Last Meeting of the Gorilla Club

by Sara Nickerson

  And the other thing, of course, was the gorilla. Lucas was still thinking about Mr. K’s class, and the gorilla experiment.

  Right after class, he’d gone up to Mr. K to tell him what he’d seen. He’d waited until almost everyone else was gone. Then he cleared his throat and said, “I saw it.”

  Mr. K was fiddling with the computer but looked up right away. “The gorilla?”

  Lucas nodded.

  Mr. K leaned against the edge of his desk and crossed his arms over his chest. His “thinking look” as the kids called it. “Well, Lucas,” he said finally. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I guess because when nobody else saw it, I wasn’t sure.”

  “You weren’t sure you were seeing the gorilla? Or you were afraid to be the first to say it? Or—”

  Lucas shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe both. I don’t know. It was weird.”

  Mr. K nodded and tapped his fingers. “Emperor’s new clothes—do you know that story? When the tailors came to town and made the emperor clothes of a new fabric? Fabric so fine it was only visible to intelligent people? And the emperor paraded around naked, and no one said anything because they were all too afraid of being called stupid? Remember that story?”

  “Yeah,” Lucas said. He did.

  “Speak up next time, okay? Like the kid in the story. You’d be surprised at how many more kids might follow.”

  Lucas could tell Mr. K wanted to talk more about the Emperor’s New Clothes and speaking up and all that stuff that seemed to be favorite topics of grown-ups, so he said, “I need to get to PE.”

  “We can talk about this more in class, okay?” Lucas nodded but hoped Mr. K wouldn’t call on him to talk about it.

  And then in PE he ran around the track and was feeling good and Coach Wolfberg was shouting, “Good job, Hernandez! Keep it up!” But then Maxie Moon appeared in the stands again, kicking her legs and dancing like a cheerleader.

  “Go, Lucas, go!” she screamed. And Lucas faltered. He practically stopped. He bent over and sucked in air and watched the feet of his classmates thunder past him.

  When he finally stood and walked the final stretch to the finish line Coach Wolfberg said, “You just need to pace yourself better at the beginning.” And he nodded. Because what could he say?

  Lunch was halfway over and his friends had finished eating and were busy gathering their trash and recycling. “You coming, Lucas?” they asked.

  Lucas looked down at his sandwich. He hadn’t even taken a bite. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up with you.”

  He wasn’t hungry, but he didn’t feel like walking with them in their normal group. Everything felt too strange and twisted for that. He thought about Mr. K’s class again, and the thing he’d said about the Emperor’s New Clothes. Yes, Lucas knew the story. Practically everyone did. And it did make sense. Speaking up and all that. But there was something that had always bugged Lucas about that story.

  What if the clothes really were invisible? What if they were spun from the most magical thread in the entire universe? And what if everyone was too stupid to see? Including the stupid little kid who became the hero of the story?

  From the middle of the cafeteria, Maxie Moon twirled around and waved at him again. Of course he couldn’t have told Mr. K what he really thought. All he could do was nod and say yes, yes, next time he would certainly speak up because, of course, the Emperor’s New Clothes!

  FIRST MEETING

  At lunchtime Josh got two slices of pizza again and walked out to Dead Melanie’s bench. He picked off the pepperoni slices and stacked them on the side of the plate.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  He was thinking about several things at once: the invisible gorilla, his invisible locker-room experience, and the fact that pepperonis were so perfectly round they looked like freaky eyes.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Did he hear them or see them? He wasn’t sure. Did they really make a noise, or was it the motion that made them seem like they had? Two feet, right in front of him, in mismatched shoes.

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Josh looked up, just as the sun slid out from behind a cloud. The air in front of him shimmered. Two shiny pots of gold on either side of a sparkly rainbow—that’s what he saw after the shoes. And then she was there, hovering in front of him with her strange and watchful eyes. His heart did a fast flip and his neck started up again. SOS, the twitch warned.

  He clamped his hand against his neck but still, SOS.

  The world seemed to tilt, like a picture on its side. Josh wasn’t hungry but he picked up his pizza because it was something to do. I am choosing to ignore this, he said to himself, just as Dr. Ted had instructed. But the dough and cheese was expanding in his mouth and the sun was blinding and there were those little shiny pots of gold. And his neck.

  “I saw you in Mr. K’s class today.”

  He stared at her feet. Tap, tap, tap.

  “I know you can see me.”

  Josh stuffed more pizza in his mouth.

  “And you saw the gorilla, too, didn’t you?”

  Josh closed his notebook. You are not really here, he said to himself, as he was supposed to.

  “Do you want me to go?”

  He continued to stare at her feet. Then slowly he said, “You don’t need to go because you are not really here. You are not a part of the real world.”

  She laughed and tapped her shoes together. One green, one red. “You see me, don’t you? Maybe you’re not here. Maybe you’re a dream. Maybe it’s not even your own dream. Maybe you’re part of my dream. Have you ever thought of that?”

  Of course he had. I am the dream of a giant fungus on a tree. He cleared his throat. “I saw you before,” he said.

  “I know you did. And you saw the gorilla today.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I was there.”

