Cheeseburger Subversive Read online

  Maybe hell is like having your best friend hold your hands behind your back while everyone lines up to punch you twelve times because it’s your twelfth birthday. The adults in hell just laugh about it, tell you that you must “learn to take things like a man.”

  Maybe hell is like being lost in the dark, and feeling that invisible eyes are watching you, even in the privacy of your own bedroom. Maybe hell is like dreaming dreams you can’t stop. Maybe hell is waking up, heart racing, pyjamas wet.

  The second hand on my watch seems to be slowing; I wonder if our bus is heading into a time warp. I know that these things exist; I am a faithful watcher of Star Trek.

  It is 8:35.

  The bus hits a bump, and bodies are momentarily airborne, weightless. The kids at the front scream with joy; the kids at the back just scream.

  Then we all chuckle, pretending it was fun. We have passed 8:35 and none of us seem to be in hell.

  “Well,” says Cliff, “I told you chicken-shits there was nothin’ to worry about.”

  He turns to me.

  “See, Turd-Bird! Nothin’ happened.”

  I have some idea why Cliff keeps calling me this name; it most certainly has to do with what my father calls an inferiority complex. This sounds like something an idiot like Cliff might have, but it doesn’t make his name-calling any less humiliating.

  “I don’t recall saying that anything was going to happen, Cliff, you retard,” is my unspoken riposte. This, of course, is what I would like to say to Cliff. I don’t actually say this because I don’t want to get beaten up in front of Amanda and Zoe.

  “Hah! Nothin’ happened! That guy on TV was full of it!” chortles Cliff. “Everything is the same as it was before.”

  My father has a favourite expression from Shakespeare. I decide to repeat this expression to Cliff.

  “Methinks you dost protest too much.” It is a safe thing to say because Cliff will certainly not understand it.

  “Huh?” comes the expected response.

  I notice that Zoe is listening. This knowledge makes me feel brave, and I continue.

  “I think you were scared, too, Cliff.”

  “What the hell are you . . . ?”

  I do not let him finish his sentence. Zoe is pretending to read a teen magazine but she is really listening to Cliff and I. I am feeling beyond brave now, because it has suddenly occurred to me that the fondness I feel for Zoe is being quietly returned, like a shared secret.

  “And, if I were you,” I say, “I’d be even more scared right now.”

  My heart is pounding in my throat because I realize I have just crossed a line. Something is going to happen, something I will not be able to stop.

  “What the hell are you talkin’ about?” snarls Cliff, like a confused, trapped animal. His growl scarcely conceals his confusion.

  “Hell is exactly what I’m talkin’ about, Cliff old pal.” Oops. He has detected that I am mocking him.

  “Are you asking for a busted face, Turd-Bird?” Cliff asks. I know that he has no intention of hitting me. Not yet. He would rather let me back down voluntarily. But I won’t do it this time. Something inside me has snapped.

  “Maybe I know something that you don’t, Cliff. Not that that’s surprising.”

  Cliff puts on a tough expression for Zoe and Amanda, who are watching from the edge of their seat.

  “You’d better take that back, Turd . . . ”

  “Let me ask you a question,” I say.

  The killer instinct takes over.

  “How do you know that the world really didn’t end at 8:35, Cliff?”

  Cliff looks confused. Not a major surprise.

  “How do you know that you haven’t passed straight into hell, that the Devil isn’t just fooling you into thinking you’re still on the school bus? How do you know that demons aren’t going to suddenly pop out and rip you to shreds, Cliff? How do you know you’re not on the bus to hell?”

  The tone in my voice surprises me. It is as if I have pulled the release pin out of the cylinder in the back of my head from which all the nightmares come.

  Cliff is no longer sure whether or not I am joking.

  “Knock it off, Turd-Bird. You’re buggin’ me.”

  “Calling me Turd-Bird is not a very intelligent thing to do right now, Cliff.”

  “Why not?” He rolls up his sleeve, preparing to punch.

  “Why not?” I holler. “Because you don’t know whether or not I’m who you think I am. Maybe the world ended two minutes ago, and now you’re in hell. Tell me Cliff, am I Dak Sifter, or am I a demon in disguise?”

