Big Mouth (20 page)

“You know what?” I said. “You should come over tomorrow after Gardo’s meet and see how my training’s coming. My capacity is way up. Look!” I pointed to my Galactic Warriors shirt, then did a 360 with my hands over my head. It was still snug, but it fit. It fit! “This didn’t fit before, now it does. My, uh, my
belt
is going away. I’m going for twenty HDBs tomorrow night.”

“Twenty? Really?

I nodded. She seemed impressed. “And I’m speed-training it. So it’s twenty in twelve minutes.”

“You’re serious?”

“Totally.” Yep, she was impressed. Good. Gardo wasn’t the only one who can spin the glory tale. Now she knew I was my own man.

Someone yelled my name and we both turned. It was Paul from my American History class walking by the cell phone accessories cart. He gave me a thumbs-up and I waved back.

Lucy looked more annoyed than impressed now. “I don’t know. You sure you want me over? You’re awfully busy these days.”

“Busy? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about all your beating up people and
Thuff Enuff
ing.” She made invisible quotation marks in the air with her fingers. “Everyone’s talking about it. It must be exhausting being a superhero.”

“Who keeps telling everyone that? I didn’t beat up anyone. You know I wouldn’t.”
You know I couldn’t.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s what everyone is saying, that the Great Thuff Enuff beat up Shane and a Finn.”

“Well, everyone’s wrong.”

She didn’t respond, just pursed her lips and scanned the busy promenade.

“Look, just come over after the meet,” I said. “It’ll be fun.”

“I’m not going to the meet.”

“What?” I couldn’t believe it. Gardo had dreamed of being on the wrestling team since his mom bought him that first WWE video in third grade. “You have to come, it’s his first one.”

“He won’t care, trust me.” A customer walked up to the cart. “Hi, ma’am, what can I get for you tonight? Shermie, I gotta get back to work. I’ll just talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

She’ll talk to me tomorrow….
More crankiness slid away.

Catching the up escalator wasn’t nearly as difficult as the down. Though the Chocolat du Monde cart receded below, the scent of cocoa stayed in my nose. I wished it wouldn’t, actually. It made my headache worse, if that was possible. Pounding, aching, dizzy…I didn’t know how I’d get through the rest of my shift. I’d probably crack twenty more cones, at least. Arthur would be throwing fruit at me all night.

You know what, I’m
not
going to get through it. I’m going to get my bike, go home, and curl up in my water bed with my last Gardo Glass of the day and my “Summer of Fun” man-hater bikini issue.
Arthur and Grampy could get along without me. They were always calling in sick on my shifts, but I’d never called in sick, not once. They owed me, and tonight was the night I’d collect.

I got off the escalator and stomped toward Scoops, determined to hold my ground in the face of any objection they hurled my way. Or, in the case of Arthur, any fruit he hurled my way. I wouldn’t give in. I needed a night off and I was taking it.
Ladies and gentlemen, Thuff Enuff is leaving the building.

CHAPTER 16

“The Elixir of Life.
Agua.
H
₂
O…”

Mad Max sounded hoarse today. She was sucking on a cough drop while she talked, and every few minutes she paused to sip from a tall yellow tumbler.

“You all know the subject of today’s science concept in action as that clear fluid you’re stuck drinking when the vending machine is out of Gatorade. Scientists, on the other hand, know it as the most essential part of life next to the almighty atom itself: water. Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. All around me I see water—each of your bodies is sixty percent water; each of your brilliant brains is seventy percent water; our school mascot, the oh-so-inspirational plum tomato, is ninety-five percent water. Water is so important to the human body that while we can go a couple of weeks without food, we can only go a few days without H
₂
O. You, my knowledge-thirsty young scientists, will be working with water in today’s experiment.”

I groaned. Here I was, back on Gardo Glasses again and so incredibly thirsty that I could barely see straight, and Max assigns a water experiment. The universe was cruel.

Max pulled on her lab coat and nodded at Lucy, who passed out the Experimentation Documentation worksheet. Then Max put up an overhead of a grape and a raisin. The images made me think of the heaping bowl of raisin bran Grampy had eaten for breakfast this morning, right before his buttered cinnamon raisin toast. I’d pretended to be finishing my Spanish homework at the breakfast table just so I could be close to that buttery cinnamon smell. Twice during breakfast I’d had to wipe drool off my
Entradas
textbook.

Thankfully, Gardo’s meet was today. After he weighed in, he’d have an hour to eat and build energy for his match. And since we were in this together, I’d get to “build energy” with him. He promised me it’d be the feast of a lifetime. I’d have the good end of the stick, too, because I’d just get to eat, not grab some sweaty guy in a singleton afterward.

Lucy stepped in front of my desk and handed me a worksheet to share with Tater. She started to move away, but I reached over the desk and touched her hand.

