Now we are 7.

We were up the stairs and out into the open faster than any of the now gang of 7 could have imagined.

Nathaniel stopped just beside the gate that led into the pool and raised his finger to his mouth and gestured for us to all be quiet!

Like dominos we piled into each other and again Nathaniel listened.

I have no idea what he might have been listening for since all we could hear was the fire bell and the loud shrieks of students running to cover their books from the fire sprinklers.

“Ok listen”, Nathaniel said.

“We all need to lose these ponchos and blend back into our classes as quick and a seamlessly as possible”, Nathaniel said with a mischievous smile on his face.

“Ana what are you seeing”, Kevin asked as if he really needed to know.

Ana quickly pulled up her sleeve and started to tap away on her watch which was synced into the school security system.

“I don’t think we have much time to stand here and debate the weather”, Ana said like she was ready to run.

Looking back at her watch again Ana had some specific information that everyone paid attention to.

“Ok the main foyer is flooding with water and with students, not a good place to go. The second and third floors are clear but everyone is being asked to assemble at the black fence in front of the school. If we go in to our right the Howsler is standing guard and sure to ask us to join him is some obscure Karaoke of Canadian bands that nobody has ever heard of, I think he is singing into a pen and listening to a walkman as he patrols the hallway. If we go in the left door we have to worry about Charles, he seems to be standing directly in front of Max’s locker. The only option is through the library!” Ana took a deep breath and led the way.

“Stop”, shouted Nathaniel.

“What are we going to do with the detention book? If we are caught with this there is no telling what will happen to, well, Omar” Nathaniel said trying not to laugh.

Everyone knew that Omar had basically been sentenced to spend the rest of his high school life in detention whenever he had a spare moment.

Nathaniel looked at everyone hoping that there would be a magical answer on someone’s face.

Sam took one look at Nathaniel and one look at the door leading into the library and said“, put the book on a shelf in the library close to the reference section where nobody ever reads the books and we can pick it up after our last class”!

“Good plan”, said Kevin who hardly ever said anything.

Brandon shouted, “rain ponchos to me”, and he stuffed them into one of the support posts for the sunshade that went over the school pool.

“Nobody will find those before we can move them”, Brandon said with a smile on his face.

We all slid down into the library and very quickly had to make it look like we were busy in the music studios because that is where we appeared to be coming from as we entered the library.

We all began to hum a song, good thing the school was noisy because we were all humming different songs.

Then came the Max move!

I did my best sliding belly glide across the wet floor in the library and that immediately caught the attention of Ms. Bookmite, the librarian with attitude, provoking her to jump over her desk as if she was an Olympic hurdler and descend on me like a wild cat on a steak.

When it was clear that I had distracted Ms. Bookmite, the librarian, Nathaniel placed the detention book between the Outback Diner Art History and Paris Sewer Tour coffee table books.

Then just as I was about to get an earful from Ms. Bookmite, the hungry as a cat librarian, Ana tapped away at her watch and the phone on Ms. Bookmite’s desk began to ring VERY LOUD.

I am not sure who was more surprised us or Ms. Bookmite, the hungry and odd librarian, because nobody had ever seen that phone work, even now there was a big red sign, with bent up corners on the phone, that said out of order.

Yet the phone was ringing, very loudly.

Ana gave a crocked smile to the group and Ms. Bookmite looked at me and said, “this is a library not a ride at the water park, even if it is a bit wet in here, next time I catch you doing this you will lose 100 house points”!

Now that was a threat that I didn’t need to have weighing over my head.

Ana took a good look to make sure Nathaniel had the book placed and then signaled everyone to move out.

“How did you do that Ana”, Kevin asked.

“Well remember the physics experiments we did 2 weeks ago where we manipulated magnetic fields? The bell in the phone works off of a magnetic field so with the help of a pulse from the schools security system I managed to get it to ring”, Ana had that look of surprise on her face that told everyone that she had no idea it would work at all.

“OK now we need to use plan C”, Omar said with that authority that only a student council president could have.

Brandon pulled out of his pocket what looked like a small package of Oreo Cookies.

But it wasn’t Oreos at all it was a micro recorder with a voice modulator attached.

Brandon quickly walked up the steps towards the foyer and tossed the cookie package at the PA systems console.

The package seemed to be guided to the steel cabinet and attached to it effortlessly like a chameleon and then blended into the case becoming nearly invisible.

Omar looked around and then said, “now lets have a bit of fun”!

Saved By Gas

We had all but finished the last pieces of the day old donut when I began to wonder when we might actually get out of this place, the detention hole.

