Fat Girl on a Plane

by Kelly deVos

  When I walk in, I’m already pissed. No one has said boo to me since my shitty weekend trip to NYC. Terri’s at the reception desk on the phone. I blur by Brittany’s and Shelby’s desks, and they aren’t there. They’re interns too, but they go to Mesa High.

  Marlene is in her office staring into space. Waiting for me.

  “You’re my best contributor,” she says before I can even take a seat in the chair opposite her. There’s a series of bulletin boards lining the walls covered with pictures of the season’s looks along with similar items from local boutiques. Other than that, this isn’t a fashionable office. The walls, the carpet, everything is gray. The boring metal desk could have been rented from anywhere.

  “Have you been getting my emails? My voice mail messages?” Marlene hasn’t spoken to me since I was locked out of the preview.

  “Things have been out of control around here,” she answers. “Terri’s just back today and then...”

  I ignore all of this. However busy Marlene has been, it’s impossible to believe she couldn’t manage to send a single text or email or to pick up the phone.

  “I always send glowing reports to the school.”

  “Some horrible hobgoblin took my seat at the G Studios preview,” I say. “And even worse, she seems to want to go all Single White Female on me and take over my entire life.”

  Her gaze darts back and forth. “Close the door,” she says.

  My heart sinks a bit as I get up to do this. I notice Marlene looks great. She’s lightened her long hair a shade, making it closer to platinum blond, and is wearing a pleated skirt that is either one of the best knockoffs I’ve ever seen or from the brand-new Proenza Schouler collection. You’d have to drop at least a grand to get a piece like that.

  “Roger left me.”

  “What?” I ask. I hate to say it, but my first instinct is to wonder what the hell Marlene’s husband has to do with the fucked-up situation in New York.

  I’m lucky that Marlene interprets my confusion as shock, because worrying about seeing the latest designer clothes when someone is telling you they’re headed for divorce court is kind of jerky. “It was sudden,” she continues. “Left me. For our dental hygienist of all people.”

  “Oh. God. I’m sorry. How are your kids?” Marlene has two kids in college, both at expensive East Coast universities.

  She shrugs. “They were less surprised than I was. I guess I didn’t want to see it coming.”

  Marlene stares into space again and then keeps going. “I’m worried. About finances. I won’t have Roger’s income. Tuition payments are coming due. Starting this website was my dream. But I didn’t think there was much of a choice. Last week, I sold it. I sold SoScottsdale.”

  Light bulbs are going off in my head. “To Jameson Butterfield?”

  Her shoulders tense and she frowns. “Terri told you?”

  I snort. “Please, Marlene. I can put two and two together. It was his ‘dumber than a sack of hair’ daughter who took my place in New York.”

  Marlene folds her hands on her desk and relaxes. “Butterfield’s been buying micro sites in emerging markets. B-Mobile wants to create a friendlier image, so they’re trying to advertise in different ways.”

  “Probably a good plan considering they’re being sued by the federal government for antitrust violations,” I grouse.

  “Yes. Well. He thought SoScottsdale might be a good medium and could also give his daughter an opportunity to develop some business acumen.”

  Oh, you have got to be kidding me. Kennes wants my BFF and my job? “The only thing his daughter is going to develop is a case of varicose veins from wearing heels that are so disproportionate to her height.”

  Marlene cocks her head and shifts into stern boss mode. “Cookie, you’re my best contributor. I hope you like working here and feel that your experience is helping to prepare you for college and for your future career. I don’t want to lose you. But if you force me to choose between you and Kennes Butterfield, I have to choose her. And that’s not personal. That’s me doing what I have to do to take care of my family.”

  I truly hate it when people tell you something’s not personal. All it means is that they don’t want you to make them feel bad for doing something really shitty to you personally. I glower at her.

  “I know you and Kennes got off on the wrong foot. But I promise, she’s not so bad. Give the new situation a chance. She’s going through some tough times at the moment. It’s not easy having the secrets of your parents’ marriage on the cover of OK! magazine.”

