Butter (7 page)

I grabbed my sax from the passenger seat, locked up the BMW, and followed a familiar path. It wasn't the trail to the top. This path angled up for only a few yards before it leveled out and circled around the side of the mountain. It ended at a small outcrop of solid red-brown rock, shrouded by just enough desert shrubbery that you couldn't see the parking lot or the city
lights or anything but desert and stars. This is where I came to howl at the moon.

I could play as loud as I wanted, as long as I wanted, and the only creatures who heard were the coyotes, who sometimes liked to sing along. I wanted to reward the choir of night critters with something upbeat, but as was usually the case when I came to howl at the moon, I was only in the mood for blues.

I didn't even know what would come out when I raised the sax to my lips, but soon I heard the first frail notes of “Cry Me a River.” I embraced the choice, laying into the keys and listening to the lyrics running silently through my head. Soon, it faded into more melancholy modern artists, until the saddest songs I knew were weeping right out of my saxophone.

With every note I unleashed, I allowed myself a new beat of self-pity. A: parents who give up on you. B-flat: people who stare at you but don't really see you. D: doctors who fail to fix you. C-sharp: kids who would rather watch you eat than hear what you have to say.

A final note sailed away from my outcrop and was swallowed up by the wind twisting over the desert below.
That is unless you can eat and say something at the same time
.

A reckless idea began to take shape in my head, and I knew I was done howling for the night. Without another glance back at the moon or my beloved mountain, I padded down to the car, packed up the sax, and hit the gas for home.

• • •

My dad was pacing the wide stone walk out front when I got home. He stopped as I pulled up, and we locked eyes for a
moment. Then, eyes still on me, he called loud enough to be heard through the open doorway, “He's home!”

Typical.

And good
, I thought. That was the last thing I needed—for him to start talking to me when I'd made my decision.

Mom met us at the door with her arms stretched wide in what I'm sure was a hug meant for me but intercepted by my dad. He took her wrists gently in his hands before she could go all “mom” on me.

“He said he was going to Logan's,” he said.

“I changed my mind,” I said to his back. “I just drove around instead.”

“Driving. Again.” He said it pointedly to my mother.

Mom accepted this “out driving” excuse blindly, over and over again, but my dad had long since stopped believing it. Sometimes I think he even suspected I still went to the mountain.

“He changed his mind.” Mom excused me, as always.

“In this house, we don't say we're going one place and go another. He knows better.”

I'm right here!

“I'm going to bed,” he said. “
Everyone
is going to bed.” Then he kissed my mom on the forehead and released her wrists.

He disappeared into the house, and when his footsteps hit the stairs, Mom finally reached for me. For a small woman, she had large hands, and she cupped them now around my cheeks.

“Out driving again, huh?”

I nodded, wiggling everything that wasn't gripped in those hands.

“Professor Dunn was really hoping you'd show up at Logan's to play a little.”

I shrugged.

“I called down there to tell you it was time to come home, but Professor Dunn said you never showed up and that you hadn't planned to. Your father was just beside himself.”

I rolled my eyes. It was taking a conscious effort to keep my mouth shut, but I knew talking to my mom would talk me right out of my plan.

“He worries about you very much,” she said softly. “I think he worries even more than I do.”

Yeah right
.

“Aw, who am I kidding?” She smiled. “Nobody worries more about their little ones than mothers.”

Little ones!
I could have laughed if I hadn't been concentrating so hard on showing no emotion at all.

Her smile faded, concern clouding her delicate features once again. “You okay, baby?”

I nodded once more, and finally she released me to my room, where I took up my usual post in the overstuffed chair, laptop perched on my wide middle. Only this would be no usual bedtime Web session. I wasn't even going to talk to Anna—or at least, I was going to try really hard not to. Fortunately, she wasn't online, and I could focus on the task at hand, before I lost my nerve.

• • •

Setting up a website is easy enough. Get a free domain name, search the Internet for a premade page format, copy all the
computer language mumbo-jumbo into your site, then start tinkering. It took me less than fifteen minutes, and by the time I began typing on
ButtersLastMeal.com
, I felt committed, like there was no turning back.

The first words came easily. All I had to think about was that photo someone had snapped of me in the cafeteria, of all the eyes that were
always
on me at lunch, of kids I didn't even know spewing shit that wasn't true online.

I couldn't control the kids at school. I couldn't control my parents or my weight or my life … but I could command the conversation online. I could make sure the only things people said about me in cyberspace were the things I invited them to say. And if I could control that, then that would be all that mattered.

The first words flowed from my fingertips:

You think I eat a lot now? That's nothing. Tune in—

I checked a calendar, and my eyes fell on New Year's Eve; it was exactly four weeks away to the day and perfect for so many reasons. First of all, come on—the last day of the year? There's poetry in that. It was also the day before that stupid airline started charging double for seats; I didn't mind missing that. New Year's Eve gave me plenty of time to say good-byes but came up soon enough that I couldn't talk myself out of it. Best of all, it was the night I was supposed to meet Anna.

Now I would never have to know what would have come
next—Anna hurt that I stood her up, Anna breaking up with me, Anna moving on.

I typed furiously.

December 31
^st
, when I will stream a live webcast of my last meal. Death row inmates get one. Why shouldn't I? I can't take another year in this fat suit, but I can end this year with a bang.

I hesitated. What was I expecting from this? Pity? Attention? Would it have some dramatic impact? Or would I just come off as some pathetic crybaby?

You
are
a pathetic crybaby
.

I swallowed and closed my eyes. The cafeteria flashed there under my lids, then my mother's face—I tried not to think of her gentle smile, her strong hands, her familiar humming. The pictures came faster: Doc Bean, the Professor, Tucker, my dad, Anna.

