Chubby Chaser

by Kahoko Yamada

  Sara didn’t believe him at first; she couldn’t afford to. If her mom had truly passed, who would go with her to the mall and make her feel pretty while she tried on hideous plus-size clothing? Who would look at her artwork and praise it? Who would she talk to, as in, really talk to? Who would she admire and look up to? Who would be her friend?

  By the time of her mother’s funeral, her mother’s death still hadn’t sunk in; Sara hadn’t even cried yet. She thought something was wrong with her. How could she not shed a single tear for her mother? How could she not shed a single tear for her only friend? It wasn’t until it came time to go back-to-school shopping that it hit her: She was trying on a pair of jeans in Lane Bryant, and she wanted to ask her mom whether they made her look like a hippo. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t because her mom was gone. She was gone and she was never coming back. Her tears had taken three months to come, and when they finally came, they came like a rushing flood, pelting down and visibly wetting the carpeted dressing-room floor.

  Sara shook her head to clear her mind and focus on the movie. But the movie had already ended. And her plate was empty.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Jason gripped the armrest of his seat with his left hand and the ass of the girl bent over his lap with his right. He loved it when girls licked the slit in his dick. The girl currently giving him oral pleasure was Amanda Peyton, a cute, little brunette he hooked up with that weekend—after Emily—and went to school with. They were actually in the school parking lot right now. It was the first day of classes after summer vacation, the parking lot was packed, and people were constantly walking by. At any moment, one of them could look over and see what Jason and Amanda were doing. It was all just so . . .

  “Uh!” Jason cried out as he ejaculated into Amanda’s mouth.

  Amanda sat up, her lips pursed and her face panicked. She opened the passenger door with amazing celerity and spat a few times. She turned to Jason, anger replacing the panic that had been on her face. “Why didn’t you tell me you were about to come?”

  “I’m sorry, baby. I forgot. You were so good, I couldn’t think about anything else.” He smiled at her and flashed his puppy-dog eyes (girls always fell for his puppy-dog eyes). Jason actually hadn’t forgotten, but he liked to come in girls’ mouths when they blew him, and if they said no when he asked, he would do it, anyway, and claim he had forgotten when they called him on it, feeding them the exact same lines and puppy-dog eyes he had just fed Amanda. And they always forgave him.

  “Just don’t let it happen again,” she said, wiping her chin with a wipe from her purse. She checked her hair and makeup in the sun-visor mirror. “You wanna stop by the mall after school?”

  “Can’t. I got football practice.”

  “Well, what about tomorrow? I’m free then, too.”

  “I can’t do tomorrow either.”

  “Why not?” Amanda asked in an accusatory tone.

  “Because—”

  “Because you’re with Emily, aren’t you? You’re dating Emily Bulstride!”

  “No, I told you already that wasn’t true.” Jason had run into Amanda at the mall the day after sleeping with Emily at Eric’s party and chatted her up. She had been interested, but she had been reluctant to do anything with him, because word had gotten around that he and Emily were together. Jason had denied it, but apparently, Amanda was still having trouble believing him.

  “Then what is it?” Amanda demanded to know.

  “My grandmother is sick.”

  “Your grandmother is sick?” Amanda asked, her tone changing from one of accusatory anger to compassionate concern.

  “Yeah, real sick. She’s moving in with us this week, and I have to come straight home after school to take care of her on the days I don’t have football practice.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know.”

  “Yeah, I really don’t like to talk about it. My grandma and me are so close. If anything ever happened to her . . .” Jason put a hand over his face and pretended to cry.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m such a bitch for giving you a hard time when your grandma is sick. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “No, I’m fine. I just need some space for a while to deal.”

  “I totally understand.”

  The first bell rang. It was to alert students that they had ten minutes to get to class.

  “Well, I gotta go. Call me if you need anything, okay?”

