Fat Cat

by Robin Brande

  "You keep saying 'interesting.'"

  "No better way to describe it," she said. "You'll see."

  My bowels were the least of my worries this afternoon. I had zero energy. I felt like death. I was finally hungry, but I didn't feel like eating what I could eat, and couldn't eat what I wanted to (like that nice big cinnamon roll I saw up in the cafeteria).

  I took one bite of banana, then put it aside.

  "Honey," my mom said, "are you sure about this?"

  I put my head down on the desk and moaned, "No."

  Day 2 (cont.)

  Total food intake: One bite banana, one slice dry toast (bread processed and full of preservatives, but safety exception, since subject appears to be dying).

  14

  Day 3, Saturday, August 23

  A little more human. Barely.

  I opened one eye, testing the situation.

  Head? Still attached. Still achy, but not nearly as bad as yesterday.

  Stomach? Still a little queasy, but also so empty I could eat a whole boatload of bananas.

  Mood? Hmm ... hard to tell. It might take some interaction with my little brother to really test that out. Last night he got on my last nerve by asking me, "You sure I can keep your TV? You're not kidding? You swear?"

  "YES!" And then I cradled my poor head in my hands because some unthinking person had just shouted.

  I think I fell asleep around seven-thirty last night. One minute I was reading about the Abolitionists and the next it was morning. That combo of starvation and caffeine deprivation must do wonders for insomniacs.

  But now it was morning and it was time to test my legs. I swung them over the edge of the bed and stood. Tried to stand, I mean. My head got all squirrelly, and I had to collapse back onto the pillows or I would have pitched straight down to the floor. I lay on my back for a few minutes and waited for everything to stop feeling like a bad carnival ride.

  And that's when I knew I can't keep living like this. Either I have to give up and go back to my modern ways--Diet Coke (bless you!) and all--or I need to figure out a way to get through the next seven months without suffering every day. Otherwise there's no way I'll make it.

  The fact was I needed food. A LOT of it, and NOW. Fruit and water for breakfast just weren't going to cut it. I was truly dying.

  What would Hominin Woman have done? Saturday morning, 1.8 million years ago. She'd been scavenging all week, running with the men, maybe supervising a kid or two, but this particular morning she decided to kick back and do a little cooking.

  Was it going to be nuts and berries again? No way. They could have that any day. No, I think today she woke up starving, and she decided to make something special.

  Like maybe an early version of pancakes--without the butter and syrup, of course. Or how about some bread? They did have this kind of wild-growing grain called goat grass back then, even though it's not exactly like what we have right now. But I can adapt.

  The closest I could find to a natural grain in our kitchen was a box of plain oatmeal. So I treated myself to two bowls of it--just oats and water--with sliced bananas and walnuts and raisins on top. BLISS.

  But it wasn't enough. I'd been almost entirely without bread of any kind for two days already (except for the emergency toast), and there was a hole in my stomach the size of a loaf.

  Which led me to my first big ethical question: Am I allowed to make bread or not? Even if my cave woman had grain, it's a separate step to say she figured out how to mill it into flour. And then another step to say she knew how to combine it with other ingredients to make some sort of bread. Not to mention figuring out how to bake it.

  But I do know how to do that, right? If I were transported back there in a time machine, I'd know to gather up grains and start smashing them into a powder. I'd know to add some water, mix in a little honey (they had bees back then--I checked), maybe add a stolen bird egg or two, and then cook the thing on top of a hot rock. I would be the most popular cave girl in the region.

  So that's what I decided: I'm not going to penalize myself for my skills, I'm going to take advantage of them.

  I mean, what's the point of knowing how to cook if you can't actually save your life with it? Cooking is just chemistry. You take a little of this, a little of that, you keep tasting it and adding a little more, and pretty soon you're feeding your entire cave family a nice, nutritious meal of fried insects and leftover rabbit and a soft slab of bread. Right? It's just science.