Anna
. Her tan skin and blond hair swam into my vision, eclipsing everything else. I thought of her waiting alone on New Year's Eve, of her confused expression when I spoke to her at lunch, of her perfect lips and blue eyes and her forehead that I would never kiss the way my dad kissed my mom's.

I thought of preachers who said suicide damned you to hell. I thought of heaven and how it must be a place made of smooth desert rock with tundra that blocked out the city lights and clear skies with a perfect view of the moon and a saxophone and a body that never got too tired to play it.

I thought of those damn airline seats and how even two of them wouldn't be enough for me, and that's why we always drove everywhere and why the one time we flew to New York it was on Dad's company jet, and Dad was
still
embarrassed by me when I had to squeeze all the way down the plane's exit stairs because the rails were pinching my sides.

I opened my eyes and finished:

If you can stomach it, you're invited to watch … as I eat myself to death.

—Butter

That probably would have been enough—just a little website out there among the millions—a clue for one or two classmates to find or something for a stranger to sympathize with. But even after unloading into cyberspace, my anger had not diminished. In fact, it bubbled over and poured right into the comments section of that piece-of-shit Scottsdale High “most likely” list.

I tried to post a link to my site, but the blog wouldn't allow anonymous links. I knew I couldn't comment as “SaxMan” without blowing my cover with Anna, so I created a new handle, “Butter,” and posted my morbid invitation.

Then I went back to
ButtersLastMeal.com
and added this quick postscript:

Menu to be announced, but I can tell you right now—it ends with one full stick of butter.

A carton of eggs

An extra-large anchovy pizza

A stack of pancakes

An entire bucket of fried chicken

A package of uncooked hot dogs

One raw onion

A jar of peanut butter

An extra-large box of cookies

An entire meat loaf

A tub of ice cream

And one stick of butter

There's something about waking up the morning after you decide to kill yourself. There's this kind of expectation that skies will be gloomy, the air damp, and the sun blocked out—some kind of environmental sympathy, you know?

So I have to say I was a little offended by the sunshine glaring through my blinds at seven a.m. that Friday. I mean, I know we only get about five days of rain a year in central Arizona, but couldn't the universe just do me this one favor and spit out a couple clouds?

I groaned and covered my face with a pillow. If Mother Nature didn't believe me, no one would. I could already hear the whispers behind my back—
a cry for help
. Gross. I didn't want anybody's help.

Mom's voice followed three short raps on the door. “Breakfast, baby.”

Seriously. When was she going to stop calling me baby?

When I'm dead
, I thought. Then I hauled myself out of bed and joined my parents in the kitchen.

Mom hadn't been able to reach me last night through conversation, so she was apparently giving it a shot with food instead. She loaded my plate with extra bacon and topped my eggs with so much cheese I could barely see the scramble underneath. I noticed she was still blackballing the sugar, though. There wasn't a pancake or pastry to be seen.

I intended to down my breakfast and go back for seconds. After all, no need to stay on the diet now. But somehow, for the first time in I can't remember how many mornings, I didn't have an appetite. So I picked at a couple pieces of bacon and settled my stomach by adding some 7-Up to my orange juice.

Mom tried not to notice, but I could see her eyes flickering toward my plate as she talked to Dad. Her obvious concern needled me with a splinter of guilt—small, but powerful enough to split me open if I let it.

I focused instead on how much better off she'd be without me, once she'd dealt with the loss. She could save a ton of time in the kitchen for a start, making breakfast for just her and Dad. And they would fight less, since, from what I could tell, all their fights were about me.

I knew Mom wouldn't see it that way at first, but Dad would help her get there, because deep down, Dad would probably be relieved. I felt strangely grateful for my dad right then, for his distance from me. It would be an immense benefit for Mom when I was gone. The thought cheered me up, and I swallowed
a couple more bites of bacon before excusing myself to get ready for school.

• • •

“Excuse me. I'm sorry.”

“It's fine. After you.”

“No, it's okay. I didn't mean to cut.”

“Go ahead.”

“No, I'm sorry.”

“It's no big de—”

“No, really.” The girl put her hand on my arm. “I'm sorry.”

Geez! All day it had been like this. First, the kid who insisted on helping me gather my books and papers when they tumbled out of my locker, then the boy in algebra who jumped in to answer for me when I fumbled a question about linear equations, and now this girl, insisting I use the soda machine ahead of her. Maybe Anna was right. Maybe everyone at school
was
reading the most likely list.

I shook off the girl's hand and tossed my quarters down the soda machine's slot. “It was a joke,” I mumbled.

One Mountain Dew later, I was parked at my cafeteria table, unloading my lunch. Hunger had finally caught up to me, and I didn't care who was watching as I inhaled the usual cold leftovers. I half expected some sort of follow-up confrontation with Jeremy or Anna, but that corner of the cafeteria seemed to be ignoring me more than ever. I was invisible again.

Only once did one of them look my way. The mouthy kid,
Trent, caught my eye for a split second as I glanced up between bites of roast beef sandwich. I looked away quickly, so maybe I imagined it, but I could have sworn he gave me a thumbs-up. I did a double take, but when I looked back, he was talking to the crowd at his table.

I made it all the way to sixth period computer lab without another incident, and I'd almost convinced myself no one had really seen the site. I just had to be sure.

I parked at my favorite computer, under the lab's tiny window. It was the only spot where the computer screen wasn't visible by the teacher or any other student. I'm no computer whiz, but this lab was desperately easy. Most of us in the class knew more about computers by the time we got to junior high than our teacher did when he graduated college, so everyone always raced to finish the day's assignment and get in some Internet time. It was just tricky not to get busted cruising online. That's why the seat under the window was the best.