  Josh looked up. The world was so bright. Her shirt was so sparkly. A crow landed on the garbage can on the far side of the bench and cocked its shiny head at them. Josh remembered to turn his face, so the crow wouldn’t memorize it.

  “Maybe we should start a club.” The sparkly girl raised her hand in an official way. “First meeting of the Gorilla Club.”

  Even though he knew better, Josh said, “I was in a backgammon club at my old school. But I was the only one.” His voice came out like a croak.

  “That’s sad. You won’t be the only one in this club. Lucas Hernandez saw it, too. The gorilla. You should ask him. What did you do in your loser backgammon club?”

  “Played backgammon. But because I was the only one, I played on the computer.” He was going along with it, with her, and it was feeling too easy. The crack in the universe was expanding in an alarming way. “What does the Gorilla Club do?”

  The girl tapped her toes and shrugged. “Whatever we want. We have meetings. Maybe we go into the woods. You should ask Lucas.”

  “I don’t know Lucas.”

  “He’s in your class.”

  “I know but—” Josh shrugged.

  “Why do you get pepperoni?”

  “What?”

  “You just pick them off. Why do you get pepperoni if you just pick them all off?”

  Josh looked down at his plate with its neat stack of pepperoni slices.

  “You need to learn to speak up for yourself.”

  Josh nodded. “I guess.” She sounded way too much like Big Brother when he was being bossy. And it was strange to be talking to her. Talking out loud. It had been so many years without them, his friends. He knew it meant trouble, and soon. He tried to think of a poster that would help, but nothing came to mind. Except the sad cat clinging to the tree. Hang in There! That pretty much worked for anything.

  “Nothing is wrong with me,” he said. “Except all of you. You need to go away.”r />
  “I can’t,” she said sadly.

  Something in the way she said it made him look at her. Closely. She seemed smaller somehow, like a little kid. And lonely. He recognized that, too.

  “Why? Why can’t you go away?” The crow flew down from the garbage can and did a little hop dance at her feet.

  She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said finally. When the crow cocked its head at her, she cocked her head back.

  Josh looked away, through the spaces of the leaves on the giant bush, all the way over to the Hello Walk, where kids grouped together in tight clusters. He said, “I don’t know where I’m going to eat my lunch in the winter.”

  “Is that why you’re sitting on this bench? Because you don’t know where else to sit?”

  Josh nodded.

  “Melanie Price,” she said.

  “We will never forget,” Josh finished.

  The girl sighed and shook her head. “Melanie died two weeks before her thirteenth birthday. She was crossing the street in the middle of the afternoon. She was in the crosswalk. The driver said he didn’t even see her.”

  “Well,” Josh said. It made him think of the pirate captain. Well, well, well. He wondered if that’s how the old captain felt—blank and at a loss for words. Alone in a world he didn’t understand.

  “What does that remind you of?”

  “What?” He had no idea what she was talking about.

  “The driver? Not seeing her?”

  “I don’t really—”

  “Mr. K’s class? The gorilla!”

  “Oh.”

  “Get it? He didn’t see her. Even though it was daytime and she was in the crosswalk.”

  “Oh,” Josh said again. The other world was starting to collide with the real world in a dizzying way, and that was something new. He needed her to go back to her other place. He could not let it all happen again.

  “You need to leave now,” Josh said. But the girl stayed where she was. Maybe, thought Josh, I am the fungus in her dream.

  She said, “All her friends have all moved over to the high school.”

  “What?”

  “Melanie Price. The girl whose bench this is. I guess her parents didn’t think about that when they put up the bench—they didn’t think about her friends growing up and leaving this school. Going to football games. Learning to drive.”

  “Well,” Josh said, and then stopped himself from saying it two more times by taking in deep breaths.

  The girl said something, but he didn’t hear what it was. A wind tunnel, that’s what it sounded like. Josh was tired. So tired.

  “You need to go away now,” he said. And he meant it. He really did. He was looking at his own lumpish feet and thinking that maybe if he closed his eyes she would leave. Maybe she would slip back through that invisible crack that didn’t make sense in this world. Maybe his life at this new school would have a chance of being normal.

  He heard her say, “I know someone who wants to be your friend.” And he opened his eyes.

  But it was too late, then. She was gone. And the crow was gone, too.

  What did that mean? She knew someone who wanted to be his friend? “Hey, Big Brother?” Josh whispered, but there was not even a breeze of a response.

  As Josh walked to the garbage can on the far side of Dead Melanie’s bench, he looked again to the Hello Walk, where the kids still clustered in groups. Some were just standing around talking, while others tossed balls and Frisbees. The girl was there, too, watching it all.

  When she turned to look in Josh’s direction, he lowered his eyes, dumped his lunch into the trash, and hurried away.

  WAVE

  Lucas couldn’t make sense of the whispering in his ear. It was something about the new kid, the kid who wore the stupid red raincoat, even when it wasn’t raining.

  The kid was halfway hidden by a bush and a garbage can, but when Maxie pointed him out, Lucas recognized him. He ignored her and waved goodbye to his friends.

