Read Online Big Mouth by Deborah Halverson - Free Book Online Page A

savor them. I couldn’t suck on thawed gummy bears. It was impossible and that was just the way of it. As soon as those hit my tongue, I automatically chewed them. It was some kind of reflex, maybe, like kicking the doctor in the shin when he hammered my knee. It had something to do with the gumminess, was my guess. The good thing was, even thawed gummy bears were a real workout. After years of chewing them by the case, my jaw was stronger than most people’s, and Lucy said the best competitive eaters had the strongest jaw muscles.
    I liked the clear-colored gummy bears the best. Most people thought they were supposed to be vanilla-flavored, but they weren’t. They were pineapple. Yellows, though, those were from the Devil himself. On a good day, they tasted like Lemon Pledge. I could’ve paved the road from my house to Del Heiny Junior 13 with all the yellows I’d trashed in my life.
    I picked out half a dozen clear bears and lined them up on the bottom shelf. “Hey, bears,” I whispered. “Any of you got a cure for ice cream headaches?”
    “Sherman!”
    I whipped my head around toward the freezer door.
Ow!
My cranial pounding kicked up another notch.
    Arthur hollered again from outside the freezer. “Sherman! You alive in there? I don’t hear anything!”
    “That’s because I’m dead!” I hollered back.
    “Don’t eat the gummy bears!”
    “I’m not eating the gummy bears! I do have self-control, you know!” Not that anyone thought I did.
    I turned back to my gummy friends, slowly this time. I didn’t want to jostle my aching brain. Like loyal little puppies, the gummies waited patiently for my attention, no judgment in their eyes, all unconditional love. That was nice for a change. I wasn’t stupid, I knew what people thought the first time they looked at me:
big fat doughnut.
Shane said it, others thought it. It was all over their faces. But so what, who wasn’t lugging around a little something extra? Movie stars, maybe, but I mean real life. Whenever I looked around at the mall and at school, mostly all I saw were people I’d never call skinny, not even accidentally. I swear, there were way more of us—us
big guys
—than them skinnies. Yet it was the skinnies we were supposed to bow to. Who put them in charge?
    I picked up a second gummy bear and put it in my mouth.
    Well, I’ve got news for you, Skinnies, this Big Guy has lots of friends. I’m no social outcast.
And it would only get better when I stuffed Tsunami in the Nathan’s Famous hot dog–eating contest. Then I’d be more than “that big guy who works in the ice cream parlor.” I’d be Thuff Enuff, hot dog–eating champion.
    I fished the first gummy bear out of my mouth—it was now warm and soft—and threw it hard at the icy wall. It stuck.
    My stomach lurched again. I burped chocolate and pineapple and butyric acid.
Nasty.
To kill the taste, I dug a red gummy bear out of the bag and popped it into my mouth with the clear one.
There.
Cherry-pineapple, like a tropical drink. Just stick an umbrella toothpick in my mouth and I had my own piece of Hawaii in the Scoops-a-Million freezer.
    Not that I planned to swallow my tropical delight. My stomach felt full up to my tonsils. I had to get used to the sensation, though, because with all the HDB training Lucy had scheduled for me, I’d probably be feeling this way a lot. Hey, every dream had its sacrifices. I just hoped I wouldn’t suffer any more reversals of fortune. They could ruin an eater’s career. Do it during a competition, get disqualified; do it after a competition, get laughed at. I had to conquer them. Besides, I hated feeling like my face was exploding.
    I gave my hands a big shake. My fingers were going numb. While that was better than the finger cramping and forearm burning I’d suffered in the hours since becoming Ice Cream–Eating Champion of the Universe, it wasn’t good for doing the inventory quickly.
Man, why does Grampy always schedule his supplier visits