Leslie's Journal Read online

  Leslie’s Journal

  Allan Stratton

  for my students

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Thanks

  One

  It’s only the first week and already school sucks. I’ve got Ms. Graham again for English.

  Today she said every class is going to start with fifteen minutes of journal writing, which is what we’re doing now. This is supposed to train us to “reflect freely on our personal experiences.” Oh yeah? It’s to give her fifteen minutes with nothing to do.

  Also, since our journals will be about personal feelings, she says she won’t read them. “Your journal is just for you. So write, write, write. As with everything in this world, you’ll get out of it what you put into it.” According to her, this is a “Life Lesson.” What it really is is an excuse for her to get out of marking.

  A year of journals! Can I scream yet? It’s so boring I keep forgetting to breathe. And each day when it’s over she’s going to collect them and lock them up in her filing cabinet, like we’re a bunch of babies who’ll lose them or something.

  But okay. Journals beat having her teach. Last year, she either read aloud to us or we read aloud to her, then she’d stop and ask us stupid questions about what we’d just heard. This last part was hilarious, because nobody ever gave her an answer. We just stared up at her like we were dead and watched her eyes go funny. No kidding, her eyes were like gerbils. They darted around desperate for a hand to pop in the air till the silence got so bad she couldn’t stand it anymore and blurted the answer herself.

  Normal teachers would figure if students are passed out, maybe they should do something. LIKE, HELLO, MAYBE STOP ASKING DUMB QUESTIONS! But not Ms. Graham. She went from dumb to dumber. There’d be red patches on her neck and she’d be sweating and wiping the sweat from her hands to her dress. It was disgusting.

  That’s when she’d tell us to read the next chapter silently and answer the questions on handouts she’d pass around for homework. Which of course we never did. We pretended we hadn’t heard her and the handouts didn’t exist. At the end of class, we’d crumple them into balls and toss them in the general direction of the wastebasket. It’s like, whole rain forests got clear-cut so Ms. Graham could stuff her filing cabinet with handouts that all ended up in the garbage.

  Then, pretty soon, we pretended Ms. Graham didn’t exist either. We’d come in, put our heads on our desks and go to sleep. Which was fine by her, I guess, because at least if we were sleeping we weren’t throwing chalk. Or handouts.

  It was sooo painful.

  Near the end of the year, she went Missing in Action. They said she was away with chronic bronchitis, but we figured she was having a breakdown. Over the summer the story went around that she’d knocked over a shelf of light fixtures at Wal-Mart and ended up under a pile of lampshades babbling hysterically while trying to strangle herself with an electric cord till the ambulance came and hauled her off in a straitjacket.

  Well, that’s the rumor. And even if it isn’t true, it should be, because obviously she’s back for more and she’s nutty as ever. Right now she’s floating around with this vague look, smelling kind of stale in a pale gray billowy thing. She looks like a human dustball. Wait. She’s just come to rest in front of the window. She’s looking out. Maybe she’s thinking of jumping.

  It’s kind of sad, really. I mean, if she wasn’t a teacher, I’d feel sorry for her. Once upon a time she was somebody’s baby, playing patty-cakes and having everybody kissing her and saying she was a cutie. Then she grew up. I picture her all alone in some tiny apartment, surrounded by cats and stacks of unmarked assignments, praying that tomorrow will be better. And it never is.

  Poor Ms. Graham. It’s not like she wants to be boring. That’s why I almost feel guilty when we torture her. Who we should torture—really, really torture, with hot coals and a pair of hedge clippers—is Nicky Wicks. He has short greasy hair, cystic acne and a squishy tongue he likes to stick in girls’ ears for a joke. He also has a dent in his forehead from where somebody hit him with a shovel when he was little. Too bad they didn’t hit harder.

  Nicky is the grossest pig in the school, and in this school there’s a lot of competition. He only has one re-deeming feature. If you want to lose weight, think about making out with him. You won’t be able to eat for a week.

  Anyway, Nicky “Pus-head” Wicks worked it so he sits one seat ahead of me in three separate classes. What’s worse, he apparently thinks it is majorly funny to stick a couple of pencils up his nose and pretend to be a walrus. The real reason he does this is to have an excuse to let his pencils fall on the floor so he can bend down to pick them up and look up my skirt while he’s at it.

  Today I got my revenge. I waited till lunch, when I knew he’d be in the cafeteria with lots of people all around. Then I marched up to his table and said in a big loud voice, “Hey, Pus-head, you look up my skirt one more time and I’ll personally pop your zits with my nail file!”

  There was this roar of laughter, hooting and foot-stomping. Nicky was so embarrassed, I thought his cysts would explode. As for me, I just snapped my fingers and diva-ed my way to the parking lot for a smoke.

  That’s where I met the vice-principal, Mr. Manley, out on a little narc duty. “I want to see you in my office, young lady.”

  Sorry, journal, according to Ms. Graham it’s time for you to go into the filing cabinet. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you what happened with the Nazi.

