Date with a Monkey
Oliver Oken attempted to cram the inflatable muscles into his locker, but he was not having much luck. He had taken them off in the bathroom after realizing that he was sweating twice as much with them on. It was like wearing another three layers of clothing.
"Come on!" He grabbed one of the fake biceps and pushed, but he heard a pop and a whoosh of air, then suddenly, it was not quite as difficult to push the plastic inside the metal rectangle. "Aw, man." Oliver gathered the plastic and shoved it into the bottom of his backpack instead, tossing it inside with the books he would not need during the lunch period. When he turned around, Lilly Truscott was waiting for him, an amused look on her face.
"Did you pop your pecs?" she teased him, her arms crossed in front of her. She had tried to tell him inflatable muscles were not the way to go, but when did Oliver ever listen to her?
"Actually, I think one of the abs might have got caught on the hinge of the door," he muttered to the ground. Oliver then narrowed his eyes before he looked back up at her. "What do you want anyway? You and Miley left me to get pummeled by the football player."
Oliver had been chased half way across the school when he mistakenly opened a very large and very angry football player's locker, thinking it was Rico's locker, and the location where his cell phone with the incriminating picture of Miley was located. He had managed to lose the guy somewhere near the library, but was still looking over his shoulder every now and then.
Lilly looked him up and down before shrugging her shoulders. "You look fine to me."
"Aw, thanks Lils," he told her flirtatiously, attempting to put an arm around her shoulders. "Now, would you mind telling the other girls that." He took a deep breath. His best friend smelled... different. Not that he normally paid attention to the way she smelled.
"Ha. Not what I meant," Lilly responded flatly, but did not step out from under his arm. "Miley was finding out what Rico wanted, and I figured you could outrun the meathead." She shrugged again. "You think you could help me find Rico's locker? Miley's spending her lunch as the shrimp's hot date since he needed a little arm candy to get in with the right people." Lilly rolled her eyes at Rico's idea of Miley being the right person to get him in with the popular kids. "And I think she's going to throw him on the barbecue any minute."
"Okay, that I gotta see," he told her, the words having distracted him from how good her hair smelled. He could not place the scent, but decided he would ask her later. Oliver wrenched his arm from around Lilly's shoulders and began heading toward the cafeteria, but the blond grabbed his arm to stop him before he could get too far.
"Come on, it's not that great. Kinda gross actually. He called her his love monkey earlier." She shuddered a bit at the thought. "Besides, you know I'm going to need you to actually open the locker once I find it."
"I'm sorry, did Lilly Truscott actually just admit that she needed me for something?" Oliver spun around, but there was no one else in the hallway to witness his mock surprise. "Darn it. You gotta start saying stuff like that when there are other people around."
"Would you just help me!" Lilly hissed at him, rolling her eyes in frustration.
"Okay, jeez. What are you, coming down from a sugar high?" He saw her glare and realized he was probably right. "Alrighty, how are we supposed to figure out which one is his?"
"He's got to be in one of the freshman hallways, like us. And, he said he needed someone to reach the top shelf…" Lilly trailed off as the two of them walked into the hallway adjacent to the one where their own lockers were housed.
After a few minutes of walking in which Oliver kept elbowing her in the side and Lilly smacking his arm in mock anger, they both stopped short at the sight in front of them.
"Jackpot." Oliver pointed to the only locker in the hallway to have a footstool sitting in front of it.
"You think it's another trick?" Lilly asked him skeptically, tilting her head a little to the right.
"Hmm… I doubt it. Who else would have a footstool? Just get Miley." Oliver decided to stand guard until the girls got back. He crossed his arms and tried to make an imposing figure aimed at the other people around the hall. "Hey, how's it goin'?" he asked a tall blond when she walked by. She did not even bat an eyelash.
When Miley and Lilly jogged back to him, he was all prepared to give Miley a speech about how difficult it was to find the locker, but Lilly cut him off.
"It was the only locker with a footstool in front of it," she quickly informed their friend.
"Would it've killed you to let me have this one?"
Miley cut off what was sure to become an argument, more worried about she and Rico honeymooning in Hobbitown than her who got credit for finding the locker. The success of the find was short lived though when the trio discovered a monkey was living in Rico's locker instead of the normal school supplies. Really, a monkey? Oliver thought about that for a second. Who let their kid bring a monkey to school with them?
