It’s lunchtime when we get to Shotwell Stadium in Abilene, Texas, where we’ll earn a Guinness World Record for the largest crowd of people dressed as insects.
Mom, Dad, and I double-check our costumes. Once our long antennae, slip-on bug bodies, and extra legs are all in place, we grab our sack lunches and trudge through the parking lot. We stop at the check-in table in front of the main entrance.
My heart beats hard inside my homemade thorax. We’re here on time, we made it with no flat tires or car breakdowns, and our costumes are accounted for. Registration is the last step. After this, nothing can stop us.
Just past the gates, the place is already crawling with participants. Mom and Dad finish at the table, and my family gets the okay to join the rest of the crowd.
I let my parents go first, and I pause to absorb the scene—the stadium, the people, the last moments before everything changes.
Inside, Mom stops and studies the map she grabbed when we checked in. “Let’s follow along the backside of the bleachers. When we get to the corner at the end, there’ll be a ramp down to the field.”
“Lead the way,” Dad says.
It gets harder to stay together as the swarm of people-sized bugs gets thicker. We veer around giant butterflies and spiders and somebody in green who I think is a grasshopper. The plastic roach wings on my back make me sweat. I stop to lift them and get a little airflow. This is a mistake. It cools me down, but it also makes me lose sight of my parents.
I wait for Dad to come back for me. “Let’s go, Milo. Keep moving.”
We find the ramp and take it to the field. Mom leads us toward the middle, and we settle onto the grass. As soon as we sit on the blanket we brought from home, my stomach growls. I’m hungry for the first time all day.
I’m halfway through my turkey sandwich when Mom hands me a Coke from our cooler. If Allie, my older sister, were here, she would definitely make some comment about how soda is terrible for me and how unfair it is that I get to drink it when she never did. Mom would shrug and say, “He’s the second kid, and we’re much older now. We pick our battles.”
Allie now uses those same rules she grew up with to parent Jesse, who also happens to be my same age and my best friend—even though technically I’m his uncle because my parents are his grandparents.
On the field, our antennae bend in the breeze. It’s super windy down here, and it brings whiffs of the stadium food: salty barbecue and sweet funnel cakes. But there’s a sour smell too. It makes me glad that we brought our own lunch.
“This is actually going to happen,” I tell my parents.
“Of course it is,” Dad says.
Mom winks at me.
My nervousness produces energy. I can feel it in all six of my (real and fake) arms and legs. The realization of a lifelong dream when we—my mom, my dad, and I, along with two thousand plus of our insect-clad companions—will earn a world record.
I hold my phone above my head and take a picture of the crowd. I send it to Jesse with the hashtags #Guinness #greatness #recordsettingpests #worldrecord #myswarm.
“I’m ready to get this show on the road,” Dad says. He rolls his shoulders. “This exoskeleton is super uncomfortable.”
Mom shrugs. “Well, you didn’t have to wear it during the drive. Plus, you should have made your costume with cardboard like mine. I feel fine.”
“Plastic is definitely the better option. Yours doesn’t have the right amount of sheen. Roach wings need to sparkle a little.”
Our wings may sparkle, but they also lack airflow. I’m about to tell him this, but that’s when it happens: the Smell.
Someone must have really let one rip. The odor is truly impressive… and disgusting. I hold my breath and wait for it to pass. When I venture to use my lungs again, the stink cloud barely lingers.
I’m all antsy and can’t sit still. “I’ll be right back,” I tell my parents as I grab all our trash. The first two garbage cans are full, but I remember seeing one by the ramp. When I find it again, it’s already in use. A dude has his arms draped over the top rim and his head is over the middle. His entire body tenses. I glance away too late and accidentally glimpse the hurlage. I cover my mouth to stop a sympathy gag.
I end up walking around the entire perimeter of the field before I find a trash can that isn’t completely full.
When I rejoin my parents on the forty-yard line, Mom says, “That took you a while. You okay?”
“Yup. Just had to take the long way around.”
Mom shrugs. “Sometimes that’s the best way to get where you’re going.”
The Smell hits me again.
It’s even stronger this time.
And disgusting—like a cross between a fart, skunk spray, and rotten milk.
Then I wonder, Is it me?
