Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher Read Free Book Online Page A

though Mautz still doesn’t know that. “Yes, dear, I remember Crispy Pork Rinds. Is that what you’ve been talking to Sarah Byrnes about? No wonder she won’t talk to you.”
    â€œNo way, man. She loved that rag right up till the final word of the final sordid exposé. If it hadn’t been for trouble within the ranks she’d have brought it right on into high school with us. Hell, we brought Mautz.” I pull a half-full quart of Gatorade from the refrigerator and drain it like a college kid sucking down a Bud, placing the empty bottle back on the rack.
    â€œPrepare to die,” Mom says, and I come to my senses, grabbing the bottle before the door can close and flipping it across the kitchen into the garbage can on survival reflex. Of all my dysfunctional behaviors, she hates me putting empty containers back where they don’t belong. “I don’t care if you weigh seven hundred pounds the rest of your life and don’t stop picking your nose till you’re forty,” she told me once, “but if you put one more empty container anywhere but in the garbage, I’ll have you put to sleep.”
    â€œYou remember Dale Thornton?” I ask.
    â€œThe kid that used to come over here and bully you out of your junk food?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œSure, I remember him. Pretty rough customer. Why?”
    â€œOne of the counselors up at Sacred Heart—his name’s Sam—asked if Sarah Byrnes had any other friends. Dale was the only one I could think of. Man, that’s shitty. Her only other friend than me she hasn’t seen for more than three years.”
    â€œThat is shitty,” Mom says. “Did the counselor think Dale Thornton could do some good?”
    â€œDidn’t know. I think he was just fishin’.”
    â€œIs Dale still around?”
    I laugh. “I don’t know. If I were going to hunt him down, I’d probably start at the state pen. But you know, when I was driving home I remembered something he said once.”
    â€œWhat was that?”
    â€œHe got really pissed off at Sarah Byrnes one day when she was ragging on his family and told her he didn’t believe her story about the pot of spaghetti.”
    â€œAbout how she was burned?”
    â€œYeah. At the time I thought he was just trying to get her goat. Man, he got the whole herd. Anyway, I’ve wondered about it sometimes. It was a pretty strong reaction if it wasn’t true; she like to ripped him a new one.”
    The conversation dies because Mom has to get ready to go out. Her latest boyfriend, a guy named Carver Middleton, on whom the jury is still out, is taking her to the recreational vehicle show at the trade center. Now there’s my idea of an exciting night on the town.
    Â 
    I think it’s safe to say Dale Thornton took exception to his personal profile in Crispy Pork Rinds. He wasn’t the publicity hound we might have expected. And let me say it was one thing to have him rough you up when you didn’t have enough lunch money to keep him happy, but it was something else altogether to get him really mad. I feel truly fortunate not to have been the first in a succession of Dale Thornton serial murders.
    By the end of that day of our first edition, I really did consider locking myself in the school furnace room until Dale was about a month into his first three-to-five for first degree assault on some other kid. But Sarah Byrnes thought she could get me out under cover. I actually thought there was a chance because Sarah Byrnes was—and is—one tightfisted kid with a buck, and she had three of them bet that I would get home that day with all my blood in its original container.
    I hung around school talking with Mr. Webb, whowas one of the few teachers I liked—and who liked me, I think. Mr. Webb was one of those small oases for those of us who spent most of our time scorched on the deserts of humiliation. Someday