Big Mouth

by Deborah Halverson

  I picked up the box of Haribo Gold-Bears and wedged my fingers under one of the top flaps. Grampy was a certified cheapskate with the customers, but he ordered only the best for the store. He was always telling me how product quality was the key to his success. It certainly couldn’t be customer service. Arthur would have driven us out of business long ago.

  With an explosive rip, I popped the flap up and hefted out a clear bag of one-inch colored bears. Red, yellow, orange, green, clear…Mardi Gras beads couldn’t have been more festive. I tugged and pulled at the frozen bag, but it didn’t give. I finally just ripped it open with my teeth and helped myself to candy heaven. I swear, on the list of the best candies ever invented, gummy bears had to be in the top ten, if not the top three.

  Grampy stored everything in the freezer because he thought food lasted longer that way, but I seriously doubted gummy bears ever spoiled. Not that I would’ve pointed this out to him, though, because sucking frozen gummy bears was the best. They were like bite-sized pieces of super-sweet, extra-tough Jell-O, and they took a long time to thaw in your mouth, which gave me time to savor them. I couldn’t suck on thawed gummy bears. It was impossible and that was just the way of it. As soon as those hit my tongue, I automatically chewed them. It was some kind of reflex, maybe, like kicking the doctor in the shin when he hammered my knee. It had something to do with the gumminess, was my guess. The good thing was, even thawed gummy bears were a real workout. After years of chewing them by the case, my jaw was stronger than most people’s, and Lucy said the best competitive eaters had the strongest jaw muscles.

  I liked the clear-colored gummy bears the best. Most people thought they were supposed to be vanilla-flavored, but they weren’t. They were pineapple. Yellows, though, those were from the Devil himself. On a good day, they tasted like Lemon Pledge. I could’ve paved the road from my house to Del Heiny Junior 13 with all the yellows I’d trashed in my life.

  I picked out half a dozen clear bears and lined them up on the bottom shelf. “Hey, bears,” I whispered. “Any of you got a cure for ice cream headaches?”

  “Sherman!”

  I whipped my head around toward the freezer door. Ow! My cranial pounding kicked up another notch.

  Arthur hollered again from outside the freezer. “Sherman! You alive in there? I don’t hear anything!”

  “That’s because I’m dead!” I hollered back.

  “Don’t eat the gummy bears!”

  “I’m not eating the gummy bears! I do have self-control, you know!” Not that anyone thought I did.

  I turned back to my gummy friends, slowly this time. I didn’t want to jostle my aching brain. Like loyal little puppies, the gummies waited patiently for my attention, no judgment in their eyes, all unconditional love. That was nice for a change. I wasn’t stupid, I knew what people thought the first time they looked at me: big fat doughnut. Shane said it, others thought it. It was all over their faces. But so what, who wasn’t lugging around a little something extra? Movie stars, maybe, but I mean real life. Whenever I looked around at the mall and at school, mostly all I saw were people I’d never call skinny, not even accidentally. I swear, there were way more of us—us big guys—than them skinnies. Yet it was the skinnies we were supposed to bow to. Who put them in charge?

  I picked up a second gummy bear and put it in my mouth.

  Well, I’ve got news for you, Skinnies, this Big Guy has lots of friends. I’m no social outcast. And it would only get better when I stuffed Tsunami in the Nathan’s Famous hot dog–eating contest. Then I’d be more than “that big guy who works in the ice cream parlor.” I’d be Thuff Enuff, hot dog–eating champion.

  I fished the first gummy bear out of my mouth—it was now warm and soft—and threw it hard at the icy wall. It stuck.

  My stomach lurched again. I burped chocolate and pineapple and butyric acid. Nasty. To kill the taste, I dug a red gummy bear out of the bag and popped it into my mouth with the clear one. There. Cherry-pineapple, like a tropical drink. Just stick an umbrella toothpick in my mouth and I had my own piece of Hawaii in the Scoops-a-Million freezer.

  Not that I planned to swallow my tropical delight. My stomach felt full up to my tonsils. I had to get used to the sensation, though, because with all the HDB training Lucy had scheduled for me, I’d probably be feeling this way a lot. Hey, every dream had its sacrifices. I just hoped I wouldn’t suffer any more reversals of fortune. They could ruin an eater’s career. Do it during a competition, get disqualified; do it after a competition, get laughed at. I had to conquer them. Besides, I hated feeling like my face was exploding.

