CHAPTER THREE

Christening Cheesus

My alarm blares, dragging me out of a dream where my best friend Gabe and I are kissing. We’ve never crossed the friendship barrier in real life. I’m pretty sure Gabe’s never even thought about it. I can’t say the same. But here’s the thing: He really is my best friend. Okay, like my only friend. There’s no way I’m going to risk wrecking that by making a move. Unfortunately, my subconscious hasn’t gotten the memo. I shake off the dream and roll out of bed.

Emmet takes half an hour to get ready in the mornings. He’s a guy; he should be in and out of the bathroom in two minutes. But his routine hasn’t varied for over a year. Maybe it really does take him that long to apply hair gel, slap on some cologne, and admire his pecs.

I wait in the car, drumming my fingers on the cracked dashboard and making little holes in the layer of dust. Emmet will be driving, of course. I have my license, but the only spare vehicle is this old Buick my brother bought six months ago. It was cheap because it’s the ugliest car ever made—squat and wide with each door a different color and Rust Bucket painted on the hood in foot-high black letters.

I lean over and smack the horn. Rust Bucket belches out a noise like a jet engine being stomped by an elephant.

“Come on, Emmet,” I yell out the window. “No one cares if you have a hair out of place. You’ve got practice after school anyway.”

Emmet appears in the front doorway and shoves a last bite of Pop-Tart into his mouth. His right cheek bulges like a hamster’s.

“Zip it,” Emmet growls, spraying crumbs. The car drops lower as he climbs in.

Rust Bucket shudders to life with a squeal, and black smoke billows from the tailpipe. The ride to school only takes five minutes, seven if all three of the stoplights are against us.

Shrenk High squats on a patch of land at the edge of town. To the right of the school, a low chain-link fence surrounds the sports field and a row of bleachers only five benches high. The field is used for everything from our ten-person track team to the football and soccer teams. Football gets first dibs on practice time, though. Even among extracurriculars there’s a pecking order.

On the other side of the school is the tiny parking lot. It has as many potholes as parking spaces and one sad little tree in the middle. The actual school is a cluster of three buildings: the elementary, middle, and high schools. They share a single gymnasium, which usually means we’re tripping over the kindergartners’ T-ball bats and jump ropes when it’s time for our daily PE torture session. There aren’t enough kids to merit completely separate schools so the county decided to save money and build this monstrosity. Last year’s graduating class, the biggest in the school’s history, had sixty-seven students. I’ve been going to school with the same kids since I was five.

Gabe is waiting for me by the entry doors, back propped against the metal railing that separates the middle school from the high school.

“Morning, Beaudean,” I say, pausing to bump my shoulder against his.

“What’s up, Delgado?” Gabe smiles.

I try not to focus on Gabe’s lips, worried he’ll guess about last night’s dream. His jeans hang loosely on him and he’s grown another few inches over the past months. He’s all knees and elbows, his skin tanned the color of burnt summer grass.

Truth is, Gabe and I are odd friends. Under normal circumstances we’d barely talk to each other. But our friendship is anything but normal.

When I was ten, Reverend Beaudean and his family moved to town from Louisiana. Rev B and Gabe were fine, but Gabe’s mom, Lila, stirred up all sorts of gossip, especially when she wore her micro miniskirt for a stroll down Main Street. A few months later, Lila shocked the town biddies when she ran off with some trucker passing through. Worse, she stole all the proceeds from the Ladies Auxiliary bake sale before she left.

For weeks, Lila and the missing bake sale money were all anyone could talk about. No one wanted anything to do with Gabe. They couldn’t shun Reverend Beaudean—he was a preacher after all—but Gabe was fair game.

I threw my very first punch the day Wayne Hissep called Gabe a gator-hugging swamp baby and accused him of helping Lila steal. Gabe and I weren’t friends, but Wayne was way out of line. I skinned my knuckles, bruised Wayne’s cheek, and ended up grounded for two weeks.

I also ended up with Gabe as my best friend. You’re either born friends in Clemency, or trouble ties you so tight together you don’t have any other choice. I’m glad I punched Wayne way back then. Some friends are worth fighting for.

“Earth to Del, hello?” Gabe says, dragging me back into the present. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

I glance away and shrug. Was I staring at his lips again? “Maybe I just think you’re weird.”

“Please, you’re the one who totes around a camera older than the school. How was your first Sunday shift?” Gabe falls into step beside me as we enter the main doors. “Sorry I didn’t come by yesterday, I got caught up with helping Dad after the service.”

“No worries. You’d have been bored. It was so slow I almost gave Santa a makeover.”

The front window of the Gas & Gut features a life-size painting of Santa Claus holding a turkey leg. Ken paid some drifter two cases of beer to paint the figure last November. Now, almost a year later, Santa’s paint is cracking and there are scratches in inappropriate places thanks to the middle schoolers. Ken’s so proud of that Santa he refuses to clean the front window, but he never said anything about modifying Saint Nick.

Gabe laughs. “What kind of makeover are you planning?”

“Santa needs to get with the locale. I’m thinking a cowboy hat.” I change out my books.

Gabe shoves every book he has into his navy backpack, making it bulge. If I press a finger against his shoulder I bet he’ll tip over. “Ken’d skin you if you touched Santa,” Gabe says.

He has a point. Is alleviating boredom worth my life? Guess I’ll have to decide next Sunday.

We head for homeroom. All around us students rush, shoving open lockers, searching for lost assignments, and gossiping about their weekends. The hallway is filled with the dull roar of two hundred kids on the move.

