Meatball Express
By Kevin Quigley
Chapter 1: Evan Hudzik’s
Great Big Idea
“Dewei.”
He’s not listening. Not when pinball’s on the line. My
name is Evan Hudzik. My best friend, Dewei Lin, is about to beat his high score
on the Tilt-A-Swirl machine at Big Fun Party. He’s not, we both know, about to
beat Sophie Klein’s high score, but that goal can wait. The tournament isn’t
for a month and a half.
“Dewei.”
He’s always pronounced it “Dewey,” which I’m pretty sure
is wrong. Whenever I’ve eaten over at his house, his parents give more of an
inflection to the second syllable. I don’t want to offend them or anything so I
basically don’t call him by name when I’m around them. I think they probably
think I don’t know his name, or think it’s “bro” or “dude” or something. He’s
still not paying attention to me.
“Dewei.”
Now he looks around, a little. 75% of his concentration
is on the table. Tilt-A-Swirl is the hardest game in here, at least according
to Dewei. I can’t play pinball at all. Either I don’t have the motor skills or
the brain skills for it. I’m not bad at Tetris
though. I like fitting pieces together. Dewei is severely annoyed at me right
now, I know that, I feel that, but he’s keeping it all locked in. I can’t
decide if Dewei’s Vulcan-like control of his emotions is a good thing or a bad
thing. I cry at movie trailers, so maybe I’m not the best barometer.
“Evan, I do believe we are both clear on the reason we’re
both here today.”
“Yes, but…”
“I do believe my intentions before we left your house
were articulated succinctly.” He talks like this when he’s mad. That’s kind of
his only tell. Sophie Klein hasn’t picked up on it yet, I don’t think. She
drives him bats.
“Dewei, you know I wouldn’t interrupt you if there wasn’t
a good reason.”
“A good reason?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no reason that can be more important than
pinball.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
He sighs. “It’s a girl, isn’t it?” This has been a bone
of contention in our friendship for about six months. For most of our
friendship together, not being remotely interested in girls was one of the
things that bonded us. Also the fact that we lived next door to one another.
Then, six months ago, I was reading this book called Airship Warkiller! by
this guy named Ron D’Andrea. There’s a girl pirate in it named Annie Huxley
with all this red hair and a scabbard and a sword and a gun and suddenly
everything changed. It was like I was blind to half the world and then someone
gave me these magical prescription glasses and now I could see everything. There
are girls. In my school. How come no one told
me this before?
Dewei hasn’t quite gotten there yet, thus the contention.
I’ve wondered a lot if he might be gay. My Mom and Dad’s two best friends are gay.
If he is, I wish he’d just come out and say something so we could check out
hotties together at the mall. It’s awful lonely sitting in the food court and
trying to share how major a girl is with your best friend, and all he wants to
do is talk about pinball or Star Trek
or The Avengers. Those things are fine, but jeez, Dewei, there’s another
interest before us now.
“It’s not just a
girl,” I told him. “It’s the girl.”
And indeed it was. Madison McMasters. Dewei always says, “Madison McMasters, of
the Boston McMasters.” Like she’s all stuck up or something. Or maybe he’s just
jealous because the McMasters are kind of rich. Her mother invented something to
do with software and then sold it to a company and it was apparently a big
deal. Sometimes I wonder why, if Madison and her parents are so rich, they live
in a rinky-dink town like Cork, which is so stuck in the past that it still has
a record store and an arcade and a roller skating rink. A roller skating rink. To tell the truth, I’m a little jealous
myself, but it’s easy enough to get over it. Because Madison McMasters is the
hottest girl, not only in school but in town and – look, I’ll be bold and say
it – the entire universe. She doesn’t have red hair but that doesn’t matter.
Okay, well it hardly matters. It’s so
brown it’s almost black. She sometimes wears glasses but not usually. She’s
bigger, too. I don’t know women’s sizes very well, but the way she wears her
shirts loose and her jeans tight just drives me bats.
“Madison, huh?” he’s not really listening anymore, just
filling space so that I’m not talking to empty air. Dewei doesn’t really
approve of Madison, but I’ve had a hard time finding out why. Sometimes I think
he’s sort of threatened by the fact that I have an interest that doesn’t
involve him at all. Sometimes I think he’s put off by her size, even though
Dewei isn’t that skinny himself. I am. I’m so skinny it’s almost tragic. Last
summer I read the comic book adaptation of Moby-Dick
and they had illustrations of the people starving on the life rafts. I’m a
little bit heftier than that, but not by much. It’s kind of an embarrassment to
my folks, though they’d never say it. They’re too nice. But they run a
restaurant, and I think it’s a little weird for them to work in food all day
and their kid is basically like a skeleton with skin. The restaurant is called Meatball
Express, and they never ask me to be in the ads. That’s okay. The food’s good
enough without my skinny self endorsing them in the local circular and on the
website.
