Chop, Chop

by LN Cronk

  “Well, you hurt her feelings,” he said.

  “It was THREE years ago!”

  “You should tell her you’re sorry.”

  “I’m not going to tell her I’m sorry for something I did three years ago. She can just get over it.”

  “You should tell her you’re sorry,” he said again.

  We saw Laci at the swim complex a lot that summer, hanging around with Natalie and Ashlyn. In addition to swimming, there was a game room with pool tables and video games. Mr. White helped me learn the real physics behind playing pool, but Laci and Greg still ran a claw through the air at me from time to time . . . scratch.

  Tanner and Mike were usually there too. One day we tried to build a pyramid, like we had at the ski lodge, with Tanner and Mike and Greg and me on the bottom and Laci and Natalie and Ashlyn standing on our shoulders. We’d barely gotten a good start though when the lifeguard blew his whistle at us and made us stop. I really wanted to go skiing again next winter.

  That wasn’t going to happen though. In the fall, Laci shared her Mexico mission trip plan with everybody else in the youth group and they all thought it was a great idea. Nick and Matthew and Evan had moved up into the high school youth program led by Mrs. Kelly, and Mike and a few other kids moved up to ours from sixth grade. Mike was excited about going to Mexico.

  “This is gonna be fun,” he said.

  “Skiing was fun,” I told him. “Ice fishing was fun.”

  “Would you be quiet?” Greg whispered, nodding his head toward Laci, who was sitting nearby. He didn’t need to let me know she was there . . . I wouldn’t have bothered saying anything if I’d thought she couldn’t hear me.

  Each Halloween the mall hosted a trick-or-treat event in the courtyard. Non-profit groups were allowed to set up booths for free and distribute candy that the mall provided. Each trick-or-treater had to pay ten dollars to attend and all the money went to the groups running the booths. The mall didn’t make any money off it – they were just hoping to draw in customers on what would otherwise have been a slow night.

  Mr. and Mrs. White and a few kids from the youth group were running one of the booths, so Greg was in charge of taking Charlotte around.

  “She’s a girl magnet,” he’d promised when he’d convinced me to go.

  He was right. Charlotte was dressed like a fluffy white lamb and said “Baaaa,” whenever she held her plastic orange pumpkin out for candy.

  “She’s so cute!” the girls from the high school Honor Society Club exclaimed and Greg and I grinned.

  Laci and Natalie were working our youth group booth with Mr. and Mrs. White.

  “You can work too, if you want,” Laci offered. “All the money’s going toward our Mexico trip.”

  “No thanks,” I said through my latex werewolf mask.

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to help out once and a while,” Natalie said.

  I pulled off a hairy-fingered, clawed glove and showed her one of my blisters.

  “See this?” I asked. “I got this raking leaves last weekend so I could earn money to NOT go skiing.”

  “I like your costume,” Greg told Natalie. She was dressed like a witch. Laci was a gypsy.

  “Thanks,” she replied. “Um . . . what are you supposed to be?”

  He was in his regular clothes holding a cereal box with a knife through it.

  “I’m a serial killer,” he grinned. Laci and Natalie both laughed. I rolled my eyes, but no one could tell through my mask.

  We walked away from the booth.

  “That was mean,” he said.

  “What was?”

  “Laci’s working really hard so we can go to Mexico . . . it means a lot to her and every chance you get you complain about not being able to go skiing. It makes her feel bad.”

  Unseen, I rolled my eyes again.

  We came to the booth run by the junior high cheerleaders and I immediately started looking for Sam. I almost didn’t recognize her.

  She was dressed like Cleopatra. She had on lots of sparkly green eye shadow, black eyeliner, huge fake eyelashes, and a sequined headpiece. Her tunic was silky white with a gold belt and she had gold cuffs around each wrist and a gold snake coiled around her upper arm. She was beautiful and I was really glad that I had my mask on because my mouth dropped open when I saw her.

  “Hi, Greg,” she said, squatting down in front of Charlotte. “Is this your little sister?”

  He nodded.

  “She’s adorable!” Sam said.

  “Yeah,” Greg agreed, “most of the time.”

  “Baaa,” said Charlotte.

  “Who’s this?” Sam asked, pointing up at me. She had on inch-long gold fingernails.

  “It’s David.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Hi, David!”

  I managed to lift a hairy hand to wave at her.

  She put some candy in Charlotte’s bucket and tickled her tummy with a gold nail.

  “You’ll have to tell your mommy and daddy to call me if they ever need a babysitter,” Sam told her.

  “Would you like that, Charlotte?” Greg asked, looking down at his sister. “Would you like for the pretty pharaoh’s daughter to come and baby-sit you sometime?”

  “Baaaa,” Charlotte replied.

  “You were flirting with her!” I accused after we were out of earshot.

  “No I wasn’t,” Greg said.

  “Yes, you were!”

  “Noooo,” Greg said, shaking his head. “I talked to her – which is more than I can say for you – but trust me . . . I would not flirt with her.”

  “Why not?” I asked. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “You know what, Charlotte?” he asked, looking down at her. “I think Davey’s hopeless.”

