No More Pranks Read online

  No More Pranks

  Monique Polak

  Orca soundings

  Copyright © 2004 Monique Polak

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Polak, Monique

  No more pranks / Monique Polak.

  (Orca soundings)

  ISBN 1-55143-315-X

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS8631.O43N6 2004 jC813’.6 C2004-905171-7

  Summary: Pete has to pull the most important prank of his life to bring about justice.

  First published in the United States, 2004

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2004112466

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage’s Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

  Cover design: Lynn O’Rourke

  Cover photography: Eyewire

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 5626, Stn. B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  v8r 6s4

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  07 06 05 04 • 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  Printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper, 100% old growth forest free, processed chlorine free using vegetable, low VOC inks.

  For my Michael with love

  and gratitude

  for bringing me to the whales.

  Acknowledgments

  Un grand merci to Marie-Louise Gay for her generous encouragement.

  This book would not have been possible without help from the staff at the Marine Mammal Interpretation Centre in Tadoussac, and especially from naturalist Robert Michaud, research director of the Groupe de recherche et d’ éducation sur les mammifières marins. I’m also grateful to Alain Dumais, biologist and kayaking guide, and to Captain Mario Tremblay of le Groupe Dufour.

  Special thanks to Claire Rothman and Evadne Anderson for their valuable comments on the manuscript; to Viva Singer for letting me talk about this project nonstop and agreeing to read several versions; and to Deena Sacks, Donna Haberman, Rina Singh, Max and Celine Polak for reading the manuscript.

  Thanks also to Erica Lighter, Angad Singh and Daniel Haberman for giving me a kid’s point of view; to Barbara Vininsky, my most loyal supporter; and to Andrew Wooldridge of Orca Books for his faith in the project and wise guidance.

  Finally, thanks to my daughter Alicia for bringing home great stories.

  Chapter One

  I’m not going to think about yesterday. No, I’m going to lie here under the covers and think about last week instead. Yesterday sucked big-time, but last week, well, last week was amazing.

  One thing’s for sure—I’m good. I don’t mean good in a goody-goody way, like that girl Elizabeth who sits in the front row in English, the one who’s always volunteering to erase the blackboard or run errands for the teacher. When I say I’m good, I mean I’m bad. Real bad.

  It must’ve been pure badness that gave me the idea to phone the Pillow Talk hotline and pretend I was Mr. Quincy. That and the fact that he gave me a detention the week before for not having my shirt tucked in. You’d figure a vice-principal would have better things to do than patrol the hallways looking for dress-code violations. If you ask me, any self-respecting guy who goes around with a clear plastic ruler and measures the platforms on girls’ shoes is asking for trouble.

  Which is what I gave him.

  When I got the idea, it was like I was possessed. Nothing could’ve stopped me—not even if I’d known how royally pissed off my parents would be.

  Everyone at school listens to Pillow Talk. It’s a total hoot. These perverts phone in to discuss their sexual problems. You’d think they’d be shy to talk about stuff like that on the radio, but they’re not. Like this one nutbar phoned to say he likes to prance around naked right in front of his living room window. He wanted to know if Dr. Dingle—believe it or not, that’s the name of the sex therapist who hosts the show—thought there was anything wrong with that. Then there was this headcase who phoned to discuss her urge to tie her boyfriend up before they fooled around. You gotta admit, sometimes people can be pretty whacked out. It makes me wonder about regular-looking people I see in the street or at the mall. I want to ask them, Are you one of those weirdoes or what?

  I was pretty surprised when Dr. Dingle picked up the phone himself. I knew it was him because I would have recognized his voice anywhere. I have been listening to him twice a week since seventh grade. He’s got one of those low, really serious voices and he says “uh-huh” and “I see” a lot. He also makes this clucking sound when people say how lousy they feel.

  Which is exactly what he did with me. Only, it wasn’t really me. It was me pretending to be Mr. Quincy. And I must have been convincing because Dr. Dingle fell for it—hook, line and sinker. “My name is Mr. Joseph Quincy,” is how I started. My voice was a bit shaky at first. Not because I was nervous or anything, but because I was trying not to laugh. But even the shakiness was good, because most of the people who phone in sound nervous, especially when they first start talking. “I’m the vice-principal of Hill Road High School and I have a terrible problem.” I even sniffled a little to make myself sound extra pathetic.

  That’s when Dr. Dingle clucked. “And what is the nature of that problem?” he wanted to know.

  “Well,” I said—and I took a deep breath so I wouldn’t crack up altogether—” I have an uncontrollable urge that involves girls’ shoes. When I measure the platforms on their shoes, which is part of my job—you see, girls at Hill Road are forbidden to wear platforms more than two inches high—I’m unable to resist sniffing their shoes and feet. There’s more, but it’s extremely difficult for me to talk about on-air.”

  “Go ahead,” Dr. Dingle prompted me, and then he made another of his clucking noises.

  “Well,” I continued, “I have this, this urge—it’s really extremely shameful. I have an uncontrollable urge to brush my private parts against these girls’ stocking feet. Please, Dr. Dingle, help me!”

