The Second Life of Abigail Walker (7 page)

when abby
got home, her mother was in the kitchen making pizza. They always had homemade pizza on Saturday night, but Abby had mixed feelings about it. Because she loved pizza, she wanted to eat slice after slice until she was too full to eat one more bite, but what stunk was that she knew her parents would be watching her. Her mother's eyebrows would rise a little higher with each piece Abby ate, and her dad would make comments like, “Save some for the rest of us, Ab,” which were supposed to sound like jokes. But Abby knew he wasn't joking.

“I'm going to make two sausage and one cheese,” her mom announced when Abby walked into the kitchen. “But the sausage is for the boys and Dad, okay? You and I can share the cheese pizza.”

“But I like sausage,” Abby complained. “Why can't I eat sausage pizza?”

“Abby,” her mom said, sounding as though Abby were being unreasonable. “Come on, sweetie, you don't need sausage. It's so fatty.”

Abby didn't care if she didn't need sausage. She wanted sausage. Why should John and Gabe get to have sausage just because they were skinny? Fatty foods were bad for everybody, weren't they? If her brothers could eat foods that were bad for them, she should be able to, too.

“Fix the salad, would you, sweetie?” Her mom pointed to a bag of lettuce on the island in the middle of the kitchen. “And grate the carrots, don't chop them. Grated is nicer.”

Abby opened the fridge and pulled out the carrots and a green pepper. She eyed the shelf with the salad dressing. Blue cheese, Thousand Island, and fat-free ranch. The fat-free ranch
was for her. It tasted like garlicky glue with artificial sweetener stirred in. She wondered if she could sneak some Thousand Island on her salad when no one was looking.

By the time the pizza was on the table, Abby was starving. Her father was the official pizza cutter and server, and when it was Abby's turn, he put a single slice of cheese pizza on her plate. “Maybe that'll do ya, Ab, what do you think?”

Abby thought that one piece of cheese pizza would not do her, but she didn't say so. She took the plate from her dad and set it down in front of her. At least it wasn't a tiny piece, she consoled herself. At least it had some crust on it.

“What are you trying to do, starve her?” John asked, and Abby smiled at him for sticking up for her, even though she wished he wouldn't make a big deal out of it. She didn't want the dinner table discussion to be about her eating.

“You just worry about what's on your plate, John-Boy,” Abby's dad said. “I'll worry about Abby.”

Abby concentrated on tearing her paper napkin into tiny pieces on her lap. She wanted to
yell,
Quit making a big deal about how much I eat! Just let me have some pizza!
But she didn't have the kind of dad you could yell at. You could maybe joke with him a little bit, but never yell.

“Oh, let's talk about something more interesting, why don't we,” Abby's mom said in her peacemaker's voice. “Gabe, have you decided what you're going to wear for Colonial Day next week?”

Gabe had a mouthful of pizza, but that didn't stop him from answering. “You know what would be cool? A musket. Like, if I wore a sort of army uniform from back then and carried a musket.”

“You're kidding, right?” John asked. “They're not going to let you bring a gun to school. Even a fake one.”

“What if I made it out of a stick or something? So no one would think it was real?”

“No way,” John insisted. “No weapons, period. They'll expel you.”

Abby's mom's eyes widened. “From second grade? For a stick?”

“Yeah, Mom, for a stick. They'll expel you for
anything. Like if you brought some aspirin in your backpack and your teacher found it? Automatic expulsion.”

Abby's mom shook her head. “I don't want Gabe bringing a stick to school, but that seems so extreme to me.”

“I don't make the rules,” John said, reaching for another slice of sausage pizza.

Abby was taking tiny bites of her pizza, trying to eat it as slowly as possible. She had one eye on the bottle of Thousand Island. It was within her reach, but could she grab it without anyone noticing? No, she shouldn't grab. Grabbing would definitely get her noticed. But maybe she could reach over casually, like it was no big deal. That was it—she would ask Gabe a question, get him talking, and while everyone was listening to him, she'd just sort of quietly move the Thousand Island closer to her. And then she'd really nonchalantly put a little bit on her salad—

“Hey, Ab,” her dad said, interrupting her strategizing. “Did you get any exercise today?”

Abby sucked in her stomach, thinking of Mrs. Benton. “I took a walk,” she said. “It was nice.”

“Walking is good,” her dad said, but Abby could tell he didn't mean it. “How about jogging? Great for your heart, and it really burns the calories.”

Abby's mom shook her head. “Oh, let's not talk about calories at the dinner table,” she said lightly. “That's no fun.”

“Well, look at her, Susan. Someone should talk to her about calories.” Her dad turned back to Abby. “Calories in, calories out. That's the formula, Ab. You have to burn more calories than you take in. That's all there is to it.”

Abby looked at her pizza. One-third of her slice was left. She knew it was getting cold and she should hurry up and eat it since she didn't like cold pizza, but suddenly there was a lump in her throat and she thought she might not be able to swallow right now.

“Hey, Dad, did you lift weights when you were in high school?” John asked. “Because Coach was saying he didn't think we should really get into lifting until sophomore year. It might do some damage if we start earlier.”

Good old John, always changing the subject.

When dinner was over, Abby helped her mom clear the table. She tried to remember to keep her gut sucked in. She liked how it made her feel taller. She wondered if holding in your stomach burned extra calories. And did you have to hold it in all the time? She'd have to ask Mrs. Benton if you were allowed to let your stomach out every once in a while.

“Hey, Mom,” Abby said, dumping out leftover salad into the trash. “Do you have any books on Lewis and Clark?”

