Timothy and the Phubbers

by Ken Kwek

  Being the sort of boy who would offer a stranger half of his breakfast, Timothy gladly took Bella’s bottle.

  “Thank you,” said Bella. She smiled so sweetly, Timothy felt his cheeks reddening. He quickly turned away and left the room with the empty bottle.

  7

  CPR

  Rudy beamed as he jogged up the stairs back to the classroom. He had bought four sandwiches in the canteen, and was robbed of just two by Big Burt and Tsai Koh. That meant he still had two sandwiches left, which was why he was smiling.

  He saw Timothy in the classroom holding a pink water bottle. He was standing very still in front of the hamster cage.

  “What’s going on?” said Rudy. “They ran out of chicken so I got ham.”

  Timothy didn’t reply. He didn’t even look at Rudy, as if he hadn’t heard his friend come back at all. Rudy looked to where Timothy was staring. The door to the hamster cage was open. Rudy could just about see one hamster from the four paws poking out from underneath a pile of wood shavings. But the other hamster was gone.

  “Oh!” cried Rudy, nearly dropping the sandwiches. “Which one is that? Is that Duke?”

  Timothy shook his head.

  “Orange?”

  Timothy nodded and reached into the cage. He felt around the wood shavings to see if Duke was hiding somewhere. He wasn’t. Timothy’s heart sank. He could feel his hands were trembling. He carefully brushed away the shavings from Orange, who was lying on her back, with all four paws in the air.

  “She’s not breathing,” he said.

  “Nooooooooo!” Rudy wailed. He dropped the sandwiches on the floor and pushed Timothy aside. Very gently he lifted Orange out of the cage and laid her down on a desk.

  Timothy went to comfort his friend, but Rudy held out his arm to keep Timothy away.

  “I need some room, Timothy. Stand back, please.” Rudy stood up tall, took a deep breath, and then placed his two index fingers on Orange’s chest.

  “What are you doing?” cried Timothy, as his friend started pumping the dead hamster’s chest.

  “I’m performing CPR! I saw a YouTube video where a first-aid guy pumps the patient’s chest to disco music.” Rudy took another deep breath and started singing.

  “Ha ha ha ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive. Ha ha ha ha, stayin’ aliiiiiiiii–”

  “Rude…she’s dead!” Timothy pulled Rudy away from Orange’s lifeless body.

  “But, how?” said Rudy, as he wiped away a tear from his cheek.

  Timothy struggled to piece together what had happened. “This girl…she came in here and… she tricked me. She asked me to get some water for her, and so I did. But when I came back, Duke was gone and Orange…” Timothy paused. “She seemed so nice.”

  “She was nice,” said Rudy, bending down to look at Orange.

  “I meant the girl, Rude.”

  “Well, who is this girl?”

  “Your friend from drama. Bella.”

  Rudy shot back up and spun around to look at Timothy. “She’s no friend! Bella is evil, okay?”

  “Evil?”

  “Yes. When Romeo & Juliet was…” Rudy stopped. He’d spotted the sandwiches on the floor and picked them up. “When Romeo & Juliet was announced, me and ten other girls auditioned for Juliet. I thought I stood a good chance, though deep in my heart I knew Lilian would get the role.”

  Rudy blew away some dust from the sandwiches, and then wiped them on his shorts.

  “Everyone knew Lilian would get the role. She’s not as pretty as Bella but she really nails those doths and forsooths.”

  “Those what?”

  “Shakespearean words,” Rudy said, as he eyed both sandwiches and then took a bite from each.

  “Is Romeo & Juliet in English?”

  “The point is Lilian’s a better actress than Bella,” said Rudy. “Just before auditions, we were all given masks for the ballroom scene. Midway through Lilian’s audition, she tore off her mask, screaming her head off. She was crying brown tears and her face was covered in rashes!”

  “What happened?”

  “Apparently, someone had laced her mask with curry powder.”

  “No way!”

  “Way.”

  “Bella?”

  “Yes, but no one could actually prove it was her.”

  “So, I’m guessing Bella got the role?”

  “Yup,” said Rudy, shaking his head in disgust.

