by Sarah Dessen
I never touched an Oreo again. I honestly cannot even be in the room with one.
I feel the same way about dancing.
It was the Fall Harvest Dance. My first dance. As usual, I was at a new school: Central Middle, in some small suburb of Maryland. My mother was working at a dentist’s office; it was the first time in my life I’d had clean, well-inspected teeth.
Maybe this made me feel confident enough to go to the Harvest Dance. Or maybe it was my mother, who never let her extra pounds get in the way of having a little fun. Either way, when I was only two months into a new school, fat with no friends (other fat kids wouldn’t hang out with me because I was new, part of the complex stratification even among the losers at Central Middle), my mother spent all the grocery money to buy me a new pair of Misses Plus jeans and a cute top.
The top was long-sleeved, with green and pink stripes. I wore my white Keds and a pair of heart-shaped earrings my mom had given me for my birthday. We spent a lot of time selecting this combination, and she even let me wear some of her makeup. She dropped me off on the other side of the football field, the cool thing to do, so I appeared to have just walked out of the woods.
“Have fun,” she called after me. I’d gotten the sense, through all the shopping and preparation, that she would have gladly traded places and gone herself. I was more than ready to let her.
The engine of the Volaré rattled as she drove off. “You look great!” she yelled as I stepped through the brush and started across the field. I could already hear the music, could see the lights in the cafeteria, and despite myself I felt a little flutter of excitement.
I paid my three bucks and went inside, passing clumps of kids along the hallway; no one seemed to be dancing yet. The fat girls were all in a far corner. One of them had brought a book and was reading it.
I went to the bathroom and checked my makeup under the glaring fluorescent lights, to see if I looked different. Then I washed my hands twice and went back to the cafeteria.
By then some people were dancing. I went inside and stood against the wall, watching as the most popular kids took the floor, the girls shaking their hips and hair, the boys all doing that same white-guy shuffle with their eyes somewhere else, their faces bored.
It wasn’t bad, all of a sudden, being there. Everyone around me was moving to the loud music, even the other fat kids. So I did, too.
No one ever really teaches you how to dance. I was kind of moving back and forth, looking down like everyone else. I couldn’t even find myself in the crowd reflected in the cafeteria windows. That was nice.
There was a girl standing next to me with glasses and long hair, and when I looked over she smiled shyly. The music was good and I relaxed, letting myself move a little bit more, copying some of the moves I saw other people making. Maybe this would be different, this school. Maybe I would make friends.
I kept dancing, thinking this, and I realized suddenly why people liked to dance; it did feel good. Fun, even.
Then I heard it. Someone laughing. The noise started off quietly, but as the music was dying down, the song changing, it got louder. I looked up, still dancing, to see a boy across the cafeteria with his cheeks puffed out, moving like a hippopotamus, his legs straight and locked, rocking back and forth. Everyone was standing around watching him, giggling. The more they laughed, the more pronounced he became; sticking out his tongue, rolling his eyes back in his head.
It took a few seconds to realize that he was imitating me. And by that point everyone was staring.
I stopped moving. The music changed and I glanced around me to see that the girl with the glasses was gone; everyone was gone. I’d been all alone, dancing, in my big fat Misses Plus jeans and new shirt.
When this happens in the movies and in after-school specials, the fat, teased kid is always befriended by some nice person who sees her for the wonderful, worthwhile person she really is. But in real life, middle school just isn’t like that.
No one followed me as I walked back across the football field and sat beneath a stubby pine tree for two and a half hours, waiting for my mother. I could hear the music from the cafeteria. I could even hear voices through the woods, people sneaking away from the chaperones. When my mother pulled up at ten o’clock I climbed into the car and didn’t say a word the whole way home.
I told her later as I sat with her arms around me, crying, my voice hiccuping and ashamed. She just rocked me back and forth, her mouth set in that thin, straight line that meant she was angry. She stroked my hair and told me I was beautiful, but I was old enough by then to know not to believe it anymore.
