Sunny Sweet is So Dead Meat

by Jennifer Ann Mann

  “Turn around, Jeremy,” his mother said. Jeremy didn’t listen.

  “It’s a hamburger,” Sunny said. “The meat is no longer alive, but there is something alive inside the meat.”

  The little kid began to drool. “A dinosaur?” he asked.

  “Dinosaurs have been extinct for sixty-five million years,” Sunny answered. “There are fly eggs in this hamburger. Want to see them?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Fly eggs!” said the kid. He got up on his knees and leaned over. Again his mother told him to turn around. Again the kid didn’t listen. I sat up even straighter and folded my hands together on my lap, trying so hard to look normal.

  “Wow,” the kid breathed in my face. “How did the fly eggs get in there?”

  “The flies laid the eggs in there.”

  “Are they gonna hatch and fly out on the bus?”

  I glanced around the bus to see if anybody heard that. I hoped that this wasn’t going to happen. The bus driver would really throw us off then.

  “No, no,” said Sunny. “When the eggs hatch, they’ll be larvae, or what we call maggots …”

  “Okay,” I said, interrupting. “Maggots” had gotten everyone’s attention on the bus. Jeremy’s mother turned around and pulled him down into the seat. She caught sight of me, and I saw her frown. I tried to brush some of the pottery dust off me, but it seemed to be totally stuck to my T-shirt.

  Sunny went back to playing with her hamburger.

  “I think I see the eggs under the pickle.”

  “Stop poking at them,” I whispered. She didn’t stop.

  I looked out the window so I didn’t have to watch her hunt for fly eggs in a gross blob of mustard. We were passing a seafood restaurant that Sunny, Mom, Mrs. Song, and I had eaten in once. I didn’t remember it being anywhere near our house. A tiny sick feeling wiggled in my stomach, and it had nothing to do with maggots. The bus took a left at the light and headed in what felt like another wrong direction. I looked around at the faces on the bus like someone might look familiar—or maybe something about them would clue me in to where we were heading. I wanted to lean forward and ask Jeremy’s mom where we were, but after her frown I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  I clicked on my phone and brought up the bus map. The 55’s route was a red line winding its way around the city and passing a few blocks away from our house. I looked back out the window at the unfamiliar houses and stores and then over at Sunny. She was totally focused on her fly eggs. I tried to think if I’d looked at the number on the front of the bus when it pulled up. Lots of buses used the same bus stop, and you had to make sure you got on the one with the right number. I was sure that I remembered seeing that big white 55 lit up over the top of the windshield. But I knew that I hadn’t. I was too busy trying to keep Sunny from scooping up dog poop.

  Maybe I should go ask the driver. But then I’d have to stand up and walk through the bus, and it wasn’t like he loved us. And he might even ask about our parents again. I was starting to sweat. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I leaned forward to ask Jeremy’s mother just as her phone rang. I sat back. That’s when I realized I needed to use the bathroom. Ugh.

  Jeremy turned around. “Let me see the maggots,” he whispered.

  His mother was busy talking on the phone and didn’t notice he’d turned around again. I wished she would. I didn’t need this kid’s face in mine right now.

  “Sunny,” I said.

  “Hmm,” she answered, not listening.

  I couldn’t stop myself and tapped Jeremy’s mom on the shoulder. “What bus is this?” I asked in my sweetest voice ever.

  “One minute,” Jeremy’s mother said into her phone in an annoyed voice. She glanced back over the bus seat at me, taking in all of my splotchiness and giving me another disapproving frown. It’s like Sunny had turned me into some kind of monster. And all it took was a single bottle of ketchup! “The 57,” she said, and then she returned to her phone conversation.

  “Thanks,” I croaked, sitting back. My eyes stung and a cold wind swirled through my chest. How did I get us on the wrong bus? But I knew how.

  “Why are you dirty?” asked Jeremy. “And why does she only have one boot on?”

