Monkey June Stories

Story Four

If you don’t remember much about Monkey June, I’ll take a minute here to remind you: She was a girl who loved monkeys. She was a little obsessed with them. A little more than a little obsessed, actually. Some might call it super-obsessed.

Some even said that if she could discover a way to become a monkey, she would, but I asked her about that once and she assured me that it was just a rumor, and a completely silly idea if you thought about it for more than a minute or so.

She did have a lot of monkey-related items in her room, and she was never seen outside of the house without her monkey backpack. And her monkey hair clip. And her monkey water bottle. And…well, I’m going to stop right there, or I’d be listing things for the next hour, and we just don’t have time for that right now.

You might remember a time when Monkey June met a crying boy on the playground before school one day. The boy had a problem that he could have solved for himself by doing a bit of asking, seeking, and/or knocking, but for some reason he hadn’t thought to do any of those things, and Monkey June had managed to solve his problem for him by doing a little asking, seeking, and knocking.

If you don’t remember that story, you’ll have to go back in time to hear it, or maybe you could ask a friend about it—or maybe just look back at some of the stories before this one, and I’m sure you’ll find it.

One thing I will tell you, though, is that when Monkey June was talking to her school’s custodian, Mr. Jeffries, in the doorway of the school’s Maintenance Building, she saw something very strange behind Mr. Jeffries, way in the back of the room.

Now, it was dark back there, and there was a giant lawnmower-looking thing in pieces on the floor behind him, and she could have imagined it—maybe—but she saw something that made her eyes open up as huge as…well…a monkey’s. 

What she saw (or thought she saw) was a large monkey face against the back wall of the Maintenance Building, smiling at her from the shadows! Was it a painting? A large model of a monkey head? A giant monkey piñata? She didn’t know.

When she got to school the next morning, she found her best friends Marilyn and Carolyn and told them that they needed to have a Secret Conference at recess.

“You mean like we do every recess?” Carolyn asked.

“We do not have a Secret Conference every recess!” Monkey June insisted.

“I think we kinda do,” Marilyn pointed out.

“Well this one’s important,” Monkey June said. “Meet me at the usual place at the usual time, and use the usual password.”

Her two friends did meet her at the usual place (near the…monkey bars, of course), at the usual time (five minutes into recess, so they could gather casually), and using the usual password, which I won’t tell you here, because that information is secret.

“Okay, MJ,” Carolyn said, “we’re here. What’s on the agenda for today?”

“A Monkey Mystery,” Monkey June said in her most mysterious voice.

“I never would have guessed,” Marilyn said, a little sarcastically.

“This is for real!” Monkey June said. She told them the story of how she had helped the boy the previous day and how she had seen something strange behind Mr. Jeffries in the Maintenance Building.

“When you got my bag?” a small voice asked nearby. It was the boy from yesterday. Somehow he had sneaked up behind Monkey June and had been listening to their Secret Conference.

“Oh, hi!” Monkey June said. “Yes. When I got your bag. But this is a Secret Conference, and I’m afraid it’s only for us Secret Conference people.”

The boy looked up at her with big, sad eyes, and his big, sad eyes began to fill up with big, sad tears, and then his lip started to quiver just a bit, and then…

“But, of course,” Monkey June said cheerfully, “you are one of our Secret Conference people, too, since it was your bag that helped me discover the amazing thing that’s hidden in the Maintenance Building.”

The boy’s face lit up and he joined them with a big smile on his face and no more tears—for now.

“So you’re saying that you saw a giant monkey face in the darkness that might have been imaginary,” Carolyn said, “and you want us to help you figure out how to get back in there so you can discover what it was?”

“Exactly!” said Monkey June.

“And this boy here…” Marilyn said, “um…what’s your name, little guy?”

“Ryan,” the boy said.

“Nice to meet you, Ryan,” Marilyn said, continuing. “So, MJ, this boy Ryan here is part of all our Secret Conferences from now on, or just this one?”

“That’s beside the point,” Monkey June said. “What we need to be talking about is how we can get into that Maintenance Building and see what’s hidden in there.”

“I learned that you won’t ever find anything if you don’t knock,” Ryan said, “so wait here…”

The three girls were too confused about what he was saying to do anything to stop him, and about five seconds later he was over at the Maintenance Building knocking on the door.

“Direct approach,” Carolyn said. “I like this kid.”

“He learned it from me,” Monkey June said.

No one opened the door when Ryan knocked. After waiting for a bit and getting no answer, Ryan grabbed the door handle and tried to open the door. To everyone’s surprise, it opened, and Ryan disappeared into the building. The heavy, metal door clanged shut behind him.

“What do we do now?” Marilyn asked. “Wait for him to come out?”

“No,” Monkey June said. “He might get lost in there. It’s dark. There’s all kind of dangerous equipment in there. I think some older kids should go in there and make sure he’s safe.”

“Okay,” Marilyn said. “HEY, PHIL!” she shouted across the playground. “WE NEED AN OLDER KID! COME HERE!”

“I meant us!” Monkey June hissed at Marilyn as Chill Phil walked up. 

“Oh,” Marilyn said, half embarrassed and half offended. “You didn’t say ‘us’. You said we needed an older kid.”

“Need an older kid for what?” Phil asked.

“We saw a little guy go into the Maintenance Building,” Monkey June said. “We’re about to go make sure he’s okay and tell him he shouldn’t be in there.”

“Cool,” Phil said. “Let’s go.”

