Larger-Than-Life Lara

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  They got their trays of cafeteria lunch, like they always did, both of them picking the exact same thing. But instead of going to the head table with the other popular fourth graders, they stood in the middle of the cafeteria and looked all around. Then they weaved through the tables of noisy lunch eaters until they got to Lara’s table.

  Lara had her own chair in the cafeteria. She’d gotten it after the cafeteria opposition thing that happened with Joey Gilbert. (But I’m not getting into that one here because he’s not a minor character.) The janitor set up Lara’s lunch-chair special, right before first lunch period, and took it away right after. He saw to it that the chair was pushed up to one of the long cafeteria tables, instead of being off by itself. But it ended up off by itself anyway because nobody—and I mean nobody—ever sat down with Larger-Than-Life Lara.

  I hate lunch. Usually, I sit with Theresa and Amanda, even if they’re being best friends and only talking to each other that day. Sometimes a reject boy or two sit at the same table as us, only they act like it’s a different table, and maybe even a different cafeteria, or even a different school.

  Our table was two tables away from the empty table with Lara’s chair. Sometimes I’d sneak a peek at her, and she’d look like she was the only one enjoying lunch. Not because she gobbled her lunch or ate more than other kids. She just looked like she enjoyed it because of that smile of hers.

  So back to Maddie. She walked right up to Lara. Sara followed her, staying behind, like she was afraid of what Lara might do.

  “Are these seats taken?” Maddie asked.

  Lara had to know Maddie was up to something because those seats were never taken.

  “No, they’re not. Please be seated, Maddie and Sara,” Lara answered. Somehow, after a couple of days at our school, and with nobody talking to her, Lara seemed to know every single person’s name.

  “Thank you,” Maddie said fake-sweetly.

  Sara still looked scared, but she sat down when Maddie did.

  Somebody dropped a tray on the other side of the cafeteria. Silverware clattered on the floor. Somebody else busted out laughing. There were kids yelling at each other at the popular tables, where Maddie and Sara ought to have been eating.

  There was one table between where I was sitting and Lara’s table, but I could hear. Our end of the cafeteria was quieter, for one thing. And for another, not only was Lara’s table empty, but the table next to her was empty on that end, like people were afraid fatness was something you could catch if you ate too close to it.

  “So how do you like school?” Maddie asked, like they were old friends and she was really interested in something that wasn’t about her.

  “I love school,” Lara said. “Where else can you learn every day and meet all kinds of new people? What’s not to love?”

  When Lara said that, you had to believe her. It was something in her eyes and the way the smile didn’t go away.

  Mrs. Smith taught us that sarcastic is how you’re being when you say the opposite from what you really mean. Like when I say to my middle big brother, Matt, “Oh that’s real cute, Matt,” only it isn’t. Saying Matt’s cute when he isn’t is sarcastic. This is not the same thing as lying. When you lie, you don’t want the other person to know it’s a lie. If you’re sarcastic, you want the other person to know you’re saying the opposite of what you mean and saying it snotty.

  Well, Lara wasn’t being sarcastic. In spite of Joey Gilbert’s pig note, and in spite of what he did to her later that day in the cafeteria, and in spite of what kids said to her and about her, Lara Phelps liked school.

  Lara turned to Sara. “So, Sara, are you trying out for a part in the play, Fair Day?”

  “Um . . .” Sara glanced at Maddie. “Uh . . . I guess.”

  Maddie swung around on her. “You didn’t tell me you were trying out! I’m supposed to be your best friend. And you didn’t say anything to me about it? What part? What part are you trying out for?”

  “I think you’d be a great Adeline,” Lara said. She took really little bites of food, so it was taking her a long time to finish hot lunch.

  “Do you really think I’d be a great Adeline? Really?” Sara asked, her eyes getting big.

  “I do,” Lara answered. “I heard you sing in music yesterday.”

  “You heard me?” Sara asked. “But you were in the back.” Sara and Maddie always sit front row center in music class. Ms. Brandywine loves them so much she doesn’t even yell at them when they giggle and talk all during music period.

