Slider: Chapters 9–20

“Bridgette’s not here,” I tell him.
“I know! I called to talk to you.”
Like I should be ecstatic about that.

He is carrying a bag emblazoned with the SooperSlider logo: a toothy, disembodied mouth biting into a juicy, dripping slider.

He is carrying a bag emblazoned with the SooperSlider logo: a toothy, disembodied mouth biting into a juicy, dripping slider.

The meat isn’t crispy and dark; it’s more of a pallid gray and only about a quarter of an inch thick.

I move the pulverized slider back in my mouth and open my throat and feel it ooze down my gullet to join its friends.

My belly is as taut as an overinflated basketball.

During the drive to the college, Derek expounds upon his philosophy of life.

“Everybody is good at something,” he says. “Take me, for example. I am good at recognizing opportunities and capitalizing on them.”

Derek exchanges high fives with several of his fraternity brothers as we weave our way through the throng.

Randolph, who turns out to be a weaselly-looking guy wearing a Deathchain T-shirt and a magenta fauxhawk, is in the side yard, standing over a charcoal brazier, turning some sort of animal on a spit.

“In honor of our late mascot, Possy, every contestant will start out with a scrumptious possum appetizer!”

I try dipping the squeezed slider in my SooperSlurp cup to facilitate the slide.

Suddenly, my box of sliders is completely empty. I look around in a panic. Now what? Hoover is staring at me, aghast.

With a flourish, Randolph presents me with a small plastic card.

Unlike a lot of other towns in Iowa, Vacaville has a thriving business district, with four restaurants, an old-fashioned movie theater, a couple of bars, a good assortment of retail stores, and a twenty-foot-tall fiberglass cow named Vaccie.

“It’s a great idea,” I said, not so modestly.

“People all over the world are going hungry. Those contests are a disgusting display of excess and gluttony.”

Inside is a cheap black plastic frame containing a Certificate of Authenticity.

I take it out and unroll the tissue and uncover a small, oblong object tightly wrapped in tinfoil.

I try to imagine this petrified relic on display in the State Historical Museum in Des Moines.

But there is a machinelike regularity to his eating, an unhurried, graceful ballet of mass consumption.

How fast could he eat if he was really trying? My mind is boggled. There is no way I can beat him in the qualifier.

“A waiver. Since you’re underage, you got to have one of your parents sign off on it.”

“And look what it’s doing to you. Fifty hamburgers? It’s obscene!”

Dad seems a little taken aback by that, but Mom smiles—she knows she’s won.