Free Heads or Tails by Jack Gantos Page A

next.”
    “Okay. But she starts this week.” I didn’t want to have to do the spaghetti dishes.
    “We’ll flip a coin.” Dad fished a quarter out of his pocket. “Loser washes for the first week.”
    “Okay,” I agreed reluctantly.
    Dad flipped the coin. “Your call,” he said to Betsy.
    “Heads,” she yelled.
    It landed in his hand and he slapped it down on his forearm. “Heads it is,” he announced. “Jack does the dishes.”
    “Loser,” Betsy said under her breath.
    “People can be arrested for using children as slave labor,” I mumbled, but nobody paid any attention to me.
    While they finished dinner I put together a plan. I started to eat very slowly. Before long, everyone had finished eating and excused themselves, but I still had food on my plate. I drank my water slowly. I buttered another piece of bread. I helped myself to more spaghetti.
    When Betsy walked by, I said, “This sure is good spaghetti.”
    “What a pig you are,” she shot back. “Look at you. People are starving all over the world and you eat not because you need to but just because you like the taste of it.”
    When I finished that plate I served myself another. I looked at my watch. An hour had gone by. Mom and Betsy hadn’t lifted a finger in the kitchen. I served myself a third, then a fourth plate. I will eat all night long if I have to. When they get up for breakfast, I’ll still be sitting here, eating. By then, they’ll clean up the kitchen just because they can’t stand to see it so messy.
    But after a few more bites I couldn’t eat any more. I pushed myself away from the table and staggered into the living room.
    “I don’t feel so good,” I said to Mom. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
    “It’s no wonder you feel sick,” she replied. “You just ate four plates of spaghetti.”
    “I hope you heave all over yourself,” Betsy sneered.
    “I hope I heave on you,” I replied, then dashed down the hall and into the bathroom. I leaned over the toilet and threw up. It looked like bloody worms. I flushed the toilet and moaned loudly.
    “Mom, I don’t think I can do the dishes,” I said when she checked on me.
    “You know as well as I do that you made yourself sick,” she said. “Now, make sure you clean up your mess, and then do the dishes. And no more of your nonsense.”
    As I washed the dishes I began to sing about the hills being alive with music. But instead of making me crazy, it gave me the perfect idea. I finished the dishes in record time, got dressed in my grubby clothes, and snuck out of the house. I grabbed a trash bag from the utility room and walked down to the drive-in theater. There was a hole cut in the chain-link fence and I slipped through just as the von Trapp family ran a forty-yard dash and sang without breathing hard.
    There were bottles and cans just below all the car windows. I had to move quickly. I didn’t want to be missed at home. I darted between the cars and picked up the cans and searched through the garbage bin until I had two dollars’ worth. The bag was so full it wouldn’t fit through the hole in the fence, so I had to unload half of it and then reload it on the other side. Then I ran home.
    I woke late and had to ride like a maniac so I could be on time to roll the tin policeman into the middle of the road. I was out of breath but excited. I had enough money in cans and bottles to buy the canary. Still, it bothered me what Donna had said about the chicken bone, so I checked on my grave. A dog had dug it up and there were feathers and a piece of dried-up bird leg next to the ripped-open bag. I felt good knowing that Donna was wrong and I was right. But I felt bad about Victor and reburied him.
    At lunchtime, Mrs. Marshall asked me to stay behind. “I’m sorry to tell you this,” she said sternly, “but I’m taking back your Safety Patrol badge.”
    “Why?”
    “Donna said you weren’t doing a good job. Said you were spending your time talking to someone