Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can't Have (6 page)

Warner.

He’s sitting on the ground smiling and spinning a dodgeball between his legs. So we’re together yet again.

That’s just Monday. Trust me, it gets worse.

On Tuesday, Eytan and I are walking out of AP History when I see Justin put his arm around April’s shoulders like
he’s hot shit. She shrugs it off, but not too fast. It looks like she’s grateful to have someone paying attention to her. Someone with a positive rep. Someone who’s not me.

Eytan sees it, too, but he doesn’t say anything. He starts talking about Estonia instead, trying to distract me like a friend does when things are bad.

At dinner on Tuesday night I have to listen to Jessica telling Mom how things are going so well at school. She loves seventh grade, she says, and then she launches into some stupid story about how the boys try to touch her hair, but she screams and they run away.

Mom asks me how things are going, and I tell her the girls try to touch my hair, but I scream and they run away. Jessica doesn’t find that funny, and neither does Mom. So I make up a bunch of exciting stuff, so Mom won’t get worried or e-mail Dad to have a talk with me.

So much for Tuesday.

On Wednesday, April’s not sitting alone at the new-girl table in the cafeteria anymore. Instead she’s at a table with Lisa Jacobs and a bunch of the popular girls. Lisa Jacobs is an SHG. Super Hot Girl, only she’s SHG #
I
. She’s got long blonde hair, an amazing face, and giant boobs. Her boobs are so big they’re like an entire other student. Eytan says they have their own GPA, like Lisa has a 2.8, and her boobs have a 4.0.

The worst part is that Lisa is nice. Not nice to me, but a nice person. Everyone says so.

What I can’t figure out is how April ended up with Lisa. They’re laughing together like old friends. When did they become friends?

Lisa is also O. Douglas’s girlfriend. No surprise that the hottest girl and hottest guy are together. My dad always says, “Water seeks its own level.” Maybe that’s why I always get stuck with Warner. Fat drifts towards other fat. It’s a fundamental physical law.

Later that day I see April and Lisa Jacobs together again, this time sitting in the library. It looks like they’re studying together, but that seems pretty much impossible. I mean, April is brilliant, and Lisa Jacobs is … known for having good hair. It’s a mystery to me.

On Thursday, I see April walking down the hall with those same girls. They’re like a posse now, moving together in a clump of popularity.

By Friday, she’s sitting far away from Justin in History class. She’s getting so popular, she doesn’t need him anymore. Or maybe her new friends warned her that he was a dipshit. Either way, she’s moved on to bigger and better things.

That would be kind of a relief, except she’s moved on from me, too. She hasn’t said a word to me since that day in the hall, and she won’t make eye contact. It’s like we’ve never even met. Or maybe we did meet, but she purposely did an
Eternal Sunshine
and had the memory erased to make space for more pleasant memories that don’t include fat kids.

Eytan said I had to move fast, and I did.

It took just one week for April, a brand-new girl, to become popular. It took me less than a week to become an untouchable.

That’s pretty fast.

mini memories.

I’m standing in front of 175 mini spring rolls with a love song playing in the background. “True Colors,” that old song by Cyndi Lauper. Sappy. But what else do you expect at a wedding?

It’s the weekend, and I’m helping Mom again. There are girls all over the place, but I can’t stop thinking about April. I blame the spring rolls. They’re Asian, and so is April. I know she’s Korean and spring rolls are Vietnamese, but it doesn’t matter. Asian things remind me of April now.

Mom passes me with a platter of mini knishes, and those remind me of April, too. I can’t figure that one out. Why would Jewish food remind me of her?

When I see the mini meatballs, I realize it’s not the nationality at all—it’s the food. Food in general reminds me of April. So I’m pretty much screwed.

As soon as Mom disappears into the kitchen, I stuff three
spring rolls into my mouth. I gulp down a knish and nearly burn the roof off my mouth. Then I pop in a meatball to wash it all down.

True colors.

I’m trying to distract myself, but it doesn’t work. I keep looking behind me thinking April is going to walk up at any minute.

And the thing is, she’s not even at this wedding.

I turn right.

It’s the end of the day, and I’m rushing to put books in my locker and get down to the auditorium for the first Model UN meeting. Eytan has been talking about it nonstop for two weeks. “Are you excited?” he asked me yesterday for the three-thousandth time.