  Jason nodded, his hand still covering his tearless face. He breathed a sigh of relief once Amanda was gone. Why did girls always have to make a big deal about sex? If they weren’t so sensitive and clingy, then guys wouldn’t have to lie to them and cheat (it’s not cheating if you only tell a girl, I want to be exclusive, to get sex) on them.

  The first half of the school day wasn’t much fun for Jason: he had Sociology, AP chemistry, and AP English for his first three periods, and Eric wasn’t in any of them to keep him entertained; he didn’t even have Andy for company. Fortunately, they all had the same lunch period. Collin Holt; Amy Reed, Collin's girlfriend, whom, unbeknownst to Collin, Jason had fucked; and Matt Sudekis, a guy who was a point guard on the varsity basketball team and who was best friends with Collin, joined them at their lunch table.

  “I can’t believe I got stuck with Mr. Harrison again,” griped Eric. “He has the worst case of BO. It was so bad I thought I was gonna blow chunks first period.”

  “I see your bad-BO Harrison and raise you the spitting Mr. Clay,” said Amy.

  “Spitting is nothing. You can move to the back of the class to get away from spitting. There is nothing, I mean nothing, you can do to escape Mr. Harrison’s funk. It fills the entire room like one big, gnarly, everlasting fart.”

  “At least you never had Mr. Vanderhoss,” argued Collin. “He called me a fucking loser in front of the whole class sophomore year.”

  “That’s because you told him your dog ate your homework,” Andy pointed out.

  “But my dog really did eat my homework. After I fed it to him.”

  Everyone laughed.

  Eric took a swig of his Coke. “So what about you, J? Got any first-day horror stories for us?”

  “No. My classes and teachers are pretty much blah. The only problem I face is dying from boredom.”

  “That’s because you don’t have me there to make you laugh. Don’t worry, you’ll have your boy back by sixth period.”

  Jason, Eric, and Andy all had AP calculus together, sixth period. Jason understood how Andy got into the class, but Eric?

  “Hey, look! It’s Darlene!” Eric said urgently.

  They all turned to see Darren Parker sitting at a table by himself. Darren was a short, scrawny gay kid who would come to school wearing makeup and girls’ clothes and then would have the audacity to get upset when people called him Darlene and gave him a hard time—as though he hadn’t been asking for it.

  Today, Darren was wearing a black Lady Gaga T-shirt with matching leather leggings and wedge sandals. The entire table erupted in laughter at the sight of him.

  “Why doesn’t he just wear a shirt with the word fag written on it?” Jason quipped.

  “It’d get the same message across a lot more efficiently,” said Andy.

  “Come on, guys,” Jason commanded. The first day of school had been dull as dirt so far; messing with Darren would be a nice way to liven things up. He grabbed a bottle of Coke off the table and walked over to Darren’s table, with Eric, Andy, Matt, and Collin joining him. They surrounded Darren, so he’d have no way to escape. Jason sat in front of him; Eric sat behind him; and Andy, Matt, and Collin were on the opposite side of the table.

  “Hey, Darlene.” Jason grinned innocently at Darren.

  Darren tried to make a run for it, but Eric held him down.

  Eric put his mouth next to Darren’s ear and whispered menacingly, “Where the hell do you think you’re going, Darlene?”

  “It’s Darren, Neanderthal. Now get your hands off me.” He tried to sound
tough and masculine, but Jason could see the fear in his eyes and could hear the lisp in his voice.

  “Neanderthal. Wow. That’s a big word for such a little girl like you, Darlene,” Jason said tauntingly. “Where’d you get it from, the sissyonary?”

  “It looks like he got his clothes from Sissies-R-Us,” Eric interposed.

  Jason looked down at Darren’s leggings. “Yeah, speaking of, are those real leather?”

  Darren looked at the bottle of Coke in Jason’s hands then at Jason. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

  “I just wanna know if those are real leather, I swear,” Jason promised. He saw Eric smirking at him from behind Darren.

  “Yes, they’re real leather,” Darren sighed.

  “See, that’s all I wanted to know. And since you’re being so nice, I’m gonna be nice and buy you a drink.” Jason began to slowly unscrew the top on the bottle of Coke.