  “Uh-huh, I see,” and then Dr. Dingle took a short pause, as if he needed to gather his thoughts. “Well, the first thing you need to know, Joseph, is that foot fetishes are surprisingly common and relatively harmless,” Dr. Dingle said. “But for a man in your, uh, position, it might be wise if you put someone else in charge of measuring footwear at your school. You are, shall we say—vulnerable. You don’t mention a wife, Joseph, and I’m wondering whether you are married or have a girlfriend. Perhaps she might be willing to let you caress her feet. How does that sound, Joseph?”

  That’s when I slammed down the phone. I had to—because I was about to crack up.

  My biggest mistake was taping the call. Okay, maybe it was my second biggest. The biggest was letting Jordan borrow the tape.

  Everyone was whispering when I walked into homeroom on Monday. They were asking each other if they’d heard Pillow Talk the night before. Even Elizabeth was giggling. Then I remembered how, earlier in the year, she’d gotten into trouble for breaking the two-inch platform rule, so maybe even Elizabeth the goody-goody had something against Mr. Quincy.

  “I’ll bet it was you, right?” Jordan called out when I grabbed a seat near his. The other kids turned around to watc
h my reaction. I could have said it wasn’t me, but I guess I was proud. I know it sounds kind of weird, but I felt like an artist or something. Like it was my creation and I wanted credit for it. I never could understand those guys who write poems and sign them “Anonymous.” I mean, why go to all that trouble finding just the right words for what you’re trying to say?

  “Yup,” I said, “it was me.” And just for fun, I took a bow, bending over like I was on stage or something.

  “Gee, am I ever sorry I missed it!” Jordan said. “We were out for dinner. But I heard all about it. ‘An uncontrollable urge to brush your private parts…’ Jeez, Larkin, how do you come up with that kind of stuff?” he said, clapping me on the shoulder.

  I’ve known Jordan forever—which in our case is since we were both born—fifteen-and-a-half years ago. Our moms met in some prenatal yoga class. Unlike me (I’m just over five feet), Jordan’s real tall. It’s weird how much a guy’s life is affected by his height. Jordan’s into basketball. I’ve made a name for myself by pulling pranks.

  “You can always listen to the tape,” I told Jordan.

  “You taped it?” Jordan sounded impressed.

  “Uh-huh,” I said, pulling the cassette out of my back pocket.

  Jordan swears he had nothing to do with Mr. Quincy finding out, though he did admit he made two copies of the tape and lent them to some guys on the basketball team.

  Mr. Quincy sure can’t take a joke. When he called me into his office, his face looked like a purple balloon about to explode. “You have defamed my character. And I want you OUT OUT OUT!” I swear he said the word “out” three times. Not only am I suspended for five days, but I’ve actually got to switch high schools.

  You can imagine how flipped out my parents are. Quincy met with them on Friday afternoon and my mom hasn’t spoken to me since. Even my dad, who’s usually pretty understanding when I get into trouble, is upset. “We’re still reeling from all this,” he told me yesterday when he passed me on the staircase at home. “This time, Pete, you’ve crossed the line.”

  No wonder I prefer to lie here and think of what last week was like. Before I crossed the line, that is.

  My mom and dad don’t argue much, but hey, they’re arguing now. I can hear them all the way from the kitchen; they’re making so much noise the floor in my bedroom is vibrating. “He’s going—and that’s that,” my mom is saying.

  Going where? What’s going on?

  “I’ve had it. He’s spending the summer in Tadoussac. I want him away from those friends of his. And Daisy and Jean have offered to look after him.”

  Tadoussac? They’ve got to be kidding. That tourist trap in the middle of nowhere?

  I can hear my dad’s voice now. He’ll talk her out of it. At least I hope he will.

  “I’m not sure it’s necessary,” he says, “but if you think it’s come to that…”

  I can just imagine him throwing his arms up in the air.

  Getting suspended is one thing. Being forced to go to another school is another. But spending a summer in Tadoussac? Now that’s a life sentence.

  Chapter Two

  Pierre?

  That’s what everyone here calls me. And it doesn’t help to say my name is Pete. They just nod and say, “Okay, Pierre.” Then they point to the wet suits that need hosing down or the kayaks that have to be pushed off from the shore.

  My Uncle Jean owns a kayaking company up here in Tadoussac, about five hours northeast of Montreal. He’s got quite the job. Twice a day, he takes groups of tourists out on the St. Lawrence River to watch whales. You should see his tan.

  Aunt Daisy—she’s my mom’s kid sister and Uncle Jean’s wife—says the business is tougher than it looks. “Let’s put it this way,” she told me this morning at breakfast. “You don’t want to be out on the river with a group of inexperienced kayakers when it’s storming. If someone falls in, Jean has less than five minutes to get the person back in the kayak. The St. Lawrence might look harmless—just a body of gray-blue water—but it’s colder than you’d expect. If you fall in, you lose sensation in your extremities—your hands and feet—within three minutes.”