They walked over to the Maintenance Building and as Phil was about to knock on the door Monkey June just grabbed the handle and gave it a twist.

“It’s open,” she said.

The four of them soon found themselves in the darkened Maintenance Building with the smell of oil everywhere and a giant lawnmower-looking thing in pieces on the floor in front of them.

“It’s hard to see in here,” Carolyn said. “Does anyone know where the lightswitch is?”

“No worries,” Chill Phill said calmly, “I have a light.” He took a tiny flashlight out of his pocket and clicked something on the back of it. Suddenly, they could see the giant lawnmower-looking thing as plain as day, but there was no sign of Ryan.

“Ryan,” Marilyn called out, “are you in here?”

“Back here!” the small boy’s voice came from the very back of the building. “You won’t believe it! You have to see this stuff!”

The four older kids walked back towards the sound of Ryan’s voice, being careful not to bump into the giant lawnmower-looking thing or slip in any puddles of oil or touch any sharp tools or anything along the way.

When Phil’s flashlight lit up a huge monkey face at the back of the room, Monkey June let out a squeal that might have been a ‘yipe!’ of fear or a ‘yipe!’ of excitement. Or maybe it was a little of both.

“Have you ever seen a monkey head that big?” Ryan asked, running over to them with the world’s biggest smile on his face.

“What’s it for, though?” Carolyn asked. “Why would there be a huge monkey head statue—or whatever that is—in here?”

“That’s only the start of it!” Ryan said. “There’s so much more! Come see!”

They followed Ryan to see more of what was stored against the back wall. I only have time to list a few of the things here, but they included:

• a cotton candy machine
• a sno-cone machine
• a strange contraption that looked like you could fill it with water and have someone sit above the pool of water and then fall into the water if someone threw a ball just right at a target-lever-thing
• a ticket booth, folded into a flat bunch of boards and leaning against the wall
• various signs that said things like ‘Cake Walk!’ and ‘Dunking Booth!’ and ‘Tickets’

“It’s a carnival,” Phil said. “I mean, it’s all in pieces, but it’s everything you would need to have a carnival.”

“Do you think the school is planning something like that?” Marilyn asked.

“I hope so!” Monkey June squealed.

“If they are,” Phil said, “we probably shouldn’t ruin the surprise. Also, what if all this stuff is from a long time ago—when they did a back-to-school carnival or something—and it’s just sitting here now, being stored forever, and they don’t plan to use it anymore?”

“I guess that’s possible, too,” Monkey June said.

“HEY!” a man’s voice yelled suddenly from somewhere near the door to the Maintenance Building. “Who’s in here?!”

The five kids froze, and Phil snapped off his flashlight. Without saying a word they all looked at each other wondering what to do. Monkey June was about to put her arm around Ryan and say, “Hi, Mr. Jeffries! We came in here to find this little guy!"—hoping that he wouldn’t realize that they were actually snooping around in there. Before she could do that, though, Ryan silently waved his hands to get everyone’s attention and then pointed at something that might solve their problem without them having to explain anything to Mr. Jeffries: there was a staircase not far from the carnival things—a staircase that went down into total darkness.

“Where does that go?” Marilyn whispered.

“No time to find out,” Monkey June whispered. “Follow me.”

With that she tiptoed to the stairs as quietly as she could, and started down into the inky darkness.

She was glad that the stairs were made of concrete, because they didn’t squeak or creak or make any noise as they walked on them. She didn’t know if they were headed into a basement, a cellar, or some other storage area, but she did notice that the others were following quietly after her.

The deeper they got down the stairs, the darker it got. Monkey June finally felt that they had probably reached the bottom, but it was so dark down there that she couldn’t tell. She couldn’t see anything at all. She felt things, though—like four people bumping into her from behind.

“I think we’re far enough away from Mr. J. that you can use your flashlight, Phil,” Monkey June said quietly.

Phil didn’t waste time answering; he just clicked on his light and shined it in front of them.

Monkey June almost jumped for joy when she saw what the light revealed: they were in a tunnel.

“Where does this go?” Ryan asked.

“I think I know exactly where it goes,” Monkey June said. “C’mon. We can’t stand here talking or Mr. J. might find us.”

Monkey June started off down the tunnel and Chill Phil followed after her, which was great because his light was pointed down the tunnel so she could see where she was going. The others had no choice but to follow, since they didn’t want to be left standing in the dark waiting for Mr. Jeffries to find them.

After they had walked about as far as they would have walked to get from the Maintenance Building across the entire playground and back to the main school building, Monkey June pointed to another set of stairs at the far end of the tunnel.

“Up we go!” she said cheerfully, and up they went.

At the top of these stairs was a metal door that Monkey June opened a teeny, tiny bit, and peeked out. She turned back to the others and said, “It’s the little kids hallway. Ryan, you can pop out first and go find your class.”

“We’re back inside the school?” Ryan asked. “How did that happen?”

“We went under the playground!” Carolyn said. 

“Cool!” Marilyn said.

A few minutes later, Ryan was back in his class, and the others had come out through the door (which had a sign on the outside of it that said ‘Custodian Use Only’) and had gone to their own classes.

The only one who almost got into trouble for coming back from recess late was Phil, but he said that he had been helping some younger kids find a lost friend of theirs—which was true—and his teacher told him that was very nice of him.

Monkey June was now more curious than ever, though. She wondered what that carnival stuff was there for. She had to figure out some way to figure it out…