Fruit

by Brian Francis

  “Don’t you want to get out there and get all rumble tumble with the other boys?” she asked. She put the Bluewater Hockey form on my desk.

  “Not really,” I said. I was practising my W, a very tricky letter to do in calligraphy. “And watch that you don’t knock over my jar of ink.”

  And I know that my dad would’ve liked me to dress up like a soldier or a pirate for Halloween in grade 4. Instead, I borrowed a blonde wig from Mrs. LaFlamme, one of Nancy’s dresses, and an old pair of high heels from Christine, and went trick-or-treating as Marilyn Monroe. My dad wore his baseball cap, kept his head down the whole time we were out, and stood in the middle of the road while I went up to the houses.

  “That you, Henry?” Mr. Blake called out when he looked past my shoulder. He lives three doors down from us.

  “What’s that?” my dad asked, even though he heard Mr. Blake. His voice sounded deeper, too, like he was doing an impersonation of someone else.

  “Thought you only had two daughters!” Mr. Blake yelled and tossed a bag of Hostess chips into my pillow case.

  I thought Mr. Blake was complimenting me. My dad started coughing. He seemed pretty relieved when I broke a heel and had to call it a night.

  The truth is that I feel bad about not being normal, but I just can’t help it. I’ve tried to make my parents happy, but it just never works out. For example, I signed up for shop class this year instead of home ec. We have to take a half year of each in grade 7. But in grade 8, you can choose one or the other for the full year. Even though I really wanted to learn how to make pants and lemon meringue pies, I knew I had to do the right thing and sign up for shop like all the other boys. I wasn’t looking forward to it and the shop teacher, Mr. Gilvary, is very annoying. He has the biggest butt I’ve ever seen on a man. When I took shop with him last year, he was always saying things like, “Watch yourselves, students. One slip and suddenly, you’re missing an arm” or “Keep your goggles on at all times. Had a student in ‘76 who didn’t listen. Now, he’s got a marble for an eye.”

  I tried to get myself excited as I handed in my form on the last day of grade 7. It had taken me a good ten minutes to make a red circle around the word “Shop.”

  “Peter, this is your chance to be normal,” I told myself. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll even make a boy friend. You can do it!”

  But during the first week of class this year, something bad happened. We were going to make plastic key chains, Mr. Gilvary told us. He brought in large sheets of coloured plastic that had to be snapped into smaller pieces to make our key chains.

  “Put your goggles and gloves on before you do this,” he said. “Then secure the plastic sheet good and tight in the vice. Now grip the top and give it a sharp pull towards you.”

  When Mr. Gilvary snapped the sheet, the sound was so loud, I screamed and ducked behind one of the woodworking tables.

  Everyone turned to look down at me and started laughing. Brian Cinder sniffed loudly.

  “I think he crapped himself.”

  No one came within ten feet of me for the rest of the day. That night, I sat my parents down and told them the school had made a terrible mistake.

  “They overbooked the shop class,” I sighed. “Now some of us have to go into home ec. No one volunteered, so they made us draw straws. And guess what?”

  I tried to do my best disappointed look, but inside, my stomach was doing flip-flops. There was just no way I could spend the rest of the year in shop class.

  “What do you mean, they overbooked it?” my mother asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “that’s just what they said.” I hoped she wasn’t going to ask any more questions.

  “Why should you have to switch classes?”

  “I told you. I drew one of the shortest straws.”

  “How many other students had to switch?”

  “Um, I don’t know. Three or four, maybe.” It felt like my armpits were raining. “Look, it’s not that big of a deal. I mean, I’m kind of upset, but what can I do?”

  “Well, we can call the school for one thing,” my mother said. “Why should you have to suffer for a mistake that they made on their end?”

  This wasn’t going well at all. My parents couldn’t call the school or else Mr. Mitchell would tell them that I said they were the ones who wanted me out of shop class and into home ec.

  “My mother isn’t a very good cook,” I’d told him and shrugged.

  “You can’t call the school,” I said, “or else everyone will say I’m a whiny baby. I pulled the shortest straw, Mom. Fair is fair.”

  “But I don’t see why . . .”