But back to Dewei and Madison. More specifically,
Madison. She’s surrounded by a bunch of girls because everywhere she goes, she’s
surrounded by a bunch of girls. They fed a few dollars into the jukebox machine
and now some music I don’t know is playing over the bleeps and bloops of the
games and pinball machines. She is the most beautiful person to have ever
lived. When she’s singing along to the song on the stereo, she closes her eyes
sometimes. I bet she would close her eyes like that when she kissed someone. And
if the someone is me, well, I wouldn’t say no.
“You know,” Dewei says, shaking me out of my reverie, “she’s
going away for the summer.”
It’s an effort, but I managed to rip my eyes off of
Madison and face my friend. “What? What do you mean?” All at once, it was like
all the air had gone out of Big Time Fun. Good luck breathing, chumps, we stole
all the oxygen. “Where’s she going?” I envisioned her having a cottage
somewhere on some beach near the ocean, and she and her rich family would sit
around all day and sip tea and do crosswords and talk about how dull the poor
people are. The difference between me and Dewei is that he would envision this
exact scene as a scathing argument against her family, whereas to me it feels
like a nice way to spend the summer. Certainly the Hudziks don’t own beachfront
property. Still, the restaurant is a good compromise. You don’t get free
open-faced meatball sandwiches on a beach. I think.
“It’s her folks. They’re sending her to fat camp.”
I gape at him, then back to Madison, who I have never had
a conversation with but who is nonetheless perfect. “She’s not fat.” I say it
out loud and I want to take it back. The word feels weird in my mouth. Madison
McMasters is the pinnacle of every girl in existence, but she’s hardly an
isolated case. There’s a girl in Mr. Hudson’s math class named Claire who is a
lot bigger than me but not as big as Dewei, and she is stunning. Her brain is
also a lot bigger than mine. No math I ever took in junior high ever prepared
me for algebra, and she just breezes through it like it’s breathing. When they
were doing the scoliosis checks at the start of the year, I saw her in just her
halter top. That might have been when I had the first stirrings of “girls are
something else now.” I mean, Madison has lived on my street for most of my life
and I’d never noticed her that way
before. I was noticing her now. And it’s not like she isn’t bigger. That’s how
I’ve always described her. Bigger. Zaftig, which is a French word. But I never
call her fat. It isn’t nice to call
someone fat. Right?
Dewei lets go of the flipper buttons and now turns to me.
“Yeah, she is. She’s fat. I’m fat. Your parents are fat. That girl Claire in
school you like is fat. You’re the only person who isn’t fat.”
“You can’t say that.”
“What? Fat?”
“You can’t say it about girls, Dewei.”
“You don’t think Madison knows? Her parents are sending
her to fat camp. I think she has a pretty good idea.”
I look from him to Madison and back to him. “Okay, fine,
sure. But like … why? She’s perfect.”
Dewei sighs, which he does a lot around me nowadays. “For
you, maybe, Evan, but you’re a special little flower.”
“All right, that’s enough of that.”
“It’s true, though. Most people hate fat.”
“I really wish you’d stop using that word.”
He sighs again. “Look, I’m sorry that the girl you dig is
going away for three months. I actually really am sorry about it. I don’t know
what you see in her but I’m not, like, ignorant to the weird needs of my best
friend.”
“Liking a girl isn’t a weird need.”
“Regardless, maybe these three months away will give you
some perspective. I mean, even if I was totally okay with this Madison thing,
it’s like this singular obsession. Singular obsessions are weird.”
I place a hand on the Tilt-a-Swirl, looking from it to
him and him to it and back again. “That’s in no way the same.”
“You’re in love with a pinball machine. So, okay, yeah, I
guess you’re right. Not the same.”
“I’m not in love with a pinball machine. I’m practicing. For a tournament. And you’re deflecting.”
