Big Mouth

by Deborah Halverson

  Lucy stepped in front of my desk and handed me a worksheet to share with Tater. She started to move away, but I reached over the desk and touched her hand.

  “What did you decide?” I whispered. “Gonna make it to the meet?”

  She looked over at Gardo. He was leaning back in his chair, his head lolled back with his eyes to the ceiling. “I don’t think Gardo is gonna make it to the meet,” she said.

  He did look like roadkill. And judging by the squinty once-over Lucy gave me, I probably didn’t look much better.

  “I’ll come over after.” She moved toward Gardo’s desk.

  Tater nudged me in the ribs. “Hot date?”

  I punched him in the shoulder, hard. “Shut up, man, that’s Lucy. That’d be like dating my sister.”

  “Sorry. Sheesh, someone’s touchy.”

  “I’ll show you touchy—”

  “Sherman, is there a problem?” Max’s eagle eyes drilled into me.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then close the mouth and open the ears. I’ll be testing you on this information.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I stomped on Tater’s toe. He winced but didn’t yell out. Good, take it like a man.

  “Water is a key element,” Max said, launching into the pre-experiment lecture, “one of the Big Four—water, fire, air, and earth. The balance of these four is delicate and essential to all life. If we allow this balance to falter, we throw off the balance of nature itself. Remember our static-charged hair last week?” She picked a black comb up from her podium and walked to the instructor’s faucet, pulling out the two wooden chopsticks that held up her hair. Long locks cascaded down her back. Quickly she pulled the comb through her hair twice, turned on the faucet, then held the comb next to the stream of water. The stream bent toward the comb.

  “I just covered this comb with negative electrical charges much like we experienced last week,” she said. “Now those negatives are attracting the positive charges of the water, actually bending the stream. See that? Imagine the give and take that’s going on at a cosmic scale. The sunspot activity last week heated the water temperature in the Pacific Ocean, creating an El Niño effect. This, in turn, results in increased storm activity all along our coast. We’ll be seeing a lot of water very soon. Life on this planet is merely a series of delicate balances. The role played by two simple molecules—oxygen and hydrogen—is what we’ll be exploring today.”

  Lucy rose up onto her toes and peered at Gardo’s face. His eyes were closed now. Ha! He’s sleeping like a baby! Max was definitely sick if she hadn’t spotted that. Shaking her head, Lucy handed the worksheet to Leonard and moved on to the next table.

  When I met Gardo at the track this morning, he was already looking like death in a sweatshirt. Coach Hunt had made the wrestlers practice an extra hour last night, and then everyone who was more than four pounds over their weight goal was forced to run several miles with backpacks full of dirt strapped tightly to their backs. On top of that, Gardo had ended the night with a one-hour stint in the sauna at his mom’s fitness club. My buddy was superhuman to even be here today. He’d make weight this afternoon, I just knew it. He wanted to be extra doubly sure, though, so he’d been spitting all morning to cut down on water weight. He even had a plastic sandwich bag in his pocket for spitting during class. He’d also buzzed his hair almost as short as Tater’s to make himself lighter. Personally, I wouldn’t join any sport that made you shave your head. A guy had to have his pride.

  “A gallon of water weighs approximately eight and a half pounds,” Max said, setting a jug of water on top of the podium.

  Wow. That was how much I drank in water training last night? Well, almost drank. No wonder spitting matters for wrestlers on weigh-in day. Water was heavy.

  “The average five-minute shower takes between fifteen and twenty-five of these containers. The average indoor toilet uses twenty-eight of them per day—per person. Now imagine just one inch of rainfall on the ground. That doesn’t seem like much, I know, but it’s actually equal to seven thousand of these puppies. We’re talking nearly thirty tons of water falling to the earth in one simple spring shower, my young Einsteins. That’s a lot of agua.”

  She went to her office on the side of the room and stepped inside the door. There was a lot of banging around and the sound of a chair being shoved across the floor and then a random crash. She stuck her head back out. “Mr. Finn, will you assist me, please?”