Two weeks later, she gave up her job at the dentist’s and we moved to Massachusetts, where I was the fat new kid all over again. But I never forgot Central Middle or that dance. I never could.
There’s something about dancing that’s like being stripped naked; you have to be very self-confident to thrash around in public, deliberately attracting attention. I’d never been that way, even without the weight that once kept me in everyone’s eyes. Dancers were the lightest and brightest of butterflies, while girls like me stayed low, bellies scraping the floor, and watched from there.
chapter ten
The first thing I saw when we stepped inside was Isabel, her hair in rollers, crossing the kitchen floor to turn up the CD player. She had on cutoffs and a short white shirt, and her bare feet had cotton balls between each toe. The polish on her toenails was bright red and still looked wet.
“Is this new?” Morgan yelled, as I put the eggs down on the coffee table. Isabel tossed her a CD case before heading back to the kitchen. Morgan turned it over, examining it.
“I love disco,” she said.
I nodded. I had my eyes on Mira’s house, my excuses ready. I could not stay.
“I bought supplies,” Isabel announced, coming back into the living room with a grocery bag. She started unpacking it, stacking its contents on the table and floor: two six-packs of beer, a six-pack of Diet Coke, Cosmo, two bottles of nail polish, a pack of Fudge Stripes, and a plastic container of what looked like cold cream. Then she picked up the bag and shook it, emptying out a handful of Atomic Fireballs, two packs of gum, and some cigarettes; there were a couple of boxes of sparklers, too.
“For you,” she said to me, handing over the gum. She gave Morgan the Atomic Fireballs and kept the cigarettes, tucking them in her shorts pocket.
“Isabel,” Morgan said disapprovingly. Actually, she yelled. We were all yelling to be heard over the Bee Gees. “You quit, remember?”
“I got you Fudge Stripes,” Isabel pointed out. “So hush.”
“Fudge Stripes don’t kill you,” Morgan fussed.
“Morgan.” Isabel shook her head. “Let it go, okay? Just for tonight.”
“They cause cancer,” Morgan said.
“Let it go. . . .” Isabel said, closing her eyes.
“And heart disease.”
“Let it go. . . .”
“And emphysema.”
“Morgan!” Isabel opened her eyes. “Let it go!”
Morgan reached for the Fudge Stripes and sat back on the couch. “Fine,” she said, ripping open the package and stuffing one in her mouth in a sloppy, very un-Morgan-like fashion. Then she held them out to me.
“No thanks,” I said.
“You never eat anything bad,” she said. To Isabel she called out, “Ever noticed that, Is?”
“Noticed what?”
“That Colie eats so healthy, it’s disgusting,” Morgan said. “I’ve never even seen her have a french fry.”
“And she runs every morning.” Isabel came back and plopped down on the floor, reaching for a beer. “I always see her when I get up to pee. She’s out there at some ungodly hour.”
“Eight o’clock,” I said.
“Exactly,” Isabel said.
“Well, if Kiki Sparks was your mother,” Morgan said, her mouth full, “I guess you’d have to be a health freak, right?”
I just nodded. Pe
ople assumed that, never knowing my mother’s favorite food in the Fat Years—and now—was fried pork rinds.
Isabel popped the top off her beer, then handed one to Morgan. She gave me a Diet Coke. “I’d give you a beer,” she said, “but . . .”
“But you’re underage,” Morgan said primly. “And it would be illegal.”
Isabel rolled her eyes.
“Well, it would be.” Morgan pulled her legs up underneath her. “When I was fifteen I lived off Coke and Reese’s cups. I ate Twinkies for breakfast.”
“And never gained a pound,” Isabel said, reaching for the cold cream. When she opened it, however, it was bright green and oozy, like toxic waste.
“I wanted to gain weight in high school,” Morgan said to me. She was alternating between eating deviled eggs and sucking on an Atomic Fireball held between her thumb and forefinger. “I was so skinny you could see my collarbone from a mile off. Disgusting.”