I check the bottom of my shoes first. Just dirt, no poop or anything. I do a quick check to make sure nobody’s watching, and I tip my head down to sniff inside my bug body.
Smells fine-ish. As good as a plastic bug body can.
I tilt my head to one side and then the other. Not my armpits either.
Mom and Dad have got to smell it too. The air is morphing into solid stinkness.
But my parents are acting normal—normal for them, at least. Dad rubs his hands together like something big and exciting is happening. Mom’s lips pucker like she’s part platypus; it’s her Concentration Face. She’s totally focused on the stage and the guy in the official blue blazer. He’s the adjudicator who will tell us when we’ve broken the record and present the official certificate.
“We’re getting the last folks registered,” the adjudicator says into the sound system. “Once they’re inside the stadium, we’ll make this record thing official!”
We are so close. This is really happening!
As long as we don’t all pass out first.
“Dad, do you smell that?”
“Huh?”
I make the official gesture of stink by waving my hand in front of my nose.
Dad sniffs and makes a face. “Nice one, Milo.”
Mom says, “Do you need to use the bathroom?” She glances at her watch. “I think you’ll have time, but you’ll have to hurry.”
From the stage the adjudicator says, “Shouldn’t be long now. And it’s a good thing too. It’s getting ripe in here. Whew!” He tugs at his collar. It’s hard to tell when he’s so far away, but I think he sways.
No, he’s not swaying. It’s all okay, I tell myself. It’s just in my head. Nerves or something.
Still, the Smell grows—faster than my odor-acclimating skills can handle. And from the way people start to move and murmur, I know I’m not the only one who’s noticed. All around me noses wrinkle. A lady just a few feet away dry heaves. I tell my own stomach and sympathy-gag reflex to simmer down.
“Whoa,” the adjudicator says. He puts his palm to his forehead and wobbles. “Excuse me. I think—” But he never finishes his sentence. He puts his fist to his mouth and runs off the stage.
This finally gets Mom’s attention. Her lips retract to their normal position. “What’s going on?”
If she has to ask, something is seriously wrong with her nose.
“The smell.” Dad sniffs the air like a dog tracking a scent.
He sniffs again. “Maybe. I think it’s sewage related.”
Mom shakes her head. “I barely smell anything.”
Then we hear it: the unmistakable sound of somebody retching. Loudly. It’s coming out of the stadium speakers. The volume is so loud and clear, we can even hear the splatter as it hits the ground.
The murmurs of the crowd die down. More than two thousand people get quiet, listening with heads tilted.
There’s a groan, and it happens again.
“Turn off your mic!” somebody yells, and I start to understand. We’re listening to the adjudicator get sick in surround sound.
We all stand there like we have no idea what to do. Until, in the distance, somebody else pukes.
“Excuse me,” says a lady with butterfly wings. She pushes through the crowd, elbowing people out of the way—I take a hit in the upper arm—as she makes a path to the exit.
A guy in a spider costume runs by. He’s got one hand over his mouth and the other over his backside.
Dad watches him pass. “That seems unpleasant.”
Then the field is like an anthill that somebody stepped on. Total chaos. People run toward the exit ramps. Everybody’s pushing because they can’t get through. Bug costumes are stripped and left behind.
“Where are they going?” Dad asks and frowns.
“I need to be first,” a guy yells. “I’m gonna go in my pants!”
A lady with her arms wrapped around her stomach shakes her head. “Just let it happen. There’s no stopping it.”
“No!” the guy screams. He turns and runs in the opposite direction.
“We were poisoned!” says a shirtless guy with his chest and extra-large stomach painted in yellow and black stripes like a bee. The paint’s rubbed off around his belly button. “It was the food! We’re all going down!”
“Will we break the record if they all leave?” Mom asks.
“Surely,” Dad says. “Let’s just wait this out.”
Mom, Dad, and I stand in the middle of the field with our sack lunch staying firmly in our stomachs.
There is a record set at the stadium in Abilene that day: THE MOST FOOD POISONING VICTIMS ever recorded at a single place—the puking adjudicator verifies it.
Except my family and I are bystanders. We are an audience of three, watching everybody else reach our goal without us.
I wish I’d run to a trash can and taken a bite of somebody’s leftovers. Just a tiny nibble.