the sweetest little things. They're just as mean as Graham and Grant, but
sneakier
. And that makes them worse.”

She squeezes the top of her snack bag closed and folds her arms together tightly across her chest. “A couple of weeks ago, the three of them caught up with me on the way home from school. I thought they were going to start calling me
Fat-a-line,
or ask me if I got my clothes at
Frumps ‘R' Us
. That's the kind of thing they do, so if I tell on them, they can just bat their eyelashes and claim that I must have misunderstood what they said, and then the teacher gets down on
me
for trying to get
them
in trouble. But they didn't make fun of me at all. In fact, Lara told me that she and Carrie and Caitlin had been discussing it, and that they thought maybe they should let me join the Little Colour Girls, since my last name is Brown.

“I suspected they were setting me up, since they're always torturing me, like giving me cards with hippos and pigs printed on them on Valentine's Day, or handing me fashion and dieting magazines during library class. So I told them, ‘Thanks for the offer, but I really doubt that you want
me
to join your group.' But then the next day at school there was a beautiful card, an official invitation to join the Little Colour Girls for my initiation ceremony.”

“Initiation ceremony?”

“I was worried about that, too, but they assured me that it would be ‘great fun' — we would just dress up in some fancy clothes, drink some tea and eat some bon-bons, and then there would be a ceremony where I would ‘welcomed into the sisterhood.' They sounded so sincere about it. So, I pretended to be sick so I could skip my Friday night Bible study group, and I snuck out to meet them at Lara's house, which is like Buckingham Palace compared to the shack we live in. Sure enough, there were teacups and candles and little china plates full of candies everywhere, and the three of them were all dressed up in fancy satin dresses, and of course Lara's was lavender, Carrie's was green, and Caitlin's was black, just like their names. They told me that all I had to do was put on the special brown ball dress they had found for me, and then I would officially be one of the Little Colour Girls.”

“That's it? That was the ceremony? You had me thinking you'd be drenched in pig's blood or something. So then what? What did they do that makes them worse than Grum and Grunt?”

“I was supposed to take off all of my clothes, except for my underwear, then fold everything up and hand it over to them. Then I was to go down into the cellar, where I would find my brown satin ball dress hanging. Once I had put it on, I was supposed to emerge again into the room, and they would all clap for me, we would share what they called a ‘hug of sisterhood,' and then I would officially be one of the Little Colour Girls. I wasn't too crazy about the whole plan, but Lara told me they all did the same thing when they made their ‘Bestest Friends Forever' pact, and that it was supposed to represent me shedding my skin, turning from a caterpillar to a butterfly, or something like that. And everything was so beautiful, and they all seemed so sincere . . . ”

Tears collect in the rims of Adeline's glasses.

“I'll never forgive myself for believing them.”

“What happened?”

“I don't think I want to talk about it anymore. Ugly girls don't have any friends.”

She bends to pick up her fallen
Bible Stories for Children
, and her glasses slip from her face.

With her glasses off, she can't see me looking at her. She's got straight white teeth, and perfectly formed pink lips; these features alone make her beautiful compared to me. With those clunky old glasses off her face, her cute dimple of a nose is no longer camouflaged, and her dark brown eyes are not magnified or distorted.

“You're not ugly, Adeline,” I tell her.

“It's nice of you to say that, but . . . ”

“I mean it.”

She slides her glasses back onto her face, and takes a deep breath. “So I went down into the cellar to put on the brown ball dress, thinking,
‘I am going to be a Little Colour Girl.'
” Her lip quivers. She bites it.

“They locked me in. There was no ball dress. Lara said through the door, ‘
You can't be one of the Little Colour Girls,
Adeline!
' Then Carrie said, ‘
Everyone knows that brown isn't a
real colour!
' Then Caitlin said, ‘
Yeah! Mr. Springthorpe said so
in science class.
' I just let myself out the basement door and ran home in my underwear.”

A split-second image flashes in my mind, of Adeline's round, naked breasts bouncing as she runs. My erection suddenly thickens. Adeline is pouring her soul out to me, and I've got a boner. Why can't I control this stupid thing?

“Jesus, Adeline.” I don't know what else to say.

“You shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain like that, Philip,” she says.

“Sorry.”

“It's okay,” she shrugs. “Thanks for listening.”

“Thanks for standing up for me yesterday,” I say.

As we all stand in line waiting to be let back into the school after recess, Lara Lavender, Caitlin Black and Carrie Green cluster together with Sam Simpson, Turner Thrift and Brandon Doggart, whispering and giggling. The Little Colour Girls and the Little-Brain Boys. I've got a pretty good idea of what they're discussing, and I think Adeline does, too. She stands as far as possible from me in line.

My brother Michael is beside me. “How come you didn't come play field hockey with us, Philip?”

“I wanted to thank Adeline Brown for telling Mr. Brush what happened yesterday.”

“Listen, Philip, take some advice from someone who's been at this school since Kindergarten, okay? You're not going to make any friends here by hanging out with losers like Adeline Brown. It's just the way it is.”

I don't look at him or say anything as we trudge into the school.

The Meaning of Know

T
his is the last class before Christmas Holidays begin. Here in the windowless, overheated Science Room, the feeling of desperate anticipation is rising to a slow boil, even without Grant Brush to stir the pot. Mr. Springthorpe has not arrived yet; he is habitually late when he has to teach Class 8-C.