“It was not,” Isabel said. She smeared a handful of the green stuff across her face, covering her cheeks and forehead.
“Plus I was ten feet taller than any of the boys,” Morgan went on. “And since my mom never wanted to buy me any new clothes and I kept growing, all my skirts and pants were too short. My nickname was Highwater.”
“Do we have to talk about high school?” Isabel said. Now her entire face was green, except for a tiny bit of white around her eyes and mouth. She handed the container to Morgan.
“You’re right.” Morgan spit out the Fireball and sat cross-legged, scooping out a green handful. “I’m depressed enough already.”
“Wait, wait,” Isabel said. “I don’t want to talk about Mark, either.”
But Morgan was already going. “The thing is,” she began, a glob of green in one hand, “it was stupid for me to get so upset, anyway. I mean, it’s not his fault his schedule is so crazy right now. He might be getting moved up to Triple A next year, the team is doing really well . . .”
“Whatever,” Isabel said. The green stuff on her face, which I had finally figured out was some kind of beauty mask, was hardening and forming tiny cracks whenever she spoke.
“. . . and the last thing he needs when he finally gets a chance to see me is to be bombarded with details about the wedding and our future. It’s no wonder he gets so irritated when I bug him about it.”
“Morgan,” Isabel said. Her voice sounded strange; she was trying not to move her mouth. “Don’t forget how upset you were this morning.”
“I haven’t,” Morgan said, glancing at her ring. She spread the mask across her face, carefully, using her fingertips.
Isabel leaned back, pulling the cigarettes out of her pocket. “Because that’s what you always do, you know. You get all upset and then just forget it away.”
“You can’t smoke in here,” Morgan snapped. Then she got up and went to the kitchen, turning the music up even louder.
“I wasn’t going to,” Isabel shouted after her. Then she nodded toward the face stuff. “Go ahead,” she said. “It’s your turn.”
I picked it up, peering down into the green contents.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never done this before,” she said.
“Well,” I said.
“Oh, God.” She crouched down in front of me. “Give it to me.”
Morgan was still in the kitchen, washing her hands. I could see her green face reflected in the window over the sink.
Isabel scooped out a handful of mask and leaned close to me, spreading big gobs of it across my skin. It was cool and smelled like leaves.
“All natural,” she explained, her finger brushing my lip ring as some slipped into my mouth. It tasted terrible. “Deep-cleans your pores and tightens the skin. What kind of person has never done a beauty mask before? When I was fifteen I was obsessed with this stuff.”
“Colie’s not like we were,” Morgan said, coming back to sit beside me. She’d pulled her hair back in a clip on top of her head and looked like a big asparagus. “She doesn’t sit home and read Seventeen every Saturday night. She has a life.”
Isabel kept spreading the mask. I waited for her to say something about Caroline Dawes and what she’d heard, but she didn’t. Instead, she just sat back and looked at my face, studying her work. “Oh, right,” she said. “A life.”
Morgan reached over and picked up the phone. “Hello?” she said.
I was confused for a second until I realized it must have rung. Morgan, obviously, had doglike super hearing.
“Turn that down,” she hissed, pointing at the CD player.
“Who is it?” Isabel said, getting up.
“Just turn it down.”
“Oh,” Isabel said, slowing down considerably. “It’s Mark.” She cocked her head to the side, hard, to punctuate the name.
“Turn it down, Is.”
Isabel turned it down and the noise was sucked out, gone, just like that. Then she came back over, plopped down on the floor, and opened another beer.
“I wasn’t mad,” Morgan was saying, her mask cracking as she did so. She wrapped the phone cord around her fingers. “I just really wanted to have a chance to talk about our future. . . .”
“Oh, God,” Isabel said loudly, and Morgan turned her back.
“I know. I know how busy you are.” Morgan examined her nails, one by one. “I just always forget how little time you have to spend with me.”
Isabel made a gagging noise. Morgan stood, picked up the phone, and started dragging it toward the bedroom, still talking.
