Mercy on These Teenage Chimps Read online

  Mercy On These Teenage Chimps

  Gary Soto

  * * *

  Harcourt, Inc.

  Orlando Austin New York San Diego Toronto London

  * * *

  Copyright © 2007 by Gary Soto

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and

  retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work

  should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed

  to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc.,

  6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Soto, Gary.

  Mercy on these teenage chimps/Gary Soto.

  p. cm.

  Summary: At thirteen years old, best friends Ronnie and Joey suddenly

  feel like chimps—long armed, big eared, and gangly—and when the

  coach humiliates Joey in front of a girl, he climbs up a tree and refuses

  to come down.

  [1. Best friends—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Coming of age—

  Fiction. 4. Puberty—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S7242Me 2007

  [Fic]—dc22 2006002599

  ISBN-13: 978-0-15-206022-0 ISBN-10: 0-15-206022-7

  Text set in Minister Light

  Designed by April Ward

  First edition

  H G F E D C B A

  Printed in the United States of America

  * * *

  To Linda Jabara

  and Dora Maher,

  librarians and friends

  in the good cause

  Chapter 1

  I, Ronaldo Gonzalez, better known as Ronnie, was like any other boy until I turned thirteen and woke up as a chimpanzee. I examined my reflection in the bathroom mirror. What was this? The peachy fuzz on my chin? The splayed ears? The wide grin that revealed huge teeth? I played with my mouth, squeezing it as I had seen the chimpanzees do on Animal Planet, my favorite TV channel. I wiggled my ears. My nose appeared flatter than ever.

  Mom noticed the change right away. Instead of eggs, bacon, and buttered toast, my usual morning pick-me-up, I had a bowl of Froot Loops and a banana, but not before I juggled three apples and a single orange. I seemed to have been charged with an uncanny ability to keep things in the air.

  "What's gotten into you?" She laughed. "You should be in the circus!"

  "It's my birthday," I answered. I was glad that I had been born in spring. Spring was when the mountains appeared majestically in the distance and retirees got out their mowers to clobber the first dandelions sprouting on their lawns. Spring was when birds and flowers did their magic of lifting the souls of regular people.

  I could see Mom registering in her mind that I was no longer a kid. She pulled at my cheek tenderly and told me that I was a young man and that soon she would lose me to some trashy girl. Of course, I promised never to move away and that the trashy girl could come live with us.

  Mom playfully spanked my bottom thirteen times, my new age, and then asked me if I had hurt my leg. She had noticed that my gait seemed wider and was sort of rolling. She also inquired about my arms. They were hanging so low at my side that I could tie my shoes without bending over.

  "Nah, Mom," I answered. "I'm okay."

  That morning I felt curiously different, and even older when Mom let me sit at the head of the kitchen table—ever since Dad had taken off, his place usually held piles of clean laundry. And that's what I did that morning. I accepted my position as head of the table, whipping out the newspaper and muttering to myself that the San Francisco Giants were already four behind the Los Angeles Dodgers.

  I was suddenly a teenage chimp. My best friend, Joey Rios, a few days older than me, had also turned into a chimp. For years we had been just like other boys—muddy, with scabs on our knees and elbows—until we both had growth spurts. Our arms, it seemed, hung a few inches longer and our ears sprung out from the sides of our heads. We caught ourselves beating our chests and jumping, especially Joey, who was a wrestler. Each time he pinned an opponent he'd jump up and down and circle the mat, pacing off his territory. He just couldn't help himself.

  And how we could climb! Joey and I often scaled the tall tree in front of his house, where we sat for hours. Most of our talk involved girls and food. We avoided talking about our looks, as we were doubtful that we were handsome. Indeed, I sometimes played a refrain in my mind: We ugly, we real ugly.

  "Do you know the meaning of life?" On my birthday I'd asked Joey this question thirty feet up, with a chimp's view of our small-town neighborhood.

  "Not a bit," Joey answered. He pursed his lips, spat at the ground, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Except I know spit takes three seconds to hit my cat."

