“Look, I just do,” Jake said.
Fat Angie looked over her shoulder. KC stood, her boots pigeon-toed. Fat Angie turned back to Jake. The equation of the moment was too complicated. She was terrible with numbers, her mother consistently reminded her. She was nothing like her sister. She was nothing. Tortoise in the Shell jamming, the villains dropping dead in the shoot-’em-up video game, and the smell of giant peanut-butter cups overwhelmed her.
“I gotta go,” Fat Angie said to Jake.
Jake cracked his neck, the sound painfully audible, and strutted out the door.
“Hey,” Fat Angie said to KC.
“Moment of awkward, huh?”
“Guess.”
“So, the Stacy Ann thing — back in the Hills,” said KC. “He’s not a hundred percent off and not a hundred percent on. It was just a different . . . crowd. Kinda.”
“I don’t care,” said Fat Angie. “I mean, unless you’re plotting to destroy my life.”
“Not likely.”
Sheepish smilefest back on.
“So, what are you drinking?” KC asked Fat Angie.
Fat Angie held the cup out for KC, who, upon taking it, touched Fat Angie’s hand. This sent Fat Angie into what some refer to as a maximum sensory overload. Butterflies swarmed in her stomach and mishmashed with the recently ingested concoction of soda and half-and-half. The girls’ exchange had a staying power foreign to Fat Angie.
Then.
Straw. Lips. KC’s eyes lifted. Angie’s heart seemed to split. That something that told Fat Angie to smile earlier in the cafeteria that day said, Speak, you freak! Speak! Say . . .
“I think you rock,” Fat Angie blurted out, unsure exactly what she meant.
The moment was stellar odd, complete with racing pulse accessories in the geekness of Fat Angie.
“I mean . . . um . . . I think . . .” continued Fat Angie. “Um, that you are . . . um . . . swell.”
Swell? Of all the words in the modern English language, including slang, Fat Angie had resorted to a 1950s Leave It to Beaver “swell.” The passion behind the word faded as she realized what had actually stepped out of her mouth.
KC’s expression held unreadable. Mad, sad, glad . . . hands down, she had mastered the poker face.
“Swell,” KC repeated. “Cool . . . I’ve never been a swell.”
“Yeah?”
KC nodded. Fat Angie nodded. So began a nodfest.
“You wanna go get some pancakes at an IHOP?” said KC. “I’m raging hungry.”
“Dryfalls is kinda a Waffle House town,” said Fat Angie.
“Way too truck stop,” KC said.
“The Kick You Like a Legend chicken-salad wrap is award-winning,” said Fat Angie, motioning toward the counter. “Picked Best Wrap in four counties.”
“Split one?” KC asked.
“Definitely.”
Just like that, KC Romance and Fat Angie walked side by side through the smell of lattes and pounding booming bass. There seemed nothing more normal in the world to Angie at that moment and she had no idea why.
Fat Angie had slept approximately four hours and fifty-two minutes after returning from The Backstory. As kids pushed past her in the hallway, all she could think of was KC’s grin the night before and that enticing purple heart tattooed on the side of her neck. So engrossed was she in the recollection that she nearly failed to see the tattoo come into full view as KC turned the corner. Fat Angie quickly rubbed sleepy crust from her eyes. The crusty flakes clung to her T-shirt. KC’s grin speared through the crowd and landed in the rapidly pumping heart of Fat Angie. The moment. It was swell . . . ing.
Butterflies-in-belly fluttered. It was as if the crowd of chattering, texting kids parted like the Red Sea for the sexy Ms. Romance. Stacy Ann Sloan took note of this phenomenon, mostly because the stocky jock she was talking to craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the Amazon beauty runwaying it like New York Fashion Week.
Fat Angie smiled.
She adjusted her backpack straps.
She tugged at her slightly too-tight T-shirt.
She gulped.
She leaned against the lockers with her right shoulder. That was awkward.
She stood with her weight evenly distributed.
She suddenly wished she had peed.
“Hey,” said KC, sipping something steamy from a tattoo convention travel mug. “Get any crash time?”
“Not really.”
“I’m not real big on the sleep gig,” said KC. “You can sleep when you die, right?”
The morbidity of the statement made Fat Angie uncomfortable to the nth degree.
PRESUMED DEAD
had been the headline on one website covering her sister’s disappearance. A video stream with Iraqi script along the bottom and top. Her sister seated at center for the whole world to see. Beaten, bruised, and forced to spit out a scripted plea for the release of Iraqi war prisoners. Beneath the dirt and blood, beneath the scripted plea to the world, her sister seemingly fearless. Even with a gun pressed to her sweaty temple. Fat Angie had downloaded the forty-five-second video and kept it in her desktop folder marked FAMILY PICS.