“Ask him why he’ll never give you a number where you can reach him,” Isabel called out as the cord slid along the floor. “Ask him why he only calls you once a week.”
Morgan waved her off angrily, trying to get the door shut.
“And ask him about that girl in Wilson, Morgan. Get a spine and ask him for once about that.”
The door slammed. Isabel threw up her hands.
“That girl,” she said, in the same loud voice, “wants to be hurt. And I am so sick of standing by and watching her do it.” Her green mask was splitting open across her cheeks. “Let me tell you something about men, Colie.”
I waited. My skin felt strange, tight, and I was concentrating on not moving any part of my face.
“Men,” Isabel said, after pausing to suck down some beer, “are wired, by nature, to take everything they can from you. It is their basic instinct to screw you over.”
“Really.”
“Yes,” she said solidly. Then she leaned closer. “If you think that girl from the restaurant yesterday can hurt you, you just wait. All the bitchy girls in the world are just a training ground for what men can do to you.”
The bedroom door opened and Morgan stood there, phone under her arm. Even with her green face I could tell she was mad.
“What is your problem?” she snapped, dropping the phone onto the couch. “He heard what you were saying, Isabel. He heard you.”
“Good.”
“I don’t understand,” Morgan huffed, “why you have to bad-mouth him to anyone who will listen.”
“I’m not the one coming to work and sobbing over him, Morgan,” Isabel shot back. “I’m not the one bringing in deviled eggs.”
“This isn’t about deviled eggs,” Morgan said.
“No, it isn’t.” Isabel picked up her pack of cigarettes, turning it over and over in her hand. “This is about how Mark does not respect you. About how he uses you.”
“Shut up,” Morgan said in a tired voice, walking into the kitchen.
“Why doesn’t he ever ask you to come to the games? And why can you never get a number or place where he’s at or going to be since you surprised him in Wilson?”
“He’s never sure where exactly he’ll—”
“Bullshit!” Isabel yelled. “You can go down to the drugstore and buy a poster for ninety-nine cents with their entire schedule on it. They’re a baseball team, Morgan. They have a season. They don’t just travel around playing random teams when they feel like
it.”
Morgan put her hands on her hips. “It’s more complicated than that. You don’t know—”
“I know this,” Isabel said, standing up. “I know he comes into town, sleeps with you, and books out of here the next day before breakfast. I know when you went to surprise him on your anniversary you found that stripper in his hotel room.” She was ticking things off on her fingers, one by one. “And,” she went on, “I know that since he gave you that ‘ring’ ”—as she said it she made quote marks with her fingers—“he has not said one word about your wedding or your future. Not one word.”
Morgan absorbed this, blinking. She’d put one hand over her ring, protectively, when Isabel mentioned it.
My face was so tight my eyes were starting to hurt. But getting up to wash the mask off meant stepping between them, and I wasn’t about to do that.
“Can’t you see, Morgan?” Isabel lowered her voice and took a few steps closer; with their green faces, they looked like aliens meeting on a foreign planet. “There’s something wrong here.”
Morgan blinked again. I wondered if she was going to cry.
Then she straightened up to her full height and took a deep breath. “Jealous!” she shouted, pointing a long bony finger at Isabel, who just rolled her eyes. “You always have been! Since the very beginning!”
“Oh, please,” Isabel said indignantly.
“You are,” Morgan said, turned on her heel, and went down the hallway to the bathroom. “Because you weren’t his type.”
“Oh, that’s right, Morgan,” Isabel yelled, following her even as the bathroom door slammed shut. “I want to be the one engaged to a baseball player who’s already balding, cheats on me with other women, can never give me a straight answer about the rest of our lives, and couldn’t get over the Mendoza Line if his life depended on it!”
There was a silence. Then Morgan opened the door.
“His batting average,” she said coolly, “has greatly improved this season.”
“I don’t give a shit!” Isabel screamed.
The door slammed shut again.
“Mendoza Line?” I said.
Isabel stomped back to the living room, cranking up the music. “It’s a baseball thing. It means he sucks.”