“You’re a good artist,” Gabe says. “Ken should’ve paid you to paint the front windows.”

I grimace. “I’m not interested in the sort of currency he was offering. Beer isn’t my thing.” Vodka gets the job done faster, mixes well with lots of stuff, and doesn’t taste like you’re licking the bottom of a toilet bowl. Too bad I cleaned all the vodka out of Dad’s liquor cabinet six months ago.

“True. But if he’d offered you some camera film, I bet you’d have painted the walls, windows, and roof.” Gabe slides a sideways grin at me.

“Are you calling me cheap?”

“Nah, just obsessed. Get any new pics?”

“A couple. I snapped one of Andy’s holy cheese.”

Gabe’s eyebrows hit his hairline. “Holy cheese?”

“I can’t believe you haven’t heard.” I edge past him into the room. Homeroom is basically a homework catch-up session and announcement time, so we don’t have assigned seats. It’s the only time we get to sit together all day, other than lunch. “Emmet knew about the cheese wheel by the time I got off shift. Power of the Internet and all that. Also, did you know Andy has a blog and people actually read it?”

“Can we focus? Why is the cheese holy exactly? Is it a Swiss kinda thing?”

Before I can explain about the cheese wheel, the last warning bell rings and Mrs. Winnacker gets to her feet. Her frizzy brown hair adds three inches to her five-foot height and thick glasses teeter on the end of her nose, threatening to hit the floor at any moment. She glares and the room falls silent. Mrs. W might be tiny and unimposing, but no one hands out more detentions.

I shrug at Gabe and mouth, “Later.”

He nods once, rolls his eyes, and switches his attention to Mrs. Winnacker.

I pull out my worksheets and hideously thick math book. When homeroom ends half an hour later, I feel as though my brain has been squeezed through a pasta strainer. “Who cares what freaking x means anyway? I’ve never had to make change for a customer and been forced to multiply by x, divide by z, and then quantriple the remainder by a factor of 7.” I slam the cover closed on my math book, shove it in my backpack, and get up.

“That’s your problem.” Gabe puts away his copy of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. “Making change is way more fun if you quantriple it by a remainder of 7.”

“We can’t all be math geniuses,” I mutter. I take perverse satisfaction in watching Gabe struggle with his backpack. He’s always been an A student, and while I love him, I also occasionally want to smack him over the head with a protractor and some graph paper.

“I’m glad you recognize my better qualities,” Gabe says.

“Sure I can’t bribe you into doing my math homework?” I bat my eyelashes and give him a soppy smile.

“Not a chance.” Gabe shoves me ahead of him and out of the room. “Come on, you owe me an explanation about holy cheese. Can it make the meatloaf in the cafeteria edible?”

“The pope couldn’t do that.”

“Still waiting for an explanation.”

“It’s stupid. Andy unwrapped one of those Babybel cheese wheels, the kind dipped in red wax. The cheese inside had an image sort of stamped or carved into it. Andy says it’s baby Jesus, maybe even a message from God, but I’m not feeling it.”

Gabe shakes his head. “Probably just something random.”

“Probably. I doubt God has anything to say to anyone in Clemency.”

“My dad would disagree.” Gabe touches the small silver cross he always wears. He’s had it as long as I can remember.

“Your dad thinks God communicates through snack food?”

“He quotes that ‘God works in mysterious ways’ line all the time. I bet he’d buy into the holy cheese story.”

“That’s all Andy needs, someone credible reinforcing his delusions.”

Gabe shifts his backpack and glances at the hall clock. “One minute warning. Better get to math or you’ll miss that algebra test. Wish me luck with Shakespeare.”

I wave Gabe away. “Fine, go enjoy English while Mr. Sutherland tortures me to death. You’re such a sadist.”

“You know me so well.” He laughs before turning to jog down the hall.

I make it through the classroom door as the bell rings. Everyone else is already seated and Mr. Sutherland is writing a problem set on the whiteboard. The bald spot on the top of his head is shiny under the fluorescent lights and his blue dress shirt is untucked in the back. As he adds the last inscrutable letter to his demonic math example, Mary leans over to Anna and whispers, “Have you seen the picture on Andy’s blog?”

By lunchtime, it’s clear that Gabe’s ignorance about the cheese wheel is an isolated phenomenon. Andy’s blog and the picture he posted dominate school gossip. Half the school thinks the thing is a fake and the other half are willing to admit God might have a dairy fetish.

Gabe is a brown bagger, bringing his lunch each day in a black insulated sack. I, however, rely on the questionable cooking skills of our cafeteria lunch ladies. Which means Gabe is on table stakeout duty while I get to stand in line. I balance my tray one-handed and take my seat beside Gabe.

“Thank goodness Andy left my name off his blog,” I say. “Bad enough having everyone ask me if I’ve heard about Baby Cheesus without them knowing I actually saw the thing in person.”

“Baby Cheesus?” Gabe laughs. He’s arranged his food in front of him in a semicircle: an egg salad sandwich, small red apple, bag of Fritos, and a peanut butter bar. Gabe goes for the peanut butter bar first. The boy has taste.

“Not sure which genius came up with that name, but it’s sticking.” I poke a fork at the fried meat patty on my plate and wait to see if it fights back.

Gabe shakes his head. “By tomorrow they’ll be talking about how Mrs. Dixon’s dog crapped on Mrs. Rutherford’s lawn.”

“You’re probably right.”

And everything might have ended there, just as Gabe predicted. Except for Wendy Stevenson.