“What did you decide?” I whispered. “Gonna make it to the meet?”

She looked over at Gardo. He was leaning back in his chair, his head lolled back with his eyes to the ceiling. “I don’t think
Gardo
is gonna make it to the meet,” she said.

He did look like roadkill. And judging by the squinty once-over Lucy gave me, I probably didn’t look much better.

“I’ll come over after.” She moved toward Gardo’s desk.

Tater nudged me in the ribs. “Hot date?”

I punched him in the shoulder, hard. “Shut up, man, that’s Lucy. That’d be like dating my sister.”

“Sorry. Sheesh, someone’s touchy.”

“I’ll show you touchy—”

“Sherman, is there a problem?” Max’s eagle eyes drilled into me.

“No, ma’am.”

“Then close the mouth and open the ears. I’ll be testing you on this information.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I stomped on Tater’s toe. He winced but didn’t yell out.
Good, take it like a man.

“Water is a key element,” Max said, launching into the pre-experiment lecture, “one of the Big Four—water, fire, air, and earth. The balance of these four is delicate and essential to all life. If we allow this balance to falter, we throw off the balance of nature itself. Remember our static-charged hair last week?” She picked a black comb up from her podium and walked to the instructor’s faucet, pulling out the two wooden chopsticks that held up her hair. Long locks cascaded down her back. Quickly she pulled the comb through her hair twice, turned on the faucet, then held the comb next to the stream of water. The stream bent toward the comb.

“I just covered this comb with negative electrical charges much like we experienced last week,” she said. “Now those negatives are attracting the positive charges of the water, actually bending the stream. See that? Imagine the give and take that’s going on at a cosmic scale. The sunspot activity last week heated the water temperature in the Pacific Ocean, creating an El Niño effect. This, in turn, results in increased storm activity all along our coast. We’ll be seeing a lot of water very soon. Life on this planet is merely a series of delicate balances. The role played by two simple molecules—oxygen and hydrogen—is what we’ll be exploring today.”

Lucy rose up onto her toes and peered at Gardo’s face. His eyes were closed now.
Ha! He’s sleeping like a baby!
Max was definitely sick if she hadn’t spotted that. Shaking her head, Lucy handed the worksheet to Leonard and moved on to the next table.

When I met Gardo at the track this morning, he was already looking like death in a sweatshirt. Coach Hunt had made the wrestlers practice an extra hour last night, and then everyone who was more than four pounds over their weight goal was forced to run several miles with backpacks full of dirt strapped tightly to their backs. On top of that, Gardo had ended the night with a one-hour stint in the sauna at his mom’s fitness club. My buddy was superhuman to even be here today. He’d make weight this afternoon, I just knew it. He wanted to be extra doubly sure, though, so he’d been spitting all morning to cut down on water weight. He even had a plastic sandwich bag in his pocket for spitting during class. He’d also buzzed his hair almost as short as Tater’s to make himself lighter. Personally, I wouldn’t join any sport that made you shave your head. A guy had to have his pride.

“A gallon of water weighs approximately eight and a half pounds,” Max said, setting a jug of water on top of the podium.

Wow.
That was how much I drank in water training last night? Well, almost drank. No wonder spitting matters for wrestlers on weigh-in day. Water was heavy.

“The average five-minute shower takes between fifteen and twenty-five of these containers. The average indoor toilet uses twenty-eight of them per day—per
person.
Now imagine just one inch of rainfall on the ground. That doesn’t seem like much, I know, but it’s actually equal to seven thousand of these puppies. We’re talking nearly thirty tons of water falling to the earth in one simple spring shower, my young Einsteins. That’s a lot of
agua.
”

She went to her office on the side of the room and stepped inside the door. There was a lot of banging around and the sound of a chair being shoved across the floor and then a random crash. She stuck her head back out. “Mr. Finn, will you assist me, please?”

The Finn worked himself out of his desk and joined her behind the door. After more banging around, he came out pulling a large, red metal wagon. Four humongous containers of water sat in the wagon, with nozzled hoses running out of the top of each one.

Jeez, Max, drag a thirsty man to water but don’t let him drink, why don’t you? The torture!

“Today,” she said, following the wagon, “we are going to reproduce Newton’s water experiment. Each pair of you will measure out two and a half quarts of water, which is the amount of water a person should consume per day. It comes from all sources—food, straight water, etc. Then we’ll…”

I was having a hard time concentrating on all the numbers she was throwing around. Or on anything she was saying, actually. Tater seemed like he had a bead on it, though, so I just let my mind drift. He’d get us where we needed to be with this experiment. The guy was way smarter than he acted; I’d figured that out over the semester.

