Big Mouth Read online

  The thought of another week of this made me wilt. I couldn’t wait until I was as small as Tsunami; then I could get back to normal life. At least I didn’t have to cut to a weight class. My mission was about how big my belt was, not how much it weighed. And since my Galactic Warriors shirt fit already, I knew that in just a few weeks I wouldn’t have to ever think about the Belt of F…the Belt Theory anymore. Poor Gardo had to do it this whole season, then next season, then three more seasons at Del Heiny High 3. What an awful life. I swear, I’d quit the team if that were me. A big red “3” on a high school letterman jacket wasn’t worth it.

  I chomped into the sloppy sandwich, reveling in its flavors. Empty silver benches stretched around us, lying in metallic lines, end to end, row upon row. Except for me and Gardo, the stadium was empty tonight. Even Culwicki and his crew were gone. I almost hollered out, “Hellooooooo!” just to hear the echo. I stopped myself, though, because the dead quiet was actually pretty nice. Peaceful, relaxing. There was no pressure to be “on,” no feeling like everyone was checking me out, waiting for me to punch somebody out, to eat ten thousand gallons of ice cream, or whatever. No pressure from anyone for anything. It was weird, though. I’d always figured myself a full-stadium kind of guy, but there I was, enjoying the solitude.

  Another messy bite of my sandwich dribbled Italian dressing down my chin. “This is so good. I’m sick of lettuce and hot dogs—” I froze mid-chew. “Oh no.”

  “What?”

  “I just remembered, I have to eat twenty HDBs tonight for capacity training. Wait, no, I’m speed-eating this session because Lucy’s coming, so make that twenty HDBs in twelve minutes.” Twenty in twelve? What had I been thinking, telling Lucy I was speed-eating that many? How was I going to pull that off?

  I set the last half of my sandwich down on the bench. It was almost too heartbreaking to bear, but I knew I couldn’t eat any more. I shouldn’t have eaten any at all. I’d just filled precious stomach space.

  “Lucy’s coming over?” Gardo asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “You think she’ll be happy with your training progress?”

  I shrugged and rewrapped the crumpled plastic around the sandwich. “Dunno. She doesn’t understand the athlete stuff. But she should like the HDB progress. I’ve been serious about it, just like she said.”

  “You have. I can vouch for you. Not that my opinion matters for much with Lucy.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know.” He grabbed a powdered doughnut. “It means what it means. Forget I said it.” He bit into the doughnut, showering his jeans with white powder.

  “No, tell me, what are you talking about?”

  “I’m not talking about anything.”

  “Gardo.” I stopped wrapping my sandwich and waited for him to go on.

  Finally he couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “I’m just saying I’m hardly Lucy’s favorite person, that’s all. We kind of annoy each other, actually. C’mon, you never noticed that? We only hang out together because we’re hanging out with you.”

  “Please.” I resumed wrapping. “I think starvation is shriveling your brain.”

  “Oh really? Name something she and I have in common.”

  “Who cares about in common? You don’t need in common to be friends. Lucy and I just like hanging out together. We don’t care what we do or when we do it. What do you and I have in common?”

  “For one thing, we’re training together. Or didn’t you notice?”

  “Besides that.”

  He thought a moment. “We like to watch wrestling together. And Galactic Warriors.”

  “Oh really?” I crossed my arms. “And what is Captain Quixote’s call sign?”

  He stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it. “Excuse me? I didn’t hear that. What?”

  “You heard me just fine. Quit stalling.”

  He toed his sneaker into a drop of mustard below the bench, dragging it into a thin yellow line then swirling it up with a flourish at the end. “Fine. I don’t actually watch the show when we watch it. It’s nothing personal, Shermie, but…I don’t know, I don’t really care that much about it, I guess. I just like hanging out with you and throwing things at the aliens.”

  “That’s all I do with Lucy. It’s not some secret thing, we just come up with stuff that makes each other laugh, that’s all. You can do that with her, too.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” He consulted his watch. “Whoa, I’ve only got three minutes.”

  He started chucking things into the bag. I snatched a Chips Ahoy! before he grabbed the package. One more cookie wouldn’t make a difference to my training tonight, not after the damage I’d already done.

