Big Mouth

by Deborah Halverson

  “I heard that,” she said through the door. “Open up. I’ve got wieners.”

  My relief about not being egged fell away as I remembered that I hadn’t invited Lucy to join us. She might flip if she saw Gardo here with me.

  When I opened the door, she stumbled past me and into the kitchen with several bulging plastic grocery bags. She’d changed out of her Cinderella scullery costume, so now she was back to looking like Lucy, with her brown polo shirt and jeans and normal, nonratty hair.

  “Sorry I’m late.” She heaved the bags up onto the counter with one big, double-armed swing. “Dang, water’s heavy.”

  Late? “You’re not that late.”

  “Are you kidding?” She didn’t seem surprised when Gardo joined us at the counter. She just started unloading the bags. One jug of water, another jug, a third. “I should have been here half an hour ago. But it took forever to convince my dad to drive me over. He hates driving in the dark. Total Capricorn. Like his daughter should walk in the dark, especially with a full moon. Full moons bring out weirdos. And a full moon on Halloween is just asking for nutcases. What a lovely idea to let children roam the streets tonight.”

  Lucy hated trick-or-treating. She called it forced begging.

  “Halloween is such a stupid holiday,” she continued while Gardo helped her take the last two water jugs out of their bags. “People dress up their kids then send them to strangers’ houses for candy. What are they thinking? Any other day of the year, taking candy from strangers gets you grounded for life.”

  Gardo pulled a screwdriver and wire cutters out of a bag. “What’s all this for?” He held up a funny-looking hammer. “What is this, a mallet?”

  She took the tools and put them right back in the bag. “I need them for a science project.”

  “Which science project? We don’t have a science project.”

  “It’s extra credit. Here, Shermie, this is for your training.” She handed me a piece of black construction paper covered with letters and numbers in neon ink. “I charted your horoscope so I could tell how tonight’s training would go. I know, I know, you don’t believe in horoscopes. But I’m your coach, and I do. The problem with this morning’s newspaper horoscope was that it focused too much on Leos’ tendency to drama queen when they feel vulnerable and…well, we’ll forget all that for now. Water under the bridge. My chart goes more in depth than that horoscope, and all signs say this’ll be your most important night ever.”

  “Train? Tonight?” I stifled a cocoa-y burp. Oh, the sweet relief of burps. “What signs?”

  “The stars, the sun…” She pointed to the paper. “It’s all in your chart. You’re a new man today, Sherman T. Thuff, with a new future. It’s very exciting.” She pulled hot dogs and buns out of the bags. “Your primary training graph says a round of hot dogs tonight and then another this weekend. Where’s your copy of the primary graph? I told you to put it on your fridge. I can’t wait to see how the wet buns are working for you. Stomach expansion is definitely our next step. Tankage is power. And I know you don’t want to talk about it, Shermie, but we really need to do something about your…you know…your belt.”

  Gardo climbed onto a stool. “Stomach expansion?”

  “That’s right.” She shoved a gallon of water out of the way to make way for her binder, opening to the graph with Cancers H2O doodled in the margins in girly curlicues.

  Gardo leaned in for a closer look and whistled. “Dang. I hope you like water, Shermie.”

  “I guess….” My stomach gurgled.

  “Drinking large amounts of water will increase the elasticity of his stomach. He’ll have to pee a lot, though.” Lucy paused. “What’s that smell?”

  Coconut-Puke Boy leaned away quickly.

  “You don’t want to know,” I said. The thought of eating the scheduled fifteen hot dogs and buns right then made my stomach queasy. I shot Gardo a help-me! look, but he just shrugged. “Look, Lucy, I don’t mean to go against my coach or anything, but I can’t train tonight. I didn’t fast today. I need to fast before I feast.”

  “Since when?” She pushed a button on some big, black G.I. Joe wristwatch. “Fasting is not on any of your training graphs. Carrots are, though. Have you been eating them for jaw strength like I said? How does this timer thingie work?”

  “Here.” Gardo took the watch and started playing with the buttons.

