Adam Canfield of the Slash (6 page)

A girl sitting nearby, Tooth Number 37, said that she had smiled six straight hours one night last week. When Tooth Number 12 overheard this, the color drained from her face and her nervous leg got bouncier. Tooth Number 12 didn’t think it possible, smiling six straight hours. She sure hoped it wasn’t possible.

“It’s all true,” said Tooth Number 37’s little brother, Tooth Number 38. “She practiced so much, she was talking in her sleep. She kept saying, ‘I won, I won. Bananas, bananas.’ My mom took a picture of her sound asleep, smiling.”

Phoebe had to stop because Peter Friendly was rounding up kids to pretend the contest was beginning. He hurried them into chairs, making sure there was one white, one black, one Hispanic, and one Asian smiler in the front row. “This isn’t real,” he told the children. “This is just for TV news.” After his crew finished taping Dr. Cooper and the charming Phyllis standing in front of the forty-six smilers, the News 12 crew raced off, bumping into chairs and mall shoppers as they left. When Phoebe last glimpsed Peter Friendly, he was shouting into a cell phone and all three beepers on his belt were buzzing or jingling.

The commotion over, Dr. Cooper thanked them for their patience. In his remarks, which he read from note cards, he explained that the latest research showed there are over half a billion cavities in America. He said that the smile contest was intended to dramatize the need for proper dental care, the first of many outreach programs he planned during his two-year term as dental association president. Brushing was vital, he said, flossing essential, and, of course, regular visits to the dentist. But too often overlooked, he said, was proper diet.

“Our children are junk-food junkies,” said Dr. Cooper. “If we don’t control our kids’ sweets intake, we could be looking at a billion new cavities in twenty years.”

Phoebe noticed people’s eyes glazing over, but they got focused fast when Dr. Cooper’s wife, Phyllis, reviewed the rules for the five-hundred-dollar prize. “For a smile to count,” she said, “the top teeth must be exposed. The upper lip must be up. Up, up, up. If your lip drops, you lose, you’re out, goodbye. The judges’ decision is final.” She made everyone do a practice smile. The ten judges inspected the forty-six smiles. Number 15 was grinning. Phyllis explained that grins didn’t count; you had to show teeth. She said there would be a five-minute break every ninety minutes.

“OK, ready?” said Phyllis, who was holding a stopwatch. “Three, two, one, SMILE!”

Immediately, forty-six upper lips shot up. It was infectious. Soon the judges and parents were smiling. Phoebe was smiling. Even the busy shoppers passing by and trying to figure out what was going on were smiling.

But as often happens in life, smiling is the most natural thing in the world until a person thinks about it. Phoebe had nearly driven herself crazy one night, lying in bed trying to figure out how she fell asleep, and now she could see that same kind of worry creeping over the faces of the forty-six smilers. For the first time in their lives, they were 100 percent focused on their mouths. It was amazing how sore their cheekbones were, how annoying it was to have a tongue in the middle of the mouth doing nothing. At the twenty-two-minute mark, Phoebe noticed a hissing. She suspected a gas leak, until she realized the hissers were smilers straining to breathe through clenched teeth.

At twenty-four minutes, the first Tooth, Number 17, was yanked by the judges and broke down crying. “That’s what worried me,” her mother told Phoebe in a post-smile interview. “It’s a lot of pressure, and she had no teeth to show. Open your mouth, kitty. Let the reporter see.” Number 17 obliged, and where her two front teeth would be someday was a gap.

“The Tooth Faiwy took away my baby teeth,” sniffled Number 17, her blond pigtails drooping, “and no one bwought me big teeth yet. I am misweble.”

“When they inspected her upper lip,” explained the mother, “the judges just got air.” She took her daughter’s cheeks in her hands and said, “Don’t you worry, kitten-witten. We’ll walk over to McDonald’s, get a Happy Meal, and we’ll both feel better.”

With the first tooth pulled, the rest felt wobbly, and many fell out. After a while Phoebe could tell when a smile was about to go. The hissing got louder, the top lip wiggled, stiffened, drooped, collapsed. The child would look around to see if anyone noticed — but of course the judges were right there and their decision was final.

