Larger-Than-Life Lara

by Dandi Daley Mackall

But there are some hard things about dialogue. Like for instance, one thing is you have to talk to people. I don’t do this a whole lot. Robert and Matt and Luke don’t like to talk to me, and I don’t like to talk to them. At school, Theresa and I talk some, especially when her real best friend, Amanda, isn’t speaking to her or is absent. Although if we do this in class, Mrs. Smith yells at us. Besides which, Theresa and Amanda’s biggest problems are too little, like whether they should get their hair cut or not. And my biggest problems are too big to talk about. So that’s the first hard thing.

  The next hard thing about dialogue is that it’s hard to get all the words right. This doesn’t matter if you’re just making stuff up. But my book isn’t making stuff up. And I’m trying not to put words into people’s mouths if the words didn’t actually come out of their mouths. Still, I got to say straight-out that maybe I forgot some of the dialogue and even that maybe I forgot some of it on purpose.

  When I came down from my bedroom, Matt was on the phone. Robert was sitting on the couch with Matt, eating a hot dog and watching the sports part of the news. Luke was sitting on the floor, throwing things out of his backpack, like he was searching for something. There was no dialogue when I came down, if you don’t count the sports men talking to themselves on the TV.

  Then Matt slammed down the phone and glared at me. “Hey, why didn’t you tell me you had an elephant girl at your school?”

  “What’s an elephant girl?” Luke asked.

  “Shut up!” Matt answered.

  “There’s no such thing as an elephant girl,” Robert said.

  I didn’t say anything yet.

  “Travis said his brother’s class got a new girl who’s big as an elephant,” Matt explained. “Roger and Laney are in the same class.” He turned back to me. “So?”

  Luke quit searching through his bag and came closer to join in the dialogue. “For real, Laney? Does she look like an elephant?”

  I shrugged. (This is not exactly dialogue. Mrs. Smith says it’s a gesture.)

  “Is she just normal fat, like Theresa?” Robert asked.

  I shook my head. Another gesture.

  “So?” Matt demanded. “Is she really as fat as Travis says, or is his brother a liar?”

  “Yes and yes. Roger is a liar. And I’ll bet she weighs three hundred pounds,” I said, walking in front of the TV on purpose. It almost never happened that even one of my brothers made dialogue with me, so this was really something that all three of them wanted to ask me questions.

  Robert made a sound that might have been a guffaw. I’ve seen this word written in stories when it seemed like the characters were laughing. But I could be wrong about Robert’s noise because I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a real guffaw. “Is there room for this new fat kid in a regular classroom?” he asked.

  Before I could answer, Matt jumped off the couch and shoved me aside from the TV. Then he asked, “Did you talk to her, Laney?”

  “What’s she like?” Luke asked.

  I was getting a not-so-good feeling, like they were tired of me not having the answers they wanted. And that meant trouble. For me.

  “What’s with you, Laney?” Matt snarled. (I’m not sure you can use snarl in dialogue. But Matt made me think of the Baileys’ pit bull that’s always about an inch away from biting a person. So snarl works for me.) “What’s her name? Who is she? Didn’t you even try to find out?”

  “Her name is Lara. Larger-Than-Life Lara. And she’s my new best friend,” I said, which was an out-and-out lie because I hadn’t said so much as one word to her. Plus, I had no plans to. “And,” I went on, “she said to tell you that if you give me trouble, she’ll come over here and sit on you.”

  That ended that dialogue, and I went to the kitchen. I figured that all three boys had already stuffed their faces, so it was safe to get out the macaroni mix.

  The macaroni had been sitting on the stove in the pan for so long that it had all mushed together when I heard Daddy’s truck. I knew as soon as I heard it scrape up the gravel drive that his and my dialogue was going to be tougher than I thought. He was driving too fast, and he had to slam on the brakes to miss hitting the shed. If the car had been dialoguing with the driveway, it would have looked like this:

  “ERRRRK!” screamed the brakes.

  “Crunch, crush!” growled the gravel.

