by Cassie Mae
“Heard that one already, Silverman.” He smirks. “Time to be more original with your insults.”
I put the heel of my hand against my mouth and blow a loud and proud raspberry in his direction before I turn to leave the sweaty weight room and head to the very cold girl’s locker room.
“Hold up!” he calls from behind me. I don’t exactly stop and wait for him, but I do slow my pace. “You know,” he says when he catches up, “Fall formal is a week away, and I still haven’t gotten an answer.”
“Don’t pull that crap with me. I’m not saying it again.”
“Technically you didn’t say anything. You said you were going to answer in a ‘fun’ way.”
I roll my eyes. “It was implied, wasn’t it?”
“I think I deserve my fun answer.”
“Okay, Drake.” I nod over his shoulder at the room we just left, then put on a perky and very high voice. “I can’t weight to go to the fall formal with you.”
He shakes his head, crossing his arms. “Wow. I’m impressed by your effort.”
“Thank you.”
“And your ability to pick up sarcasm.”
“My, you are full of compliments today.” We start walking toward the locker rooms, and I elbow him in the side.
“Very unlike me.”
“Indeed.”
The hallway splits, and he heads right while I go left. There’s no need to say “See you later” or “Goodbye” because we’ll see each other in about ten minutes out on the track, rain and all. I’m in unusually high spirits today, mostly because of my run-in with Oliver earlier. We never did settle on if we were hanging out this weekend, but I mentally made it a group thing so it makes it more… non-date-ish. Guess I need to suck up my pride and ask Tiff and Fartbucket to accompany us.
I do my usual locker room gym clothes swap, meaning I pretend to take forever to untie my shoes, and start changing my gym shorts for my cross country shorts all underneath my very large gym shirt, and by the time I’m done my entire locker row has cleared out. It’s not like anyone watches other girls get dressed and undressed and so on. Actually, I think we all pretty much lightning speed our way through it while keeping our eyes glued to our open locker in front of us. But I really don’t want to risk someone accidentally glancing in my direction, and then find out that the Sharpies have debuted via Twitter.
Hashtag, OMGinger.
I hear the last locker door slam shut a couple rows over, and I peek around and watch Riley Thompson walk out the locker room door. Now I have about two minutes, three tops, before the rest of the cross country team comes in to change. I whip off my very overlarge gym shirt and toss it into the community laundry bag Coach Dicks takes home every Friday. We used to be able to do that ourselves, but there were a couple of girls who “forgot,” and well, the smelly complaint resulted in this solution.
The tape around my bra is starting to get a little too sweaty, and I quickly glance at the clock to see if I have time to fix the problem. It’s quiet, and if someone walks in, I suppose I can duck into one of the bathroom stalls without being seen.
I grab one end of the tape, close my eyes, and hold my breath. The echoing creeeech makes me wince, but not as much as the pain of duct tape being yanked off the skin it clung to for an eight hour school day. My chest is a bright, scary red, and there are lines across my sides from where the tape dug in and cut off circulation.
I let out a long breath, wiggling around a bit before I have to confine them again. Funny how I was complaining a month ago about the extra weight hurting my back, and now with the tape I don’t think my back’s ever hurt more.
The clock ticks up above my head, but I’m still very much alone. I reach in my locker for my extra set of tape and my cross country shirt, but all I get is cold metal.
Pushing up on my tippity-toes, I peek on the upper shelf, heart starting to thump hard and loud behind my unrestrained and very exposed chest.
Nothing. There’s nothing in my locker. I keep my cross country uniform up on top, my gym one at the bottom. My shorts were here, so where the heck is my shirt?
Oh my gosh, the clothes I was wearing to school aren’t even here. I hope Dad isn’t too attached to that shirt I borrowed.
The locker room door creaks open, and in a panic, I rush to the laundry pile and pray that the top shirt is the one I just threw in there, but the laundry is gone. Coach Dicks must’ve grabbed it. Or I am losing my dang mind.
