Butter (4 page)

• • •

If I were physically capable of skipping, I would have skipped into school the next day. Not only had I managed to restrain myself at breakfast—just two eggs over easy, a couple sausage patties, and a glass of OJ—but I had also woken up right at the end of one of those sweet dreams. And I mean
sweet
.

Sans the ability to skip, I whistled my way from the parking lot to my locker, poking my head into the band room on the
way. My whistle shifted to one high-pitched tone, one low—a catcall. The shrill notes startled the Professor. He pulled up from a box of records and spun on his heel so fast, he had to catch himself on a music stand to keep from falling.

“Looking good there, Professor!”

“Butter! You scared the sh—You caught me off guard. That is some serious lung power. It's a shame you don't put it to better use.”

“Hey, I play every night.”

“For whom? The crickets outside your window?”

“Touché.” I winked and turned to leave.

“Butter, wait! I want to talk about next semester!”

“I know you do, Professor,” I tossed back over my shoulder. “Why do you think I'm walking away?” Then, just to show him I didn't mean any offense, I whistled a few bars from one of his favorite Dizzy Gillespie tunes in farewell.

The whistling lasted all the way to comp.

It was much easier to focus in first period without Anna fidgeting. She sat perfectly still, each hair on her head hanging stick-straight, like fine strings of glass. Instead of crossing her legs, she tucked them under her lap in a serene yoga pose. The position hiked up her tiny shorts so high on one thigh, I could almost see—

“Ahem.” The sound of the teacher's fake cough at my side snapped me out of my daydream. Maybe it wasn't so easy to concentrate after all.

“Can you repeat the question?” I asked, embarrassed for the second day in a row.

“I simply asked if you were paying attention,” she snapped. “And thank you. You answered.”

I would have shrunk down in my desk-built-for-two if there had been any room, but I was already wedged in tight as it was.

As the teacher swayed up the aisle, my eyes drifted back to Anna and caught a burst of bright blue, like sea glass. She was looking right at me! Actually, everyone was probably looking at me, but next to that pair of crystal-clear blue eyes, all the other sets disappeared. I couldn't help myself. I smiled.
My
Anna would have smiled back, would have probably even giggled and shared my embarrassing moment with me. But this Anna didn't know me, so when I smiled, the best I got in return was a confused tug of one corner of her mouth before she turned forward again to pay attention to the lesson.

The teacher addressed me once more from the front of the classroom. “And please stop whistling.” I hadn't even realized I was making noise, but sure enough, my lips were in a pucker. I stopped abruptly and didn't start again for the rest of the day.

This was fine, because there would be nothing else to whistle about anyway.

It all went down in the cafeteria, just like in my nightmares.

I started the lunch hour as usual, at the long table in the back with my soft-sided cooler and my privacy. Halfway through my cold beef sandwich, everything went wrong.

I had been watching Anna out of the corner of my eye, at her usual table with Jeanie and their circle of girls, when I noticed movement from their end of the cafeteria. It was Anna, standing up and wrapping her hair into a bun that she held together with a pencil. Something was wrong. She nearly stabbed her own scalp three times trying to jab the pencil through her bound-up hair with one hand. The other hand was gesturing wildly, punctuating what ever she was saying with the jab of a single finger. I followed that finger to Jeanie's face.
Cool! Cat fight!

Other guys in the cafeteria had also turned to watch. Some, closer to the girls, must have been able to hear, because they began to take sides.

“You don't need to take that shit, Jeanie!”

“Damn, Anna! I didn't know you could cuss like that!”

“Anna can talk dirty like that to me
anytime
.”

I wrenched my gaze away from the fight to see which asshole was talking about my girl. Asshole was right. Jeremy Strong was leaning back in his little plastic chair, balancing it on two legs. The way he leered at Anna made my skin catch fire. I bet he didn't even remember how he'd called her “Anna Banana” freshman year, when her first attempt at going blond turned her hair yellow.