As I looked around the detention room I realized that it really was nothing more than a rough room carved out of stone, it really was a hole with a nice coat of white paint on it.

But the question remained, when will we be let out of here?

“Omar, when do they let us out”, I whispered over my shoulder.

“Do you have any more food”, Sam said a bit too loud for my liking.

“Keep it down or Mr. Smith is going to take our food away”, Omar said with a silly grimace on his face.

As soon as I saw that look I knew that Omar was up to something.

Omar pulled what I am sure is one of the smallest telescopes I have ever seen from the right front pocket of his finely pressed school pants.

I made a mental note to ask Omar how he kept his pants so finely pressed.

It wasn’t that the telescope was small but that it was flat and with the flick of his wrist the scope was round and ready to be used, amazing.

“What are you looking for Omar”, I said in an almost inaudible mumble that could have easily been confused for the hum of the air conditioning fan.

“Shhhhh”, Omar shot back like a snake being disturbed from a nap.

In fact Omar had trained the telescope firmly on Mr. Smith and was looking intently at him.

“Omar what are you looking at Mr. Smith for”, I said wondering if Omar had lost his mind!

“5 minutes men and we are out of here”, Omar said with a huge smile and with the flick of his wrist had the telescope flattened and back in its concealed spot in his pants.

Omar was looking at the only clock in the room the one around Mr. Smith’s neck.

“Be ready to move when I give the word”, Omar said to Sam and me.

“I’m not so sure it is a good idea to move from these seats unless we get the all clear from Mr. Smith”, Sam said looking more serious than I had ever seen him look.

Well there was the time that Sam was selling homemade Jerky from his locker that he also looked this serious.

But that time the serious look was because the jerky was curing in his locker and the longer he kept the door open the greater the chance that Charles, the security guard, would realize that it wasn’t the washroom smelling but Sam’s locker.

And then there was the question of what meat the jerky was in the first place.

“Believe me when the time comes you are going to want to get out of here and there will be a clear path”, Omar said looking at the door with his full attention.

In the mezzanine of the school an odd collection of boys were congregating very close to the left side of the front doors close to the reception desk but not close enough to immediately send up a warning flag to the hall patrol.

Brandon, Kevin, Mitch, Abdulla, Sam and Nathaniel were all standing arm in arm with their backs to the wall and concentrating like they were trying to will the clock above them to advance to the end of the day.

Jeanne and Sarah walked by and gave the boys a quizzing almost untrusting look.

“Sarah what did you have for lunch”, Nathaniel asked with his face scrunched up like he was trying to blow up a balloon that had been sitting in the desert sun for so long that it had fussed together.

“The usual”, Sarah ate the same thing day in and day out.

Rumour has it that one day last year Sarah’s Dad forgot her lunch in his briefcase and that was on an Emirates flight with him half way to Australia before they found out that the lunch was not at school.

Well, things got so ugly in the cafeteria because Sarah didn’t have her lunch that the Emirates flight, we are told I was sick that day, had to turn around and have the lunch specially delivered to the school when it landed at the airport.

I also heard that the story had become so well known that it was going to be on page 145 of the 2010 edition of the Ripley’s Believe it or not book.

“Nathaniel like yesterday and the day before that and the day before that I started off my lunch with a lightly sautéed piece of goose fat drizzled with a honey mustard sauce.  The appetizer was followed by deep fried octopus suckers drizzled with marshmallow and caramel sauce. And for desert I had an apple with sardine strips”, Sarah called this the meal of champions even though the one thing that it ensured was that no matter where she left her lunch nobody was going near it!

“Sarah we are going to need some help”, Nathaniel said as if his life was depending on him being able to advance the clock on the wall above him.

“Nathaniel I know just what you need”, and Sarah ran off like her pants were full of fire ants.

Hmmm… was Abdulla up to his tricks again?

Just as things were set to go all wrong Sarah was back with a very ripe Ms. Shelley in tow.

“What are you boys doing”, Ms. Shelley shouted like a wild gorilla swinging in from the jungle canopy.

And as Ms. Shelley got close the boys literally had it scared out of them and with the added help of the smell of the exploded toilet still growing on Ms. Shelley the boys in unison let out one collectively evil fart and almost instantly sirens began to screech throughout the school!

Hungry

Mr. Smith pointed towards me and told Sam to go and find a seat, his assigned seat.

“Sam what are you doing in here?” I asked.

I should have known Sam would be up to his old tricks and if not beat me to detention join me here before too long.