  I ignored him. “Sunny.” I nudged her. “Sunny, we’re on the wrong bus.”

  She looked up calmly from her can, the brim of her hat sitting on top of her blond eyebrows. “Let me check what time it is,” she said.

  “What does it matter what time it is?” I asked.

  “No reason,” she said.

  “What do you mean, no reason?” Sunny never did anything without a reason.

  She blinked at me. And then she reminded me that we were lost. “How about we get off this bus and get on one that takes us home?”

  I glanced out the window. We were passing old broken-down highways and piles of sand and gravel. “We can’t get out here,” I said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Number one or number two?” asked Jeremy.

  “What?”

  “Do you have to go number one or number two?” he repeated.

  “He’s asking if you have to—” Sunny broke in.

  “I know what he’s asking,” I said. Then I turned so I faced Sunny only, trying to give Jeremy the hint that this was a private conversation. “I’ll ring the bell to get off as soon as I see a restaurant or a gas station or something. Be ready to get off.”

  “Can I have a fly egg to take home?” Jeremy asked.

  “I need them for an experiment that I’m doing,” Sunny told him.

  “You can’t do an experiment, you’re a little kid.”

  Sunny paid no attention. “I’m thinking I might do something related to forensic entomology, you know, the study of insects and other arthropods. I’ve done some work on mass temperature. It’s kind of interesting because sometimes this data can be used to tell how long a human body has been dead. The mass temperature of the gathering of maggots in a dead body can give a pretty accurate time of death.”

  “You’re weird,” Jeremy said.

  “No, she’s not,” I shot back at him. Although I had to admit the dead body thing freaked me out a little too.

  He stuck his tongue out at us and turned around.

  I looked at Sunny. She shrugged, like she had no idea where that came from. Well, it wasn’t all bad because the kid was pretty annoying. I seemed to be scaring off the adults, and Sunny was taking care of the kids. We were like a freaky Dynamic Duo.

  The flash of a big blue coffee cup sign caught my eye. It was The Mug, and that meant a bathroom! I quickly pressed the yellow strip to stop the bus. Within five seconds, the bus pulled over and I dragged Sunny and her fly eggs off. I could feel everybody on the bus sigh—Thank goodness those kids are gone. The driver slammed the doors shut behind us.

  “Hurry,” I said to Sunny, running for the coffee shop. “I really have to go!”

  Sunny ran behind me, holding out her hamburger/fly egg combo-in-a-can. Her booted foot scraped the road with each step, followed by the silence of her sock—scrape, silence, scrape, silence, scrape, silence. “Did you know that your bladder is a muscle and right now you’re exercising it?” she called at my back.

  “Stop talking,” I yelled.

  “It can hold up to two full cups of pee-pee. So probably right now your bladder has about that much in it,” she continued.

  “Sunny!” I shouted. My little sister understands how the universe was made but not how wrong it is to talk about someone else’s pee-pee. Or that you don’t call it pee-pee!

  You Say Pariah, I Say Piranha

  Sunny took a big bite out of her sausage-and-egg sandwich. Then she studied the hamburger in the can at our table in The Mug.

  “Put that thing on the floor.”

  “No, someone might kick it over.”

  That was true. And a disgusting half-eaten hamburger all over the floor was probably worse than a disgusting half-eaten hamburger sitting in a can. Plus I
knew that this wouldn’t end the stinky burger story, or I’d kick it over myself. Sunny would just stick the gross thing back in the can. I shuddered when I thought about touching that fly-filled piece of meat.

  Two teenagers walked over to the table next to us, took one look at me, and then without even speaking chose another table on the other side of the dining room. It was like they had used telepathy to decide not to sit anywhere near me.

  “You made me a piranha,” I moaned.

  “A piranha is a fish with very sharp teeth that eats meat,” she said. “I’m an excellent scientist, but not good enough to turn you into a freshwater fish.”

  “Yet,” I said.