  “Are you coming over after the meet?” I asked.

  “Can’t. Coach is ordering pizza for the team. He says if we plan a victory celebration, we’ll have a victory to celebrate.” Coach Hunt might’ve been one nasty midget of a guy, but he had a good head for sports training. Me and Gardo were lucky to have him. “After that, all I want to do is sleep. Listen, Shermie, don’t stay up late just because it’s a Friday. I’ll be over at five-thirty tomorrow morning, same as usual. Get yourself psyched up, because we start jogging again, and we’ll get your sit-up routine going. You’re losing your belt, now we have to tighten it. You think you feel good now, wait until tomorrow night!”

  He took off up the stairs with his grocery bag. The sugar from the Pepsi and cookies must’ve been kicking in, because he took the steps at a full run.

  Me, on the other hand, I just sat there like a deflated lump. Who says I’m feeling good right now? Hungry and thirsty is what I am. The thought of not eating or drinking for another three or four hours—and worse, jogging again—sucked out whatever wind was left in my sails. Walking was so much better than jogging. I almost looked forward to walking. But jogging…ugh. I would’ve skipped eating for another five hours if it meant I didn’t have to jog.

  I’d had it right before, being an athlete does suck. Big time.

  CHAMPION EATER SAYS SECRET TO GUSTATORY SUCCESS IS IN THE FEET

  New York Times News Service

  CALIFORNIA—Championship-level competitive eating does not stop at fast jaws or strong stomachs…it includes active feet, too. That’s the message champion eater Sherman “Thuff Enuff” Thuff has for his fans.

  “When I’m not training to increase my jaw speed or expand my stomach capacity, I’m walking the track. That’s where the real magic happens.” A champion who knows firsthand what it takes to turn daydreams into reality, Thuff Enuff says bigger isn’t necessarily better when it comes to packing in the hot dogs. As his astounding success proves, a professional eater’s stomach must be free to stretch when the pressure is on. “My fans always ask me, What’s your secret? How do you eat so many hot dogs? I tell them the key to eating big is an unrestricted stomach, and the key to an unrestricted stomach is a tight belt, and the key to a tight belt is a brisk walk.”

  Thuff Enuff certainly knows about belt tightening. He’d dropped to an amazing 130 pounds when he stunned the world by eating fifty-four hot dogs at the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog–Eating Contest, ripping the Mustard Yellow Belt of International Hot Dog–Eating from the reigning champ and record holder, Tsunami. “I credit my feet for that win as much as my mouth. I owe it to my fans to be clear, though: I’m not talking about jogging. Don’t ever let the exercise whackos tell you jogging is the only way to go. Have you ever seen a jogger smile? Walking’s just as good. Trust me. I’m a champion athlete, I know these things.”

  And it seems that when Thuff Enuff speaks, his public listens. Judging by the exploding number of aspiring eaters pounding the sidewalks and rounding junior high and high school tracks, legions of Thuff Enuff fans are following their idol’s footsteps on the walking path to eating fame.

  “It’s so awesome to see that I’m making a difference,” says Thuff Enuff. “My fans are the best. I just hope they remember,
though, that I’m an eater, not a role model.”

  CHAPTER 17

  It wasn’t easy talking Grampy into letting me have a Friday night off. In the end, I had to resort to blackmail. He knew Mom would kick his can if I ratted him out for making me ride my bike home in the middle of the night. Not that I ever would tell her. If I did, Grampy and I would both be on a shorter leash. But I put on my poker face and made the threat, anyway, and Grampy didn’t call my bluff. It was a good win for me. I didn’t miss Gardo’s first meet, and now I was home for my HDB training no matter what time Lucy came by.

  “What’s cooking, Thuffaroo?” Grampy cut through the kitchen on his way out to cover Arthur’s break at Scoops.

  “Just dinner. Lucy’s coming over.”

  He peered into the pot on the stove. “You’re serving her hot dogs?”

  “We have to eat something.”

  He shook his head sadly. “My boy, that is not the way to impress the ladies. In my day, you wanted to impress a girl, you cooked veal.”

  “What’s veal?”