  I look him straight in the eyes.

  “Can you say that you know for sure?”

  “Shut up, Sifter! You’re a psycho!”

  “Or maybe just a demon, eh? You never can tell, can you, Cliff?”

  My eyes are bulging maniacally.

  “Am I a demon, Cliff? What do you think?”

  Cliff may actually be scared. I am frightening myself a little, because I am starting to enjoy what I am doing to him.

  Amanda is watching with the fascination some people have for film footage of airplane crashes and convenience store shootings. Cliff turns to her.

  “Tell Sifter he’s a dickhead, Amanda.”

  I expect Amanda to do this, since she is one of the girls who often buys potato chips for Cliff. To my surprise, Amanda tells Cliff to grow up.

  “But Cliff can’t grow up if he died three minutes ago, can he?” I cackle. “He won’t ever grow up!”

  “You never know, do you Cliff?” Amanda says sweetly. She doesn’t wish to fail grade eight for want of a passing grade in math.

  “You’re a bimbo, Amanda,” Cliff grumbles. “You can forget about going to the movies with me again!”

  Amanda, who usually wears the expression of a deer caught in a pair of car headlights, becomes enraged.

  “Dead guys don’t go to movies, Cliff!” she screeches like skidding tires. “You’re not so cool now that you’re dead, are you?”

  Then, she turns to ice, rotating slowly around in her seat with her head cocked back. Wow. Girls are so good at that!

  “Whoops! Bad move, Cliff!” I chirp. “But don’t worry, old pal, you won’t be needing girlfriends where you’re headed . . . ”

  Cliff is turning red. Oh-oh! Could Cliff be losing his famous cool? I am bent on seeing this happen.

  “Maybe the flames won’t burn you too badly, Cliff, given that you’re so cool . . . ”

  I feel a sharp blow against my jaw, and the back of my head bounces against the bus window.

  Momentary blackness . . .

  I can feel the warmth of my blood trickling into my mouth, slowly filling it. Cliff has punched me in the face. Dull pain rises from the back of my head and my lower lip throbs.

  Cliff stands in the aisle, still-clenched fists hanging at his sides, and he begins to cry. Although he has punched me in the face, he is the one who’s crying. Despite loosened, bloody teeth, I am grinning.

  My head hardly hurts at all, relatively speaking. I have lost teeth to snowballs with rocks inside them and I have been knocked off my bicycle by biting dogs. Back when I was younger, and I went to the Special School for “gifted” kids, I got hit in the privates with a baseball bat just because I rode on a different bus than the other neighbourhood brats. So a punch in the face is nothing.

  Zoe shimmies around Amanda, and squeezes into the seat beside me. She mops blood from my mouth with a Kleenex, looking admiringly worried.

  “Ohmigod!” she says. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s nothing.”

  It occurs to me at this moment that Zoe is going to grow up to be a very attractive woman.

  Cliff is sitting in his seat, knees against his face, hiding. It is too late, though, and he knows it.

  What will happen from this point will go something like this: Cliff will be sent down to the principal’s office by the bus driver. Zoe and Amanda will be called in as witnesses, b
ecause girls are seen to be above this sort of boyish nonsense.

  Of course, Amanda and Zoe will tell the principal that I did absolutely nothing to provoke such a heartless attack, and the principal will believe it. In the past, Cliff has had a tendency to be a bit too “cool” with the teachers, whereas I have been on the honour roll every year since grade one.

  Cliff will pay for the broken window. He will apologize to me. He will be watched like a prison inmate for the remainder of the school year. He will probably also collect fewer potato chips at lunch. Poor Cliff.

  He looks at me from across the aisle, head between his knees. He would like to apologize for hitting me, if only to save his own skin, but his residual coolness prevents this from happening.

  Even though I have stopped bleeding, Zoe continues to gently rub my lip with the Kleenex.

  Cliff sits and cries.

  Welcome to hell, Cliff.

