Fat Girl on a Plane

by Kelly deVos

  Great. Now I’ve ousted my arthritic grandma from her bed.

  “Could be good news,” she says. She puts on a new pot of coffee. As the machine starts to gurgle, I pick up the mail.

  On top there is a large envelope from Parsons.

  The letter reads, “Congratulations! On behalf of the Admissions Committee, you have been offered a place at Parsons The New School for Design.” There’s a bunch more paperwork in the envelope. Grandma grins at me while I leaf through it.

  Page two tells the whole story. It’s labeled “Financial Aid Award Notification.” Underneath the header, “Expected Financial Aid,” there’s a big fat zero.

  Grandma’s still smiling. But it’s over.

  My dream of going to Parsons is dead.

  soScottsdale New Feature Proposal

  Cookie’s Manifesto

  Dior once said, “No one person can change fashion—a big fashion change imposes itself.” Until recently, I thought he was wrong. I thought that anyone could change fashion the instant they wanted to pull something different from the closet.

  But I’ve realized Dior is right. Fashion changes when ideas change, and right now the world is ready for a big change.

  It’s time to give everyone the same opportunity to look and feel beautiful. It’s time to embrace fashion and beauty ideals that are accessible to all.

  My new feature The new world order isn’t about skinny jeans or halter tops or feeling bad because you’re not a fourteen-year-old Eastern European model. But it’s not about shaming people who can eat boxes full of Twinkies and still stay a size two either.

  We need fashion and style for all girls everywhere. We need fabulous fashion finds from size two to thirty-two. We want a place for style that will put a smile on your face.

  It’s time for fashion that makes people feel happy.

  SKINNY: The odyssey of Day 822 continued

  “I’m a big fan of your blog.”

  This is what Fred LaChapelle says to me.

  There’s this whole awkward interlude where I stand at the door and stare at him. I try to take the bottle of wine and almost drop it. Three times. Nathan comes to rescue me. LaChapelle finally gets inside the penthouse and somehow the wine ends up in the kitchen.

  Gareth comes down off the ladder, takes one look at my face and shows me some pity. He ushers LaChapelle into the living room, makes sure he gets something to eat and drink and starts a conversation about holiday decor.

  When I’ve had time to adjust to the fact that the guy I’ve been hoping to meet for years is sitting next to me at a party, Gareth steers the conversation back to me. “I mentioned to Fred I’d like to keep you in New York.”

  Fred.

  Gareth’s on a first-name basis with someone I should be calling Dean LaChapelle.

  I think about all the questions I’ve dreamed of asking. What’s it like to mentor the top names in fashion? How does it feel to be in charge of the world’s most influential design school? But nothing comes out and instead I’m a spectator, sitting there like a well-behaved child who is quiet while the adults are talking.

  “Yes,” LaChapelle says. He’s got his crimson, striped tie in a Van Wijk knot, which I’ve never seen in person because you pretty much have to be a wizard to do it. He leans in toward me, as if we’re now very good friends. “Gareth mentioned you had an interest in Parsons and asked, in light of your studies at Arizona State and your successful blog, if I might be able to pull a few strings to enable you to bypass the usual application process. But as you were accepted last year, that doesn’t appear to be necessary.”

  There’s a pause and Gareth is frowning in a way that suggests we’ll be discussing this topic later on.

  “May I ask why you didn’t attend?”

  Everything about LaChapelle is proper and polished and friendly. Behind him, Gareth is the opposite, all raw animalism with the glow of the Christmas lights reflecting in his dark eyes like lightning over the Whitefish Mountains.

  They’re waiting for an answer, and there doesn’t seem to be any advantage in skirting around the real issue.

  “Um. I couldn’t afford it. My mom wouldn’t pay, and I didn’t qualify for any financial aid because of her income. I got a scholarship from ASU.” My face is turning red but Gareth relaxes back into his seat.

  “Ah, an easy problem to resolve now, I would assume,” LaChapelle says with a nod to Gareth.

