^17 Tome is another word for book. I could have used volume or manuscript or hardback or codex but I like tome. It comes from the ancient Mayan practice of writing on tomatoes. Unfortunately, all the great literary works of the Mayans are now just dusty ketchup.
MURDERBALL
Why? Why me? Brendan crouched in the middle of the gymnasium floor as Chester Dallaire wound up for the killing blow. I’m a good person. I’m kind to animals. I even tolerate my sister! So why me?
He had known it was going to be a bad day when he woke up with a giant, red, glistening pimple at the junction of his eyebrows. Pimples were a constant worry for him. Clustered at the corner of his mouth or at the side of his nose, they were a common occurrence. This pimple, however, was different: it was a harbinger of doom. He had tried to squeeze it but that had only made it redder and angrier. He knew then, as he left the house, this day was going to be a bad one.
“Ches-ter! Ches-ter! Ches-ter!” the crowd of students at the edge of the floor chanted. They were all excited and eager for the kill. There is nothing a crowd enjoys more than not being the one who is about to get clobbered.
Chester Dallaire was really savouring the moment, allowing Brendan to contemplate his fate at great length. Chester Dallaire was the largest boy in grade nine at Robertson Davies Academy. Chester truly was a misfit in RDA. Usually, jocks are the norm and nerds are the minority in high school. RDA, however, was a small school that recruited academically gifted students from all over the city. In essence, one could call RDA a school of nerds where Chester was the odd man out. Physically more mature than the other students, Chester had the beginnings of a moustache, and the rumour ran that he had a tattoo of a crouching panther on his back. No one had ever seen this tattoo as Chester rarely took off his shirt and scrupulously avoided bathing. He tossed the ball playfully in the air and leered at Brendan, who trembled in terror, waiting for the blow to fall.
Brendan was on the exact opposite end of the spectrum, physically. Where Chester was already well on the way to adulthood, Brendan’s body was still teetering on the edge of adolescence. He was thin and gawky. He had to wear thick glasses if he didn’t want to run into walls and furniture. As an added bonus, he wore braces on his crooked teeth. Yes, indeed. Brendan had definitely won the Teenage Affliction Lottery.
He pushed his glasses up onto his nose. Why do we even play this stupid game, anyway! Brendan thought miserably. Who, besides Chester, even likes it?
“CHES-TER! CHES-TER! CHES-TER!”
Murderball 18 is a game that is ideal for bullies. Why bother picking on the weaker kids in the schoolyard when you can just whack them in the head with a ball during gym class? Every gym teacher on the planet fails to see how humiliating and often painful it is to let these bullies have their way. Gym teachers the world over believe that Murderball is a great way to instill character in their young charges and allow the kids to blow off some steam. 19 Most schoolkids would rather leave their steam where it is and live without the giant purple welts on their backs.
“CHES-TER! CHES-TER! CHES-TER!”
Murderball is a game for sadists 20 and masochists. 21 Chester definitely fell into the former category, while Brendan liked to think of himself as neutral. How he’d ended up lasting to this point in the game he couldn’t quite understand. Maybe his desire to avoid being the recipient of a smack from Chester Dallaire had infused him with some hitherto unknown agility.
Usually, Brendan could barely avoid tripping over his own feet. He was famously clumsy. All his classmates teased him mercilessly. Butterfingers, Thumbs, Trippy McFallstein-they were always dreaming up new names to mock him with. Yes, Brendan knew he was a danger to others and to himself. At home, his father had gently but firmly banished him from the basement art studio after the nine-hundredth time he had accidentally crushed some delicate sculpture or piece of art. His mother said he was just growing too fast and he would eventually grow out of his clumsiness, but Brendan had his doubts.
Knowing all this, it was hard to believe that he was the last person in the game, backed into a corner, waiting for Chester to pulverize him. How? he asked himself. Why? But he knew the reason. The reason was Marina Kaprillian, a ninth-grader of surpassing beauty who was currently leaning coolly against the wall with a tittering group of her friends watching the action. The students who had been eliminated from the game early watched with relish as the humiliation continued, relieved to escape relatively unscathed. The audience grew as more were knocked out and so did the humiliation. The added opportunity for embarrassment was the fact that gym classes, due to the small number of students, were co-ed. Unlike most high schools, gym class and sports were a low priority compared to academic pursuits at Robertson Davies Academy. As a result, physical education suffered from funding shortfalls in favour of Chess Club and the Debating Team. Brendan was desperate to impress Marina or at least make her notice him. Staying in the Murderball game seemed like the way to catch her eye. So, despite all his physical shortcomings, he had made a superhuman effort and here he was on the verge of devastating personal injury.
There’s an old saying: be careful what you wish for. Now he was standing in the middle of the gym, wishing she would look anywhere else. Chester was going to cream him and he would look like a total goof.
Brendan looked to the sideline where his friends gathered, faces screwed into varying expressions of horror on his behalf. Harold’s chubby hands half-covered his round face as if he couldn’t bear to look but at the same time couldn’t pass up a chance to witness such exquisite carnage. Dmitri, small and blond, shook his head and motioned for Brendan to just play dead. Beside Dmitri, Kim gave Brendan a thumbs-up. The expression on her face suggested she wished she were in Brendan’s place. She was a true tomboy and loved physical contests. Of all his friends, she was the only one who was at home in the gymnasium: her shorts and T-shirt actually fit, and she stood with one hip cocked, looking quite sporty. She kept her hair cut in a trim little bob that framed her oval face neatly. One graceful eyebrow was arched as she slowly shook her head in disbelief. Apart from Kim, Brendan’s little gang of nerds lived mainly in their minds and found physical activity difficult at best and distasteful at worst.
“CHES-TER! CHES-TER! CHES-TER!”
The chant-ing of the crowd took on a feral edge. 22 They sounded less like high school students and more like a pack of hyenas baying for blood.
Brendan looked away from the little knot of supporters and back to his inspiration. His eyes sought out that special face…her face. There she was! She was looking at him! In spite of his pimple, she was looking at him.
“I am so gonna smear you all over this floor, Brendan Clair!” Chester’s heavy voice cut through Brendan’s daze. Brendan turned to see Chester sneering at him from across the floor.
“No need for taunting, Chester.” Mr. Davenport, the gym teacher, his voice nasal and piercing, chided over the noise of the crowd. “That’s poor sportsmanship.” Mr. Davenport was thin and wiry with a horrible comb-over. He wore a red sweatsuit with “Robertson Davies Academy Philosophers” stencilled on the front. Mr. Davenport was a physics teacher but he doubled as a phys. ed. teacher because he had a secret desire to be an athlete, a desire that had no hope of ever being fulfilled. As a result, he took grim pleasure in inflicting physical exercise on his students.
“Whatevs.” Chester shrugged and wound up his massive arm. The inflated rubber sphere was clutched in Chester’s banana-like fingers, the surface dimpling as he reared back to launch a massive throw at Brendan as he squatted, cornered.