Record Breaker

by Robin Stevenson

  “I haven’t started school here yet. My parents said I might as well wait until after Christmas, since we moved partway into the year.”

  “I guess.” Christmas was still over a month away. I couldn’t imagine my parents letting me stay out of school that long.

  “So are you coming up or what?” she asked. Her eyes were challenging.

  “I guess,” I said again. I climbed up, feeling awkward with her eyes on me, trying not to let my feet slip on the smooth, damp bark. When I was almost at the top, she held out a hand. I hesitated; then I took it.

  She gripped my hand firmly and hauled me up the last few inches. “I’m Kate,” she said.

  Eight

  I shuffled onto the boards beside Kate, my legs hanging over the edge, and sat there awkwardly. I tried to leave a few inches between us, but I was still awfully close to a girl I didn’t know. I couldn’t think of anything to say, but it didn’t matter. The way Kate talked, I couldn’t get a word in anyway.

  “So what are the schools here like? At my old school, I had a teacher who used to get mad every time anyone made a sound. Really. She’d get mad if you even breathed loudly. I’m not joking.” Kate widened her eyes until I could see the whites all around her brown irises. “One time, she actually pulled me right out of my seat and made me stand in the hall just for sneezing!”

  “Wow. Our teachers are—”

  “I mean, I sneezed quite a few times. But I had hay fever, so I couldn’t help it.”

  “Right. Of course not. I mean—”

  “It wasn’t like I was sneezing on purpose.”

  “Right.” I wondered what the record was for most sneezes in a row, and whether Kate could beat it.

  “But I bet the teachers are nicer here anyway. Everyone seems nice here so far. That guy at the store? Tony? He even gave me some licorice for free because I didn’t have any money.”

  “He did?” He’d never given me anything for free, and I’d been going to his store for my entire life.

  “Yup. Three pieces.” She grinned widely. “And then, on my way out, I found a dime on the floor, right inside the door.”

  “Did you give it to him?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “Are you crazy? ’Course I didn’t.” She pulled the coin out of her pocket. “Still have it, see?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So you want to walk up to the village with me? We could buy something.”

  “Nah.” I had an ache in my stomach that wouldn’t go away. “My friend Allan says Tony has cancer. Because his stomach’s so big, you know?”

  Kate snorted. “That’s stupid. People who have cancer get skinny, not fat. My grandma had cancer and she was skin and bones by the time she died.”

  “Yeah?” Mom wasn’t skinny. She wasn’t fat, but she was curvy.

  “Yeah.”

  I felt a little better. “Well, I better go, I guess.”

  “Why? Do you have to be somewhere?” She looked at her watch. “It’s not even close to dinnertime.”

  “Um…” Everything came flooding back in a sickening wave of awfulness, and to my absolute horror, my eyes started to fill with tears. I turned my face away from her and swallowed hard. “It’s complicated.”

  She was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke, her voice was uncertain. “You want to talk about it?”

  I shook my head. “Nope.”

  “You came here to be alone, didn’t you? I’m sorry. You want me to go? ’Cause I can, if you want. I don’t mind. Sometimes I have to be by myself, you know. I mean, that’s why I come here too.”

  “Yeah. No. I mean, you don’t have to go.” I took a shuddery kind of breath and blinked a few times. “I have to go,” I said, and I started scrambling back down the tree trunk.

  “Come here again and see me.” It was more of a command than an invitation. “I’m here all the time. Practically every day.”

  I nodded.

  “Wait!” she yelled after me. “You never even told me your name.”

  I dropped to my feet at the bottom of the tree and looked up at her. “Jack.” And then I started running back toward Allan’s house. Back toward the news I didn’t want to hear.

  “Where’d you go?” Allan demanded. He was in the front yard, bouncing a tennis ball against the side of the house. “My mom’s pretty mad.”

  “What’d you tell her?”

  “That you took off. What else was I going to say?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”

  Allan missed the ball and it went bouncing past me. “Your dad said to send you home when you turned up.”

  “He went home?”

  “Yeah. He said he was going home to catch some sleep.”

  “Was he mad at me?”

  Allan shrugged. “Nah. He and Mom are too distracted. She’s still in the kitchen crying over the president.”

  I caught my breath. “The president? She was crying over the president?”

  He walked past me, picked up his tennis ball and looked at me oddly. “Yeah. So? Even your dad was choked up.”

  Mrs. Miller had been talking about a woman though. A woman doesn’t get over something like that, she had said. I realized she must’ve meant Jackie Kennedy seeing her husband get shot, and I felt like an idiot. My face burned and I turned away, not wanting Allan to read my thoughts and know how stupid I was. “Um, did he say anything about Mom?”

  “Just that she was sleeping.”

  I took a couple of steps away from him. “I better get home. Tell your mom thanks, okay?”

  And I started to run toward home.

  “Where did you take off to?” Dad demanded. He was sitting in his chair in the living room. His eyes were bloodshot and he looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. “I’ve got enough to worry about without you causing trouble.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  He beckoned to me to come closer. “Jack, come sit down for a minute.”