I remembered. The name caught on and stuck to her for about a month. Once, after a particularly messed-up comment from Jeremy about how he'd like to peel the banana and see if she had “highlighted her lowdown,” I'd seen Anna explode into tears and hide in the bathroom for two periods. The insult would have bounced off any of her friends, with their hard shells. But Anna was soft, and she let it sink in. I knew how that felt—how words could physically hurt, and I remember thinking Anna and I had something in common. I had wanted to know her ever since.

I guess I had Jeremy to thank for that—the master of cruel nicknames. Hell, he gave me mine. But unlike Anna Banana, the name Butter had stuck.

Jeremy landed his chair back on four legs with a thud and stood up swiftly. I turned to see what had caused the sudden
movement. Anna was marching away from her table, aiming blindly for the cafeteria exit, and Jeremy was moving to intercept her.

I don't know what possessed me, but in an instant I was standing too, stumbling toward Anna and Jeremy into the corner of the cafeteria where it was silently understood that I and other less impressive teenagers were not invited. I was moving too quickly—my heart was hammering, my breath catching in my chest—and not quickly enough, because Jeremy was reaching out; he was about to catch her arm.

“Anna!”

It was like time stopped. I mean, it wasn't just every single kid in the cafeteria that went quiet, but also the clangs and booms from the kitchen, the soft whir from the soda and snack machines, and the almost imperceptible sound of students packing and unpacking their lunches. It all just stopped dead in response to my booming voice. The Professor was right; I did have some lung power.

I froze. I had no idea what I had hoped to accomplish by barking out her name like that, but I had to do something! That douche bag was about to
touch
her. Now they were all staring at me, waiting to see what the giant would do next.

“I-I-I-I-”

“Spit it out, dude!” some guy from Jeremy's table hollered. It didn't sound cruel; it sounded eager, like he—and everyone else, I guess—was dying to hear what I had to say. What could possibly be so important to make the fat kid talk? It's not like I didn't talk; I talked to the Professor, I talked to teachers, I
talked to Doc Bean and my mom and the guy who delivered our mail. I guess I just didn't talk much to the kids at my school. Now those kids were hanging on my every word—or they would be, if I could get a word out.

“I … just wanted to make sure you were okay.” I said it directly to Anna. She shouldn't have been able to hear me from all the way over on her side of the cafeteria, but the utter silence carried my voice right across the room.

She stared back in response, her mouth falling open in a little circle of shock.

I had to keep talking to fill the god-awful silence.
Seriously, what happened to the damn machines?

“Are you? Okay?”

Heads shifted in unison to Anna. She felt the spotlight and tried to stand up straighter. She closed her mouth and fingered the pencil in her hair.

“Um, I'm fine?”

She said it just like that, with a question mark at the end. I wondered if everyone in the cafeteria heard what I heard in that question mark—not just “I'm fine,” but “Who are you and why are you talking to me?”

“Okay, well … good,” I said.

“That's it? What the hell was that?”

Damn, that kid from Jeremy's table had a mouth on him.

“She's fine, Butter.” Jeremy wrapped an arm around Anna, but it looked more predatory than protective, and I felt my skin crawl. “Why don't you just waddle on back to the big-and-tall section?”

A few kids gasped. You just didn't talk to a morbidly obese teen that way. It was unseemly, even by wicked-evil high school standards. But I wouldn't have even flinched if it weren't for Anna's reaction. She didn't gasp like the others or laugh or stand up for me or
any
typical reaction. She simply turned red and looked down at the floor.

She's embarrassed for me
.

The realization made me bristle. I didn't want Anna's pity. In fact, at that moment, I didn't want anything from her at all. She was weak for not saying something—
anything
—and for not picking a side or even bothering to look me in the face. She didn't have to know me to see I had gotten into this mess for
her
, that Jeremy was harassing me because of
her
, and that the best person to diffuse the situation would have been
her
. Nope, she just buried her face in the floor and pretended nothing was happening.

I was this close to calling her out on it when something wet and stringy smacked the side of my face. I didn't have to look as it dripped from my cheek to my chest to figure out what it was. If there's one thing I knew, it was food. And food was exactly what had just made contact with my face.

