Big Mouth (28 page)

“Good. Nothing else? Dieting? Anything like that?”

I clamped my lips shut. I knew where she was going with this, I wasn’t stupid. The taste of the coconut milk I’d poured over my Lucky Charms this morning was still with me, souring my mouth. Chewing spearmint gum hadn’t killed it completely. I probably had coconut breath. But that didn’t matter, I didn’t need to feel guilty. The coconut was proof that I was eating. I was no Sean. And I was no Gardo. I was losing my belt the smart way. “I’m not dieting. Everything everybody eats is part of their diet. I’m watching what I eat.”

Max nodded. “Sounds wise. Moderation is the key. I don’t care what anyone else says, the only way to get and stay in shape is to eat healthy foods in reasonable portions and exercise smartly. Period.” She flicked her wrist angrily, sending the yearbook into the papers on her desk. “Not starving yourself, or wrapping yourself in
plastic.
”

There was a knock on the door. I shot up, knocking over my stool with a loud crash. “I gotta go.”

“Sherman—”

“I gotta go.” I righted the stool quickly, then yanked the door open. Gardo was standing there, his red wrestling shirt covering his gray sweatshirt and a sheen of sweat glistening on his hoodless, shaved head. His hand was raised, ready to knock again.

“Shermie?” His face clouded for a moment. Then he lifted his other hand and waved a small pink paper over my shoulder. “Ms. Maxwell”—he flashed his Charming Man smile at her—“will you sign this permission slip for me? Coach Hunt is taking the team on a field trip Friday to a special wrestling clinic. There’ll be coaches from three colleges there.”

“Unless Coach Hunt will be staying behind to take your unit test for you, you’ll need to be in class. Since you’re here, though, I want to ask you something. Come in for a second.”

“I gotta go.” I shoved past Gardo.

“Hey, watch it, Shermie!”

I didn’t watch it. I just wanted out of there. I hadn’t talked to Gardo since our fight yesterday morning, and I didn’t trust what I’d say to him now. Especially now. Because as Gardo stumbled out of my way, it wasn’t his protest that echoed in my ears. What echoed in my ears was the unmistakable rustle of a plastic bag.

CHAPTER 23

Twenty-four hours after my betrayal, I was hunched over a bowl of Lucky Charms with coconut milk, so hungry I almost wanted a bite of the vile concoction. I’d been too tense yesterday to deal with nasty coconut, so I hadn’t eaten anything after my visit to Max’s office. But the first spoonful of coconut-bloated marshmallows and soggy cereal gagged me.

I can’t do this!
I dumped the horror down the garbage disposal. I’d rather starve than eat coconut again.

My stomach was still growling violently when I walked into Science Concepts in Action. Gardo’s seat was empty. Lucy was missing, too.
Nice going, Thuff. Your friends are vanishing faster than T’larian heat probes in the galactic sun.

I dropped into my seat next to Tater.

“Traitor,” he spit out.

My heart stopped. How did he know about me and Gardo?

“I can’t believe she went red,” he said.

My heart started thumping again. Tater wasn’t glaring at me, he was glaring at Max, who’d just come out of her office wearing a red shirt. She was whistling as she strolled across the front of the room.

Max had defected. I couldn’t believe it, either.

“Stupid Culwicki,” Tater said. “I bet he’s behind this. He probably threatened to fire her. Or he had the Olive Shirts chase her with brooms or something.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. Max didn’t look like she’d been broomed. She seemed pretty chipper to me, actually, whistling all the way to her podium, only stopping when she stood behind it and faced the class. Row upon row of hostile Yellow Shirts met her gaze.

She smiled lightly. “It has come to my attention that this school is off balance. We’ve been working against each other instead of together, and we’ve lost sight of our common goal. I think it’s about time someone spelled it out, don’t you?” She stepped away from the podium and posed like a supermodel. Her offending red shirt was one of Culwicki’s free
In Del Heiny We Trust
deals. Only she’d blacked out his propaganda and written her own: Go, RE
D! “Like it?”

The Yellow Shirts stayed stony.

The tardy bell rang and Max broke her pose. Turning to the whiteboard, she set a black marker on the ledge, right next to a small stuffed turkey in a pilgrim’s costume. “I’ll leave this here for anyone who might need it. Mr. Culwicki has thoughtfully left a booth full of shirts unattended in the quad. I suggest you avail yourselves of it. Ah, Mr. Esperaldo, nice of you to join us today. You know the way to your seat, I presume?”