  I stirred the mushy macaroni and worried about how it might not be so much help at persuading Daddy to let me try out for the play. I already had the table set with two places, which had caused some not-so-nice dialogue from Robert and Matt, who right away said they knew I was up to something. Or did I invite my new girlfriend over for dinner?

  “Hey, Daddy!” I called as he stumbled into the kitchen. “I made you dinner.”

  “Hey, Laney,” he said. He came over and sniffed the macaroni in the pan. “I ain’t had nothing to eat. Them stooges down at the factory cut lunch break a good five minutes. One of these days, I’m going out for lunch and not going back at all, I swear.”

  My daddy has worked at the parts factory for twelve years. Sometimes he comes home smelling like oil from a car. Other times, of which tonight was one, he smells like beer. I’m not sure which smell I hate worse.

  We sat at the table and started in on our macaroni. I was real grateful that all three boys had run out of the house after Matt got another phone call. I didn’t know where they were, and Daddy didn’t ask after them.

  We ate without any dialogue for a while. I knew I had to start it.

  “Guess what,” I said.

  He didn’t. He got up and took a beer out of the fridge, popped the top, and sat back down.

  “We got a new girl in class today.”

  He took a long swig from the can. “Hmmm.”

  “She’s really big. Bigger than Mr. Rafer.” Mr. Rafer was one of Daddy’s bosses.

  “That son of a sodbuster. He thinks he can make us do overtime without paying for it.” He took another swig. “Well, that not-nice man has another thing coming.”

  (This was not his real dialogue. But I figure you know that. And you know why.)

  “The new girl’s name’s Lara, and we had to get her a table for her desk,” I continued, trying to get him off Mr. Rafer because that had been a mistake to bring up.

  “You know what, Laney?” He narrowed his tiny eyes at me, like he was going to tell me something that was going to change my life forever. “Don’t you never settle. You hear?” He downed his beer. So far he hadn’t eaten more than two bites of the macaroni. Me neither. But he got up and got himself another can of beer.

  I figured I better get the show on the road because he was either going to end up mad and shouting, or he was going to fall asleep right over his bowl of macaroni.

  “Daddy?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I agree with you about not settling.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So I’ve got something to ask you. Because I don’t want to settle, like you said not to.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “At school, Mrs. Smith says we’re going to put on a play. And the play is by Samuel Green, and it’s called Fair Day. And you got to memorize lines and even sing a song. And to do that, you got to practice. The practices are after school sometimes, so that means not getting home right after.”

  “I wanted to be in a play once.”

  “Well, so, you know what I mean!”

  “Stupid sons of not-nice mothers wouldn’t let me. Never did get to.”

  “So I need your permission to even just try out for it.”

  “I wasn’t good enough for them. Graftons weren’t to amount to nothing.”

  “Is it okay? Can I tell Mrs. Smith it’s okay?”

  “Huh?”

  “Please say yes, Daddy.”

  “Yes? Sure. Whatever my baby wants. I’m going to watch the game.” He got up, took another beer from the fridge, and left.

  I heard the TV come on.

  In my head, I replayed our dial
ogue. I’d asked him straight up about being in the play. And he’d said yes. So that was that.

  I knew if he hadn’t been drinking, he probably wouldn’t have said yes. He counts on me to keep the boys from killing each other when he’s not home. And he doesn’t like me to go to other people’s houses after school, not that anybody besides Theresa ever asks me to.

  I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to remember about the Fair Day play in the morning, or about him saying yes. But he said it. And that was enough for me to do the trying out.

  Besides, I dialogued to myself, I probably won’t get a part in the play anyhow. Graftons don’t get parts in plays.

  7

  MRS. SMITH SAYS THE MIDDLE of a story can be the most boringest part. And I think she’s right. Because that’s where sometimes some kids fall asleep when we have reading time. So she says the middle part is where you have to get you some opposition, which means things or people that are against your character. Which was not a problem in this book because Larger-Than-Life Lara had so much opposition it can’t all fit in here or the story would be so long that nobody, not even Mrs. Smith, would read every word of it.

