Sean Cullen - The Prince of Neither Here Nor There

Chester frowned. He barked a laugh, “Ha. Clairabelle doesn’t think this is funny. Is there anybody else who doesn’t think this is funny?”

There was a predictable silence. Chester was about to make further comment when Kim’s voice cut him off.

“I don’t think it’s funny,” she said, pushing away from the wall where she’d been leaning. “And I doubt anybody else does either. If they weren’t all afraid to talk, they would agree. Brendan obviously doesn’t care for your sense of humour. Harold and Dmitri also think you suck.” Brendan could hear Dmitri and Harold gulp. She sauntered easily over to Brendan and stood beside him. “I think you like picking on people smaller than you because you’re a loser and a coward. But I’m not afraid of you.” She cracked her knuckles and looked straight into Chester’s face. Her expression showed no anger or bravado. It wasn’t a challenge. It was a simple statement. The conviction in her eyes made Chester hesitate.

“Who said to stop stretching?” Mr. Davenport’s peevish voice broke the tension. He stood in the doorway holding an enormous leather ball. “On the floor, people! On the floor.”

Chester stared at Kim a second more before turning to Brendan and drawing a thumb across his own neck in an obvious “you’re dead” gesture. Chester turned to walk away when the strangest thing happened. One of the floorboards beneath his feet gave way with a loud shriek. He squawked and tried to shift his weight, but the floorboard under his other foot gave way too. His legs drove downward and he was stopped only by his groin slamming into the floor.

Brendan gawked with the others. Everyone erupted in laughter as Chester clutched himself while trying to lever his lower half out of the floor. Brendan couldn’t believe his eyes. He happened to look over at Kim to find she wasn’t laughing. She stood with her hands on her hips, smirking slightly.

“Now that’s funny,” she said. Then she pointed at Brendan. “You’re lucky I feel so sorry for you.” The bell rang to mark the end of class. Kim spun on her heel and headed for the girls’ change room without looking back.

Brendan turned to watch as Chester’s pals hauled him out of the floor by the arms. They helped him limp toward the boys’ change room.

Brendan went to examine the floorboards where Chester had fallen through. The floor had just given out. It was an accident, right? A pretty convenient one. He turned in time to see Kim’s back disappear through the change room door.

“All right, everybody,” Mr. Davenport called. “We’ll have to end class there. Go to lunch.”

Brendan joined Harold and Dmitri as they headed off to change, buzzing with excitement over Chester’s humiliation. As he listened to them re-enact the event, he glanced over to where Marina Kaprillian stood with her little entourage of friends. As soon as he saw them they fell silent for an instant then burst into girlish giggling. Then something amazing happened: Marina Kaprillian, the object of his adolescent desires, looked at him and smiled. The confrontation with Chester hadn’t threatened his equilibrium, but one look from her caused him to trip over his feet and fall headlong into the doorframe.

They sat and ate in silence, Dmitri his stinky sandwich and Brendan his cold soup. Luckily, the doorframe hadn’t split his skin, but he had a large goose egg on his scalp. Mercifully, it was above his hairline so he could effectively hide it. Mrs. Barsoomian had shaken her head when she saw Dmitri and Harold helping him up the hall to the nurse’s office. She had examined him, held her fingers up, and asked him to count them and made him count backwards from one hundred. At last, she was satisfied that he hadn’t suffered a concussion and sent him on his way with a bag of ice and a gentle scolding.

Brendan was feeling gloomy. His clumsiness had ruined his moment of triumph, made him look like a fool after looking the hero. He wanted to talk about it but Dmitri wasn’t in the mood. He was in study mode, his face buried in his textbook. Restless, Brendan got up to take a walk.

He headed up the main corridor past the doors to the auditorium. The walls of the hall were hung with old photographs of the school’s history, black and white images of young men frozen in time, their haircuts stiff and their bodies pale as ghosts. Robertson Davies Academy had once been a boys’ school. It had become co-ed only two decades ago. He paused to examine an old photo of the 1936 Senior Varsity Lacrosse Team, young faces earnestly staring out at the camera from long ago.

At first, he didn’t realize he was hearing voices. He looked up and down the hall. There was no one nearby. He listened harder.

“Your presence here will attract attention,” a female voice hissed.

“Nevertheless, I feel Brendan needs watching…”

The voices were coming from the auditorium. He recognized the smooth tones of Mr. Greenleaf.

Greenleaf seemed a little annoyed. But with whom? Feeling sneaky, Brendan crept closer to the closed doors of the auditorium. They were solid wood with two small windows at head height. He could just peek into the window and see who the sub was talking to. That wouldn’t be spying, would it? No!

It was dim inside the auditorium. The only light was from the windows high up the walls by the stage. The seats ranged away in dim rows a few feet from the doors. Mr. Greenleaf was leaning against a seat in the back row, his arms crossed. He was talking to someone Brendan couldn’t see.

“… have no control over where I go and what I do. I was just a bit worried. My sister is coming into town and I knew I’d have to keep an eye on him. She has her own ideas, you know.”

Brendan almost gasped out loud when he saw Kim step into view. She pointed at Mr. Greenleaf and hissed, “I got the assignment. We’ve only just managed to locate him and I’m supposed to be watching him. You have no business being here. He doesn’t know anything and I want it to stay that way for as long as possible.”

“As do I, dear.”

“Don’t dear me. Just your presence here complicates things. It could trigger the…”

“What are you doing?”

Brendan whirled to find Dmitri staring at him. His rapid movement caused him to lose his balance. He tripped and fell against the door, which rattled loudly in its frame.

“Nothing,” Brendan whispered. He grabbed Dmitri by the strap of his knapsack. “Let’s go get some fries. I’m hungry all of a sudden.”

“What? Fries? I don’t…”

Brendan pushed him along the hall and through the closest door to the cafeteria just as the auditorium door swung open. Brendan breathed a sigh of relief. I don’t think they saw me.

Dmitri was staring at him as if he were insane.

“What?” Brendan demanded, trying to lighten the mood. “I really wanted some fries.”

The rest of the day crawled by for Brendan. He went from class to class in a daze. He couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything his teachers were saying. More than once, he was reprimanded for not paying attention. His goal became to simply make it through the day and go home as quickly as possible.

He was determined to ask Kim about Mr. Greenleaf. She obviously knew the guy better than she said she did. Why had they been talking about him in the auditorium? If Dmitri hadn’t come along he might have heard something important.

He planned to wait for Kim after school and have it out with her. So he was quite disappointed when the close-of-day bell rang that she managed to slip out of physics without saying anything to him. He got caught in a clot of students, trying to swim against the current. In his typical clumsy way, he managed to drop his bag and spill the contents out everywhere underfoot. By the time he chased down all his pencils and pens, hurried down the main stairs, and burst out the front doors of the school, Kim was long gone.