  The Finn worked himself out of his desk and joined her behind the door. After more banging around, he came out pulling a large, red metal wagon. Four humongous containers of water sat in the wagon, with nozzled hoses running out of the top of each one.

  Jeez, Max, drag a thirsty man to water but don’t let him drink, why don’t you? The torture!

  “Today,” she said, following the wagon, “we are going to reproduce Newton’s water experiment. Each pair of you will measure out two and a half quarts of water, which is the amount of water a person should consume per day. It comes from all sources—food, straight water, etc. Then we’ll…”

  I was having a hard time concentrating on all the numbers she was throwing around. Or on anything she was saying, actually. Tater seemed like he had a bead on it, though, so I just let my mind drift. He’d get us where we needed to be with this experiment. The guy was way smarter than he acted; I’d figured that out over the semester.

  Tater went to stand in line at the wagons. The jugs were huge. Maybe that’s what was on her cart in the parking lot Halloween morning. When Tater reached the front of the line, he picked up a graduated cylinder, stuck a nozzle into it, then let fly.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the beautiful stream shooting out of that nozzle. It looked so cool and wet and satisfying filling up our cylinder. I held my breath as he carried the container back. Don’t slosh it, Tater, don’t slosh it….

  Only when he reached our desk safely did I breathe again. The ripples in the water rolled outward from the center like solar orbits from the sun—perfectly round, perfectly spaced, perfectly synchronized. Max said water was the most important building block for life next to the atom itself. I had a few atoms that could use some water about now. If I just took a sip…

  I glanced over at Gardo. He was awake now, sitting up and staring hungrily at his own cylinder of water. Our eyes met. We held the gaze a moment.

  He knew what I was thinking.

  And I knew what he was thinking.

  If we’re both thinking the same thing, then maybe it would be okay to both…

  In a sudden flash, Gardo grabbed his cylinder, flipped it upside down, then let it go. Water splashed everywhere.

  “Hey!” Leonard’s legs and feet got soaked as he stumbled backward.

  Every head snapped in their direction. The empty cylinder rolled in a wide, lazy circle next to a huge puddle of water. Gardo stood next to Leonard, his pant legs wet, too. His eyes were wide and innocent, and his mouth was open in fake shock.

  My mouth was open in real shock.

  Max stalked over to Gardo’s table, grabbing a stack of brown paper towels along the way.

  “Stand back, don’t slip.” She threw half the stack at the water on the table and dropped the other half onto the puddle. “Sop that up,” she barked at Leonard, pointing to the floor. Then she turned her attention to Gardo.

  Man, he’ll be doing push-ups for the rest of class.

  “This is not grade school, Edgardo. If you expect to continue in this classroom, you will conduct yourself like a scientist. And scientists do not spill their materials. What if that had been an acid? Go get the mop and bucket from my office.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Max turned and clapped her hands. “Back to work, people. And let’s try to keep our water in our containers. Lucy, show him where the mop is. Leonard, stop! Don’t keep splashing in it. Is this kindergarten?”

  When Gardo passed in front of me, he winked. “So much for temptation,” he whispered.

  “Yo
u’re a troublemaker.”

  “And don’t you forget it.”

  I waved him off, then reached for our Experimentation Documentation worksheet. Tater had already written our names on it in swirly green ink. All around us, the class settled into the low, soothing hum of young scientists at work.

  Once upon a time, lunchtime was fun. I ate corn dogs and hamburgers and potato chips and fries, I drank smuggled Pepsi and root beer, I hung out with Gardo and Lucy and sometimes a few other friends, and we joked and laughed. Except for Shane’s so-called pranks, lunch was the best time of the school day. Now there was barely room to squeeze myself in at my table with all my new friends, I didn’t get to eat anything (that’s right, not even lettuce today!), Lucy wouldn’t eat in the same room with me, and laughing was the last thing I felt like doing. How did things go south so fast?

  Gardo and I were both slumped at our crowded table with our chins resting in our empty palms. No eating, no talking, no energy. Oh wait, silly me, Gardo had enough energy to occasionally pick up a cup and spit in it. What was I thinking to overlook that lovely sight? Tater was turned sideways so he wouldn’t have to see it as he ate. Part of me wanted to tell Mr. Tots up His Nostrils that he didn’t have much room to criticize someone else’s table etiquette, but the rest of me didn’t have the energy to care. Leonard was turned away, too, but it was probably more to hide his smuggled Ring Ding from the janitors than from disgust at Gardo’s spit cup.