I twisted in my seat. Gardo was in the doorway, half in and half out. I hadn’t seen him since yesterday morning in Max’s office. He’d disappeared after that, skipping science and Spanish and even going AWOL at lunch. Now he looked like a totally different person with a solid black T-shirt on instead of his wrestling red, no sweatshirt or hoodie, and deep, angry creases in his forehead. He shot me a wilting glare as he went to his seat next to Leonard.

And wilt I did.

Next to me, Tater was muttering—though whether to me or to the cosmos, I didn’t know. “Who needs her anyway?” he said. “She didn’t keep the faith. The Mustard Taggers will get Culwicki off our backs. Mark my words, big things are in the works.”

Max pounded the tibia bone on the podium. “All right, people. We’re in a school, let’s act like it already.” She pointed the bone at a giant picture of maggots or something else wormy and nasty that she’d just taped to the whiteboard. “Ham beetles. Blow flies. Flesh flies. We’ve finally secured approval for an exciting new lab that explores the role of insects in forensic entomology. Today we’ll work with insects, and tomorrow I’ve got a surprise lab starring your newest best friend, Porky the
Sus scrofa Linnaeus….
”

Max might as well have been talking Swahili. My attention was on Gardo for the rest of the period. Not that he acknowledged my existence. He never looked my way, not even once. None of his usual winking, no funny faces behind Max’s back, nothing. I wasn’t stupid; I could read the writing on the wall: Gardo was done with me. Years of friendship down the dumper. We were through.

When the bell rang, I left without waiting for him. There was nothing to say. He hated me.

But so what? Lucy hated me. I hated me. Shane and the Finns hated me. Who
didn’t
hate me?

“Thuff Enuff, buddy!” Tater caught up to me in the stairwell. “Have you heard the latest? Shane got replaced yesterday as wrestling captain. Terence Vanderfite got the job. The first scrub captain ever.”

I groaned but kept walking. That explained Gardo’s black shirt. He was in mourning.

“Isn’t that hilarious?” Tater said. “The great Shane, replaced by a scrub. I love it! I bet the Finns were fit to be tied. Shane sure was. He stood right up out of his wheelchair and threw it at his dad, swearing revenge. Kind of suspicious, don’t you think, seeing as how we got trashed last night and all?”

I stopped on the second floor landing. “Trashed?”

“Yeah. You didn’t hear? All the Yellow Shirts know about it already. You’d know, too, if you went yellow.”

“Will you stop already? I told you, Thuffs stay loyal to Scoops white.”

“All right, all right. At least you know how to keep the faith. Even if it’s the
wrong
faith…”

“Tater. What about something getting trashed?”

“Oh yeah.” He leaned in like he was revealing some great secret. “What happened is, someone splashed yellow paint all over the guys’ locker room, and a bunch of locker doors were ripped right off. And this happens the same night Shane threatens his dad at practice?
Suspicious.
” He practically sang the word.

“How do you even know all this? Wrestling practice is closed.”

He jingled his office aide keys. “Tater has his ways.”

Tater is creepy.

I spun and headed down the hall toward Spanish class.

He fell in step beside me again, snickering like a B-movie villain. “I told you, buddy. Big things are afoot at Del Heiny Junior thirteen. It’s better than TV.”

Not quite. You can change the channel with TV.

Kenny and Runji ran up to us halfway down the hallway. Their eyes were as wide as their grins. Tater and I stopped short. Lucy practically bowled us over from behind.
Where’d she come from?

“This is a hallway, not a bus stop,” she snapped. She had a fresh scrape on her forehead and a large Band-Aid on her arm.

Kenny ignored her and slugged me in the shoulder. “Thuff Enuff! Have you heard? Shane is out of his wheelchair.”

“I already know. So what?”

“So then you already know he said he’s gonna kick your butt at lunch today, once and for all.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Runji said. “Shane’s telling everyone he’s tired of scrubs putting on airs, and he’s gonna make an example out of the biggest scrub of all. That’s you! ‘Puff’n Stuff needs to be taught some respect,’ he said. I told you he’d try for a comeback! And the timing couldn’t be better. Both the Finns are absent today, so this is your chance to take him down one on one.”

“Take him down?” Lucy said. “Shermie, you’re not going to fight Shane. He’ll murder you.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” I had no intention of fighting Shane, but I did have my pride. “Kenny, you know the rumor mill at this school sucks. Nothing’s gonna happen.” Sure, the Finn hadn’t been in Max’s room this morning, but that didn’t prove anything.

“Oh, we’ll make sure he doesn’t hide like a wimp,” Kenny promised. “You can count on us.” They high-fived all around.

The vultures.

“I gotta go.” I left before anyone else could hit me. “Class starts in four and a half minutes.”