  “Lucas!” his friends called. “Where you going? First bell hasn’t even rung yet.”

  “I need to finish my math homework,” Lucas lied. He really just needed to get away from her and her whispering and her pointing. He needed to be alone.

  But she followed close behind him, talking fast. Her mind moves a mile a minute. That’s what his abuela had always said about Maxie Moon. Her mouth can’t keep up with that brain of hers! When she said it, she’d smiled. Everyone used to smile about Maxie.

  Maxie Moon had stopped talking, but he knew she was still nearby. Lucas veered sharply into the chaos that was lunchtime in the Hello Walk. Kids crowded around him and pushed without even noticing. Lucas thought, I am the gorilla, and everyone is busy counting balls.

  A feeling so big and so sad came in like a giant wave and knocked him off his feet. He looked down. He was still standing, but it felt like he was flat on his back on the cold cement floor.

  Maxie Moon was in his ear again, buzzing again, talking about the house in the woods and the new boy again. Something about a Gorilla Club and what she wanted him to do. The house in the woods. The house in the woods. With the new boy. The house in the woods. Get him there.

  He couldn’t listen. He didn’t want to listen. But then he heard her say, “Just do this one thing for me, and I’ll go away. I’ll leave you alone. I won’t come back.”

  “What?” He spun around. There was no one there. “What?” he said, again and again. But she was gone.

  SAD MONKEYS

  A thing Josh never told his parents, or Dr. Ted, was that people, real people, made him nervous. So nervous that sometimes his eyes would freeze. He’d start staring at a random thing.

  A shiny button.

  Or an ear.

  He would stand there, staring. At the ear. Or the button. And if he did manage to get his words out in the right order, his voice would sound weird. Also, if he stood there for very long, his face would get sweaty. It was probably why he chose to have conversations with things that weren’t alive, like the wooden bear and the poster guy.

  Josh decided it was time to make a change. Maybe it was his dad’s poster quotes suddenly doing what they were supposed to do, or the surprise of Big Brother showing up again (and then disappearing for long stretches of time), or the mysterious sparkly girl with her cryptic message. Or maybe it was thinking about his mom at home with her rash and unpacked boxes.

  But whatever had prompted his desire to make a change—a big one—Josh was ready. Ready to enter the real world, with real people.

  The thing was, he didn’t know it would be so hard.

  Hard to raise his hand in class.

  Hard to make eye contact.

  Hard to find a seat in the cafeteria.

  After a few days, he just stopped trying. He didn’t see the sparkly girl again, even though he looked for her everywhere.

  Because of Dead Melanie’s bench, lunch at his new school wasn’t a problem. At least, not during that first week. But by the middle of the second week, when there was a new damp chill in the air, Josh wondered how much longer he’d be able to eat his lunch outside, behind a bush. He scouted out other hiding places, like he had at his old school. The bathroom was obvious. The locker room might be okay. And when he saw the DO NOT ENTER sign on the door that led to the old library stairwell, he wondered: Could that be it, the perfect lunchtime getaway?

  He tried to conjure Big Brother, to talk it over, but Big Brother wasn’t predictable the way he used to be. Instead he just showed up when he wanted to, sounding way too much like Josh’s dad, and then—poof—was gone.

  But even bossy, unpredictable, poster-quoting Big Brother was better than no Big Brother at all. So when he showed up at lunch that day, Josh sat up straight and grinned. He was so happy he couldn’t even pretend to be mad. “Hey,” he said. “Where have
you been?”

  Big Brother settled down on the bench. He was carrying an umbrella. “Aren’t you getting wet?”

  “Nah.” Josh held up his hands. “Remember? We call it liquid sunshine!”

  Big Brother laughed. “You missed picture retakes.”

  “What?”

  “Picture retakes.”

  “That was today?” Josh thought back to the first day, when he’d seen the notice on the Mountain View K–8 reader board with his mom. It seemed like such a long time ago.

  “Mom will be mad. She loves pictures of you.” There was something sad about the way he said it.

  “I’m sorry—” Josh started, but Big Brother held up his hand.

  “Never mind all that. How is everything going?”

  Josh shrugged. “Okay. Riding my bike is pretty good. You were right about that. But seriously, where are you all the time? Why is everything so different than it used to be?”

  “We’re both older. And I was gone for so long—”

  Josh’s throat tightened. In his mind he saw the awful dirt hole where he’d buried him, the little rock painted with his name. “I’m sorry. I told you—”

  Big Brother didn’t let him finish. “I’m not mad. I’m just glad to be back with you.”

  Josh cleared his throat. “Me too. I’m just glad you’re back, too.”

  “And you haven’t told Mom about me?”

  “No,” Josh said. “I’m going to wait until Dad gets back and tell them together.”

  “One fell swoop!”

  “Exactly.”

  “Eat your pizza.”

  Suddenly hungry, Josh plucked off a pepperoni and bit into the thick, cheesy slice. Everything felt fine to him then. Even the sun came out from behind a gray cloud, lighting up the mist in sort of a magical way. He remembered to wipe the pizza grease from his mouth. “Hey, I thought I saw you talking to someone the other day. Over by that wall.”