Gabe Johnson Takes Over Read online

  “Summer help, buddy,” Dante said.

  “Where’s Carrie?” I asked.

  “Working on her dad’s farm. You knew that,” Dante said.

  “No, this is not going to work,” I said, again pointing at Gore. “She’s a potential murderer.”

  Gore swallowed hard, then whispered, “You don’t know anything.” She turned and bolted for the bathroom. Even through her makeup, I could tell her skin was flushed.

  “Unacceptable, dude. No good,” Dante said. “You don’t own this place. You don’t treat my employees with disrespect. When Chandra is done with her business in there, you apologize to her or you go home. Understand?”

  I bent toward Dante. I whispered, “She’ll probably stab us before summer is through.”

  “I’ve known Chandra her whole life, Chunk. She’s a sweet kid. Don’t you go judging a book by its cover.”

  Well, Dante knew Chandra because her dad owns MNLake Bank. You know Darrell Wettlinger, right?

  You gotta learn all these people’s names if you’re going to do business in this town, Mr. R.

  The story?

  Chandra threatened to kill people in middle school. Seriously. Three kids in my class—Kailey, Janessa, and Tyler Paul (who left town soon after, probably because his parents were freaked). She also threatened Seth Sellers, a grade ahead of us. (I approved of that.) She wrote them notes saying she’d cut their throats in the middle of the night and that they’d better watch out. It was a big deal. She was suspended. Her dad had to petition the school board to get her back in. I was friends with all those guys in seventh grade (except Seth). They were so scared.

  Of course, they’d all been psychotically mean to her before she made death threats.

  Yeah. Things were bad for her.

  In any case, RC III showed up before Gore even got out of the bathroom. I trained him. Dante trained her. Gore didn’t look at me for the rest of the morning. Not even when I apologized.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Okay,” she whispered, staring above my head. She’s almost six feet tall, so it’s easy for her to stare over my head.

  Yeah. I did feel bad about going off half-cocked like that. A little. Mostly, I felt like jamming every damn donut in the store in my damn mouth because I was so damn hungry!

  I didn’t stuff anything though. Grandpa was planning a workout for me after donuts. I didn’t want to barf all over his old fart shoes.

  RC III did well. Gore did too. They learned the donut-selling business fast.

  With the new employee training, I didn’t get a chance to ask Dante about helping the band until nearly closing time at 2 p.m., when everybody was cleaning up (Gore out front sweeping). “Hey, Dante, would you add a nickel to your donuts and donate to the band?” I asked.

  RC III looked up from washing a rack.

  Dante said, “What now?” He stood holding this big metal spoon (sort of looked like he was going to whack me with it).

  I swallowed, strained my brain, and said something like, “Donuts. Lost our funding. Help the band?” I wasn’t articulate. My leadership bone was so weak, Mr. R.

  “What the hell?” he asked again.

  “Pop machine funding. Dance squad took our money. No summer band. School-sanctioned theft.”

  Dante turned a little red. “No way,” he said.

  “Totally,” I said.

  “Really?” RC III asked.

  “Really,” I said. “We need money or else—”

  Dante shook his head and winced. “Jesus. I can’t change my prices. I’d have to redo all my signs and printed materials. That’s costly.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Hm.”

  “I’ve got no budget for that.”

  “Right,” I said.

  Then he took a deep breath and said, “How about you come up with a bake sale or a special event that maybe I can sponsor?”

  “Hm,” I said. “Yeah?”

  “Something not stupid, Chunk,” he said. “Propose an event and we’ll see. Maybe.”

  Sure. That was a start, I guess.

  No, Justin never responded to my early morning text calling out the cheer bitches. Camille did though. We agreed to get together after my workout at 5 p.m.

  “Workout?” she asked.

  That’s right. Workout.

  CHAPTER 7

  Project Kill Chunk. Why do you want to hear about this?

  Yeah, I’m a real motivational figure, sir. Big time.