  “Baaaaa.”

  Greg and I were in Algebra One together and so was Sam. If Sam hadn’t been in there I probably would have tried to drop it because it was way more work than I was interested in. Mom checked my homework every night and made me redo anything that I’d missed.

  Tanner and Mike ate lunch with us every day and even before winter had set in, Mike started complaining about how we would all be going off without him again in the fall. Tanner told us this was his last season playing fall soccer with us; he was going out for the high school football team next year.

  “You guys should try out too,” Tanner said to me and Greg. Mike burst out laughing. Tanner and Mike were both getting a lot bigger than either one of us.

  “Well,” Tanner said seriously, “they could be kickers or something. A lot of teams recruit their kickers from soccer teams.”

  “Gee, thanks for that vote of confidence, Tanner,” Greg said, “but I think I’ll just stick to soccer.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  Meanwhile, our fundraising efforts went on throughout the school year. We sold magazine subscriptions and shoveled sidewalks and wrapped Christmas presents at the mall, but by May we had only raised about half as much money as we needed for our trip to Mexico. I would like to add here that throughout it all, I had worked hard. Despite the fact that I always gave Laci a bad time about not being able to go skiing, I really did want to go to Mexico. I think the only two people who earned more money than me were Greg and Laci. The church board agreed to pay the rest of what we needed and Mr. White arranged all of the details. We were going to be in Mexico for a week and were all set to fly out ten days before our freshman year of high school started.

  On the first day of summer vacation I got to the pool early and swam laps. I knew from past years that it was usually so crowded after lunch that it would be impossible to do anything except splash around. After I was finished I walked toward my chair, puddles of water trickling off my feet with each step. I was sitting down, toweling off my hair, when I heard Greg’s voice.

  “You sure were going nowhere fast,” he said.

  “I’m going to make varsity my freshman year,” I said, looking up at him. If he hadn’t already been talking to me I would
n’t have known who he was. Most of his hair was gone.

  “Well, look at you!” I said, reaching up with my hand and rubbing the top of his head. “All your little groupies are going to be crying when they see you!”

  He was grinning. “I thought it would be good to have it gone during the summer.”

  “Did you send it off?” I asked. He nodded.

  “Are you sure it was long enough?” Laci’s had always been longer.

  He nodded again.

  “You have to send at least ten inches,” he said. “Mine was eleven and a half.”

  “No more long-haired, hippie-freak,” I said, shaking my head in mock despair.

  “You can still call me that if you want,” he smiled, “’cause I’m going to grow it out again.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “So what’s this about making varsity your freshman year?” he asked me as he sat down.

  I nodded. “I’m going to work out all summer and make the swim team next winter.”

  “What about basketball?”

  “Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m going to swim.”

  Mike and Tanner had size going for them and Greg was a lot quicker than me on the court. I was tired of sitting on the bench watching them play.

  “What about soccer?”

  “I’m still doing soccer . . . still doing baseball. I’m just going to try swimming in the winter, that’s all. Why don’t you try out with me?”

  “As if the basketball team could survive without me. Besides . . . the cheerleaders only work basketball and football games!”

  “Don’t remind me,” I said.

  “What event are you going to swim?”

  “I don’t know . . . probably freestyle.”

  “You should try butterfly,” he suggested.

  “Naw,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not any good at it.”

  “My dad could teach you,” Greg offered. “He swam butterfly and individual medley in college. He says that if you learn to do it the right way you can really do good because most people don’t ever learn how to do it right . . . there’s less competition.”

  “That’s probably exactly what I need,” I said. “Less competition.”

  Three mornings later Mr. White was in the pool teaching me how to do the butterfly. The trick to it was getting the kicks timed exactly right during the stroke and after about thirty minutes I finally got it.

  I popped up in front of him and grinned, knowing I’d done well.

  “That’s great, David! I’m proud of you. You’re like the son I never had.”

  Greg was sitting behind him, dangling his feet in the water. “Thanks a lot, Dad.”

  “Oops, sorry Son. Forgot you were there.”

  “That really did look good, Davey,” Greg said. “I bet you make varsity.”

  “Thanks!” I replied, feeling good enough to almost believe him. I worked all summer and, by the time we left for Mexico, Mr. White said my times were where they should be. I just needed to figure out some way to get the cheerleading squad to start working the swim meets and I was going to be all set.

  ~ ~ ~

  WHEN THE MORNING came to leave for Mexico, Mom and Dad and Jessica all came to the airport to see me off. I had never been out of the country before and had never flown before, so I was pretty anxious. I’d hardly slept that night at all.

  Laci was pretty excited too – she could barely sit still once we got on the plane. I know, because I sat in between her and Greg and she kept tucking her legs up underneath her and then putting them back down, shifting from one side and then to the other, looking out the window and then looking back to us, twirling her hair around her finger, and telling us how excited she was for the first two hours.

  “Can you believe we’re actually on our way?” she asked. “This is the best thing I’ve ever done in my whole life . . . I can’t wait to get there. This is going to be so much fun.”

