The Next Big Thing (A novel about Internet love, plus size heroines, and reality TV)

by Johanna Edwards

  The Next Big Thing

  By Johanna Edwards

  Copyright © 2005 by Johanna Edwards

  Revised edition © 2014 by Johanna Edwards

  www.johannaedwards.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  PRINTING HISTORY Berkley trade paperback edition / March 2005

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group. BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA)

  Prologue

  All my life I’ve been waiting for things: calls that never came, guys who never showed, invitations that got “lost in the mail.” But mostly, I’ve been waiting to be thin.

  I wanted a thin body so badly I could visualize it, like a beacon in the distance. I spent a lot of time preparing for my “thin life.” I even bought clothes for it. I have a box filled with supplies—my skinny box—lodged in the back of my closet.

  Before the show, I’d never told anyone about it, not even Donna, my closest friend.

  Every fat girl has her skinny outfit, the one she pictures herself wearing when she miraculously drops seventy pounds overnight. The dress she imagines all her friends and ex-boyfriends swooning over.

  I was walking through the Oak Court Mall when I spied it: my dream dress. It was made of black velvet and was absolutely jaw-droppingly gorgeous. My eyes locked on the mannequin wearing it, and something inside me came to life. The mannequin was thin—but not as thin as they generally are—and in addition to the velvet dress she had on a pair of knee-high black leather boots. Everything about the image overwhelmed me. This mannequin was me—the me I would become.

  My mind flashed forward, spiraling past a summer of strict dieting and hard-core exercise, and I could see myself wearing that gorgeous dress with the knee-high boots. People would stand with their mouths agape, watching in awe as I passed by. My hips, my slim little hips, would swivel seductively from side to side. No more size eighteen.

  Who the hell is that? they’d wonder. She must be from New York or maybe somewhere on the West Coast. No one that cool lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

  I usually don’t shop in skinny stores; I don’t like the stares I get from salesgirls. What is she doing here? We don’t have clothes in her size. I could feel their eyes on me the second I walked in. I was pushing two hundred pounds at the time, and I knew this particular store didn’t carry anything larger than a size fourteen; I didn’t care. I was feeling invincible, spurred on by the vision of Kat Larson, thin person.

  I walked in, head held high. I wasn’t worried about checking to see whether or not I could squeeze into an XL. Today I was buying mediums.

  I spent more than two hours gathering clothes left and right, snatching up anything and everything that caught my eye. A leather skirt, a tight gray turtleneck, a plaid jumper, a deep-red button-down shirt with black cuffs.

  No one spoke to me the entire time. No one asked how I was doing, or whether I was having a good day. None of the sales reps offered to help. I knew they thought I was strange, but I felt like a genius. I had found the secret recipe to weight-loss success!

  Wasn’t it all about motivation? And nothing would motivate me more than a closet full of expensive, thin-person clothes. I would look at them every morning and they would remind me of who I wanted to become. Who I would become.

  In the end, I bought nine things, including the spellbinding black velvet minidress and the knee-high boots. The salesgirl—a snazzy redhead hell-bent on ignoring me—folded and wrapped my purchases in tissue paper, then placed them gingerly in a large white and purple bag that I held like a trophy as I made my way out of the mall.

  I did not get slim that summer, and I never wore those clothes. They sit in my closet to this day, still in the tissue paper, and horribly out of date.

  Chapter One

  No matter where you work, dragging yourself out of bed and into the office after a weekend is never pleasant. But at Hood & Geddlefinger Public Relations, Mondays are especially brutal and Richard Geddlefinger is the man to thank for it. He doesn’t believe in easing into the workweek. “Nobody ever got anywhere in life by taking it easy,” he’s fond of saying. “Monday sets the tone for the whole week.” So he holds an hour-long mandatory staff meeting every Monday at 8 A.M. sharp to “kick things off right.” His words, not mine.

  I’m not a morning person by nature. Unless I have some profoundly exciting reason to be out of bed at the crack of dawn—like, say, a date with Justin Timberlake—it usually takes several hours and about a gallon of coffee before I fully wake up.

  That particular Monday, the day I first learned about the show, was worse than usual. I hadn’t received my nightly e-mail from my Internet boyfriend, Nick, and I’d stayed up late trying to catch him online before he left for work.

  London is six hours ahead of Memphis, and I knew Nick got online promptly at 7:30 A.M. (I knew because I’d waited up for him on more than one occasion.) When he hadn’t signed on by 1:30 A.M. Memphis time, I panicked. Nick and I had a routine, and we never varied from it. In the three months we’d known each other, Nick and I had spoken on the phone at least once a week and he’d e-mailed every single day without fail, even if it was just a short note telling me he was too busy to write.

  His e-mails mean everything to me. I print them out and whenever I get bored, or sad, or lonely, I read them. It’s strange how someone so far away can have such an impact on my life. Like the day, so many weeks ago, when Nick finally told me that he loved me. I carry a tattered copy of that e-mail in my purse.