Voices start getting louder, and I do what I had planned before—dive into a bathroom stall. Though I’d planned to have a shirt with me, and now I’m just a half-naked runner afraid of anyone seeing what’s underneath the giant t-shirts.
The girls on the team start laughing, and I hear locker doors and some gossip, but nothing huge. I climb the toilet like the floor is hot lava and crouch so that there isn’t a risk of seeing any part of me.
“Whose phone is this?” someone says—sounds like Bridget. “It was just sitting here on the bench.”
“I’ve got mine,” Hadley says.
“Me too,” says someone else.
“Maybe it’s Ginger’s? She might already be out there.”
Oh my gosh, it is mine. I have my phone! I can call Tiff, and she’ll bring me a shirt.
“Should I just leave it here?” Bridget says, and I nod to the floor, hoping the vibrations make their way to her in some sort of translatable morse code.
“I’d put it in her locker. The door’s still open.”
Then my foot slips on the toilet seat and plunks into the water. Oh gross, oh gross, nasty, disgusting, water people pee in… I choke back bile and try to shake off my foot while balancing on the seat, but I slip again, rolling my ankle and crashing to the floor. Here I am, wedged between the toilet and the stall, wet foot high up in the air while the other is somewhere under my butt.
Thank heavens my uncoordinated moment happens right as someone shuts their locker, covering up the curse tumbling out of my mouth.
“Hey,” someone says… sounds like Chrissy. “Do you really think she ran that fast?”
“Ginger?”
“Yeah. I mean no one saw her do it.” A pause. “And we’ve all seen that she’s… rounded out over the summer.”
My mouth pops open in disgusted shock as I carefully peel my body from between the toilet and the stall and get back up on the seat. Chrissy and I always get along. It’s not like we’re friends exactly, but we’re friendly. I hope one of the girls has my back out there. If I was wearing a shirt, I’d have my own back.
“Well, we can ask her when we get out there,” Hadley says.
“Ask her what? To prove it?”
“No, just ask her when she ran.”
“I don’t know,” pipes up Bridget. Her voice sounds a little muffled like she was talking while putting on her shirt. “Maybe the guys did what they said they were going to.”
“Tell on Coach Fatty?” someone snorts, and I do not find it funny at all. In fact I’m pretty sure I go up in flames and evaporate all the toilet water underneath me.
“Maybe we should see if she can beat our times.” Chrissy laughs and someone slams their locker shut. Their voices and laughter get closer as they walk past the potties, and then they’re cut completely off when the door to the field shuts behind them. I gently step off my perch, stretching my legs, and start counting to two hundred.
Does no one like Coach Fox? Because, as mad as I was that I could’ve been kicked off the team, I don’t think she’s a bad coach. What she did to bring the team together was great to see—actually, it’s the part of the reason I want on the team so badly—but maybe I’m the only one who notices.
And just because someone’s a little bigger around the middle doesn’t mean they can’t do something.
Or bigger around other places.
One-hundred ninety-eight, one-hundred ninety-nine, two hundred.
I unlock the stall and peek out, covering the Sharpies and being careful on tile since my
shoe is still wet, and I don’t want to crash land on the yucky bathroom floor again.
They closed my locker for me, so I quickly open it, grab my phone, and get back to the stall in case one of them comes back. I’m sure they’re bound to notice my absence since they want me to “prove my time” and all.
I swipe the call button for Tiff—a button I rarely use, but calling is going to be faster than texting right now.
“Um… hello?”
“Please tell me you’re still in your car.”
“Are you in the bathroom?”
“Yes.”
“Hang on, I don’t know if I have anything. Let me check.”
“Tiff, what are you talking about?”
“Tampons. You need one right?”
I wish it was only that. “I need a shirt.”
“Um… nasty! I do not need to know how bad it is, Ginger.”
“No, I need a shirt. Someone took my shirt out of my locker.”
“What? Who would do that?”
Funny how that question didn’t pop into my head until she put it there. “I don’t know. But could you get to my house and bring me another one? I need one from my dad’s closet.”