  P.S. Dear Ms. Graham: You promised our journals were going to be private. So in case you’re secretly reading this to get some cheap thrills, you are nothing but a crazy perverted liar, and it’s not my fault if it sends you over the edge.

  Two

  Vice-principals are basically school cops. They like to act tough and eat donuts. So, all things considered, I guess Mr. Manley is in the right job. Mr. Manley. Right. As in: “He is so manly.” An elephant in a suit is more like it. They say that once upon a time he used to be a phys ed teacher. Now the only exercise he gets is yelling. His vocal cords are on steroids.

  It’s pathetic. Mr. Manley walks around all tough and important, like he’s the FBI or something, when all he really is is some old guy who gets his kicks busting teenagers. I mean, he spends his whole life sneaking behind cars in the school parking lot to catch smokers, or smelling kids’ breath for alcohol or pot, or going around with a flashlight at school dances to make sure nobody’s having sex on the football field or under the stairwells. What kind of pervert gets off on that?

  Last year, in grade nine, Mr. Manley was always hauling me down to his office. I practically lived there. I joked he kept wanting to see me because he had the
hots for me, but really it was on account of me being late and skipping all the time. My parents had started this “trial separation” and I wasn’t taking it so well.

  I’m still not. Especially since it stopped being a “trial,” and Mom went from Still-Married-Sort-Of to Officially-Designated-Single-Mother. Now when she sees politicians on TV going on about single moms she starts to cry. Then she yells at me. It’s like she’s afraid if she doesn’t crack down I’m going to turn into this demon seed from a broken home, end up on some talk show maybe. “You’re going to improve your behavior,” she yells. “Do you hear me, Leslie?”

  “No. I’m deaf.”

  “Cut the attitude!”

  I give her the look. She goes ballistic. “Don’t give me that look.”

  “Then stop yelling at me. I mean, no wonder Dad left.”

  That’s when her face goes white and she runs to her room and makes these awful animal sounds. And I want to die. I don’t want to hurt her. Really. I just don’t want her to yell at me all the time. Why does everything have to be my fault?

  Last year after Dad left was pretty bad. I couldn’t be around anybody. Sometimes I took off to the mall to see how many movies I could sneak into at the multiplex, or to watch music videos on the wall of big-screen TVs at Laserama Electronics, or to panhandle beside the bank machine to see if I could make a living if I ever had to run away from home. But mostly I just hung out in the far cubicle of the girls’ washroom on the second floor east wing and cried.

  Needless to say, whenever I did show up for class there was a note telling me to report to the vice-principal. In fact, me getting hauled down to the office turned into what my drama teacher would call a “Ritual.”

  At first Mr. Manley tried to smarten me up by giving me after-school detentions. No way for that. So guess what he’d do when I’d skip detentions? Give me two-day suspensions. Is that funny or what? I skip school and my punishment is that I get to skip more school. Mr. Manley is a genius in the Stupid Department.

  Which brings me back to getting caught in the parking lot. It turns out Brainiac hadn’t seen my cigarette after all. Instead, he wanted to talk to me about my “in-appropriate dress.”

  “It’s not inappropriate,” I say when we’re in his office. “It’s retro.” What it really is is a black vinyl micro-mini with fishnets, platforms and a crop top. Since last May I’m happy to say I haven’t needed padding.

  “You know what I’m getting at,” Mr. Manley snaps back, all eyebrows.

  “I’m afraid I don’t.” I smile sweetly. “Perhaps you’d like to explain it to me.” Teachers hate that smile, because they know exactly what I’m thinking but they can’t do anything.

  Mr. Manley gives me his famous silent routine. It’s deadly. He stares down at a person without any expression, like they’re a bug or something, and he just keeps staring. Finally the person goes crazy and starts to twitch. That’s when he has them.

  Well, he doesn’t have me. Last year, maybe, when I was a niner who thought getting sent to the office meant something. But I’ve been called down so much by now I’m inoculated. Instead of getting scared, I look him straight in the eye. “Mr. Manley, are you saying I look like a slut?”

  “That’s not what I said,” he chokes.

  “But it’s what you meant, isn’t it? Unfortunately, I’m only a junior. I don’t know anything about sluts. Perhaps you could tell me about them. For instance, how exactly do sluts dress?” (And here I give him an even sweeter smile.) “In your experience.”

  We stare at each other hard, him really trying to break me down, me keeping cool by counting his nose hairs. Mr. Manley has hair growing out of his nose and his ears and all over the back of his hands and fingers. I picture him naked. I nearly barf.

  Suddenly, for a split second, he looks away. I win. “You will go home, change and report back to this office when you’re decent,” he mutters. “That will be all.”

  Go home? I don’t think so. I have some baggy clothes in my locker I can put on. They’re what I leave the apartment in; otherwise, Mom wouldn’t let me out the door. I wear them over top, take them off as soon as I get in the elevator and stuff them in a plastic bag. It sounds dumb, but it saves a fight, and we fight enough as it is.

  I tilt my head, smile at Mr. Manley, get up and roll my eyes. “Have a nice day.”