  “Just the finest of the finest, child.” He grabbed a V8 from the fridge. I cringed as he swigged it. V8 tasted like someone took whatever they found in the garden dirt and just threw it into a blender, including the rotted stuff.

  Grampy wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I’ll be staying to help Arthur close. You keep that girl downstairs tonight, ya hear? I don’t want some angry daddy showing me the business end of a Louisville Slugger.”

  “Grampy!” I ducked as he mussed my hair.

  “Ah, to be fourteen again.” He grabbed another V8 and headed for the door. “Not a care in the world, and you don’t even know it.”

  No wonder Grammy Esmerelda used to swat him with dish towels.

  I finished cooking the hot dogs then loaded them into the buns, stacking them in a tower on a thick paper plate. Twenty HDBs, my goal for tonight’s speed-eating session. It would definitely be tough. I could eat eighteen off the clock, but twenty in twelve minutes…well, I had to do it, and that was that. Next time I’d keep my big mouth shut in the first place.

  Admiring my stack, I marveled at the fact that Tsunami could eat fifty-three and three-quarters in twelve. Every time I increased my quota, I realized just how far I still had to go. There were years of training ahead of me, at least, before I could compete on his level. And then I’d have a championship to defend for a few years. The joy of eating could be gone from my life forever.

  I miss you, my little gummy bear friends.

  But I’d made a commitment, and I was serious about it. Tonight twenty HDBs were going down in twelve minutes flat. No excuses.

  And no reversals.

  I stuck my plate of HDBs in the nuker so that when Lucy came, I’d just have to give them a quickie touch-up. In the meantime, it was Galactic Warriors time. Plus I’d bought yellow, pink, green, and light blue highlighters to bring my HDB graphs up to date. Lucy would want to see the graphs. For the water training graph, I’d only use blue. She’d like it that I was being theme-conscious. Color coding was an important part of graphing.

  And when I was done with that, I’d open up my Captain Quixote telescope. It came today while I was at school. I was tempted to rip open the box now, but I’d never get to my graph coloring once I took out that telescope.

  Three hours, four graphs, eighteen HDBs, and two episodes of Galactic Warriors later, I was flat on my back on the couch, my Polaris Model 76AZ-P 300 Power Captain Quixote Signature Edition telescope propped across my body. My eye was glued to the lens as I searched the moon. Lucy had stood me up, but who needed her anyway? I just ate the freakin’ HDBs. Almost all of them. Sure, it took forty minutes instead of twelve, but so what? I did it.

  And now I wanted to die.

  But I wasn’t going to reverse. If I couldn’t eat them in twelve, the least I could do was hold them down.

  I twisted the zoom knob on the telescope. The night was clear of all clouds, which was perfect for telescoping. So much for Max’s great balance of the sun and tides and moon and whatever theory. It was like daytime up there, with the sun lighting the moon brighter than a Hollywood spotlight. I read somewhere that you could see Neil Armstrong’s footprints if you looked at the right place hard enough, but I couldn’t see them or his flag and I’d been searching for fifteen minutes now. Stupid footprints.

  I dropped the telescope to my side and let out a gnarly burp. It wasn’t much help. I rubbed my eyes.

  Lucy liked to tell me that her ruling planet was the moon. She said that’s why we’ve been friends so long, because we balanced each other out, me being a sun-ruled Leo and all. Well, we’re not such great friends right now. Maybe there was something in Max’s balance theory after all.

  In the distance, a lightning bolt shot across the sky. I quickly put my eye to the viewfinder, but I wasn’t fast enough to see the bolt magnified. It must’ve been raining hard somewhere.

  I was tempted to scan the sun for the exploding sunflares that Max had lectured about, but I was afraid of going blind. The telescope was supposed to have a special patented solar filter just for sun gazing, but it was still scary. Max said 4.5 pounds of sunlight hit the earth each second. That’s a lot of poundage. Maybe the Earth needs to watch its belt, too.

  I shifted, groaning with the effort. My belt was killing me.

  Jupiter. That’ll get my mind off the pain. It’s a big planet, it’ll be easy to find. Following the directions on the telescope box, I twisted and adjusted until I had Jupiter in the center of my 5 x 24 viewfinder. They called it the Giant Planet, and I could see why. It was definitely hard to miss. It was looped by gas belts that made obsessing about my own stupid belt idiotic.