Lucy caught up with me as I rushed off, her voice urgent now, not snapping. “You’re not actually thinking of fighting Shane, are you?”

“I can’t wait to see Max’s surprise lab tomorrow.”

“Shermie, no fighting.”

“Something to do with bugs, she said? Should be cool.”

“Shermie…”

“Here’s my stop. Nice talking to you.” I ducked into the guys’ bathroom. As the door shut, I caught a glimpse of Gardo standing a few feet behind Lucy. He was looking our way, his face blank. Then the red door closed.

I leaned my forehead against it. What was I going to do? The guys expected me to beat up Shane at lunch. I couldn’t do that. Even though he’d been in a wheelchair for two weeks, he wouldn’t be weak. He was a muscle-bound jock wrestler. A trained fighter. I was just a fat scrub doughnut—and it wasn’t jelly that I was full of.

How did I get myself into this?

CHAPTER 24

Lunchtime was on me faster than ants on a picnic. And news of Shane’s upcoming “comeback fight” spread even faster. In between every class, Plums egged me on—or “supported” me, as Tater called it. Boy, was that guy getting caught up in the excitement. That, or he was secretly worried I’d be killed. When I ran into him in the hall at lunchtime, he couldn’t talk about anything else.

“You know,” he said as we entered the cafeteria, “I’ve been watching Shane at wrestling practice. He puts up a big act, but he’s all talk. He was only captain of the wrestling team because his dad’s the coach, not because he’s any good. He won’t wrestle any of the scrubs or pea-greeners because they’d make him look bad. I bet Coach was looking for an excuse to can him. You’ll take him down in one punch, maybe two. No sweat.”

Easy for him to say. He thought shooting Tots out of his nose was a high talent.

“It won’t even be an issue, Tater,” I said as carefree as I could. “Shane’s going to avoid me.”
I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope.

“You think?” He looked downright sad for a moment. “Nah. He’ll make his move. He has to try for a comeback. Being decaptained is too humiliating. You know what? Just in case he gets in some lucky wrestling stuff in his desperation, let me show you counters to his favorite moves real quick.” He grabbed my left wrist and yanked my arm behind my back.

“Ow! Tater, stop!”

“The key is to grab his wrist. Jackie Chan does that all the time.” He wrapped his other arm around my neck.

“Stop!”

“See, if you’ve got a wrist, you’ve got control. Now all I have to do is squeeze my forearm to my biceps and I’ll crush your windpipe.”

“Don’t! Tater, let me go!”

He released me but then immediately grabbed at my other wrist. “Here’s another one.”

I saw it coming this time and pulled away in time. Adrenaline must’ve juiced my reflexes. “I don’t need another one. Just stop.”

“Okay. But just let me show you what to do if he gets you on the ground. I saw it in a movie once—”

“Tater, stop! He’s not going to get me on the ground. Just chill.”

I stomped to the food line. What was he thinking? He couldn’t make me a wrestler in two minutes. Even Gardo couldn’t do that, and Gardo actually knew what he was doing.

Tater was still with me.
Jeez, he’s like a rash.

“You’re probably right,” he said. “Shane’s all talk. The Finns are the ones to worry about. They’ll punch your nose out the back of your head. Shane won’t do anything without them here. It doesn’t really matter, anyway. Shane’ll go down one way or another. You’re not the only one who wants some changes around here. Oh, there’s Runji. I’ll meet you at the table.”

He hustled away.
Finally.

Now that I was in line, I was committed to buying lunch. But I didn’t know what to buy. I was hungry,
real
hungry, but without coconut to keep me in check, I probably wouldn’t be able to stop eating once I started. That would just land me in the bathroom with my face over a toilet like a total loser. Or like Max’s tuba player.

The line moved forward. I picked up a red plastic tray with the Del Heiny Ketchup logo on it. Someone patted me on the shoulder and wished me luck, but I didn’t look to see who it was. My eyes were glued on paper bowls piled high with cheese-filled raviolis. They came with low, nearly flat dishes of ketchup on the side for dipping. While ketchup wasn’t as good as spaghetti sauce, it was red and tomato-y, so it was close enough.

I lifted one of the bowls, hefting it up and down, weighing it with my hand.
This won’t help my belt…. Aw heck, who cares about some stupid theory?
I dropped the bowl onto my tray defiantly and shoved over to the next station. I wasn’t made for Gardo’s weight-cutting craziness. It had turned me into some kind of girl, worrying about diet and belt size and gorging then throwing up. I wasn’t a girl, I was Thuff Enuff. Worrying about my waist size was a waste of time. There were lots of Big Boys on the eating circuit, and they’d been racking up the records left and right, so me and my fat belt would do just fine, thank you. Cookie Jarvis was four hundred pounds, and he held records for ice cream, mayo, cannoli, chicken-fried steak, corned beef and cabbage, dumplings, pizza, and all kinds of other stuff. If big Cookie could be a winner, so could big Thuff Enuff.
Thuff Enuff eats what he wants, when he wants.