Tater went to stand in line at the wagons. The jugs were huge. Maybe that’s what was on her cart in the parking lot Halloween morning. When Tater reached the front of the line, he picked up a graduated cylinder, stuck a nozzle into it, then let fly.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the beautiful stream shooting out of that nozzle. It looked so cool and wet and satisfying filling up our cylinder. I held my breath as he carried the container back.
Don’t slosh it, Tater, don’t slosh it….

Only when he reached our desk safely did I breathe again. The ripples in the water rolled outward from the center like solar orbits from the sun—perfectly round, perfectly spaced, perfectly synchronized. Max said water was the most important building block for life next to the atom itself. I had a few atoms that could use some water about now.
If I just took a sip…

I glanced over at Gardo. He was awake now, sitting up and staring hungrily at his own cylinder of water. Our eyes met. We held the gaze a moment.

He knew what I was thinking.

And I knew what he was thinking.

If we’re both thinking the same thing, then maybe it would be okay to
both…

In a sudden flash, Gardo grabbed his cylinder, flipped it upside down, then let it go. Water splashed everywhere.

“Hey!” Leonard’s legs and feet got soaked as he stumbled backward.

Every head snapped in their direction. The empty cylinder rolled in a wide, lazy circle next to a huge puddle of water. Gardo stood next to Leonard, his pant legs wet, too. His eyes were wide and innocent, and his mouth was open in fake shock.

My mouth was open in real shock.

Max stalked over to Gardo’s table, grabbing a stack of brown paper towels along the way.

“Stand back, don’t slip.” She threw half the stack at the water on the table and dropped the other half onto the puddle. “Sop that up,” she barked at Leonard, pointing to the floor. Then she turned her attention to Gardo.

Man, he’ll be doing push-ups for the rest of class.

“This is not grade school, Edgardo. If you expect to continue in this classroom, you will conduct yourself like a scientist. And scientists do
not
spill their materials. What if that had been an acid? Go get the mop and bucket from my office.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Max turned and clapped her hands. “Back to work, people. And let’s try to keep our water
in
our containers. Lucy, show him where the mop is. Leonard, stop! Don’t keep splashing in it. Is this kindergarten?”

When Gardo passed in front of me, he winked. “So much for temptation,” he whispered.

“You’re a troublemaker.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

I waved him off, then reached for our Experimentation Documentation worksheet. Tater had already written our names on it in swirly green ink. All around us, the class settled into the low, soothing hum of young scientists at work.

Once upon a time, lunchtime was fun. I ate corn dogs and hamburgers and potato chips and fries, I drank smuggled Pepsi and root beer, I hung out with Gardo and Lucy and sometimes a few other friends, and we joked and laughed. Except for Shane’s so-called pranks, lunch was the best time of the school day. Now there was barely room to squeeze myself in at my table with all my new friends, I didn’t get to eat
anything
(that’s right, not even lettuce today!), Lucy wouldn’t eat in the same room with me, and laughing was the last thing I felt like doing. How did things go south so fast?

Gardo and I were both slumped at our crowded table with our chins resting in our empty palms. No eating, no talking, no energy. Oh wait, silly me, Gardo had enough energy to occasionally pick up a cup and spit in it. What was I thinking to overlook that lovely sight? Tater was turned sideways so he wouldn’t have to see it as he ate. Part of me wanted to tell Mr. Tots up His Nostrils that he didn’t have much room to criticize someone else’s table etiquette, but the rest of me didn’t have the energy to care. Leonard was turned away, too, but it was probably more to hide his smuggled Ring Ding from the janitors than from disgust at Gardo’s spit cup.

Leonard probably should’ve been protecting the Ring Ding from me. Man, that thing looked good. He must have babied it well during the smuggling operation, because I didn’t see a single crack in the delicate milk chocolate shell. Would he eat it straight, like a sandwich that just happened to be made of moist chocolate cake and sweet, fluffy cream filling, or would he break it gently in half and scoop out the creamy white filling first?

I shook my head hard.
Jeez, I’m coveting people’s food. What a loser.

Next to me, Gardo spit in his cup again. I never realized what a nasty sound spitting makes.

Where did he get all that spit, anyway? He hadn’t had anything to drink since last night before his sauna. He had to suck on hard candy just to generate enough saliva to spit. Personally, I thought he was in food violation, but Coach Hunt was the one who gave him the bag of those round, red-and-white Christmas peppermints after his run last night, so who was I to question it? At least they gave him nice breath.

He spit into the cup again. I tried to focus on the paper turkey on the table, ASB’s latest holiday decoration. Man, I wished Lucy were here. She was probably glad she wasn’t, though. She’d hate sitting at this table now. I did.

“This is stupid,” I mumbled.

“What is?” Gardo moved nothing except his lips.

“Us sitting here not eating. Why are we torturing ourselves in the cafeteria?”

“Would you prefer we torture ourselves in the parking lot? Quit whining and wait for the bell.”

“I’m not whining. I’m just making an observation.”