Diary of a Witness (2 page)

“Here’s what you have to do for me, though.”

Oh. Should’ve known. That was way too good to be true.

He pointed to the full-length mirror across from the shower. “See that mirror?”

“Yeah …” Did he think I was blind or something?

“And that scale next to it?”

Uh-oh. This was getting ugly. The scale was one of those vicious doctor’s office things with the weights that slide over, so you see the answer right in front of your nose. “Okay. What about it?”

“When you get out of the shower, I want you to stand in front of that mirror and look at yourself. And then get on the scale.”

I could feel myself getting dizzy. My heart was pounding in my ears, and it was like all these silent voices were screaming at me to get away. Just start running and never stop. Like I could really do that even if I tried. I don’t think I said anything at all.

“Look, I’m not trying to shame you,” he said. “That’s why I’m giving you your privacy. I don’t want you to be
ridiculed. And I’m not saying you should ridicule yourself. I just want you to keep your eyes open. Look the problem head-on. I don’t want to help you be in denial about it.”

I just kept looking at my shoes.

I never look in full-length mirrors. Never. If I catch a glimpse of myself in a store window, I quick look away again. We don’t even have full-length mirrors at our house. My mother doesn’t want them, and neither do I.

“Ernie. Do we have a deal?”

“Yes, sir.” It was better than showering and dressing with the other guys. Besides, if I didn’t look, and I didn’t weigh, he would never know.

“Okay, good. I’ll clear out now. See you in the gym in less than five.”

I started to get undressed. I was thinking this wasn’t such a bad deal. Then I looked up, and there was the mirror. You couldn’t miss it. You couldn’t help but look. At first I sort of had my arms in front of my middle, but then I just dropped my arms and stood there.

Then I got on the scale.

Don’t ask me what came over me. But there was nobody there but me. Better to find out in private than at the doctor’s. I might as well see how bad it really was.

About 200, I was thinking. If Mr. Bayliss had asked me how bad I thought it had gotten, I’d have said around 200. I tapped the little weights into place: 242. I was officially more than 100 pounds overweight.

I sat down on the scale for a few minutes, and then I got up and put on my sweatpants and T-shirt. And joined the other guys in the gym. They were playing dodgeball. Ah, geez. Anything but dodgeball. There should be a law against that game. It’s like legal torture.

Will looked surprised to see me, but I just kept avoiding his eyes.

This guy named Alex and this other guy named Kenny had gym class with us, fifth period. And even though Will and I weren’t exactly friends with them, we had a certain amount in common. That is, they weren’t exactly jocks, either. Not quite the “it” crowd. So I could sense the four of us trying to look out for each other throughout the regrettably legal viciousness that is dodgeball. Trying to have each other’s backs. Kind of a professional courtesy.

All through the game I was thinking I’d have to do something. This had gone far enough. It’d be hard, because I couldn’t tell my mother I was going on a diet. She’s bigger than me. There’s just no way I can say a thing like that without making her feel bad about herself. Without hurting her feelings. Maybe I could say my appetite was off and I didn’t even know why.

After dodgeball Will came up to me. “It didn’t work?”

“Not exactly. I didn’t get a pass. But I do get to shower and change in Mr. Bayliss’s office.”

“Good deal. Problem solved.”

I knew I had a bigger problem than that, though. Thanks to Mr. Bayliss, I was looking it head-on.

When I got home, my mom was standing at the stove. Stirring with a wooden spoon in the big pasta pot.

“Your nose does not deceive you,” she said. “I made your favorite dinner.”

Fettuccine Alfredo. She makes the noodles from scratch. It’s the best, most wicked, most addictive thing anybody has ever eaten. My father used to call it death on a plate. The sauce is made out of half a cup of butter, a whole cup of heavy cream, and a whole cup of Parmesan cheese. I don’t even want to think about how many calories it has. Well, you don’t. That’s the thing. You don’t think about it. When you eat fettuccine Alfredo, it means you give up, you don’t care about the calories. It’s like when you’ve been flailing around in the water trying to get someone to rescue you, but then you give up and just sink. You stop caring and sink.

