I got out a new towel to dry myself. Then I blow-dried and combed my hair.
It was 7:00. The basics were over. Now for the details, the finishing touches. I clipped every nail on my body, all twenty of them. I dug out every speck of dirt from behind them, even the little toenails. I Q-tipped my ears. I Visined my eyes. I snipped all outlaw hairs on my head. I even thought about cutting my underarm hair a little shorter. I figured the longer they were, the more sweat they would collect and the smellier my pits would get. But then I thought about what Poff would think if he knew. Trash that idea.
Deodorant. I reached for my Sure aerosol. Gone! I stormed into Megamouth’s room. I wanted to scream. How could I ever find it in that dump? Her shelves and closet were practically bare—everything was on the floor. I started kicking stuff aside: socks, Big Mac boxes, wet towels, papers, books, clothes, pretzels. Every time I moved something, I was afraid I’d uncover a nest of roaches. Finally I found my Sure, beneath the most gruesome lacrosse sock I ever saw and on top of three limp french fries. I gave her Wayne Gretzky poster a squirt in the face and got out.
At 7:30 A.M. I ate breakfast. My usual health shake, two boxes of raisins, and a potato skin.
Back upstairs, I redid my mouth. Then I figured I’d work on my vein, get it up so high that it would still be humping at the fair. That meant a hundred right-arm curls, minimum. After five or six curls, I suddenly had a problem: I was starting to sweat. I couldn’t afford to sweat. A single sweat drop could bring on a million bacteria. By the time I reached the kissing booth, I’d smell like a garbage truck. On the other hand, I had to have my vein in top shape.
There was only one answer: a dumbbell in my right hand and my can of Sure in my left. After every third curl: squirt-squirt. The last twenty-five curls were pure murder, because by then I was getting a rash under my arm and it was itching, then burning, like mad. When I finally reached a hundred, I made a mental note to remember this day, in case twenty years from now I develop cancer of the armpit. I’ll tell the doctors about the time I overdosed on deodorant. Maybe it will be too late to help me, but it might save others. Anyway, if it gets me twenty years with Jennifer Wade, it’ll be worth it.
Then Toddie came in to watch his Saturday-morning cartoons. As soon as he sat down, he farted. Toddie can be amazing. Judging from the sound alone, you might have thought there was a horse in the room. Or an elephant. Usually he says “Scooze me,” but today he was all wrapped up in Daffy Duck. I shifted to the other end of the bed and didn’t think much about it, until he farted again. Then again. Suddenly, as the invisible clouds drifted my way, I had a horrifying thought: It’s seeping into my clothes! I could become a walking fart!
I got out of there fast. Then I remembered: my English Leather. I hadn’t put it on, and it was back in my room. Luck was with me. It was on my dresser, just inside my door. I reached in and snatched it, and escaped just as Toddie cut another one.
Downstairs, I splashed my English Leather on everywhere, then left the house before anything else could happen. It was only 8:15, but that was okay. Sara’s house was pretty far, and I could use a long walk in fresh air. I took a slow, roundabout way, and it was almost 9:00 when I saw Sara’s house ahead. She was waiting on her porch. When she saw me, she jumped up, waved, hopped down from the porch, and came springily up the sidewalk. She was still ten feet away when she went, “Wow, you smell great!”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. What is it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Some cheap stuff. Some spilled on me is what happened.”
She chuckled and poked me. “Clumsy.”
The bus stop was only two blocks away. She kept looking at me, smiling. “You’re early,” she said.
“Am I?”
“Yep.”
“So are you.”
Her smile went down a little but her eyes didn’t. “Am I?”
When we finally got seated on the bus, Sara pulled something from her pocketbook. “Cert?”
She was staring at me. I stared at the pack. “Okay.” I took one out.
“Pas de quoi,” she said.
“Huh?”
“That’s French. Means ‘you’re welcome.’ ‘Thank you’ is merci.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“Pas de quoi.”
I didn’t want to use the Cert yet, but she kept staring at me and somehow I knew she wouldn’t stop until I put it in my mouth. So I did, and as soon as she turned away, I took it out and stored it in my pocket. I thought: In just a little while from now, a little drop of Retsyn will pass from my lips to Jennifer Wade’s. I got a little dizzy just thinking about that.
