In Zanesville by Jo Ann Beard

Author:Jo Ann Beard [Beard, Jo Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2011-04-24T06:00:00+00:00

“Stop giving me subliminal suggestions,” I tell Maroni that afternoon.

“You’re the one who had the dream, not me,” she says.

We’re sitting out gym class, waiting for Felicia to join us—she gets off early on Fridays for School Beautification. This is a program run by the health teacher that mainly involves picking up candy wrappers outside, scraping gum off the pile of desks under the stage, and taping up holiday decorations. You have to be on the honor roll to do it, because it only takes about twenty minutes and then you get to go home.

“Guess the candy bar most eaten at this school,” Felicia says on arrival. “Then guess the gum.”

“The gum is Bazooka and the candy bar is Hershey’s,” I answer.

“Wrong.”

“The gum is Juicy Fruit and the candy bar is Clark,” I try.

“Right,” Felicia says.

“How can you know the actual flavor of the gum?” Maroni asks her.

“Because when you have about sixty petrified pieces in a bucket and you add hot water, it turns into a giant vat of Juicy Fruit again.”

“Ha—who did that?” I ask.

“Peter Sheldon and Don West. They used the hot-tea water in the teachers’ lounge.”

“Why do you get to go in the teachers’ lounge?” Maroni asks, suddenly interested. “What’s it look like?”

“We went in there to staple president heads to the bulletin board. All their stuff was everywhere—knitting, newspapers, crap like that. A bunch of Tupperware with people’s names on it. Ashtrays every two feet.”

“Was Mr. Carlisle’s toupee anywhere?” Maroni asks.

“That’s his hair, Maroni,” Felicia says.

“People don’t have hair like that,” she insists.

“People don’t buy toupees like that,” Felicia argues. “Plus, who cares what his toupee looks like when he wears his pants up around his neck?”

“They do something weird in the back,” I add. I’m somewhat of an expert on Mr. Carlisle because he was my homeroom teacher and my history teacher in seventh grade. He was in the war and cries during the Pledge of Allegiance. Everyone talks about his pants, but nobody talks about that.

“Can we blow up balls, please?” Maroni says. We have several cages of gym balls—basketballs, soccer balls, volleyballs, kickballs—that need to be checked for softness and then affixed to an air hose and pumped back up by stepping on a pedal. Since I actually do have cramps—Maroni is faking—I’m doing the checking and affixing, and she’s doing the stepping.

“Here, I’ll do one,” Felicia offers. “That’ll get the old butt smaller.”

It seems like the entire fleet of volleyballs is flat; it’s going to take forever, and the whole point of Maroni sitting out class and Felicia sneaking into the locker room was to do something besides jamming air into gym balls—we’re supposed to be getting me started on tampons so that when I go to the cheerleader party tomorrow night I won’t seem like some demented pioneer girl who’s out there scrubbing her rags on a washboard and hanging them on a line.

If only I hadn’t left metal shop to meet Luek and talk about boys, none of this would be happening.

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