Lost

Judith Beck

I always liked candy canes. Not the big ones, the little tiny ones that come wrapped in cellophane in long stripes. Those baby ones that only took a minute of sucking before they were worn right through. My daddy used to get them for me when I was little, but last year he said the dentist bills were too high and a big girl like me didn't need so much candy. But I still loved that minty flavor and crunching up the little bits. Big old Tommy knew how much I liked them. He gave me a pair of earrings that looked just like them, but when I sucked on them they had no flavor. I complained to him about that. None of us kids liked Tommy because he was so fat. He could barely get out of the old Cadillac he drove and when he got in, the whole car sagged down. He must have walked, wheezing and puffing, all the way into Walgreens to get those earrings at the after-Christmas sale. "No flavor, huh?" he said. "I've got something for you with flavor." So I went back to his messy old house with the old lady always feeding the cats and staying out of his way. He was mean to her, but not to me. He gave me those earrings. When we got to his room he pulled down his pants. Most guys just open up their zipper, but those rolls and rolls of fat got in the way with him, I guess. "Suck this," he said, pulling up some blubber. Still took me a few minutes of moving things around to find his thing. It was just about the size of those candy canes. But it didn't taste minty. Not at all. And the whole time those rolls of fat were just wrapped around my head, like he was sucking back. When I got out of the car after he drove me home I almost said I hated it and it was gross and stinky. Would have been rude after he gave me those earrings and all, but he did lie about the flavor. But then I realized that one of those earrings was gone, straight from my ear. And I realized that it must have gone straight down into one of those crevices of fat. And I needed to keep on his good side so I could go back in and get it.