  I crossed the room and perched on the edge of the couch. My heart was trying to set a speed record of its own.

  “Your mom…well, you know she hasn’t been herself since…for a while now.”

  I looked down the hall toward her closed bedroom door. “I thought she was getting better.”

  He sighed and rubbed his hands across his face. “I did too. She seemed better, didn’t she? Getting out more…” His voice trailed off.

  “Dad? Is Mom really sick?” My voice caught, and I cleared my throat. Dad didn’t like to see me crying. Even when I was a little kid, he used to say I was too old to cry. Stop babying him, Marion. It’s time he toughened up a little.

  “In a way. In a way, I suppose she is.” He looked away from me, out the window at the mess in the backyard. “She needs a rest, Jack. Sometimes when someone is very sad for a long time, like your mom has been, they need some help to get better. The doctor’s given her some medicine, but I’m not so sure it’s helping.”

  “But physically she’s not sick? She doesn’t have, well, cancer or anything really bad?”

  “No.” Dad looked startled. “What on earth gave you that idea?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. So she’s just sad?”

  He turned back to me and nodded. “She’ll be okay. She needs some time. You could help out, you know. Stop pulling stupid stunts and think about her for a change.”

  I thought about her all the time. Seemed to me that she was the one who didn’t think about anyone else. Anyway, if she wasn’t sick, why did she need medicine? “Can I see her?”

  “She doesn’t want to see anyone right now.” He stood up and rubbed his face with both hands. “You heard about President Kennedy?”

  I nodded. “Miss Thomas told us. At school.”

  Dad shook his hea
d. “The whole world has gone mad.”

  I didn’t know what he meant, so I just nodded again.

  “Well.” He gave a long sigh, then lifted one big hand to hide his mouth as he started to yawn. “I’m going to bed.”

  I sat at the kitchen table and flipped through the pages of my Guinness Book of Records.

  Just one more try. There had to be something I could do. One measly little thing I could be the best at. It didn’t have to be something important. Anything would do.

  I took a pencil from my schoolbag and started circling anything that was even a little bit possible. Eating a whole roast ox in less than forty-two days. I could do that, easy—I bet I could do it in a week—but where would I get a whole roast ox? I circled it anyway, just in case. There was someone who’d eaten four hundred and eighty oysters in an hour. That was only eight a minute, and how hard could that be? I hadn’t ever eaten an oyster, but I was pretty sure they were tiny. No way would my mom buy me four hundred and eighty of them though. I’d had a hard enough time getting those eggs. But I circled that one too.

  Seventeen sausages in ninety seconds! That was fast. I remembered the eggs and felt slightly sick, but I circled it. Maybe I could do it. How many seconds would I have per sausage? I couldn’t quite work it out in my head. Less than six though. Maybe five and a half or something like that.

  Ugh.

  But at least I could get sausages.

  Nine

  The next day was Saturday, and I decided to get up early and surprise my parents by making breakfast. Sausages. Mom loved sausages.

  I was planning to make lots of them.

  I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater and headed downstairs as quietly as I could. It was still dark outside. I yawned and stretched, watching my reflection in the kitchen window. My hair was sticking up, all spiky and damp, like I’d been sweating in my sleep.

  I opened the freezer and rummaged through the contents until I found the packages from the butcher. A dozen sausages…and another dozen. They were fairly small ones. I wondered if there was any rule about the size of the sausages.

  A few minutes later, twenty-two sausages were sizzling in two frying pans. Three for Dad. Two for Mom. Seventeen for me. I hoped the smell of them cooking wouldn’t wake Dad up.

  I got out a plate and set it on the table. Beside it I set a glass of water and the kitchen timer. Hmm. Perhaps I should cut up the sausages. It would mean less chewing, maybe. On the other hand, it might be faster to pick them up whole than in pieces. Also, I wasn’t sure about the exact rules and whether cutting in advance was allowed. Even though this wouldn’t be an official record, I had better not risk it. So no cutting.

  I counted out seventeen sausages and put them on my plate. A pile of sausages. A mountain of sausages. My stomach twisted. Usually the smell of sausages made me hungry. Not this morning though. The way the sausages lay there in a steaming brown heap made me think of intestines.

  Or dog turds.

  I swallowed. There seemed to be too much spit in my mouth, and it wasn’t the mouthwatering kind that happens when you’re hungry.

  I felt like I might be sick.

  I took a deep breath. Probably I should have let the sausages cool a bit more, but I was worried about Dad waking up and coming downstairs. No way would he have let me do this. I poked one of the sausages gingerly. It was pretty hot. I picked up my plate and carried it over to the sink. I turned on the cold tap and let the water run over the sausages for a minute. That should do it. I tipped the plate, drained off the greasy water and carried it back to the table.

  Ready.

  I twisted the dial on the timer to ninety-five seconds, giving myself a six-second countdown.

  One.

  I can do this.

  Two.

  I can. I really can.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

  Imagine how impressed Dad will be if I get in the Guinness Book of Records.

  Six.

  I held the sausage in my hand. Warm and wet and slippery.

  Go!

