Big Mouth Read Online Free

them wearing T-shirts with my name on them. Me, Sherman ‘Thuff Enuff’ Thuff. Awesome!”
    “Oh, we’re not stopping at crummy T-shirts, my friend.” Gardo picked up another pizza slice and eyed it from different angles. “We’ll do hats and sweatshirts and mugs. The memorabilia shop on level four will be begging for Thuff Enuff stuff. Begging! And the endorsement deals, they’ll pour in by the boatload.” He bit into the slice and talked while he chewed. None of his food spit out, though. “Thuff Enuff, my good man, I am going to make you rich and famous.”
    I thumped him solidly on the back. “And when I’m rich and famous, Gardo Esperaldo, you can call my play-by-play at the Glutton Bowl.”
    “Oh, I’ll call it, all right.” He tossed his slice back into the box and jumped to his feet with his arms spread wide, right in the middle of the food court. “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, sports fans of all ages! I give you the one, the only…Sherman ‘Thuff Enuff’ Thuff!”
    He yanked my hand straight up into the air like I was Rocky Balboa himself. I went with it, standing up and throwing my other arm into the air.
    “Sit down!”
Lucy whipped up her binder to hide her blushing face.
    Some kids in yellowy-red GO, ROMA TOMATOES! T-shirts pointed at our table from the Nature’s Nectar smoothie counter. Seventh graders, probably. Their matching yellowy-red ball caps were tilted back on their heads as they slurped at their fruit shakes. The geeks. One of them dropped his smoothie, splashing pink goo up the front of his jeans.
    Please tell me I wasn’t that pathetic last year.
“So they’re looking at us,” I told Lucy. “Who cares? We’re higher up in the food chain than a bunch of pea-greeners.” A seventh grader’s opinion was as useful as an empty can of Coke, especially seventh graders from Del Heiny Junior High #11, home of the Roma Tomatoes. I shouted in their direction: “Thank you! Thank you!”
    Gardo jumped up on the bench and pointed their way three times. “Are…
YOU
…Thuff Enuff?”
    The tallest one flipped us the bird.
    I waved at him with both arms, real exaggerated, a bird in each hand. “I AM!”
    Ha! Unless that kid has three hands, I win this round.
    Gardo high-fived me again as most of the pea-greeners scowled and wandered off like good little underclassman. They left the goop-splashed kid to fend for himself with the Nature’s Nectar napkin dispenser.
    Laughing, we climbed down and attacked the rest of the pizza.
    Lucy didn’t eat anything more, though. She just fingered the colored tabs on her binder silently. We probably embarrassed her too much. Again. She could get oversensitive about that kind of thing.
    Gardo ran his mouth enough for the three of us, though, telling us all about how he’d kick butt at his wrestling scrimmage coming up. With all his big-man-on-the-mat talk, he lost interest in the pizza pretty quickly. Me, I was more than happy to focus my energy on the feast in front of us. Hey, I was hungry. I hadn’t had much luck with those hot dogs at lunch.
    I polished off the truffles first. Clearly Gardo wasn’t going to eat them, and Lucy would have jabbed out her own eye rather than eat a truffle. Working with chocolate all the time made her lose her taste for the stuff. Aversion therapy, I think she called it. I was just glad it didn’t work that way with ice cream. After a quick check of my cell phone’s clock, I hurriedly slurped the last dribbles of Cookie Dough out of the cup and grabbed one last slice of pizza for my hustle back to Scoops-a-Million. Just fifty-eight seconds left of break. I rushed off with a hasty good-bye, with one last sad look at the milkshakes. No one had touched them. What a waste.
    As I dodged my way back to Scoops, I tuned out the drone of the air conditioners, letting the sounds of my upcoming fame fill my head instead:
Thuff! Thuff! Thuff! Thuff!
    I couldn’t wait to be rich and famous.
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    And Now, a Word from