Maggie Bean Stays Afloat

by Tricia Rayburn

  “Christmas, sixth grade. The year Santa had a better shot of fitting down the chimney. 167 pounds.”

  “Birthday, sixth grade. I got books, CDs, and DVDs, but breaking the candy-filled piñata open was my favorite present. 170 pounds.”

  “First day of school, seventh grade. Big book bag, bigger butt. 175 pounds.”

  Maggie’s knees started to tremble, then buckle as Ben, Jason, and Polly pointed, giggled, and took turns reading from the laptop screen. In a desperate attempt to keep Arnie from hating her forever, she’d stayed up late the night before writing captions for her photo slideshow. She must’ve left it up on the screen after saving the changes.

  “Oh, wow. I had no idea pizza could make one person so happy.” Jason shook his head.

  Maggie forced her legs to move before she worsened the new Most Embarrassing Moment Ever by collapsing to the sidewalk. Ducking behind a garbage can, she clutched her purse to her chest, as though the pressure could slow her hammering heart. She knew there was a risk that people she knew would eventually see the Patrol This website—though she and Arnie had agreed on no last names, to protect the innocent—but the risk was never to have presented itself so soon. The photos weren’t even on the website yet; she’d assembled the slideshow more for Arnie than for future Patrol This participants.

  And the shock of exposure was only magnified exponentially by the fact that here it was again: her old, inescapable self. She’d worked so hard for so long to lose weight and be the kind of person people liked and thought of as more than a smart girl who might also be a pretty girl if she only had more self-control in the kitchen. She ate right, got good grades, was an excellent swimmer and, up until recently, was a great friend, sister, and daughter. She did everything she was supposed to do.

  So why did this keep happening?

  As they continued to whisper and giggle, Maggie frantically weighed her options. She could not go back and hope someone would at least be nice enough to take the laptop and her shopping bags home so she could get them later. She could summon the courage of her most confident, assured, imaginary self, and saunter up, nonchalantly ask what they were looking at, and brush it off as no big deal—something she just forgot to mention. Or, she could try to save them all—including herself—from forced politeness and painfully fake social propriety.

  For better or worse, in this situation of fight or flight, there was no fighting the flight.

  Maggie peeked around the garbage can to make sure they were still distracted. When Polly said something about Snickers and Jason snorted, Maggie stood, sprinted to Stella’s, and went in, and came back out again. “Thank you so much,” she yelled into the store as she held the door open. “That was really so great of you to hold my credit card for me. Does the Better Business Bureau give awards to exceptional employees? Because if they do, I’m calling them right now to nominate you! And if they don’t, I’m calling them right now to propose they start, and then I’ll nominate you. Do you like coffee? Ice cream? Next time I stop in, I’ll bring you both!”

  Once satisfied she’d given Ben, Jason, and Polly enough time to hide the evidence (and the staff at Stella’s enough reason to lock the door if ever she came back, which she now doubted she ever would), Maggie turned and started walking casually toward the bench. “Hey, guys,” she said brightly. “I have good news and bad news. The good news is, they had my credit card. The bad news is, I just remembered I have a very important thing I should’ve been at five minutes ago, so I have to run.”

  Ben swigged from a water bottle, Polly inspected her face in an open compact, and Jason talked on his cell phone. They all sat on the bench just as she’d left them. The laptop was back in its bag, which was back on the ground, next to her shopping bags.

  “Are you sure you have to go?” Ben asked, looking in her direction, but not quite at her.

  “Yup.” Deciding there was no way she could look any of them in the eye herself, she grabbed the three shopping bags and laptop bag.

  “That’s too bad,” Polly said, pouting into the compact mirror. “We were having such a great day.”

  “I know. We’ll do it again soon.” She winced slightly at the hopefulness in her voice. She should’ve been so infuriated that the idea of spending even five more seconds with any of them would send her running in the other direction. And she was infuriated—but she was also sad.

