Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have (2 page)

“I don’t want any trouble this year,” I say. Ugo and I have been at war since the first week of ninth grade. I don’t even know why. I just know that Dad doesn’t like it when I have issues at school. It makes him question his legacy.

“We’re not going to have any trouble,” Ugo says, “as long as you stay in your locker and don’t come out.”

“Very funny,” I say.

But he’s not joking. And to prove it, he starts pushing me into my locker. Now it doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that a 306-pound kid is not going to fit into a school locker. But Ugo’s never been bothered by little things like facts.

He puts a giant paw on my back and shoves. I probably wouldn’t mind getting in the locker if I could close the door behind me and never come out. I’d stay for the whole semester if someone would slide a thin-crust pizza through the slats three times a day. Preferably Papa Gino’s with extra pepperoni.

“Cut it out,” I say, my voice echoing inside the locker. I sound like such a pussy. Even to myself. Ugo thinks so, too, because he just pushes harder.

“Hey, Andy,” someone says in the hallway.

Ugo lets go. I turn around and see my best friend, Eytan,
standing there. I’ve never been so relieved to seen a skinny person. It’s not like Eytan can do anything to stop Ugo. He’s outweighed five to one. But there’s less likely to be bloodshed with a witness around. Eytan’s my personal version of Amnesty International.

“This may sound slightly cliché,” Eytan says to Ugo, “but why don’t you fight someone your own size?”

“He is my size, Pretzel Rod,” Ugo says.

“Then try someone your own IQ. I think there’s a mold culture in the Bio lab.”

Ugo crunches his fist like he might punch Eytan in the face, but instead he gives me a super hard shove, so my head whacks into the front of the locker. Great. I’ll probably have the number 372 imprinted on my forehead for the rest of the day—48 on my waist and 372 on my head. There goes my Sophomores Who Lost Their Virginity Award.

“Son of a bitch,” I say, like I’ve had enough.

I turn around and face Ugo. Actually, I face his sweatshirt. He’s a lot taller than me, and he always wears a sweatshirt, even when it’s a hundred degrees. From the smell of it, this sweatshirt hasn’t been washed since middle school.

“You want to do something about it?” Ugo says to me.

He reaches out slowly, too slowly, and puts an open hand on the front of my chest and pushes. And just like that, he pins me against the locker.

I’d love to shove him back. Grab him by his sweatshirt and whip him into the wall, bash his head a couple times
until he starts crying. I get a flash of those sea-lion fights on Animal Planet, two giant bulls roaring and smacking against each other.

But I don’t do anything. I don’t fight back at all.

That makes him smile. He even laughs a little.

“You’re such a wuss,” he says.

What can I say? It’s true.

So I stare at the ground. I keep staring until he walks away. Then I brush myself off and pretend it didn’t happen. Just like always.

“First day follies,” Eytan says. “Don’t let him get to you.”

I rub my sides where the locker almost tore them off.

“No big deal,” I say.

But it’s not true. When I look into the future, I see an entire year of misery—hiding from Ugo, never going to the bathroom alone, taking corners wide in case he’s waiting. It’s a very big deal.

I was hoping Ugo forgot about me over the summer, or maybe there would be a new, pudgy freshman for him to torment.

That’s pretty sad, right? When you’re such a coward you wish someone else would get it instead of you?

on a new level.

Eytan and I are walking downstairs when I suddenly remember I’ve got a protein bar in my backpack. I’m not supposed to eat it until right before lunch. Jessica taught me that if you eat a protein bar and drink an entire Diet Coke right from the can, you feel really full because your stomach thinks it ate a whole meal. She didn’t tell me you swell up like the
Hindenburg
and leak gas out of your butt for thirty minutes. But I guess it takes sacrifice to lose weight. If I have to choose between skinny jeans and air pollution, I’m willing to compromise.

I reach into my backpack, feel the wrapper crinkle seductively in my hand.

“Are you smuggling illegal contraband into school facilities?” Eytan says.

“It’s just a protein bar,” I say.

“It may look like a protein bar, but how do I know it’s not an illegal recording device?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Okay, check it out. I saw this Web site where a guy turns regular items into little cameras, and then he walks around and looks up girls’ skirts.”

