Big Mouth

by Deborah Halverson

  “No theories, Shermie. You promised, whatever I said. I’m the coach.”

  “But look at you. You’re toast. You need something to get you over the hump. Just two macaroons. They’ll get you through.”

  “No. And you can’t eat them, either. Trash ’em.”

  “Gardo—”

  “Now.”

  Am I talking to a wall? “Just listen to me for a minute—”

  “Nothing to listen to. The coach does the talking.”

  “But I’m telling you how you can make weight without crossing over to the dark side. I know how it is. I kept getting dizzy and dropping things and I kept”—I stopped myself. I couldn’t admit to the intentional reversals. Not even to Gardo. “I kept tripping. My new plan is better. You won’t have to worry that once you start eating you won’t stop. See, you know how I hate coconut, right? Well—”

  “Stop. I don’t want to hear it. It’s just excuses.” He rubbed his hands on his face slowly, like he was just too tired to go on.

  “No, it’s not. It’s a better way. Trust me.” I pulled over his backpack and unzipped the front pouch to tuck in the cookies. “You can eat them later, when no one’s watching.”

  “Don’t!” He launched forward again, throwing himself across his backpack.

  The instant before he landed, though, I caught sight of a green and white box with blue letters in the front pouch.

  “What was that, a box of Ex-Lax? What are you doing with a box of Ex-Lax?”

  “I don’t have a box of Ex-Lax.” He gathered his backpack to his chest and got to his feet.

  “Yes, you do. I live with an old man, I know Ex-Lax when I see it.”

  “You think you could say it any louder?” he whispered harshly. “Keep your face out of my backpack.”

  “But I don’t understand—”

  “You don’t see me rummaging through your bag, do you? Coconut macaroons…Jeez. What else you got in there? A pizza?”

  “Gardo—”

  “And here I was thinking you had the goods. No wonder Lucy dumped you.”

  “Hey!”

  “You know what, Shermie? You weren’t meant to be an athlete.” He swung his backpack behind him and tucked his arms through the straps. “Hunt is replacing Shane as captain, everybody says so, and he’s probably gonna pick me. I’ll be the first eighth grade captain on the JV prep team ever. The last thing I need right now is someone dragging me down. You violated our pact; you’re on your own.”

  “What? Wait a minute….”

  But he didn’t wait a minute. He didn’t even wait a second. He stalked away before the words had even left my mouth. Gardo Esperaldo, the soon-to-be First Eighth Grade JV Prep Wrestling Team Captain Ever, left me sitting there, all alone. He didn’t even pause when he almost ran down Lucy near Max and the librarian. He dodged her at full speed, catching his foot on the same book cart, knocking it over again. The Chocolate War paperbacks spilled over Max’s feet like spreading lava. The women stared at the mess blankly, not even registering the fact that a student had just walked out the door in the middle of class.

  Good going, Shermie. First Lucy, now Gardo. You’re two-for-two. Are YOU Thuff Enuff? Give me a break.

  I sagged down onto my stack of books, then frowned. A tattered Dixie cup sat on the table just inches from my eyes. Lovely. The soon-to-be First Eighth Grade JV Prep Wrestling Team Captain Ever forgot his sacred spit cup. What a souvenir.

  I smacked the cup to the floor, then buried my head in my arms. The coconut in my stomach gurgled threateningly.

  Black birds shrieked and dove at the school’s white-flagged roof like kamikazes. You’d think there was a big plate of birdnip or something on top of our red blob of a building, the way those birds kept swooping in. The sky behind them was a deep, ugly gray as another storm threatened to sog the birds, and the wrestling team jogging the stadium track below, and me, tucked between the two under a row of bushy trees near the bleachers.

  Swell. Just what I need, a shower. I pulled my hoodie over my head and hunkered deeper into my nook, which offered a great view of the track below. Ow! A bush branch speared me in the back. Spying wasn’t nearly as glamorous as they made it look in the movies.

