His jaw squared with determination, he marched the fifteen blocks to Mike’s apartment building, burst into the lobby and paused in front of the doorman. Yes, he had every right in the world to be there, he told himself. Swiss auto experts were interested in buying Mike’s car, and he owed it to Mike to tell him about it. Then he would manoeuvre the conversation around to include Mike’s ersatz hometown, address and phone number. It would all work in very naturally. When he left this place, by God, he would have it all!
“Otis, 7E,” he told the doorman confidently. “My name’s Paul Abrams. I’m a friend of Mike’s from school.”
The man phoned upstairs, and Paul was surprised at how quickly he was admitted. He hadn’t been entirely sure how Mike would respond to a visitor at his home. When he got to the apartment, he found out why. It had been Mrs. Otis, not Mike, who had invited him up so readily.
“Michael’s out on an errand now, but I expect him back any minute. Please come in and sit down.”
Paul allowed himself to be seated in front of a glass of milk and a few cookies while Mike’s mother made small talk. His head was spinning. Perching on a fire escape watching the Otises was nothing compared to the jolt of actually speaking with a member of this incredibly normal family.
“Mr. Otis and I have often wondered about this Don Carey High School. It seems like such a… strange place. We’ve never received so much as a letter or a telephone call from them.”
True, thought Paul, but even if there were a notice, it would end up in the dead letter office via 106 Gordon Street. Aloud, he said, “Oh, it’s not strange, Mrs. Otis. They just… uh… don’t want to interfere with individual development.”
“Well, we were just afraid that Michael might be left out of things.”
“I can safely say,” said Paul devoutly, “that Mike is never left out of anything.” He looked up as the front door opened and Mike entered, carrying a bag of groceries.
Because of the positioning of the door frame, the first thing Mike saw was Paul, sitting at the kitchen table. In perplexity, he checked the number on the front door. Yes, this was his apartment, all right.
“Oh good, dear, you’re back. Paul is here.”
Cautiously, Mike entered the kitchen and put his parcel down on the counter, but the beady eyes never left Paul.
“Hi, Mike.”
“Hi.” Mike looked at his mother plaintively, as if to say “How did this happen?”
Mrs. Otis refilled the cookie plate and poured a glass of water for her son. “Well, I must go and finish my ironing. I’ll leave you two boys to chat.”
The conversation didn’t start. Intimidated by the situation of facing Mike in his own home, Paul completely forgot about his Swiss car experts, and just sat, looking uncomfortably at the student body ex-president. Mike looked back, his system on a sort of bland red alert. This confrontation reeked of the things at school that he didn’t understand — right here on his own turf.
Finally, Paul blurted, “There is no Finch, Oklahoma, is there, Mike?”
The beady eyes grew even more veiled than usual. After a pause, Mike said, “Probably not.”
“There’s no such thing as apartment eleven twenty-five at one-oh-six Gordon Street, either, and the phone number in your file is disconnected, right?” Mike made no reply, so Paul continued. “Why does the school have all this phony information about you?”
Mike looked all around the kitchen and then paused before replying. “I had to put something on the registration forms.”
“So you gave them all that! On purpose!”
“Nobody said it had to be right.”
“But why?” Paul insisted. “Why can’t people know where you come from and where you live and what your telephone number is?”
Paul could almost see the wheels turning in Mike’s head. His answer, when it came, was, “I like it better this way.” Then he shrugged very slightly, but together with his words, it seemed to say everything about the man Sheldon had picked to be president.
Suddenly, Paul felt very foolish, trudging all over town, interrupting people’s lives to solve the Mike Otis puzzle. There was no puzzle. It was just Mike’s nature, the fact that Mike liked it better that way. The mysterious Mike Otis was just a guy — an offbeat, bizarre, crazy, weird guy, but just a guy nonetheless.
Paul stood up, his mind at ease, or at least as much at ease as it could be, considering he was scheduled to participate in a twenty-six-hundred-man rally in the morning. Should he mention it to Mike? No. Better leave well enough alone. “Well, Mike, I’m going to take off now. See you at school tomorrow.”