“You’re twisted,” I say, but I’m kind of laughing. That’s why I like Eytan. He can always make you laugh when things are rough and you don’t want to.

“Seriously,” he says. “You take a protein bar, core out the center, put in one of those spy cams, and
bam!
You’re in business.”

“What good is a camera in a protein bar?”

He looks at me like I must be dense. “You drop it on the floor when girls walk by,” he says, “and it looks up their skirts. Or you kind of hold it in your hand when you’re talking to them. You’re talking, but your protein bar is looking at their cleavage.”

“You’re totally obsessed.”

“Call it what you want, but this is our year, my friend. You get your 4.0, Estonia wins Model UN, and I become a man. A Hoochie Coochie Man, in the immortal words of Muddy Waters.”

Eytan loves blues music. He also loves sex, even though he’s never had any. Getting laid is Eytan’s life mission, followed by winning Model UN. We came in sixty-third last year, but we were Botswana, and what can you expect when you’re Botswana? This year we were assigned Estonia, and for some reason, Eytan thinks we can go all the way. He thinks he can
go all the way, too. Last year he got to second base with Sveta, a German exchange student, but no further. Those last two bases are driving him crazy.

Eytan says, “We’re sophomores now, right? That means the freshman girls are going to be looking up to us for support and encouragement.” He winks at me. “Play your cards right, and you might become a man, too.”

“I’m already a man.”

Eytan studies my face. “Son of a bitch. Did you get some this summer?”

“No.”

“Seriously. You got poon, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t get poon. But I met somebody.”

“Met her where?”

“At a wedding. One of Mom’s events, you know?”

Eytan looks at me with amazement. Like he suddenly respects me or something. Not that he didn’t before. But on a new level.

“You have a girlfriend!” he says.

“Not exactly.”

“I want photographic evidence—cell phone pictures, image capture—”

The bell rings, and the hall fills with a loud
groan
.

“We’d better go,” I say.

“You’re not getting off that easily. I expect a full report later.”

Eytan swings his backpack up on one bony shoulder. Sometimes I think we shouldn’t hang around together. You know how big things look bigger when they’re next to small things?

Eytan is halfway down the hall when he calls back to me: “What’s her name?”

“Who?” I say.

“Your girlfriend.”

“April.”

My whole body tingles when I say the name. Suddenly I’m back at the wedding yesterday with music playing, surrounded by the smell of Mom’s food.

Remember April
, the note said.

And I do.

what happened yesterday.

It was Sunday afternoon, and I was in the function hall at Temple Israel, standing in front of a table of 380 mini éclairs. The éclairs were stuffed with cream. I was stuffed into my suit pants.

Another Sunday, another wedding. That’s what it’s like when your mom’s a caterer.

Mom’s not just any kind of caterer. She has a specialty: mini food.

She does platters of mini cheeseburgers, mini club sandwiches, mini pizza bagels, mini muffins. She’s famous for her Skinny Mini Caesar Salad, which is a whole Caesar salad made on one piece of romaine lettuce so you can pop it into your mouth with your fingers.

Everyone likes small things. Take my sister, for instance. She’s got a waist like a stalk of asparagus, and she’s very popular.

Small food, small people. Extremely hard to resist.

Anyway, there was a platter of mini club sandwiches sitting on the table in front of me, and they were calling my name.

Andy
, they said.
Eat us
.

I looked around to make sure nobody was watching me, and I scooped one up in my fist—

“I saw that,” a girl’s voice said.

It was an Asian girl, and she was looking right at me. She was about my age, wearing boxy black glasses that made her look like a genius. I glanced down at her cleavage—it was kind of hard to miss with the dress she was wearing—and I realized she was a
beautiful
genius.

Suddenly I got this strange feeling in my chest. I have to be careful with strange feelings because I have asthma. When I have an attack, it usually starts as a tickle in my chest. The next thing you know, there’s a giant fist clenched around my lungs and I’m gasping for breath. That’s why I keep an inhaler on me at all times.

“What did you see?” I said to the girl, and I reached in my pocket to make sure the inhaler was there. Like Mom says, better safe than sorry.

“I saw you snag a sandwich. You’ve got nice moves.”

“Not true,” I said, even though it’s obvious that I did it.