Omar took one look at Sam and tried to hold in a laugh, he wasn’t very successful.

The problem with laughing is that it was in direct violation of at least 3 rules in the rulebook and seemed to be something Mr. Smith was on the listen-out for.

“Boys”, Mr. Smith said like a Santa in distress with his foot caught in a log rack as he tried to pull himself up a chimney.

“If you boys make me come over there I promise you nobody is going to have a smile on his face!”

Omar let out a quick response to the challenge, as you would expect from the student council president.

Under his breath Omar said, “It would be hard to have a smile on our faces with that smell of toxic garlic coming from your shoes”.

“Are you making a crack about my shoe problem”, Mr. Smith shot back and started to walk towards us.

I wouldn’t have been concerned except I was clearly not sitting in my seat and was not sure how good Mr. Smith’s memory was.

Omar in the quietest voice I had ever heard said, “stay calm boys and follow my lead.”

“Mr. Smith we were just commenting on how much we liked your Kiwi/Hawaiian/retro shirt and were wondering if there was any chance you could ask the senior without a clue team, I mean education leadership/innovation/inspiration team, about making your shirt the basis of a new uniform?”

Omar was good really good there was no question in my mind why he was the leader of student council!

Before Mr. Smith had a clue what had hit him he stopped in his tracks, took a look at his shirt and smiled.

“You like it”, he said.

Mr. Smith looked down at the shirt and said, “I have a closet full of them all the same fantastic dead grasshopper on a windscreen green.”

Then as quick as he walked down the row of desks he turned around and walked to the front of the detention hall saying something about what a great idea we kids have.

Mr. Smith looked at us and then half in his head and half out loud said, ”this might be my ticket out of detention and into hall patrol or maybe if I’m lucky the bus monitor position!”

Then I heard the sound again, the bike bell and scraping.

In a whisper like my life depended on it I looked at Omar and asked, “ do you hear that?”

“All I could hear Max was Sam’s stomach” Omar said rubbing his own stomach.

Sam’s stomach was a bit on the vocal side.

I remember once in grade 5 Sam’s stomach was so loud in Mrs. Smith’s music class that she thought that someone was playing the bongo drums as she was trying to explain the difference between the note sequences of a triangle and a harmonica.

Sam’s stomach was so loud and so unpredictable that Mrs. Smith once actually gave him house points for creative improvisation.

The one thing everyone liked about Sam though was because he was always hungry he always seemed to be planning for that inevitable moment when he would need to feed the beast, his stomach.

Sam was a walking cafeteria!

But it wasn’t the fact that Sam was a walking cafeteria that caught my attention at this moment; it was the fact that sitting in front of me was Sam wearing rugby cleats, a paint smock and what looked like surfing shorts.

“Sam what are you wearing”, I said with a confused but inquiring look on my face.

“What does it look like I am wearing Max” Sam said.

“I am wearing a pear of rugby cleats, an art smock and my favorite board shorts”, Sam looked at me then down at himself like I was out of my mind.

“And you are wearing that fashion statement combination because?” I didn’t want to sound too sarcastic because I was sure Sam would have some food to share and I was beginning to get very hungry.

“Well you see, I wanted to demonstrate to the Diploma Program Accreditation committee that there was an art to rugby and that it was like surfing a fine line between an abstract and impressionist painting”, Sam said with a smile on his face.

“Unfortunately as I swung from the PE hall into the main foyer with my rugby ball in hand I misjudged my velocity and bumped cleat first into Mrs. Loadwick’s chin, it wasn’t pretty and 15 seconds later I was being pulled by my ear down here” Sam said with a huge grin on his face.

“Sam do you have anything to snack on” I asked as my own stomach began to rumble and yodel.

“Max this is your lucky day”, Sam said and reached deep into his back pocket and pulled out what looked like a pita and chip sandwich that had lost a fight between a butt cheek and a chair.

Not to be out done Omar took off his shoe, removed what looked like a tinfoil liner and dug deep to expose what looked remarkably like a piece of pizza.

“I find if you take a piece of pizza and put it in your shoe with a piece of tinfoil over it you get a warm and remarkably thin piece of pizza that tastes almost like the moment it was delivered, as long as it doesn’t rain” which with a wink Omar reminded us is a pretty rare thing around here.

What could I offer?

Lucky for me Ms. Shelley had shielded me from the exploding toilet so I still had a half eaten day old donut in my shirt pocket that I could also offer up to this makeshift picnic.

Page 507and ½

A rule book for detention?

