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By Root 662 0

- munching and not saving too much. Arnie had a devilled egg and swapped it for one of my cold meatloaf sandwiches. Parents know very little about the secret lives of their children, I guess. Every Monday since first grade, Regina Cunningham had put a devilled egg in Arnie's lunchbag, and every day after we had a meatloaf dinner (which was usually Sunday suppers), I had a cold meatloaf sandwich in mine. Now I have always hated cold meatloaf and Arnie has always hated devilled eggs, although I never saw him turn one down done any other way. And I've often wondered what our mothers would think if they knew how few of the hundreds of devilled eggs and dozens of cold meatloaf sandwiches that went into our respective lunch-sacks had actually been eaten by him for whom each was intended.

I got down to my cookies and Arnie got down to his fig-bars. He glanced over at me to make sure I was watching and then crammed all six fig-bars into his mouth at once and crunched down on them. His cheeks puffed out grotesquely.

'Oh, Jesus, what a gross-out!' I cried.

'Ung-ung-gooth-ung,' Arnie replied.

I started to poke my fingers at his sides, where he's always been extremely ticklish, screaming 'Side-noogies! Look out, Arnie, I got side-noogies onya!'

Arnie started to laugh, spraying out little wads of munched-up fig-bars. I know how obnoxious that must sound, but it was really funny.

'Quit it, Dennith!' Arnie said, his mouth still full of fig-bars.

'What was that? I can't understand you, you fucking barbarian.' I kept poking my fingers at him, giving him what we used to call 'side-noogies' when we were little kids (for some reason now lost in the sands of time), and he kept wiggling and twisting and laughing.

He swallowed mightily, then belched.

'You're so fucking gross, Cunningham,' I said.

'I know.' He seemed really pleased by it. Probably was so far as I know, he'd never pulled the six-fig-bars-at-once trick in front of anyone else. If he had done it in front of his parents, I figure Regina would have had a kitty and Michael possibly a brain-haemorrhage.

'What's the most you ever did?' I asked him.

'I did twelve once,' he said. 'But I thought I was going to choke.'

I snorted laughter. 'Have you done it for Leigh yet?'

'I'm holding it back for the prom,' he said. 'I'll give her a few side-noggies too.' We got laughing over that, and I realized how much I missed Arnie sometimes - I had football, student council, a new girlfriend who would (I hoped) consent to give me a hand-job before the drive-in season ended. I had little hope of getting her to do more than that; she was a little too enchanted with herself. Still, it was fun trying.

Even with all of that going on, I had missed Arnie. First there had been Christine, now there was Leigh and Christine. In that order, I hoped.

'Where is she today?' I asked.

'Sick,' he said. 'She got her period, and I guess it really hurts.'

I raised a set of mental eyebrows. If she was discussing her female problems with him, they were getting chummy indeed.

'How did you happen to ask her to the football game that day?' I asked. 'The day we played Hidden Hills?'

He laughed. 'The only football game I've been to since my sophomore year. We brought you luck, Dennis.'

'You just called her up and asked her to go?'

'I almost didn't. That was the first date I ever had.' He glanced over at me shyly. 'I don't think I slept more than two hours the night before. After I called her up and she said she'd go with me, I was scared to death I'd make an, asshole of myself, or that Buddy Repperton would show up and want to fight, or something else would happen.'

'You seemed to have everything under control.'

'Did I? 'He looked pleased. 'Well, that's good. But I was scared. She'd talk to me in the halls, you know - ask me about assignments and stuff like that. She joined the chess club even though she wasn't very good but she's getting better. I'm teaching her.'

I'll bet you are, you dog, I thought, but didn't quite dare say it - I still remembered the way he had blown up at me that same day at Hidden