From then on, the bus ride was mostly two things: me squeezing the rubber ball in my pocket, and Sara talking. Mostly about French stuff. I didn’t hear much of what she said until I noticed how close we were getting to Conestoga. Then I started to get a little nervous, and then I thought I felt a sweat drop pop out under my arm. Stop thinking about it, I told myself. I turned to Sara and for the rest of the trip I nodded and raised my eyebrows and oh-yeahed at every word she said. I got the impression she was really into France.
“Maybe you oughta go over there someday,” I suggested. “See the Eiffel Tower.”
She laughed and poked me. “That’s what I love about you, Greg, you’re a great listener. I said a half hour ago I was hoping to do that.”
The bus dropped us off near the school. Cars were parked all over, people heading for the gym door. As soon as we got inside, I knew I could forget my English Leather—it didn’t have a chance with the smell of hot dogs, popcorn, and cotton candy.
Sara started pulling me. “Come on, let’s go see Jennifer.”
I held back. “Nah. Think I’ll check out some other stuff first.”
She waved one of her tickets in my face. “I can get you a free kiss from her.”
I gave her a sneer. “Why would I want to kiss her?”
Her grin broke wide open, she whirled away.
There I was then, alone with an overwhelming feeling: She’s here. Somewhere. I’m in the same room with Jennifer Wade. I gave my rubber ball ten good final squeezes and took off my jacket. My vein was bulging. I put the Cert in my mouth. I took a deep breath. I was ready.
I was wandering through the crowds, glancing around for the kissing booth, when I felt a tug on my shirt. Sara was behind me, grinning. Then a pout came over her face. “She’s not here.”
My heart stopped. “Who?”
“Jennifer.”
“You sure?”
“There’s another girl in the booth. She said Jennifer’s sick. Phooey.”
Then she said some other things, but I didn’t pay much attention. I just sort of let her drag me around the place. I remember throwing some balls here, some darts there. I ate a tasteless something, drank a tasteless something else. Little kids reeled by in painted faces. Somebody went thunksplash into a tub of water. A pony chewed straw.
Finally I said I had to get home. On the bus she kept it up—staring at me, grinning at me, talk talk talk, cheery cheery cheery. I felt like stuffing my rubber ball down her throat.
I walked her to her porch. She wouldn’t go right in. Ever since we had left the bus, she had stopped talking. And smiling. Now she was just looking. She leaned back against her front door. A new kind of grin, sort of shy, and a twinkle in her eye: “Uh, you know, you wouldn’t need a ticket to kiss me.” Suddenly that’s what I was doing, kissing her. Her head banged against the door, my teeth clicked into hers. She gave a little yelp. Then I frenched her.
Megin
Romeo and Juliet Get Down and Boogie. That’s what most of the kids wanted to call the show. But not Mr. MacWilliams. “I wrote it,” he said, “and I’m naming it.” So it’s called Romeo and Juliet—Now!
It’s supposed to be like the real Romeo and Juliet (by Shakespeare), only brought up to date. For instance, Romeo whams Whoppers at Burger King, and Juliet grills Big Mac meat at McDonald’s, which is right next
door. They arrange to take their breaks at the same time, and they meet in the shadows of a Dipsy Dumpster.
Romeo and Juliet have to meet in secret because their parents don’t want them together. Romeo’s parents are strict vegetarians. If they knew Romeo was working in a hamburger joint and fooling around with a meat-eater, they’d probably kill him. As for Juliet, her father’s a butcher, so naturally he would never let his daughter near a vegetarian. I don’t know what Shakespeare’s show is like, but it has to be better than that. Anyway, that’s about all I know, because soon after tryouts started, I got kicked off stage crew. Here’s how it happened:
It was taco day in the lunchroom. Maybe that’s why I got so mad. I love taco day, and I hate having it spoiled. Which is what Sue Ann did. How? By running off at the mouth again about the girl from California.
“Guess what?” she started.
Stupid me, I bit. “What?”