  Mrs. Smith said that some famous writer who I can’t think of the name of right now said, “It’s a good book, but the covers are too far apart.” Get it? Like the middle part of the book was way too big and fat. I don’t want that to happen to me. And another writer I can’t remember said, “Inside every big, fat book is a skinny book waiting to come out.” And I’m not so sure what that one means, but it made Mrs. Smith laugh, and it’s true because a famous writer said so.

  So what you do then, about opposition, is you pick the biggest or most interesting ones. And that’s what I’m doing.

  I got to school Tuesday after Joey and before Lara. So I, along with most of the kids in my class, saw Joey Gilbert put a folded piece of paper on Lara’s larger-than-life desk. Doing this made Maddie and Sara and Amber giggle, so I figured they knew more about this note than I did, which didn’t surprise me none. Somebody would have had to help Joey spell the words, for one thing. He was the worst speller in the whole class, if you didn’t count Eric.

  Joey shot me this look that Matt, my meanest big brother, gives me when he thinks I might tell on him. Only Joey’s got a ways to go with that look. He should have known I never tell on anybody. I stay out of trouble that’s not mine.

  Lara was the last one to come in the classroom, and I was thinking that if I was her, I’d be the first one so as I wouldn’t have to walk down the side of the class (she didn’t fit between desk aisles) and have everybody staring at me. But she smiled, like she was so glad to be back and was having good memories of her first day at Paris Elementary.

  “Now then,” Mrs. Smith began, “for our reading time today, we’re going to start reading through Fair Day. It’s a fine little play, written by a man who used to farm in this community.”

  I watched out of the corner of my eye as Lara grunted into her desk.

  “We should finish reading the play tomorrow. If you’re trying out for a part, I’ll be passing out copies of tryout portions of the script tomorrow. But don’t forget that everyone will have a part in our production.”

  She went into her routine about how lighting and making the background and decorating the stage were all just as good as being a star on the stage. I missed a lot of that speech because I was watching Lara unfold her note.

  “Excuse me, class?” This was Mrs. Smith’s way of saying, “Shut up!” although sometimes she just said that. “Would someone care to tell me what’s so interesting that you can’t pay attention to me?”

  I glanced around the room. Kids were creeping out of their seats and stretching to see what Lara was going to do about Joey’s note.

  “You know how I feel about passing notes in class,” Mrs. Smith said, stretching out her arm to Lara.

  We did know. If Mrs. Smith caught you passing notes, she collected them and read them all in front of God and everybody, even when it was notes between Maddie and Tommy, or some other boy, and they were so mushy that we all said things like “Yuck!” “Gross!” “Give me a break!”

  Since I sat right next to Lara, I had already got me a good look at Joey Gilbert’s note. And I was pretty sure Mrs. Smith wouldn’t read it out loud. I can’t remember every single word of that note, and I can’t guarantee I got the words in the right order. But it went something like this:

  I don’t know why Joey would have signed the note. He’s stupid, but not that stupid. I thought maybe whoever did the spelling for Joey made sure to sign Joey’s name, so as the speller wouldn’t get in trouble.

  Lara still hadn’t handed over the note to Mrs. Smith, whose arm was still reaching for it. Instead, Lara folded the note. Then she folded it again.

  If I didn’t think Mrs. Smith would get after me for using a cliché, I would say that in our classroom, you could have heard a pin drop. That’s how quiet it got. Clichés are sayings that get too much use and people get sick and tired of them. That’s what our teacher says, and she doesn’t like them one bit.

  When the note was folded as small as it could get, Lara smiled up at Mrs. Smith.

  Mrs. Smith put down her arm. Her forehead wrinkled up like an even older person’s, and her head tilted to one side because you could tell she just didn’t get what was going on.

  Then Lara asked, “Mrs. Smith, do you mind if I keep my note?”

