Slob - Ellen Potter [36]
“What you got there, Flapjack? Is that a puffin?”
“It wasn’t his idea,” Jeremy was quick to defend me. “Someone stole his usual lunch sack.”
Then she turned bright red again because Andre Bertoni looked at her.
“Well, it wasn’t me,” Andre said, getting all bristly.
“No one said it was,” I told him.
“Well, she’s looking at me funny,” he said, nodding at Jeremy, who then turned a shade redder. You’d think if you were all heartthrobby like Andre, you’d know when a girl is turning red because she’s madly in love with you or because she thinks you stole her brother’s lunch sack and wants to pulverize you.
“I already know who stole it,” I reassured him.
“Really?” I could practically see his shoulder muscles relax. Frankly, if I didn’t know who stole my lunch sack, I might have started to suspect Andre. “Who?”
“Mason Ragg,” I said.
“Oh, man.” Andre thumped me on the back of my neck. “That’s who I wanted to talk to you about. Listen, don’t mess with that lunatic. Did you know he carries a razor under his tongue?”
“A switchblade. In his sock.”
“Here’s the thing,” Andre said. “I was at basketball practice on Friday, and I went to get a drink of water at the fountain. That’s when I overheard my coach talking to Mr. Wooly about you.”
“Me!?” I couldn’t imagine the name Owen Birnbaum being tossed around the gymnasium on off-hours.
“You and Mason Ragg. Wooly thinks the two of you were up to something at the triathlon. He thinks you two knew that there was going to be a fire drill and that’s why you arranged it so that you were both last.”
“That’s ridiculous! How would we know there was going to be a fire drill?” I said. “Besides, why would Mason and I be up to anything together? We can’t stand each other!”
Andre shrugged. “All I know is that Wooly is planning something special for the two of you at the next gym class.”
“What’s he planning?” I’m not going to lie to you. I didn’t ask this question with a nice, calm question mark at the end, like the one written here. I asked it with three exclamation points at the end, in bold letters, and underlined. In other words, I shrieked it.
Andre shrugged again. “I don’t know. But if I were you, I’d reconsider getting that fat exemption ASAP.” He thumped me on the belly.
“What’s a fat exemption?” Jeremy asked when Andre was gone.
“Nothing,” I grumbled.
“Owen?”
“What?”
“Maybe it’s better that those Oreos get taken.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean maybe you shouldn’t be eating Oreos at all, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. What do you mean?”
Of course I knew exactly what she meant. But never, NEVER had Jeremy said anything about my being fat. She was always the one who didn’t care. She was always the one who never even seemed to notice, who saw me for who I was, underneath all the blubber.
“Why can’t you at least try harder to lose weight, Owen? People make fun of you, you know. I’ve heard people laugh at you. They make you the butt of their jokes in front of everybody, even though they’re friends, and I defend you, I do, but you could at least try to lose the weight. You weren’t always fat.”
She blurted this out as though it had been something she had been wanting to say for a long time.
There it was. Everything had changed in a minute between us. She no longer thought I was a better person than I actually was.
“Fine,” I said to her, “if you’re so embarrassed of me, walk to school by yourself.” I ran ahead. I’m not an elegant runner, and once I started running I wished I hadn’t because my jacket got caught in the back of my pants and I had to yank it back down over my rear end.
All morning long I fumed about my argument with Jeremy and worried about what Mr. Wooly was planning. Fuming, worrying, fuming, worrying. I clutched my clay sarcophagus so hard that I snapped off the tip of it while I was painting it. Rachel Lowry helped me glue it back on. That was nice. Her breath smelled like toothpaste and construction paper.
Ms. Bussle made Mason Ragg spend some