Mrs. Otis breezed into the kitchen. “Michael will drive you home, Paul.”
Mike looked pained.
“Oh, that’s okay,” said Paul. “I don’t live too far.”
“It’s raining and you don’t have an umbrella,” she insisted. “Off you go, now.”
The black behemoth rode quite comfortably, and on the way home, Paul remembered his original excuse for visiting Mike that day. He told Mike about the letter from Switzerland and the interest shown by the International Automobile Collectors’ Association in purchasing the mystery car.
Mike seemed unimpressed. “I like it,” he said, indicating the car was not for sale.
Paul looked at Mike in sudden admiration. “You made this, didn’t you? You built this car totally from scratch!”
Mike made no reply, and at first Paul thought there was to be no answer. And quite a few seconds had gone by before Mike said,
“Sometimes I have a lot of spare time.”
So the mystery of the car was solved, too. It was the closest thing to a straight yes anyone would ever get out of Mike. Paul shook his head. “Mike, do you have any idea how great an achievement it is to make a working car out of nothing?”
Mike pulled over to the curb in front of Paul’s building. “Probably not.”
Over the phone, Sheldon told Paul that he had already alerted the media himself about tomorrow’s rally. The fact that he had not waited for Paul to do it undoubtedly meant that he had exaggerated grotesquely. Tomorrow the school would be crawling with reporters, all expecting a bloodbath. Paul decided not to tell Sheldon about his unscheduled trip to the Otises’. Not knowing the real truth about Mike had never bothered Sheldon anyway. Maybe in a few months, if Sheldon brought it up…
“And now it’s time for City Update!” exclaimed Flash Flood. “Today’s reminder: Avoid inhaling, because the garbage strike shows no signs of ending! Be prepared for the worst, because that’s what we always get in the greatest city in the world!”
As he got ready for bed, Paul was aware of a few butterflies in his stomach over tomorrow. He felt better about Mike than ever before, but organized student protests made him very nervous. When the teachers arrived at school to find twenty-six hundred demonstrators dressed like Mike, they were going to freak out.
Before calling it a night, Paul made a point of checking on the building across the street. Rabbit Man was still nowhere to be found, and the fire-eater didn’t seem to be in, either. The big football fan was crouched in front of his TV set watching a game. There was a new enigma on that floor, however. Three windows over from the end zone was a whole apartment lit at least six or seven times as brightly as anything else in sight. In the living room sat a man, a woman and two children, all wearing sunglasses. Whenever they moved, great shadows were cast in all directions. Even with the lights out and the blinds drawn, Paul’s room was still partly illuminated from the Fifty-Thousand-Watt Family across the way.
The people next door had moved out, taking Steve with them. Somewhere he was waging his continual TV battle against the forces of evil, and piling up medals and leading ladies like cordwood. A group of young intellectuals now lived there. They borrowed sugar a lot, and spent the rest of every day arguing philosophy. If it hadn’t been for their discussion, Paul might never have gotten to sleep that night.
13
The next day, Paul wa
s up before dawn to begin the task of converting himself into a Mike Otis look-alike. He moved about the apartment on tiptoe for fear of waking up his parents, as he was not keen on explaining his behaviour and that of his twenty-six-hundred-odd fellow students. Feeling more than a little ridiculous, he shuffled into the bathroom, repeating Sheldon’s chant under his breath.
“One. The hair. Slick. Greased back.” From the medicine cabinet he produced a tube of hair cream, squeezed a minor mountain of it into his palm and began plastering his light brown curls to his scalp. He reflected glumly that he would obviously be the only one fool enough to get himself up this way, except for Mike himself, and maybe Sheldon. No one would even show up. It was going to be a horrible bust.
For the shirt, he selected the blood-red monstrosity given to him by Auntie Nancy for his birthday. He had never dreamed that he would wear it anywhere but to Edmondo’s. Then came the jeans, which he rolled up at the cuffs and tacked down with two bright silver safety pins. The raincoat and shoes were his father’s, both several sizes too large, but essential to the overall effect.
Then came a decision. Should he make his escape while the coast was clear? Or should he risk a bowl of cereal, since he was dying of starvation. And so it was for the sake of a bowl of corn flakes that Paul’s escape was foiled when his mother appeared in the kitchen.