  “Indeed,” Gareth answers.

  “Well, we’d be delighted to have you, Cookie,” LaChapelle says, although he’s still turned toward Gareth when he makes this remark. “Just delighted. I really do enjoy your blog. And as I was saying last week, the industry needs more of that perspective. How I would relish a return to a time of more generally accessible trends.” He turns back to me. “Of course, I’d arrange for you to get transfer credit for classes you’ve taken thus far and you’d be able to graduate on schedule, I should think.”

  LaChapelle pats my arm. “We need you, Cookie.”

  Gareth nods again. “Send me the paperwork,” he says.

  “Of course. I’ll need it back ASAP. The semester starts in four weeks.”

  Just like that, it’s done. In a single conversation, Gareth Miller accomplishes what I’d failed to do myself in three years.

  I can go to Parsons.

  The dream I’d let go of more than a year ago could now come true. My brain struggles with this reality. It’s as if I’ve bumped into a dead relative in the supermarket. Or found the set of keys I’d lost years ago and have long since replaced. Fate’s offering me a do-over. Or Gareth is offering me an opportunity I couldn’t get on my own.

  “Cookie. It’s snowing.”

  It’s Piper’s voice, coming from over by one of the floor-to-ceiling windows that line the back of Gareth’s living room. She and Brian are watching the weather with their arms wrapped around each other.

  Being from Phoenix, I have limited experience with snow. Somehow, though, this snowfall is different than what I expected. It’s coming down in round orbs, creating a pattern of different-sized white polka dots wherever the street and building lights shine into the city night. Clouds hover above the tall, tall buildings, and the snow has an impossibly long way to fall before it can build up on the rooftops and sidewalks.

  This must be some kind of a sign.

  A sign of what?

  I could stay in New York. But if I did, would I become one more white dot, falling in silence into a city waiting for me to blend into its walkways?

  FAT: Days 111–114 of NutriNation

  I spend the next week avoiding Tommy at school and ignoring the calls I receive from Marlene. I’ve permanently taken up a seat in the back of History class and will myself to focus on taking notes instead of staring at the back of Kennes’s head and trying to find a way to hex her Harry Potter–style.

  From Twitter, everyone on the planet is aware that Kennes spent last Saturday enduring the horror of shopping for “an off-the-rack dress at the last possible minute,” but that she triumphed and had a delightful evening of dancing at 00-Snow. Judging from the fact that I pass Tommy and Kennes sitting together, holding hands, as I carry my lunch to the Clothing room, the I can’t see you anymore conversation never happened.

  I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to make of that kiss behind the oleander bushes, and I try not to think about it. The truth is, in that moment, either Tommy was being a jerk to Kennes or he was being one to me. I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to try to analyze the latter scenario.

  Mrs. Vargas reminds me that I can’t dodge Marlene forever. “You’re getting school credit for your work at SoScottsdale,” she says.

  But I can’t go back. No retreat. No surrender. “What if I make my own blog? Using the idea I worked on in class?”

  Mrs. Vargas is cool and we agree that she’ll
be my faculty supervisor. I’ll have to put in the same number of hours as I did at SoScottsdale, and be able to prove it by keeping a log of my time. “You do need to advise your current employer of the change,” she adds. “I don’t want to get another phone call from Marlene Campbell.”

  Marlene always breezes out of the office around three, so I wait until after school and well past four to call in hopes of being able to leave a message. Sure, quitting by voice mail is tacky, and yeah, it’s what you do when you’re chickenshit. But this plan eases the weird fluttering in my stomach. And anyway, I’m pretty sure I’ve already burned the SoScottsdale bridge, so what the hell?

  Because this is my life and not some alternate reality where things work out as planned, Marlene picks up the phone on the second ring.

  “Hey, Marlene. It’s Cookie. Mrs. Vargas asked me to call and make sure it’s clear that I won’t be continuing my internship.”

