Big Mouth by Deborah Halverson

bench that I could only figure he was holding on by a single butt cheek.
    “Thank you.” Lucy settled in without acknowledging my presence. She caught a glimpse of Tater as she settled onto the bench. “Nice earring,” she told him.
    He scowled, then took his lucky green marker from behind his ear and stuffed it back in his pocket, elbowing people in the process.
    Lucy reached into her plastic bag and pulled out a container of salad with a clear plastic lid, a small cup of brothy soup, and another small cup of lumpy white stuff that better be cottage cheese.
What did she do, steal Max’s lunch?
    I tried to work on my own lunch, but it was just too weird to be sitting two feet from Lucy’s face and not talking to her. She was making such a production of opening all her containers and unwrapping her spork…I bet she
wanted
me to notice. Well, I wasn’t going to.
    I ate a French fry doused in ketchup and watched the ceiling. For a minute. Then I just couldn’t help it, my eyes slid back to Lucy. She was prodding her fluffy pile of green, purple, and red leaves with her spork like it was some strange Mad Max experiment. There were some stringy orange things in the salad, and a few black things, too. Definitely not anything I’d want in my mouth. But even more disturbing was that there wasn’t a single tomato as far as I could see. What was Lucy thinking?
    “You’re gonna get suspended,” I blurted before I could stop myself. She didn’t look up. Leonard and Tater did.
Shoot. Now I’m committed.
I pointed at her lunch. “You can’t have that here. None of that is ketchup-dunkable.”
    She reached into the bag again. “Neither is what’s between your legs.”
    The guys exploded with laughter. I quickly raised my soda can for them to see. Lucy was no dummy; she knew where I stashed my soda every day.
    She had a sly smile on her lips as she pulled out napkins and blotted the corners of her mouth. She probably thought that was a good shot.
    Well, she could take all the potshots she wanted, but an illegal soda between my legs wasn’t a plate of illegal food on the table for all the world to see. She was just asking for trouble. Culwicki had drilled and drilled and drilled us that first week of school:
All cafeteria food must be ketchup-dippable.
He’d lectured everyone about it in the daily bulletin for a week, and we’d received special mailings at home about it. He was probably afraid of losing precious funding if we ticked off Del Heiny. All the mustard graffiti around campus must’ve had him crapping bricks already. And it was only escalating. Just minutes after lunch started today they’d found the ketchup packet bin filled with mustard packets. I swear, I’d never seen the cafeteria ladies move so fast. They had the bin refilled to the brim with red packets within minutes.
    It was no joke. With a lunch of salad, soup, and white gunk, Lucy was definitely walking on thin ice.
    “There’s not even a tomato in that salad,” I warned her. “I’m telling you, if one of those janitors sees you with that, you’ll get suspended.”
    “How can I get suspended for eating healthy?”
    “This is healthy.” I pointed to each item on my tray. “Protein in the burgers, grains in the buns, veggies in the French fries and the pickles. And it’s all dippable in ketchup—yet
another
vegetable.” I raised my milk carton in a toast. “Plus, I’m washing it all down with a nice, cold box of milk. It does a body good.” Gardo and I bumped our cartons together. “Cheers!”
    The other guys bumped their cartons, too. “Hear! Hear!”
    Lucy observed this scene quietly for a moment. “What about mustard?”
    “What about it?” I wiped off my milk mustache with my sleeve.
    “You like your burgers with mustard. Last week at McDonald’s, I had to go back and ask for a bunch of mustard packets for you.”
    “So what?” I said. “They don’t have mustard here.”
    “Oh yes they do.” Kenny and William laughed