  “But why would she come after our hamsters? Why would anyone do a thing like this?” said Timothy turning back to where Orange lay. He pulled out a short ribbon of toilet paper from his pocket and wrapped the dead hamster in it.

  “What’s Bella got against us?”

  8

  Polka-Dot Underpants

  Timothy and Rudy found Gilbert in the basketball court, kicking the feathered capteh on his own.

  “Where’s Wacky?” asked Rudy.

  “She got bored of playing with me and left,” said Gilbert. He was still unable to keep the shuttlecock in the air for more than one kick.

  Timothy unravelled the toilet paper he’d put in his pocket and held out his hand to show Gilbert.

  “What happened?” cried Gilbert, jamming a fist in his mouth to stop himself from gagging.

  “Bella,” said Rudy, simply.

  Gilbert’s eyes widened. He knew Bella from the school bus. She’d got on the bus once with a pair of scissors, and he saw her sneakily snipping bits of ponytail from the unsuspecting girl sitting in the seat in front of her.

  “What are we gonna do?” said Gilbert, his spectacles fogging up from the beads of sweat that had formed on his forehead.

  “First, we give Orange a proper burial, ’cos he’s starting to smell funny,” said Timothy, re-mummifying Orange and placing the dead hamster carefully in his breast pocket. “Then we look for Bella and try to rescue Duke – if he’s still alive.”

  “We might have to put off Orange’s funeral,” said Rudy, pointing to the fitness area at the end of the basketball court.

  Darren was doing pull-ups on the monkey bars, while Bella stood watching. She had a brown fur ball cupped in her hands.

  “Duke’s alive!” cried Gilbert, but Timothy and Rudy shushed him.

  “Why do I get the feeling Darren put Bella up to this?” said Timothy.

  “Even if he did – how would we prove it?” said Rudy.

  Timothy had an idea. They could use his phone to secretly film Bella and Darren in the hope they would catch her telling Darren how she had stolen the hamster. Timothy held out his phone to Gilbert. “We’re counting on you, Gilbert.”

  “Me? Why me?” said Gilbert, sweat was now trickling down his temples.

  “Because we’re the bait,” said Timothy.

  “Yes, Timothy and I will go over to the climbing wall so that Bella can see us,” said Rudy. “When she sees Timothy, she’ll start bragging to Darren about how she stole Duke. Boom! Evidence!”

  “I…I c-can’t,” stammered Gilbert.

  “Come on, Gilbert,” urged Timothy. “They’ve done something criminal. If we catch them on video and show the teachers, we’ll be heroes! They’ll be suspended, maybe even expelled. They’ll never bother us again!”

  The idea of being hailed a hero in school appealed to Gilbert.

  “Okay,” Gilbert said finally. “I’ll do it.” He took the phone from Timothy and walked towards Bella and Darren. He stopped when he reached the end of the monkey bars and pretended to tie his shoelaces. Then he realised his shoes had no laces.

  Fortunately, Bella and Darren didn’t notice Gilbert. They’d been distracted by Timothy and Rudy, who were now standing by the climbing wall, talking loudly.

  “Look, Darren!” said Bella, pointing at Timothy and Rudy. “See those losers?”

  Still bent down, tying his non-existent shoe laces, Gilbert pointed Timothy’s phone camera up at Bella and hit the record button.

  “AAAAAAAAARRRRRRGHHHHHHHH!”

  Barely a second had pa
ssed when two shrieks came from the direction of the climbing wall. Gilbert instinctively panned the camera across, just in time to catch Big Burt and Tsai Koh yanking his friends’ shorts down to their ankles.

  As Timothy and Rudy scrambled to pull their shorts back up, Rudy got tangled and tripped into Timothy, so they both lost their balance and fell flat on their faces. For ten excruciating seconds, everyone saw Timothy’s pink polka-dotted briefs and Rudy’s…well, Rudy was not wearing any underwear at all.

  Gilbert’s jaw dropped. The phone kept recording.

  “Delete it!” cried Rudy. “Delete it!”

  The three boys were huddled together in the safety of the gym locker room, watching the video clip on Timothy’s phone.