  His cat looked around, mystified by the sudden presence of rain.

  "Do you think any girls will like us?"

  Joey didn't answer. He just spat again, and again his cat, none too smart, looked around until a sparrow caught his attention. He pranced after the sparrow, who, blessed with keen sight and swift wings, lifted up and away.

  A week later we were policing our school for the usual litter of potato chip bags, candy wrappers, and soda cups. We had detention for being tardy—on the way to school, we had stopped to swing on the monkey bars at the public playground.

  "This is way nasty," I groaned, wincing at the sight of a swollen hot dog. I poked it with a stick and deposited it in a plastic trash bag. It was a sickening sight. We were non-meat eaters, devoted vegetarians who loved fruits and veggies, plus what my mom called "monkey juice," the fruity smoothies I concocted in the blender.

  "Who's this?" Joey held up a photo he had found on the ground.

  We studied the photo, our heads nearly touching.

  "She's pretty," I said longingly. Then, We ugly, we real ugly, repeated in my mind. The pang was like a fishhook in my heart.

  Joey dropped the photo into his trash bag, and we continued with our task until we saw, in the distance, Coach Puddlefield approaching. Every dozen or so steps he slowed to hike up his pants—he was a big man whose stomach cast a shadow in front of him. Behind his back, we students called him Coach Bear. He was way hairy and growled a lot.

  Coach Bear chugged across the lawn. "You two monkeys," he bellowed. "I got a job for you."

  The last time Coach Bear had required our service was to put all the balls away in the gymnasium. Joey, an occasional show-off, had spotted a volleyball in the rafters. He spat into his hands and climbed the bleachers, pushed himself up on the window ledge, grabbed and swung from the exercise rope, shimmied up the rope, and boosted himself up onto an iron girder. Then his fingers tickled the ball from where it was caught behind the rafter. Coach had yelled at him for risking his neck, but Joey was just doing what any chimp would have done.

  Now it seemed that Coach Bear required our services again. He halted in front of us, giving his pants one final tug. He wiped his brow with a thick finger.

  "We're already doing something, Coach," Joey explained.

  "And what is that, exactly?"

  "Picking up litter," I said, jiggling the contents of the plastic trash bag. "We have detention."

  Coach Bear sniffed. "You guys been eating hot dogs?"

  "No, sir," Joey answered.

  "We're vegetarians," I divulged. I had studied the diets and life spans of carnivores and noncarn
ivores, and was prepared to offer a litany of reasons why a person, young or old, skinny or fat, boy or girl, should avoid meat like the plague.

  "Vegetarians! No wonder you boys are so skinny. Not you, Rios." Coach Bear corrected himself, as he was proud of Joey, the wrestler. Joey was anything but a weakling. The previous year he had captured the regional championship, and Coach had a soft spot for champions. Then his eyes slid over to me, and he held his tongue, which was muscled from yelling at kids for a dozen or so years. "Anyhow, I'm here to ask if you guys could help out with a banquet tonight. I need two more kids, and if you do it you can quit the trash pickup." He told us that the regional sports awards banquet would be held at the high school down the street.

  Joey turned to me. I wiggled my ears as an affirmative yes.

  "What are we supposed to wear?" Joey asked.

  Coach Bear scratched his forehead thoughtfully. "A clean white shirt."

  Joey, biting his lower lip, hesitated and asked, "Do we wear pants?"

  Coach Bear beaded his eyes at Joey, who re-leased a smile. "Just kidding, Coach."

  Coach Bear instructed us to get there by five thirty, hiked up his pants as he turned, and sized up trouble on another part of the school grounds. He waved a paw at two kids trying to shimmy up a drainpipe.

  "You knuckleheads," he roared. "Get off of there!"

  I knew the culprits. I poked at a candy wrapper and mused how in a year, two years at most, those boys would wake up as chimpanzees.

  It was just a matter of time.

