Food Freak

by Alex van Tol

  But right now? I couldn’t care less.

  My father is holding me in his arms. My father.

  My father is talking to me. Asking me where I’ve been.

  Holding me.

  “I slept at the pool,” I say. My voice is muffled against his shoulder. He smells like laundry detergent and…Papa.

  Him.

  “You were where?” He loosens his grip so I can speak.

  I straighten and he lets me go, but I can’t look at his face. Not yet. “I was at the rec center,” I say. “I slept on the trampoline.” It feels like an absurd thing to say. Kevin appears from around the corner. He pauses to survey the scene, then glides gently across the floor toward me, his shoulder blades rolling smoothly under his fur.

  “You slept on the trampoline?” Papa repeats. “At the rec center?”

  I nod. “It wasn’t very comfortable.” The cat rises up, puts his front paws on my thighs and stretches.

  “Why, Dani?”

  I shrug. I gently pick Kevin’s claws out of my jeans. He drops to the floor and stalks back in the direction he came from.

  Papa hugs me again. “Because of me,” he whispers. “Because I’ve been lost in my own world. I’ve forgotten about you.”

  I start to cry then, small stinging tears, as though I am afraid of anything bigger. In case they swallow me and Papa whole. “I’m sorry I worried you,” I snuffle. I pull away from his hug. “And I’m sorry I shouted at you. And threw the glass. And tore up your poster.”

  Papa is quiet for a moment. “I think I understand.” Then he shakes his head. “I didn’t know you changed schools because of me.”

  “Did you know I changed schools at all?”

  He looks at me with sad eyes. “No. I did not.”

  I nod. Somehow this hurts more than anything else.

  “I am sorry, Dani.”

  I shrug.

  “Was it really that bad?”

  I think about the way people looked at me. The mean pity in their eyes. You know Dani? Poor girl. Her mom died of bowel cancer, and then do you know what happened? Her dad went frickin’ crazy.

  When I try to answer, my throat closes. I shrug again.

  “I embarrass you,” Papa says now.

  I can hear the hurt in his voice. The worry. I want to save him from it. I don’t want to hurt Papa. But it’s the truth. He embarrasses me to death.

  “Yes, Papa,” I whisper.

  He sags back against the dryer.

  “I know you have an important message,” I say. “And I actually agree with it.” I look up into his face. “I’m with you on the sugars and fats and chemicals. These things do make us sick. They might even have made Mamma sick.”

  “They did make Mamma sick.” Right away there’s a furious edge to his voice.

  I nod. I will never argue this with Papa. He will never change his opinion, even though the doctors couldn’t say what caused Mamma’s cancer.

  “But the way you’re telling people makes you look crazy,” I continue. “People end up avoiding you.”

  “And making fun of me.”

  It is such a relief to be having this conversation. I don’t know what I expected it would be like when we finally did talk about this stuff—if we ever did. But Papa hasn’t lost touch as much as I had feared. He’s actually hearing me.

  “Yes.” I pick up the dishtowel from where he dropped it and start to fold it. “And when people see you as something to make fun of, your message doesn’t get through.”

  “Then how do I make them see?” He sounds genuinely puzzled. “If I don’t tell them, how do I make them see?”

  I look at him. Really? He really doesn’t have a clue? He thought that wearing signboards and holding placards that talk about Satan and destiny would make people listen seriously to what he has to say?

  “I don’t know for sure,” I admit. “Letters to the editor, maybe. I mean, people do still read the newspaper. Or a YouTube documentary. Even a class at the university. Like a night class for adults. How to shop and eat local, healthy foods. Or a Vine,” I say. “Although you’d have to set up a Facebook or Twitter page for that.”

  “A vine?” His face is puzzled.

  His confusion makes me smile a little. “A Vine is a super-short video. You could make it funny. That always gets people’s interest. Ms. Kirstein is always saying a message has more power if it stirs people’s emotions. If it makes them mad, or if it makes them laugh.”

  He looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. “These are good ideas. Why didn’t I ask you before?”

  “I don’t know. Because you were too sad. And because I was too angry.”

  Papa closes his eyes and rubs them with his fingers. When he takes them away, his eyes are red. “I was too sad, yes,” he whispers. “I’m still so sad.” He looks at me. “But I don’t want to make you angry with me.”