  Okay. First, to picture this adequately, you must know that my grandpa has no shame with regard to his body. Even though he’s an old man, he walks around the yard in compaction shorts and nothing else. He should be in Under Armour advertising for old farts. Got that visualized in your mind?

  It shouldn’t be surprising that he has no fear of nakedness. He spent his youth wearing a banana hammock, making his oiled-up pecs bulge for crowds of people. That would help a guy feel comfortable being half-naked in the hood.

  These days, he’s into fitness, not bodybuilding. He built a fitness room next to my room in the basement (the laundry room). He hung a bunch of motivational posters on the wall and brought down a bunch of medicine balls and a couple yoga balls and those kettlebell weights that Russian wrestlers use.

  I’d never touched any of it. When Grandpa works out, I go upstairs. His grunting and sweating are pretty distracting. The laundry room will never smell the same—I’ll tell you that.

  Grandpa wore his compaction shorts with a tucked-in tank top. He wore wristbands and a sweatband on his crew cut head. He was barefoot (no old man shoes for me to barf on).

  I wore my XL Dante’s Donuts T-shirt, which is the tightest shirt I’ll wear, and a pair of elastic waistband khakis because the stretchies don’t pinch my loaf, if you know what I mean.

  “You have anything more comfortable?” Grandpa asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Sweats?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “We have to do something about your clothes. That shirt will restrict you. Take it off.”

  “No,” I said. “I can’t do that. Are you kidding me?”

  “Why would I be kidding?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  He set up stations—burpees, push-ups, mountain climbers, yoga ball crunches, medicine ball squats, and medicine ball military presses. He showed me how to do each. (I’d done all this crap in gym at some point in my long academic career.) Then he put me on the clock, “Thirty seconds for each exercise. Thirty seconds rest between exercises. We’ll go around the circuit three times. Eighteen minutes of hell,” he said.

  “Great,” I said (sarcastic).

  “You asked for this.”

  “Great,” I said.

  Then he shouted, “Go, Chunk! Burpees first. Let’s do it!”

  I started with burpees (squatting and then kicking back into a push-up position, then crunching up and standing). After a few, I cried, “Almost done?”

  “Fifteen seconds,” he said. “Go!”

  I tried to go. I wanted to go, but my body did not go. Lightning fired in my shoulders. The back of my neck cramped up. At the end of thirty seconds, I thought I might puke. Sweat poured from me. I sucked for air. The basement floor spun beneath me.

  “Good work!” Grandpa shouted. And then he cried, “Push-ups!”

  By push-up four, I was down on my knees. Grandpa shouted above me, but it didn’t matter. “Do girl push-ups!” he cried, but I couldn’t. I spent fifteen of the thirty seconds with my face pressed to the gross basement floor.

  It went like this with mountain climbers too. Ten seconds of go. Twenty seconds of heaving for air on the floor while Grandpa screamed above me. Yoga ball crunches turned into a crunch or two and then me draped u
pside down over a yoga ball while Grandpa shouted. Squats became little dips. Then finally there were military presses, which meant lifting a heavy object above my head over and over.

  You can’t slack off with a ball over your head. You can’t lie down or lie back. You do it or you don’t. I did it five or six times, my neck charley-horsing, backs of my arms trembling. Then I moved to don’t because I couldn’t.

  “Push it up, Chunky! Push it up!” Grandpa shouted.

  As I struggled to lift that damn ball, Grandpa slapped my hips hard. I cried out in pain and my fat rippled and waved. Grandpa shouted, “Go on, chub!” He slapped my hips again and I slammed the ball onto the floor in front of me.

  “Bullshit!” he shouted.

  “Stick it in your ass!” I shouted back.

  He glared, his jaw clenched, the whistle on his phone blew, and he dropped down onto the concrete floor and reeled off like thirty push-ups. I stood there sweating and dizzy while he did it, breathing hard, staring at that ball I’d slammed on the floor, thinking about grabbing it and crushing Grandpa in the head. Before I could, he popped back up and put his mug right in my face. He said, “That’s what you do with your anger, Chunky. You squeeze out the pain and pump out the reps. You get it?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then you’ll die a fat ass.”