  Lara nodded. “I still heard you. You’re good.”

  “Wait a minute!” Maddie raised her voice, even though she wouldn’t have had to. “I’m trying out for Adeline. I told you that.”

  “I know. I know,” Sara said quickly. “And everybody knows you’ll get it.”

  “So.” Maddie had control back. “So you can be Adeline’s friend. The one who helps her fix her hair when she’s going to meet Tom? You know?”

  Sara shrugged and nodded at the same time.

  And then it seemed to be all settled, when a funny thing happened next. Lara looked up from her tray and stared right at Sara, like Maddie wasn’t there sitting between them. She didn’t stand up, like she had for Joey in our classroom, but here’s what she said:

  “Sara Rivers, with the silvery voice,

  Reach for the stars! It’s still your choice.

  You can do it, though it’s scary.

  Fear is so unnecessary.”

  When Lara was done with her rhyming poem, Sara’s pink–lip glossed mouth hung open like a snagged fish.

  Maddie looked from Lara to Sara like they were in a Ping-Pong match. “I don’t get it.” All the sweet had gone right out of her voice. “What’s wrong with you? Normal people don’t just say rhyming things in the middle of the cafeteria. We only came over here because we felt sorry for you. I was going to try to help you by telling you that you should stop eating desserts, for crying out loud. Then maybe you’d start looking like a human, instead of a fat pig.”

  Sara didn’t say anything.

  Maddie did. “But since you’re the smart one with all the advice . . . here!” She took her own brownie from her tray and banged it down on Lara’s tray. Then she grabbed Sara’s brownie and shoved it at Lara too. “Go ahead!” She stood up and clutched her tray. “Pig out, pig!”

  Sara just sat there, staring at her brownie on Lara’s tray.

  “Sara!” Maddie shouted from halfway across the cafeteria. Kids stopped horsing around to stare.

  Sara hurried up from the table and ran to join Maddie.

  There were lots of other minor characters who did things to Lara. And here is one. Eric Radabaugh is the kind of kid who would have been a shark if he’d been an animal. We learned in science that sharks have to keep moving all the time or they’ll die dead. And that’s Eric. He can’t sit still.

  Eric went to the pencil sharpener about a hundred times a day. And every time he did, he’d take a left up an aisle, dart another left, squeeze himself between desks, and end up right next to Lara’s desk. Then he’d poke her with his pencil, or bump into her, or elbow her. Once, on the way back to his seat, he pretended like he bumped into Lara and bounced off and landed on the floor. Everybody laughed. Which reminds me of Wayne.

  Wayne Wilson, who, if you can remember back as far as chapter two, you won’t be surprised about, was the loudest kid in our class. In fact, the loudest kid in the whole fourth grade and maybe in all of Paris Elementary, and it wouldn’t surprise me none if he was the loudest kid in the whole state of Missouri.

  Wayne is the kind of kid who’s the first to laugh and the last to understand what everybody’s laughing at. During that first week of Larger-Than-Life Lara, Wayne laughed first when the wind caught Lara’s skirt after school on Tuesday, and it blew up so as you could see the back of her thigh, which was bigger than a horse’s patuney.

  Wayne laughed the loudest when our teacher had us help her make a list of clichés on the
board, and Lara gave her more than the rest of us put together, and they all had to do with fat. Fat as a pig. Big as a house. Big as a barn. The fat of the land. It ain’t over until the fat lady sings.

  Wayne laughed hard at each and every one. But Mrs. Smith, she said Lara got them all right. Those sayings really were all clichés, which, like I said before, means sayings people use so much that they lose their meaning. Only I wondered about that, about those words losing their meaning.

  And last, Wayne was first to laugh when Mrs. Smith asked, “Who’s planning on trying out for a part in our play?” and Lara raised her very big arm, and the fat on the bottom part of her arm jiggled.