  The conflicting emotions were too much to process right then, so Maggie smiled, waved, and hurried down the sidewalk toward her bike, which she’d locked, very unfortunately, near The Nook. Careful not to look down the small alley leading to the bookstore, she climbed on the bike and balanced the weight of all her bags on both shoulders. She peddled slowly at first, unsure of whether it was the extra baggage she carried or the tornado of thoughts in her head that made her unsteady. Once she could ride in a straight line, she pushed her legs to gain momentum. Soon she was flying down the street as her shiny magenta shopping bags flapped against her back and tears streamed from the far corners of her eyes, toward her ears. And she would’ve flown all the way home, bags flying and tears streaming, except for one previously unplanned stop.

  The drugstore candy aisle.

  23.

  “Well, good heavens. When’d the hurricane hit?”

  Maggie opened her eyes under the comforter.

  “Was it during Deal or No Deal? I am so ga-ga over that Howie Mandel, my house could get swept up, spun about, and dropped in another county during his show and I’d have no idea.”

  Maggie held her breath. Maybe if she didn’t move, Aunt Violetta would mistake the blanketed bulge for pillows and crumpled sheets and go away.

  Aunt Violetta sat on the edge of Maggie’s bed. “Hiya, kiddo.” She patted Maggie’s covered head.

  Maggie sighed. There was no use even trying. She could ignore her parents—a skill she’d perfected the last two weeks—but Aunt Violetta was another story. Maggie knew it, Aunt Violetta knew it, and her parents certainly knew it, which had to explain the surprise visit. They’d called in reinforcements.

  “What do we have here?”

  Maggie listened to the crinkling of plastic.

  “Kit Kats, yum.”

  “Aunt Violetta,” Maggie said from underneath the blanket. “It’s really nice to see you, but I’m very busy.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. And I don’t feel well.”

  “That’s tough. It’s always hard to be busy when you’re sick.” She clucked her tongue.

  “I knew you’d understand. So if you don’t mind …”

  “I don’t mind a bit. I have an impenetrable immune system.”

  Maggie grabbed the top of the blanket and lowered it just enough to see into her room.

  “Is this the first time you’re seeing the storm’s damage?”

  Maggie watched Aunt Violetta look around her room and shake her head sadly, as though a hurricane really had blown through. Not that it didn’t look like it—clothes, books, papers, magazines, and tissues littered the floor, bed, desk, and dresser. Scattered among all that were full bags, half-full bags, and empty bags of Kit Kats, Snickers, M&M’s, Reese’s Pieces, Rolos, Milky Ways, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Hershey Kisses, Three Musketeers, and Twix. And scattered amongst all that were dozens of silver, gold, black, and brown wrappers. None of which was that bad, though, at least not compared to the room’s southeast corner, into which she’d flung the stuffed lion, elephant, bear, flower, hedgehog, and spider from Danger Nation, and the three magenta shopping bags from Stella’s, still filled with clothes she’d never wear.

  “So, should we start with what you know, or what I know?”

  Maggie rolled onto her side, away from Aunt Violetta and toward the wall.

  “I do love to go first. Okay, I’ll give you the rundown as my sources have relayed it. I know you started working as a junior swim instructor at Camp Sound View. I know you made some new friends there, with whom you came to spend a great deal of time. I know you wer
e involved with a very successful Patrol This trial program with Arnie. I know your family found the house of their realistic dreams and were ready to pack their bags and say adios to peeling paint and rusty appliances forever.” Aunt Violetta paused. “How am I doing?”

  “Fine,” Maggie mumbled.

  “Good. I also know your parents are upset that you’ve refused to go to Camp Sound View in two weeks. I know you spent less time with your old friends as you spent more time with your new friends. I know you’ve missed three Patrol This meetings. I know the deal fell through on the house.” Aunt Violetta paused. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “And I know you haven’t resorted to chocolate in a very, very long time.”

  “You forgot something.” Silent tears rolled down Maggie’s cheeks. She reached into the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt and grabbed a miniature Peanut Butter Cup.

  “What’s that?”

  “That it’s never going to be enough,” she said around the candy.

