by Donna Cooner
I glare back at him. It’s already blazing hot. I can feel the sweat rolling down the side of my neck and I’m sitting still. Even Rat is sweating, his forehead beaded with moisture. He stands up suddenly, pulls up the hem of his T-shirt, and wipes his brow off, revealing a tight six-pack of muscles across his stomach. My breath catches in my throat.
He notices me staring. “What?” he asks.
“Have you been working out?” I ask, still staring at his ripped abs.
“Brazilian jujitsu. It’s a martial art based on ground fighting. Derived from the Japanese martial art of Kodokan judo in the early twentieth century, it favors leverage over brute strength.” He pats his still-exposed stomach with one hand, and I feel my throat go dry. “Great for your core muscles.”
Obviously.
“How?” I stammer.
“Over four centuries ago in northern India, Buddhist monks developed a form of fighting that allowed them to subdue opponents without killing them. Eventually it made its way to Japan, where it was improved upon and called jujitsu.”
“No, I mean . . .” How did you get to look like that without me knowing? I stop myself from saying that last part — just barely — and try to cover up my confusion. “How did it get to Brazil?”
“Oh that.” Rat drops his shirt back down over his stomach, and I let my breath out, not realizing I’d been holding it. He continues enthusiastically, “In the early nineteen hundreds, Japanese judo master Mitsuyo Maeda came to stay with Brazil’s Gastão Gracie. Gracie helped Maeda with business in Brazil and Maeda taught Gracie’s family judo.”
“Okay. Okay. Got it.” I hold my hands up, stopping him from continuing. This is the Rat I know. He will go on for hours if I let him. He stops the informative lecture, but adds one last thing.
“You should try it.”
“He’s seen your stomach. He knows you could never do anything like that,” Skinny says.
I’m mortified at the comparison between my bare stomach and his. “I think this is plenty for me right now,” I say, pointing to my sneakers.
“All right, but if you change your mind, you can always go with me to my lessons.” He sits back down beside me on the step.
In a few minutes, Briella’s back, wearing some black Nike shorts and a sleeveless pink tank top. She bends her leg back and reaches down to grab an ankle, stretching it up behind her at an impossible angle.
Rat watches her with his mouth partly open. “You should stretch,” he mumbles in my direction.
Seriously? Give me a break.
“Hello,” I yell, waving my hand in front of his face. “Remember me? The patient?”
“What?” he asks, blinking back at me.
“Fat girls don’t run,” Skinny says.
“Okay. Let’s go.” Briella takes a few prancing, effortless steps forward and backward. I want to hit her.
“We’ll start out slow,” Rat says. Like there’s any other way for me to start?
We all parade down the front sidewalk to the street. I stumble forward into a sort of a trot/walk, Rat and Briella on either side of me. My knees hurt with each jarring step. Every part of my body moves and shakes up and down. I’m out of breath in a few steps, but I try desperately to hide it.
“You are pitiful!”
“I’m thinking we’ll just jog to the end of the street and then walk the rest of the way,” Rat says.
I nod, but don’t speak. I can’t.
Briella jogs ahead and then glances back over her shoulder. Obviously surprised at the pace I’m keeping, she slows down nd jogs in place until I catch up.
“When do you think you’ll start to really notice a difference in your clothes?” Briella asks, but I can’t answer. I have to breathe.
“I’m . . .” Gasp, gasp. “. . . not . . .” Gasp, gasp. “. . . sure.”
The truth is I’ve already noticed my clothes are not tight anymore. At least I think they’re getting looser, but maybe it’s all in my imagination.
“I anticipate she will lose approximately one size in clothes per month for at least the first six to seven months,” Rat says.
He isn’t even breathing hard.
“Wow,” says Briella.
The end of the street looks so far away. I want to turn back or at least stop, but my legs keep moving. Step after shuddering step, crashing painfully back down to earth over and over again.
“Stop. You can’t do this. It’d be easier to quit now.” Skinny sounds firm.
