Sugarless: A Novel

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70 s4S T he next Saturday afternoon, as I was coming through the main entrance to Wheaton Central with Joe Bacino and Brian Tadder, I saw Miss Schuette’s head bobbing left and right in a river of students. Spotting me, she charged. “Rick, where have you been?” “We went to Cock Robin for lunch,” I stammered, holding out my shake cup, afraid that saying “we” might make Joe and Brian think I thought we were friends. It was enough that they’d asked me to go along. We got weird looks from some of the customers , but Joe said suits and ties were the best way to score with the Christian chicks from Wheaton College. He managed to flirt a ketchup packet out of a beanpole reading I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. I just laughed at the right spots. “But your mother made you lunch,” Miss Schuette said. “Joe, I hold you responsible.” “It’s Wheaton, Miss Schuette,” he said. “I’ve been going to Cock Robin since grade school. We’re not late or anything.” 71 “Well, Rick just made final rounds,” she said. “Huh?” I said. She frowned at Joe. “You see? He could have missed finals because he was hanging out at the Cock Robin.” “Did I get in?” asked Brian. Miss Schuette shook her head, patted his shoulder, and told Joe that Original Comedy hadn’t been posted yet. Then she grabbed my arm and dragged me down the hall. Joe fell in behind us, and I heard Brian wish me good luck. At the base of a big staircase in the center of the school, a crowd of kids enclosed by two stories of glass windows pulsed like bugs at the bottom of a beaker. Everyone was pointing up at giant sheets of white paper taped overhead. Messages from the speech gods, each sheet had the name of an event and a room number, followed by a column of numbers. “Look, Rick!” Miss Schuette shouted over the noise. I followed her index finger past a girl who was sobbing into her hands, the wings of her hair flapping on every intake of breath. The third number under Dramatic Interp, 9B, was me. The last of my milkshake swirled up in my stomach. “What now?” “You do it one more time, Rick. You’re up against the other five high scorers in the preliminary rounds. You go third, in Room 324, at one forty-five.” “What time is it now?” “Twenty after. Did you bring a toothbrush?” “What for?” “Smile for me.” I bared my teeth. “First I want you to go to the boys’ bathroom and pick that food out of your pearly whites. And then I want you to call your mother on the pay phone and tell her to come watch you.” “No way!” “She’s right down the road.” “She’s busy!” Miss Schuette was gnawing off her lipstick. “Tell her it’s the championship round. She might not get another chance to see you compete until districts. You want your mother to be on your side every step of the way, Rick.” She looked up. “What are districts?” I asked Joe, but he was looking up too, watching a sheet of paper walk by above our heads. The crowd began to surge in its direction. The paper stopped. A rabbitylooking lady popped out from behind the sheet, flipped it over, and began sticking it to the glass with violent pulls on her roll of tape. It was Original Comedy. Joe gave out a war whoop and shouted, “I’m in, I’m in!” He put his arms around me and jumped us up together. He was taller, so my face fell into his shoulder. I squeezed back just a little as we landed. When we broke apart, Miss Schuette whispered through spooky two-tone lips, “This sure beats Cock Robin, doesn’t it?” I nodded back, breathless myself. She dropped a dime into my hand and shoved me toward the pay phone. Other than the sound of the judge’s pen scribbling critiques in the back, Room 324 was dead quiet. There was no chatter between interps, and the putty-colored carpet in the foreign language classroom silenced twenty-eight pairs of feet. The desks were modern, with metal legs, blue kidney-bean-shaped tops, and headphone jacks. The left-side bulletin board in the front...