Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes (4 page)

Astonished realization passes over Mark's face when he sees the clock. He's not a distance man, and for him the jig is up. I smile and gasp, “Good swim.” He misses ninety-six by a full second, and he's gone. Ellerby and I and two of the remaining girls finish the last three and Pizza Maria is banging on the door.

Mark Brittain is pissed.

The devil made us do it.

The euphoria of our conquest drives me through the subsequent feeding frenzy in high gear, but within minutes of devouring my last slice whole, I begin to slip. Deep heat radiates from every muscle, and as that warmth consumes me I could fall asleep on the bare
deck, but I still have to visit Sarah Byrnes, so I slap high fives all around and get Ellerby to shower with me and swing me home low in his sweet chariot.

“Guess we did a dance on Brittain,” Ellerby says, settling behind the wheel.

“Guess so,” I say back, sliding down in the seat.

“It's hard to resist. He's so damn righteous; such a dumb, plastic God Squadder. Sometimes I wish I could have religion their way. You know, no responsibilities in life but to cut down people who don't think the way you do.” He waves a hand. “Aaahh. It's not worth talking about. But we burned him, didn't we? I knew we could get him. He's such a leech he couldn't check out his own body to figure out we were doin' him in.” He pounded the steering wheel. “God, I love justice.” He looks over at me. “Goin' up to see your friend?”

I nod.

“You like her.” It isn't a question.

I nod again.

He starts to say more, but doesn't, and we ride over the silent snow-covered streets to my house, chuckling every once in awhile when one or the other of us pictures Brittain's face the moment he realized he'd been duped.

At home, I grab Mom's car to negotiate the icy streets across the South Hill to Sacred Heart, thinking
of those days long ago when I held onto Sarah Byrnes like the only life raft in truly tempestuous, treacherous seas. She pushed her scars directly into our tormentors' faces, while I disappeared into my cottage cheese carcass like a scared turtle in a soft shell, watching her wage our war of the outcasts alone. It's really hard to imagine how afraid I was then; how I pulled the covers over my head at night and prayed to hurry up and get older so I wouldn't care so much. It's also hard to imagine how I ate as much as I did.

The population of the Child and Adolescent unit is down on weekends. There are no classes and no therapy groups going, and a few older kids sit reading while others quietly play games. Younger kids trail nurses and counselors like pull toys from spot to spot.

Sarah Byrnes sits on the same spot on the same couch where I left her. Laurel isn't here, but a big, young guy named Sam is taking her place, and he approaches as I sit making conversation with myself in hopes Sarah Byrnes will latch on to something she wants to talk about.

He says, “You must be Eric.”

I nod, shaking his extended hand. “Anything different? Has she been on this couch since yesterday?”

Sam smiles and shakes his head. “No. She sits in on
all the activities. She just isn't talking, that's all. We know she hears and understands because she does whatever we're doing.”

“She eating okay?”

Sam nods. “Weight is good. She doesn't eat a lot, but then she's not burning a lot of energy.” He squats beside us next to the couch. “Was there an event that set this off?”

“Not that I know of. She was sitting in American Government class and just tripped out. When the bell rang, she didn't move. It couldn't have been in response to anything we were talking about because we were answering the questions at the end of the chapter.”

Sam nods, then grimaces. “Well, if you think of something, or if you know anyone who might shed some light on this, let us know. I'm told you're her best friend. You should know the more you come and talk, the better chance she has of coming out. Talk about old times, you know, familiar things.” He pauses. “What do you know about her father?”

I look sideways at Sarah Byrnes and say, “I've known Sarah Byrnes since grade school, but she's only invited me to her house three times, and her dad was never home. He's mean, though, I'll tell you that. Mean big time. I know for a fact he wouldn't let them repair
her face when she first got burned. He seems awful proud of how tough she is.”

“What does she say about him?”

I remember her threatening me with her fists when I tried to talk about her father in junior high. “Not much.”

Sam scratches his head. “That fits what we've seen. He's come up twice—didn't stay more than ten minutes either time. Does she have any other close friends? Anyone who might know something about her, or push her a little?”