  I gave my hands a big shake. My fingers were going numb. While that was better than the finger cramping and forearm burning I’d suffered in the hours since becoming Ice Cream–Eating Champion of the Universe, it wasn’t good for doing the inventory quickly. Man, why does Grampy always schedule his supplier visits for when Mom and Dad are out of town?

  Because with Mom and Dad out of town, you’re at his mercy to make his shopping list, you doofus. Sighing, I dug out the old parka and gloves that Grampy kept in the freezer and grabbed the clipboard. Might as well start the inventorying, it was going to be a long, cold night.

  I put another clear bear in my mouth and started counting the Mint Chocolate Chip tubs. One, two, three…

  CHAPTER 7

  If there was a competitive sleeping circuit, they wouldn’t let me in for a million bucks. Not after last night. Grampy’s stupid inventorying took way longer than I’d expected thanks to my headache, so I didn’t get home from Scoops until almost a quarter to two, which put me in bed sometime around two-fifteen. Mom would’ve had a cow if she’d been home. And just to reach home at that hideous hour, I’d had to ride through the park, right up that gnarly hill in the middle. Stupid Grampy refused to drive our truck, claiming the stick shift made his bum knee swell, so I couldn’t call him to pick up me and my bike. Twice I almost laid my bike down and died in the grass. What genius puts a mountain in the middle of a park?

  At least I had the satisfaction of knowing that I hadn’t reversed my fortune in the freezer. Maybe sucking gummies kept my stomach in check. Or maybe the ice cream had frozen in my gut. Whatever the reason, I missed out on another Butyric Acid Event.

  What really torpedoed my sleep, though, was the post-park segment of my night: I was up several times each hour sprinting to the bathroom. It turns out that putting that much dairy into the human stomach causes some gross and painful side effects. I ached everywhere…in my stomach, my shoulders, my head, and, big surprise, my intestines. Then my guts rumbled like a bulldozer for a while, eventually leading to a smellfest worse than any Butyric Acid Event. Then the bathroom trips started. How humiliating. Was that what professional eaters went through after they competed? They looked so cool and collected, it was hard to believe they got reduced to that when they left the competition table.

  By sunup, my bloated belly had mostly settled. Even so, I’d tried to tell my mom on the phone that I was too sick to go to school. But she laid into me with all her motivational la-di-da and I caved. You would’ve thought she was blood-related to Grampy, the way she worked me. So that’s how I found myself sitting on the school bus this morning, totally exhausted, with the rickety rocking motion working on me like a baby in a cradle. All around me, Plums in Halloween costumes were hollering and laughing and throwing an empty plastic pumpkin back and forth like a bunch of first graders. Next to me, Lucy was trying to show me a bunch of training graphs she’d worked up last night. Reading in a jostling bus wasn’t kind on the eyes or the stomach. It didn’t help that I was half comatose.

  “I’m thinking we should start focusing on capacity instead of speed.” She took a highlighter out of the front pocket of her dress and marked a row labeled HBD CONSUMPTION TALLY on a yellow, red, and green line graph. “Each box represents half a hot dog. This yellow line may only creep up in the short term, but over the long haul you’ll see big improvement.”

  She put the
highlighter back in her pocket. She was wearing a Cinderella costume. Not the fancy, twirling-at-the-ball Cinderella that I’d expect a girl to want, but the scrungy, slaving-in-the-kitchen Cinderella, all sooty and smudged and ratty-haired. That was Lucy. Even on Halloween, she had to buck the system.

  My costume, on the other hand, was a spit-and-polish Captain Quixote dress uniform. I liked the shoulder epaulets best. They stuck out way far and official-like, and the sun insignia on them almost glowed against the black fabric background. Then I had a row of medals on my chest showing all of Quixote’s First Contacts with alien species. There were fourteen of them. Quixote was the most famous and daring and powerful of all starship captains ever. Everything that guy did screamed Destiny. I bet he never got stuck in the john with the runs.