  My dad, who hadn’t said a word, held out his hand.

  “Give me the form,” he said to me.

  “But Henry! We can’t just . . .”

  “Peter, give me the form.” He didn’t sound angry, just very tired. I gave him the form along with a pen.

  “I was really looking forward to making a birdhouse this year,” I said as he signed the sheet.

  He made a strange noise in his throat and handed me back the form.

  “Thanks for being good sports about this,” I said as I walked out. Even though it’s not very Christian to lie to your parents, I couldn’t let them find out the truth. Especially my dad. The last thing he needs is to find out just how un-normal I really am.

  Now, I’m just finishing up my first sewing project. It’s a pillow shaped like a hot dog. It even has yellow and red felt for mustard and ketchup. Next month, I’ll start working on my first piece of clothing. I think I’ll make a sweatshirt for my dad.

  The home ec teacher, Mrs. Williams, thinks I’m very talented.

  “You certainly have a knack for the art of domesticities,” she said to me. “But I do wish you’d keep your fingers out of the cookie dough, Peter.”

  I used to be more normal when I was younger. I’d always get invitations to birthday parties or sleepovers. Sometimes, I’d go roller-skating with Todd Moffat at Skate City, but that was before I broke my arm at his eighth birthday party. I never learned how to use the rubber stoppers on my skates, so I’d grab onto the railing to slow myself down before getting off the rink. But that day, I missed the railing and went flying into the lobby. Everybody was screaming and jumping out of the way. I was going that fast. I ended up running into the vending machine. I bounced back, landed on my butt, and broke my right arm. Mr. Moffat had to drive me home. He kept asking me if I was all right and I said “Yep, I’m okay,” but as soon as I walked through my front door, I started bawling. I had to go to the emergency room and get a cast.

  I didn’t get invited to Todd’s ninth birthday party.

  I even used to be friends with Craig Brown, which is really weird when I think about it, since he’s the leader of the Athlete Group at Clarkedale. In grade 6, my parents took Craig and I to the Brigden Fair. It happens in a small town of the same name every Thanksgiving. There’s a midway and candy floss stands and cows with runny noses and competitions to see who grew the biggest gourd.

  Craig and I went on the Tilt-A-Whirl and the Scrambler and the giant swings. Later, he bought a chocolate sucker shaped like a boob and I bought a bag of beer nuts, which Craig said were made with real beer. We had a great time, even though I stepped in horse crap on the way out and my mom made us drive home with the windows open.

  That was two years ago. Now, Craig acts like he doesn’t know me.

  I guess things started to change in grade 7. The year started out the same, with everyone hanging around each other. But then, halfway through, we started taking sex ed and by the time June came around, everyone was divided off into groups.

  Every group at Clarkedale has a leader. Craig is the leader of the Athlete Group, the most popular group. All of the Athlete Group boys play on the school sports teams. The Athlete Group call each other by their last names and yell things like:

  “Thompson! Over here!” and

  “You’re a doofus, Wilkie,” and

  �
�Shake it off, Lewis. Don’t let him get to you.”

  All of them are thin, even though they’re always eating. Sometimes, I think they eat more than me, which makes me angry because that’s not fair. But most of the boys in the Athlete Group are dumb and don’t get good grades. They’re not very good dressers, either. I try to stay clear of them at all times, especially Craig. I’m afraid of their touchdowns and last names and loud voices.

  Eddy Vanderberg is the leader of the Short Group. The Short Group is made up of boys who haven’t reached puberty. Most of them are smaller than the girls in my class. The Short Group plays King’s Court at recess. Eddy Vanderberg always yells out the rules to everyone, as if no one’s ever played the game before.

  “No spiking! No dribbling!”

  I think it makes Eddy feel taller to yell.

  Most of the Short Group members are dumb, like the Athlete Group boys. Eddy gets pretty good grades, but he doesn’t want anyone to know. I think he thinks he wouldn’t be the cool leader anymore if people found out he was really a nerd. The truth is, everyone knows that Eddy is a nerd, so he’s not fooling anyone.