  Darren screamed, “No!” and moved to stop him, but Eric covered his mouth and held him down. Jason loved watching the dread get to Darren: Darren knew what was about to happen to him, could see it coming from a mile away, but was powerless to stop it, because Jason was in complete control. Jason finished removing the top and poured the entire bottle on Darren’s leather leggings.

  Tears ran down Darren’s face, mixing with his makeup. The turbid mixture dribbled onto the hand Eric covered Darren’s mouth with.

  “Ew! He got his fag gunk all over me.” Eric pushed Darren to the floor.

  “And by the end of tonight, you’ll transform into one of them,” Jason said ominously, as Darren ran out of the cafeteria, sobbing.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sara pulled up to the school’s student parking lot in her red Volkswagen Jetta with a grimace on her face: she had always bemoaned the return to school, because it meant another nine months of suffering the fools of the Tallis High student body. Fortunately, this was her last year, and if everything went according to plan, she would be attending Wesleyan University next fall, where she would finally be among her intellectual peers.

  She came to school a little early that day to talk to her guidance counselor, Mrs. Townshend, about applying for early admission to Wesleyan. Reaching across her seat to the passenger side, Sara grabbed her backpack and then climbed out of her car, her bitch face firmly in place in case any of the jackasses who populated the school tried to mess with her, though they usually left her alone these days.

  As she crossed the parking lot to get to the school, she turned and saw some dumb slut in a car giving a guy a blow job! In broad daylight! What the fuck! Sara turned away quickly, scrunching her face up in disgust. One more year, she told herself. Just one more year, and she would be free. Life would be much better after high school; “It gets better after high school” had to be a saying for a reason.

  Mrs. Townshend was a sweet fifty-year-old woman, who kept a jar of bite-size candy bars on her desk (which Sara loved) and always smelled as though she bathed in perfume (which Sara didn’t love). She looked over Sara’s records on her computer before turning her attention to Sara. “Honestly, you’re a shoo-in for Wesleyan even if you don’t apply early admission. Your GPA is perfect, you’re a lock for valedictorian, you scored a twenty-two hundred on your SATs, an eight hundred on your SAT math subject test, and a seven hundred on your SAT writing subject test. Then you’ve got your art portfolio, which goes to show you’re well rounded and passionate about something. You still need two teacher recommendations though. How are you looking on those?”

  “I’m on good terms with all my teachers, so I shouldn’t have any trouble getting recommendations.”

  “Good. What about your essays? You can use your art for the one that requires you to write about one of your extracurricular activities or work experience, and you can write about anything you want for the other one.”

  “Um, I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “What about your mother’s passing? You can write about how that’s affected you as a young girl going through puberty without her mother.”

  “No way.”

  “But—”

  “No.”

  “Okay, well, try to come up with some other ideas. You have until November, so there’s no big hurry. Your stats will be the most important part anyway.”

  The bell rang.

  “That’s the first bell. You better get to class.”

  “Okay.” Sara grabbed her backpack (and a few candy bars) and left, wiping the sweat from her brow on the way out.

  Mrs. Townshend was such a bitch. How could she even consider asking Sara to exploit her mother’s death for a college essay? If Sara had to stoop that low for admission to Wesleyan, then she didn’t want to go there. She did still need a topic for her second essay though. At first she thought about using her hunting and shooting experiences but then quickly decided against it: with all the school shootings that have occurred, that might make them averse to admitting her, and she didn’t want to seem too weird or out there. Ooh, I know! Sara thought as she finished her last candy bar. She tutored her fellow students to cover her National Honor Society community-service requirements. She could write about that and how it gave her so much joy to help her peers succeed academically. It was total bullshit, of course, but colleges ate stuff like that up.