  My stomach roiled. I swallowed hard, suppressing an acidy flush that tickled my throat just as the doorbell rang.

  “Lucy!” I rolled sideways off the couch, landing on my knees, nearly reversing then and there. Keep it in, Thuff, keep it in. Using the couch for leverage, I pushed myself up, then hobbled to the peephole. Yep, it was Lucy. I flung the door wide. “You came!”

  She smiled sheepishly. “I’m late again.”

  “Late, schmate. Who cares? You’re here now, that’s what matters. Come in.” I stepped aside so she could walk by me. She smelled like chocolate.

  She saw the evidence of my eating session on the counter. “Oh. You’re done.”

  “Yeah. Sorry, I didn’t think you were coming.”

  “I should’ve called.”

  “Forget it. It doesn’t matter.” I offered her the stool. “Want anything? Milk? Juice? I’ve got Pepsi under my bed. Or how about water? I’ve got a ton of that. It’s in the cupboard here and I’ve even got some clean glasses ready and I can put ice in it if you want….” Jeez, shut up already. This was Lucy, for crying out loud, why did I feel like I had to impress her? She’d been coming to my house for years. And she was the one who bought all the water. She knew I had it. If she wanted some, she could help herself.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I can’t stay that long, anyway. I got out of my shift, but I promised I’d reorganize the inventory after closing. Aunt Enith hates it. This time I’ll try multicolored dot stickers and a numbering system.”

  “Oh. Good. Dots and numbering. Good.” I nodded and looked around the kitchen.

  She nodded and looked around the kitchen.

  We both nodded and looked around the kitchen.

  Someone say something. Please.

  “Oh! Let me show you something.” I fetched my binder from the living room. The eighteen hot dogs in my belly slowed me down, but I tried to look peppy. I set the binder on the counter in front of her. “Look, I’ve been filling out my graphs.”

  “Really?” She slid the binder closer and flipped through the graphs, pausing on the water training page. “All blue. Nice.”

  Bingo! “See, I’ve been alternating water and HDB days, just like you scheduled. I’m up to twenty HDBs.” She didn’t need to know I hadn’t broken eighteen yet. I p
atted my belly. Ugh. Dumb move, Shermie. “That’s what I ate tonight, twenty.”

  “In twelve minutes?”

  “Yep. In twelve minutes.” What did it matter at this point?

  “Shermie, that’s great.”

  “Yep. Great.”

  She closed the binder. “So where’s Gardo? I thought he was supposed to be here.”

  “He’s having pizza with the wrestling team.”

  “Oh.” A mischievous smile snuck across her lips. “So how’d the big meet go?”

  I grimaced, not from stomach pain, but from the memory of the whole scary wrestling thing. What a nightmare. It kicked off with Shane wheeling around the gym, taunting the Del Heiny Junior 7 Early Girl wrestlers through a bullhorn, telling them how lucky they were that he was injured and couldn’t squeeze their heads off in some weird kind of chokehold. Then Plums threw themselves on top of Early Girls and rolled around awhile and then whistles blew and then hands were raised in victory. Wrestling had to be the weirdest sport ever.

  “It went fine, I guess.” I lowered myself painfully onto the stool next to her, careful to keep my back straight to relieve tummy pressure. “Gardo won. But I couldn’t tell you why. He flipped some slippery-looking guy onto the mat, then the guy flipped him onto the mat, then someone bled on the mat, then the referee slapped the mat…I really don’t know what happened except that at the end, the referee was holding Gardo’s arm up high and the Plum side of the gym was cheering. So I guess he won.”

  Lucy laughed. “You definitely need to leave the play-by-play to Gardo. ESPN won’t be knocking on your door anytime soon.”

  “For eating, they will.”

  “That’s true. We all have our strengths.” She slid her hand slowly across the binder, then rubbed out a smudge. “You know, Shermie, with twenty HDBs, you beat the champ of the very first Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog–Eating Contest ever.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. I don’t know the guy’s name, but he ate thirteen in twelve.”

  “Just thirteen? Thirteen is nothing.” I definitely missed having Lucy around. She knew useful stuff.