“Paul, what are you doing up? It’s only six-fifteen. You’re far too early for —” She rubbed her eyes, opened them, and screamed in shock.
Within seconds, Paul’s father was on the scene.
“What happened?” Disoriented without his glasses, he squinted at the figure sitting at the table. “Who’s that?”
“That’s your son!”
“No, it isn’t. Where’s his hair?”
“It’s me, Dad,” said Paul in agitation. “I’m going to school early today.”
“Why do you look like that?”
Paul turned red. “Well… it’s just something we’ve got going at school. I’m… uh… meeting some people there this morning, and this is the way we’re dressing.”
Mr. Abrams leaned forward to get a closer look at his son. “What is it — Weasel Day?”
Paul smiled weakly. “Something like that.”
Mrs. Abrams folded her arms. “I don’t care what it is! You’re not leaving the house looking this way!”
“I have to go, Mom,” Paul argued. “The whole school’s going to be there. We’re supporting the student body president.”
“Aha!” cried his mother. “This is the work of that awful Mike Otis!”
“Exactly what is going on this morning?” Mr. Abrams asked.
“It’s really tough to explain, Dad,” said Paul earnestly. “Couldn’t I tell you about it some other time? I’ve got to get going.”
“Not until you wash your hair and change your clothes!” cried his mother.
“Oh, just let him be,” said his father soothingly. “This kind of thing always happens in big city schools. It means Paul’s fitting in. Don’t forget — we’re not in the boonies anymore.”
“But Cyril —”
Paul headed for the door. “I’ll be back about four, Mom. Bye, Dad.”
He usually walked to school, but today he decided to take the subway, sticking to the darker areas. He met Sheldon on the platform, and the two indulged in some good-natured laughter at each other’s appearance.
“Let’s face it, Shel, it looks okay on Mike, but on us…”
Sheldon adjusted his enormous grey raincoat. “I know what you’re saying. Let’s just hope that our troops remember to get up for the war, because I don’t want to look like this alone.” He took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s move out.”
* * *
Perhaps the worst experience of Mr. Gamble’s life was his arrival at school that morning. Though he had been briefed on the incidents at both the science fair and Laguna, he had never actually witnessed Don’t Care High in mass congregation, and when he drove along 22nd Street, the sight that met his eyes was Sheldon’s greatest turnout yet — for all intents and purposes the entire population of Don Carey High School: twenty-six hundred replicas of Mike Otis.
The entire front courtyard of the school was packed tightly with students, who stood in an orderly fashion listening to another Otis clone bellowing out a speech from the front steps. Over the crowd waved a huge cloth banner, attached to two mobile poles. It read: WE WANT MIKE BACK. Stuck through it was a five-foot-long silver safety pin. To make matters worse, there were quite a few spectators stopped on the sidewalk to watch the goings-on, and — yes! television cameras!
In a rage, the vice-principal wheeled onto the driveway and gunned the engine for the parking lot, then slammed on the brakes, stopping in a squeal of tires behind another stopped vehicle which blocked the narrow lane. It was Mr. Morrison parked ahead. His head protruded from the window, and he was watching the proceedings with a look of intense bliss. Impatiently, Mr. Gamble leaned on the horn.
Mr. Morrison looked back at him and called, “I believe in these kids, Henry!”
“You’re in the way! Move along!”
Both cars drove into the lot and parked side by side.
The two men found the rest of the staff assembled in the teachers’ lounge, where the atmosphere was electric.
Mr. Hennessey was issuing rapid-fire threats while unconsciously dismembering the Yellow Pages; Mr. Willis, who had bravely abandoned his crutches, was limping a constant figure-eight in the centre of the room; Mrs. Carling knelt on a small coffee table and peered furtively out through the curtains, shaking her head and saying, “Son-of-a-gun. Son-of-a-gun. Son-of-a-gun!” Try as he might, Mr. Morrison could not wipe the grin off his face.