“Guess who’s trying out for Juliet?”
“Miss Piggy.”
“No,” she said, not even cracking a smile at my little joke. “Zoe.”
I swear she pronounced the name like she was praying in church. I honestly believe Sue Ann thinks Zoe Miranda is Mrs. God. “I’m impressed,” I said.
“Well,” she said, “isn’t that goochy?”
“Goochy? Where’d you get that word? Never mind, I know.”
And then we both said it: “Zoe.”
“So what’s goochy supposed to mean?” I asked her.
“It means, y’know, sensational. Really something. Y’know?”
“So why is it goochy that Zoe is trying out for Juliet?”
“Why? Man, Megin, don’t you know—”
“Your taco, Sue Ann.” If it’s taco day, you can always tell when Sue Ann is getting hyper: she tips her taco more and more as she’s eating it, till all the stuff starts falling out the other end.
She restuffed her taco. “Don’t you know who Mr. MacWilliams wrote the part for?”
“Miss Piggy.”
“Maggie Wentzel.”
Actually, I knew the answer. Everybody knows Maggie Wentzel wants to be an actress. “So?”
“So? So Mr. MacWilliams wrote the part before Zoe ever showed up from California. So now they both want to be Juliet. So now who’s Mr. MacWilliams gonna pick?”
“Your taco, Sue Ann. How should I know? That’s his problem.”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing—” Sue Ann’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Maggie Wentzel hates her. Hates her. She wants to kill her.”
“Great,” I said. “At least there’s one person who’s not slobbering all over Zoe Miranda.”
Sue Ann blinked. “What do you mean by that?”
“Groveling and sniveling.”
“Megin—”
“Kissing her goochy butt.”
“Megin, just because—”
“Taco.”
“—because I talk about somebody doesn’t mean I’m groveling and sniffing.”
“Sniveling.”
“You’re just jealous, that’s all.”
“Yeah, right,” I snickered, “I’m jealous. Because I can’t wear silver sandals too.”
“She’s wearing shoes now.”
“Right—silver ones. So what’s next, silver boots? I’m really jealous of that. I wish I could worship Halley’s comet too, and wear green toenail polish and anklets on both ankles and a ton of makeup. Yeah, I really wish it, no kidding.”
Sue Ann’s lower lip pouted out. “Yeah? I bet you wish you could wear a bra like her too.”
“That so?”
“Yeah. You’re jealous ’cause she’s a real girl.”
“Really? Since when did you start shopping in the lingerie department?”
“At least I feel like a girl.”
“That so? What do you think I feel like?”
She burst out giggling. “Wayne Gretzky.”
“Well here, feel this—” I reached across the table and mashed her nose in with my finger; then I shot my chair back and jumped up to leave. There was a jolt behind me, a screech, glass sliding, crashing, and suddenly my jeans were all warm and wet with taco stuff. Zoe Miranda was glaring at me through her green eye shadow. “You owe me a taco.”
“You owe me a pair of jeans,” I told her.
“You owe her a whole lunch,” one of her grovelers butted in.
“Who asked you?” I shot back.
The California girl batted her green eyelids once. “You backed into me.” She didn’t raise her voice. She said it real slow, all calm and collected and silver shoes and bra sticking out and gold hoop earrings. “You backed into me,” she repeated.
I couldn’t think of what to say, so I just kept glaring at her, at her silly green eyelids. I noticed they weren’t just green, they were silvery green.
“Whose fault was it?” piped up one of the other grovelers. She was asking Sue Ann.
We all turned. Sue Ann sat frozen at her place, her taco practically straight up and down, a little mountain of taco stuff growing under it. Her eyes were wide as windows; they kept shifting from me to Zoe. She didn’t speak.
“You backed into me,” came the calm, silvery voice.
The green eyelids were unblinking. She’s a real girl. She’s a real girl. Then the words were coming out of my mouth: “You wanna fight?”
The green eyes grinned, the golden hoops hopped, the lipstick smirked. The silver girl from California turned and walked away. Her grovelers followed. They were laughing out loud.