  “So,” I said.

  “So don’t ask for help, fat ass.”

  I yanked the effenheimer out on him, then ran and locked myself in the bathroom.

  I sat on the toilet. My gut bulged out between my legs. I held my head in my hands.

  Grandpa knocked, came in. He just said, “Shower up, son. You did good, okay? Pain is good. Pain is gain. That was a good start. We’ll get her even better tomorrow.”

  I probably stayed in the bathroom for two hours.

  Around four o’clock, Grandpa made me a salad. He put some boiled chicken in there so I didn’t actually die of hunger.

  That was very, very hard. Workout and boiled chicken—both.

  Things were about to get harder.

  CHAPTER 8

  Dad got home from teaching his Saturday class at 4:45. “Boiled chicken?” he asked.

  “That’s what we have. Take it or leave it,” Grandpa said.

  Dad grumbled. “You ate this?” he asked me.

  “Uh,” I said. I didn’t say uh because I was against the chicken. I said uh because I had no energy. My flesh had gone all trembly and weak. The eighteen minutes of hell workout (or ten minutes or whatever it had actually been) destroyed me. Muscles in my legs twitched. My back spasmed. My head swam. Scared me, sir. I wondered if I was having a stroke.

  I pulled on my shoes though. I got ready to go.

  At 5 p.m., right on time, Camille rolled up in her dad’s pickup truck.

  I left the house and climbed in. “Cornell coming?” I asked.

  “He didn’t answer my texts,” she said.

  “He didn’t reply to me this morning either,” I said.

  “He wouldn’t answer my calls last night. He texted about how he’s been tired lately,” she said.

  “Huh. That’s truly weird,” I said.

  “Chunk,” Camille said.

  “What?”

  “Has he mentioned anything to you?”

  “No. About what?” I asked.

  “About maybe not liking me?” Camille asked.

  “Oh, no. Uh-uh,” I said. But that wasn’t exactly the truth.

  Camille has crushed on Justin for a couple years and he asked me in April why she never got a real haircut and why she wore her pants so high. (I didn’t know what he meant even—except she has these blue thrift shop hippie bell bottoms that make her look like she’s in 1970.) “Camille is pretty cute, right?” Justin had said.

  “Yeah. Definitely,” I replied.

  “But she’s just too weird,” he said. “I wish she’d wear normal clothes, man.”

  He and Camille went to prom together, even though he wasn’t enthusiastic about it, even though a year earlier all he talked about was how great it was going to be when he finally got up the courage to make a move on her.

  Yeah, he liked her before! Forever! Until the last month or whatever.

  Here’s the sad truth, Mr. Rodriguez. Over the past year, Justin’s grown from a pencil-neck geek to looking sort of like Clark Kent. He’s on the swim team and he grew all these muscles out of no place. The last time we hung out just the two of us, maybe three weeks ago, he said the weirdest thing while we were eating this thick and chewy chocolate cake his mom had made.

  My memories always revolve around food. I love his mom by the way.

  He said, “Chicks dig me.”

  Chicks dig me! What the hell, right? I asked him how he gained this saintly knowledge and he was pretty nonspecific on the matter, except to say he had been catching a little buzz on the Interweb. What?!

  He did get multiple texts that night and he wouldn’t tell me who they were from, which is ridiculous because we were buddies. I went on family vacations with him! I stayed overnight at his house like a thousand times! His dad loves me, calls me Coolio! His mom makes me cakes and pies because my mom left me! Then out of the blue, he won’t tell me who he’s texting with? That hurts, man. Seriously.

  “No,” I said to Camille. “He hasn’t mentioned anything.”

  “Something has gone wrong,” Camille said.

  “I…I don’t know,” I said.

  Camille took a deep breath and then shouted, “Screw Justin Cornell!”

  I didn’t say In your dreams, which was on the tip of my dumb tongue.