  Dear Kat,

  It’s nearly 3 A.M. and I should be sleeping, but I’m not. Instead I’m lying here, thinking about you. The things you say, the way you laugh. I memorize everything so I can play it over in my mind. Maybe this is what it means to fall in love. It’s as though all the other girls I’ve been with were a trial run. As though this is what I’ve been preparing for all my life.

  I love you,

  Nick

  Nick is never shy with his emotions and he’s always prompt. So when I didn’t hear from him, I freaked. What if something bad had happened? I debated calling, but it was still early in our relationship; I wanted to keep psycho possessive girlfriend behavior to a minimum.

  After hours of obsessing, I wound up typing him a quick e-mail:

  Hey baby, hope all is well. I missed hearing from you tonight.

  Love, Kat.

  So that Monday I woke up later than I’d intended, and had just enough time to grab a quick shower and visit the drive-thru Starbucks before coming into the office. I burst through the door at 8:04 A.M., making it into the conference room just as Richard called the meeting to order.

  “Sorry,” I said breathlessly, squeezing my chair around the crowded table. I set down my Venti house blend and cracked open my notebook. I glanced around and realized my best friend and coworker, Donna Bartosch, hadn’t arrived yet either. This surprised me; Donna had recently been issued an official warning from Human Resources, informing her she was being closely watched for �
�excessive tardiness.”

  “As I was saying before Kat got here.” Richard shot me a brief look and then continued talking, “I lined up several prospective clients over the weekend. I may have bitten off more than we can chew, and I’m going to ask all of you to put in a bit of overtime, but I think you’ll find it’s worth it. We’re talking big names, people. If we can land these clients, it’s going to take Hood and Geddlefinger to a whole new level.”

  All around the conference table people cringed, including me. We’d been down this road before. The last time Richard said “a bit of overtime” I wound up working nearly seventy hours a week for a month.

  “Great work, Mr. G.,” Cindy Vander, a sprightly blonde who worked my last nerve, responded. “I’m sure I speak for everyone in the room when I say we will do whatever it takes to make these deals happen.”

  I groaned inwardly. It figured that she would say that. Cindy couldn’t resist an opportunity to suck up to the boss.

  “Good, I knew I could count on all of you.” Richard beamed. “I’m going to need to meet with each department and with certain people individually.” He reached down and picked up a piece of paper, scanning through a list of names.

  It seemed all we ever did at Hood & Geddlefinger was meet. We even had meetings to plan meetings. It was a wonder we got any work done at all.

  “After we adjourn, I want to talk with the researchers and fact checkers,” Richard said. “Kat, Donna, and William.” He paused, looking around the room. “Where is Donna?” He said this to everyone, but I knew the question was directed at me. It was common knowledge that Donna and I were best friends.

  I thought fast. “She’s probably having car trouble,” I covered. “Her beat-up old Nissan’s on its last leg.”

  “That’s a poor excuse,” Richard griped. “If your car doesn’t run, get a new one.”

  “Well, you know, maybe if Donna earned a little more money,” I said in an I’m-joking-but-I’m-really-serious tone. It was true. We made peanuts at H&G. A few people around the conference table giggled politely.

  “I’d be happy to take notes for her if you’d like,” Cindy the kiss-ass volunteered.

  “That’s not necessary.” Donna came breezing through the door as if on cue. Her face was flushed red and her shoulder-length blonde hair was still damp. Her earrings didn’t match, she had a copy of USA Today tucked under her arm, and I noticed offhandedly that she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Not that she needed it. Donna’s skin is flawless. If it wasn’t for her wicked sense of humor and never-ending generosity, I’d probably hate her size-four guts. Donna pushed a chair over to the conference table and plunked down next to me.

  “I suppose you have a good excuse,” Richard said flatly.

  “Actually, sir, I do,” Donna said. “In the local paper this morning, did you read about the house fire in Bartlett?”

  “I read the paper, Donna.” Richard held up a hand. “Don’t try to claim that was your house, Bartosch. I know you live downtown.”

  “It was my boyfriend Chip’s place. He lost everything he owned,” she said, sounding righteously aggrieved. “He had to sleep at my apartment last night, and this morning he woke up crying. Crying,” she said again for emphasis. “By the time he pulled himself together, I was running behind.”

  I eyed her curiously. If I wasn’t mistaken, Chip lived in an apartment.

  Richard cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to hear about that,” he said, turning his attention to his laptop. “I’ve prepared a brief PowerPoint presentation detailing some of what we’ll need to do to get started.”

  I took a quick survey of the room. Richard was busy fiddling with his computer, and everybody was waiting for him to begin. I saw eyes fixed on the floor, the walls, the ceiling. No one was looking at me.

  I hastily scrawled a message in my notebook and passed it to Donna.

  So what’s the real story? I wrote, thinking she had a lot of balls lying about a thing like that.

  I’d never have the nerve.

  Donna slid my notebook back, along with the Life section of her USA Today.

  “You should think about it,” she whispered in my ear. “It sounds kind of fun.”