“I am not going into your parents’ room.”
“You said you owed me. I’m cashing in. Please, Tiff.”
She pauses for a torturously long second before giving in with a growl. “Fine. Be there as soon as I pluck up the nerve to open your parents’ closet.”
“You are the best, best, best.”
We hang up, and I crouch back up on my toilet perch. I hope she gets here quick, because cramped legs are going to kill to run on.
***
My stomach looks like it could talk to someone. There are lines forming across my abdomen, crinkling my skin, rolling up against the duct tape across my chest. I poke at it, inserting my finger to the first knuckle, prodding at the months of laziness that have solidified themselves on my body.
A frown forms on my lips, and I rest my chin on my knees and concentrate on the chips in the paint on the back of the bathroom stall door. One of them looks like a cupcake, and it sends a wave of regret through me.
This just sucks.
I already have to watch what I eat, and now I feel like I can’t eat anything at all.
Why didn’t I run this summer? I love running. Running is my obsession. Yet I sat on my butt and chilled on the beach, without a thought or care to what the consequences would be.
But what in the world did I do to grow from raisins to cantaloupes?
I hear the locker room door creak open, shaking me from my miserable mind.
“Ginger?” Tiff hisses, and I let out a relieved breath and slowly stretch my legs down from off the toilet seat.
“In the stalls.”
Her flip flops smack the tiled floor as she patters in. Seconds later a big shirt flops over the top of the stall, sending a wave of Dad’s scent in my face.
I start singing, “Did you ever know that you’re my heroooo?”
Tiff giggles. “Listen to our generation’s music. Please.”
“Never.”
She waits outside while I toss on the baggy clothes and thank her a million times over.
“I don’t know how you’re going to run in those,” she says, her eyes giving me a once-over when I step from the stall. “I almost just brought you something of mine.”
“Like they’d fit,” I grumble to myself, but I forgot to take into account the bathroom echo. Tiff’s teasing smile fades quickly into a frown. She looks down at her stomach, pulling at the hem of her shirt and then crossing her arms over it, as if she has something there to hide. A jolt of realization hits, and I rush to correct my mistake.
“Your clothes would be too small on me,” I tell her, but she’s already shaking her head.
“Whatever Miss Fastest Runner in the School.”
She honestly looks dejected. Dejected in her perfect body and blonde hair and freshly kissed lips—which I don’t ask about. I look down at my own body, covered in three sizes too big clothing, and there are still bumps despite the force of the tape around my chest, and I can barely see my feet. An uncontrollable snort rumbles through my nose.
“Come on,” I say, hitching a hand on my hip. “I know you’re curious about why I’m wearing this crap.” I drag my hand along my torso, gesturing to the Yeah, I’m in my Thirties printed across just under my braline. It manages to get a laugh out of her.
“Hey, I was gonna say something, but the look seems to be working for you.”
“How do you figure?”
“You’ve got a fall formal date, don’t you?” Her eyebrows waggle. “Aaaand, I’ve heard another someone has been asking you out.”
My arm drops from my hip. “How’d you hear about that?” I’ve been tight-lipped about Oliver, mostly because I’m in denial—someone that adorably charming can’t be interested in me like that. I start wondering if Coach Fox is a blabbermouth because she is the only one with a connection to the guy.
Tiff shakes her head like I’m an idiot. “He’s been telling everyone you guys are like, ‘a thing.’ I was gonna ask you, but we’ve been… I mean, I wasn’t sure if you were still mad about Marcus and me. Asking to double seemed like pushing it.”
Now I’m lost.
“You lost me.”
“Jamal.” She waves her hand out, and my eyes pop wide. Confusion settles in her eyes as she slowly asks, “You guys are going out now, right?”
I wildly shake my head, my frizzy brown curls thwacking my cheeks. Red hot butt-kicking anger steams up my neck and shoots out my ears. Tiff’s mouth is wide open, like a frog catching flies, and she dives into the gossip that I’ve been completely oblivious to.