  Not that I'm going to start cooking insects and rabbit. The point is I can do this. I, more than anyone I know, should be able to live for seven months without a food processor, a mixer, a microwave, and normal ingredients like sugar, butter, and premade salsa. Throughout all of history, the great cooks have had to take what they found around them and make the absolute best of it. We've all just gotten lazy since then.

  I can do this.

  Cave Girl Cafe, now open for business.

  15

  "What if I hadn't stopped by?" Amanda asked, slathering another slice of bread with that forbidden ingredient, butter. "Were you going to tell me?"

  "How?" I said. "I can't use the phone."

  "We need to work out smoke signals or something," she said. "Two puffs for 'fresh eats.'" She propped her high heels up on the chair next to her and closed her eyes while she savored another mouthful. "I think I'll just skip work and stay here."

  She always dresses so elegantly for her job. She's the hostess at the fancy Greek restaurant downtown, and even though the only requirement is that all the workers wear black and white, Amanda always takes it up a notch.

  This afternoon it was a knee-length black skirt, high heels, and a crisp white button-down shirt open just enough to show a light pink cami underneath. A long gold chain, a few gold bangles, gold hoop earrings--the whole outfit looked stunning. She'd swept her brown hair up into a loose bun so the tendrils wisped down around her face. And her makeup was just perfect.

  The thing is Amanda never busts out that look for school. She's strictly a cargo pants, flip-flops, and T-shirt kind of girl, with very minimal makeup. She and Jordan had already been going out for a month before he stopped by the restaurant and saw that his girlfriend actually looks like a model. If he hadn't noticed the cool poet girl in his class before then, that certainly would have done it.

  Every girl needs a friend who really knows about being a girl. Until I met Amanda, I was just a science-geek tomboy hanging out with the boys--well, one boy. She's the one who taught me everything I know about bringing my scary mane of curls under control and highlighting the good features on my face while concealing the bad. Now I may not be any better-looking in my natural state, but at least I know how to hide more of my flaws. When I can use makeup. Which, I have to say, I really, really miss.

  Amanda helped herself to a fourth slice of bread. That's the other thing about her--she can eat whatever she wants and never gain an ounce. She's got the metabolism of a wood chipper. If she weren't so nice and completely unconceited, it would be easy to hate her.

  "What's for dinner?" Amanda asked, getting up to snoop in the pots.

  "Pasta, veggies, and I guess I'll be making another loaf of bread--"

  "Cave people had pasta?"

  And there it was--my second ethical dilemma.

  Because here was the situation: I needed to get groceries this afternoon. There was hardly anything I could eat in the house, and so I needed to stock up. And while I was at it, I thought I could pick up a few ingredients and make dinner for my whole family tonight. Kind of as an apology for what a monster I've been to live with these past few days.

  The grocery store is only a few miles from my house. It was daytime. So even though it was furnace-hot outside, I didn't really have an excuse for not walking. I brought my backpack with me to carry the groceries home.

  By the time I got to the store, I was hot, tired, and hungry. And even though I really intended to just get fruits and vegetables and some dried beans or som
ething, I got lured away.

  Because right next to the dried beans were all these beautiful packages of pasta. Curly ones, flat ones, spinach ones, whole wheat ones--all of them so lightweight and easy to carry home and cook up once I got there.

  And some of them were made of just flour and sea salt--no fancy chemicals or preservatives. That was okay, right?

  Except it wasn't. Because premade pasta clearly violated rule #1: no manufactured or processed foods.

  But I bought it anyway. Even though I know how to make my own pasta--something I learned during Italian Week at Amanda's and my cafe. But making it from scratch takes a long time, and it doesn't always come out right, and I was tired and hot today and didn't feel like it.

  There. That's my reason.

  I explained all that to Amanda.

  "Whatever," she said. "This whole thing is already crazy. I say anything you can do to dial it back must be right."

  "You're not disappointed in me?" I asked.