Who had ever heard of such a thing?

And the facts that the book was over 500 pages long made me scratch my head a couple of times.

After the 10th scratch I started to wonder if this book was so old that it was home to a colony of mites and how far could they jump anyway, I moved my head as far away from the book as possible while still being able to comfortably read?

As I opened the book I was sure I heard the faint hiss of an airlock, coming from the book itself.

Page 1 had 3 words on it, READ VERY CAREFULLY.

Page 2, 3 words also, but a different 3, NEVER CHANGE SEATS.

And the book continued in this way for what seemed like hours… and that was the peculiar thing about this detention room, no clocks.

The only clock I could see was the one that was hanging around Mr. Smith’s neck and he seemed to spend more time at the door than he did supervising the growing population of the room.

Page 507, 3 words, ALWAYS LOOK FOREWARD.

And then the book got even a little more odd, there were half pages.

These half pages were half the size with half the amount of information on them.

I guess that makes good sense, page 507 ½ would be halfway between pages 507 and 508 and have half the content.

The instruction on the ½ page also had the dubious quality of also only being half as clear as the other pages and that might be because there were only 1-½ words!

So what did 507 ½ say?

NO EEP.

Just as I was about to scratch my head for the 15th time I felt a piece of paper, the size of a pea slam into the back of my head.

Page 507 was very specific, ALWAYS LOOK FOREWARD!
But someone was blasting me with spitballs .

I noticed that Mr. Smith was at the door, still, and he seemed to be far from being finished.

From what I could hear he was talking about the best way to get the smell of garlic out of your shoes!

Why would shoes smell like garlic?

And what was EEP, the ½ word from the ½ page?

When I was pretty sure the coast was clear I pretended to be lacing up my shoes and took a casual glance behind me to see Omar, the president of the student council, loading another spitball into the hollow core of a disposable pen.

Omar, is that you?

“shhhhh”, he said and signaled me to move back closer to him.

“I can’t Mr. Smith might see me!”

“Don’t worry about Mr. Smith he has garlic issues and will be preoccupied for weeks if not the rest of the semester.”

I slowly slipped out of my desk and moved back to the seat in front of Omar.

“Omar what are you doing here?”

“I mean you are the last person I would have expected to find in detention!”

Omar looked at me, looked around the room and then moved in close to whisper in my ear.

“Remember Baxter”, Omar asked with a quizzing look on his face.

“Remember how he was absent from school so often?”

“Well he wasn’t absent at all he was down here in detention.”

“See that desk in the back corner?”

I lifted my head a bit higher and could see the desk Omar was motioning to, it had a plaque, candle and a tiny on it.

“That was Baxter’s desk, maybe his second home!”

Baxter left the school under very suspicious circumstances.

Some students said he won a lottery and was living the life on a small island eating Mars Bars and drinking as much Pepsi as he wanted.

Others said that Baxter had gone to detention and never come out.

And even others said that Baxter and the previous detention master had simply vanished!

Come to think of it Mr. Ferrier, the old detention master, was gone wasn’t he.

But wasn’t Mr. Ferrier Baxter’s Dad?

Imagine your Dad being the detention master?

But none of that answered the simple question of why Omar was in detention.

“Omar, why are you here?”

Omar looked at me with a smile that could have been a frown, I was not sure if he was about to laugh or cry.

“Remember when Baxter was declared officially gone?”

Of course I remembered that day.

The last time we saw Baxter was also the day that there was an international banquette on campus, it was like a giant going away party.

“That was the day I was told that I would have to take over all of the roles and responsibilities of the student council president.”

“But what I didn’t know was that I was also going to have to serve the time in detention that Baxter still had outstanding.”

“So every day from 5am until 8:30am and then again from 3:30 until 6:30 I sit down here and do what I am told to do by Mr. Smith.”

I was shaking my head in disbelief I must have heard wrong, Omar is down here for 6 ½ hours a day?

What is it with 1/2s in this place?

“Didn’t they tell you how long you are going to be here”, Omar asked with a sly smirk on his face.

Ms. Shelley didn’t say anything about time I thought this was a one off.

Omar looked at me with a huge smile, “there is no such thing as a one of in here Max.”

Just as I was about to raise my hand and ask Mr. Smith when I could go Ms. Shelley poked her head through the door, commented on the pleasant smell of garlic in the air and pushed Sam into detention as well.

“Ahhh”, said Mr. Smith.

“Now that we have the mould and fungus specialist in detention, we might be able to get somewhere with the garlic smell in my shoes”.