  Chapter 2

  Later, dressed in white shirts and black pants, Joey and I biked over to Lincoln High School. Actually, Joey pedaled and I rode the handlebars, the prow of the bicycle. From that princely height, I felt exhilarated as the wind blew through my hair, narrowed my eyes, pinned back my ears, and rushed down my throat until I could hardly breathe.

  "Hold on," Joey warned.

  We were full of springtime joy. More than once I grinned at a neighbor seated on a porch taking in the last rays of the day. I smiled at the tidy gardens and the birds yanking up worms from lawns spongy from last week's rain. Life seemed immeasurably good. Not a single pooch ran after us, snapping its frothy teeth at our ankles.

  At Lincoln we locked the bike in a bike stall, pushed our shirttails back into our pants, and entered the gymnasium.

  "Over here!" Coach Bear called. His neck was choked by a reddish tie that lay on his large belly like a length of spaghetti.

  We hurried over.

  "Did you wash your hands?" Coach Bear asked as he smoothed a tablecloth.

  "Yes, sir," I answered.

  Coach Bear narrowed his eyes at me. "When?"

  "Today," I answered.

  "Get your paws washed in the faculty bathroom." The faculty john was off-limits to students, except when time was precious, it seemed. "And hurry up!"

  We disappeared down the hall to the faculty bathroom. Joey and I washed our hands and then sprayed our necks with orange-scented air freshener.

  "How do we smell?" I asked.

  Joey's nostrils worked the air. "Fruity," he assessed. He surveyed the faculty bathroom and concluded that it was nice. He pointed out a deodorant gizmo wired to the toilet bowl. He flushed the toilet and remarked, "It smells good. Way better than the boys' room."

  We returned to the gymnasium.

  "What do we do, Coach?" Joey asked.

  Coach Bear told us to unfold the folding chairs and place six at each table. We soon completed that task. He next told us to blow up balloons, attach a string to the navel of each, and tape a balloon to the center of each tablecloth. It would add a festive mood, especially with the splash of glitter that Coach Bear had already sprinkled on the tables.

  "You can do this, can't you?" Coach Bear asked as we sauntered over to a small cylinder filled with helium. "You think you can fill 'em up without busting 'em?"

  "Yeah," we both sang gleefully.

  "Show me."

  I took a balloon, stretched it like taffy, and hooked it on the hose that snaked from the cylinder. I turned the valve and the balloon quickly filled up like the fat cheeks of a huge man.

  "Don't make them so big!" Coach Bear growled.

  "We won't," I replied. "That was just the practice one." I began to preach that practice makes perfect, certain that on the field Coach spouted such wisdom. But he told me to shut my trap and threatened to send us higher than a balloon if we dared to inhale any of the helium. He warned us that he would check on us every few minutes to see if our voices sounded weirdly high.

  After Coach Bear left, Joey and I began filling balloons. Joey enjoyed a better touch working the valve, but I was a pro at lassoing the string to the balloon—we were a good team. Soon we had twenty balloons clutched in our hands like flowers. Next, we taped the balloons to the tablecloths. We stepped back and appraised our work.

  "It looks really cool, huh?" Joey remarked.

  "Right on!" But I observed that the balloon on table fourteen—each table held a stick with a number—was misbehaving. It had already begun to droop.

  I replaced that balloon with a new one and beamed with pride at our handiwork.

  "You know what kind of grub they're serving?" Joey wondered aloud. He placed a hand on his stomach to tame its growling. The food had been on my mind, too. I sniffed the air and didn't smell anything but orange-scented air freshener.

  But we didn't dwell long on the food because Coach Bear approached us and gruffly asked if we had been inhaling the helium. We shook our heads.

  "Say something," he said. He was suspicious.

  "Like what?" I asked.

  "Like what grade you're in!"

  "We're in seventh grade," I answered.

  "Next year we'll be in eighth grade," Joey added with a goofy smile.

