Big Mouth (16 page)

“Okay.” I adjusted the hood so it wasn’t so far over my face. I could live with light-headed for a while. Once my belt was gone, life would go back to normal.

Gardo saw me adjusting my hood and adjusted his hood the same way. Then he kicked into the Gardo Strut, his elbow locked straight and swinging back behind his rear. I did the same, working to time the rhythm of my straight-elbow arm swing just like his. It was hard though, with my bum calf and genetic lack of rhythm, so I started swinging my arm up over my head and then back behind me just as high. Then I started goose-stepping, which hurt my calf like a mama. But it was pretty darn funny to watch, I knew.

Gardo laughed and shoved me sideways. “You’re such a dork.”

“It takes one to know one.” I shoved him back, but he tripped on the lip of the sidewalk and crashed facefirst into the grass.

Oh, jeez.

When Gardo rolled over again, his lips were caked with wet grass and grit. But instead of being mad, he was laughing.

“Nice move, Dancing Queen.” I leaned over him and held out my hand. “Have a nice trip?”

“See you next
fall!
” He grabbed my hand and yanked me down.

When I rolled over, my face was caked with grass and grit, too. And I was laughing as hard as he was.

The gardener with the weed-whacker shook his head and moved away as we lay there in the grass, two dorks in twenty layers of clothing in broad daylight, wiping grass off our faces and laughing like a couple of second graders. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so hard. It felt good.

Eventually we stopped laughing and just lay there, resting for a spell.
Finally.
My friend was a tough taskmaster. But I knew he was only being tough because he cared. I asked for this. And he deserved only my best efforts in return. And my honesty.

“Gardo, I have something to tell you.” The sky above was the powdery blue of freshly spun cotton candy.

“Spill.”

He wasn’t going to like this. “I’m supposed to do water training today. Lucy’s graph says so.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I saw the water graph, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” I did remember now. He saw it on Halloween night. Right after he almost died.

I sat up—
ooh, head rush!
—and rested my arms on my knees.

Gardo sat up next to me. “Water training is part of your core training. And core training comes first. Same as with your hot dogs yesterday. You said eighteen dogs, right?”

“And buns.”

“Dang. I bet you
still
feel full. Man, I could never eat eighteen hot dogs and buns. I’d be praying to the Porcelain God by number twelve. Maybe number thirteen if I was lucky. You’re a natural champion, my friend.”

“Oh, well, you know….”

“Just be sure you stick with the Gardo Glasses when you’re not water training, okay?”

“Okay.” It was so cool having someone understand me as well as Gardo did.

We stood up and resumed our slow walk back to my house. My muscles were cooling down and stiffening up. Not just the ones in my legs, but all over my body, too.

“How much water does the graph say for today?” Gardo asked.

“One gallon. It’s always one gallon. But she has me scheduled to water train only on certain days. That way, I can rotate it with my hot dog training.” It was all very organized and calculated. Lucy was nothing if not organized and calculated.

Gardo whistled. “Man, you’ll be peeing for hours.” He put both hands over his belly and then moved them away about a foot in front of him. “With a gallon of water in there, your stomach will stretch like a water balloon. That’s gotta hurt. But hey, it can’t hurt more than eighteen hot dogs, right? No pain, no gain.” He laughed evilly and slugged me in the shoulder.

Ow.
“I guess not….” I wasn’t so sure about that “no pain, no gain” business. I hated pain. Pain hurt.

I resisted the urge to rub my shoulder. Instead I flashed my biggest Thuff family grin and said what a natural champion should say, “Pain lets you know you’re alive. Now let’s get a move on, bub, my granny could do laps around you. And my granny is dead.”

The flat part of Palm was ending, and now we were moving up the slight incline that just a half hour ago I’d powered down with the help of my friend Gravity. That was the problem with going downhill—you always had to go back
up
hill to get home. But that was life for you, too: Sometimes you went up, sometimes you went down, and sometimes you got a face full of grass and grit. And when grit happened, there wasn’t much to do about it except spit it out and move on.

Get over it, or get out.