The defeated smilers looked grim trudging off. A crestfallen Tooth Number 29 told Phoebe, “I tried resting my top teeth on my bottom lip, but the judges kept giving me warnings. I didn’t have the energy to go on.”

With just a few minutes to the break, parents of the remaining smilers hurried down the strollway. It seemed an odd time to go shopping, but they were back quickly, clutching paper sacks.

“All right,” said Phyllis, staring at the stopwatch. “Three, two, one. Stop smiling. Great job. You should be proud. You are all helping advance modern dentistry. You have five minutes. Nineteen smilers left.”

The smilers looked droopy, exhausted. Fortunately, their parents were prepared.

“Take these,” Number 12’s mom whispered, ripping open a ten-pound, giant economy-size bag of M&M’s. “You need to reenergize.” The girl put the bag to her mouth and funneled in the M&M’s. Everywhere Phoebe looked, little smilers were munching Sweetarts, Sugar Gushers, Necco Wafers, Skittles, Gummi Bears, Crazy Dips, and Brown Sugar Wallops. To wash it down, they took huge gulps of forty-eight-ounce McDonald’s supersize Cokes.

It took a while for Phoebe to understand what she was seeing, but as it sunk in, she could not believe it. Quietly she pulled out her camera and snapped the smilers “reenergizing” for Round Two. No one else seemed to notice. She glanced at Dr. Cooper, the charming Phyllis, and the judges, but they were talking among themselves in tight adult circles, congratulating each other on this wonderful community education event.

As Round Two started, the hissing was louder, the smilers looked bug-eyed, their hands shook, and their feet tapped feverishly.

“Where do they get all the energy?” Phyllis marveled. Phoebe didn’t say a word, but she was pretty sure this was what a level-one sugar fit looked like.

Halfway through Round Two, she asked Phyllis for a copy of the list of contestants.

“Now, why would you want that, Miss Cutie-Pie Reporter?” asked Phyllis.

Phoebe explained it was to match each smiler’s tooth number with the name on the list to make sure she spelled everything right.

“Aren’t you the little worker bee?” said Phyllis. “I can’t wait to see your story in the
Slash
”— and Phyllis made a dramatic slash in the air with her finger. “I will be suggesting to Dr. Cooper that the dental association give an award to the student publication that does the most to promote dental hygiene. And I bet you know who I’m nominating. . . .”

“I guess so, ma’am,” said Phoebe, who was staring at the floor. Phoebe felt guilty, a traitor to the cause of modern dentistry and everything the dental association, Dr. Cooper, and Phyllis stood for. Was she the only one who saw it? Had she blown it out of proportion? But, no, the same thing happened during the second break.

It was as if the dental association was promoting Rapid Tooth Decay Week, the way the eight remaining smilers wolfed down red licorice, bite-size Milky Ways, Reese’s peanut butter cups, creamy caramels, Hershey’s Kisses, and Triple-Strength Sugar Booger Dips. “I need another hit from the two-liter!” bellowed Tooth Number 12, taking several mammoth sucks of orange soda.

Meanwhile, over at the press table, Dr. Cooper and Phyllis were busy with the reporter from the
Citizen-Gazette-Herald-Advertiser,
who had finally arrived and was making a note about the need for Americans to change their eating habits.

It took four hours and three minutes, but finally, the winning tooth was crowned, none other than Tooth Number 12. The gentleman from the
Citizen-Gazette-Herald-Advertiser
took a photo of the winner flanked by Dr. Cooper and his cochair, Phyllis.

Everyone crowded around Number 12 and said how great she’d done. The man from the
Citizen-Gazette-Herald-Advertiser
asked if it was fun winning five hundred dollars just for smiling.

“Kind of hard,” said Tooth Number 12.

“That’s nice,” said the
Citizen-Gazette-Herald-Advertiser
reporter.

Phoebe waited for people to leave before asking a few last questions. She didn’t want to raise any suspicions.

“I don’t know how you did it,” said Phoebe. “I never could have lasted.”

“I know,” said Number 12. “It was hard.”

Phoebe asked if anything besides practice smiling had contributed to the victory.