  “Since always. Lucy, I can’t tonight. I had a big lunch and I’ve eaten a few candy bars.” A few bags. “I’ll do it tomorrow. I promise. I’ll fast all day and then you can come over and time me tomorrow night. I’ll do whatever you tell me tomorrow. I promise.”

  “Can’t. Aunt Enith is making me stay late to redo the inventory system tomorrow night. She keeps running out of truffles before she thinks she should.”

  “But Lucy—”

  “Hey.” She nailed me with a stare. “I haven’t said a thing to you about your ice cream training violation, have I?”

  That shut me up.

  “That’s what I thought.” She turned to Gardo. “See if you can set it for twelve minutes. Shermie, where are your pots? I’ll get some water boiling for the wieners—”

  The phone rang, interrupting her. Saved by the bell! I rushed across the kitchen and grabbed the cordless phone.

  “Hi, Cupcake.”

  It was my mom. I put my finger to my lips to shush Gardo and Lucy.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you,” Mom said.

  “That’s okay.”

  “But this couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Dad and I won’t be flying home in the morning after all. He’s in the hospital, honey. Food poisoning.”

  “The hospital?”

  My friends stopped what they were doing.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “He just ate some bad kale. He’ll be fine in a couple of days. They’re pumping his stomach right now.”

  I heard gagging sounds. “Is that him? He doesn’t sound good.” My own stomach clenched. I mouthed, He’s fine to Gardo and Lucy, and they went back to searching the cupboards for pots.

  “It’s not so bad, Moon Pie. It just looks like strained spinach. What is that, Herman?” She must have been covering the mouthpiece, because her voice was muffled. “Is that a Chiclet? When did you have Chiclets? Oh no, never mind, it’s just corn.”

  “Mom!” I swallowed hard to stave off the reversal of fortune that was brewing in my gut.

  “Oh, Sherman, no drama.” She was loud and clear again. “What’s a little half-digested food? Look, sweetie, I have to run. Don’t you worry about your dad. He’ll be fine. He’s already filled up half the bucket. Herman, honey, take off your tie, you’re splattering. I’ll call you when I get new flight information. Tell Grampy he’s on duty for a few more d—”

  I didn’t hear the rest. I dropped the phone and bolted down the hall to the bathroom so my stomach could pump itself out.

  When I was done reversing, I knelt there with my forehead on the front edge of the toilet seat, my eyes closed so I couldn’t see the lumps of chocolate floating in the watery brown pool. It was bad enough I had to smell that chocolate butyric acid cocktail. I thought I’d suffered enough of that smell earlier with Gardo’s reversal. Maybe Vicks under my nose would help.

  Before I could muster the energy to move, though, I heard Lucy’s voice. “Just a few candy bars, is that what you said?” She was behind me, in the open doorway.

  I raised my soggy head but didn’t turn. I didn’t say anything, either. What could I say?

  “What else are you and Gardo doing when I’m not watching? More ice cream?”

  “No.”

  “Did you throw that up, too?”

  “No!”

  “You two are out of control. I plotted your training out for a reason, you know. You have to ease into it. See what happens when you don’t? Jeez, Shermie, what were you thinking? I should’ve known better than to let a Leo alone with a Libra. You two just feed off each other. Gardo’s corrupting you—”

&n
bsp; “Gardo’s not doing anything.” The awful brown muck was perfect for a toilet. I closed my eyes again.

  “He is. And I don’t want you hanging out with him anymore.”

  My eyes shot back open. “What?” I turned to look up at her, my butt now on the floor with my back against the toilet. “Did you just forbid me from hanging out with my friend?”

  “He’s a distraction. I’m your coach, and I still need to show you how we’re going to chip away at your belt of f—”

  “You’re fired.”

  She pulled up. “What?”

  “I said you’re fired. You’re not my coach anymore.”

  “You can’t fire me.”

  “I just did. I don’t need a coach. I can do this by myself.”

  “But…” She paused, then squeezed her lips tight. “Fine. You want to do this yourself, you got it. Good luck, Thuff Enuff. Without me behind the scenes, you’ll need it.”

  Then she was gone.

  I sagged back against the toilet and stared at the empty doorway. I couldn’t believe it. I’d just fired my eating coach.

  I’d just fired Lucy.