  She scoffed. "Kitty Cat, the only thing you ever do that disappoints me is live the life of a hermit. Other than that, you can do no wrong. And one day, when you actually allow yourself to have a boyfriend, you will have reached perfection as far as I'm concerned." She checked her watch. "Gotta go."

  That conversation really made me feel a lot better. But the true test is going to be hearing what Mr. Fizer has to say. He wants to see our research notebooks every Monday. I'll have to give him a full and detailed confession in there and just hope I haven't violated the spirit of the project already before the first week is even over.

  Meanwhile, pasta me.

  16

  "This is good," Peter said as he shoveled in another forkful of my spinach pasta primavera. My dad nodded and kept chewing.

  "Excellent, honey," my mom said. "You're hired."

  "Gee, thanks."

  "I'm serious," she said. "If you'd like to make a little extra money every week, I'd be happy to hire you as our personal chef."

  "Great idea," my dad said.

  "But--" I didn't want to say anything in front of Peter, but I knew they probably wouldn't want to eat everything I might make. My dad and Peter are pretty partial to their hot dogs and microwave chimichangas.

  But then something occurred to me--a way to make my life a little easier.

  "Would you do all the grocery shopping?" I asked my mom. "If I gave you a list?"

  My mother is no slouch at negotiation. "It depends. How many nights would you cook?"

  "How many would I have to?"

  She thought about it for a moment. "At least four. That seems to be how many nights we end up ordering takeout."

  Then she added the clincher. "And we'll pay you what we save on restaurants."

  Considering how paltry my college fund is at the moment, that was too good to pass up.

  Besides, I can make a few meals ahead on the weekends and just pop them in the oven when we get home from work. And maybe on the other nights I'll just fix something my father can cook on the grill. A few side dishes and we're there. And now that I'm not watching TV anymore, I actually have the time to cook and still do all my homework.

  One more thing. "Do I get to decide what to make?" I asked my mom.

  She understood my issue--it had to be something I could legally eat. "Sure."

  "Wait," Peter said, "I want pizza."

  Whole wheat dough, fresh tomato sauce, veggies, some mozzarella and pepperoni on their half--

  "Okay," I said, "I can do that."

  "Once a week?" Peter pressed.

  My little brother and I shook hands on it. The deal had been struck.

  "How come you even stopped cooking anyway?" Peter asked. He took another bite. "You're really good."

  "Uh, I just got really busy. With school and stuff."

  "But you could have done it in the summers like before."

  I got up to start clearing the table, even though I was the only one done eating.

  "Yeah," my dad said, "why didn't you? It seemed like you and Amanda had a lot of fun with that."

  I took my plate into the kitchen. This conversation would be much easier if I were in another room.

  "Well, you know--I had math camp the year after, then chemistry camp, and then last summer I worked in the lab...."

  Blah, blah, blah.

  They might buy it, but no one who really knew me would. Because the real question, I could have told my little brother, wasn't why I stopped cooking after that summer. The real question was why I ever started.

  And only Amanda, Matt, and I know the answer to that.

  17

  It was at the seventh-grade science fair. I had just won--my first time ever. Or since. I was so ecstatic. My parents rushed over to hug me, Amanda was there, and I kept waiting and waiting for Matt to show up. He was in the convention center that night--he'd been competing, too--and I couldn't imagine why my best friend in the whole world hadn't come over to congratulate me the way I'd done all the years when he won.

  So I went looking for him. Amanda came, too. I'd just started being friends with her a few months before when she got switched into my English class. I thought she was so funny and nice and talented, and we ended up hanging out a lot during school. All the rest of my free time I still spent with Matt.

  So there Amanda and I were, happily walking along, me so excited to share the night with Matt. But then we got closer to his booth, and suddenly my whole life changed.

  We didn't mean to eavesdrop. We came around the corner of his booth and I saw Matt talking to this despicable guy named Willie, and I slowed down and backed up and that's when I overheard them.