I sank hard today. I ate two plates full. Once I got started, I couldn’t stop eating. I just stopped caring.

November 6
th

Will was standing in front of his locker when I came down the hall this morning. Standing there with his locker door wide open. It’s like he was just begging someone to come shove him in and slam the door. I couldn’t think what could be so important that he would forget basic safety.

He said, “What’s the best news you can possibly think of?”

“Um. Let me see. Amy McPhee wants to go out with me.”

“In your dreams, buddy, but this is close. I finally talked my dad into taking us fishing on Saturday.”

“Oh. Cool.” I was actually a little bit afraid of the ocean. But I was willing to give it a go.

Will and I had a deal, right since we met at the beginning of the school year. He was going to take me out on the ocean and show me fishing his way, and I was going to take him up to my uncle Max’s cabin and show him fishing my way.

His way you’re out on a twelve-foot metal boat, swaying with the tide, using this tackle where the hooks are like the size of your hand. Where the line is twenty-five-or thirty-pound test, and you’re wrestling these big sea monsters up out of the deep. Having to use a net or a gaffing hook just to get them up into the boat without breaking the line.

My way you’re perched at the side of this running creek, with four-pound test and a pole that swishes back and forth at the tip when you move it. Waiting for that special little stutter that says trout. Then reeling in, watching the silver of its belly crisscross through the water before it breaks the surface in one final jump for freedom. If you know your stuff you never even need to get your feet wet.

I think I like my kind best, but he swears once I get used to pulling in the big ones, I’ll never go back. I’ll get spoiled and I’ll never want to fish for twelve-inch trout again.

That’s actually what I’m worried about. I’m worried he might be right.

He also likes hunting, but I don’t think I’m up for that.

About a second later the jocks cruised by, and Will quick closed the locker before he could get shoved into it. So he hadn’t entirely lost his mind.

Just as they got level with us, all five of them did one of those fish imitations. You know, the kind with your hands up by your face like gills, and your mouth going in a little O. In perfect unison. Almost as though they knew what we’d been talking about. I mean, someone seeing it from the outside might think so. But really, they did this to us almost every day.

Just a run-of-the-mill school of jockfish going by. Taking the opportunity to rag on us as they passed. They thought fishing was hilarious. And that we were total dorks for liking it. Why Will ever talked about fishing out loud in class, I’ll never know.

I guess he thinks fishing is cool. Him and just about nobody else.

I heard their laughter echoing back to us all the way down the hall. Even after they turned the corner, I could still hear them laughing.

We sat in the cafeteria, daydreaming. Out loud. To each other.

“My dream,” he said, “is to live in a world where Lisa Muller would give me the time of day.”

“Dream on,” I said. “Besides, she’s no Amy McPhee.”

“Amy McPhee is beautiful in an obvious sort of way.”

I laughed at him, then sucked some milk out of a straw, then laughed at him again. “There is nothing wrong with obvious beauty.”

“Maybe not, but still.”

Just then somebody passing behind me bonked me on the back of the head with their tray. Hard. I figured it was an accident until I heard somebody laughing. I looked around. It wasn’t even the usual suspects. Total strangers, probably seniors. Senseless drive-by cruelty.

The only one who seemed to notice was this girl named Jane, who was sitting with us at the Safety Table. Plain Jane, the cruel ones called her. Sort of in the Kenny and Alex category. She rolled her eyes as a professional courtesy.

“I don’t even mean give me the time of day, as in date me,” Will said, going on like total strangers hadn’t just needlessly assaulted me. I think he was so deep inside his own head that he didn’t even see. “I know that’s asking too much. I mean literally give me the time of day. Well, no, not literally. I don’t mean I’d ask her what time it is. I mean literally just the kind of time you give a stranger. Like I’d say something funny and she’d laugh. She has the greatest laugh. Or even if she just smiled at me. That would be enough. You see, my young Ernie? My goals are realistic. My goals are modest.”

I just shook my head at him. I finished my milk, and the straw made a rude sucking sound.

