Beat the Band (Swim the Fly #2)(5)

“THAT WAS TOTALLY AWESOME,” Sean says as we wait in the cafeteria line. “I’ve never seen anyone faint before. What was it like?”

“I didn’t faint,” I correct. “I just got dizzy for a second.”

“Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” Matt asks. “You still look sort of . . . pale.”

“I’m fine. I just need some food. I haven’t eaten much since lunch yesterday.” Which is the truth. Mom was working late again, so dinner was a fend-for-yourself affair — which meant Pop-Tarts for moi — and I traded breakfast for three slaps at the snooze button.

“Uh-huh.” Sean chortles. “That’s funny. I thought you nearly fell out of your chair because you got stuck with Oscar Mayer Helen.”

“Don’t be such a tool, Sean,” I say under my breath. “She’s right there.” Or at least, I think she is. At the front of the line. But I might be wrong. The lunchroom is crammed with bodies and faces, none of which I can bring into sharp focus.

“Like you never make fun of her,” Sean says.

“Not when she can hear me, butt-wipe.” My stomach is creaking doors. I grab a lukewarm, foil-wrapped donkey burger, a chocolate chip cookie, and an apple juice, and plunk them down on my green tray. The thick smell of the cafeteria — salami, pizza squares, and lunch lady BO — is not the fresh air I need to clear my head. “Christ. That circus in Health class today. I mean, I can take it. But what they were saying about Helen. That was some of the cruelest shit I’ve ever heard.”

“Wasn’t me,” Matt says, sliding a chicken-finger-and-french-fry boat onto his tray.

Sean says nothing, just pretends to be studying today’s chow choices, which can lead to only one conclusion: he joined in on the verbal stoning.

He can’t help it. Sean’s a lemming sometimes. But he can also be a throw-himself-on-the-grenade-for-you friend, which are few and far between.

We pay for our meals and take up residence at the end of one of the metal-and-plastic picnic tables.

“What are you going to do?” Matt asks, sinking his teeth into a chicken strip.

“About what?” I unwrap my soggy burger, peel off the top bun, and start squeezing ketchup pouches, drowning the gray patty. You know you’re hungry when your mouth starts watering over crap like this.

“About having to work with Helen.”

“I don’t know. Drop out of school I guess.”

“Now who’s being cruel?” Sean says.

“I’m not being cruel, nutmeat. I’m being practical.”

“Practical?” Sean smirks. “Right.” He bites into his elephant-foot-trampled grilled cheese, which causes a trickle of oil to pitter-patter on the plastic it was once wrapped in. Even that looks good to me.

I start devouring my hamburger.

“Look at it this way. Helen’s a brainiac,” Matt says. “You’ll get an A for sure.”

“An A in exchange for a semester’s worth of ridicule, torment, finger-pointing, and being called Corn Dog Cooper?” I say through a mouthful of burger. “No thanks. Besides, who knows how long the repercussions could last?”

Matt shrugs. “Maybe it won’t be like that.”

“Put it in your corn hole, Corn Dog!” someone shouts as a storm of buttery niblets rains down on my head, hurled from somewhere in the general direction of the wrestling team. Dean “the Machine” Scragliano and Frank Hurkle turn and roar at each other as they slam their chests together. Everyone in our corner of the lunchroom — except Sean and Matt, who just grimace — cracks up.

I could go over there and try to find out who chucked the corn at me, but really, what am I going to do if I figure out who it is? Offer up my ass to be summarily kicked?

I grab a napkin and brush the kernels from my hair and clothes. I look at Matt accusingly. “You were saying?”

“It’s today’s news, that’s all,” Matt says. “I bet it dies down in a week when something else comes along.”

“That’s not how these things work, and you know it. It’s been almost two years since Helen’s hot dog habits were revealed. And that hasn’t eased one bit.” I look down at my T-shirt, which is now peppered with seed-sized grease stains. “If anything, it’s gotten worse. You were in class. They were like a pack of hungry cheetahs on a downed ibex. And now I’m the ibex’s partner. The rest of my high-school days are cursed.”

“What’s an ibex?” Sean asks.

“Look,” I say. “It’s not my fault about Helen, okay? Maybe the rumors are true. Maybe not. Maybe she saves abandoned kittens and spoon-feeds old people in her spare time. None of it matters, because if I’m seen hanging with Helen, or even perceived to be hanging with her, for any reason, my rep will be destroyed so fast I might as well find the nearest monkery and sign right up. Forget about tagging any bases; I won’t even be warming the bench. Like it or not, how people see you is everything in this world. And once you’re tainted, you’re tainted for life.” I take a swig of my juice. “You don’t tie yourself to an anchor that’s being thrown overboard. That’s all I’m saying.”

“So you’re not going to do the project with her?” Matt asks.