  Down on the field, Gardo was the frontrunner. Even with his hoodie and all the other layers of clothing on him, I knew him by his running style. I’d been here about twenty minutes, and I was starting to stiffen up. As I reached behind me to break off the pokey branch, Gardo tripped and slid headfirst in the dirt. Three hooded wrestlers passed him. But he scrambled up and raced past them again, regaining the lead. I almost laughed. Gardo was a tough nail.

  I was stupid to have worried about him. I’d gotten myself all worked up, stewing about that stupid box of Ex-Lax in his backpack, when clearly the guy could hold his own. Besides, he’d been spitting into nasty Dixie cups for weeks now to get all the moisture out of his mouth; I should have figured he’d be trying to clear out the other end, too. As gross as voluntarily using a laxative was, it seemed to be working for him. After all, he was ahead of everybody down there, and he was almost captain. So what if he tripped now and then? He got right back up again.

  I stood to make my way back up the hill. My Scoops shift started in half an hour, and I’d probably be late as it was. But even as I turned, Gardo went down again, this time taking out the guy behind him in an ugly collision. I instinctively lunged toward the track, as if somehow I could help Gardo from my high perch. I couldn’t, of course, so I was stuck watching as the two fallen wrestlers struggled to untangle themselves. As they thrashed, their teammates ran right past them…all except the hooded guy at the end. That Einstein smashed right into them, full speed, like he was flat-out blind. His body flew up and over them like a black bird, then hit the dirt hard.

  Gardo managed to get to his feet first and barely looked at the other two guys before taking off after the pack. The second hooded wrestler got up and did the same thing. The blind guy just lay there.

  Jeez. I hope he’s not dead or anything. The doofus.

  On the far sideline in his wheelchair, Shane put his bullhorn to his mouth. “Oh, Twinkle Toes, darling. This is your captain speaking. You are at wrestling practice, not a slumber party. What are you waiting for, breakfast in bed? C’mon, on your feet. Do you hear me, Esperaldo? On your feet.”

  I grabbed the bleacher railing for support. Gardo was the doofus blind guy splayed out in the dirt.

  “Helloooo. Esperaldooooo. Did you hear me?”

  We all heard you, you jerk. It was all I could do not to run down there and pick up Gardo. Or punch out Shane.

  “No one’s going to come tuck you in, Esperaldo. At least have the dignity to start crawling. C’mon, scrub, move it. Move it!”

  Shane is talking about dignity? Someone shut him up!

  Even as I plotted ways to kill Shane, Gardo got up, slowly, and started running again. He kept his right arm tucked tightly against his ribs.

  I let go of the railing and sat heavily in the dirt. No way could Gardo be up for captain. Even I could see that. He was just spinning hype when he said it. Or maybe he believed it; I didn’t know. But the fact was, he couldn’t even keep up with the rest of the team. Dropping to the 103 weight class really was going to kill him.

  The image of him choking flashed in my head again. I ground my fists into my eyes.

  When I finally opened them, Gardo was still limping behind his teammates, though much farther back now. I swear, this whole weight-cutting thing was completely pathetic. The guy spit in cups and took laxatives, for crying out loud. For what? To stumble after his so-called teammates? Nice lot they were, running off while he lay in the dust, dead for all they knew.

  But so what? What was I supposed to do about it? Gardo didn’t even consider me an athlete anymore; he wouldn’t listen to anything I said. And when Gardo’s mind was set on something, Gardo did it, no matter what.

  I punched the dirt. I hated this.

  Spinning, I scrambled up
the hill, hard and fast. I couldn’t watch this anymore. I couldn’t stand even knowing this anymore. Something had to give…and that something was me. I was going to give Gardo his space for the rest of the wrestling season, that’s what I was going to do. Then everything would be normal and right again. He knew what he was doing; he had a coach telling him what to do. I wouldn’t let on that I knew his last-place shame. It was none of my business. I’d already lost Lucy; I couldn’t risk losing Gardo, too.

  I hate this!

  Then I thought of Captain Quixote. He’d think I was such a loser. He never just sat still, waiting for things to right themselves. He tackled problems head-on, no matter how big they were, even nudging entire planets out of their orbits when he had to. That was how he defeated the T’larians and earned his starburst battle patch, by nudging the sun out of orbit temporarily. It had fooled the T’larians long enough for him to erase their nuke codes and neutralize Commander Panza’s brainwash implant. Just like that, Captain Quixote saved the galaxy and delivered his friend from evil.