  “Hang on, Cookie,” she answers. She puts down the receiver and I can hear her close the door to her office. “Okay,” she says. “Look, I know that thing with Kennes—”

  I interrupt her. I want off this call and I don’t want to rehash last Friday. “Marlene, I get it. You have to do what’s best for your family. And in this situation that means helping Kennes and not helping me.”

  “No, it doesn’t mean that.” Marlene surprises me with the force of her statement. She’s being loud. I have to hold the phone a few inches from my face. “This thing with Kennes, you’re letting it get the best of you. You’re so hurt and bitter because you think life is unfair—”

  “It is unfair!”

  “—that you can’t be objective. You can’t see that Kennes is all opportunity and no talent. But you’re all talent and sooner or later opportunity will catch up and you will know what to do with it. She won’t. You’ll have to work hard—”

  “She doesn’t have to work at all.”

  “—but you can make it. You can get where you want to go. Whatever her advantages are, she doesn’t have that shot. Not really, anyway. She’s only ever going to be Jameson Butterfield’s daughter.”

  “I won’t feel sorry for her.” I can’t keep the bitterness from my voice.

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  “I can’t come back to the blog.”

  There’s a pause. “I know. But, Cookie, my door is always open. I’m rooting for you. We all are. You’re stubborn. But if you take one piece of advice, take this. Forget about Kennes Butterfield and focus on yourself. You’re going to be fine.”

  I hang up the phone. I’m done at SoScottsdale.

  I fight the impulse to wallow. There’s no real point in thinking about how I didn’t get a send-off from the office or how a couple years of really hard work feels like a massive waste of time. I’ve got shit to do.

  Now I get to start my own blog. Yay.

  Who’s got two thumbs and can barely operate her iPhone?

  This girl.

  The one fringe benefit to high school, where people are sharply divided into cliques based on interests and appearances, is that it’s easy to figure out where to turn for expertise. It’s lunchtime on Friday, and I’m about to journey into the land of The Big Bang Theory.

  The computer lab is in the main Mountain Vista building on the side farthest from the football field. Black posterboard covers the windows, creating permanent night in a classroom that could best be described as a computer junkyard. There are beige towers and monitors and green components lying all over the place. I have to be careful where I place each one of my knockoff Céline wedges.

  I’m searching for Carson Graham. He’s one of the few geeks who’s ever made an attempt to cross over. Everyone knows he auditioned for the fall play and asked a drama nerd to the dance.

  He’s in the back corner, staring deep into his computer screen, and doesn’t notice me when I approach. I clear my throat. That doesn’t help.

  Before I can say anything, he says, “Where’s Rich? We need a shaman to do a solo wipe recovery.” There’s the faint sound of someone else talking and then, “Getting pizza? What the fuck? The whole point was to do this battle during lunch to level up the guild for later.”

  Carson’s talking into a small headset mic and listening to headphones. I walk around him to see a game of World of Warcraft loaded on his screen. My first impulse is to think, how typical. But then, I’m in the Clothing room sewing during most lunches, so I guess I’m not really any better than he is.

  “Yeah?” he says. He’s looking at me and, I think, speaking to me.

  “I need to talk to you about a project.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t talk to me?”

  “I can’t come over to your house and fix your dad’s wireless printer or figure out why your modem keeps going down or tell you why your iPad, iPhone, i-whatever won’t sync to the cloud.” Streaks of Carson’s greasy brown hair cover his forehead. He’s so white that he’d probably catch on fire if he went out into the sun. But otherwise, he’s not bad looking.

  “That’s not why I’m here. I have a deal to offer.”

  “A deal?” he repeats.

  “Yeah, I need to—”

  “Hang on. I’m about to be killed.”

  A second later, he removes the headset and I have his undivided attention. “I want to know if you’d like to swap services.”

  He eyes me with skepticism. “What exactly are your services?”

  I try to smile but it feels unnatural. “You do computers. I do clothes.”

  “You think I want clothes?” he asks.

