I tilted my head at him. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“Not at all. Honey ants use certain members of the colony as living storage tanks. Those ants become so engorged with honey that they’re immobile. The ants lay motionless until another member of the colony taps them with their antennae. Then they regurgitate.”
“That’s . . . really . . . interesting.”
“Ants are fascinating.” Bob went on. “I’ve studied them since I was twelve and got my first ant farm. Did you know an ant can carry from ten to fifty times its weight? That would be like you carrying . . .” He looked me over. “How much do you weigh?”
“The right amount for my height.”
“Oh, sorry. That’s one of those questions you’re not supposed to ask women, isn’t it? Well, let’s say that you weigh 150 pounds—”
“A hundred and fifty? You think I weigh 150 pounds?”
“Too much?”
I blinked at him. “I weigh 115.”
“I wasn’t implying that you’re overweight. Actually, I think you’re skinny; 150 is just a nice round number. Anyway, it would be the equivalent of you carrying an elephant or a car or something. Ants are amazingly strong.”
I crossed my arms. “You think I’m skinny?”
Bob looked at me in disbelief. “What? I thought all women wanted to be skinny. I have an older sister’s whose main goal in life is to keep her thighs from touching when she stands. I bet there are inches between your thighs.” Then he cleared his throat. “Not that I’ve ever looked at your thighs before.”
I crossed my legs too. “You were telling me about entomology, Bob.”
“Oh, yeah. Insects are amazing. Most people don’t know anything about them. I bet there are thousands of bug facts you don’t know.”
We parked and went into the Super China Buffet. Bob and I looked out of place in our dressy clothes. Everyone stared when we walked in, but Bob was oblivious. He apparently planned to tell me all of the thousands of bug facts about which I had somehow remained ignorant until now.
I tried to block him out as we went through the food line. I couldn’t find the food appetizing while the guy next to me was using words like larvae, pupae, and maggot. I nodded and smiled and tried not to think about what all the unknown objects in the Chicken Chow Mein looked like.
When we got to the cashier’s station, the woman behind the register gave us a scathing stare. I tuned Bob in long enough to hear him say, “And since flies digest food outside of their bodies, do you know a fly can throw up hundreds of times each time it lands? Think about that next time you see a fly walk around on something.”
The woman said icily, “That will be eighteen dollars and sixty-five cents. And let me tell you, we maintain the highest standard of cleanliness here, and we’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell our customers otherwise.”
For the first time I looked at the people in the line behind us. They were all staring at us.
Bob took his wallet out of his pants pocket. “Sorry. I was only explaining the life cycle of the fly. When I said that one fly can lay a thousand eggs, I wasn’t suggesting any were in your restaurant.” He glanced around. “Although, of course, it’s always a possibility.”
I tried to shrink until I became invisible.
He paid and we went and sat down at one of the few empty tables. All around us people in jeans and sweats were eating. I tried to look inconspicuous.
Bob continued to entertain me with bug trivia, and I ate as quickly as possible in hopes it would speed up the evening. Occasionally I smiled and told him how good my meal was, just so I could tell my parents I had.
Right in the middle of a treatise on the scorpion, which can survive temperatures from below freezing to well above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, I asked Bob to pass me the soy sauce. I had put off finishing my fried rice because he’d given me a complex about my weight. All through the meal I’d wondered if someone could really mistake me for weighing 150 pounds. At the same time, I remembered my father telling me to eat everything when a date took me out to dinner. I pondered whether it would be better to appear as a glutton or an ingrate on my first date. I finally decided that Bob wasn’t paying attention to me anyway and opted to eat it. I liked fried rice.
Bob reached across the table with the soy sauce. It slipped from his hand as it passed over my plate. The bottle hit the dish with a crash, and both objects flipped into my lap. The lid hadn’t been screwed on tightly, and soy sauce spurted out, mingling with the rice now in my lap.
“I’m so sorry!” Bob stood up, then sat down. “Here, let me help you.” He dipped his napkin into his water glass. Unfortunately, he did this a little too forcefully, and half of the water splashed out onto the table.
I stood up to avoid it trickling off onto me.
“That’s all right. I’ve got it.” I wiped off what I could with my napkin, but it was a hopeless cause.
“I’m so sorry,” Bob said again.
“It’s okay. I’ll just go home and change into something else.” As we left, I thought: At least it can’t get worse. As it turned out, I was overly optimistic.
Chapter 9
My parents were understandably surprised to see us again so soon. Dad took one look at me and asked, “Food fight at the restaurant?”
“A minor accident. I need to change.”
“That’s fine. Bob and I will sit down in the living room and talk about the future.”
I ran up the stairs, calling over my shoulder, “I’ll be right back!”
Mom followed me into my room. While I flipped through my closet, she asked, “Well, besides that, how’s it going?”
“Are you aware there are thousands of fascinating bug facts you don’t know about? I, of course, know them all now.” I glanced at the clock on my night stand. “And the evening is still young.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” She searched for something positive to say. “You still look lovely.”
“But now I smell like soy sauce.” I flipped through church dresses until I found one that was nice enough to wear and slipped it off the hanger.
“The dance will be better,” Mom said as she left the room. “You’ll see your friends there.”
I would have liked to see Elise. Somehow I knew she would have found a way to save the evening. She would have joked about it and made everything seem funny. She might even have found a way to get Bob to talk about something besides bugs. But Elise wasn’t going to be at the dance. She hadn’t been asked.
Elise had been sullen about this fact for days. At school she kept pointing out guys to me and saying, “See that guy? He’s a jerk. He didn’t ask me to the dance, and I’ve been nice to him since I moved in. That guy over there—major jerk. He’s taking the girl who sits behind me in algebra, and she’s a total ditz.”
“There’s always the Tolo,” I told her. “You can ask whoever you want to that.” It was the girl ask guy dance in March.
Elise hadn’t been at all cheered by thoughts of the Tolo. March isn’t much of a consolation in October.
When Bob and I got to the dance, I looked for Faith and Caitlin but didn’t see them. Chad was standing on the edge of the dance floor with Lisa Litton, a junior girl who always looked like she was part of a fashion show. He was telling her something, leaning close with his head bent towards her ear. She smiled. Somehow I didn’t think he was rhyming words for her.
Josh was out on the dance floor with a senior named Courtney. She was one of those bouncy, friendly girls who were always involved in the cute little skits during pep rallies. I wondered if Josh thought she was mature. I wondered if she’d ever hit a bike rack.
“Do you want to dance?” Bob asked.
“All right.”
We danced for a while. Although, to be accurate, the term dancing only generally described what we were doing. Bob’s dancing looked like he was lurching back and forth—sort of the step you do as you’re coming out of an elevator that’s about to shut on you.