  “Lara, you don’t have to take this,” Mrs. Smith began. She turned to Joey Gilbert, who scurried back into his chair. “Joey, I’ve seen enough to know this note is your doing. This is inexcusable. You and I have to have a little talk with the principal and—”

  “Mrs. Smith?” Lara interrupted, so calm and peaceful that Mrs. Smith stopped talking and her wrinkles went back to the normal ones. “Could I just say something to Joey, instead of you and the principal doing it?”

  “What?” asked our teacher.

  Lara didn’t repeat it. She just kept smiling.

  Finally, Mrs. Smith’s head nodded yes.

  Lara got herself up out of her desk, which I’m telling you was no small thing to do. Then she turned to the back of the room and smiled directly at Joey Gilbert.

  If you thought it was quiet in our room before, when you could have heard a pin drop, you should have heard it now. You could have heard a feather drop.

  In my head, I tried to imagine what I would have said, if I’d been Larger-Than-Life Lara and gotten me a mean note that called me a pig. And first off, I figured that I would have let Mrs. Smith and Principal Russell have at Joey. Then I would have taken him on at recess. I know this to be true because it’s already happened to me two times. And he didn’t even call me a pig—just Hillbilly Jill and stuff like that.

  But not Lara. That smile never left her face the whole time. And here’s what Lara said.

  “Hey, Joey Gilbert, thanks for the note.

  In a class clown election, you’d get my vote.

  I watched you pitch, and I think you’re great.

  But you’ll get more power if your arm is straight.”

  Then Larger-Than-Life Lara sat down.

  Nobody, not even Mrs. Smith, said nothing while Lara lowered herself back into her chair and scooched her body the rest of the way into it and pulled her folding-table desk as close as it could get to her larger-than-life stomach.

  Mrs. Smith started to say something, like, “Well, Lara, that was . . . ,” then changed her mind and started over with, “Joey, you . . . I never want you . . . again.” But she gave up trying to solve that opposition in another way from what Lara had done, and she went back to talking about the play.

  A normal person who just got out of having to go to the principal’s office for the hundred millionth time, and instead just got himself a pretty good rhyming poem that called him a class clown and great at baseball, plus gave him good advice on pitching, would have been happy or maybe even grateful. But Joey Gilbert is no normal person. And I had a feeli
ng that he wasn’t happy even one little bit about how things turned out.

  I didn’t turn around to look at Joey until Mrs. Smith started in on reading Fair Day to us. But when I did, it didn’t take but the one look for me to know I was right. Joey Gilbert was not happy. His eyes were slanty. His mouth made a hard line. He was squeezing his pencil so hard it was a miracle it hadn’t broke up into pieces.

  Mrs. Smith says about opposition that it’s boring when the opposition happens and then gets all over with right away. That it’s better when the opposition grows and grows and gets bigger and bigger.

  That one look at Joey Gilbert made me know for sure that his opposition wasn’t the getting-over-fast kind. His was the growing-bigger-and-bigger kind. Like a larger-than-life opposition.

  8

  JOEY GILBERT is the kind of kid who would never settle for being a minor character in a story. So I will leave him out of this chapter as much as possible. But the truth is that Joey was never very far out of the picture. His opposition just kept growing and growing. Sometimes at recess I could swear he started keeping his arm straighter when he pitched and his pitches started hitting the strike zone every single time. Sometimes in class he whispered his meanness, instead of putting it into a note and signing it. But mostly, he was the biggest opposition at lunchtimes.

  But he’s no minor character, so I’m done talking about him in this chapter.

  Maddie Simpson is the kind of person you’d like to look like, if you were to have the secret idea that you wanted to be an actress when you got out of school. She’s not too fat or too skinny. Her hair is blonde and long and wavy and never looks like she’s to the day when it ought to get washed. It doesn’t hurt that she wears clothes like the middle-school, and even high-school, girls wear. You hardly ever see her in the same clothes as she’s worn before.

  Two days before tryouts for Fair Day were scheduled to happen, Maddie and her best friend, Sara, surprised the socks off of all of us at first-hour lunch period. (I better say here that Sara is the kind of person who doesn’t know if she wants a hot dog or a hamburger, a Pepsi or a Coke, until other people have ordered first.)