The only problem was, if I was going to compete, I
couldn’t
eat what I wanted, when I wanted. I’d have to eat what people told me to eat during the competitions. And a lot of it. Like cow brains. Like asparagus. Like fifty-four hot dogs and buns.

Jeez.

Maybe I’d made a mistake with this competitive eating. The only time in my whole training that I’d been able to keep down my HDBs without reversing my fortune was when I took more than an hour to do it—and that was just eighteen HDBs. Eighteen. Why the heck was I killing myself over this? For the fame? That wasn’t such a dangling carrot anymore. Here I had all these new “friends,” but I could barely sit at my own lunch table anymore. And Lucy and Gardo had sworn me off. I missed being plain old nobody Shermie and hanging out with my old buddies.

Behind the lunch counter, a lady in a red paper hat and apron tossed a cardboard plate onto my tray with a vacant flip of her wrist. Tater Tots spilled onto my tray.

As I gathered them back onto the plate, Shane strode into the cafeteria. I could tell because the whole place went quiet. It was weird…nobody greeted him, and his fellow ninth graders didn’t clear a seat for him at his table. I guess trashing the locker room wasn’t the “comeback” he’d thought it would be.

Squaring his shoulders, he pushed past a girl to get in line behind me. I tried to pretend I hadn’t seen him. But he was so close, his foul breath warmed my neck.

I slid my tray along the counter to the next section. Egg rolls. Another red-aproned lady tossed a plate onto my tray. Then I slid over again, to the chicken nuggets section. That plate landed hard, too.

Shane matched my movements slide for slide, only he let his empty tray hang down by his leg so he could stand right next to me.

“Thuff,” he hissed into my ear as the nugget lady blankly plopped another dipping dish of ketchup onto my tray. “You’ve gotten too big for your britches, Thuff, if that’s even possible.”

Again I slid to my right. This time a birdlike woman with glazed eyes tossed a plate of corn dogs onto my tray.

Again Shane moved up close. “I’m gonna put you on a diet, big shot.”

I slid to my right once more, taking on a hamburger and a side of fries.

There was venom in Shane’s hiss this time: “Know your place, Thuff.” He slammed his shoulder into my back, right between my shoulder blades.
Ow!
A bunch of ketchup packets landed on my food. “Don’t forget your ketchup. Man, look at that slop. I just lost my appetite.”

Spinning on his heel, he stalked off toward his table, shoving his empty tray into Kenny’s hands along the way.

My own hands were shaky as I paid the cashier for my food. Not that she noticed my shakes. She was too busy popping her gum and looking bored.

Slowly I turned and faced a cafeteria full of Plums. My back throbbed where Shane had jammed his shoulder into me. Had anyone see him do it?

A bead of sweat trickled down my temple. My tray got heavier by the second. All eyes were on me except for Shane’s. He was standing next to his table talking to the seated guys, his back to me like he couldn’t be bothered. They still hadn’t scooted over for him, though I spotted one slipping him an illegal mustard packet. Another one offered him something to drink. He was making headway even though all he’d done was jam me in the back. Maybe killing me really would put the king back on his throne.

I had a sudden urge to go to the bathroom…not to pee, but to hide in a stall until the bell rang.

No! You won’t do that, Shermie. You can’t.
Even getting my butt kicked in public was better than getting caught hiding in the john.

I took a deep breath. And then another. Finally I willed my shaky legs to transport me to my table at the back of the cafeteria. It was so strange, passing the mustard-scribbled walls without any janitors around to clean them up. The Olive Shirts were missing all the fun.

Tater, Roshon, Kenny, and seven or eight other guys had already made themselves at home. My table was solid Yellow Shirts. No Black Shirt. No Gardo. As I approached, the guys all gawked at me like,
Well?
Their expressions made me think of the Olive Shirts back when they were just janitors, rubbing their sandpapery hands together over a Shane terrorization.

Maybe the bathroom wasn’t such a bad idea….

“Sit next to me, Thuff Enuff.” Tater scooched over to make room for me between him and Roshon. “There’s room.”

Great. The guy wanted a ringside seat.

“Hey, where’re you going?” he said.

“I got business to take care of.”
Taking a leak doesn’t make me a chicken. And if it happens to be a
long
leak, then so be it.
I handed Leonard my tray. I would
not
take my food in there. “Here, take this. And don’t eat it.”