“Well,” I say. “There was this one guy back in junior high. His name's Dale Thornton. He was kind of a friend and kind of an enemy. He dropped out after eighth grade, though. Think he could help?”

“Depends on how much a friend and how much an enemy he was.”

“More friend than enemy,” I say. “At least at the end.”

 

Old Dale was not having his best day. Though few of us would dare taunt him alone, there was safety in numbers and he'd already heard his name far more times than he would have expected. “Hey, Dale, I see you made the front page,” greeted him as he stepped onto school property that morning, followed by several
variations even before the first period bell rang. At first, Dale just smiled and waved in the direction of the voice. By the third time he heard it, however, he had seen
Crispy Pork Rinds,
and though he didn't read all that well, understood clearly his role as the target of Sarah Byrnes's and my incisive journalistic focus.

In the hallway at the end of third period Dale caught up with Norm Nickerson, a blond, blue-eyed, bookwormish kid who spent our elementary years as the kid most likely to be beat up by someone from a lower grade. Dale clamped Norm's cheek hard between his thumb and forefinger. “Norman, my boy,” he said with a sneer. “Let's you and me go to the can for a smoke—maybe have a little talk.”

Norman mounted a weak protest, but Dale squeezed so hard Norm's lip began to numb.

I was hiding out in a stall with my paranoia, my feet pulled up onto the toilet seat, waiting for the fourth period bell, in the event Dale figured me for senior editor of our underground gazette and came for his pound of flesh. I peeked out the crack in the door, breathing soft as a man passing a township of killer bees in the night.

Dale offered Norman the pack.

“No thanks,” Norman said, “I just had one.” In
fact, Norman Nickerson had never even puffed a cigarette, but at eighty-three pounds and well under five feet, he wasn't about to chance angering the man to whom most of us paid three-quarters of our weekly allowance—for protection from Dale Thornton.

“That's okay,” Dale said, “I only got one left anyway.” Norman reached into his pocket, but Dale raised a hand. “Got a deal for you,” he said, and Norm was all ears. “I'll let you go today.”

Norm waited.

Dale glared.

Still Norm waited.

Still Dale glared.

“That's not a deal,” Norman offered finally. “What do
you
get?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dale said, waving his cigarette in the air. “I almost forgot.” He handed Norm a crumpled copy of
Crispy Pork Rinds.
“Read this.”

Norm took the paper reluctantly. He glanced nervously at Dale, then down to the paper. He had thought it was pretty funny earlier in the morning. It was less funny now with Dale Thornton looming over him. Norman shot Dale another uneasy glance, and began to read silently.

Dale slapped the side of his head so hard Norman
must have thought the phone rang. “Out loud, you dip!” he yelled. “Read it out loud!” and Norman realized Dale couldn't read well enough to get through the article. Holding his hot, reddened ear tenderly with his left hand, he opened his mouth to read.

“I'd read it myself,” Dale said, “but a man of my statue hires his gruntwork done. Read.”

I think Norman started to tell Dale that's
stature,
but thought better and adjusted his glasses. He began with the headline.

“I read that part,” Dale warned. “Just gimme the small print.” Norm skipped to the text, reading in his high shaky voice.

“A man described by authorities as one evolutionary step above a banana slug has recently admitted to having been locked in the Sacajawea Junior High biology lab over a long weekend nearly sixteen years ago when he fell asleep and was mistaken as a cadaver. Though the man is incapable of human speech, he was able, over a period of weeks, to chisel out his story in hieroglyphics on the bathroom wall of the insane asylum where he now resides. He claims that toward the end of the second day of his accidental captivity, he got downright lonely and sought companionship at his own intellectual level. He found that companionship in a petri dish.”

Norman glanced up at Dale. He had to be terrified because Dale was famous for confusing the message with the messenger. If that happened, Norman knew his nose would soon be pressing hard against the bottom of the toilet, where it is extremely hard to breathe.

“Keep readin',” Dale said. “That ain't all of it. I seen it. It's longer than that.”