  This is the second time in one day that I’ve been asked to sympathize with someone who’s had every opportunity handed to her on a silver platter. I’m one heartbeat away from telling Marlene to take this job and shove it.

  But she says, “We’ll have a bigger budget and I’ll try to think of a way for you to get back to New York. Mr. Butterfield’s PR people have much better connections than I do. I’m going to do everything I can to get you to another event.”

  A carrot. A bit of hope. A tiny little chance I could make it to Parsons.

  Marlene gets up, opens her office door and motions for me to go into the conference room. “Hey, everybody. Cookie’s here,” she calls out.

  When I enter, Kennes is already in the room, sitting at the head of the long black table. It’s the two of us alone for a second. “Cookie, huh?” she says with a smirk. “What, was Doughnut already taken?”

  Before I can formulate a response, Shelby and Brittany come in. From the expressions on their faces, it’s clear they don’t know about the sale. Terri takes a seat and Marlene stands at the front of the room to make the announcement.

  When Marlene introduces Kennes as the new “associate editor” of the site, I’m pretty thrilled that my own revulsion is mirrored on the faces of everyone else at the table. Marlene makes a few more boring remarks about how this is the dawn of a new era, and then we’re back at our desks.

  The interns all share an area we call the bull pen. We’ve squeezed three computers, towers of magazines and even a small coffee maker into a U-shaped cubicle. It’s cramped but kind of cool. Sort of like a fort of fashion.

  I sit down and can’t, for the life of me, figure out what Shelby and Brittany are even doing. Brittany is inserting a pencil into the electric sharpener for a second, removing it and comparing it to other pencils laid out in a neat row on her desk. Shelby is on the phone. She listens to the phone, types a bunch of stuff on her computer and then listens some more.

  “Um... So?” I prompt.

  “So, Kennes is setting up her office,” Brittany spits out, like she’s been waiting for a while to get this off her chest. “She says neatness is next to godliness and needs all her pencils sharpened to the same length.”

  “No. Way.”

  Shelby presses three on the keypad to pause the message yet again. “I would kill to have that job. I’m transcribing her voice mail. She got all these messages from people in her family and wants me to type them so she doesn’t have to listen to them herself. If I have to hear one more old lady say, ‘I’m so proud of my little sweetums,’ I’m going to throw up everything I’ve eaten in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Wow,” I say with fake sympathy. Inside, I’m delighted they hate Kennes as much as I do.

  “How much would I have to pay you to back over me with your car?” Shelby asks. She wraps her thick brown hair into a top knot and resumes listening.

  “Enough to pay for my legal defense at least,” I say with a grin.

  I’m logging in to my computer as something lands on the desk with enough force to make the coffeepot vibrate. There she is. Kennes in her size-two distressed jeans and halter top.

  It’s a bit of a stalemate since she’s waiting for me to say something to her. But I’ve got all my energy invested in keeping myself seated in my chair and not jumping
up and head-butting her.

  “Marlene says you need this for the post.” She doesn’t offer anything in the way of introduction, nothing to acknowledge what has happened. “And I jotted down some notes. Go ahead and work that into a couple of blurbs and quote me in the piece.”

  On the desk, she’s dumped copies of pictures she took with her phone, a few scraps of fabric and an array of cocktail napkins from different bars with her notes on them. What strikes me right off is that everything in her notes is totally and completely wrong. The girl probably needs a personal shopper to keep track of her shoe size.

  The other thing is that the clothes in the pictures are fucking phenomenal.

  Kennes got to see them and I didn’t.

  I pick up one of her napkins, holding it by one corner using my thumb and forefinger. “Ah, so, for the record, you want me to quote you as saying these dresses have cap sleeves when they actually have kimono sleeves? And that those shoes are wedges when they’re really platforms? Should I include a key to your terminology? Like, today on SoScottsdale, we’ll be referring to dogs as cats?”