  I step out into the main office. There’s this senior lounging on the counter waiting for a secretary. I walk towards the hall staring straight ahead, but I can tell his eyes are following me. Not just following me—they’re burning into the back of my head.

  At the doorway, I stop and turn. “What’s your damage?”

  I expect him to go all red. But he grins, winks and keeps staring. I give him the finger, toss my hair and make an exit.

  What a jerk!

  Three

  Katie was shocked when I told her what I said to Mr. Manley.

  Katie is always shocked. That’s one of the things I like best about her. Whenever I’m bored, I go up to her and say, “Hey, Katie, guess what I just did?” and before I can say a word her eyes are so wide they look like they’re going to fall out of her head.

  Katie’s been my best friend since I moved to this pit six years ago because of Dad getting transferred. I arrived in October. Everyone was already into their little cliques, and when I was introduced to the class it was like somebody’d farted.

  At recess, no one would talk to me. All the boys wanted to do was run around like a bunch of morons screaming their heads off. But the girls—they were just plain mean. They were all in groups acting cute and when I’d come over they’d turn their backs on me and start to whisper and laugh. Mom had made me wear this brand-new outfit with a sweater vest. Nobody else was wearing sweater vests, though, because apparently the Fashion Police had decided they were against the law or something.

  Anyway, there I was, feeling like a giant dog turd. I knew I couldn’t cry—that would be too embarrassing. So instead I acted like I had something very important to do and marched off the asphalt to the fence at the back of the school yard.

  There was a girl there with big cheeks and glasses, sitting under a tree, reading a Harry Potter book. She looked pretty normal, except she was moving her lips. So I sat down about twenty feet from her and pretended to stare at this anthill, like I was a member of the junior science club or something. What I was really doing was praying my dad would get fired so we could move back home where I at least had a few friends. (I can hardly remember their names anymore, except for Laura Wilson, who stopped calling me after three lousy months—even though she’d sworn eternal friendship on her cat Fluffball’s grave.)

  I was just about to lose it when I heard a voice. “Oh, hi. You’re Leslie, right?” I looked over and it was Moving-Lips Girl. “I’m sorry for being so rude,” she went on. “It’s just that Harry’s in the middle of a spell and I didn’t even see you come over.”

  I shrugged as if I didn’t care one way or the other.

  “My name’s Katie. I sit three rows over from you. Where are you from?”

  “Seattle.”

  “Seattle? But that’s in the United States!” Her eyes went all big, like this was the most amazing thing she’d ever heard, and we’ve been best friends ever since.

  I love Katie. I couldn’t have made it through last year without her. During the stuff with my parents—the yelling, the fights, the separation—she was always ready to listen or make me laugh. Even when her mother told her to get off the phone—“It’s Family Hour, Katie!”—I knew she’d find a way to sneak to the basement washroom and call me back on her cell. And for Katie, calling back after getting the Word is a big deal.

  Katie is what adults call “well behaved”—which they apparently think is a compliment. Personally, I call “well behaved” being a suck, and it’s the one thing about Katie that sometimes bugs me. Luckily, Katie knows she’s a suck. “I just can’t help myself,” she laughs, eyes bulging. So how can I stay mad? I mean,
“I can’t help myself” is exactly what I say, only about getting in trouble.

  I guess that’s why we’re friends: we forgive each other. Katie says when she looks at me she sees a terrific person who really wants to do good. I say that when I look at her I see a spawn of Satan who really wants to cut loose. I’m not totally teasing. The reason Katie loves to be shocked by my stories is because I do and say the stuff she can’t.

  Katie’s biggest problem is her mother. Mrs. Kincaid is this giant spider sucking the life out of her. She’s this giant slug oozing slime. She’s this—don’t get me started!

  Let’s just say that Mrs. Kincaid thinks everyone and everything should be nice. As in “Don’t you look nice!” Or lovely. As in “Don’t you look lovely!” Or just about perfect. As in “Don’t you look just about perfect!” Not perfect, mind you. Just about perfect. That’s because she thinks the only perfect one is her. Naturally, Mrs. Kincaid doesn’t think I’m nice or lovely or anywhere close to being just about perfect. What Mrs. Kincaid thinks I am is trouble. As in “Leslie Phillips is nothing but trouble.” That’s what I heard her say to Mr. Kincaid one night last year when she thought me and Katie were down in the rec room watching TV.

  At first I was hurt. I’d always thought she liked me. But obviously things had changed since my parents’ separation and the move into our dump of an apartment and me starting to go wild. “Acting out” is how our family counselor put it when I got caught sneaking home drunk. To hear my mom tell it, you’d have thought I was an alcoholic or something.

  “But you’re only in grade nine!”

  “Yeah, well, I’m fourteen, so get used to it.”

  That’s when the counselor said I was “acting out.” “How would you know?” I yelled. “You’re just some turd. Get flushed, why don’t you?” I never went back.

  Anyway, I decided I didn’t have to care what Mrs. Kincaid thought. After all, I was Katie’s friend, not hers. At least that’s what I figured till Katie phoned last year at the end of spring break and said we had to talk.