  Coach Bear was satisfied that we hadn't been mischievously sucking on the helium hose, but still he claimed that we had girl voices. He predicted that by next year our voices would break and we would sound the way boys are supposed to sound. Then he told us to staple the evening's program.

  We accepted our new job and began to fold the photocopied programs and shoot their spines with staples.

  "Look!" Joey cried.

  I looked around.

  "No, here!" Joey pointed out two wrestlers in the program. "I wrestled this one," he said. "I pinned him in nineteen seconds."

  "What took you so long?" I joked. But I quit joking when I measured Joey's sadness. Joey, last year a champion wrestler, had been banned from the team because of his antics after each victory. He had already been acting chimplike—beating his chest, jumping up and down, and letting out his primordial chimp scream. The other schools wouldn't have it.

  "I could have been honored tonight," Joey said wistfully.

  "Ah, Joey, it's no big deal." I offered to be his practice dummy if he wanted to keep up wrestling on his own. I promised to go down in less than nineteen seconds. He could even jump on my chest if he felt so inclined.

  "You're the best friend ever," Joey claimed. He poked a finger around his eye and felt for a tear. He found only sleep and a dab of moisture. Still, he meant it. Ronnie was the best friend ever.

  Eventually the first honorees and their guests—mainly parents with circles under their eyes from working long hours—began to arrive. Soon we discovered that only cookies and punch were being served. Joey and I were presented with white gloves to wear while we passed the trays of refreshments.

  "But we washed our hands already," I argued.

  Coach Bear glowered at me. He told me that I had been touching stuff and that maybe some germs were on the tips of my fingers. He asked how I would like it if some monkey kids like us were serving food when just a few minutes ago they'd been scratching an armpit or maybe using a fingernail to poke at foodstuff on a dirty tooth.

  "We wouldn't like it at all," Joey volunteered.

  I agreed with Joey. Why debate the matter? Coach Bear's fur would bristle and his hollering would fill
the cavities of our ears if we didn't heed his suggestion. He was under pressure to make the awards banquet a success. I slipped on the white gloves, hiked up my pants, and maneuvered through the thickening crowd with a tray of cookies. Joey, the one of us with better balance, had hoisted a large platter onto his shoulder. He shadowed my steps, calling out, "Punch, anybody. Tasty punch."

  We circulated with our sugary provisions and soon returned to our workstation to replenish our supplies. It was then that Joey punched me in the arm, beckoning for my full attention, or as much as I could give with my mouth stuffed with cookies.

  "Did you see her?" Joey whispered.

  I looked about, confused. I mumbled, "See who?" I swallowed my cookie, cleared my throat, and asked again, "See who?"

  "Her!" He pointed to a pretty girl whose face was as sweetly pink as our punch. She was dressed in a pink dress and her knees were pink, too.

  "Adorable," I agreed. Truthfully, my tongue was too busy working a cookie into a delicious paste to be impressed. But Joey, I could see, was smitten big time.

  "I wonder who she is," Joey said dreamily. "I've never seen her at our school."

  "Let's go find out," I said.

  I scooped cookies onto my platter, and Joey splashed a new round of drinks into clear cups. We hurried over, glad that we had not only washed our hands but also misted ourselves with air freshener. We needed all the help we could get.

  "Punch!" Joey crowed brightly.

  The girl, alone at the moment, whirled around.

  "No, thank you," she said with a beauty queen's wave of the hand. But she offered us a smile and looped her hair behind her ears.

  "I'm Joey Rios," Joey said. "And this is my best friend, Ronnie Gonzalez. We go to Washington Middle School."

  The girl blinked at us.

  I could see that Joey, the less experienced of the two of us when it came to girls, was faltering badly. She was cute, this much I admit, and I scolded myself for giving so much attention to the cookie I had been pulverizing a few minutes earlier. What was wrong with me?

  Because my best friend had been kicked off the wrestling squad and wasn't being honored that evening—the unfairness!—I was committed to helping him succeed. I picked up for him and added, "We had detention today, but Coach is letting us work off our time by helping tonight."