Wicked Hungry (9 page)

“It was just for my skin,” Enrique whispers, his face red.

“I didn’t notice until now,” I say. “But yeah, your face has cleared up.”

“You see?” Zach says. “Another testimonial.”

“Look, Zach,” I say. “We appreciate your concern. But we’re trying to get dressed.”

“Yeah, what are you doing here?” Enrique asks him.

“I’m trying out for the high school team, just like you two. You’ll see. The supplements make you
fast.”

“They’re just vitamins,” I say. “Right?”

“Believe what you want,” he says. “I’ll see you out on the track.”

He always sounds like he knows something that I don’t. But I try to forget about Zach. I’m full of nervous energy, anyhow. Is it my imagination, or do I feel fast today in gym shorts, a gym shirt and my sneaks?

We walk outside and meet on the track. The coach tells us to warm up first with a slow jog for two laps, and then we will stretch a little, have one more slow jog, and then do four-hundred-meter sprints. My legs and arms are burning to run. How long has it been since my last time trial? A year, at least.

It’s hard to tell if anyone is looking at us now, because I focus on running smoothly, trying to loosen up my upper body as well, which tends to tense up. Enrique tells me about his weekend as we run the first lap.

His father is having him rebuild this classic Ford, a ’65 Mustang convertible. Quite a sweet ride, although it will be a while before anyone will be driving it.

We are now running the second lap, and Coach Gutierrez tells us to run a little sprint or two if we want. “Just a short one, okay?”

We see some people pumping their arms, kicking high, basically breaking a sweat and making an effort to run fast. There are some out here who I remember running with in middle school, but there no track stars running fast and making it all look easy. Those people? They are all already on the team. Enrique and I run in stride, and I feel a pleasant burn in my legs, feel my breath go in and out. It feels so good, it’s almost enough to forget the hunger and the pills that are letting me run.

Suddenly Enrique starts sprinting.

There’s a strange disconnect, like the world around me is lit with moonlight, and I run like the wind.

Together we pass ten people.

We slow down and the light goes back to normal. We let the momentum carry us around the turn, then slow down to a jog until we get to the coach. He looks at us like he’s never seen us before.

“Do I
know
you?” he asks.

“Stanley Hoff,” I say. “And this is Enrique.”

Enrique nods. “I have been running all summer.”

He looks at the clipboard again. “Enrique Ramirez Gonzalez?”

Enrique nods.

“Great,” the coach says. “We’ll see how you all do in the four hundred.”

I notice he has some senior with a clipboard there to record people’s times. “For right now stretch out slowly, nothing dramatic okay? It’s not a flexibility competition—that’s how people rip tendons.”

So we stretch. Enrique appears to have his own routine, which I follow. It’s pretty elaborate, actually. We are stretching parts of our body I didn’t know I could reach or feel. People look at us again, but I feel great. Not only pain-free, but warmed up and loose for once.

It’s our turn finally. Me and Enrique are all warmed up, and I feel like a spring, flexible but ready to explode. The coaches have been really eyeing Enrique. I bet they don’t know what to make of him. A Mohawk-wearing Mexican doing his own stretching and calisthenics routine.

There are ten of us in our heat. Seven girls and three guys. The girls look pretty fast though. I know one of them, Jennifer Martinez. She was in my seventh grade language arts class. She smiles at me and I smile back. Then the coach whistles, and we run.

Enrique and I pull out ahead in the first hundred meters. When I was in middle school cross-country, I used to run longer distances but this is just one lap so I pull out everything I’ve got. Again, the light goes funny around me and I feel an itching in the backs of my hands, around my knuckles. Enrique matches me stride for stride, and I have this strange urge to bite him.

But that’s not the only problem.

Zach is in our heat. And he’s right behind us. Then he pulls up even with us.

“You know, Stanley,” Zach says, matching me stride for stride, “meat is murder.”

I don’t know where he finds the breath. I pull my legs along fluidly, trying not to waste a movement, my arms pumping smoothly as well. We aren’t slowing down, and the light stays silver.

My legs burn; my heart thunders in my ears. We come into the final turn and Zach somehow pulls ahead.