  “You’re saying you’re deliberately going through your high school years in a uniform of stained Grand Theft Auto T-shirts and khakis?”

  “Well...” He glances down at his own shirt.

  “When you asked Hayley to the winter dance, don’t you wish the answer had been yes?” I ask.

  He shifts around in his office chair and in the monitor’s light, I can see his face turning red. “So you’re offering me the plot of the movie She’s All That?”

  “I have to set up a blog and I don’t think it’s going to come as a big shock to you that I need help. I’m offering you clothes in exchange. Three full outfits. Whether or not you want to dance around in a teen movie montage is up to you,” I say.

  “That thing with Hayley. Five years from now, I’ll have a seven-figure income and a house in Palo Alto. She’ll be on a barstool next to me begging for my phone number. Look at Zuckerberg.” Carson’s gaze returns to his screen and he makes a few taps on the keyboard.

  “Look at Steve Jobs,” I counter. “If you believe that Ashton Kutcher movie, he always got girls. And he wore nice clothes.”

  “Steve Jobs?” Carson repeats.

  He sighs and types for a couple more minutes. “I want five.”

  “Five?”

  “Five outfits.”

  “Deal.”

  It quickly becomes clear that I’ve gotten the short end of the stick. In about ten seconds, Carson sets me up with a website address and a site using WordPress. Half an hour later, he’s dressed the site up with the logos my Clothing class made and given me a crash course in how to blog.

  But a deal is a deal, so after my homework is done and the doughnuts have been made on Saturday morning, I spend the rest of the weekend sewing. Thanks to Grandma, three of her bingo buddies from church and Sewing for Boys and Men, we finish a collection that would be right at home on the rack at Banana Republic. Carson is a fashion noob, so I stick to a simple color palette. Basic blues and grays, khakis and a bit of black. I try to add a few techie touches here and there, like using a Space Invaders printed fabric to line the collar of a polo shirt and the waistband of the pants.

  I drop them off at Carson’s house late on Sunday night. The Grahams must be the perfect postmodern family, with a place in
posh Las Sendas and a giant Christmas tree in the window. He tries on a pair of navy slacks and a plaid button-up shirt. They fit great and the sky blue is especially good for his pale complexion. I’m getting pretty good at menswear.

  “This isn’t too bad,” Carson says. “I was sort of worried you’d try to dress me up like a boy-band singer or something.”

  As I leave he smiles and says, “Hey. Let me know if you have any trouble with the blog.”

  Perfect. Fashion changes lives, and I’ve got tech support.

  The next day I’m off to city court.

  The hearing goes better than expected. Grandma’s there and the judge seems to buy the idea that I’m a good kid caught in a bad situation. I get sentenced to twenty hours of community service. Grandma signs me up for work at St. Vincent de Paul, a food bank and homeless shelter. I’ll be making sandwiches on some days and going to grocery stores asking for donations on others.

  I volunteer for a shift on Monday after school at the Bashas’ Grocery near Mountain Vista. We work in teams of two, and it’s easy. We have a table inside the store, which we stock with generic peanut butter, jelly and bread. When people come by, we ask them to take some to the register, pay for it, and bring it back to us for the shelter.

  Julie from church is my partner. She goes to Mesa High and is volunteering to look good on her college application. She assumes I’m in it for the same reason, and I don’t correct her. We’re doing pretty good and have managed to convince shoppers to pay for most of the peanut butter we’d stacked on our table.

  “One of us needs to go back to the stockroom and get more peanut butter,” I tell Julie. We’ve been trained to go to the back of the store, ring a buzzer and wait for a store employee to give us more boxes of food.

  “I’ll go,” she says. She grabs the cart and heads toward the rear of the store.

  While Julie’s gone, Tommy shows up. Inwardly, I groan. Also, I sort of want to punch him.

  He’s got a third chair he must’ve lugged out of the store office. I don’t move over to make room for him. “You don’t need to be here,” I say coldly.