  CHAPTER 10

  I couldn’t sleep. Hours had passed since my Halloween reversal, so my stomach was fine, but my mind was all queasy. Thoughts were racing around my mind, spinning and crashing and exploding. Thoughts of Lucy color-coding those training graphs. Of yellow shirts, and red shirts, and green shirts, and boxing robes. Of hot dogs and ice cream and stitched cuts. Of Marilyn Monroe…Captain Quixote…Tsunami. Of Gardo and Heimlich incidents. I didn’t know what I was supposed to make of the mishmash. The images were all my life, but none was about me.

  This was supposed to be my night. Lucy said so. My whole future would change, she’d said. It was right there in her chart, and her charts were always perfect. She’d handed me my future, coded in a rainbow of cotton candy colors, and then I’d fired her.

  I fired Lucy.

  I flipped back the bedspread and swung my legs over the side of the bed. Staggering down the stairs, I entered the kitchen and turned on the light. There it was, on the counter: my star chart.

  I’d never seen a star chart before. It was round, with a big inner circle and a thin outer one, like the crust on a pizza. Both circles were filled with numbers and symbols, and they were divided into twelve pizza slices. At the top of the paper, above the chart and in Lucy’s curly handwriting, it said, Composite Chart:—Shermie & Tsunami. At the bottom, under the double pizza, she’d written some notes:

  Positive Sun/Moon conjunction

  Greatest emphasis falls into ninth house of travel and publicity

  Analysis: They’re two of a kind, but Shermie can take him if he stays committed. Key = Eliminate Fat Belt.

  I stared at the chart, mesmerized. It was kind of pretty, actually. Lucy had used black construction paper and neon gel pens. The circles were white lines, but the numbers and symbols that filled those circles were as colorful as the tubs of ice cream in the Scoops display case. She’d used a soft, powdery blue for the numbers, of which there were dozens, mostly in the upper left portion of the inner circle. For the symbols, she’d used a rich, creamy pink in the outer ring and a milky shamrock green in the inner circle, like the green of the St. Patty’s Day milkshakes they had every March at McDonald’s. Lucy knew I loved those shakes. The symbols were mostly grouped with the numbers in the upper left, leaving a lot of blank space in the rest of the circles.

  Making this chart must’ve taken her a long time. I couldn’t even guess where she’d learned how. Astrology wasn’t an elective at Del Heiny Junior 13.

  I didn’t have any clue what the markings meant, of course. Lucy could’ve written the combination for Fort Knox in there; I’d never know. What I did know was that the chart was about me—me and Tsunami. And according to Lucy’s notes, I could hold my own against him. Or I could in the stars, anyway. On this planet, I had a bit of work ahead of me for that to happen.

  But how was I supposed to do that work now? I had a map of the stars in my hands but no idea how to get my feet off the ground.

  “Stupid star chart.” I crushed the black paper in my hands and flung it at the counter.

  Spinning on my heel, I marched my big, sorry fat belt back to bed.

  CHAPTER 11

  I was late. It was insane to be late for anything at 6:40 a.m. on a Saturday morning, but I was. I should’ve been coasting my bike down my driveway at least five minutes ago. Still, if I hustled I could probably make it to the gym before wrestling practice started. In the wee hours of the morning, I’d come up with a plan to get by without Lucy, and I didn’t want to waste a second putting it into action.

  The sun was barely even up. What genius decided to start practice this early? I’d laughed when Gardo first told me about it, but I wasn’t laughing now.

  I pedaled as fast as I could…which meant I was panting and gasping like a dying fish. There was a reason I rode the bus to school. A mile and a half and nineteen minutes later, I was threading my chain through the spokes at the gym bike racks, hoping I wouldn’t die. I hadn’t stopped to walk my bike once, and now I was paying the price. Sweat dripped from my forehead onto the blacktop, and my legs wobbled as I walked from the bike racks. At least I was upright.

  I came to a set of double metal doors painted white, with a big red dot in the middle of each one. Proud Home of the was stenciled in red across the top of the left door, and Plum Tomatoes stretched across the right. Weird that those doors hadn’t been mustard tagged. They seemed like great targets. I grasped the handle and, after taking a few calming breaths—you can do this, Shermie—I pulled it open.

