All-Day Breakfast (8 page)

“So where in all that,” I asked, glancing at Eric, “did you get the black eye?”

“I was in the wrong,” he shrugged. “Took more than my share.”

“Okay.” I draped my elbows across my knees. “I need to figure this out.”

The kids looked at me. All sarcasm had evaporated from the air.

“Tell you what,” I said. “Yesterday morning I was a vegetarian. Last night my mother-in-law cooked bacon for the family and I ate it before I realized what I was doing, I ate more this morning, then another pound from Walgreens just now at home. That's—”

“What kind did you get?” asked Franny.

“Oscar Mayer Thick Cut. On sale, actually.”

Clint leapt to his feet, straightening his jacket.

“Stay on task, we aren't going yet,” I said. “In the last eighteen hours I've eaten enough to make someone who
really likes bacon
sick, and I wasn't even that crazy about it back when I ate meat. Now, is that roughly the same experience that everyone's had?”

“I kept saying last night I was only going to eat a couple of strips.” Grace rubbed her eye with the back of her hand. “So I cooked those, ate 'em, then I just did it again and again and again. I was up until one-thirty.”

They all shifted how they were sitting.

“I kept waiting to barf, the more I ate,” Shawn said quietly. “And I never did.”

“And nobody had habitually eaten that much bacon
prior
to eighteen hours ago?”

“I totally got into Rhinoceros last night!” said Amber. “Do I look twenty-one? No, but I'm, like, ‘Screw that, I'm not waiting five more frickin' years, I'm going,' and the bouncer just waved me in! I bought the wristband for dollar shots!” She held up her bare arm proudly. “Oh, it was the other wrist. But there were guys with rodeo belt buckles, like the big ones! And I said to this chick there, I just said, ‘Drool.' ”

“What about bacon, how much did you have?”

Her shoulders slumped. “Half a package. Just what Grace hadn't eaten yet, the little pig, and she'd stayed home to write some stupid Congo speech but she never did!”

“You better not slag Congo, bitch,” said Grace.

“I know why you're into that, but you couldn't come to Rhinoceros too?”

“I threw down with my brother,” said Clint. “And I utterly kicked his ass, and
he
's on the college wrestling team. He was crying at the bottom of the stairs, and I was, like, ‘I will eat your heart, man, I will totally eat your heart.' ”

“Oh,” I said. “What did you mean by that?”

“No idea.”

“C'mon, you!” Franny rolled her eyes at him.

“Shut up,” said Clint, “you're the one who ripped her bathroom door off!”

“What? I had to pee so bad!”

“What about any unusual cuts or bruises or…healing?” I asked. “I'm sorry I couldn't help you with the arm, Amber, but it's really a miracle you never bled to death.”

“Oh, no problem,” she said.

“Okay,” said Eric, nervously stroking his mullet. “The neighbor brought his dog over, ugly dog that looked like a butt, and I guess it didn't like me because it jumped up and it…” His hand stopped over his ear. “It bit me a bit.”

“Tore your ear off?” I asked.

“Only halfway. But funny thing was, it didn't even hurt. Whole bottom half was just flapping.” He moved his hand away but the ear looked pristine—maybe it'd been the other one. “I didn't really say anything 'cause I didn't want to bug the neighbor, right? So I put staples in it and went to bed.”

“This ear that's on your head?”

“Yup.” He tugged at it. “Just needed a good night's sleep!”

“Staples!” Grace smiled at Amber. “
That's
what we should've done!”

“What about the people who aren't here? What about Jacob or Ryan or Lydia, anybody seen them? Scott Barnes?”

“Jacob's brother said he's sick.”

“Okay, okay, wait,” said Amber from the desk, lifting her hand above us like a Baptist. “I just thought up a haiku about the thing we were talking about before.”

“Seriously, Harv's dick?” asked Shawn. “Is it cool to keep talking about that?”

“What about Harv?” I asked. “He hasn't been here at all?”