  I looked down at the paper and discovered she’d drawn a big arrow pointing toward one of the stories. As discreetly as possible, I unfolded the newspaper on my lap and started reading.

  REALITY SHOW AIMS TO BE THE NEXT BIG THING

  by Mark Tibulini, Staff Writer

  If Zaidee Panola has her way, the days of skinny Survivor and bikini-clad Big Brother contestants will soon be a thing of the past.

  Panola, executive producer of the upcoming reality show From Fat to Fabulous, thinks America is ready for a little more fat in its television diet. “We’re going to put the ‘real’ back into reality TV,” said Panola, speaking via phone from her office in Los Angeles. “In its earliest days, the genre was a bit more open [to different body types]. Now, every single reality show, from MTV’s The Real World to ABC’s The Bachelor, is overrun with people who could easily pass for models. Sure, models make nice eye candy, but when was the last time you saw someone who looked like that in real life?”

  The concept of From Fat to Fabulous is simple: A group of young women, all size 16 or larger, will battle the bulge—and each other—for 15 weeks on national television. Holed up in a Hollywood Hills mansion, they’ll be given access to the best weight-loss tools money can buy: a spacious home gym, an on-call nutritionist, a personal trainer, and a weight counselor. The house also contains a large fridge full of healthy snacks—and an even larger pantry crammed with junk food.

  “We call it the Tomb of Temptation,” Panola said, laughing. “Our primary goal is to help these girls win their personal war with weight, but we’re not going to force them into deprivation. The so-called ‘bad foods’ will be there in the house, but we’ll do everything we can to persuade the girls not to touch them.”

  However, should a contestant be tempted to cheat, Panola and crew won’t hesitate to document it.

  “If someone sneaks downstairs to eat a brownie at 2 a.m., you’d better believe we’ll be there,” she said.

  The end of every episode will feature a weigh-in, the results of which could be worth thousands of dollars.

  “Each girl has her own personal bank, and we add or subtract money according to what the scale says,” Panola revealed. “If she’s down two pounds or more, then we add $10,000. But if her weight has increased by two pounds or more, then we subtract $20,000.”

  Staying the same weight as the week before or having an increase or decrease of less than two pounds will result in no change to the bank. Additionally, the contestants can earn extra dough by logging hours in the gym. At the end of the game, whoever has earned the largest bank wins the cash. Panola said designing the reward system proved extremely difficult. Several alternatives were considered, including awarding a pre-set amount of money to the girl who lost the most weight overall. The system they wound up choosing was designed under the guidance of several medical experts.

  “Since the show is about weight loss, at first we thought it made sense to give the money to the girl who’d shed the most pounds. But everybody loses weight differently,” Panola said, “and it wouldn’t be fair to reward someone based solely on the fact that her body responds the quickest to diet and exercise.”

  Lest viewers think the whole routine could grow old, Panola hints that a few twists are in store. “We do have some stuff up our sleeves, yes,” Panola said. “I can’t tell you much, but I will say this: The girls are going to have other opportunities to earn money, aside from the weigh-ins. They’ll be able to perform special tasks and compete in some very unusual competitions.”

  Ultimately, the show is about testing one’s motivation.

  “We’re giving them the best incentive in the world to lose the weight,” Panola said. “If they can’t do it in this kind of a situation, they probably can’t do it period.”

  A
sidebar next to the article gave the show’s website and listed the instructions for applying.

  “Submit the application form (available online) and a two-minute video telling us why you’d like to be a part of the show. All materials must be received (read: received, not postmarked) by Friday, April twenty-sixth.”

  This upcoming Friday.

  “So, what do you think?” Donna whispered as soon as I’d finished reading.

  I didn’t respond at first. I was still digesting everything. The last sentence of the article—We’re giving them the best incentive in the world to lose the weight—really struck a chord in me.

  From the age of ten, my life has been about diets. All through middle school I ate nothing but Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine. In high school I moved on to Jenny Craig, then got inventive and crafted my own weight-loss methods. There was the “Chew and Spit,” which involved chomping on things like barbecue potato chips while leaning over the toilet. After chewing the food into pure mush, I chucked it straight out of my mouth into the toilet, savoring the taste while discarding the calories. If I didn’t have a major aversion—bordering on a phobia—of throwing up, I’d have likely made the jump to bulimia.

  Then there was the “Nothing But Five Fat-Free Yoplait Yogurts Every Day” plan. I lost forty pounds in less than three months, but I also lost huge clumps of my hair. By the time I graduated college I could name the number of Weight Watchers points in any fast-food item. I’d gone through stints eating both low-fat and low-carb. I’d also tried LA Weight Loss, Sugar Busters, and hypnosis. Most recently The South Beach Diet. All of these worked for a little while. But you can only down so many Subway sandwiches before the sight of a Veggie Delite starts to makes you gag.

  Incentive. Maybe that is the secret ingredient I’ve been missing all this time. And what could be a better incentive than being paid ten thousand dollars every week to lose weight?