  I’d never been in the gym before. Not being on the wrestling team or the basketball squad or the badminton team, I’d never had reason to be. The very thought of me in a red-and-white Proud Plum Tomato uniform was a joke. I couldn’t have hit a shuttlecock if it hit me first, and I didn’t dribble except at the table. I certainly didn’t hug other guys in tights. That was just the way of it.

  The gym wasn’t what I’d expected at all. It was dark and gloomy. Only the lights in the center were on, way up high over a patch of red mats. From my dark corner tucked in an alcove between the end of the bleachers and the side gym wall, I could see a dozen guys in red sweats and red hoodies spread out on the mats in a large circle, all bent in jackknife stretches. White helmets were scattered at their feet. In the center of the circle, like the bull’s-eye in a target, was a guy wearing a white hoodie, bent over like the others, shouting into his kneecaps.

  “ONE one hundred, TWO one hundred, THREE one hundred, FOUR one hundred…”

  Captain Shane was working his troops.

  I lingered in the bleacher shadows. Six-fifty-nine and they were already into their warm-ups. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. I didn’t see Gardo over there stretching, so maybe there was still a chance of catching him in the locker room before he joined the practice.

  But before I could move toward the double red doors marked Locker Room, they swung open and the enormous Finns emerged, with their bent noses and their red sweatpants and red hoodies. I backpedaled deeper into the bleacher shadows.

  “…the real power position is behind the front man,” one was saying, his voice low but intense. “If he goes down, we’ll still be standing. So just do like I said and stop arguing. Let the jerk have his precious spotlight.” He suddenly cut off and whipped his head my way when his brother’s face registered my presence. “What are you doing here?”

  They towered over me, eyeing me like a bug that needed stomping. I almost bolted right then and there. But I didn’t. I couldn’t, not if I was going to make this happen. C’mon, Shermie, earn the Thuff Enuff legend.

  I pointed to the locker room doors. “I’m looking for Gardo. Is he in there?”

  “Who do I look like, Sherlock Holmes? Go find him yourself.”

  But when I stepped toward the doors, the other Finn grabbed me by the arm.

  “Hold it. You don’
t just go waltzing in there. That locker room is for team members only.”

  “Then how am I supposed to—”

  “That’s not our problem, now, is it?”

  Shane’s voice droned in the background. “And to the LEFT one hundred, TWO one hundred, THREE one hundred…”

  The Finn let go of my arm, but they didn’t walk away. I’d just have to leave and wait until after practice to get Gardo’s help.

  “Excuse me, ladies!” Shane hollered our way. I nearly dove under the bleachers. “If you two don’t get over here by the time I finish this count, you’re joining Esperaldo on his bleacher tour. Aaaaand THREE one hundred, FOUR one hundred…”

  I followed the Finns’ eyes up into the darkened bleachers next to me. A figure in a singlet topped by a hoodie was jogging up a set of steps in the center. His toe snagged on a step and he fell forward, catching himself with his hands on a higher step. He righted himself and kept going. A few steps higher, he shoved his hood back so he could see. It was Gardo.

  I almost stepped around the bleachers for a better look. “What’s he doing up there?”

  One of the Finns snorted. “Laps. Again.”

  “Why?”

  “Talking smack, probably. Idiot’s gotta learn who to mouth off to and who not to. Hurry up, Blayne.”

  They hustled off toward Shane like a set of loyal bulldogs.

  I stared at Gardo. He was running down some steps now, not far from me. It was too dark for me to see his face well, but his feet were moving fast and sure. Too fast, in my opinion. Part of me wanted to shout out to him to slow down. If he tripped again at that pace, he’d tumble straight to the bottom and break his neck for sure. At least that would’ve been my fate if that were me doing a bleacher tour. But Gardo wouldn’t have slowed down even if I told him to. He’d call that being a wuss. As if there was some dignity in doing punishment laps well.

  As soon as his foot hit the gym floor, he spun and headed in my direction, toward the next set of steps. I ducked back behind the bleachers again. I couldn’t let him see me. He didn’t need to know that I’d witnessed his humiliation.