I jog forward a few more steps. The corner looks just as far away as when I started. I glance over at Rat. He looks like he’s lowed down to a crawl trying to keep pace with me. He’s not breathing hard. He’s strolling effortlessly.
“I’m thirsty,” I say.
“You’re right,” Rat says. “I should have brought a water bottle. You need to be drinking water every chance you get.”
I look at him, hoping that means we’ll stop.
“We’ll be sure and drink a glass or two when you get back.”
Great. I slog on, one bone-shaking step at a time.
“Why can’t she drink water when she eats?” Briella asks. I’m surprised Briella has even noticed. Still, she doesn’t have to talk about me like I’m not even here.
“I’m . . .” Gasp, gasp. “. . . right beside you.” Gasp, gasp. “I can hear you.”
Rat ignores me, too. “Sipping liquids with a meal will wash out the pouch, enabling her to eat two to three times as much, particularly with soft foods. It could cut the weight loss in half.”
“Interesting,” Briella says.
“Who’s she fooling? She’s never found you interesting in her life.”
I give up. Desperately sucking air into my lungs, I stop jogging and shudder to a walk. Briella and Rat slow to my pace. Mr. Johnson from across the street is trying to teach his daughter Katie how to ride her bike without training wheels. And next door, Mr. and Mrs. Burns are out in their immaculate yard doing some mysterious preparations for the coming summer that involve a wheelbarrow and several shovels. They all look up and watch the three of us slowly walk down the sidewalk. I feel a trickle of sweat on my forehead begin to roll down the side of my cheek; my shirt is a wet blanket against my back. We make a strange trio. Two tall, thin bookends with a huge, sweaty blob in between.
“So what’s up with your dad?” Rat asks my stepsister, and I stumble a few steps, then catch my balance again. No one asks Briella about her father. That’s a big no-no.
“He’s just totally focused on his new wife and new baby.”
I glance over quickly at Briella, shocked. She actually answered his question instead of storming off in a huff. “I used to be daddy’s little girl, but it looks like I’ve been replaced by daddy’s little boy.”
“That sucks.” Rat doesn’t try to argue with her, and I have to agree. It does suck. “His loss,” he murmurs.
“Yeah,” says Briella, and she grins at him. I catch the look between them and glance down at my sneakers trudging down the sidewalk. I don’t want them looking at each other like that. I don’t know why, but I don’t.
We slowly pass a yellow house on the corner with overgrown dandelions and a for sale sign in the front yard. It belonged to the Cat Lady, Mrs. Rattenborg. They found her two weeks after she slipped in the bath and died from hitting her head on the Siamese-cat-shaped soap dish. The animal control people were taking crates of cats away for days. I think the moral of the story is, if you’re going to wind up in life with only cats for friends, you should teach them to dial 911.
“Today, let’s go around the block. We’ll jog as far as you can, then walk the rest of the way,” Rat says to me. “Maybe you can jog the whole way by week six”
“I’ve already jogged as far as I can,” I whine. “Besides I thought we were just going to the corner.”
“Surprise,” Rat says with a grin.
My neighbor Mrs. Decker drives by in a blue minivan. Her kids stare out the window at us. Rat waves, and they wave
back.
“They’re laughing at you. Look at that fat girl out exercising. Hopeless.” Skinny isn’t out of breath. Her voice is just as steady as always.
“We should stop at the corner. This is my first day out.” I get the sentence out and take a couple more gasps of air. I can’t even walk and talk at the same time, much less jog.
“You should exercise at least ten minutes everyday this week. By my calculations, ten minutes will take us around the block.” Rat is immensely stubborn, but now that I know he’s measuring by time, not distance, I slow down even more.
“I’m not sure your calculations are right. It’s taking me a pretty long time just to get to the corner.”
“You doubt my calculations?” He honestly sounds amazed.
“Five minutes to the corner. Tops. Plenty of time to walk the rest of the block.”
“What about Lindsey?” Rat asks Briella, and they go back to ignoring me dying beside them. “Are you going to miss her?”