  “It better be,” I said.

  “What can you see out the window?” Greg asked her. He usually tried to change the subject whenever he thought I was being mean to her.

  She looked out the window.

  “A big river and a lot of square fields.”

  “How’d you get the window seat, anyway?” I asked, not quite ready to finish being mean.

  She rolled her eyes and Greg elbowed me hard in the ribs.

  “Do you want the window seat?” she asked.

  “Maybe on the way home.”

  “What if Greg wants the window seat on the way home?”

  “I’ll stay right here,” Greg said, settling his head against his seat. “I don’t think you’re supposed to move out of your assigned seats anyway.”

  “Why would it matter?” I asked.

  “Because it’s a lot easier for them to identify the bodies after a crash if everybody just stays strapped in their assigned seats.”

  Laci had never flown before either and we both glared at him. He grinned.

  Eventually I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I fell asleep, waking up when I heard Laci talking to Greg.

  “What are you working on?”

  “It’s like a ‘teach-yourself-physics’ thing,” he said, holding up a book. “Dad gave it to me.”

  “Don’t you take physics when you’re a senior?” I asked, rubbing my eyes.

  “I’m going to take it when I’m a junior,” he said. “I want to take AP Physics when I’m a senior so I can get some college credit before I get into the engineering program.”

  “What does an engineer do?” Laci asked. “I mean, I know you’re not going to be driving a train . . .” she looked at me and smirked, “but what’ll you be doing exactly . . . designing stuff?”

  “Well, that’s part of it,” he said, “but there’s a lot more to it than that. After you design something you build a prototype, or have someone else build it, and then you work with the prototype and you have to fix any problems and redesign it and make sure all the technical aspects are right.”

  “But,” Laci said, “what are you going to be working on? Buildings? Cars?”

  “I don’t know yet. That’s one of the great things about engineering . . .” he said. He was beginning to sound as excited about engineering as Laci was about Mexico. “You can work anywhere in the world and go into just about any field you want . . . aeronautical engineering, computer engineering, nuclear engineering, structural engineering, automotive engineering, cellular engin–”

  “Okay, okay,” I interrupted, putting my hand over his mouth. “We got it. You sound like Bubba on Forrest Gump. Boiled shrimp . . . fried shrimp . . . grilled shrimp . . .”

  They both laughed.

  “Did you say you’re going to take physics as a junior?” I asked him.

  He nodded.

  “You can’t do that unless you take Honors Geometry this year.”

  “I know.”

  “You signed up for Honors?”

  He nodded again.

  “That means you’re going to have my mom,” I said. “Good luck.”

  “You didn’t sign up for Honors?” he asked, sounding disappointed.

  “Nope.”

  “Why not? You did good last year in Algebra One.”

  “Why would I take Honors when I don’t have to?” I asked.

  “Well, first of all because it’ll be fun to take it together and second of all because it’ll look really good on your transcript. What are you going to major in?”

  “I don’t have any idea,” I said. It was really starting to bother me that everybody else seemed to know what they wanted to do.

  “You should go into engineering!”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Oh come on!” he said. “I’ll help you. We can go to State together and we’ll be roommates – like Bert and Ernie.”

  “You watch too much TV with Charlotte,” I told him.

  “You can be Bert,” he promised.

&n
bsp; “Yeah, right,” Laci murmured. “As if he could be Ernie.”

  We landed at the airport, picked up our luggage, and then waited for the bus to arrive. Another group of students from Pennsylvania was already waiting when we sat down. Everyone started chattering and laughing, excited about what lay ahead. Eventually an old white bus pulled up in front of us. The door opened up and a group of bedraggled teenagers filed out. They were dirty and appeared exhausted. They were also very, very quiet. We watched them trudge into the airport and then we picked up all of our things and climbed aboard.

  It was dark by the time we dropped the Pennsylvania kids off at a church building on the outskirts of Mexico City. Our group was taken to a warehouse with no windows.

  There was a corner reserved for us – the rest of the warehouse was filled with equipment and crates. The corner was partitioned off into two halves by cardboard walls – one side for the girls, and one side for the boys. Near the door was a drum of drinking water.

  “Where’s the hot tub?” I whispered to Laci. She jabbed an elbow into my side.

  “Take water with you when you leave each morning,” our group leader, Aaron was saying. “If you run out, wait until you get back here to drink.”

  He told us that he was from the United States and had been down here working for nine months. The organization was involved in many areas of Christian ministry to serve the poorest people of Mexico City. We would get to experience several of these areas. They usually had two or three church groups like us down here working every week, one group stepping in as another left.

  On Monday we were going to the church where we had dropped off the Pennsylvania group. We would spend the day making improvements to the Sunday school classrooms and the outdoor play area. On Tuesday and Thursday we would go to a home-based church program that served children who lived in the landfill. The same bus that had picked us up today would go to the landfill, pick up children, and drive them to Philippe’s house.

  “Philippe,” Aaron explained, “lives within walking distance of here with his wife. You’ll also go there on Monday and Wednesday evenings to get prepared for the next day’s activities.”