  “What’s never going to be enough, sugar?”

  Maggie shoved the blanket to her waist, sat up, and shimmied until her back pressed against the headboard. “Here’s what I know. After the most horrible year of my life, in which I morphed into some monster-like creature weighing nearly two hundred pounds, I worked so hard, night and day, through muscle aches and hunger pains, to become a normal person again. Which I did, or at least I thought.”

  “Sweetie, you’re—”

  “I liked a boy, Aunt Violetta. I mean, really liked him.

  I counted down the minutes until I could see him at our lockers, I looked forward to the end of the weekend because that meant Monday—and the chance to see him—was hours away, I kept a photo montage of him taped to my nightstand.” She leaned forward to open the nightstand drawer and show Aunt Violetta the stack of photos, which she’d immediately removed after Peter had rejected her. “I never wanted to be the kind of girl who had a photo montage of a boy taped to any piece of furniture, but I was, because that’s how much I liked him.” She shut the drawer and flopped back against the headboard.

  “So what happened?”

  Maggie covered her face with one hand. “I was an idiot.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “No, really.” She uncovered her face. “After months of wishing we were more than friends, I finally asked him out. Me! Asking out a boy. It was a terrible idea from the start.”

  “Which you wouldn’t have followed through on if you didn’t really want to, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Anyway, he said no, of course—I don’t know if I’d ever really thought he’d say anything else. And I was devastated. I lay on the couch and watched bad daytime TV for days before Mom basically enlisted me at Camp Sound View. And I swore off boys for the rest of the summer, because there was no way I was going through that again.”

  “Sounds logical.”

  “But then I met another boy. Whom I didn’t initially think of as a boy, because I wasn’t thinking about boys in general, but whom I gradually got to know and who, for some reason, seemed to like me. And this boy was older, adorable, smart, and nice—not to mention the most popular instructor at camp. Never in a million years would I have ever thought he’d like someone like me—”

  “Someone like you being a brilliant, beautiful, talented girl.”

  “But he did. We hung out, alone and with his friends. I went to parties and bought new clothes. I sang karaoke in front of thirty people! For the first time ever, I felt like the girl I always wanted to be but never thought was possible. And that felt incredible.” Maggie shoved her hands into the pockets of her hooded sweatshirt and looked at her lap.

  “Sounds pretty good,” Aunt Violetta said gently.

  “Too good to be true.” She sighed and looked to the ceiling. “It didn’t mean anything. They found out who I used to be, took one look at some bad pictures, and bolted.” They hadn’t physically bolted after looking at the photos—she had—but they hadn’t bothered to call once during the past two weeks, which meant the same thing.

  “This world is filled with all types of people, lamb chop. Sounds like you just stumbled onto a fickle lot.”

  “And the worst part is that my real friends, the people who were my friends before, during, and after the phase of really bad photos, are no longer talking to me.” The tears that had been pooling in her eyes suddenly spilled over. “So now I have nothing. No friends, no new house, nothing.”

  “It sounds like an unfortunate run.”

  “An unfortunate run? More like an unfortunate life. I’ll never be the girl I want to be. My embarrassing past will always get in the way.”

  “Everyone has a past, sugar. And if those kids haven’t lived the embarrassing part of theirs yet, they will. I promise.”

  Maggie sniffed and looked at the plastic bags and wrappers blanketing the floor. “I can’t believe I ate all this candy.”

  “Don’t worry about it—comfort food’s okay every now and then. It’s temporary, though, and you need a more permanent fix.” Aunt Violetta looked around the room. “Do you have a computer in here, or did it get sucked up in the hurricane?”

  “On the desk, under the Butterfingers and Baby Ruths.”

  Aunt Violetta reached into her purse. “Here.”

  Maggie took the paper bookmark. “www.PatrolThis.com.” She looked at Aunt Violetta. “You think I’ve lost my way so much that I need weight-loss tips from the website I helped create?”

  “I think you could use some friendly direction.”

  Maggie pouted.