“Maybe I will at first, but in my mind Lindsey’s been gone a long time,” Briella says. “We haven’t been close for” — she pretends to count on one hand — “years, I guess. We’re really different.”
That surprises me. I always sort of lumped Lindsey and Briella together. Yes, they look different, but they are both perfectly beautiful. And both perfectly oblivious to me. My hair is a wet mess of sweat stuck to my hot head. The sun is so hot that the air feels like it’s scalding the inside of my throat.
A group of boys rides by on their bikes. I can hear them coming. I glance back over my shoulder.
“Here it comes.”
One of them yells back over his shoulder, “Like that’s going to help, lardbutt!” Their laughter floats back to us.
Briella takes off, running after them. Rat and I stumble to a stop and watch in amazement. One of the laughing boys looks back over his shoulder then shouts an alarm to his friends. They start pedaling faster, all laughter gone. It’s too late. Briella reaches the one closest to her and kicks the back tire with a force that sends the bike wobbling off toward the curb.
“You big chicken,” she yells at him.
“You’re crazy!” the guy on the bike yells. He gets his balance back, and rushes to catch up with his friends, who are now laughing at him.
“Yeah, and you’re scared of me!” Briella shouts back. She stops in the middle of the street, with both hands on her hips, breathing hard for the first time since we started. When Rat and I catch up, she grins at us in triumph.
“Why did you do that?” I ask in amazement.
“Wow,” Rat says. He looks at her like she’s Princess Leia or something.
Briella laughs. “They were idiots.” She slowly jogs around us in a circle, her cheeks flushed bright pink. “Come on, Ever. One more block to go.”
I’m confused. Did she do this for me or for that superhero-worship look on Rat’s face? Either way, all this drama means I can at least stagger my way to the end of the block at my own pace.
“It doesn’t matter what you do. It will never stop,” Skinny chuckles in my ear.
Chapter Eleven
What are you and Whitney doing today?” Dad asks Briella.
Whitney Stone, Briella’s newest BFF, leans against the kitchen counter in an ultra-fitted floral tank dress, tapping her French-manicured fingernails impatiently on the marble top.
At first, I was convinced she was hanging around Briella to get closer to Lindsey and the cheerleading squad, but now I’m not so sure. Evidently they bonded over a shared love of all things not Shakespeare in their freshman English class. Lucky me.
Dad looks like he’s drinking a cup of coffee and reading the paper at the table. Really, he’s supervising me eating, or trying to eat, breakfast. I have a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me, and I’m taking tiny, careful bites. Chew. Chew. Chew. I don’t want it coming back up. Dad glances up every time I swallow, then quickly looks back at the paper to try and hide the fact that he’s watching.
“Going to the mall. I have some money for school clothes. You know, child support.” Briella grimaces. Her dad always gives her a lot of money right before school starts every fall.
Usually, he also makes a big date with her to take her out to lunch and give it to her in person. Then he cancels it and a big check arrives in the mail a couple of days later. I wouldn’t want to choose between my dad and a pair of colorful beaded sandals and a vintage studded bag, but it seems to work for Briella.
“We’ll definitely be gone all day,” says Whitney. I knew Whitney and Briella were friends, but having her in my kitchen on a Saturday morning is completely intimidating.
One of the popular crowd, she dates that cute, six-foot-tall basketball player, Matt Lucero. She’s never actually said more than a few sentences to me before, and then only when absolutely necessary. Mostly she just looks at me as though I’m one of those huge Texas tree roaches that scatter across the garage floor when you turn the lights on. So I just sit in silence, trying to fly under the popular-crowd radar, and concentrate on the dreaded food in front of me. Bite by bite by bite.
“You want some breakfast?” Dad asks Whitney.
I know what she’s going to say. Wait for it.
“No, thanks. I’m dieting.”
Bingo.
Whitney wears a size zero and I know because she tries to work it into every possible conversation. It’s the only time when being nothing is a really big deal.
“Hurry up. The mall is waiting.” Whitney rubs her hands together in anticipation and grins. “Thank God for guilty fathers. Briella is a very expensive child to support. It’s going to take at least a day to spend all that money.”