  “It won’t make a difference,” said Gilbert, showing them his phone. “You’re already on Instagram.”

  Gilbert played Timothy and Rudy the Instagram clip. It was an edited five-second clip of Timothy and Rudy scrambling around on the floor, with their pants down. It had been put on a continuous loop. The shame was never-ending.

  “Your faces aren’t very clear in it,” said Gilbert, trying to comfort his classmates.

  “Everyone knows it’s us,” said Timothy.

  “At least it’s got five hundred likes,” said Rudy, who now seemed to cheer up a little.

  “What are you flers doing?” boomed a voice.

  The boys jumped and looked up to see the glowering eyes and bushy eyebrows of Mr Singh, a PE teacher and Bangsvale’s discipline master. He wore a large red-and-blue turban like a police siren.

  “Looking at illicit videos, eh?” said Mr Singh, his accusing eyes darting from Timothy to Rudy and from Rudy to Gilbert.

  “No, Sir!” cried Rudy.

  “Don’t lie, I caught a glimpse of a buttock!”

  “Sir, it was my buttock!” cried Rudy.

  “What?”

  “Please, Mr Singh! We can explain! We were in the fitness area and some of the older boys––”

  “I don’t want to hear your excuses. Using phones in school is a serious offence, so hand it over!”

  Timothy reluctantly placed his brand new phone in Mr Singh’s outstretched palm.

  “And what is that smell?” said Mr Singh, his nose twitching and sniffing in Timothy’s direction. Seeing the bulge in Timothy’s breast pocket, he ordered Timothy to hand over whatever offensive item was inside.

  Mr Singh unwrapped the bundle of tissue, and a look of terror flashed across his face.

  “EEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEE!”

  He threw the dead rodent into the air, and backed away in the best rendition of a Michael Jackson moonwalk the boys had ever seen.

  Five minutes later, Timothy and Rudy were standing in front of a whiteboard like Bart Simpson, writing a hundred lines of:

  Killing animals is cruel and wrong and brings shame to me, my family and my country.

  Oh, the irony, thought Timothy.

  9

  Exclamation Marks!!!!!!!!

  Timothy took the bus home from school feeling rotten and defeated. In just one day he’d been fooled by a pretty girl and punished for a crime he didn’t commit. And he’d had his phone confiscated by Mr Singh.

  Worst of all, he and Rudy were the laughing stock of the entire school. Timothy’s polka-dot underpants now had their own Twitter account.

  Mr and Mrs Pong were waiting for him in the living room when he got home. Mr Singh had reported Timothy’s offences to his parents in an email, and Mrs Pong was staring at her phone looking very upset.

  “What have we done to deserve a child like you?” she wept, striking her heart more dramatically than any Korean soap actress who had ever graced the small screen. “Killing animals? Killing animals?”

  “I didn’t kill any animals! It was somebody else!” protested Timothy, but his words fell on deaf ears.

  Mr Pong was on his phone, shaking his head and texting furiously.

  “Yes, your father’s right!” said Mrs Pong.

  “What did Dad say?” asked Timothy. Both his parents were now pacing back and forth agitatedly and Timothy could not get a proper look at their phones.

  “Yes, is it sooo hard?” cried Mrs Pong, throwing her arms up in the air.

  “What is?” cried Timothy. “Please! Mum! Dad! Will you listen to me?”

  “Yes, you never should have!” wept Mrs Pong.

  “Mum, what is Dad typing?” cried Timothy.

  “Or expelled even!”

  “What’s Dad typing?” Timothy repeated, exasperated. “I don’t understand what you’re saying! I don’t have my phone!”

  “Never mind your phone!” wailed Mrs Pong. “How did you ever get it into your head that it was okay to slaughter guinea pigs!”

  “They were not guinea pigs, they were hamsters and I...DID...NOT...KILL...THEM!”

  By now Timothy’s face was flushed with rage. He needed his parent’s full attention. He made a grab for his dad’s iPhone but only succeeded in startling his dad so that he threw his phone into the air.