  “Now what about these bamboozling cheer bitches?” Camille asked.

  I told her my hunch and it was really just a hunch at that time. Firstly, all funding for marching camp comes from the pop machine. Secondly, Shaver loves summer marching camp and wouldn’t cancel it unless suddenly the money to do it was gone. And thirdly, why cheerleaders? The same week the pop price goes up, the new dance squad is announced and marching is suddenly canceled? These are not disconnected events.

  Camille pulled the pickup truck over. She said, “I don’t believe you.”

  I said, “I know in my heart I’m right.”

  She said, “I need to talk to Shaver.”

  I was like, “What?”

  Camille swung the pickup around, nearly creaming a kid on a bike. She headed toward Shaver’s shit-ball condo right off Main Street.

  “We’re going to a teacher’s house?”

  “He needs to verify the situation,” Camille said. “Otherwise, I refuse to believe it.”

  A few minutes later, we pulled up in front of Shaver’s place. He and Mrs. Shaver got divorced last year. He moved from Lion’s Ridge by Kailey to that hole, poor guy.

  Even though it was a nice evening, his shades were all pulled down. “Doesn’t look home,” I said. Then we got out of the car and heard Led Zeppelin muffled but clearly vibrating through his walls.

  “He’s home,” Camille said. “He’s rocking out.”

  “I don’t like it,” I said.

  Camille marched right up to his front door and rang the bell. His walls were literally shaking to that hey hey mama song.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Maybe the bell doesn’t work?” Camille said.

  “Maybe he can’t hear it?” I said.

  Camille pounded on the door. We waited. The song got to that ah ah ah part, which is a little quieter, and Camille pounded again. Then the song took off and we stood there. Then Camille said, “I’m going in.”

  “No!”

  She nodded and twisted the doorknob and the door was open. And Camille walked right in! Balls, man! She left the door open behind her and I didn’t know what to do, so I followed.

  Adrenaline gave me a little strength.
At least I wasn’t bodily trembling from my ten minutes of hell (and lack of Dew and lack of normal, satisfying, but deadly food).

  Shaver was right on the other side of the door, sitting in his living room on the couch, wearing these colorful plaid shorts and nothing else. He had an ashtray and this bottle of whiskey balanced on his big bare gut. Dude was sucking right from the bottle. Lit cigarette in the other hand.

  My eyes burned. I thought of Shaver in his prime, teaching us new parts for a new piece, big smile on his face, conducting, gesturing small to make us quiet, gesturing huge to make us loud. Waving his arms around crying, “Let’s hear it! Let’s hear it!” He’s such a good teacher, but there he was shirtless with whiskey.

  Camille walked over to his stereo (old school) and turned down the volume.

  “Hey, brother,” he nodded at me. “Hey, girl,” he smiled at Camille.

  “You’re loaded,” Camille said.

  “You’re breaking and entering,” Shaver smiled.

  “You’re a teacher!” Camille said.

  The smile left his face. “Maybe. Maybe not,” Shaver said. “Maybe not.” He shook his head and shut his eyes. “Maybe?” He opened his eyes and swigged on the whiskey and then puffed his cigarette.

  “God,” Camille said. She looked at me. I shrugged. “Mr. Shaver,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Chunk says the cheerleaders took the pop money and that’s why camp was canceled.”

  “Oh?” Mr. Shaver asked.

  “Is it true?”

  “Is it?” he asked back.

  “I believe it’s true,” I said.

  “Chunk would know,” Shaver said to Camille. “Boy has hidden powers of deep wisdom and knowledge.” Then he laughed, which I didn’t appreciate.

  “So it’s true?” Camille said. “If it’s true, then we’ve been bamboozled.”

  Again, the smile left Shaver’s face. He grunted. He sat forward and the ashtray slid down his gut and spilled. He plunked the whiskey bottle onto the side table. “You, girl.” He pointed at Camille. “Don’t make trouble for me.”

  “What?”

  He shook his head. He said, “I’m asking you man-to-man. No trouble.”