My dad clears his throat uncomfortably, but he doesn’t say anything. It must be hard being a stepfather sometimes.
“The eggs are good,” I say, smiling at him. Chew. Chew. Chew.
Whitney is the fashionista of Huntsville High School. She always wears the latest and best. Lucky for her, she not only wears it well, but she can afford it. Her mom’s a lawyer and her father is a big plastic surgeon in town. He caused quite a stir when we were in third grade at Shady Grove Elementary School and brought along saline breast implants as props for Career Day. Some kids thought they were water balloons until he did a demonstration on the Reading Center puppet. He was never asked back. Maybe that was his point.
Wannabes stalk Whitney through the high school halls. If she wears patterned purple hose with a plaid skirt one day, the next day there’s always at least three more purple-patterned, plaid-skirt-wearing freshmen at school. I swear she could wear a big chicken costume one day and the whole school would be clucking around behind her within a week.
“There’s the cutest pair of brown leather riding boots in the window of Charli’s. I want to be sure and try those on.” Briella shoves a last bit of toast into her mouth and pushes back from the table. “I need them.”
I’ve seen Briella’s closet. She doesn’t need any clothes . . . or shoes . . . or purses. Whatever.
Another tiny bite. Chew. Chew. Chew. Swallow. Wait and see if I throw up. Dad glances up from the paper.
“Why don’t you take Ever with you?” my dad asks. I look up, startled. How did I get pulled into this? “She really needs some new clothes. All of hers are too big.”
Briella’s mouth falls open, and I stop chewing mid-bite. We both look over at Whitney, waiting to see how she answers.
“How embarrassing would that be? She has to come up with an excuse,” Skinny says.
“Good idea.” Briella and I both stare at Whitney. “It’ll be sort of like those makeover shows on TV.”
“Here’s my credit card,” Dad says, and pulls it from his wallet. “Have fun.”
I’m stuck. I can’t even think of a good excuse. Rat is working on some kind of computer system upgrade at the community center all day, so even he can’t save me now. The truth is I do need some clothes. School starts next week, and every thing in my closet is too big n
ow. What used to be the waist of my jeans now slides down over my hips, and I end up waddling around with the crotch halfway down my thighs, feeling like a toddler wearing tights three sizes too small. I just never intended to have an audience present when I went looking for my new size. Especially not an audience that includes Whitney Stone. Still, there’s not much I can do now but take the credit card, pull up my baggy jeans for the tenth time today, and squeeze myself into the backseat of Whitney’s white Accord.
Briella and Whitney talk in the front seat as though I’m not there. That’s okay. I bite my lip, worrying about how I’m going to ditch the two of them when we get to the mall. It can’t be too hard. After all, Briella and Whitney have a huge mall, with a ton of stores full of clothes in their exact tiny sizes, to browse through. They just can’t discover that I have to do all my shopping in one tiny corner upstairs at Macy’s where all the clothes come in giant sizes and look like something your grandmother would wear.
“You think they don’t know that?” Skinny asks.
When we park I jump out of the car.
“So where do you want to meet?” I ask, ready to put the plan into action.
“Oh, no you don’t. You’re not going anywhere. I’ve always wanted to do one of those makeovers, and you’re my perfect first client. You’re coming with us.” Whitney links her arm through mine, to both Briella’s and my shock. “Did I ever tell you I want to be a stylist?”
“No,” I say, anxiety making my hands sweat as Whitney drags me through the door of Macy’s and heads to the first section of clothes. Briella lags behind, but follows eventually.
“All the movie stars have stylists.” She starts flipping through racks of clothes in the first section right inside the door. She picks out two tops and then moves quickly to the next rack.
“Hummmm . . . this might work. And this . . . I don’t know about this one . . . but we’ll try it.”
Briella and I trail her in a daze.
“Here, take these.” Whitney hands me an armful of clothes. I don’t know how to tell her I need to go upstairs to the fat-people section.
“I don’t think they will fit,” I try to tell her, but she pushes me into the changing room and closes the door with a snap.