Then there are just a hundred meters or so left, and I want to let my body fall into a jog, want to jump off the streetcar and slow down. But we keep running. Start sprinting, actually, running on the balls of our feet. And I feel like I’m making progress, running faster still, but I can’t even look at Enrique. I just try to blot out the pain and keep running forward. People jump out of the way ahead of Zach, who hits the line at forty-eight point one; Enrique and I come in together at forty-eight point seven.

The coach behind us yells, “Jog it off, you three.”

So we keep jogging around the track. I stay close to Enrique, and Zach tags along.

“My body is my temple,” Zach says.

“Take your temple somewhere else,” Enrique says.

“As you like it,” Zach says, and speeds up ahead of us. He doesn’t even seem winded.

My knee is warm but painless. Part of me wants to run off the track, pull off my sneaks, and run barefoot into the woods. Another part of me is asking if we’re on the team now, and what was the price? What was in those bitter pills?

But Enrique slaps me on the back as we slow down to a walk. “Stanley, you’re a
beast.”

“You too, Enrique,” I say, catching my breath. “You too.”

I
arrive home to find my mother leaping around half-naked, chanting incantations and burning a small bundle of sage, filling the house with sweet smoke. From past experience I know that she’s trying to cleanse the house of evil spiritual influences. Good luck.

The problem is that the burning sage smells like marijuana. The last time my mother and her friends did a sage-burning ritual with a big bundle at the elementary school
,
the boy scouts were in the building, too. The scout leader called the police. It took a while for them to sort that out, including a call to my mother’s Unitarian minister for a character reference.

Lately my little brother Josh has been giving me meaningful, searching looks. He doesn’t seem to trust me even after our pinky promise. This may have something to do with the fact that his cat Max still hisses at me almost every time I get near him. Or that my mouth waters, that I want to growl at Max and chase him. Josh may be little, but I think he can tell something is wrong with me. But he either doesn’t want to talk to me about it, or he’s afraid to. So it’s all I can do to get him to agree to play a game of Connect Four, but he drives a hard bargain. We have to listen to Raffi while we play. Max, though, isn’t soothed by Josh’s music, or our gaming. In fact, he’s nowhere to be found. My brother may be willing to play, but Max is keeping his distance.

The cat knows I haven’t become some animal-loving tree hugger. I don’t like it, but inside me there’s a predator who wants out. These days, dogs bark at me; cats, squirrels and chipmunks run away.

But I’m not thinking about prey. I’m not thinking about the pills. Instead, I’m asking myself:
Should I go to Carolina’s party?

Am I afraid that Karen will be angry? No, that’s ridiculous. She’s made no effort to see me. What would she care? But maybe people will laugh at me. Or I’ll bite someone.

Maybe I’m just scared out of my wits.

At least it’s a costume party, and my costume is
wicked funny
. I’m a mummy. And not one of those cheap ones covered with toilet paper either. My mother bought me like forty dollars’ worth of athletic bandage.

So I go. Alone. I’m one more mummy on the cold street, walking the ten blocks to Carolina’s party. Her house is just past the cemetery, on the way to the building site of the new mall.

I tried to get Jonathan to come with me, but he told me had three new anime films he just got through Netflix. I called up Enrique, too, but he told me he had to help his parents at the restaurant. And I don’t think Karen would fit in, even if it’s after dark. Even if she wasn’t avoiding me again.

As I arrive in front of Carolina’s house, I hope Karen isn’t mad at me.

From inside come the muted sounds of music and laughter. It’s the night before Halloween, so I don’t think anyone is going to mistake me for a trick-or-treater.

I need to walk inside now.

I walk up to the door and just stand there for a moment.

Maybe it would be better to go home. If only Enrique had been able to come, or even Jonathan. Anything beats being alone.

Then suddenly, the door opens. Too late. Meredith is standing in the door. And she’s a baked potato.

Either that, or an egg covered in aluminum foil.

“Hi! Wow! A mummy!” she says. “Come on in, it’s one big party in here!”

It slipped my mind that dressed as a mummy, I’d be just another guy to her, anonymous.

The laughter and music from inside is louder now. Some booming bass line makes the glass in the screen door vibrate.