  “Emphasis on ‘friendly.’” Aunt Violetta smiled, patted Maggie’s knee, and stood up. “I believe the next Patrol This meeting starts in an hour. I’d be happy to give you a ride.”

  Maggie tossed the bookmark on the nightstand and slid back under the covers.

  “Oh, and sugar?” Aunt Violetta was halfway through the door when she turned back around. “Real friends see each other through the hard times.”

  Maggie waited for Aunt Violetta to close the door and retreat down the hallway before she flung off the blankets and crawled out of bed. Socks, T-shirts, pajamas, and bags of candy joined the mess on the floor as she cleared off her laptop. She pushed another load of clothes off her desk chair, plopped down, and tried to ignore the waistband of her jeans gently digging into her waist for the first time in months.

  She hadn’t been to the Patrol This website since she’d left Arnie’s laptop with the lake house housekeeper on her way home from the fateful Stella’s shopping spree. She closed her eyes and braced herself as the site loaded, preparing herself for the worst-case scenario of her photo slideshow front and center on the home page.

  She counted to ten before opening one eye, then the other. When she saw Arnie’s face smiling at her in a small cartoon television in the middle of an otherwise empty black screen, she couldn’t help but smile back. She clicked on the miniature play button, and smiled wider as Arnie started talking.

  “Hi, guys. I know what you’re thinking—TV on a website about health, nutrition, and other boring stuff? Shouldn’t I be looking at a picture of a fruit bowl, or some unnaturally happy people playing tennis? If my parents walk by, won’t they think I’m just wasting time?” Arnie leaned closer and looked around like someone might be listening before facing the camera and whispering, “Here’s the first lesson of Weight Loss 101: It’s about you, not them.”

  The small TV faded out and the main page filled the screen. Maggie’s eyes filled with tears again as she recognized the photo that had apparently replaced the one in which she’d resembled a walrus in the screen’s upper-left corner. Aimee had taken it when they were hanging at Arnie’s lake house a few weeks before school let out. In it, Maggie and Arnie sat at the edge of the dock, their legs dangling over the side, with their backs to the camera. She remembered they’d been in a heated debate over who had better stageside manner—Oprah, Ellen, or Dr. Phil—and that Maggie had laughed so hard, she almos
t fell in the lake. She could tell she was laughing when Aimee took the picture, because her head was tilted back.

  She hadn’t laughed like that in a long time.

  She went through the entire site, clicking on recipes, different music playlists for different exercises, and more video blogs of Arnie struggling to make his chin touch the floor while doing push-ups, having trouble boiling water to make whole wheat pasta, and racing his neighbor’s poodle to the end of the block—and losing. (The general theme of the video blogs seemed to be that it didn’t matter if you didn’t quite succeed at whatever you tried as long as you tried, which was very wise while being very Arnie-appropriate.) The only thing she skipped over was her photo slideshow, which was listed right under Arnie’s. She was about to watch him do another set of pushups when she noticed a flashing spiral notebook at the bottom of the page.

  Arnie’s Online Diary, or, How Food Got in the Way Today.

  Maggie clicked on the notebook.

  Dear Maggie,

  Had a bad experience with a vending machine today.

  It’s really my flute teacher’s fault—he moved his studio from his house to a strip mall, forcing me to go from no snack before dinner to which snack before dinner. Anyway, there I was, standing in front of a shiny glass case filled with candy, cookies, peanuts, and chips, trying to decide whether I was really going to try to be good, or treat myself just once, to celebrate my flute teacher’s relocation—sort of like a housewarming gift to myself. And I put in three quarters, and was about to hit B8—Cracker Jack—and I thought of you. Not because caramel-coated popcorn usually makes me think of you—though maybe the idea of the prize inside does. Anyway, for whatever reason, I thought of you, and everything we’ve accomplished and been through together, and I decided to walk away from the vending machine. I even let it keep my three quarters instead of getting breath mints or gum. Because I don’t want to be tempted like that. I don’t want to lose to a vending machine ever again.