  Brittany lets out a single snort of laughter. Kennes’s eyes narrow and she pushes an empty cup in the intern’s direction. “How ’bout some more coffee, hon?”

  Brittany turns her back on Kennes and refills the cup with a dramatic eye roll.

  With her mug in hand, Kennes wobbles back to her office on the Gareth Miller heels I suspect she hijacked from the preview. She calls back, “Just email the story to me by tomorrow, Cankles, so I have time to approve it before it goes live on Wednesday.”

  Brittany stares back down at her pencils, letting her blond hair fall in front of her face. The three of us don’t talk for a while.

  Later on I’m doing my homework in my room. For English class, we’re studying the story of Pandora’s box. In retaliation for receiving fire from Prometheus, Zeus gives Pandora a beautiful box full of all the evils in the world. She opens it, inflicting suffering and even death on mankind. In class, we’re talking about how people always blame women for all the misery in the world.

  But there’s something else in the box. Hope.

  What does it say about life that the gods considered hope a misery?

  soScottsdale

  Title: Gareth Miller Gears Up for Fall

  Creator: Cookie Vonn [contributor]

  So, as promised last week, here is your exclusive sneak peek at what top designer Gareth Miller plans to send down the runway at New York Fashion Week!

  The collection is shaping up to be this wacky and weird combination of separates that don’t usually go together made from warm Fall fabrics that burst with the occasional neon pop. Here’s what SoScottsdale saw. An emoji cashmere sweater. A pair of baby blue corduroy shorts with a navy, rubberized trench. Bodycon dresses with kimono sleeves in plaids and houndstooths. Accessories such as bright pink bangle bracelets and construction-orange trucker hats. These colors, these patterns, these clothes aren’t supposed to work together.

  But they do.

  SoScottsdale’s new associate editor, Kennes Butterfield, daughter of ultrapowerful B-Mobile tycoon Jameson Butterfield (Disclosure: Butterfield is the owner of SoScottsdale and is currently under investigation for antitrust violations), gushed, “There was such a combination of styles and silhouettes that everything looked like everything. The kimono sleeves looked almost like caps. Platform boots suggested the always popular wedge.”

  There’s nothing left to do but wait for Miller to send these fresh, original, groundbreaking designs down the runway. Stay tuned for coverage of Fall Fashion Week.

  Notes: Marlene [editor]: Great job, Cookie! Remove the reference to Jameson Butterfield and have Kennes do a read-through of her quote.

  Notes: Kennes [associate editor]: BIG thanks for getting this done so quickly. Fix my quote to what I actually said. Also, I hope you know that I do not gush.

  SKINNY: Days 741–742 of NutriNation

  I hope I know what I’m doing.

  I’m at JKF standing outside the Admirals Club talking to Grandma on the phone. It comes as news to me that there is such a thing as the Admirals Club, which is a special lounge where rich people can wait for their flights without having to mingle with the common folk.

  Gareth goes straight to the bar and orders a Scotch, neat, while I dig in my purse for my last twenty. “It’s on me,” he says, tapping his fingers on the polished bar.

  I locate my money at the bottom of my bag, where it’s crumpled into a green ball. “Oh. I’ll have...I’ll have a Diet Coke. And I’ll...I’ll get the tip.” My mind races as I say this. Do I ask for change for my twenty? Or is twenty dollars even enough of a tip for the whiskey the bartender is pouring from a bottle shaped like Aladdin’s lamp?

  He grabs my hand and shakes it until I release my twenty and it disappears into the darkness of my bag. “Here’s a tip. When a gentleman is tryin’ to buy you a drink, say thanks and keep your money in your purse.”

  The bartender places a cocktail napkin on the bar and sets the soda on top of it. He’s chuckling and nodding like Gareth has delivered a universal truth, like the world is round or all squares are rectangles. Maybe it is a universal truth. In the international airports. The private clubs. The alternate universe inhabited by the thin and beautiful.

  As the bartender slides my soda down the counter toward me, he smiles and looks me in the eyes the way few strangers ever did in my pre-NutriNation days. Somehow it feels really phony to me.

