Creeps (18 page)

Mr. Inkwell stares for ages, then asks Wayne to join him in his office.

Dear Mr. Inkwell,

I couldn't tell you the truth because then you'd want to have a word with Pete and his posse and you'd probably suspend them and it would only make things worse. It's like I tried to explain to Dad but he wouldn't listen and that's why Pete put me in the trunk and tried to get me to say all those things. So I told you that I'd
asked The Meat to show me something I saw in the UFC and when he did we both fell because it's slippery in the parking lot with all the ice melting. You sat back and said my story was shaky and I looked you in the eye and told you I was sticking to it and you let me go and said you'd be monitoring the situation and I nodded and opened the door and found myself getting sick, so I ran to the bathroom and threw up and I think it was from all the stress.

I walked home along back roads and skidoo trails and ignored Mom when she asked why my pants were wet and I'm so humiliated and it's just occurred to me that it'd be better if I wasn't here, and no, that's not a tear that just fell and is making the ink run. Well, okay, it is, but it's not because I feel sad. I don't feel much of anything.

Three years! That's a lifetime when Pete The Meat's walking in my direction or waiting behind the corner or holding me down so I can't breathe. Three years is how long before the sun burns out and the earth dies and everything goes back to the way it was before it all started.

Three years is forever.

Your member of the student body who thinks three years is forever,
Wayne Pumphrey

TWO

It's the next day and Mr. Rollie is standing centre stage, hands on hips and chewing his bottom lip with his eyes on his loafers. Everyone else sits in a circle around him. Everyone but Marjorie. He looks up. Uses his pinky to remove something from the corner of his eye. Goes to speak but stops himself, then tries again. “No easy way to say this …”

Everyone waits.

Wayne can't breathe.

“… so I'll just come right out with it.” But Mr. Rollie doesn't, preferring instead to walk the circumference of the circle while scratching his neck and moaning softly.

Julie gets to her knees and cups her mouth as if waiting for someone to confirm her winning Lotto numbers.

Les smooths his hair.

Jason and Shane give up comparing boob drawings.

Mr. Rollie stops. Raises his hands in surrender before letting them fall lifelessly at his sides. Then he says, “She quit.”

Sixteen—save for Wayne—intakes of air.

Mr. Rollie's bottom lip quivers.

Then Kendrick drops the electrical tape he's been holding and it rolls off the stage and onto the gymnasium floor, then along the aisle, finally coming to a stop against a chair leg where it wobbles for a second before falling over on its side. For a moment everyone keeps looking, as if it might somehow regain its former momentum and roll straight out the door and along the corridor and out into the parking lot. Perhaps it might roll forever. All eyes go back to Kendrick.

Kendrick stares at the ceiling.

Julie raises her hand.

Mr. Rollie doesn't even say her name, just points.

“I just want to say that it's awful what she did, especially since the opening is tomorrow night, but on the bright side, I've learned all her lines and am ready to take over should you need me.” Julie shoots Les a grin.

If Les's smile were any wider it would be wrapped around his earlobes and dangling like earrings.

Mr. Rollie exhales like someone accustomed to
things not working out, then takes off his glasses and puts them back on, and says, “I suppose we've no choice.”

Julie screams (she can't help herself) and Les starts clapping like he's at a rock concert.

Sharon, despondent, pulls out a Snickers.

A sliver of a voice then: Wayne's.

“What was that, Mr. Pumphrey?” Mr. Rollie says.

Wayne repeats what he said, but Mr. Rollie still can't hear over Les's clapping, so he tells Mr. Faulkner to stop and Les does.

Wayne stands up. “I said … someone should go and get her.”

Julie says, “It's too late now.” She looks at Mr. Rollie. “I'll need her costume pants hemmed.”

Wayne slams his notebook closed; the sound reverberates off the walls.

All eyes on him.

Unaccustomed to having everyone's attention, Wayne drops his notebook. He bends over and picks it up and sees that his hands are shaking. He walks into the centre of the circle and says, “Who wants to go to St. John's?”

Everyone raises their hands.

Then Wayne says, “Well, she's our only hope.”

Les spits out a puff of air.

“Excuse me?” Julie says.

Sharon's got peanut on her face.

“I'm as disappointed as you are, Mr. Pumphrey,” Mr. Rollie says.

“Nothing to be done about it now,” Les says.

“No—nothing,” says Julie.

“But she's better than the Hollywood crowd and it's impossible to take your eyes off her when she's onstage and you all know it.”

“It was her choice,” Mr. Rollie says.

“No.”

“Yes, Wayne Pumphrey,” Julie says.

“Don't call me that.”

“That's your name isn't it?”

“It's her calling,” Wayne says.

Les laughs.

Julie rolls her eyes.

Wayne turns to Mr. Rollie. “Those were
your
words.”

Mr. Rollie doesn't seem to know what to say, so Wayne goes, “If you could spend time in Marjorie's place you'd understand why she'd never quit, why she prefers here to there: because Tuesdays can't come fast enough and her father will never grow old, so she lives in the basement and sings along with Thom Yorke, and we're just alike because I'd rather be here, too!”

It's silent for a long time.

Then Mr. Rollie says, “Do you think you could get her back, Mr. Pumphrey?”

Wayne's about to say yes, but Les shouts, “We don't need her!” and then Julie says, “We can do it on our own!” and then someone at the back stands up and it's Kendrick and he says, “St. John's is close to the ocean and I've never been close to the ocean and I'm only a stagehand and know nothing about acting, but Marjorie seemed like our best chance, so I'd love for Wayne to go and get her because it's likely I'll never leave this place.”