“I’m not deflecting! It’s just that three months without
seeing Madison every day…” Okay, here’s the part where I have to delve into
some clichés. Because even though the McMasters have a guy who comes in and
does all the chores around the house, is it completely
out of the realm of possibility that she might have, at some point this summer,
decided to mow the lawn? Maybe in a shirt that comes to her midriff, a word I
learned in a book we had to read for school this year and now I can’t stop
thinking about it. Midriff. It’s so descriptive. It comes midway down, and exposes a girl’s … well, riff? Is that right? Maybe it’s archaic. Anyway, Madison wears long
sleeve shirts almost all the time and she never wears dresses and maybe that’s
part of the reason why I like her so much, but the what-if is huge. What-if she mowed the lawn in a shirt that
shows off her midriff. What-if she
decided to sunbathe on the lawn wearing a swimsuit. What-if, oh my God, she
decided to wash her Mom’s car in one of those old-fashioned shirts that girls
tie in the front, maybe red with polka dots, and she’s wearing sunglasses and
she keeps getting wet and I’m
literally going to go crazy if I don’t get to see her every day, legitimately
crazy.
And just like that, I have an idea. Dewei’s not going to
like it.
“I have an idea. It’s a great big idea.”
“I’m not going to like it, am I?”
“Let’s find out. What if I went to fat camp, too?”
Dewei stares at me. In addition to sighing, this is Dewei’s
favorite reaction to everything I say. “Okay…” Now he’s looking at me like I’m
a nutball. Am I a nutball? I glance over at Madison, who just put a straw in
her mouth and now she’s drinking a root beer float and leaning up against the
soda counter like she owns the place, and her stance is so effortless and easy
and hot that I have to come to the conclusion that I am, indeed, a nutball.
“I have some basic questions,” Dewei begins, slowly, as
if I don’t understand words or what they signify.
“I have answers to literally every question you could
ask.”
“Okay, first question: what?”
As it turns out, I do not have an answer to this
question. Look, Dewei had explicated the issues just moments before. I’m not
fat. Not only am I not fat, I’m not even husky. Not chubby. Not tubby. Not “still
holding onto his babyfat.” I am skinny.
Skinny as heck. Like to the point that my Mom is sometimes concerned I’m
starving myself. I swear I’m not. She sees
me eat at the restaurant. Whenever I go to Babci Jadzia’s, she loads me up with
more food than a boy can reasonably consume. They have a healthy lunch program
at school, so I’m getting salads and fruits and legumes and all that at least
five times a week, and it’s not like Dewei doesn’t make fun of me if I don’t
finish it. I eat. I eat a lot. But it’s
never enough. So I see Dewei’s point.
“There are some bugs to work out,” I tell him,
involuntarily letting my eyes drift up to Madison. She has yet to notice me and
Dewei, but that’s fine. I think I might be perfectly content to watch her from
afar as long as she lets me. She doesn’t have to notice me. Just let me look at
her, and that’s all I’ll ever need.
Then Dewei’s hands are on my shoulders and he’s shaking
me. “Snap out of it, loverboy.”
My head snaps back. “Quit it or you’re going to give me
whiplash.”
“Maybe that would improve your mental state. Now I’m having an idea.”
“You’re going to give me whiplash?”
“I should, but no. It occurs to me that we are both
facing impossible challenges. You want to go to fat camp to be with Madison and
you’re the skinniest person who has ever lived in history.”
“I guess I wonder if hyperbole is necessary.”
“I am facing the very real possibility that I will never
be as good as Sophie Klein at Tilt-a-Swirl, and that’s unacceptable.”
For the first time since Madison wandered into Big Time
Fun, I commit my full attention to Dewei. “What is it with you and this girl?”
I hold my breath, waiting for him to tell me that the rivalry is a big
smokescreen and he’s really deeply in love with her and we can finally deal
with things.
Dewei sweeps his hand in an arc to indicate all of Big
Time Fun. “You play on the arcade games. Have you ever noticed the initials on
the highest scorer?” I shrug. I just play Tetris
and I’m not great at it, but it’s fun. When we play games at home, it’s fun for
Dewei too. I wonder if Tilt-a-Swirl is actually fun for him anymore.
“Most of them say
SJK: Sophie Jane Klein. She’s good at everything
here. And I’m not good at … well, let’s be honest, Evan. I’m not good at most
things.”
“Okay, now you’re being an idiot.”
“Usually. You’re better at school and you have a handle on
the girl thing. My parents are both successful. My older sister got into a good
college without trying. What do I have?”
“Besides that you’re just in general awesome?”
A smile breaks over his face. “Okay, thanks. Sorry about
the pity party. It’s just that I do love this table. I love it a bunch. And I know I’m good at it. But I’m not the best at it. Not yet. But I think I can
be. With your help.”
I looked at him and he looked at me. We both looked from
the Tilt-a-Swirl to Madison, still sipping from that root beer float.
From the smallest moments, the best summers begin.