  “What you mean is that I turned you into a pariah,” she said. “A pariah is an outcast, someone who doesn’t fit in with everybody else.”

  How does she know what I meant? But the fact that she actually did know what I meant made my head feel like it was going to pop right off my body. “Yeah, well, maybe I did mean piranha. Maybe I do feel like you made me into a meat-eating fish.”

  She pushed her gross hamburger bucket toward me. “Want some lunch, fishy-fishy?” she asked, giggling.

  “Cut it out,” I said.

  Sunny put down her sausage-and-egg sandwich and pulled out her notebook.

  “Sunny,” I groaned.

  “So, you feel like a fish,” she said, scribbling away, “out of water?”

  “Just eat your hamburger—I mean your egg sandwich—and leave me alone. And why are you still wearing Mom’s stupid rain hat? Take it off.” I picked up my phone and started checking out the map to see how the heck I was going to get us home.

  Sunny ate her sandwich and scribbled in her notebook while carefully studying her fly eggs. But I knew perfectly well that she was writing about me.

  A text came in from Alice.

  Are you home yet?

  I sighed and tapped “Alice” in my favorites. There was no way to text what we’d just been through. I had to call.

  “No!” I said into the phone.

  “Where are you?”

  “At The Mug on …” I switched over to my map. “Washington Avenue and Thornton Street.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, Alice, I got us on the wrong bus.”

  There was silence for a minute. And then Alice burst out, “Masha! You’re right across Fairlawn Cemetery from the hospital!”

  “So?”

  “So? Come here.”

  “No way, Alice!” I shouted, making everyone in the coffee shop turn just a little more away from Sunny and me than they already were. “No way. No way,” I said more quietly. “I need to get home.”

  “Did you find the paint can and the paintbrushes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you look normal. Why can’t you just walk across the cemetery and say hi?”

  I breathed in deeply through my nose and looked at Sunny in her stupid rain hat and single boot. I didn’t have the heart to tell Alice that the paint can and brushes weren’t exactly working. No one believed the artist thing. They were seeing Sunny’s idea of me—they were seeing me as different. “I can’t walk into that hospital, Alice. It’s been less than two weeks since I stole a cast and ran out of there.”

  “Okay, you don’t have to come in. I’ll meet you out front. And you can catch the 68 home. You know the bus. It’s the exact same one you took home last time. Anyway, what bus would you take from The Mug on Washington? The 68 might just be the closest bus to you right now. I bet it’s the fastest way for you to get home.”

  Shoot … She was making sense. I could hear her ticking away on her keyboard. “It looks like you can walk here straight through the graveyard.”

  “Through a graveyard? There has to be a faster way home.”

  “There’s not. And it’s not even a mile.”

  “A mile?”

  “Did you know that some people can run a mile in less than four minutes?” Alice said.

  “Those people aren’t dragging their little sisters around,” I told her.

  The thought of walking a mile through a graveyard wasn’t sounding so good, but the only other idea I could think of at the moment was to call my mom. I actually considered it for about a second. But then I pictured her pulling up to The Mug with a disappointed face because I couldn’t manage a simple science fair. And on top of this, I’d have to explain Sunny’s missing boot and her bucket of maggots. I just knew I couldn’t do it. Instead, I imagined my mom sitting in her painting class, leaning her face up close to her canvas. She always leaned up close to her painting when she was working. For some reason, she looked really pretty when she did that. Maybe concentrating on something hard made you pretty. I glanced over at Sunny staring down intently into her maggot bucket. Maybe it depended on what you were concentrating on.

  “Masha? Are you still there?”

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ll come.”

  Alice screeched with happiness. “Text me when you’re almost here, and I’ll come downstairs and meet you outside.”

  “How will you get out?”

  “Don’t worry about that, just get over here.” She giggled. “And Masha?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “I’d do anything for you,” I told her. And it was true. I would. “You’re my best friend.”

  There was a tiny bit of silence.

  “I never had a best friend before,” she whispered.