  Finally, in this chapter on minor characters, I got to add this. Laney Grafton is the kind of person that doesn’t do open meanness to a person, but couldn’t help being a little glad that the meanness was going to somebody else for a change, because for three whole days nobody called her a name or tripped her at recess.

  9

  CONFLICT IS A WHOLE LOT like opposition, and I’m not real sure I know the difference. Opposition is like the other team that’s waiting to beat the tar out of you. Conflict is the beating. Or something like that.

  Which makes me have to back up to that day when Joey Gilbert gave Lara the pig note, and Lara gave him a poem answer that rhymed. If that note was just opposition, then what happened in the cafeteria after that was conflict.

  Mrs. Smith says stories have a beginning, middle, and end. They should get told in a chronological order, which is a fancy way of saying making stuff happen like it did in real life, without jumping back and forth in time like some kind of time traveler. I tried to do that, which is why you can find words like first and next and then, if you go back looking for them in this story.

  But I can’t figure out how else to tell this one conflict without time traveling backwards. So Mrs. Smith, if you’re reading this, I just apologize for that.

  Tuesday was Lara’s first lunch at Paris Elementary because she was too late for it on Monday. When she did that swish, swish walk into the cafeteria, people pointed at her (which could also be a cliché to say, but they did it anyway). She waited for her food and got the normal amount like other kids in line. Then she shuffled off with her tray, going to the very back table. You could tell this wasn’t her first time in a school cafeteria.

  She set her tray down on the table, but she didn’t have the special chair to sit in. So she was standing up and pushing the little straw that comes with milk into the milk bag.

  And that’s when Joey Gilbert and Wayne and three other characters came along. The three other boy characters are too minor to even have names in this story.

  Joey said, “Do you eat standing up?”

  Lara smiled at him. “Not usually. I’ll sit on the corner here.” She lowered herself onto the bench, taking the very edge of one side. It worked okay, but didn’t look too comfortable. Her left elbow was on the table, and both feet were on the floor, without her legs going under the table. It looked like she was as much standing on her legs as sitting. So she had to eat sideways, with her back to the cafeteria.

  Joey told his boys to sit.

  Wayne laughed.

  “I’m not sitting with her!” one of the unnamed boys protested.

  “I’m not eating with no pig!” said another unnamed boy.

  But Joey gave them this look that made them sit anyways. He sat across from Lara, and the others lined up along Joey’s side of the table, like birds on a telephone wire.

  “You can sit all the way on your bench now,” Joey said, with his mouth full of burger and bun and ketchup.

  Lara smiled at the row of boys, then scooted more onto the bench.

  Wayne was telling a joke so loud that I couldn’t hear whatever Joey and Lara were saying to each other.

  Then the conflict happened.

  I don’t think Wayne had even eaten one bite of his food. The unnamed characters were about half done with theirs. Joey did something—like a kick under the table, or maybe some word clue I couldn’t hear. But all at once, like they were those swimmers who perform dances in the water and do everything at the same time, Joey and his boys got up. They just stood up and climbed off that bench like they were bailing off a seesaw.

  And just like that, their end of the table flew up.

  And Lara’s crashed to the ground. Trays of food slid down the table on top of Lara. The whole table tipped over, and part of it landed on her. She crawled away from it, pushing down on her green dress, which was covered in milk and lettuce and applesauce and pork ’n’ beans.

  Wayne laughed first. He was so loud that the whole entire school ran over to see. Kids shouted, “Look! She’s got food all over her!” “She tipped the table!” “I’m glad I wasn’t sitting there!” And other things that will not be in this book.

  Mr. Gray, the janitor, ran over to help, and so did Ms. Cox, the monitor, and even one of the cooks, who still had her plastic hairnet on.

  Lara just sat there for a minute, like she didn’t know where she was. For a second, I thought I saw a tear slide down her cheek, but it could have been the applesauce. Really it could have. Then slowly, slow as applesauce, her smile came back. “I’m okay,” she said. But I could see her leg was bleeding.

  “What happened?” Ms. Cox demanded.

  “I guess I slid off,” Lara answered.