Norman drew a deep breath.

“According to the man, who identified himself as Morton Thornton, the night got real long and by midnight, he was darn well wed to one of the lovelier inhabitants of the dish, a comely middle-aged amoeba of unknown parentage named Rita. When he was rescued on the morning of the following day, Morton plumb forgot about his single-celled nuptials and went back to his daytime job tasting the contents of open pop bottles for backwash and cigarette butts. Only sixteen years later, when a brilliant Sacajawea Junior High roving reporter—who shall remain nameless—discovered the product of this union lurking among us right here at Sac Junior High, was Morton's long-held secret discovered.

“This intrepid reporter was present three weeks into Dale Thornton's third try at seventh grade, when the young Einstein bet this reporter and several other members of the class that he could keep a wad of chewing
tobacco in his mouth from the beginning of fifth period Social Studies until the bell. The dumb jerk only lasted twenty minutes, after which he sprinted from the room, not to be seen for the rest of the day. When he returned on the following morning, he told Mr. Getz he had suddenly become ill and had to go home, but without a written excuse (he probably didn't have a rock big enough for his dad to chisel it on) he was sent to the office. The principal, whose intellectual capacities lie only fractions of an IQ point above Dale's, believed his lame story, and Dale was readmitted to class. Our dauntless reporter, however, smelled a larger story, recognizing that for a person to attempt this in the first place, even his
genes
would have to be dumber than dirt. With a zeal rivaled only by Alex Haley's relentless search for Kunta Kinte, he dived into Dale's seamy background, where he discovered the above story to be absolutely true and correct. Further developments will appear in this newspaper as they unfold.”

Norman folded the paper slowly. I breathed through my pores in order not to be discovered.

“That it?” Dale asked quietly.

Norman raised his eyebrows. “That's it,” he squeaked.

“All that there story says is I'm pretty dumb, don't it?
Me an' my dad,” Dale said.

Norman winced and nodded. “Uh-huh. It's not necessarily true though. I mean it's not a real newspaper. I was there the day you did the tobacco. Really, it was pretty neat. Nobody else would have had the guts….”

“How'd they know my old man's name is Morton?” Dale said. “Everybody calls my old man Butch. He finds out about this, he'll skin
my
hide, 'cause he'll think I told.”

Norm was quiet. He lived with his family on a farm. He knew better than to mess with a wounded animal.

“How'd they know?” Dale was insistent.

“I don't know,” Norman squeaked. “Really, I was there. The day with the tobacco. I mean…”

“Better shut up,” Dale warned, then paused a minute. “Better give me your money, too.”

“I thought you said…”

“Yeah, well, you was wrong. You gonna give me the money or you wanna go swimmin'?” Dale nodded toward the toilet stall, where I sat. Give him the money, Norman.

Norman Nickerson dug deep.

 

By fifth period, word was out that Dale Thornton was looking for Eric Calhoune, and a high-stakes gambling pool had been set up in an inconspicuous corner of
the student lounge. Bets were running three to one that I wouldn't make it home with all my body parts. Dale had been seen in the hard chair in the outer office before the lunch bell, and rumor said he spent the entire lunch period in the office with Mautz discussing the relative merits of smokeless tobacco in the classroom. His only words upon release were: “Where's that fat ass Calhoune? He's a dead man.”

“He'll have to go through me first,” Sarah Byrnes said in an effort to get me out of my study hall desk.

“Oh,
that'll
take him all of about fifteen seconds,” I said. “The only hurt you put on him in that fight was on his knuckles. God, I'm dead. I'm a dead man.” I sat staring at the desk, considering. “Get Ms. Simmons in here right now. She'll win a Nobel prize if she gets me on video. I'm a biological miracle: a living dead man.” A short, high-pitched laugh escaped me. “I could make the next issue of
Crispy Pork Rinds.
Oh, God,
Crispy Pork Rinds.
What a great idea.”

“Come on,” Sarah Byrnes said. “It isn't that bad. Let's go to science class. He's not going to beat you up in the hall.”