If they wanted to get the phone and save Miley from four long years of blackmail, they had to act fast, especially since lunch would be over soon.
"Okay," Miley decided, "I'll stall Rico. Oliver, make friends with the monkey." She ran off down the hall and Oliver was thrown. Make friends with a monkey?
"Exactly how do I do that?" he called after her.
"Oh, just be yourself, he'll think you're family," Lilly said with a slight smirk on her face and one hand on her hip.
"High school's made you hard," Oliver informed her, starting to turn back to the locker. It had only been one day, and Lilly's insults were already more creative than his. He was definitely going to have to up his game.
"Coconut!" Lilly cried out, ducking a little. What? And here he was thinking her insults were becoming more creative.
"What kind of come back is coconut?" Oliver asked her just before he felt what was undoubtedly the same fruit hit him in the back and he stumbled past her into another bank of lockers. "Okay, got it. Not a comeback." He rubbed the spot on his back where the coconut had hit him.
"Are you okay?" Lilly asked. She had taken a step back, hoping she was out of the monkey's line of fire.
"Pssh. Yeah. He can't throw that hard." Oliver waved off Lilly's concern, but he stayed hunched over for a few more seconds. Another coconut bounced off the locker next to him, and he rushed to Lilly's side. "Do you think he understood me?" He whispered to her fearfully.
"He's probably just protecting his territory," Lilly muttered to him, but she eyed the open locker cautiously all the same.
"What are we going to do?" Oliver asked her. "We have to get that phone." He and Lilly were huddled together just out of the primate's line of sight and the people passing them in the hall were giving them strange looks.
Lilly's eyes lit up and she turned to Oliver, almost hitting her head on his chin. She took a step back to steady herself, asking, "do you have a dollar?"
"How is a dollar going to help? Lilly, it's monkey! I mean, yeah, it's Rico's monkey, but still." Oliver gave her a look clearly meant to indicate that he thought she had lost her mind.
"No, we're not going to give the money to the monkey. I'm going to get a banana out of the vending machine," she patiently explained to Oliver.
"Monkeys do like bananas," Oliver said thoughtfully. He reached into his back pocket to pull out his wallet, but as he handed Lilly the money, he thought of something else. "You are not leaving me alone with the coconut throwing monkey!"
"Just don't make him angry!" Lilly snapped at him and she whirled on her heels to rush down the stairs to the only vending machine in the school to have fresh fruit in it.
As she hurried away, Oliver caught a whiff of the scent again, but now he knew what it was. Apples. She was back to using her old conditioner. She had changed to one of those fancy salon brands last year because she thought it would make her hair shinier, but it did not smell the same. He smiled to himself, and did not notice when Rico's pet hurled another fruit at him.
"Hey!" Oliver cried out as he was hit in the arm. "How many of those do you have in there anyway?" He peered around the locker to see the monkey eyeing him. It might have been Oliver's imagination, but he had a feeling this animal did not like him.
When Lilly made it back, Oliver and the monkey were having some sort of staring contest.
"You okay?" She asked Oliver, looking from him to the monkey in confusion.
"I don't think he likes me."
"Maybe he's not a he."
"No, he's definitely a he." Oliver pointed to the monkey to prove his point.
"Oh, yeah, I guess you're right." Lilly nodded her head and the two of them stepped a little closer to the entrance to the locker. The monkey inside visibly tensed and Lilly tried to put on a cheerful expression as she held out the fruit she had managed to get from the machine. "Who wants to trade a silly little phone for a nice banana?" Lilly's voice went up a notch and she waved the banana in front of the locker.
Oliver had been examining the other contents of the locker, and he took the fruit from her hand, asking, "Why would he want a stupid banana? He's got a snow cone machine and a mini-fridge in there."
He made the mistake of pointing to the appliances with the yellow skinned fruit though and the primate in the locker tried to grab the banana from his hand. Oliver let out a scream in surprise and tried to get his arm back. He braced himself with his free hand on the edge of the metal, and Lilly grabbed on to the back of his shirt trying to pull him free from the monkey's grasp. That thing was a lot stronger than it looked though, and she was forced to wrap her arms around Oliver's waist to get better leverage after a few minutes. The monkey was undoubtedly winning though since Oliver was practically climbing up the front of the lockers now. Lilly tried to focus on getting Oliver away from the animal rather than how ridiculous they would look if anyone decided to walk down the hallway.