I looked at Lisa. Needless to say, she was not looking at us. She was talking to her friends and to one of the jocks. Either Mike or Dave. Or maybe his name was Rusty. They
all kind of mush together in my head. She had long dark hair and dark eyes and a nose that was a little too big. But she was pretty. Will was right about that. Not in the most obvious way. Not like a Hollywood starlet. Not like the curvy blonde you throw at a guy when you want him to say “Oooh” without even thinking. This was something a little more real. She might actually have been real.

“That’s it,” he said. “I’ve made up my mind.”

“What mind?” I said. But just kidding, not really being mean. You can talk like that when friends know they’re friends.

He ignored me. “I’ve just made a resolution. Someday I will go up to Lisa Muller and say something to make her laugh.” He stared off in her direction and sighed. “It’s resolved.”

Just as he said that, she stood up from her table and picked up her tray.

“Go, tiger,” I said.

He just sat. “I have to think of something funny first.”

“Right. I get it.”

“Besides, I said someday. I definitely did not say today.”

November 9
th
3:00 a.m.

A day like yesterday is why Uncle Max gave me this journal. I know it is. I think he figures the little stuff is important, too, but this is the kind of thing you’d put in a journal even if you never had one before. I couldn’t even bring myself to write about this yesterday. It was just too long a day and I was too tired and confused. Too upset.

But now it’s early Sunday morning and I’m waiting for Uncle Max to drive down from Lemoore to help me with this fish. And I know he’s going to ask if I wrote it all out in my journal. I want to be able to say yes. I want to say, I did
it just like you told me. Remembering everything everybody said, and putting it down. Also how I felt and what I saw. Like I was writing out a story. So a total stranger could read it and really get what happened.

“But I’ll never show it to a total stranger.” That’s what I said at the time.

He said that’s not why. He said it was because later, when I’m a grown-up, I’ll look back on it, and I’ll be so far removed I’ll need all those details to help bring it back.
I’ll
be the stranger.

Uncle Max is a writer, and I think he has it in his head that I’ll grow up to be one, too. I’m not sure I’m good enough for that. But I’m willing to try what he says.

Anyway, here goes:

We got all the way to the coast, and I found out that Will’s father wasn’t actually going out on the boat with us. Just me and Will and Sam, Will’s little brother. It seemed scarier without a grown-up. I don’t know why, really. Grown-ups do stuff wrong all the time. Still. I didn’t figure it would just be us.

“I’ve been out on this boat without my father, like, twenty times.”

“Yeah, and he still hasn’t caught a legal ling,” his father said.

We were standing on the boat ramp, right where it met the sand. This steep concrete ramp with deep ridges, so the trucks can always get traction.

“This’ll be the time,” Will said. “Besides, I’ve caught plenty of lings.”

“Yeah, plenty of shorts.”

“I caught a legal one.”

“Hooked a legal one. It’s not caught till you get it on the boat.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know what a ling is.

All four of us picked up the boat by the stern end. Lifted it off the trailer and set it on the sand. Then Will and his father took the bow end and put that down on the sand, too. Then we all turned it around and pushed it down to the waterline, across this stuff that was more like pebbles than white sand.

“Six hours,” his father said. “Keep an eye on your watch. I want this thing landed when I back down the ramp again in six hours.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Will said.

I got in the front, the seat right behind the bow. Like a metal bench across the narrowest part. Not too comfortable. The waves looked big to me. But I guess I’m not used to judging waves. Sam got in the middle, and Will sat on the stern end, where he could work the outboard motor.

“Ready?” his father asked. He was standing right behind the boat, waiting for a big wave to come along and lift it up a little. He was wearing big rubber boots that came
up to his knees. “This one,” he said. When it came in, I felt the boat slide sideways. He gave us a big push, and Will grabbed up the oars and rowed like crazy. “Six hours. Don’t let me down.”

Will’s father walked up the pebble-sand to his truck and drove up the ramp and down the road. Meanwhile, Will kept rowing, until we were out beyond the waves. I looked out to the horizon, and a big wave crashed into the bow and caught me in the face. It got my sneakers wet, too. Sam laughed at me. Will told him to shut up.