Shane claps.

Jason puts his middle finger and thumb in his mouth and whistles.

Paul Stool actually sits up.

A few of the younger cast members start chanting Marjorie's name.

Sharon says to Wayne, “Give you a Snickers if you can bring her back.”

Mr. Rollie puts his hand on Wayne's shoulder. “Didn't I tell you, Mr. Pumphrey?”

“What?”

“That you're a leader?”

Wayne doesn't say anything.

“Go, Mr. Pumphrey. Get her if you can!”

A sea of cheering erupts as Wayne jumps off the stage and runs towards the double doors.

THREE

Mrs. Pope opens the door and stares at Wayne and tightens the knot in her bathrobe. “What can I do for you, mister?”

Music somewhere. Radiohead.

“Marjorie home?”

Mrs. Pope grips the doorknob. “What's this about?”

“Can I speak with her? It's urgent.”

“Urgent? What's urgent at your age?”

“I hear Thom Yorke coming from the basement, so can I just go down and say hello?”

“Not until you tell me what this is about.”

Sweat's trickling down his back. “Our show is tomorrow night and she quit, so how can we do it without her?”

“Show? What show?”

“Our play, and if it's good enough to win the
local drama festival—which it will be so long as Marjorie's in it—we'll get to go to St. John's.”

“Whoa there, mister, I didn't hear anything about no play.”

“She never told you?”

“Told me? What does she tell
me
? Nothing.”

“Marjorie's the lead and she's better than the Hollywood crowd and she's so real it's like she's not even acting.”

“St. John's did you say?”

“She makes Mr. Rollie cry and she's like lightning: you can't take your eyes off her—”

“What am
I
supposed to do while
she's
in St. John's?”

“And she smiles. How often have you seen her smile lately?”

“You'd better go now.”

“And it's her ‘calling.'”

“What?”

“To be onstage.”

“Off you go.”

“And it gives her something else to think about besides her father.”

Silence then, a blast and the dust's settling.

Then the door closes in Wayne's face and the light goes off in the foyer and he imagines Julie putting too much emphasis on words that should be Marjorie's; Les delivering half of his lines to the
pretty girls in the front row; Sharon sucking on a Snickers; Paul Stool's erection banging into everything; Mr. Rollie with his head in his hands, saying, “So much for St. John's, Mr. Pumphrey.”

He turns and walks down the porch steps and along the driveway and he looks and sees the finger parting the drapes and the eye and the bit of chin and mouth and suddenly he's going back and he's taking the stairs three at a time and he's pushing open the door and not bothering with his boots and running through the kitchen and towards the door leading to the downstairs.

“Just what do you think you're doing, mister!” Marjorie's mother says, but Wayne ignores her and runs down the steps and along the hall towards Thom Yorke's voice and stops at Marjorie's door and tries to open it, but it's locked, so he hammers on it, then kicks it, then Mrs. Pope is on the stairs and she's holding the hem of her robe so she doesn't trip and shouting something, although Wayne can't make out the words.

Now Mrs. Pope is in the hallway and Wayne gives the door a final kick and it suddenly opens and a hand grips his own and pulls him inside and Marjorie quickly turns the deadbolt and the music's blasting and her mother's banging on the other side of the door and threatening to call Wayne's parents or, better yet, the police.

She takes him over to the unmade bed and they sit down and Marjorie's father's picture is there and some letters and some five-dollar bills and two twenties and a container of coins and a knapsack that's half packed.

Thom Yorke sings the chorus of “Creep.”

Marjorie stands up and goes over and lowers the volume and her mother's about to come through the door she's banging so hard.

“Go away!” Marjorie says.

“Let me in!”

“In a minute!”

“Now!”

“I need to talk to Wayne!”

“Tell him he's in trouble!”

“Go away!”

“I'm calling his mother! Maybe the cops, too!”

“Leave us alone!”

More smacks against the door.

Then silence.

Marjorie goes back over to Wayne. She doesn't sit. “You shouldn't be here.”

“Where you going?”

“Didn't you learn anything from last time?”

“Why you packing?”

“Shush.”

“Sorry.” Then, in a whisper, “Why you packing?”

“I don't know, Wayne Pumphrey, why do people usually pack?”

“But where can you go, you're just a kid.”

“I'm fifteen and older than people twice my age.”

Wayne pauses. “You quit.”

“What?”

“We're about to do a dress rehearsal and there's no you, and of course Julie and Les couldn't be happier, but you should have heard the rest of them: chanting your name and clapping and telling me to come and get you and bring you back because we don't have a prayer without you, but now you're going, so what odds.”

“Shush!”

“Sorry.”

Quiet for ages.

“Come with me,” Marjorie says.

“What?”

“Tomorrow night. Train pulls out at eight.”

“I can't.”

“Afraid, Wayne Pumphrey?”

“No—yes, I don't know. We've got the play and everyone's worked so hard, including yourself, and just how do you think you're going to survive wherever it is you're going?”

Marjorie picks up her father's picture and wraps it in a flannel shirt and stuffs it in her bag. “I'll make beaded necklaces.”

“Beaded necklaces?”

“Or I'll act in plays. I'm better than the Hollywood crowd, right?”

“Yes, but you've got what … fifty, sixty dollars? How far's that going to get you?”

“Far enough. Any place is better than here.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Are you going?”

“You really have to ask? Because I'm sick of being told I don't miss Dad and I hate her needing me so much and I'm tired of the stupid play and I was there yesterday, Wayne Pumphrey.”