  THE FAIREVILLE BOARD OF EDUCATION

  “Teaching Tomorrow Today”

  OFFICIAL NOTICE OF SUSPENSION

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Boswink,

  This notice is to inform you that your child/charge has been suspended from school for three days for the reasons outlined below:

  Cliff is suspended under Section 12 (a) of the Education Act, for “personal conduct injurious to the moral tone of the school community,” specifically, the harassment and unprovoked assault of another student, while riding Bus 16 to school on Wednesday, February 11.

  The incident was witnessed by the bus driver, Mr. C. Underhill, as well as by several students.

  The suspension will begin on February 12. You must accompany your child/charge to school on February 15 at 9:00 AM for re-instatement.

  Principal

  Dogs That Lick and Dogs That Bite

  (Grade eight)

  I once read that the personalities of dogs tend to reflect those of their owners and vice versa, and I suppose this is true of me and my dog, Smiley. Smiley never bites, growls, or barks unnecessarily, and neither do I. He is the kind of dog who can’t catch or even find a ball that is thrown to him, and I, unfortunately, am that kind of boy. All of my report cards say that I am an “earnest, polite student,” and I get As in everything except physical education; if they issued report cards for dogs, Smiley’s probably would look a lot like mine.

  I think my father has been hoping for something a little different. After watching several old Lassie re-runs on TV, Dad concluded that I needed a dog, one that was noble, loyal, brave, and adventurous, in the hope that some of these traits would rub off on me. Despite the assurances of the pet store owner that Smiley would eventually grow out of his awkward, stumbling puppy gait, and would become a good guard dog and hunter with time, Smiley remains clumsy, skinny, relatively passive, and uninterested in hunting or guarding of any kind, which are traits I already have in abundance. At least both of my ears are more or less the same, whereas Smiley always has one ear sticking up and one ear lying down.

  Dad knew for sure he had hit another roadblock on his journey to make a man of me when I named my new dog. Dad suggested some “good, old-fashioned dog names” like “Rex,” “Rover,” and “Buster,” but I decided to name my fluffy new puppy Smiley, because he always looked happy. When Zoe Perry came over to see my new puppy, and declared that Smiley was an “adorable” name, Dad gave up the fight and retreated to his den to watch war movies on TV (which is probably why I got a pellet gun — which I didn’t ask for — for Christmas this year). Nevertheless, since dogs prefer to pee on trees and the wheels of neighbours’ cars, I, at least, have to go outdoors more often, which has convinced Dad that his mission has not been a total failure.

  Despite our relative passivity as a boy-and-dog team, Smiley and I manage to have a pretty good time together. Smiley splashes in the ravine across the street while I skip stones across the shallow water. Smiley gleefully rolls around on whatever dead thing he manages to sniff out, and I usually lose my balance on a stepping-stone and end up falling into the stagnant water. That we bring the stench of the ravine home with us on a regular basis drives Mom nuts, but it makes Dad happy to see me covered in guck like a “normal” boy.

  Today is a hot, kiln-fire dry summer afternoon. The ravine is dried up, so I can’t skip stones, and there is nothing moist and stinky for Smiley to roll around in, so today we decide to venture past the ravine to a barren, undeveloped region that both the kids and adults in our subdivision call The Badlands. On a bright day like this one, you can stand at the edge of The Badlands and watch the heat-distorted air twist above the parched ground, and you can squint, grit your teeth, and pretend that you’re Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.

  The adults call it The Badlands because this hilly patch of land is unfarmed, uninhabited, and undeveloped, due to its uneven terrain, its cracked, unyielding clay ground, and the unsightliness of its scraggly weeds and mounds of industrial waste containers and windblown garbage. The neighbourhood kids call it The Badlands because it is where the notorious Bad Boys hang out.

  The Bad Boys are mostly in grade nine or ten, only a couple of years older than me, but their reputations are bigger than age or size alone. Cliff Boswink, the bully of bullies at our middle school, is merely a little toadie in this gang of thugs. The Bad Boys have claimed The Badlands as their turf. It is the place where they roar around on their noisy, mufflerless dirt bikes, then stop to swear, spit, and smoke cigarettes stolen from the local convenience store. Mr. Cheung, the store’s owner, has started turning a blind eye to their petty thefts. Last time he apprehended the Bad Boys, his store got spray-painted with terms like “faggot chink” and “bumfucker store.”