  The phone seemed to float and spin high above the coffee table... IN SLOW MOTION

  It hit one of the blades of the ceiling fan with a loud thunk and ricocheted towards a shelf…

  It knocked into Mrs Pong’s favourite vase with a plonk…

  The vase teetered and tottered and then plummeted six feet to the ground with a

  CRASH!

  Mr Pong’s iPhone lay in the middle of hundreds of pieces of broken vase. Its cracked LED screen flickered three times, then went blank. Mr Pong stared at his broken phone. Mrs Pong stared at her shattered vase. Their lips quivered in horror.

  Tara heard the crash and raced out of her room into the living room. She whipped out her phone and started filming. Christina Aguilera, who had been belting “All About that Bass” while showering in the toilet, went silent.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!” screamed Mr and Mrs Pong in perfect unison, and at a volume most other human beings reserved for unnatural deaths and natural disasters.

  Their screams penetrated the apartment walls and descended fifteen floors, reverberating across the various amenities of the condominium estate. A tennis player in the tennis courts flubbed his serve; an old man doing breaststroke in the swimming pool swallowed water; a hairdresser shaved off a customer’s eyebrow.

  Later, Mrs Pong explained to the two policemen who’d come knocking on their door that they had not meant to cause public disorder. There had merely been a minor family dispute. The cops left after five minutes, but not before making a note of the Pongs’ “quarrelsome attitude”.

  Mr Pong might have given Timothy the biggest verbal shellacking of his life for destroying his iPhone. Instead, Mr Pong reached for his other phone and sent his wife the longest WhatsApp message he had ever typed.

  Mrs Pong noted that her husband had used an unprecedented number of exclamation marks.

  Then Mr Pong actually looked at Timothy and said: “You will not be getting your phone back. In fact, you will not have a phone until you’re old enough to get a job and buy one of your own!”

  Timothy was devastated. He tried again to explain the truth about the hamsters, but nothing he said mattered in the wake of the smashed iPhone and the broken vase.

  The only consolation was that the number of Instagram views of his polka-dot undies and Rudy’s naked butt had stopped increasing. There was now another video growing in popularity on Instagram and Snapchat. It had the hashtag #checkoutwhatmyidiotbrotherdid, posted by Tara Pong.

  10

  Modern Art

  Timothy wasn’t allowed out for the entire week of the mid-semester break. Instead, he had to stay home and repair Mrs Pong’s Korean vase by gluing the teeny, tiny shards back together, piece by piece.

  Rudy came over to help, but he was too clumsy to handle the intricate parts of the vase – he was about as delicate as an elephant trying to peel a banana.

  It took four long hours to glue just half of the vas
e back together. Then, when Casper started hissing, Timothy saw that Rudy had accidentally glued Casper’s tail to the base. The boys had to take the whole thing apart to release the cat. As they started putting it together all over again, Timothy wasn’t so sure he wanted Rudy’s help any more, but didn’t have the heart to tell him.

  Then, Rudy came up with (what he called) an ingenious idea. “We’ll use a small balloon and the cardboard tube from the middle of a kitchen roll. If we blow up the balloon a little, and stick it to one end of the tube, it makes the same shape as the vase. Then we can glue the pieces of vase around it.”

  It did sound like an ingenious idea at first. But then Rudy spilt hot chocolate on the cardboard tube, so it went all soggy and lost its shape. They ended up building a vase with a wonky top.

  “It’s like the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” said Rudy, trying to console his friend.

  “The Leaning Tower of Pieces, more like,” said Timothy.

  Fortunately for Timothy, his mother didn’t really care what the vase looked like as long as it held together and was relatively upright. She had no intention of keeping the vase, she wanted to sell it off. But no one on eBay or Carousell bought her pitch that it was a piece of “modern art by a famous Korean sculptor”.

  On the last day of the holidays, Mrs Pong picked up the landline telephone – which was unusual, since no one ever used landline telephones any more – and pressed actual buttons.

  “I’ve been trying to contact you all weekend,” Mrs Pong whined into the receiver. “Don’t you have a proper phone? Tian did say you were a bit of a dinosaur. Anyway, I have a Korean vase you may be interested in.” There was a brief pause before she coughed and added: “It’s vintage.”