  I still wish I hadn't.

  But the truth is the truth. And science deals in truth.

  And the truth is what Matt said stabbed me in the heart.

  18

  I was deep into calculus after dinner tonight when there was a knock at my door.

  "Cat?" Peter called. "Can I come in?"

  That was kind of odd, but I said, "Sure."

  I get along with my little brother just fine, but we don't really have a habit of stopping by each other's rooms to chat. His hair was wet from the shower and he was already wearing his sleep T-shirt and shorts.

  He sat on the floor just inside my door, like he was afraid to come all the way in. "Can I ask you something?"

  Uh-oh. For a minute I thought he was going to continue grilling me about why I'd hung up my spatula.

  But I played it cool. "Sure. I'm ready for a break."

  "Um ... you know the cafe thing you and Amanda used to do?"

  "Yeah."

  Peter picked at my carpeting. "Is she ... gonna come back? You know, and be your waitress?"

  "I doubt it," I said. "She has a real job now. And I doubt I could pay her what the restaurant does."

  "How much ... would you pay?" Peter asked, not meeting my eye. So now we were getting to the real issue.

  "Why do you ask?" I said, smiling to myself in relief.

  Peter had been talking mostly to the floor, but now he lifted his eyes. "Could I be your waiter?"

  "Sure--you really want to?"

  Peter nodded.

  "Okay, you're hired," I said, holding out my hand. I left it there until he pushed off the floor and came all the way over to me.

  "How much?" he asked, taking my hand.

  I thought about it for a moment. "Three dollars a week?"

  Peter obviously learned his negotiating skills from our mother. "Ten?"

  I sucked in a breath. "That's pretty steep--Mom and Dad aren't really paying me that much."

  "Five?"

  We shook on it.

  "You'll have to dress up," I added, just for my own amusement. "You have to look like a real waiter."

  "Okay," Peter said very seriously. As soon as he left and shut the door, I snorted to myself. What a funny little kid--so weirdly earnest sometimes, like he's already in his forties or something.

  I wanted to call Amanda so badly. Or
at least send her a quick text: uv bn rplacd.

  I know it's only been three days, but can I just say how much I miss my phone? And my music and IM'ing and my blow-dryer and makeup and junk food and normal life and everything that goes with it?

  Am I really going to do this for 204 more days?

  19

  Day 5, Monday, August 25

  Breakfast: Oatmeal, banana, walnuts, honey.

  Technology avoided: Last night I experimented with using candles instead of electric light. It takes five candles to provide sufficient light for homework--only three if I'm using the computer. Used the computer this weekend for homework only. Resisted checking e-mail or playing music or cruising any of my usual Internet sites. In some ways those things feel even harder to give up than chips and candy.

  And just on a personal note, I'm beginning to see what Nancy meant about my digestive system--"interesting" is right. Yow. But it actually feels really good--like I'm getting rid of a lot of gunk. I just don't think that's the kind of thing Mr. Fizer or the judges need to know.

  I did, however, include in my notebook a full list of everything I've eaten since last Thursday, including the peanut butter and honey sandwich I made myself for lunch today. The peanut butter came from a jar, but the only things in there were peanuts and salt, so I figure I could have duplicated that at home with a bag of peanuts and a hammer.

  But rather than just wait and worry about whether or not Mr. Fizer would approve of all these minor modifications, I decided I'd bring it up with him myself this afternoon. He told us last Friday that we can meet with him as often as we want to make sure our projects are progressing the way they should. I don't want to get two months into this and find out I've messed up.

  But when I got to class, I saw I wasn't the only one having a problem.

  Kiona was already off in a corner with Mr. Fizer, looking all stressed, showing him the picture she had chosen and discussing it in an intense whisper. I tried to read their lips, but Amanda is much better at that than I am. Thanks to our Sign Language classes, she can eavesdrop as far as her eyes can see.