Slob - Ellen Potter [38]
“Let’s go back to our classrooms, shall we?” she said.
“We shall,” I said, because as you know, I always say stupid things when I’m nervous. The teacher narrowed her eyes at me and we hurried off.
Izzy walked me up to the second floor. He was hanging murals for the parent show, he told me, and he had to hang some up there anyway. He’d been hanging them all week as a matter of fact, which was great because he got out of class for half an hour or so. They chose him because he was so tall he could hang them without lugging around a chair.
Being a giant has its occasional advantages.
“Hey, man,” Izzy said before we parted, “how about you just let Mason take those Oreos? What’s the diff, you know?”
This echoed what Jeremy had said that morning. Everyone seemed to be turning on me at once.
“The diff is THEY’RE MY OREO COOKIES!” I cried.
Izzy held up his hands. “All right, all right, relax. See you at lunch.”
He took off down the hall and I started walking back to my class. I passed right by the lunch closet, then I stopped. Backtracked.
I knew it was silly. I’d been right behind Mason so I knew that he didn’t have time to rifle through my lunch, but I wanted to check anyway. I unrolled the tote bag and opened it up.
That’s right. You guessed it.
My frickin’ Oreo cookies were gone.
So it wasn’t Mason after all.
12
It’s funny the way things work. Just when I was thinking I might come close to a solution to my Mason Ragg problem, I found that I was even more confused than ever.
And just when I was feeling that I’d never be able to get Nemesis to work, a solution appeared out of the blue.
After school, I stopped by Nima’s apartment. I hadn’t seen him for a while, and quite frankly, I needed a break from Nemesis. I was afraid I was in for another long evening of Freakout shows with no sign of an old signal. Also, I was feeling pretty gloomy about the whole Jeremy thing and panicky about the whole Wooly thing, and I needed to take my mind off of both of them.
Nima was in the middle of watching one of his Indian movies, so he just opened the door, said a quick tashi-deley, and rushed back to the couch, where I sat down next to him. He’s got about fifty of these Indian movies piled up in his closet. They’re really goofy and they’re all the same: there’s a beautiful woman who’s in love with a handsome man, and there’s a bad guy who messes things up. Everyone sings and dances a few times, and it all works out great in the end. Nima loves these movies, which means I often have to sit through them. It’s fairly excruciating for me. This time, I spent most of the movie counting how many times the bad guy stroked his moustache in this supposedly sinister way. Twenty-eight.
The actors suddenly exploded in a musical number, and everyone was dancing and spinning. It reminded me a little of that woman in front of the museum. Nima sang along in a loud, out-of-tune voice and started popping his head around like a chicken.
There was a close-up of the Indian actress singing something to her best girlfriend, her eyes looking all woozy, so I knew it must be something about the handsome guy. I snorted in disgust. Nima looked at me. I think he took it personally, he loves these movies so much. I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings, so I tried to make an excuse for my snort.
“Pema is better-looking than that actress,” I said.
“Pema is more beautiful than a jewel.”
“Why doesn’t she come here already?” I asked. I’d wanted to ask this for some time. I wasn’t sure if it was some mysterious Tibetan custom, where you separate a newly wed husband and wife for a while.
“She wishes to. I wish her to. But her mother is sick, and there is no one to care for her but Pema. If I make more money, I can bring them both and pay for medicine for her mother. Maybe by next year.”
“Next year!” I said.
“If business improve much.”
Personally, I love momos. I think everyone