  “Now, Shermie,” Lucy said, “I know capacity training isn’t as exciting as speed-eating, but the final numbers are more dramatic, so you’ll like that. Stomach capacity and stamina are where it’s at in the twelve-minute competitions. Those heats aren’t for the two-minute sprinters.”

  “Whatever you say.” The Nathan’s Famous hot dog–eating contest was a twelve-minute HDB eat-off, so this strategy of working on capacity rather than sprint speed sounded smart to me. Maybe eating fast was why the dogs didn’t stay down. Even if I hadn’t agreed with Lucy, I was too tired to argue anyway.

  The plastic pumpkin whizzed at my face, but a Jedi leaned over our seat from behind and snagged it just before it popped me in the mouth. Boy, he’s lucky his reflexes are quick. If that pumpkin had hit me, I couldn’t be responsible for my actions right now.

  “I put together some capacity growth graphs—oh, before I forget!” She interrupted herself and reached into her backpack, digging out a plastic shopping bag. “Here.”

  I opened the bag. It was filled with packs of gum. “What’s that for?”

  “For you to chew. It will build up your jaw strength.”

  “I don’t need to work on jaw strength. I eat gummy bears. I could chew a walnut shell into powder with this jaw.”

  The bus stuttered to a stop and three kids got on. One was dressed as a California raisin, another as Santa, and the third as a penguin.

  “You sure?” She leaned in to inspect my jaw.

  I turned away. “Yes, I’m sure. Trust me.”

  “If you say so.” She took back the bag reluctantly and drew a giant X through the graph. As she turned to the next page in the binder, I let my head sag back against the seat. “I don’t know if you’ll like this next graph. Shermie? Shermie!”

  I snapped fully awake.

  “Sorry.” I shook my head to get the blood moving through my brain. It didn’t help much. “Do we need to do this now, Lucy? I’m really tired.”

  “We need to talk about this new graph sooner or later. I don’t know how you’re going to take it, though….”

  I rested my head on her shoulder. “I’m tired, Lucy. I was up late.”

  “Does your head still hurt?” Her voice was soft in my ear. She’d come by Scoops during her break last night to see why I hadn’t met her in the food court. Gardo stood her up, too. I hadn’t told her why my head hurt, though.

  “No. It went away sometime last night. Or maybe this morning. Depends on if you count two a.m. as morning or night.” My eyelids slid closed. I swear, my head was just a big, empty, exhausted melon. And the rest of my body wasn’t much better. My legs were stiff as wood and my arms were heavy as bricks. Getting out of bed this morning was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. “The rest of me feels like a train wreck, though. I had to ride my bike through the park last night.”

  “On that hill?”

  “Yeah. At night.” Her hair brushed my lips. She didn’t smell like chocolate today, she smelled like candy canes. I bet she used peppermint mouthwash.

  “You’re working out?” she asked. “When did you start that?”

  “I wasn’t working out, I was working late. Stupid Grampy.”

  “You rode your bike up that hill.” She was taking in that information. I could only imagine the visual she got in her head. “How did it go? Can you do it again?”

  “What?” I sat up straight. Ow. “Are you insane? Why would I do it again?”

  “Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” The bus shuddered to a stop. A ghoul and a nun got on. Lucy lowered her voice. “See, there’s this theory….”

  She paused and looked around her to make sure no one was listening. Then, slowly, she reached down and turned the page in her binder. There, at the top of a new black and blue bar graph, was a handwritten label: BODY WEIGHT-TO-HBD RATIOS.

  “I’m sorry, Shermie, I didn’t make this up. It’s common knowledge on the circuit. It explains why the big guys are losing to little guys by so much.” She touched her finger to the colored bars. “See, Tsunami was only a hundred and thirty-one pounds when he got his first record of fifty-three and a half HDBs, and just one-sixty when he broke that record with fifty-three and three-quarters. For six years the closest anyone else could get was thirty-eight. And that guy was skinny, too. The big guys couldn’t even get that many HDBs down. Even a hundred-and-five-pound lady kicked their butts with thirty-seven. Only a hundred and five pounds, Shermie; we’re talking toothpick. They call her the Black Widow, and the big guys are terrified of her. She wins nearly every eat-off she’s in. Isn’t that cool? Anyway, no matter how you look at it, the tiny eaters are the big winners.”