He took the tray from me and dumped it into the trash can next to the table.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Why’d you do that?”

“You said, ‘Take this. I don’t need it.’”

“No, I didn’t!”

“Yes, you did. I heard you.”

“Aw, man,” I moaned. I knew I shouldn’t complain; Leonard had just saved me from myself and all, but
still.
“That was perfectly good food, Leonard. What am I supposed to do for lunch now?”

“Oh. I’m sorry, Thuff Enuff. I really thought you said you didn’t want it. Here, I’ll get you more.” Leonard jumped up and swung a leg over the bench. “You need to keep up your strength.” He rushed off.

As I stood there torn between sitting down to wait for food or ducking into the guys’ room, an angry shriek ripped through the air. It sounded like the Wicked Witch of the West right after Dorothy soaked her with water. But it wasn’t a witch screaming, it was Shane.

Halfway across the cafeteria, the situation was obvious. In hustling to get me replacement food, Leonard had plowed smack into Shane, spilling the jerk’s chocolate milk shake all over his sacred red wrestling shirt. Shane was a mess of poo-brown goo.

“You idiot!” he yelled. “Look what you did!”

Leonard froze in shock, but only for a moment. Then reflexes kicked in. Snatching a stray napkin from the table next to him, he attacked Shane’s chest and tried desperately to blot the goo.

“Stop!” Shane tried to block Leonard’s hands. “Stop! You’re making it worse!” The milky poo now oozed down the front of Shane’s pants. “Look at this! What were you thinking, you tub of lard? Are you as blind as you are fat?” He grabbed Leonard’s collar and tried to yank him forward. But Leonard couldn’t be budged by mere yanking, so Shane had to step forward to get in his face. “You’re gonna pay for this big time, you stupid loser scrub.”

Boy, the Olive Shirts would be bummed that they missed this. The zoned-out cafeteria ladies certainly didn’t appreciate the entertainment. Poor Leonard. There was no one to stop Shane. And even Leonard knew rescue wasn’t in the cards. He simply closed his eyes and cringed, waiting for Shane’s punch.

This is so messed up. You shouldn’t have to take one in the kisser just for being a nice guy. And this whole school full of people is going to let it happen. Pathetic. We might as well start genuflecting for Shane.
The very thought of that roiled the butyric acid in my gut.

A shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds and spotlighted Leonard and Shane. I squinted in the glare off the white linoleum. With my face scrunched like that, I could be Grampy, going all cheeks and trying to talk me into something I didn’t want to do. I could almost hear his voice: “Sherman T. Thuff, this crowd looks tough, and you know what that means: When the going gets tough, the Thuffs get Thuffer! All for one and one for all!”

All for one and one for all…I hate Grampy sometimes. Especially when he’s right.

“Stop!” I hollered before Shane could sock Leonard. Then, faster than I’d yanked my wrist out of Tater’s grasp earlier, I stabbed my arms out right and left and yanked Tater and Roshon to their feet. They were both so surprised, they didn’t resist.
There, it’s three against one now. All for one and one for all. Take that, Shane.
“Leave Leonard alone.”

Plums around the room gasped.

Shane sized up the three of us standing there like a wall—Tater on my left and Roshon on my right, me in the middle bracing them up with my hands around their biceps. He smiled and let go of Leonard’s shirt.

“Well, well. So here we have it. Puff Enuff finally makes his move. I honestly didn’t think you had the stones for this,
scrub.”

He raised his right arm up over his head like he was going to hail a cab, then bent his index finger in a brief come-hither motion. Immediately, two hulking, white-haired, bent-nosed goons in red wrestling T-shirts marched out of the guys’ bathroom.
Finns!
No wonder Shane wasn’t avoiding me. It was an ambush.

Tater tried to sit back down, but I squeezed his biceps hard and locked my elbow to hold him up. We were committed now. Preemptively, I locked Roshon into a standing position on my left. Captain Quixote said victory was in the numbers, and as long as we were standing, we were still three. They couldn’t take us all down. Not quickly, anyway.

Shane and the Finns started over to us, marching in step.
Right, left, right, left.

Roshon whimpered. Tater babbled, “We’re dead, we’re dead, we’re
so
dead….”

Right, left, right, left.

What would Captain Quixote do now? He would’ve seen the ambush coming in the first place, that’s what he would’ve done! And he sure as heck wouldn’t have Tater and Roshon rounding out his three.

Right, left, right, left.

We were gonna get creamed.

Right, left, right, left.

At least I’d die knowing that I hadn’t hid in the john.