Thank the Galactic Sun King for water beds and moms who were paranoid about chiropractors. When Mom forced me and Dad to switch from metal springs to water beds, neither one of us sleep lovers was hot on the idea of giving up our cushy, just-right beds. But this afternoon I was ready to nominate Mom for a Nobel Prize for Brilliance. Every inch of me had screamed in pain when I’d dragged myself and my gallon of water upstairs after Gardo left to finish his jog. Now I was floating on my own personal ocean.

Too bad there was no ocean breeze in my room. Instead, it was a sauna. I had my window shut, just like I’d promised Gardo, and I still had on my hoodie and ski cap. Sweat was running down my face and even my fingertips. The garden thermometer outside the front door logged eighty-two degrees when I got home. I could only guess what the temperature was in my tropical room: ninety degrees? one hundred degrees? one million degrees? But Gardo was the coach.

At least he hadn’t forced me to do my sit-ups. When he’d dropped to the ground to do his three hundred, I got to sit next to him and massage my calf some more. It was my first workout, after all, no need to kill me on the first day.

I gave myself one more minute on the soothing water bed, then forced myself to sit up. Thirst was a more powerful motivator than pain. And my tongue was the Sahara.

Groaning, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and reached for my thirty-two-ounce Big Gulp Slurpee mug and the gallon of distilled water. That was what Lucy’d brought me, distilled water. I guess she didn’t want me ingesting all the chemicals that they put in regular water. Whatever. To me, water was water. It was weird enough that they sold it in stores. I mean, wasn’t it free if you turned on the tap? And what was up with there being
brands
of water? It wasn’t like companies had secret formulas for it; they just dropped big hoses into rocky mountain springs and pumped the water into their trucks. How could buying the brand with the red label be any different than buying the one with the blue label?

I filled up my mug to the brim and chugged it down, all thirty-two ounces, without stopping to breathe.
Ahhhh. Now, that hit the spot.
I was tempted to wipe my drippy lips with the sleeve of my sweatshirt, but I didn’t want to waste a drop. Instead I licked them dry.

I got eye level with the gallon of water, trying to gauge my rate of consumption. It looked about three-fourths full now, which didn’t seem bad for my first mugful. At this rate, I just needed to drink three more mugfuls and I’d have the gallon conquered. That seemed doable. While I wasn’t thirsty anymore, I wasn’t full, either. And with the water being cool (not cold, I couldn’t chug cold) my body felt mercifully refreshed on the inside. Water training wasn’t so bad.

I lifted up my sweatshirt, T-shirt, and undershirt and tapped my belly.
Thump, thump, thump.
Nice and solid, like a watermelon.
Way to go, Shermster.
I poured another mugful and grabbed a man-hater magazine off the stack Gardo had sent home with me. I’d research while I drank.

It turned out that I’d grabbed the summer swimsuit issue.
Nice.
This miserable morning was looking up. Maybe researching wasn’t so bad, either. No wonder Lucy liked it.

I propped my pillow against my headboard and shifted and twisted—
ow, ow, ow
—until I was leaning almost comfortably against the pillow, the magazine on my lap and the full mug in my hands. My stomach sloshed loudly, which I took as proof that there was still plenty of room left for more. Lucy had allotted me thirty minutes to get the full gallon down. By my estimate, I’d probably start feeling the urge to visit the loo in thirty-five minutes. Water went through a guy fast.

Sipping from my mug, I flipped to the table of contents. I’d do official research in a minute; right now I wanted to find the swimsuit section.
Health and Beauty…Fashion Fair…Hollywood Eye…Dear Editor…Features.
It was probably a feature.
“How to Know If Your Boyfriend’s a Tramp”…“Beach Bangles and Bags”…“Beach-Friendly Workouts”…come on, summer swimsuits…“How to Hide Any Blemish”…“Beauty and the Beach”…“Beach Blanket Bikinis”—That’s it!
Page sixty. Bikinis were the best kind of summer swimsuits.