Funny how Sam’s locker reputation was legend around the school.

I heard the sound of stone scraping on stone and a bell from a bicycle, I was sure I was going mad.

The Desk.

“Darling you know how much it hurts me to have to put you into detention for the next month, but it’s for your own good” Ms. Shelley seemed to be enjoying the whole parade of shame much more than she had to.

But I was very glad we were walking fast because what ever the brown stuff from the toilet explosion was, it was beginning to dry and it was getting even more horrible smelling.

“A month, you can’t be serious”, I half-heartedly protested, “I am innocent”!

“Now Max don’t back chat or you might find that this is your new home for the rest of your academic career, and you wouldn’t be the first to have that happen”!

I had walked by the detention room many times but had never been into it.

Rumour had it that there were students who actually lived there because they had been so bad!

And that was why the detention room was located in the basement of the school in a small non descript room behind the elevator shaft.

It was also rumoured that the detention room was blasted out of ancient stone when the school was built and that is why you never heard a peep from the room and nobody, NOBODY talked about the place when they came out.

Even Charles the security guard seemed to stay clear of the detention room and he seemed to be everywhere.

Ms. Shelley marched me down the stairs, past the elevator and then we walked behind the elevator shaft to the large black metal door with the word DETENTION painted on it in big red letters.

Funny the things you notice when a teacher has you by the ear and is almost lifting you off the ground.

For instance, I had never noticed that the door to the detention room had a big doorknocker on it in the shape of a lion’s head.  I was sure I had seen one of those doorknockers before, maybe it was in Rome or Pompeii but it looked oddly familiar and there was nothing new about it.

The keeper of the detention room was Mr. Smith.
Ms. Shelley heaved the doorknocker and with a loud, almost deafening clang it fell against the door and shook it causing dust to fall from the ceiling.

Ms. Shelley heaved it again and I could hear the door latch screeching open.

“Your on your own Darling”. Ms. Shelley said and vanished back up the stairs.

That was the second time in one day that I had been told that I was on my own!

This by the way was also the second place that I really began to realize that there was something up at this school and that there really was a space between the real and the imaginary that somehow had shaken open right here and my locker was somehow related!

Mr. Smith opened the door and the room was unnaturally light.

I expected the room to be dark, damp and dungeon like but it seemed to have the atmosphere of a beech or ski chalet.

Mr. Smith met me at the door wearing sandals, a kiwi take on a Hawaiian shirt and a large stopwatch around his neck.

“Don’t let the look of this room fool you Max, this is detention and we do mean business here!”

Who exactly was the we he was talking about?

And what business was he thinking he was in?

Then I noticed the line of desks, the 3 lines of desks, 12 in total and one off in the back corner with a plaque on it!

I thought I saw a picture on the desk in the back corner and a candle in one of those red glass jars that you see at memorials in old churches.

But I could not be too sure because just as I started to look around Mr. Smith dropped a book onto the desk in front of me, and it sounded like a piece of stone falling from the ceiling!

I must have jumped 3 feet, which did not go unnoticed my Mr. Smith!

“ A little edgy are we”, he said with that same grin that Ms. Shelley had as she hauled me off to detention.

“This is the detention manual”, Mr. Smith said with a sly grin.

“In this 543 page book are the rules of detention, your obligations and our expectations YOU MUST READ THE WHOLE THING COVER TO COVER, and then sign this paper acknowledging that you understand your obligations and our expectations, and here is the sheet you need to sign”, now this was getting strange.

A 543-page manual for detention?

A detention contract?

Why had I never heard of these details before before?

“Your seating assignment is on the top of the contract”, shouted Mr. Smith as he returned to the door of the detention room to speak to what I think was another teacher.

My seating assignment was indeed on the top of the form.

In big bold letter it said SEAT 0192ac4d.

That was what was written in my locker!

But there were only 12 seats in the room.

I then noticed that each seat did seem to have a number, very strange.

As I walked across the room towards the right wall the numbers did grow until I found 0192ac.

So where do I go now?

Then I noticed that the seat behind was 0192ac1d.

I walked to the next and next and next desk until I did find my assigned spot, 0192ac4d.

How odd that this number would be in my locker after the stuff from Erin’s locker went missing, and I am not even sure there is an Erin at our school!

I looked at the desk and I was sure that there was a fine layer of dust covering it.

Just as I was about to wipe the table clean in a gust of commotion Mr. Smith whirled by, “Get cracking lad”, he said, “you have a lot of reading to do.”