“I'm sure I do, down in the basement.” Her mom glanced over at Abby from the sink. “Do you need them for school?”

“For a project,” Abby told her. “I thought I might get started tonight.”

Drying her hands on a dish towel, Abby's mom said, “I'll go see what I have.” She sounded excited. “I think I have that book that won all the prizes. It's wonderful.”

Abby's mom disappeared down the basement stairs. Abby looked around. She was alone. Her dad and brothers were in the family room watching a college football game on TV. There were
three pieces of sausage pizza on the platter on top of the stove. Abby stepped softly over to the paper towels and pulled off two sheets. Quietly, she crept to the stove and wrapped two of the pieces in the paper towels. They were still warm. She could smell the sausage.

The trick would be sneaking past the family room without her dad seeing she had something in her hand. Because if he noticed her carrying something wrapped in paper towels as she headed toward the stairs, something that might be food, he would definitely want to know what it was.

Her left-hand side would be toward the family room, so she should carry the pizza in her right hand. Could she put it in a book? No, she'd get pizza grease all over the pages. Abby looked around the kitchen. The newspaper. She could put the paper-towel-wrapped pizza in the newspaper, and then if anyone asked, she could say she was taking the paper to cut out articles for a current events assignment.

Brilliant.

Abby ate the pizza sitting at her desk. She
took bite after humongous bite, the sausage and cheese and crust filling up her mouth and making her whole body hum. Why did food taste so good? Abby wondered about this a lot. Because if food didn't taste so good, she wouldn't have a problem. She would get this lovely, filled-up feeling from something else. There were books that almost made her feel filled up the way pizza did, usually books she wasn't supposed to read, celebrity biographies her mother called “trashy,” and books she was officially too old to read, like Junie B. Jones. Candy books.

She was halfway through the second piece when her mom knocked on her door. “Abby, I found it!
Undaunted Courage
—that's the title. May I come in?”

Abby scrambled to wrap the remaining pizza in the newspaper and throw it into her trash can. She sniffed the air around her desk. Could you still smell sausage?

“Come in,” she called, trying to sound innocent. “I'm just doing some homework.”

“You are so good to do homework on Saturday night,” her mother said as she walked into the
room. “I always used to wait until the last minute, and it made Sundays so depressing.”

She stopped, cocked her head to the side. “It smells funny in here. What is that?”

“I know, it's weird!” Abby exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “My shirt totally smells like pizza! Isn't that weird?”

“It's the sausage,” her mom said, nodding her head in agreement. “Whenever I cook sausage for the pizza, the house smells like sausage for the rest of the night. Well, anyway, here's the book.”

She handed it to Abby, who nearly dropped it. “Sort of heavy,” Abby said, putting the book down on her desk. “Thanks, though. I thought I'd see if I could find some interesting facts.”

To Abby's dismay, her mother sat down on her bed. If she hung out in Abby's room much longer, she might sniff out the pizza wrapped up in newspaper. “Oh, the Lewis and Clark story is fascinating. Thomas Jefferson sent them out West. He was a genius, Jefferson. Remember that trip we took to Monticello?”

“It was fun,” Abby said, though mostly what
she remembered was how obsessed the tour guide was with the beds, which where built into the walls of the rooms. “We should go back sometime.”

Abby's mom smiled. “We should. It's only a few hours away. And now that Gabe's class is studying colonial America . . .  That reminds me! Costume! I think there might be something in the back of John's closet from a play he did—”

With that, Abby's mom was up and out of her room. Abby staggered to her bed and plopped down. Whew! That was close! She could just imagine what she'd have to go through if her mom had found the pizza. A lecture from her dad about being a big fat pig, that was for sure. And then maybe they'd put her back on an official diet instead of just bugging her about what she ate, and there'd be low-fat yogurt at every meal. And packaged turkey slices. Abby hated packaged turkey slices.

She got up and dug the half piece of pizza out of her trash can. It was cold and the fat was starting to congeal on the sausage. But the crust? The
crust still looked good. Abby tore it off and started to chew. She reached under her bed and pulled out
Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook
. She thought about crying, but she decided to keep chewing instead.

that night,
when the fox woke up from yet another dream of bombs exploding, she made her way through the yards, across the street, and down to the creek. No fish, unless you counted the swarms of tiny minnows, which the fox did not. Minnows! When once she had dined on red-and-orange cutthroat trout.

She'd been in the long-ago story of the grand expedition, on a narrow boat floating westward on the lazy river. Everything had seemed so new, even the sky. The wind like God laughing softly in the next room. She'd folded herself into a bundle
behind the boxes of supplies and piles of blankets, and when she got hungry, she reached a paw over the side and grabbed a fish from the water.

Tall tale!
Crow had cawed when she'd told him about it later.
Tall tale!

But birds fished the river all the time. Why not a fox, so much smarter than a bird in every way?
Yes, all I had to do was reach a paw out,
the fox had insisted to Crow, who'd flown away nattering like a cranky old man.

The old story soothed the fox, even with the echoes of Crow's disbelieving cries ringing in her ears. Really, she had to do something about these nightmares. Who'd ever heard of a fox having nightmares? Preposterous! What if that silly raccoon found out, the one that had set up shop by the trash bins next door to the fox's field? The fox could hear its snitty laughter. Raccoons always sounded like they were choking when they laughed. Disgusting.

When she reached the creek, the water was cool, and it calmed her as she drank from it. When she was done, she lifted her nose to a familiar scent and realized she could smell the
girl she now knew was named Abby. She looked around and saw a small cooler a few feet away from where she stood. Too small for Abby to be inside. She must have touched it, carried it, left it here on the way to somewhere else.