My wardrobe is the talk of the sophomore class—really, people?—and Drake apparently came to my defense, and Jamal got all up in his face, saying that he and I are “a thing,” but Drake said he’s going with me to the formal. I’m fuming by the time she’s done. Not only at my friends doing all this behind my back, but at the Sharpies for causing all the drama.
It’s their fault; I know it somehow. Drake saw them at my party, and now my guy friends have turned into poop-flinging apes.
“So, you and Jamal…?” she asks again. I shake my head and manage to answer through gritted teeth.
“Friends.” I let out a humorless laugh. “For now anyway. I may kill them both.”
She nods with enthusiasm, and I love her in that moment, and not just because she told me everything, but also if she hadn’t raided my father’s closet, I’d still be perched half naked on top of a questionably sanitary toilet.
She snatches at my forearm so suddenly I nearly jump from my shoes. “Wait… do you have someone asking you out?”
I try to rewind the conversation to where I slipped, but it’s been about fifteen minutes, and I track it back that far.
“Um…” And my traitorous cheeks fill with blazing heat.
Her mouth splits open into a wide smile. “Omigosh, who?”
“Geez, chill.” I chuckle, quieting her squeal. “It’s not a big deal.”
“Who who who?” She’s bouncing now.
“You don’t know him.”
“I know everybody. Don’t lie.”
“I’m serious.” Even though my smile is widening, my stomach zoo is perking back up. Admitting a crush is so much harder than having one, I decide. “He doesn’t go here.”
Her enthusiasm doesn’t wane in the slightest. “What’s his name?”
Here it goes. “Oliver.”
Her face does a slow motion crumple, like when someone finds a basket of kittens. “Awww—”
“Okay, stop,” I tell her through a laugh. My stomach is going crazy. My hands are shaking, and my toes are wiggling in my shoes. I jam my fingers in the hem of my shirt, refusing to go boy crazy. Tiff’s been waiting for me to gush over a real-life person and not someone on our shows. I’ve been more about being one-of-the-guys than actually �
��gushing” over one of them.
“Okay,” I say, just wanting to get it out of the way in one, quick tug, “don’t squeal like a monkey again, but I kinda need you and Far…Marcus to double this weekend.”
She has to clap her hand over her mouth to contain the freak-out. I put one up against her mouth too because her excitement needs to be even more muffled.
“That’s a yes?” I ask. She nods under our hands, and then voices from the gym door come filtering in.
“…knew it, right?” Bridget says through a laugh, and the other girls all laugh and agree to whatever she was saying. They come around the first corner—all of them dripping from the downpour outside—and spot Tiff and I. We drop our hands.
“Oh, hey,” Bridget says quickly, her wet cheeks burning red. “There you are.” She looks to Hadley on her left, who’s playing with her slippery water bottle.
“Uh, Coach wants to see you,” Hadley says, and then they go off to change, leaving a trail of water behind her. I flick my eyes to Tiff, who gives me a “Good luck” half smile before saying, “I’ll wait for you in the lot.”
I have no doubt that we’ll be having a much looonger conversation tonight.
16
A Stalker by any Other Name
For the first time since I’ve known her, Coach Fox doesn’t look happy. Her highlighted hair is frizzy from the rain and falling from its low ponytail, and her lips are chapped and turned down in a frown that reminds me of Mom when Dad doesn’t ask for seconds on an experimental meal she’s made. She waves me in, and I gently push the door closed, to the dismay of the runners lingering in the locker room.
“Take a seat,” she says, her voice suddenly salty when I’m used to sweet. I lower into the chair, ignoring the pinch of the duct tape as my skin rolls over it.
Coach studies me, and I let my eyes wander around the room as my discomfort grows. I didn’t think this woman was capable of intimidation, but here I am, under her microscopic stare, being silently lectured. The clock ticks above her head, and the second hand starts to move backward, and I can feel my heart in my brain, and I clear my throat, swallow, cluck my tongue, and wait forever and a day before I finally can’t take her scrutiny anymore.