Oh my God. They're throwing food at me. They're going to come after me with tomatoes and lettuce and fruit like I'm a bad clown act in some old circus
. I nearly started shaking with rage and fear when I felt the sensation of food once again, but this time it was liquid, dripping over the sides of my fist. Confused, I looked at my left hand. It was covered with mustard leaking from the beef sandwich strangled between my clenched fingers.
I hadn't even realized I was still gripping my sub when I'd stood up.

Then it dawned on me. I finally looked down at my shirt and confirmed my new suspicion. The food that had hit me in the face was a chunk of beef—leftover pot roast—that had popped out of the sandwich I'd apparently squeezed in my rage at Anna's cowardice.

I'd thrown food at
myself
.

“Ew.” A small voice at my elbow drew my attention. It belonged to a slight girl with tiny, pointed features. She was holding out one bony arm as if it were contaminated. I glanced at the extended arm long enough to see I had accidentally sprayed it with mustard from the other end of the sub.

I couldn't even say I'm sorry. I couldn't say one more word—not to Anna, not to Jeremy, not to the waif I'd covered in condiments. I just needed to get
out
. I pushed forward blindly. The fastest way to the exit was right through Anna and Jeremy, and it was the only path wide enough for me to make my escape without tripping over chairs or tipping over tables.

I stumbled on the first couple of steps and heard nervous laughter from a few nearby tables.
That's okay, go ahead and make noise—any noise at all—just stop all the damn silence
. The volume continued to pick up—kids returning to their lunches, the kitchen back in action—and as I reached Anna and Jeremy, real voices joined the chorus.

That mouthy boy from Jeremy's table—
What's his name? Trent?
—had already moved on. He began talking loudly about some upcoming football match up against a rival school. But
not everyone was done with me. The next voice I heard was Jeremy's, at a pitch just soft enough not to create another scene, but just loud enough for his friends and Anna's to hear.

“New boyfriend, Anna? I didn't know you liked them so big. But that's cool, babe. I dig chicks with fetishes. Just be careful he doesn't crush you, huh? Wouldn't want you to suffocate.”

Then, with perfect timing, as if he planned it, he reached out a hand at the very moment I brushed past him, pretending not to hear, and flicked the fallen chunk of beef from my shirt. “Or get dirty.”

I didn't even break my stride. I kept my focus on the double doors that led out of the cafeteria and let new sounds continue to flood into my ears. I relished the return of the soda machine hums, the crackle of a bag of chips opening, the peal of laughter from kids who had returned to their personal conversations. Every sound was a new instrument joining the swell of a symphony. I let them all crash over me until I reached the doors and escaped into the blissfully silent hallway beyond, my sandwich still clutched in my fist.

“Two Big Mike's burgers, fully loaded, with a double order of sweet potato fries, a chocolate-cherry shaker, and an apple pie pocket.”

“Will that be all?”

No, probably not, but that's all for this stop
.

“Yes.”

“Sixteen seventy-two at the window. Please pull around.”

I paid for my food and found a shady spot to park the BMW. Charlie Parker blared from the stereo as I inhaled. Two burgers, two sides, and two desserts later, I tossed the empty containers into the passenger seat. I couldn't remember what anything had tasted like, and now I had an appetite for Mexican food. I steered the Beemer toward my favorite taco stand.

I was supposed to be in fifth-period advanced history. But when I'd left the cafeteria, I had just kept walking—right down
the hallway, past my next class and my locker, straight to my car, fishing keys out of my pocket as I went. Anna had the right idea the day before, cutting class. It was exhilarating. I could go anywhere I wanted, do anything I wanted—total freedom.

But as soon as I'd revved the engine and pulled out of the school lot, I was lost. Where the hell was I supposed to go at twelve thirty in the afternoon? Home? Not likely. Mom would be there and want to know why I wasn't in class. Tucker's? Tucker was homeschooled, and since our moms didn't know each other, she wasn't likely to call up and tattle on me. But as I'd thought of Tucker's skinny face, I'd somehow ended up at a drive-through window.