“Aw, you never heard that?” Franny wiped her mouth. “Harv totally hates his sister, right? So the kid on the bus said Harv stuffed her mouth with bacon, Beanie Babies, then
microwaved her head
.”

“It's that pink stuff,” said Grace. She thudded her sneakers against the front of Cam's desk. “Let's be real. It's not like this is complicated. It's cause and effect.”

“What was the name of their superstar—Rob something?” asked Clint. “We should call that guy up, ask him what the hell.”

“Yeah, maybe Rob'll say it'll all go back to normal after, like, a day,” said Grace.

“Why go back to normal,” asked Amber, “what's so bad about this?”

“I do have his number, that's something.” I sprang to my feet—usually I got stiff sitting cross-legged, but I was spry as a fox. “My last class Thursday's just prep, I could drive back to Velouria and talk to them, but let's see how the next couple days go, maybe this'll all, I don't know, subside.” Maybe if I hadn't been their teacher, diplomatic to a fault because that was the job, I would've admitted there was no chance of that happening. “Megan, hey, what's your mom been like since Friday? Plenty of bacon?”

“She's loud,” she said, toying with her cardigan button. “Yells a bit more.”

“I don't mind that my ear grew back on,” said Eric. “Guy without an ear would look screwball.”

“Hey, my dad can call them,” said Franny. “He does that all the time.”

“Absolutely not, but thank you. I'll look after this.”

“So then can we all go to class, Beanie Babies?” She climbed to her feet and brushed down her jean skirt. “Or is Abel sending us to hot, hot lesbian prison?”

“I guess I could take a ninja down,” Clint said to no one. “They aren't tough.”

“So was the idea that Harv would
eat
the head?” Shawn asked Franny.

“I think you should all go home and get some sleep,” I said. “Seriously, does anybody know where Harv is?”

My concern was that I'd have disemboweled Dave Saunders if I was in Harv's position and the committee might frown upon that when Harv applied for scholarships.

Chemistry 11 was
last period, in my stuffy classroom with its tattered entomology posters and faded globe—Czechoslovakia was apparently still one country—and Dr. Reid's informational fax still on the desk. The only kids perched at their benches, of course, were the three who'd missed Friday's field trip.

“Where the heck are they all?” asked Devon.

“They found the bale of pot that fell out of that airplane,” said Jordie.

I told the three boys that if you sketch the atoms in an inorganic molecule they'll line up to look either left- or right-handed, but an organic molecule is
always
left-handed, and how did nature possibly come up with that? Not curriculum, but it was cool, and kept me from smashing my forehead through the cabinet of Bunsen burners. Then I gave them handouts to color and, because I had a bad feeling, trotted to the office to ask Kathleen if there'd been any calls from Harv Saunders' home to explain his absence.

“There was this morning,” she said, red hair in a bun now. “His dad said flu.”

After the dismissal
bell she called me back to the office over the
pa
—an update on Harv, I figured. But Kathleen slid a milky-yellow business card across the counter.

“This, ah, gentleman just left,” she explained. “Wanted to know the names and addresses of the kids and teacher who were over in Velouria yesterday. Said he represented the parent company. I said that access to that information would be between him and the school district, my hands were completely tied as far as handing over that sort of information. So he left this.”

James Jones
, the card read.
Penzler Industries
. And a fax number.

“Thought you'd want to know,” Kathleen said.

“He didn't say why?”

Compensation!
I was thinking.
Deep-breathing methods to calm us down!

“No. Just looked at me and wrote in a little book, then said he had lots of appointments and out he went.”

“What'd he look like? Maybe I'll spot him around.”

“Gray suit,” said Kathleen, shrugging. “Gray hair.”

Or maybe he's come to explain what the hell's happened to us
.

In the Pizza
Hut parking lot a woman with a baggie over her hand picked up her little dog's poop.

“In the future the dogs will pick up after
us
,” Josie said from the back of the car.

“And dogs'll poop in the toilet!” said Ray.

“That stuff's science fiction,” Deb told them.