  Sean Dilworth is the leader of the Geek Group. The members of the Geek Group are good at math and science. They stand around at recess, in the far corner of the school yard, talking about science fiction movies and passing around Fangoria magazines.

  “Check out this one!” they say, pointing to pictures of zombies or people with knives sticking out of their heads. “That’s totally putrid!”

  Margaret Stone is the leader of the Goody-Goody Group. That group is kind of like a girl Geek Group, even though you’d never catch them looking at Fangoria magazines. Instead, the Goody-Goody girls go to C.G.I.T. meetings in church basements and trade stickers that they keep in photo albums.

  “Mmm, smell this one,” I’ll hear them say. “Peach.”

  “This one’s fuzzy. Touch it.”

  The Goody-Goody Group also make friendship pins which are little safety pins with beads. They pin them to their shoelaces. Sometimes, they make friendship pins, using letter beads, so the pins spell things like “love” and “pal” and “classy.”

  Eric Bird is the leader of the Indian Group, the toughest group at Clarkedale Elementary School. You don’t talk to the Indian Group unless you’re an Indian yourself. Every morning the yellow school bus drops them off. They come in from the reserve, which is outside Chemical Valley.

  I don’t think the Indian Group likes Clarkedale, even though we do Indian crafts sometimes. I heard Eric say that everyone at Clarkedale is a “bejoggin head.” I don’t know what “bejoggin” means, but something tells me it doesn’t mean “super nice.”

  Michelle Appleby is the leader of the Slut Group. The Slut Group is made up of girls on the wrong side of the tracks. They wear dangly earrings and lip gloss and dark blue eye shadow. There’s always some story going around about them, like so-and-so put a thermometer up her vagina to see what the temperature was, or so-and-so gave a boy a BJ in the path behind the school.

  Whenever the Slut Group hears one of these stories, they yell “THAT’S A LIE!” like they’re angry. But then they start to giggle. Except for one time, when people were saying that Lisa Miller put peanut butter on her vagina so that her dog would lick it. She started crying and had to be sent home that day.

  The Banger Group leader is Brian Cinder. Banger Group boys date Slut Group girls. Most of them are poor and live in the South End, where the low-rentals are in Sarnia. The Banger Group listens to Def Leppard and AC/DC and wear black and white concert T-shirts and bang their heads against the brick walls of the school for fun. That’s how they got their name.

  The Banger Group picks on everyone except for the Indian Group. Each thinks they’re the toughest group at Clarkedale and there’s always some kind of fight going on. On Monday, it was between Darryl Lascelles and Ronnie Doucette. It started because Darryl said he fingered Ronnie’s girlfriend, Andrea, after school one day. Everyone was very excited about the fight, even me. I was just glad I wasn’t involved, because I’m sure that either one of them could’ve pounded the crap out of me.

  At the end of the day, everyone gathered in a circle behind the gym while Darryl and Ronnie went at it. All the Indian kids were yelling “Kill him!” and all the members from the Banger and Slut Groups were yelling, “Punch him out!”

  I felt sick to my stomach because I could hear the punches hitting body parts and Darryl’s nose was bleeding and it was very disturbing. The fight didn’t last for too long, because the principal came running out and everyone scattered. Darryl and Ronnie were suspended for three days.

  Then there are people that don’t fit into any group. Like Jackie Myner, who as well as being the ugliest girl at Clarkedale, is poor and stutters and doesn’t dress very well. Sometimes, I’ll see Jackie trying to talk to Arlene Marple. Arlene doesn’t belong to any group. That’s because she has dandruff and B.O. and wears sweatshirts with kittens on them. But even Arlene doesn’t like to be seen with Jackie. That’s how bad it is for Jackie.

  I guess I don’t belong to any group either, but I’m not like Jackie or Arlene. Even though I’m overweight and have deformed nipples, I never stutter. And there’s no way I’d be caught dead wearing a kitten sweatshirt.

  Back in September, I started hanging out with the Goody-Goody girls, but that was only because most of them were in my home ec class and Margaret goes to my church. Then, Brian Cinder noticed me trading stickers with a couple of the girls at recess.

  “Look at Peter Paddington,” he said in a high voice, “he’s just one of the girls.”