I didn’t speak to Sue Ann till next day, at stage crew. Tryouts were in the front part of the stage. We were in the back. Our job was to mix about a ton of shredded paper with flour in a couple big boxes. Later we would boil it in pots in the Home Ec kitchen to make papier-mâché, which would then be slapped onto a frame that the boys were working on. The whole thing was going to wind up as a five-foot-high Whopper.
Sue Ann didn’t say anything. She couldn’t even look at me. She just kept stirring her paper. I let her stew for a while, then I said, “Thanks a lot, Sue Ann.”
“Huh?” she went, as if she didn’t hear.
“You heard me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.” Her face was sinking deeper and deeper into her box. “You coulda stuck up for me, you know. You didn’t have to go joining Zoe and her grovelers.”
“I didn’t join them.”
I could barely hear her voice. “Well, you didn’t exactly come racing to my rescue, did you? I thought I was supposed to be your friend.”
“You are.”
“Yeah, sure. You got a great way of showing it. The whole place was laughing.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, it must make Zoe Miranda feel pretty powerful. Walking into this school and snapping her fingers and—zap—there goes my best friend. Excuse me, my former best friend.”
“I am your best friend.”
“Traitor.”
“No!”
She was starting to cry. It’s an old trick of Sue Ann’s, whenever she wants sympathy. Trouble is, I always fall for it. So in another minute or two, it was like nothing had happened. We were laughing and throwing shredded paper and making fun of the auditioners. We could hear them but we couldn’t see them, because between us and them were all kinds of scenery junk, including the McDonald’s golden arches. They were the first thing the stage crew made. They were huge.
At first the Romeos were trying out. Each one had to do a speech and sing a song, “Whopper Woo.” Every couple minutes, even in the middle of the song, we could hear Mr. MacWilliams’s booming voice: “Val-dooo-cci!”
I don’t know why Mr. MacWilliams did it, but he put El Grosso’s idiot friend Valducci in charge of the lighting. That’s why the stage lights were always changing colors, like we were in a disco or arcade. And that’s why the spotlight was never where it was supposed to be, but roaming all over the place: on the auditioners
in the wings, the walls, the ceiling, the back of Mr. MacWilliams’s head. Sometimes a sliver of spotlight would reach all the way back to us. “Val-dooo-cci!… Val-dooo-cci!”
The Juliets came after the Romeos. Their song was “Squeeze Me, Please Me, Cheese Me.” Maggie Wentzel did it first. She was great. I would have given her the part right there. Then it was Zoe’s turn. Sue Ann and I stopped mixing paper to listen.
“I don’t think she’s so hot,” I said. Sue Ann just shrugged. I jabbed her. “She’s really rotten, isn’t she?”
She shrugged again. “Sort of.”
I laughed. “Come on, Sue Ann, tell the truth. I won’t get mad.”
She grinned. “I think she’s great.”
“She stinks.” I laughed and kicked over her box.
Suddenly her face broke out in horror. She pointed to the floor and squealed: “Look out!” Something was heading away from the kicked-over box and straight for me. A roach! A BIG roach! I jumped up and backed away. That’s when I tripped over something, and next thing I knew I was stumbling backward. I couldn’t stop. Behind me, Zoe was into the long, final high note of the song. Then I banged into something else and fell. World War III. Crashes all around. But the high note never stopped. I looked up in time to see a big scenery panel fall forward, and there was the bright-lit stage front, with Zoe Miranda singing the high note out toward Mr. MacWilliams in the auditorium, her arms high in the air, her fingers spread out. Down came the golden arches—slowly, like they didn’t really want to—and as they came down, Mr. MacWilliams came up, and as they toppled down over Zoe Miranda like a giant halo, she never flinched, never stopped singing. The crash of the golden arches and the end of the note came at the same time.
Dead silence. Zoe Miranda, arms still up, was turning slowly toward me. Then everything went white: the spotlight was on me. And out of the blinding light came Mr. MacWilliams’s booming voice: “Out! Tofer! OUT!”
It took me about three seconds to scramble around for my book bag and get out of there. The spotlight followed me all the way. In fact, even as I was walking home, I could have sworn it was still on me.