A shower of spitballs and eraser chunks rain down from the back right corner of the classroom, where Sam Simpson, Trevor Blunt, and a few of Grant Brush's other toadies sit. I occupy the middle desk of the middle row, right in the crossfire zone. Adeline sits beside Cecil in the front left corner. She has not made eye contact with me since recess ended.

Caitlin Black sits in the front right corner, looking unhappy to be here as always. Because she was struggling in Math and Science classes, Caitlin has been transferred into the more
“deliberately paced learning environment”
of Class 8-C. There has been none of her usual chirping and preening. Separated from Lara and Carrie, Caitlin has seemed translucent, colourless, a mere outline of herself. But today she's got fire in her eyes.

Caitlin turns and stares at me for a moment, probably wondering what Adeline has told me. She can't read my face, though, so turns her sniper's eye on Adeline, who is hunched over hiding in her science textbook, stalwartly ignoring the little projectiles that bounce off her back and catch in her hair.

Caitlin isn't the only one with eyes trained on Adeline. In Mr. Springthorpe's absence, Sam Simpson has been scanning the room for a victim.

“Hey, Adeline,” he calls out. “Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, you ugly cow! Since you're a Bible freak and all, I've got a Bible question for ya.”

Caitlin wears a feline expression; her green eyes narrow, lips in a tight, slender grin, the ends of her long red hair like spikes against either cheek. She's in on this.

“So, like, in the Bible,” Sam says, “the word ‘know' means having sex, right?”

“Answer him, Adeline,” Caitlin Black demands.

“Why don't you read the Bible and find out for yourself,” Adeline says.

“Here's an example,” Sam says. “In the Bible, ‘Adeline
knows
Philip' would mean ‘Adeline
fucks
Philip,' right?”

A few of the other kids giggle and gasp.

“Congratulations, Sam,” Adeline says, without unlocking her eyes from her science book. “For a change you're right about something. ‘To know' occurs frequently in the Bible — ‘and Adam
knew
Eve,' ‘I have two daughters which have not
known
man,' and so on. Most people who study the Bible agree that the term ‘to know,' or
yada
in Hebrew, refers specifically to having sex, or ‘fucking' as you put it.”

Everyone in the class is quiet. Nobody can quite believe that they have just heard Adeline Brown, a uniform-wearing member of the Tabernacle of God's Will, say the word “fucking.”

“After Biblical times,” Adeline continues, “if you got caught having sex with someone you weren't supposed to, like your sister or somebody else's wife, you would be punished
‘For
Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.'
” She pronounces these last four words slowly. “See? It spells
fuck
.”

This was not the reaction Sam was hoping for from Adeline, so he turns to Caleb Carter, who has been flipping through the pages of a
Star Wars
fan magazine. Sam reaches over and snatches it away.

“Hey, Monkeyface,” Sam calls out, “If you and Adeline get to
know
each other enough, this is what your baby's gonna look like!” He holds the magazine open to a picture of the sluglike Jabba the Hutt. “It'll have your face and Adeline's body!”

I shrug. “At least my kids will be able to add and spell.”

Sam is pretty sure he's just been insulted. “You better watch it, Monkeyface,” he says.

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, waving my hand in the air like I'm swatting away a fly. “Beat me up after school, okay?”

“I might just do that, Monkeyface,” Sam says. “Be ready.”

Sam stretches his neck out into the hallway to see if Mr. Springthorpe is on his way. Then he reaches out with a blue magic marker and scrawls the words “CEESIL B. SUCKS THESE!” at the bottom of a faded biology poster entitled
The
Male Reproductive System
. “Hey, Baby Bulk!” he calls out. “I wrote a little poem about you!”

Cecil looks back at Sam and says, “J-just because y-you th-thuck them, d-doesn't m-mean I do, Th-tham.”

“Gee-ZUSS!” Sam grunts. “What's gotten into the geeks today, Trevor?”

“Pretty friggin' mouthy, eh?” Trevor says. “Maybe they think they can shoot off their mouths because holidays start tomorrow.”

“Remind Cecil that Christmas hasn't arrived yet,” Sam says.

Cecil cowers as Trevor dramatically raises his fist in the air.

“Okay, people,” Mr. Springthorpe calls out from down the hallway, “here I come. Settle down and get your Science notebooks out.”

I have a theory that Mr. Springthorpe announces his imminent entrance like this so he won't have to witness what's been going on before his arrival, and therefore won't have to actually do anything about it.

Trevor drops his fist to his side. Sam tosses the magic marker into a nearby garbage pail. Caitlin stops glaring at Adeline and puts on her sweet Little Colour Girl face. The stormy rumble of conversation fades, and the rain of little projectiles stops abruptly, as if a new weather system has swept into the classroom. Mr. Springthorpe switches on the overhead projector, and tosses a time-yellowed transparency onto the dust-specked glass.

“Okay, people,” he drones, as he wanders toward his desk at the front of the class. “You are to copy this note on Temperature, Heat, and the Particle Theory. When you're finished, you can read pages 106 to 125 and answer the questions on 127 and 128. That should keep you all busy until the end of class, but if you have time for chit-chat and goofing off, I can assign more.” He sits down and opens a
Sportsweek
magazine. “So, unless there are any questions . . . ”