  Leonard probably should’ve been protecting the Ring Ding from me. Man, that thing looked good. He must have babied it well during the smuggling operation, because I didn’t see a single crack in the delicate milk chocolate shell. Would he eat it straight, like a sandwich that just happened to be made of moist chocolate cake and sweet, fluffy cream filling, or would he break it gently in half and scoop out the creamy white filling first?

  I shook my head hard. Jeez, I’m coveting people’s food. What a loser.

  Next to me, Gardo spit in his cup again. I never realized what a nasty sound spitting makes.

  Where did he get all that spit, anyway? He hadn’t had anything to drink since last night before his sauna. He had to suck on hard candy just to generate enough saliva to spit. Personally, I thought he was in food violation, but Coach Hunt was the one who gave him the bag of those round, red-and-white Christmas peppermints after his run last night, so who was I to question it? At least they gave him nice breath.

  He spit into the cup again. I tried to focus on the paper turkey on the table, ASB’s latest holiday decoration. Man, I wished Lucy were here. She was probably glad she wasn’t, though. She’d hate sitting at this table now. I did.

  “This is stupid,” I mumbled.

  “What is?” Gardo moved nothing except his lips.

  “Us sitting here not eating. Why are we torturing ourselves in the cafeteria?”

  “Would you prefer we torture ourselves in the parking lot? Quit whining and wait for the bell.”

  “I’m not whining. I’m just making an observation.”

  “And what observation is that, Einstein?”

  “That we’re idiots.”

  Gardo sighed, but he didn’t argue my point. “Just a few hours more, Shermie, then we feast. I’ll supply a meal that’ll make your wig spin. C’mon, we got this far, we just have to tread water a little while longer. We’re athletes, remember.”

  It was my turn to sigh. My lips felt like the desert. “Being an athlete sucks.”

  “Sometimes.”

  Runji interrupted us from the far end of the table. “Hey, Thuff Enuff, settle a bet. Roshon says you could put away twenty-five of these corn dogs in ten minutes.”

  He waved a corn dog in front of his face like a tiny flag at a parade. The gently browned breading extended almost an inch down on the stick, the perfect length for tearing free with your teeth as an appetizer before chomping into the corn dog proper. Like the chips before a Mexican dinner, it was enough to get the juices flowing for the main course. The tip was yellow with smuggled mustard. Boy, did I miss corn dogs.

  “I say no way,” he continued, “twenty corn dogs, at best. How many do you think you can do?”

  I didn’t even hesitate. “Sixty-two.”

  “Sixty-two? No way, you’re pulling my leg.”

  “Of course I am. Are you retarded?” Jeez, does he think before he opens his mouth?

  “That is not how to make friends and influence people,” Gardo mumbled. He picked up his cup and spit into it.

  “Bite me.” I slid off the end of the bench and stalked away from the table, my head woozing with each stomp. Where I was stomping to, I didn’t know. But I’d had enough of their Ring Dings and golden-breaded corn dogs and peppermint spit.

  “No can do, Thuff Enuff,” Gardo called out after me. “I’m not eating today, remember?”

  I flashed him the bird over my shoulder and headed for the john. This morning he’d ordered me to pee every hour, get out as much of the residual water as possible. He’d wanted me to spit in a cup, too, but I finally drew the line. I would not carry a bag of spit around in my pocket. Period. Since it had been an hour since my last pee attempt, I figured I might as well stomp over that way and see if the well was truly dry.

  And who knew, splashing a little cold water on my face might make me feel better. Heck, it certainly couldn’t hurt anything at this point. And maybe if I timed things right, a few drops of that water might accidentally slip between my lips. Hey, no one was perfect. Water will do what water will do.

  Gardo hadn’t shown up in the football stands yet. We were supposed to meet here half an hour ago. I was worried that his being late meant he hadn’t made weight—

  No. No way. Not with how hard he was working. Not possible.