“Why do you have to hide it? Why don’t you just eat one?”

“My mom made them,” I said. “And she’ll kill me if I eat her stuff.”

“Your mom’s the caterer?” She picked up a mini éclair
and popped it in her mouth like it was no big deal, like a person can just eat a whole mini éclair in public, with everyone looking.

“This is delicious,” she said. “What’s it like to have a mom who’s a caterer?”

I glanced down at my stomach. It was hanging over my belt like a muffin top. That kind of answered the question, right?

“Hello,” the girl said. “Anybody home?”

“What?” I said, kind of annoyed. Sometimes I get lost in my head so it’s hard to keep up my end of the conversation.

“I’m just being friendly,” she said. “Don’t pop a blood vessel.”

“April,” an Asian man with graying hair called.

That was the first time I heard her name.

“Coming!” she said.

“Now,” the man said. Then he spit out some rapid-fire foreign sentence.

“Is that your dad?” I said. She nodded. “He’s pretty tough, huh?”

“Imagine Kim Jong-il as a dentist,” she said.

I got a flash of the Korean dictator drilling a molar, and it made me laugh. This girl sounded like one of the Model UN geeks, funny and smart at the same time.

I really liked her. That was my first problem.

She smiled at me, and I noticed her teeth were super white, whiter than any human being’s I’ve seen.

“You have nice teeth,” I said, which even I have to admit was a pretty stupid thing to say.

April lowered her voice to a whisper: “I had teeth-whitening.”

“You mean like those strips?”

“No. The real thing. With the laser. Just like the actresses get.”

“Are you an actress?”

“No.”

“Then why did you do that?” I said.

“I used to look … different,” she said.

“Different how?”

Before she could answer, a stream of angry Korean came flying across the room. Her dad.

“Shoot,” April said. “I have to go.”

“Wait,” I said.

She was a little surprised. So was I. I’d never told a girl to wait before.

“Wait for what?” she said.

I had to say something. I couldn’t let her go thinking I was just a fat kid with a caterer mom. I mean, I am a fat kid with a caterer mom, but there’s a lot more to me. I don’t know why, but I wanted her to understand that. I wanted to tell her there was more to me that she should know.

“I’m a jock,” I said, which was a complete lie.

“You are?”

“Seriously,” I said. “I’m an athlete.”

“That’s cool,” she said, but it didn’t sound like she believed me.

“You know the sumo wrestlers in Japan?” I said.

“I’m Korean,” she said. “Everyone assumes all Asian people are Japanese, but we’re not. We’re a lot of different things.”

“I know that,” I said, even though I didn’t know. “But you’ve seen the sumo wrestlers, right?”

“Only on TV,” she said.

“You know how they look big, but they’re really not big? I mean, they
are
big, but they’re big in a muscular way. Like they’re famous for being big.”

“Okay.”

“I’m like them.”

“You’re a sumo wrestler?”

“No. I’m a jock. A big jock.”

“You’re a big jock?” she said, then she looked across the room. “I really have to go.”

She smiled again. It was like looking into car headlights.

I wanted to say something else. I wanted to say a million things, but I just grunted …

… and April walked away.

the pitiful life of a narrow.

That’s what happened yesterday.

So when Eytan asks me, I tell him I have a girlfriend. I even say her name.

But it’s all a lie.

I’d never seen April before yesterday, and I’ll never see her again. That’s what happens when you’re a coward. You don’t speak up. Even when it’s the perfect time. Even if it’s the only chance you’ll ever get.

“You know my theory,” Eytan says. “Hot girls are always named after months, cities, or flowers. You meet a girl named Magnolia or Dallas—guaranteed hotness. And if you name your daughter April, she’s going to have a prom date. It’s like you’ve cut fate completely out of the picture.”

Eytan gives me a double thumbs-up and disappears into the crowd.

Sophomore year is ten minutes old, and it’s already messed
up. Ugo is on the warpath, I lied to my best friend, and my stomach is killing me.

To hell with my diet. I grab the protein bar out of my backpack. I tear off the wrapper and take a huge bite. I hold the backpack in front of my face for camouflage. I don’t want people to see me eating. A fat kid chewing with chocolate smeared on his face? That’s a bad first impression.