  Smiley and I peer into The Badlands from atop a hill, my elbows and knees rest against the hard ground, and Smiley sprawls on his belly like a reconnaissance agent. What we see makes my heart race with excitement.

  Half a dozen dirt bikes buzz around the landscape of The Badlands like angry wasps around their hive, kicking up plumes of dust behind their spinning tires. The riders spin in cyclone circles, sound roaring into the air. The speed! The noise! The excitement! I’ve got to get one of these machines!

  The kid on the tallest bike brings his ride to a halt in the center of a bowl-shaped indentation between the hills. He stays on top of his bike, allowing the dust to clear before he kills the machine-gun sputtering of his bike’s idling motor. He tugs off his helmet, tosses it on the ground beside him, and flips the mane of sweaty hair from his face. It is Devin Orff, the undisputed leader of the Bad Boys, sitting atop his stone-dented, mud-splattered Suzuki RM 250, the sleeves of his black shirt rolled up past his shoulders to reveal wiry muscles, which he manages to flex through the simple action of inhaling from a cigarette.

  One by one, the other Bad Boys park their dirt bikes in a circle around him. They ride Hondas, Yamahas, and Suzukis with 125 cc engines. I suppose Devin gets to be the leader because his bike is a little bigger and a little faster than the others. The two huge Dobermans, which nip and snarl at each other at Devin’s feet, probably also help to reinforce his position of leadership. Devin kicks one of the dogs, sending it yelping around to the other side of his bike.

  “Knock it off, ya damn idiots!” Devin grunts at the dogs.

  “Yeah, ya stupid mutts!” adds one of Devin’s toadies, who kicks at the second dog.

  Devin slowly levers his long right leg over the gas tank of his dirt bike, then takes two quick strides over to the kid who has just taken a boot at the second Doberman. He stares at him for a moment, then kicks the kid’s bike over on top of him. The kid jumps to his feet, brushes the dirt off his hands, inspects the scrapes on his elbows, and struggles to pull his bike up off the ground.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” the toadie whines, his voice cracking like someone who wants to cry, but knows he can’t.

  “Chopper ‘n’ Slash are my dogs, dickwad. Only I get to discipline ‘em. They’d better be chewin’ yer balls off before you ever touch ‘em. Get i
t?”

  The kid looks down at his feet in the dust and says nothing.

  “I asked you a question!” Devin rasps.

  “Yeah, I got it,” the toadie mumbles.

  One of the Dobermans lifts its nose in the air, toward the spot where Smiley and I are hiding behind the hill and begins barking furiously. The second dog joins in. Smiley scampers quickly down the hill into the shelter of the ravine.

  “Hey, Devin! There’s somebody spyin’ on us!” calls a toady.

  Following my little dog’s wise example, I beat it down the hill. My heart is thumping in my throat as we hastily retreat home, but it isn’t just because we nearly got caught spying on the Bad Boys. The sound, speed, and motion of those motorcycles ripping around The Badlands has touched something deep inside of me, a feeling of desire unlike anything I have ever felt before. It has created inside me a need for speed, power, and motion. I want one of those dirt bikes. I need one.

  It is night, and I am listening from the top of the stairs as Mom and Dad argue furiously over whether or not I can spend my allowance money, which I have been saving since the third grade, on a dirt bike. Dad sees his boy suddenly wanting to do something “manly” without being forced into it, while Mom envisions me being smashed into a million pieces and scattered over The Badlands.

  “He’ll kill himself!” Mom wails. “Motorcycles are too dangerous for boys!”

  “It will teach him to be responsible and cautious,” Dad counters. “Dozens of the other neighbourhood boys have got them.”

  “He’ll get into trouble!” Mom argues.

  “It’ll keep him out of trouble,” Dad reasons. “It’s good, wholesome fun. He’ll make new friends with the other boys who ride.”

  “He’ll knock his teeth out or break his arm!”

  “It’ll be good for him. He’ll improve his hand-eye coordination. He’ll get more fresh air.”