  I straddled a front-row bench at the fifty-yard line. Sprinklers doused the field next to me, slowly washing away the yellow chalk mustaches that had appeared this morning on the Del Heiny end zone logos. Tater was convinced that the mustaches were the work of a copycat tagger, insisting that the Mustard Taggers would only use mustard, never chalk. Like he was some kind of Mustard Tagger expert.

  On the other side of the field, way up at the top of the visitors’ bleachers, Culwicki was gesturing angrily at the janitors, who were lined up like a row of pickle spears in front of a wall of mustard. The campus security guy was there, too, in his olive-green uniform with red armbands. There was also some guy in a suit with a green tie. He could’ve been Culwicki’s clone, so I figured he was Del Heiny High 3’s principal. This was half his field, too, after all.

  The line-up looked like a firing squad. They were too far away for me to hear what Culwicki was shouting, but it was definitely aimed at the janitors. Why was everyone always turning on them? I almost felt sorry for the big jerks.

  I checked out the gate at the top of my stairs again. There! Gardo was running down the steps toward me, his red shirt bright against the gray cement. He carried a bulging brown grocery bag. That had to be a good sign. A brown bag feast meant the famine had worked, right?

  “Shermie!” he shouted. “Shermie, I did it!”

  “Yes!” I knew it! When Gardo wanted to make something happen, he made it happen. Bring on the energy building!

  “Sorry it took so long,” he said when he reached me, “the 7-Eleven on North Hill was closed. I’m so hungry, I thought I’d die when I saw the sign on the door about a power outage. I had to run two extra blocks to the 7-Eleven on South Hill.”

  He’d brought quite a haul. A footlong sub, super-sized Doritos, Chips Ahoy!, a bag of powdered doughnuts, and four cans of Pepsi.

  “None of these packages are open,” I said. “You didn’t eat anything yet?”

  “Nope. I meant what I said; we did this together, we celebrate together.” Man, the guy had willpower. “I have to be suited up in half an hour, though, so rip off half that sub for me already, will ya?”

  Eyeballing the mid-line, I tore the sub in two. Some ham and pepperoni slices slipped to the ground,
but there was more than enough still on the bread. We timed it so that we both chomped into our halves at exactly the same moment.

  “Oh, gawd, this is good.” Bits of bun sprayed out of my mouth, but neither of us cared.

  I closed my eyes in ecstasy and relief. The bread was soft and fresh, the lettuce barely soggy with its zesty Italian dressing, its tangy yellow mustard, its lightly spread herb mayo, and its thick dill pickle rounds. You never knew what you’d get in a 7-Eleven prewrapped sandwich, but this had to be the best sandwich of my life. The joy of eating is back!

  I popped open a Pepsi and chugged it. My thick, dry tongue nearly stood up and saluted. The fizzies bit the back of my throat, but the sweet, syrupy liquid quenched my screaming thirst perfectly. Gardo was cramming chocolate chip cookies into his mouth almost as fast as he’d jammed in those mini Three Musketeers on Halloween.

  I paused. I hadn’t thought of Halloween for a few days now, not since I’d stopped speed training. I’d been focusing on capacity ever since Gardo…well, since he choked.

  I swallowed my bite. “Slow down, buddy. You’re not racing anyone.”

  He pointed to his watch and spoke through a wad of cookie. “Racing the clock.” He swallowed and wiped his crumbly lips with his forearm. “If I’m late, Coach will have my hide. I’m on his good side right now. He liked that I cut that last four pounds so quickly. All I can say is, I’m just glad I spit out all that water weight. A good clean-out is the key.” He shoved in another cookie. “Patrick Walter didn’t make weight for the 103s, so Coach wants me to cut down to that weight class next week. He said that to do that, I have to wear the plastic bag the entire week before the meet, even when I sleep. He says when I wake up, I should be swimming in my sheets.”

  “No way.”

  He shrugged and finished the cookie. “It’s more comfortable than that stupid plastic wrap was. So get ready, Plastic Man, we’re doing the bag every day next week, even when we sleep.”