  They helped her up. It looked like she couldn’t put her weight on one foot all the way. So she limped to the nurse’s office, with Ms. Cox and Mr. Gray, one on each arm.

  When she came back to our room, she had one leg all Band-Aided up. And she had another poem. I didn’t know this until school was all the way over. I had to stay after class and explain to Mrs. Smith how come I hadn’t turned in math homework. Instead of telling her the truth—that Matt tore it up and ripped out a whole handful of pages from the math book, too, when I told him I was too busy to make him a chocolate milk shake—I told her I was sorry and would make it up. She believed me because, like I told you, I’m a good actress.

  When I left our class, the hallway was almost empty. Joey should have been on the bus already, bossing bus riders around. But instead, he was yelling at Lara. I don’t think I described Joey Gilbert’s outsides, even though he’s more than a minor character. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt and jeans that looked a size too big for him. He’s taller than me, but shorter than Wayne and Eric. He always looks tan, and the skin on his forehead is too tight. He has a buzz cut that’s so short it’s hard to tell what color his hair is. I’m not sure, but I think it’s brown. Describing words are adjectives, and here are some for Joey Gilbert: scrappy, wiry, tough, lean, mean. (Those last two rhyme, and that was just on accident.)

  “You don’t know anything about it, you fat pig!” Joey screamed.

  Lara smiled at him.

  “Mind your own business! You’d be the last person I’d ask to help me with anything!”

  Lara smiled again.

  “Just shut the funny up, you sleeveless sweatshirt!” Joey shouted, only with other words. He threw something down and stormed off, hollering at Wayne to hold the bus.

  I tried to press against the hall wall so as Lara didn’t see me seeing her. But it didn’t work.

  She smiled at me. Then she turned and shuffled away.

  In the middle of the hall, I could see what Joey had thrown down. And I could see that it was a big wad of paper. I waited until Lara was all the way gone. Then I looked both ways and ran to where Joey had been screaming at Lara. I snatched up the wad of paper, even though it wasn’t none of my business and I usually stay out of what’s not my business.

  Here is what it said:

  When I was almost home, I pulled the note out of my pocket and read it again. Lara was right about Joey’s art. He goofed around more than anybody in art class. But his pictures had always been the ones teachers put up on their bulletin boards. I remembered how when we had to draw the part of outside we could see out of our second-grade wind
ow, Joey’s sky looked exactly like the real sky. He put in the tops of trees and left out the parking lot. And I remembered how I’d wished his picture was something I did, because I had just tried to draw the parking lot and my cars looked like ugly bugs.

  But I didn’t know how Lara knew Joey was good at art.

  I also didn’t know how she knew about Joey’s dad. Robert told me that Joey’s dad was a no-good son of a spitter, who left when Joey was not even in school yet. And he took the time to beat up Joey’s mama before he left, and he put her in the hospital. I saw Joey’s mama once when she came to pick him up after the principal kicked him out of school for three days for writing not-nice things on the bathroom wall. She still looked beat up. And she yelled worse things at Joey than he’d written on the walls.

  But I didn’t know how Lara could have found out about the bathroom walls and Joey’s mama.

  Sometimes it seemed like Joey Gilbert was one big conflict waiting to happen. We didn’t have to wait long.

  10

  MRS. SMITH SAYS that every good story has to have some suspense, and not just the scary stories that call themselves “suspense” or “adventure.” She made us look up the word in her giant dictionary, which is almost always harder than you’d think. And it was this time.

  I looked up suspense, which is tough enough to do because that dictionary has a hundred million words that start with s. Then the dictionary person had this for a definition: “an exciting apprehension to an approaching climax.” Which was not any help at all.

  So I had to look up apprehension and approaching (even though I was pretty sure about that one, and I was right) and climax (which I’m still not so sure about, although there is a chapter coming up by the name “Climax.” So maybe you can have suspense wondering what goes on in there).

  Looking up apprehension made me have to look up other words, like anticipation. And this is almost always what happens when Mrs. Smith makes us look up words in her dictionary.