“Well, I’m a cheerleader,” said Number 12. “So I’m used to smiling even in the face of defeat.”

“Did the M&M’s help?” asked Phoebe.

“Huge,” said Number 12. “Heading into the first break, I didn’t think I’d be able to go on. I kept remembering the girl who said she smiled for six hours. I started dreaming about being home, watching my collection of MTV spring break videos. And then my mom poured those M&M’s down my throat. Yipes! My toes were tingling; I could feel my heart pounding. I was riding a sugar wave to victory.”

Phoebe took down the quote and closed her notebook. “I think that’ll do it,” Phoebe said. “Congratulations.”

“Yeah,” said Number 12. “I’m not smiling for a week, even if it’s something funny.”

Phoebe reopened her notebook to write that down, then put her pen and pad away in her backpack.

She glanced around. The dental association officials were gone now. A mall custodian was stacking folding chairs on a dolly. Then she spied Jennifer, leaning against the wall, just beyond Bed, Bath & Beyond. Phoebe walked toward her. It felt good to get away from all those dentist people. She never realized it was so much pressure being around people when you might have to write bad stuff about them. Part of her felt she was a wicked sneak.

“Phoebe,” said Jennifer. “How’d it go? A long Saturday afternoon.”

“OK,” said Phoebe quietly. “Different from what I expected.”

“Different?” said Jennifer.

“Yeah,” said Phoebe. “It’s hard to explain.”

Jennifer nodded, then asked, “You get some good shots of the M&M queen?”

Phoebe stopped walking and looked up at Jennifer. “How’d you know?”

“Wild guess,” said Jennifer.

“You think it’s OK to put that stuff in the story?” asked Phoebe.

“I do,” said Jennifer.

Sunday was colder, a blustery autumn day. It would be tough bicycling into the wind. Adam e-mailed Jennifer to see if she still wanted to go. He wasn’t sure if she was still mad at him. Jennifer could nurse a grudge pretty good. But the instant message she sent back seemed normal. They were sticking to the plan. After church, she would meet him at the Pancake House by the train station for a late breakfast. Then they would bike to the animal shelter to see Danny.

On the way over, there were a couple of neat curbs for doing wheelies and grinds, and Adam arrived at the Pancake House twenty minutes late, which was about what Jennifer had expected. She already was sitting in a booth — they loved getting a booth — sipping hot chocolate and leafing through old J. Crew catalogs.

“Heavy reading?” asked Adam.

“Get lost on the way over?” asked Jennifer. She stared at him. He was such a space cadet. “You can take off your bike helmet now,” she said. “The ceiling looks pretty safe in here.”

“Oh . . . right,” said Adam, unbuckling the chin strap and placing his helmet on the booth seat. He ordered blueberry pancakes and a hot chocolate with whipped cream.

Jennifer cut her pancakes neatly into little pieces. Not Adam. First he ate all the whipped cream off his hot chocolate. Then he picked up the top pancake with his hands, turned it over so he could see where the blueberries were, and began eating, making sure every bite had at least one blueberry.

Jennifer didn’t seem angry anymore, so Adam didn’t see any point in revisiting ancient history. “How’d the smile contest go?” he asked.

“I guess if you wanted to know, you would have been there,” said Jennifer, not even bothering to look up from her pancakes.

Adam felt like Jennifer had just kicked a forty-five-yard field goal straight into his stomach. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry you’re still angry. I didn’t want you —”

“Stop,” said Jennifer. “It’s over. I’ve been thinking. This is partly my fault. I did sort of pressure you into being coeditor. You don’t have to do it. Honest. I can find someone else. I think Sammy could probably —”

“Sammy?” said Adam. “Sammy can’t even do that cafeteria investigation without messing up.”

“Well, then, maybe Donald,” said Jennifer.

“Donald?” said Adam. “Donald didn’t even come to the first meeting.”

“Not your problem,” said Jennifer. “I’ll handle it. There’s Robert. Or Franklin . . .”

“I’ll do it,” said Adam. “I said I would, and I will.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” said Jennifer. “I don’t need —”

“Jennifer, stop, stop, stop. I want to do it. I do. I promise.”

“You’re sure?”

Adam nodded.