Wordlessly, Mr. Gamble looked out the window at his unrecognizable student body. Then he turned to his beaten staff. Shaking his head in disbelief, he started down the hall for the school’s front door.
At the rally, Sheldon was in his glory. The day was shaping up into an enormous success with a near perfect turnout. Slim Kroy was playing a rousing rendition of his now-legendary Mike Otis Tuba Solo, by popular demand, when Mr. Gamble appeared on the front stairs. The vice-principal held up his hands for silence and the crowd grew still, but the two-hundred-fifty-pound Slim kept on playing.
“Stop that!” snapped Mr. Gamble irritably, and Slim hastily ended his serenade. “One more oompah out of you, and you will be suspended! Now, where’s Otis?”
This was the one question Sheldon was not prepared for. “He’s… uh… somewhere. I mean… else. Somewhere else.”
Mr. Gamble swallowed hard. “I’m not surprised. Well, when he shows up, tell him he’s president.”
“You mean it?” blurted Paul.
“I said it, didn’t I? But just remember that this is a school, and despite any blessed events, we were kind of hoping to hold classes today. So break this nonsense up and have everyone in homeroom by nine.” He spun on his heel and disappeared into the building.
Sheldon addressed the multitude. “We’ve just been informed that Mike Otis is now reinstated as student body president!” He started to say something else, but was completely drowned out as a colossal roar of pure, unadulterated joy erupted from the students. All at once, several hundred raincoats were spontaneously thrown into the air, and seemed to hang there for a moment, forming a canopy over unrestrained rejoicing and revelry. There were handshakes and backslaps and victory signs, and even an amount of hugging and kissing. Some students formed a snake-dance; others a conga line. Wayne-o ran around in circles, punching his fist into the air and yelling, “Yeah!” Rosalie Gladstone actually took her gum out of her mouth and sat down on the ground so she could savour the moment. A group of boys led by Phil Gonzalez broke into a chant of “Mike! Mike! Mike!” Phil himself was yelling so loud that his face was scarlet and his eyes were tightly shut. Students were meeting in joyful embrace, congratulating each other, and then running on to other friends. Old grudges suddenly disintegrated as students
were united under the banner of Mike Otis. In one particularly touching episode, Feldstein ran up and awarded a hearty handshake to his old enemy, Slim Kroy, who had discarded his tuba to join the festivities. It was the first time in years they had been seen together, and the students formed a circle around them to cheer the reconciliation. The two posed for a few pictures, with Feldstein straining to get his arm around Slim’s enormous shoulders. Even Daphne Sylvester cheered. Paul noticed that the divine Daphne still looked remarkably gorgeous, exquisite and dainty dressed like Mike Otis. Her greased-back hair only emphasized her fine-boned face, and even her massive raincoat could not hide her figure.
Once again, Sheldon’s voice boomed over the scene. “Look, everybody! It’s Mike! Our president is coming!”
Paul’s eyes turned to the road. The black behemoth was making its way to the Don’t Care parking lot, the man of the hour at the wheel. The crowd roared again, and several hundred students started off on a stampede for the driveway.
The moment was intense. Paul could see Sheldon’s face glowing bright red with pride as he watched his president make the turn into the school. Dick Oliver and Samuel Wiscombe stood like sentries at attention, rigidly holding up the poles that supported the banner. Ten feet into the driveway, Mike’s car was mobbed by jubilant students shouting and banging on the windows. Hundreds more ran to join the welcoming committee, and the scene fairly exploded.
And suddenly it became too much for a boy from Saskatoon to handle. Paul felt he had to do something — anything — and, fuelled by a rush of emotion, he made a running leap for the gleaming five-foot safety pin that pierced the WE WANT MIKE BACK banner.
His hands locked on the bottom metal bar, and he swung dangerously for an instant as the shocked Samuel and Dick struggled to keep the poles upright. Then his weight proved too much for the banner, and the cloth began to give way at the centre of the sign. Paul held on for dear life to the pin, which swung like a pendulum as the cloth of the banner ripped right down the middle. He crashed to the ground and lay there, still holding the pin, which was attached to a long, thin strip of cloth, which was in turn trailing from what was left of the banner.
Don't Care High Page 16