"What does Rico feed that thing?" Lilly groaned as she tried to pull Oliver back from the animal.
He did not reply as he braced his feet against the bottom of Rico's locker. Lilly was now supporting all of his weight and her arms were ready to give out. Under other circumstances, Oliver might have enjoyed the feel of his best friend's arms around him, but he was beginning to lose feeling in the hand the monkey still had a grip on. Lilly's arms slipped and she almost let go, but she readjusted her grip just in time. Unfortunately for Oliver, her arms were no longer in the same place they had started and he had not really anticipated being felt up by his best friend in the middle of the hallway, even if it was an accident.
"Uh, Lilly," he grunted, "can you not put your hands that low?" He could feel his face turning red and Lilly immediately started to let go of him, almost causing him to fall to the ground with nothing but the monkey's grip holding him up. "Lilly!"
"Sorry, sorry!" She returned her hands to their earlier position at his waist and tried to keep them there.
Even though the monkey had managed to get the banana from his grasp, Oliver had also managed to curl his fingers around the phone that had been resting next to the animal. He was holding on to it so tightly now that he was afraid he would have the permanent outline of the cellular in his palm.
"Get your stinkin' paws off me ya darn dirty ape!" Oliver growled at the monkey, tired of having his arm nearly pulled out of its socket by something less than half his size.
"Use your muscles!" Lilly tried to tell him.
"They're in my book bag!" Oliver shot back.
Lilly rolled her eyes, but continued to pull. She knew Oliver had to have some muscles in his arms. It took a lot of upper body strength to paddle out past the surf, and he did it on almost a daily basis.
They really should have seen what was coming next. It should have been obvious, especially since they were having a contest of strength with a monkey that belonged to one of the smartest, annoying, yes, but still, one of the smartest, kids they knew.
The monkey suddenly withdrew his grip from Oliver's forearm and there was nothing holding him to the locker. He and Lilly flew backwards on to the unyielding floor of the school hallway with an "eep" from Lilly and an "oof" from Oliver.
"Get off me," Lilly gasped from underneath Oliver's back.
He tried to roll to the side, but with her trying to push him away, they only ended up further entangled. Oliver turned slightly, putting his cell phone free hand down to brace himself as he moved away, but his hand did not connect with the linoleum floor, but something much softer.
"Oliver!" Lilly practically shrieked. He was bracing his weight on her stomach, and that could not have been comfortable.
"Sorry!" He snatched his hand back and they were finally able to free themselves and get to their feet.
"Come on," Lilly grabbed his arm to prepare to drag him to Miley. "We have to get her the phone."
"Really? I can't have a minute to catch my breath?"
"There are only ten minutes left for lunch, and I have to eat something," Lilly snapped at him. "The sugar withdrawal is giving me a headache."
Oliver groaned and followed her down the hall, and then the staircase.
Lilly's eyes widened as she saw Miley leaning in to Rico. She guessed the distraction was not going the way Miley had planned.
"We got it!" she shouted.
"We got the phone!" Oliver added as he came up behind her.
Unfortunately, when Oliver opened the phone and was sprayed with a face full of water, Lilly and Oliver realized that they had been bested by the pint sized owner of the snow cone machine run by a monkey.
As Miley and Rico discussed his reasons for pulling one over on them, yet again, Oliver lost focus on the conversation when Lilly decided to rest her head on his shoulder. He felt a smile start to cross his face, and he hurried to try to put his expression back to normal. He was not going to waste time thinking about the way Lilly's head felt on his shoulder or how he was able to inhale the scent of her shampoo when it was there, especially not after she informed him that he smelled like wet monkey. Oliver's lip curled in disgust at her pronouncement. He really could not catch a break. In seventh grade, he got frog juice all over him because of Miley. Now in ninth grade, he smelled like a monkey, again because of her. Figures. He really needed to start hanging out with other people. People who did not expect him to do things that would make him end up smelling like various exotic animals.