The music vibrates through me and I feel like one funky mummy. For a moment the hunger, the thirst, the fear—all is forgotten. Look out world, I’m ready to party.

Meredith steps aside to let me inside, but it’s hard to squeeze by her costume. We get stuck next to each other for a moment in the doorway.

“This costume is driving me nuts,” she says. “Who are you, anyway? You have nice eyes.”

In my family everyone always says I have my mother’s eyes. Everything else is from my dad or some distant relative. I think it’s my best feature, and it’s kind of nice now having everything else covered.

“I am the funky mummy...” I say, and sure enough I sound like a chain-smoker. It’s hard to believe she can’t tell who I am, but with my whole body covered and only my eyes and hoarse voice to identify me, maybe it’s possible.

“It sounds like the funky mummy needs some punch.” She brings me to a table in the middle of the party.

We knock people out of the way trying to get through. Carolina’s house is full of black lights and lava lamps and other funky stuff, and the music is really loud, especially the rumbling bass. Dancing actually seems like a good idea all of a sudden.

We get to the table and she pours me some punch. Then she looks around and pulls out tiny bottles from inside her costume. “Don’t let Carolina’s parents see, but it’s better with this.”

She pours the contents of one little bottle into her drink and the contents of another into mine. She hands me a glass of punch.

“Cheers!”

It burns my throat, and then my stomach. The alcohol itself, though, is tasteless. All I can taste is the punch with its artificial fruit flavors and a little bit of orange from the slice floating in the cup.

“What is this?” I ask her. I feel loose.

“Vodka,” she whispers in my ear, bumping me with her potato costume.

“You are one hot potato,” I tell her, my voice husky, looking her straight in the eyes.

She smiles and flushes a little. “Let’s dance, funky mummy!”

So we start to move on the floor. I can’t get close to Meredith in that costume of hers. She knocks people out of the way as she shakes herself around.

I look my part of the funky mummy, dancing to the hip-hop with slow controlled movements, doing some robotic mummy shtick. A few hip gyrations every once in a while, but mostly just freezing myself every other second. My mime training from sixth grade summer camp is coming in handy. And that dance class my mom had me take last summer. I just need some more punch; my throat is parched.

“I’m going for some more punch,” I tell Meredith, and she nods at me with a smile.

People are talking behind me. “Who is that guy? Did you see him dancing?”

A guy says, “Freak.”

“I thought it was cool,” says a girl. “It’s hard to dance with a baked potato.”

But for my ego, the damage is done. I stand in front of the punch bowl for a moment, and get a cup. Someone taps me on my back.

I turn around. It’s Carolina. I think. She’s got this big dragon costume on and her face is painted green.

“Are you enjoying the party?”

I nod.

She squints at me. “Who are you, anyway?”

My voice is a throaty rasp. “The funky mummy, they call me.”

She laughs.

“We’ll unmask you soon enough.” She pulls a little bottle out of her costume. “Here, have some of this.”

More liquor. I hold out my glass of punch and she pours it in.

“Thanks for dancing with Meredith. She was really upset before. People just don’t find baked potatoes appealing.”

“It’s not the baked potato that makes the woman, it’s the woman that makes the baked potato.”

I’m not really sure if that came out right. Carolina just stares at me.

“I think she looks wicked cute,” I continue.

Carolina shrugs. “Anyway, thanks. She was kind of despondent.”

I’m not sure I remember what “despondent” means, but I’m glad I can be of help. I take another sip from my cup. The punch cools my throat, and I’m beginning to feel very pleasantly numb.

I take another sip, and smile like an imbecile.

“Come on,” Carolina says. “Let’s go dance with Meredith, she’s all alone over there.”

We make our way through the party. Meredith shakes her baked potato booty around to the music.

For a moment I just stare. She is an aluminum foil goddess, all shiny and round and reflective. I want to slather her with sour cream and butter and bring her to my hungry lips. Meredith Luna has permanently changed my mind about the sexiness of the baked potato.

I just have to say something. I can’t keep it in; my feelings just want to come out. I try to keep my mouth shut but it’s greater than me. She turns her luminous body towards me, stops for a moment, and smiles.