  Sara loved the order of her classes. It allowed her to get all of her least favorite subjects (AP English, French, and AP government) out of the way first and saved all of her favorites (physics, anatomy and physiology, and AP calculus) until after lunch. Sara didn’t like English class, because it usually involved reading some boring book or play, like Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, simply because it was a classic. She loved to read but preferred to pick her own material. She didn’t mind French that much, but it wasn’t the language she wanted to study. She wanted to learn how to speak Japanese and Chinese, but her school didn’t offer those. She had to take at least two years of a foreign language to graduate, and French was the best of a bad bunch (French, Spanish, and German). As for AP government, she simply found politics boring, but it was another class she had to take if she wanted to graduate. She could’ve taken regular government and regular English and regular calculus, but AP classes looked better to the college-admissions people. And because AP classes required at least a B-plus from last year’s class, there were fewer dunderheads in the classroom, though a few riffraff always managed to sneak in, usually jocks and their female counterparts (cheerleaders).

  When it was time for lunch, Sara went out to her car to eat. She had been avoiding the cafeteria since eighth grade. Kids had always made fun of her for how much she weighed, how much she ate, and the way that she ate, but that year they had done something particularly heinous to her.

  Sara was sitting by herself in the cafeteria, eating a slice of pizza, periodically dipping it into a small container of ranch dressing, when Kimberly Weitsel came over and sat next to her. Kimberly was pretty and popular, and for the life of her, Sara couldn’t figure out why Kimberly would want to sit next to her.

  “Do you know who Lady Gaga is?” Kimberly asked.

  “Y . . . yeah, I know who she is,” Sara stuttered, nervous.

  “Everyone keeps saying I look like her, but I don’t know.”

  “You’re a lot prettier than her.”

  “I am?”

  Sara nodded enthusiastically.

  “Thanks. You’re really pretty too.”

  Sara shook her head and looked down. “N . . . n . . . no.”

  “No, really, you are. I just love your hair color. It’s so different looking.” She stroked a strand of Sara’s dark-red locks. “Is this your natural hair color?”

  Sara nodded.

  “I’m totes jealous. All I have is lame, boring brown hair.”

  “B . . . b . . . but it’s very nice brown hair. Very pert and shiny.”

  “Pert?” Kimberly clearly didn’t know what the word meant.

  “Y . . . y . . . yeah, pert, as in
‘nice, attractive’, you know?”

  “You’re so smart. Yet another thing about you to make me totes jealous.”

  Sara smiled. Kimberly was one of the prettiest and most popular girls in school, and here she was, saying she was envious of Sara. It was as though her birthday and Christmas had fallen on the same day. To Sara’s surprise, Kimberly continued to have lunch with her for the next two weeks, and it was a great boon to her: she felt the anxiety and trepidation that had plagued her for years when it came time to go to school begin to dissipate; she felt more comfortable speaking up in public; and for the first time, she felt as though she had found a true friend.

  That was all shot to hell when Kimberly brought a bag of homemade chocolate-chip cookies for lunch and gave two to Sara. Sara thought they tasted great. She didn’t even notice a problem until near the end of the class she had after lunch. Her stomach cramped, and became hot and bloated, as though it were filled to the brim with molten lava, and she could feel intense pressure in her anal region. She had diarrhea.

  She trotted up to the desk of Mr. Whitman, her English teacher. “Mr. Whitman, may I use the restroom, please?”

  He looked at the clock. “I can’t give you permission to do that. There’s only five minutes left until the end of class, and as you know, Ms. Krason, students aren’t allowed out during the first or last five minutes of class.”

  “Please, Mr. Whitman, it’s an emergency.” She leaned toward him and whispered, “I have diarrhea.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard that one before, Ms. Krason,” Mr. Whitman chuckled. “I never thought I’d hear it from you though.”

  Sara held her stomach and clenched her anal sphincter muscles; the heating and bloating were getting worse, as was the intense pounding in her anal region. The sound of laughter made her turn around. Kimberly and the people she was sitting with were looking at Sara with sly grins on their faces and tittering. Sara knew immediately what had happened. It was the cookies. Kimberly had pretended to be her friend to set her up with the cookies.