“Absolutely,” I said. “But aren’t you a little worried about being Estonia?”

That was my subtle way of reminding him that nobody gives a crap about Estonia, and maybe he shouldn’t get his hopes up.

“That’s the great thing,” Eytan said. “We’re the underdog. Nobody expects the underdog to do well. It’s perfect.”

I don’t see how it’s perfect. I see another long year toiling in obscurity, arguing about sheep-grazing rights with Latvia. When I told Eytan I was excited, I was lying. I just didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Now I have to go down to Model UN and fake it for two hours.

I slam my locker closed and spin the dial twice. I turn around and run right into Ugo’s sweatshirt.

“People call you JP now. That’s funny,” Ugo says.

I look up and down the hallway. Nobody. Why is it you can’t get two seconds alone all day in high school, but when you actually need people, there’s nobody around?

“Jurassic Pork,” he says, trying to get a reaction out of me.

“I’m not scared of you,” I say.

It’s a total lie, and he knows it. He cracks his knuckles.

It’s go time.

Suddenly I think about Dad. If I get into it with Ugo, Dad’s going to be pissed. Ugo and I had a fight last year, and Dad had to come in for a thirty-six-minute conference. That’s $210 in Dad’s world. If you add drive time back and forth from work, one stupid fight cost Dad $455. I know the exact number because he wrote me up a fake bill to teach me a lesson.

Now I’m thinking it’s going to happen again, only Mom will have to deal with it alone, and she’ll freak out. Dad will have to spend seventy-six minutes on the phone talking her down, and forty minutes yelling at me for making his life difficult. I don’t want to see what that bill looks like.

So when Ugo makes his move, I do something different.

I run.

It’s total wuss behavior. I won’t deny it. It’s not only wuss, it’s just plain stupid because I’m fat, and I can’t run. They don’t put you in Slow Gym because you set records in the hundred-meter dash.

But I’m not thinking clearly in the moment. I’m running for my life.

I’m barely halfway down the hall before Ugo snags me by the back of the shirt and reels me in like a whale on a harpoon. He jerks me around and sends me flying over his thigh. It’s like I weigh nothing at all. That’s how strong he is.

Once I’m on the ground, he starts kicking me in the ass. “Holy shit,” he says, “you’re so fat my foot almost disappeared!”

I wish I had super ass cheeks. I’d grab his foot and tear it off with my ass. That would teach him a lesson. But I don’t have a super ass or super anything else. I have protective fat and the good sense to cover my balls. That’s about it.

Ugo leans back on one foot, getting ready to kick me again. I close my eyes and nothing happens.

I open my eyes and he’s not there anymore. I roll over just in time to see him traveling backwards, pulled by some invisible gravitational force. I don’t know what’s going on until I notice there’s an arm pinned around his neck. Someone is pulling him from behind.

O. Douglas is pulling him.

He spins Ugo around, unwinding him like a top until they’re face-to-face. It’s an expert move, like something you’d see on WWF.

“What the hell?” Ugo says.

“Back off the kid,” O. says.

“What’s it to you?” Ugo says.

He waits for an answer.

I wait, too, because I’ve got no idea. I’ve never even met O. Douglas before. He’s got no reason to save me. He doesn’t give a reason. He just holds his hands out to Ugo, palms open, and shrugs. Ugo looks at me over his shoulder. He’s like a lion who can’t get to his meat. I’m practically pooping my pants, but O. doesn’t flinch.

“Take off,” O. says quietly.

“Whatever,” Ugo says, and he drifts away down the hall.

I’ve never seen anyone stand up to Ugo. This is one of those historic moments in the history of high school. I wish I had it on video so I could play it back for Eytan. He’d upload it to YouTube, see if we’d get e-mail from some lonely girls in the Midwest.

But it doesn’t seem to be a big deal to O. Almost like business as usual.

“You okay?” he says.

“I guess.”

He holds out a hand to help me up, but I don’t take it. I don’t want him to think I’m some little kid who can’t stand up on his own. I get up by myself and brush dirt off my pants.