  I reached the cement of the empty stadium promenade and stood upright. On the cement wall in front of me was one of Culwicki’s free IN DEL HEINY WE TRUST red shirts, duct-taped to the wall and covered with a mustard X. Above it was written, in mustard of course, IN MUSTARD WE TRUST.

  “I hate this!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. The birds circling the roof broke apart and fled.

  I balled my fists into my eyes again, then opened up and refocused. The shirt was still there, of course. As if it would be gone just because I closed my eyes! This wasn’t an alternate universe where things came and went in a nanosecond. And Gardo and I certainly weren’t Galactic Warriors. This was Del Heiny Junior High #13, and we were Plums.

  I looked up at the empty, gray, sunless sky and shuddered. Who would deliver us from evil?

  CHAPTER 22

  A bead of sweat trickled down the back of my neck as I stared at the doorknob. I reached out, only to pull my hand back. Gardo would hate my guts for doing this. But what else could I do? When I got home last night and checked Grampy’s Ex-Lax box, the label said in bold type, “Continued laxative use can cause bloating, cramping, dehydration, electrolyte disturbances and imbalances, cardiac arrhythmias, irregular heart beat and heart attack, renal problems, and death.” I didn’t know what the heck electrolytes or arrhythmias or renals were, but I did know what death was.

  I inhaled deeply, then twisted the knob. It stuck at first, then wrenched free and swung wide as I forced out the fakest perky greeting of my life. “Hi!”

  Two heads jerked my way.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I stuttered. “I should’ve knocked.”

  Lucy stood and faced me, a big piece of graph paper pressed facedown against her thigh. Her face was smudged with dirt, and pieces of hair were sticking out of her long braid.

  “Hi,” she said quietly.

  She was the last person I expected to see in Max’s office so early in the morning. I had no idea what to say to her. So I went with the first thing that popped into my head. “Why are you so dirty?”

  Make that the stupidest thing.

  Lucy thrust her paper at Max, then brushed me out of her way. “I gotta go.”

  Shoved aside, I stood there lamely watching her cross the empty science room toward the hall door.

  “Come in, Sherman.” Max’s chair creaked as she sagged back into it. A small hunk of foam popped out of a hole in the seat cushion and landed on the scarred linoleum under the chair. “What can I do for you?”

  She gestured to a metal stool next to her desk.

  I took a step toward it, then remembered the open door. I closed it, jiggling the knob to make sure it was latched. Couldn’t have some clueless idiot barging in.

  Maxwell watched me silently, her eyebrows raised, as I positioned the stool closer to her, farther from the door and the empty classroom beyond. First period didn’t begin for another fifteen minutes, but kids would start arriving soon.

  The size of Max’s office surprised me. It was barely half the size of my bedroom, making me wonder how she’d fit all those wagons and water jugs and experiment supplies inside it. The few metal shelves bolted to her walls were cluttered with beakers and books and stacks of papers and folders. So was the floor and her banged-up desk. On the wall over her desk was a black-and-white poster of a girl covered with tar, the words What if smoking did to your outsides what it does to your insides? along the bottom in bold, black letters. A trash can overflowing with papers and folders was next to her chair. It was one of those huge metal cans from the cafeteria—the same kind that Shane had the Finns stuff me into a million days ago.

  Since there was no window in the office, it was closed in and dreary. This was how Del Heiny treated its teachers? No wonder the woman left and voluntarily ran the bleachers after school. The rest of the time she was stuck in a classroom with hundreds of punk teenagers or she was rotting in this hole.

  “Ms. Maxwell, I—” A box at her feet caught my eye. It was mostly under her desk, but not totally. There was a yellow tarp in it, with a hammer, a chisel, leather gloves, and a crowbar piled on top. She followed my gaze to the box, then suddenly tossed in Lucy’s paper and pushed it all the way under her desk with her foot.