  Aunt Daisy looks like my mom—they both have this wild, curly, blond hair—but they’re not at all alike in other ways. My mom would definitely flip out if she were discussing losing sensation in your extremities. Not Aunt Daisy. You’d think she was discussing a recipe for sugar pie, this dessert she makes. Aunt Daisy is the calm, collected type. Maybe it’s because she used to be a nurse. Up here though, she runs a bed-and-breakfast—The Whale’s Tale—which is where she and Uncle Jean live—and where I’m staying.

  It’s funny about the St. Lawrence. I’ve spent my whole life in Montreal, and though the St. Lawrence is always there—underneath us when we cross one of the bridges into the city, or in the distance when we’re up on Mount Royal—somehow, I never really noticed it till I got here. Man, that thing is massive. If you ask me, it’s more like an ocean than a river.

  Uncle Jean’s got me working, which is all right, I guess. Otherwise, I don’t know what else I’d do up here in Dullsville. How many times can a guy go to the whale museum and check out whalebones? Of course I don’t have Uncle Jean’s cushy job out on a kayak; I’m part of the cleanup crew. But I get minimum wage, which means I should end up with about a thousand big ones by the end of August.

  The other guys on the crew are older than me. Most of them don’t speak much English, so it’s a good thing I’m pretty much bilingual. As long as they don’t talk too fast, I get most of what they say. I hate to admit it, but maybe all those years in French immersion schools weren’t as big a waste as I thought.

  One thing I notice is that I get all the crappy jobs. Like today, Réal—he’s in charge when my uncle’s not around—well, he made me hose down this mountain of boat shoes. They’re these blue and silver nylon boots you’re supposed to wear when you kayak. I guess they’re meant to keep those extremities warm in case of a spill. You wouldn’t believe how smelly those things get. I thought I’d pass out when I had a whiff of them.

  Even though they didn’t make a sound, I could tell that Réal and his pals were having a good laugh at my expense. “You okay, petit anglo?” they wanted to know when I was done.

  I didn’t mind their asking me how I was doing or their making reference to the fact that I speak English. What I didn’t like was being called petit, which is French for “little.” I guess you could say I’m sensitive about my height. I know they say a kid can still have a growth spurt when he’s fifteen, or even sixteen, but frankly, I’m not holding my breath.

  The best job around here is hanging up the life jackets at the end of the day. That’s because people leave all sorts of stuff in the pockets. Sunglasses, suntan lotion, gum, sometimes even cash. And get this—last week, Réal found a condom. You gotta wonder about someone who packs a condom when he goes out for a two-hour kayak trip. If you ask me, it sounds like a case for Dr. Dingle.

  There’s a lost-and-found bin in the office and we’re supposed to put anything we find in there. Truth is, most people who come to Tadoussac are only here for a day or two. By the time they discover their sunglasses are missing, they’re already on the road to someplace else.

  I came up with this idea while we were hanging up the life jackets. Instead of taking stuff out of the pockets, I thought, why not put something into them? Something kind of unusual—something no one would expect to find in their pocket when they were out on the St. Lawrence.

  Just when I was thinking about what I might put into one of the pockets, well, the answer just came to me. Literally. It jumped out from behind this rock where I was standing. A bullfrog. Not the best-looking specimen, either. This was a big fat guy with dark green blotches. They looked kind of like warts, only flat. It took a little effort to catch him, but I managed.

  “What are you up to, Pierre?” Réal wanted to know. I could tell he was about to give me some other chore—till he spotted the bullfrog.
r />   You should have heard Réal laugh when I slipped the frog into one of the life jackets. I didn’t pick one of the orange and yellow ones. No, I picked one that was more unusual, a green and purple one. That’s because I wanted to be able to keep an eye on it when the next group of kayakers went out. As for Réal, I thought he was going to keel over. I’ve got to admit that when one of my ideas makes someone laugh, I feel—well, I guess you could say I feel tall. Like I’m six-foot-two or something.

  When Réal calmed down, I brought my finger to my lips—a sign he shouldn’t tell anyone else about my little surprise. Réal nodded. Then he said something in French that I didn’t quite understand, but I’d say it must’ve been the French equivalent of “Way to go, kid.” Only this time he didn’t call me “petit.”

  The next group of kayakers was scheduled to leave at three—after Uncle Jean gave them their basic paddling lesson. What amazes me is that he doesn’t get tired of teaching people how to kayak. I mean, he goes through the exact same lesson twice a day. He makes everyone line up in rows, and he stands at the front, demonstrating with this wooden paddle: “We use our shoulders, never our wrists.” Then he repeats the instruction in French. From the way he says it, you’d think he never thought of it before. I’m bored of his routine and I’ve only been here a week.

  I felt a little bad when I saw who picked the green and purple life jacket. It was this tall, thin woman in a big straw hat that looked like a lampshade. She was with her husband—a bald guy with a beer belly. “Are you sure this is a good idea, Bill?” she was asking him when they headed down to the beach.

  One thing about pranks is that they kind of have a life of their own. Once a prank gets started, you can’t just call it off. Especially when you’ve got a guy like Réal winking at you like crazy when you push the kayak with the lady and her hubby off from the shore. “Bon voyage!” I tell them—and I can’t help thinking it may be more “bon” for me, watching from the shore, than for them.