  Me neither, I thought. I wondered if it was weird to make it all the way until the fifth grade and never have had a best friend. Back at my old home in Pennsylvania, I’d played with lots of different kids. And at my new school I had been hanging out with Junchao a lot. But I hadn’t ever been super close to one person. It seemed that in books or movies there were best friends popping up all over the place—kids had them, adults had them, even dogs and cats and robots had them. But in real life, they didn’t just get passed out like cake at a birthday party.

  “And so now you do,” I told her. “And your best friend is about to walk through some creepy graveyard covered in paint and pottery dust, dragging her little sister, who is wearing one boot and carrying a pail of larvae.”

  “Lar-vee, not lar-vah,” corrected Sunny without taking her eyes from her can.

  “What?” asked Alice.

  “Never mind,” I told her. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  I hung up and smiled at my phone. I wasn’t a fish or an outcast. I was Alice Rottersdam’s best friend.

  The Informal Diagonal Line Game

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Wait. I have to … do something,” Sunny said.

  “What?”

  “Um.” I could tell she was thinking something up.

  “You don’t have to do anything, Sunny.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Right.”

  “I do. Here,” she said, leaning her stomach toward me. “You want to push on my bladder? It’s full.”

  “No, I don’t want to touch your bladder,” I said, moving away from her.

  She threw her head back and laughed from deep within her skinny little neck. All her tiny teeth were on display, like a yawning shark.

  “It’s not funny. Listen, you can’t go in there with just a sock on your foot. Here,” I said, taking off my sneaker. “Just put it on and tie the laces tight.” My foot felt weirdly cold not having a shoe on it in the middle of a coffee shop.

  Sunny put on my sneaker and placed my mom’s rain hat neatly on the table. It was the first time she’d taken it off today. Then she glanced up at the clock on the wall.

  “Why do you keep checking the time?” I asked.

  “Watch my fly eggs,” she said.

  “Are they going to hatch?”

  “Not for a few hours at least,” she said. “I just don’t want anybody to take them.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “They are definitely in danger of being stol
en.”

  As soon as Sunny walked away and I was by myself at the table, I felt blotchier and dustier. It was as if I became even more different without Sunny next to me. I stared down at the crumbs on the tabletop and tried to think normal thoughts, but I still felt like I stuck out. I tapped my paintbrushes on Sunny’s empty plate to make them more noticeable and pulled the can of paint a little closer to me. But the smell of the old meat hit me in the nose, and I had to push it away.

  Sunny came back with a fistful of mustard packets and stuck the rain hat back on.

  “I knew it. I knew you didn’t have to use the bathroom. What are you doing?”

  “My eggs will dry out,” she whined. “You have to keep them moist so they hatch. If we’re going to be taking a long walk in the sun, they might die.”

  She squirted the mustard onto the hamburger. “Oh gross, Sunny.” I couldn’t take much more of this. I could see the people around us grimacing as they watched out of the corners of their eyes. And they had no idea what was in that bucket!

  “Let’s go.” I stood up and scrunched my jeans down a bit so they would fall over my shoeless foot. I’d just let Sunny keep my sneaker. I walked out of the coffee shop. Sunny followed, staring into her bucket and bumping into me every other second. “Get your eyes off those eggs and watch where you’re going.” We walked down the little sidewalk that led us toward the back of the building. I stopped to look both ways before we crossed the parking lot and Sunny rammed into my back. “Do that again and I’m going to dump you in the graveyard,” I snapped.

  She didn’t even react. Her calm face made me want to drop to the ground screaming and frothing at the mouth. She always seemed to be able to make me the most mad when she did nothing!

  I turned and started walking across the parking lot toward the archway. It said FAIRLAWN CEMETERY at the top of the gate in curly, black letters. I took long, fast strides, not caring whether or not Sunny kept up. The parking lot felt warm through my sock. I could hear Sunny scraping behind me in her one boot, with the scrape now followed by the clomp of my sneaker on her other foot.