  “Sorry for the mess,” she said. “I was straightening my office. You were saying?”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the spot where the box had been. Those tools hadn’t looked like any lab equipment I’d ever heard of—

  “Sherman, class starts in a few minutes.”

  “Right.” I tried to collect my thoughts. Captain Quixote wouldn’t let himself get flustered when he was in a showdown with hostile aliens. “Ms. Maxwell, I need to talk to you.”

  “I assumed as much.”

  “See, I have this…this problem.” I crossed one leg up over the other, then dropped it back down again and smoothed the edge of my shorts against my knees. “Well, I don’t have the problem, my friend does.”

  “Your friend…”

  “Yeah. See, I have this friend who is doing something stupid but who I know won’t stop even if I tell him it’s stupid because he’s so stubborn even though it’s not even working and now he’s mad at me and won’t listen to me at all. Maybe you can do something.” There, I did it. I nudged something in Gardo’s orbit. I did what I could. Sighing in relief, I stood and spit my gum into her trash can, then stepped toward the door. “Thanks, Ms. Maxwell.”

  “That’s it? You’re done?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  She kicked the metal stool closer to me. “Care to tell me what this stupid thing is?”

  “Oh, right.” I reached into my backpack and pulled out the plastic wrap, the Queen’s Fit Belly Buster page, and the Gardo Glass, which I’d dug out of my bushes last night. I put them all on top of a stack of papers on her desk.

  She studied them a moment. “A box of Saran Wrap, a Dixie cup, and an ad for a girdle.”

  I nodded. “The ad was in a magazine. I was doing research.”

  “I don’t understand. You think your friend is wearing a girdle while he cooks? And this troubles you?”

  “No.” This was stupid. I was sorry I came. She didn’t get it. “Never mind.” I reached out to take back my stuff, but she blocked my arm.

  “No, wait a second.” She studied my stuff again, then pointed to the Dixie cup. “What is this black line for?”

  “That’s the fill line. He won’t drink more water than that. And only eight of these cups a day. Or maybe none now, I don’t really know.”

  “But that’s barely an inch of water.”

  I shrugged.

  Now she was really eyeballing the stuff. “What else does your friend do?”

  “Well…” I pressed my back against the door, my hand still on the knob. The wood was hard against my back, but I liked the feeling of something solid holding me up. There weren’t any sounds beyond it, so either no students had arrived yet, or the door was thick enough to
be eavesdrop-proof. “There’s the weird eating. Lettuce all cut up tiny with lemon juice…when he eats at all. And pickles for dessert…And then there’s his wrapping himself in plastic and wearing thirty different shirts and jogging and five hundred push-ups and post-weigh-in feasting. And the spitting in cups—lots of it, I just know it. And…” I paused, barely able to say the next thing. “There’s the Ex-Lax.”

  “Ex-Lax.” Max picked up the plastic wrap and held it a moment, like she was weighing it. “Sherman, do you think your friend needs help?”

  I shrugged. Can I just leave now? Please.

  “You came to me, Sherman. I’m asking you, do you think he needs help?”

  I twisted my hand back and forth on the knob, my sweaty palm squeaking against the metal. “I guess.”

  Max set the plastic wrap on the messy desk, then rested her elbows on her knees, clasping her hands together in front of her mouth. “Sherman,” she said quietly over her fingers, locking her eyes on to mine, holding them even though I’d rather have looked at anything else in this sad room, even at the poster of the tarred girl. “Do I know this friend?”

  My heart sped up and my face flushed. “I have to tell you that, don’t I?”

  “It would help.”

  I can’t believe I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna open my big mouth. But what else can I do? Coconut macaroons didn’t work. “It’s Gardo,” I mumbled.

  Her eyes closed as she took that in.

  “Aw, man. Please don’t tell him I told you, Ms. Maxwell, he’ll hate me forever if he knows I ratted him out.” It was a stupid thing to say. Of course Gardo would know I was the one who’d told Max. Who else would it be? But I’d had to fink him out; there was no other way. “He only does it so he can make weight. I don’t see why, though. Wrestling is the dumbest sport ever. Why would anyone want to be a wrestler?”

  She dropped her hands in her lap and sighed. “You’d be surprised what interests people.”