  Since then, I haven’t said two words to a Goody-Goody girl and I signed up to be a Clarkedale library assistant. I don’t mind working every recess, even though Mrs. Kraft said she only expects me to come in three times a week.

  “Your friends will think you don’t want to be around them anymore,” she said. I just smiled and told her that I have a very strong work ethic.

  “I’ve been delivering papers for three years,” I said. “Hard work is in my blood.”

  The truth is, I’d rather be in the boring old library, putting books away and making ditto copies for the teachers, than outside with everyone else. It’s safer.

  Mrs. Kraft is very nice to me. She’s divorced and wears sandals with pantyhose and always has a Kleenex stuffed up her sleeve, even though I’ve never seen her blow her nose. She’s best friends with Ms. Robillard, the grade 6 teacher. They hang out together at recess, talking over the ditto copier and sipping coffee. They don’t say too much when I’m around, though. I guess they don’t want me to hear. Maybe they talk about what students they hate the most. Or what teacher is having an affair with another.

  But one time, I overheard Mrs. Kraft say, “I forgot my watch today, and I just feel so naked without it. So completely naked.”

  I felt pretty weird when she said that, because all I could think about was Mrs. Kraft wearing nothing except for her pantyhose and sandals. I bet Ms. Robillard was thinking the same thing, too. A lot of students think Ms. Robillard is secretly a man. That’s because she’s not married and has hairy knuckles and when she wears high heels, she slides all over the floor, like she’s on ice. Maybe Ms. Robillard is a secret agent, assigned to investigate our school.

  “Nothin’ to report today,” the secret agent would tell his boss over the phone, pulling off his high heels and wig. “Just a bunch of smart-ass kids. ‘Cept for that library assistant. He’s been on to me since Day One. Maybe we should offer him a job on the force.”

  At lunch, I walk home. My mom will usually have a bowl of Alphagetti or two grilled cheese sandwiches waiting for me or if she’s in a really good mood, she’ll make sloppy joes with French fries.

  “How was your morning, dear?” she always asks me.

  “Fine.”

  “Did you learn anything new?”

  “Not really.”

  After that, I’ll eat a row of Fudgee-Os or a couple of Wagon Wheels
with a glass of chocolate milk. Then I’ll go downstairs to watch I Love Lucy. As soon as the end credits roll and the announcer says “I Love Lucy is a Desilu production,” I leave to go back. I get there just as the bell is ringing. I’ve got things timed pretty well.

  It doesn’t really bother me that I don’t have a boy friend. But I think it bothers everyone else, especially my parents. Sometimes, while we’re watching Love Boat on Saturday nights, I’ll catch my mother looking over at me, like she’s trying to figure out a crossword puzzle. That makes me uncomfortable. Or Uncle Ed will say something stupid like “You planning to play ball this summer, Peter?” right in front of my dad and I’ll want to yell, “No! And stop asking me! I’m not planning to play football or soccer or hockey or any other stupid sport, okay?”

  But I never do. Instead, I’ll always say, “Maybe,” and hope that my dad forgets about it.

  But the other day, I overheard Margaret Stone and Julie Tilson talking after school about becoming locker partners for grade 9.

  “I don’t want to share a locker with Lisa,” Margaret said. “And I just know she’s going to ask me. So why don’t we agree to be locker partners and then when Lisa asks me, I can say, ‘Oh, sorry. Julie already asked me.’”

  “Okay,” Julie said. “I guess that’s not really lying, is it?”

  I never even thought about having a locker partner for grade 9! Later, as I was delivering the paper, I couldn’t stop worrying about how I was going to find someone in time. September wasn’t that far away.

  And here I thought I’d figured everything out. I knew that things would be different for me by the time high school started. I planned to start my life over as a whole new Peter Paddington. I’d be thin and wear all the right clothes and I’d be very popular. When I walked down the halls, everyone would say “Hi Peter!” but I’d pretend like I didn’t hear them. I’d head straight for the cafeteria to eat my lunch with my new friends. I wouldn’t have to go home for lunch anymore and I wouldn’t have seen an episode of I Love Lucy in I don’t know how long.