We waited behind a guy in a wheelchair at the takeout counter, manned by a fuzzy-moustached senior from the high school. A plastic bin beside the till asked for
Spare Change for the Congo Refugees
. I made Deb walk all around the restaurant, hunting for a short girl with a brown ponytail, and if there was no sign of her then all we were going to get out of Pizza Hut was pizza. Then just as it was our turn, the guy at the counter went on break and Harv's sister pushed past him, her black visor square to her brow like she was a ninth-inning relief pitcher.

“Hey,” I said, “I don't know if you remember me, I was at your house—”

“What?” she said.

“Come on, we're
starving
,” someone hissed behind me.

“Well, I'm one of Harv's teachers and I was worried he might've been sick today, because…”

“Harv's fine,” she said. “Ask him yourself, he's across the street.”

I peered out the window. A half-dozen people ambled around in front of Walgreens—mostly seniors with piles of plastic grocery bags.

“Is that him with the hat?” I asked.

“That's our boy,” she said. “Were you going to order? Because—”

“Hawaiian!” screamed Josie and Ray.

“A large Hawaiian with triple bacon.”

“I don't know why I bought the veggie burgers,” said Deb.

The pizza was going to be twenty-five minutes so I left her and the kids solving a word search on the back of a menu and jogged across the street to where Harv, arms folded, leaned against the pay phone outside the Walgreens entrance. The setting sun was in his eyes so he had to tilt his sky-blue Oklahoma City Thunder cap to look at me from under the brim.

“Sir, would you be able to buy me a pack of Camels?” he asked, rolling a crumpled five between his fingers.

“Harv, it's me,” I said. “Mr. Giller, remember?”

“Oh, sure.” The five disappeared. “I was just out today with the flu.”

“What are you—you don't smoke, do you?”

“Ah, no, no. My dad just…”

He lifted off his ball cap to scratch his hairline and in the blaze of setting sun across his head I saw a thick scar stretching from his left eyebrow across to behind his right ear. Weird I'd never noticed it before, since he'd always had a buzz cut. Tiny bald patches ran up either side of the scar.

“Jesus, man,” I said, “did something happen to your head?”

He muttered that he'd been pruning elms with his dad and there'd been an accident.

“What in hell were you pruning with?”

“Chainsaws,” he said.

“Christ almighty, how long ago was that?”

“Yesterday morning,” he grinned. “My dad looked after it. He said we're going out on the dirt bikes on Saturday!”

“Well, Jesus,” I said. “Maybe wear a helmet.”

He peered behind me, so I looked too. No prospective Camel-buyers.

“Want to hear my movie idea?” He twisted his hat back onto his head. “See, there's this town where nothing's going on, but the parents think the basketball team might win the state championship even though the guys on the team are all, ‘No way.' ”

“Sounds great,” I said through my teeth. “Look, I wanted to ask—”

“But
then
they sign up for this science experiment with, like, a professor who gives them all this strength and agility and stuff, so then they win the championship and the whole town's going crazy, shooting off fireworks, but then, just as the soundtrack's going all high-pitched and violins, the guys all fall down dead.”

“Because of the experiment?”

“Yeah! So in the audience you'd feel really happy one second and then the next super-sad. And the parents would be looking down at the dead kids, and they'd be, like, ‘Man, jeez, was that really what we wanted?' Cool, right?”

“What made you think of that?” I asked.

“I don't know—I missed the game the other night because we were late from Velouria, so I had to help Dad staple his notices up, that's when I thought of it.”

“Jeez. What do his notices say exactly?”

out-of-towners bring in unwanted elements
?

“Oh, just ads. He goes to old people's houses and gives 'em massages. Lot of his clients have passed away but Kim, that's his girlfriend, she makes good money. She's a notary public.”

“Dad!” Josie stood outside the restaurant, hands cupping her mouth. “Pizza!”

“That your kid?”

“One of them,” I said.

So if babbling and unrestrained healing were any indication of good health, I had nothing to worry about regarding Harv. I handed him five more dollars for lack of anything better to do, then I jogged back across.