  I feel my eyes filling up all over again. “Well then, would you consider not wearing the signs?” I give him a lopsided smile.

  Papa rubs his eyes again and nods. “Yes. I would consider not wearing the signs.” He sighs deeply, then looks at me. “Would you consider helping me make a—how do you call, a vine?”

  “Yes.” My smile is full and happy now. “Yes, Papa, I can help you make a Vine.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Papa gives me a ride to school just before afternoon dismissal. I feel better than I have in a long time. We talked some more this morning. We figured a few things out. I think we’re going to be okay.

  I’m nervous about what I have to do now though.

  I wait until all the buses are at the bus circle, and then I watch. When mostly everyone has boarded their buses, I hurry toward the one I want. My heart pounds like a trip hammer as I climb the steps. It’s crowded, and I don’t see him.

  And then I do. I work my way between the people standing in the aisle, apologizing and excusing myself as I bump and squeeze my way along. When I’m finally standing in front of Gregor, I say hi.

  He looks up from his phone. “Hey! Where have you been?”

  I blink. I wasn’t expecting him to be so normal toward me. “Uh,” I say. “Well, I had to have a meeting with my dad.”

  “Was that him I saw at your house the other day?”

  I wince. “The guy with the signs, yeah.” I nod. “Yeah. That’s my dad.”

  “Here, sit,” Gregor says. He pushes over on the seat to make room for me.

  “You mean you’re still talking to me?” I say as I sit.

  Gregor looks confused. “Why wouldn’t I be talking to you?”

  “I don’t know. Because my dad’s a nut?”

  “What? No,” he says. “Actually, I was thinking about catching the bus to your place and seeing if you were okay. But then I thought maybe you wouldn’t want to see me. I thought I had made you mad.”

  “No, no.” I shake my head. “I wasn’t mad. Not at you, at least.” I look down. “I was pretty rude to you. I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to see my dad.”

  “Why not?”

  I shrug. “Because I thought that if you did, you’d think my dad was crazy, like everybody else does.”

  “Is he?”

  “No, not really,” I say. “He just looks like it. You know. The signs and all.”

  Gregor nods. “He’s eccentric.”

  I smile. I like that. Eccentric. It sounds better than crazy. “Yeah. Anyway, I stayed home to talk to him about how he needs to stop wearing signs. It’s freaking people out.”

  “Well, he is largely correct.”

  I stare at him. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean, what do I mean? Do you think he’s wrong?”

  “No,” I say, surprised. “I don’t think he’s wrong. I just think he’s a little over the top.”

  “I don’t know if he is,” Gregor says. “I think we need a million people screaming this stuff from the rooftops.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

 
Gregor indicates his phone. “I’ve been reading up on it all day. I started with palm oil. I had no idea it was so bad.” He reads to me from a screen he’s bookmarked. “Wreaks havoc on forests, causes steep decline in animal populations, encourages child labor and contributes to climate change.” He looks at me. “That’s some pretty heavy stuff.”

  I nod. “It’s heavy.” I wonder if Gregor has any idea how chocolate is produced. About the kids in Africa who are kidnapped to work on cacao-bean farms. Who spray pesticides on the trees without wearing any masks. Who climb trees with huge machetes to cut down the cacao pods and then drag sacks weighing more than one hundred pounds through the forest.

  Does he know how sugar is produced?

  And then there’s what it does to our bodies when we eat it.

  “I think your dad’s got a point,” Gregor is saying now.

  “Yeah. The problem is, he’s making it in such an awkward way.”

  “Why is all this processed-food stuff so important to him?”

  I look down at my hands. “My mom died of bowel cancer. Papa—my dad—he thinks it’s because of all the bad stuff in our food. He is convinced she died from the nitrates and preservatives in processed meats.”

  “Oh,” Gregor says. He’s quiet for a moment. “What if he’s right? Look at this.” He goes back to his phone and scrolls through a couple screens. “Here. I looked up MSG because I’ve seen your dad holding a sign about it. This is an article in Men’s Health.”

  “MSG is in everything,” I say, peering at the screen.

  Gregor nods. “I know. Well, I didn’t know it before, but I do now.” He reads, “MSG, or monosodium glutamate, also goes by maltodextrin, sodium caseinate, autolyzed yeast, autolyzed vegetable protein, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, yeast extract and even citric acid.” He looks up at me. “This is terrible.”