I spent the next three or four minutes trying to find page sixty. The stupid page numbers kept disappearing and skipping and doing all kinds of weird things thanks to a million lame ads and lotion samples and subscription postcards and stapled inserts.
No, I’m not going to subscribe for four easy payments of just $4.44, not even if you do jam forty different postcards into the magazine “inviting” me to.
I shoved a pile of postcards and makeup samples onto the floor. Boy, there was a lot of crap in girls’ magazines.

Realizing I’d just lost valuable water training time, I tipped my mug to my lips and downed as much as I could. Halfway through, I came up for air, panting like a dog. The second round was harder, that was for sure. I took another deep breath then downed the rest, which made sixty-four ounces of water in my belly, half the gallon gone. And boy, did sixty-four ounces fill up a guy. I lifted my shirt and tapped my stomach again.
Ow.
No more tapping.

I studied the half gallon still sitting on my nightstand. How was that supposed to go down? The half gallon already in me was starting to hurt even without tapping.

I put my mug on the nightstand and wiped off the fresh batch of sweat that had broken out on my forehead. I’d lay off the water for a few minutes. I needed to give my aching stomach a chance to do some stretching.

Man, sitting in this room is like sitting on the sun.
I pushed my hood off. That didn’t give much relief.

I took another stab at finding page sixty.
Page fifty-six…page fifty-seven…ad for hair dye…ad for eyelash goo…ad for ugly pointy sandals…insert for mail-order beauty school degree…leaky lotion sample…
Were there any
articles
in this stupid magazine? Any at all? I didn’t even care what it was about anymore; I just wanted a stinking article to read so I wouldn’t have to think about the pain in my belly.
Ad for fat-free baked tortilla chips…ad for fingernail polish…“Beauty and the Beach”—There!
An article. It wasn’t the one I was looking for, but it would do for something to read while I worked on my third mugful.

With my belly feeling like a bushel of watermelons was packed in it and my body locking up like a corpse by the second, I filled my mug a third time, sipped—
ugh, I am
sooo
not thirsty
—and started reading. The article was mostly just a bunch of tips from experts about how girls could get in shape for their bikinis by summer. I probably should’ve written down useful tips for losing my belt, but to do that I would’ve had to stretch to the other side of my nightstand to reach a pen and some paper…and there was no stretching anywhere with half a gallon of water in your stomach. I’d just have to remember the tips that might work for me.

“For beautiful beach feet, schedule pedicures at one-month intervals.—Monica Staral, NPA, INPA.” Yeah, right,
that’s
something I’d use. Too bad I didn’t get my pencil to write that one down. Next!

“To give your hair ‘natural’ summer highlights at the
beginning
of beach season, skip the high-priced salons and lather in freshly squeezed lemon juice after each shampoo.—T’wanda Parkay, FE.” Please, while I did like the bite of tart lemonade, I wasn’t going to rub it into my hair. What was this woman thinking? And what the heck was a summer highlight?

“Eat a balanced diet, don’t starve yourself. Being too light-headed to remember your day at the beach defeats the point of a well-cut bikini.—Shelley Stippen, RDN, RMN.” You had that right, Shelley Stippen, RDN, RMN, LMNOP. I didn’t know about the well-cut bikini business, but I knew firsthand that being light-headed sucks.
No swimsuit is worth that, girls. Trust me.

“To look your best on the beach, replace high-cal, high-fat breakfasts with lo-cal, healthy energy boosters like this one: ½ cup Cheerios, ½ cup low-fat milk, ½ banana. Lunches can be quick, easy, and tasty, too: 3 oz grilled chicken, 1 whole wheat tortilla, 1 tbsp low-fat sour cream, ½ cup salsa, ½ cup favorite veggie with 1 tsp olive oil.—Bea Cantwell, CDN, RDN, LLN.” What was all the one-half stuff? Hadn’t old Bea heard of rounding up fractions? No wonder my mom has so many measuring spoons and measuring cups and food scales in the kitchen. For her, fixing lunch was like doing a Mad Max experiment. Dad and Grampy and I were the smart ones in the family, we bought our food at McDonald’s or ordered takeout, so someone else had to do the math. And with me in training, Gardo was handling all my menus and portions, so this tip wouldn’t do me much good. Thank goodness. Math was never my strong point.