O. says, “The bigger they are, right?”

I don’t know if that’s right or not. Do the laws of physics apply to Ugo? Or is he some kind of anomaly? A giant, sweat-shirted version of a black hole.

O. motions towards the stairs. “You headed down?”

“Sure,” I say.

And just like that, we start to walk downstairs together. It’s hard for me to conceive of it—the head of the football team and me walking together through school. Surreal.

“What’s your name?” O. says.

“Andy.”

“I’m O.”

He says it like I haven’t heard of him. Like the whole school hasn’t. In one way it’s ridiculous, but it’s also kind of cool that he doesn’t just assume I would know him.

“Hold up a sec,” he says when we get to the bottom of the stairs.

He licks his fingers and starts to nervously fix his hair. It reminds me of an actor getting ready to go onstage. After a couple seconds he says, “Ready.”

And we walk out into the hall.

There are kids everywhere—talking, laughing, and splitting into groups before heading for their various clubs. The minute we step out, people begin to say hi to O. Not just a few people. Practically everybody. I’m used to walking down the hall without really being seen—fat but invisible—but O. is like a celebrity. Some people call his name, others nod, still others stop to ask him how he’s doing. He negotiates it effortlessly, moving in a straight line while everyone reacts around him. He seems comfortable with it all, except I notice he reaches up and checks his hair from time to time.

I check a lot more than that. I make sure my fly is up and my stomach is sucked in. I hold my head up a little so it doesn’t accentuate my double chin. Mom taught me that one.

But then an amazing thing starts to happen. I begin to feel like I’m taller. Thinner, too. I know I haven’t changed in the last ten minutes, but I feel different. I walk with my shoulders up, and I nod at people I’ve never met in my life. All this just from standing next to O.

Just as I’m starting to enjoy myself, a guy with a thick neck cuts between us. He gives O. some kind of triple handshake that ends with them bumping fists.

The Neck notices me standing there.

“What do you want?” he says.

“We were talking,” O. says.

“Right. Whatever.” He turns away from me. “You ready to kick ass and take names?” he asks O.

“Let’s do it,” O. says.

O. nods to me once, and then he’s off, walking side by side with the Neck. Actually, it’s less like walking than it is strutting. They own the hall. People move out of the way to let them by.

I’m so stunned by what just happened, I stand and stare.

There’s a group of people stopped at the end of the hall waiting for them. Lisa Jacobs and crew. The popular girls. One of the girls reaches down to unzip her backpack, and I see April.

O. slides into the middle of that crowd, and they all greet
each other. He even says hello to April. It’s not like they hug and kiss, but I’m amazed they even know each other. How did April get to Hello Level with O.? A week ago she was at You Don’t Exist Level.

I’m too far away to hear what anyone’s saying. I watch it all like a scene through a window. April nervous, shifting from foot to foot, playing with her hair and smiling a lot.

Suddenly I feel sick to my stomach.

Eytan walks up doing a stiff-legged march and singing something unintelligible. I cover my ears.

“What the hell is that?” I say.

“Estonian National Anthem,” he says in a thick accent. “We must hurry—glorious future UN triumph awaits.”

“Okay, Borat.”

Eytan pulls me down the hall towards the auditorium. Usually he’s a pretty cool character, but today he’s so excited he’s practically skipping. I look back at O.’s group down at the opposite end of the hall.

“For what purpose do you suspend forward movement?” Eytan says.

“I have to go to the can,” I say.

“There’s no time for Number 2 when the fate of our Number 1 country hangs in the balance.”

“It will be the fastest dump in history,” I say.

He looks at me through squinted eyes. “You’d better set a land speed record,” he says.

“I’ll bring you the digital readout.”

He pats me on the elbow and runs towards the auditorium.

I stand there for a minute. I don’t really have to go to the bathroom. I just need a second to breathe.

I look back and forth down the hall. It’s one of those moments when you know something big is happening, but you don’t know what it is yet.

If I turn left, I’ll follow Eytan to the Model UN meeting. Those are my people, the UN geeks. Any kind of geeks, really. I know what’s going on in there, and it might even be fun. I can talk in a stupid accent like Eytan and try to score with the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The thing is, I don’t really like Model UN. I’ve never really told anyone.

Still, I belong there. I belong on the left.

I turn right.