  “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “No more ginger beef,” I say.

  “No!”

  “Or ramen noodles. Or fast food.”

  “NO!” Gregor cries. “It’s everywhere!” He fake stabs himself through the heart.

  “It’s everywhere,” I agree.

  “It’s depressing.” He goes back to reading what the article says. “MSG is considered a neurotoxin.” He looks up. “So it poisons brain cells.”

  I shrug and nod at the same time.

  “Shown to damage nerve cells by overexciting them to the point of cell death,” he reads. “MSG is also a—” He peers closer, then reads slowly, “A chemoinducer—”

  “A cause,” I supply.

  “Right. Of obesity and type 2 diabetes,” he finishes. “So it makes us fat.”

  I give a short laugh. “MSG’s got nothing on nitrates.”

  “Nitrates,” he repeats. “That’s what’s in hot dogs, right?”

  “And bacon.”

  Gregor covers his ears in horror. “It just gets worse.”

  I laugh.

  “No wonder your dad is so worked up about this stuff.”

  “He’s pretty worked up.”

  “Does he do it every day?”

  “What, the signs? Yeah. Well, he still goes to work. And then after work he goes around to different places and does the sign thing. But I talked to him about it yesterday. Because I was so embarrassed when you saw him.”

  “What was so embarrassing?”

  “Are you serious? People laughed me out of my last school because of my dad. They called him—” I break off, shaking my head.

  “What? What did they call him?”

  “Nothing. Never mind. It wasn’t very nice.”

  “Is that why you got off at a different bus stop?” he asks. “So I wouldn’t find out about him?”

  I nod miserably.

  “Jeez,” he says. He looks out the window, then back at me. “I don’t know. I think it’s kind of cool. Do you think he’d let me hold a sign too?”

  I stare at Gregor. “Are you serious?”

  “Totally serious,” he says. “You can’t make me say anything bad about pizza though.” Then he gets this silly grin that makes me go warm all over.

  I try to picture Gregor standing on a street corner with Papa, in his skinny jeans and Converse sneakers. And a sandwich board.

  It totally works.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I just spent the morning talking him out of his sign-waving brand of activism.”

  Gregor’s face falls. “Oh.”

  “But maybe he could do one last gig,” I hurry to suggest.

  “Like a swan song?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Sweet!” He grins, then has another thought. “Hey, let’s get a bunch of people together to do this! We could ask the Eco Crusaders. They’d be in for sure.”

  “The Eco Crusaders?”

  “Yeah, that’s the fancy name for Central’s environment club. They’d totally go for something like this. And they could help us pull other people in. Maybe we could even do a flash mob!” Gregor is about to go into orbit with this idea.

  I’m not so sure Papa would be down with a flash mob. But he might think it’s kind of cool to have other people waving signs with him. “Maybe you should meet my dad,” I say. “You know, first things first.”

  Gregor looks at me again, eyes shining with his big plans. “Maybe I should.”

  “Maybe you could come over for dinner sometime.”

  “Maybe I could.”

  “But don’t get him going on sugar,” I warn. “Sugar is not up for discussion. Or you’ll never hear the end of it.”

  “I guess bacon’s off the table too?”

  I laugh. “Yes. But if you like noodles and cream sauce…”

  “Sign me up,” says Gregor. “Get it? Sign me up?” He mimes holding up a sign.

  I groan. “Oh, so bad.”

  “Just wait,” he says. “I got lots more where that came from.” He looks at me in that way he has, and my tummy does a triple flip.

  I grin. “Sign. Me. Up.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I had the amazing support of my plotting partner, Manuela Biron, in creating Dani’s story. Sixth-grade student Molly Turner gave me excellent feedback from the middle-schooler’s perspective. And I owe a debt of gratitude to fellow writer Peter Jory for reading the full draft and providing comments that ultimately made Food Freak a better story.

  Alex Van Tol is the author of thirteen books, including the Orca Currents titles Chick:Lister and Oracle. She enjoys nearly every kind of food—including bacon—and, like Dani, takes great pleasure in preparing meals for the people she loves. Alex lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with her two young sons. Learn more at www.alexvantol.com.