  I stared at the graph but didn’t say anything. What could I say? My left leg weighed more than the Black Widow.

  Lucy went on hesitantly. “People think that the skinny guys are eating so much because their stomachs can expand more. The big guys’ stomachs can’t expand so far because…well, because they have this…restriction….” She ran her hands back and forth across her belly. The plastic pumpkin hit her elbow and bounced into the aisle, where a fairy quickly snatched it up and threw it toward the front of the bus.

  I focused my eyes on the pumpkin, watching as shrieking Plums batted it around the front bench. I was hoping Lucy wouldn’t say what I thought she was going to say.

  “They call it the Belt of Fat. And you have one, Shermie.”

  She said it.

  “I’m sorry, Shermie. But we have to talk about this.”

  No we don’t. “I’m tired and I’m sore. I don’t want to talk about training anymore.”

  “Shermie—”

  “No.” I scooted painfully over to the window and leaned my head against the glass. It vibrated against my temple.

  What’s poking me in my…Oh. I leaned forward and pulled my Galactic Warrior photon taser stick out of my back pocket. The stupid costume shop was out of taser holsters. Where was a space warrior supposed to store his taser if he didn’t have a holster?

  Whap! The pumpkin hit my chest and fell into my lap. The Jedi leaned over the back of my seat and nudged my aching shoulder. “Hey, big guy, give it here.”

  I picked up the pumpkin and dropped it out the window.

  “Hey!” he shouted.

  “Shermie!”

  Lucy was shocked, but so what? I rose painfully and used every ounce of strength left in my arms to slide the window shut. I faced the Jedi. “It’s gone. Deal with it.”

  “You suck, man.” He dropped back into his seat. A chorus of boos rang out.

  Stupid pumpkin. I sat down and leaned my head against the window again. Man, I felt like death warmed over. Maybe I should’ve tossed myself out the window. Wait, silly me, with this belt of fat, I wouldn’t have fit. Silly, stupid, fat me.

  Our clunker bus got to school about the same time as Mad Max did. I saw her through my window as we drove by the staff parking lot, which at that late time was full of cars but deserted of people. She was unloading a big crate from her trunk, struggling to slide it onto a wheeled metal cart. She must have had one serious costume if an entire crate was needed to get it to her room. She was draping a giant blanket over the cart when I lost sight of he
r behind the other buses.

  I waited for the rest of the costumed Plums to clear the bus before I slogged off into the busy quad, right next to the tomato-shaped bus stop sign. All of its letters except the st in STOP had been scrawled over with mustard. Now it read MUSTARD! with a smiley face in the D.

  Someone touched my shoulder. “Excuse me, Shermie.”

  I stumbled to the side as a yellow M&M with red hair pushed past me and stood under the sign. Tater stepped up and snapped a picture of the guy with his cell phone camera. Instead of “Cheese,” the M&M shouted, “Go, Mustard!”

  “Yeah, Auggie! That one’s a keeper,” Tater said. He waved his cell phone at me. “How about you, Shermie? You want one? They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. Go, Mustard!”

  “Nuh-uh,” I muttered, turning away. I probably should’ve cheered, “Go, Mustard!” in solidarity or something, but there were no cheers in me this morning, not even for the Mustard Movement.

  “Suit yourself.” Tater and his M&M disappeared into the crowd.

  My bus revved its engine. Lucy stepped up beside me and groaned. “Oh no. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.”

  She was looking past the MUSTARD! sign at our red blob of a school. Two janitors in green overalls were perched at the top of ladders on either side of the double doors. They were hanging a white banner with large red letters. IN DEL HEINY WE TRUST.

  Culwicki was striking back.

  “It’s official, I am living a nightmare.” Lucy gazed back longingly at the departing bus. “I gotta wake up from this. Someone please pinch me.”

  For an evil moment, I considered volunteering. Fat belt, my foot.

  A sudden movement caught my eye. Across the crowded quad, the Finns had just burst out of a pack of yellow-hatted ninth graders and were now sprinting toward the janitors. They had double-barreled water rifles in their hands and were wearing court jester costumes with yellow bandannas on their faces.

  Oh, c’mon. Like no one will recognize you giant idiots behind bandannas. What an embarrassment to the Mustard Taggers. They knew how to keep their identities secret.