  Gareth has moved on. He’s on the phone and is pretending to watch the stock market ticker whizzing by at the bottom of the television screen. I call Grandma, and she’s the first person who doesn’t respond to my news like I’ve just won the lottery or something. I can see her frown through the phone.

  “This sounds like some kind of harebrained deal, like what your momma would cook up, girl. And I ain’t too happy about any plan that involves leaving school on account of a man,” she says.

  “I’m not leaving school. They’re going to let me make up the work. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Even as I say this, it strikes me, down in some place I can’t allow myself to acknowledge, that she’s right. That I do sound like my mother. That I don’t think life is ever about a single, onetime shot. Every day is filled with opportunity. Every day can be made into something special. “The stuff I design will go in real stores. Then I’m going back to school.”

  “Well. I guess we’ll see now, won’t we?” Grandma says.

  Gareth doesn’t talk much on the plane. He gives me a geography lesson on Argentina, then reclines his first-class seat and goes to sleep.

  Salta, he said before passing out, is in the northernmost part of the long and thin country. Normally, he flies by private jet. It’s faster and he can have the plane drop him on a landing strip a couple miles from his ranch.

  Because we’re in a hurry for reasons no one has explained to me, Gareth didn’t have time to find a pilot. We’re flying commercial, and the flight isn’t nonstop. We have to land in Buenos Aires. Gareth said this several times, shaking his head in disbelief like he’d found out that the pilot was on a suicide mission to circle the sun or something.

  We’re on the plane for eighteen hours. Did I mention that?

  We’re on so long that I have no idea when day ends and night begins. So long that I wonder how the people back in coach are able to resist the temptation to oust us from our more comfortable seat beds in an airplane revolution.

  Clearly Gareth has traveled way more than me and has a whole strategy for dealing with the flight. He’s got noise-canceling headphones, a million books loaded on a Kindle and some kind of weird mask he probably ordered from a late-night infomercial that covers your eyes and ears.

  I have one book, a romance I finish before we even hit South America, a few magazines and a sweater I’m knitting from t
he brand-new, lipstick-red jersey yarn I special-ordered from London. I get through a whole sleeve as Gareth snores. At this rate, I’ll easily be able to wear my holey stitch design on the plane ride home.

  He shows signs of life as the plane taxis down the runway at the Salta airport. Outside, the climate feels similar to Phoenix, which is always warm and dry in September. There’s a limo waiting at the curb. Gareth ducks in without saying a word to the driver.

  “What time is it?” I ask Gareth.

  “A little after four. Did you sleep on the plane?”

  I shake my head.

  “Probably for the best. You’ll sleep well tonight.”

  There’s a glass panel between the limo driver and us and I can see my refection in it. I can almost see the airplane grime that covers me. The weirdest part of the whole thing, though, is that I’m traveling with someone I barely know. I don’t know what the rhythms are to Gareth’s life. When does he eat? Or sleep? Or exercise?

  “I need a shower,” I say. “How long does it take to get to your ranch?”

  “About two hours,” he says.

  I slump in the seat, getting ready for a long ride. But he says, “I thought we’d stay in town for a few days.”

  “Really? Why?” I ask.

  He doesn’t look at me as he gives his first two reasons. He’s checking his phone, reading messages that mostly appear to be from Nathan. “The ranch is in the middle of nowhere. It’s easy to get lost. I don’t like to drive up there at night if I can avoid it.”

  He turns to face me. Somehow, he’s even more dark and handsome than when he stepped on the plane. The stubble on his face is forming a beard that borders on suggesting danger.

  “You asked what inspires me. Well, you should see Salta, especially at night. There’s an exact spot in Julio Square where Lerma stood when he founded the city in 1582. There’s over four hundred years of life here. People walking in the cobbled square, working in the buildings, worshipping in churches that became more modern and more French and Italian as Argentina became a cosmopolitan country. I draw a lot of my ideas from the town. It’s where I come to see color and shape.”