  I crammed half the sausage in my mouth, bit it off and chewed as fast as I could. And the other half. Next sausage. I was doing well, right on the pace. Chew, swallow, chew, swallow. Gulp of water. Third sausage…Just swallow. Don’t think about dog turds. Don’t think about dog turds. I gagged slightly but managed to get the first half down.

  I glanced at the time. Almost twenty seconds and I’d only eaten three! I was already falling behind the record-setting pace I needed. I choked down the last of the third sausage, took another gulp of water and started on number four. Bite, chew, swallow. Faster. Faster. Number five. Number six…

  But halfway through number six, something went wrong. I couldn’t swallow. My mouth was full and I was chewing, but it was as if my throat had closed up, and I could tell that if I tried to swallow I would throw up for sure. I looked at the timer. It’d been almost a minute already. I should be on number eleven or something. I wasn’t going to make it.

  I walked over to the garbage can and spat out the chewed-up meat.

  I never wanted to see another sausage again.

  When Dad finally got up, I was lying on the couch, holding my stomach.

  “What’s the matter with you?” He yawned and shuffled toward the kitchen in his slippers.

  “Stomach ache. Ate too much, I guess.”

  Dad sniffed the air. “Sausages?” He walked into the kitchen. “Jack! There’re enough sausages here to feed an army!”

  “I know. I was hungry.” I thought fast. “I thought Mom might want some.”

  “Not this many. I’ll take her a couple though.” Dad took a plate from the cupboard and flipped two sausages onto it. “Is there any bread?” He looked lost, as if he’d never been in our kitchen before.

  I got up and found the bread. “One slice or two?”

  “Two.”

  I popped two slices into the toaster. “Butter?”

  “Sure.” Dad turned and looked at me. “You okay, son?”

  “Yeah. Can I take her the plate?”

  He nodded. “Try not to worry,” he said. “It won’t help.”

  I shrugged. “I guess not. But…”

  “I know.” He gave me a sad sort of smile. “I can’t help it either.”

  I wondered if Dad still thought about Annie all the time. The weird thing was that although the moment I found her was burned into my brain like one of those Hiroshima shadows, I could hardly remember her alive. Annie had died before she was old enough to do anything. I couldn’t even remember talking to her or holding her, even though I knew I had done both of those things. Mostly what I remembered was Mom: Mom carrying her around, changing her diapers, patting her back to get her to burp after each feeding. I couldn’t even picture Annie herself. Every time I tried, I’d get this image of her lying in her crib like she was that morning, and then I’d have to shut the memory off as fast as I could.

  I knew finding her didn’t make me responsible for her dying, but it was hard not to feel that way. I was the one who’d had to call my mother and watch her pick Annie up. I’d heard her scream. I’d stood there and watched while she crumpled up like a paper doll, sinking to the floor of the bedroom with Annie in her arms.

  I buttered two slices of toast, put them on the plate with the sausages, poured a glass of orange juice and arranged it all on a tray. Then I took it down the hall to my parents’ bedroom. I balanced the tray on one hand, knocked and pushed open the door.

  The room was dark, so I put the tray down on Mom’s dresser and pulled open the curtains. She sat up in bed, the covers bunched over her knees. “Jack?”

  “Hi, Mom. I made breakfast.”

  “Oh. Thanks.” Her hair was tangled, sticking up on one side and flat on
the other.

  “Shall I put the tray on the bed for you?”

  “You can leave it on the dresser.”

  She wasn’t going to eat. “I made sausages,” I said. Then, impulsively, I added, “Mom? I tried to break a record. I was going to eat seventeen sausages in ninety seconds, but I couldn’t do it.” I made a gagging noise, hamming it up. Hoping for a chuckle or even a tiny smile.

  “Oh, Jack.” She sighed.

  “You used to laugh about my record attempts,” I reminded her. “Remember? You used to think it was funny. Remember when I tried to learn to juggle?”

  “I’m tired,” she said. “Just leave the tray there.” She lay back down and pulled the covers up to her chin. “Please behave yourself, Jack.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “Can you close the curtains? It’s too bright.”

  It was barely even light. “The sunshine might be good for you,” I said. “It might make you feel better.” I stepped close to the bed and awkwardly bent over to give her a hug. “I guess you heard about the president,” I said. Then I wished I hadn’t. So much for making her smile. And what if she hadn’t heard? Dad would kill me.

  But she just nodded. “Unbelievable. His poor wife. To see him killed like that. I can’t imagine how she’ll ever get over that.” Her eyes were glassy with tears, and she looked down at the white sheets stretched over her.

  There was a long silence, and I knew we were both thinking about Annie. “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  Mom didn’t say anything. After a minute I crossed the room and closed the curtains.

  Sometimes I was scared she wouldn’t ever get better.

  Ten

  Dad spent the morning working on the fallout shelter. He hadn’t touched it for ages, but without any explanation at all he headed outside and started rushing about as if the bomb was already on its way. It was sort of scary. I wondered if Kennedy being shot meant that war was more likely. Dad kept muttering that the world had gone mad, and Mrs. Miller had said something like that too.