“What?” KC said.
“Nothing,” said Fat Angie.
“Doesn’t seem like a no-thing,” said KC.
Fat Angie fidgeted with her locker handle.
“Something you wanna tell me?” said KC, almost seeming to bait her.
“Um . . . no,” Fat Angie said.
KC dug around her tattered black messenger bag covered with underground rock band patches and political pins. Fat Angie noticed one pin with the peace sign in silhouette and a background of rainbow colors descending top to bottom.
KC held out a square-folded note with a purple heart colored in scented marker on the front.
“You wrote me a note?” Fat Angie asked.
“Guess I could’ve texted, but I’m old-school. Yeah, I wrote you a note. Think of it as the scratchings of a deranged young woman.”
No one had ever given Fat Angie a note, though many notes about her had been passed from desk to desk. Drawings with Fat Angie’s head on a pig’s body. Her feet as pig hooves. In one such note, her head from an eighth-grade class photo was taped on the body of Jabba the Hutt.
So a note for Fat Angie had become a rather impossible possibility, but there it was, resting softly in her palm. This was significant and required an immediate response. Fat Angie did not always do well at immediate responses. It was something the doctors at Yellow Ridge had diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Post-traumatic stress disorder (n): a psychiatric condition that can develop following any traumatic, catastrophic life experience.
The PTSD diagnosis infuriated Fat Angie’s couldn’t-be-bothered mother. She felt Fat Angie would use the diagnosis as an all-access pass to continue to behave “unusually.”
Rather than reading the note, Fat Angie feverishly dug into her backpack. After accidentally dumping the contents on the floor, she sifted through wads of college-ruled notebook paper, a series of pen caps, an unwrapped tampon, and a stick of Black Jack gum. She found her gem wedged between her science and history books.
“Here,” Fat Angie said, dangling a LIVESTRONG bracelet from her fingertips.
KC knelt.
“It’s not as cool as a note,” said Fat Angie. “But, um . . .”
“No, I’m with the ixnay on cancer.”
KC slipped off her Che sweatband and, as with a Cinderella slipper for the wrist, slid on the yellow bracelet.
She held up her arm to Fat Angie. “What do you think?”
Fat Angie had never given anything to anyone without a special occasion — well, except to her sister. “Cool . . .”
KC picked up the piece of Black Jack gum and slipped the stick in her mouth, drawing further attention to her lips.
The warning bell buzzed.
“We better fly,” said KC.
Fat Angie restuffed her backpack. Stacy A
nn Sloan glared as she walked past them.
“She really is a vicious bitch, isn’t she?” said KC.
Fat Angie adjusted her backpack straps. “You should meet my brother.”
The girls walked down the hall.
“You know what I don’t like about girls like Stacy Ann?” said KC. “Their innate ability to humiliate any and everyone, with no conscience. They’re just too scared to be who they really are,” said KC.
“She comes from a long line of fearless brothers and sisters. Her dad is like a supermarine or something. I don’t think she’s scared of anything,” said Fat Angie.
“Yeah, she is. She’s scared to death,” said KC. “Not like you.”
“I’m scared all the time,” said Fat Angie, unsure why she had just divulged such privileged information.
KC stopped in the middle of the hallway. Kids cut around them, between them.
Pause.
“I’ll see you at lunch,” KC said.
“Sure,” said Fat Angie. “See ya.”
Fat Angie stood at what could be described as a crossroads, if the halls were in fact roads, feeling so . . . STUPID! I’m scared all the time, she thought. That was beyond stupid. Fat Angie lowered her head and huffed to class. Her incredibly tight jeans felt tighter and tighter.
After stumbling around a corner, Fat Angie’s sneakers squeaked to a fast stop. Mid-hallway, Stacy Ann Sloan’s posse hung behind their queen in classic V duck-flight formation as the perfectly assembled girl bent over at the water fountain. When she straightened, the first thing she saw was Fat Angie. A drop of water clung to Stacy Ann’s vivacious rosemary lipstick.
“Why?” asked Stacy Ann, strutting toward the fat girl.
“Why what?” Fat Angie asked.
“Why are you walking down the same hallway as me?” Stacy Ann asked.
The answer was blatantly obvious to Fat Angie. The only alternative route would require her to run two flights downstairs, take three hall turns, and trudge two flights up again. That seemed excessive avoidance of any single person or thing. Unless the thing had fourteen heads, seven clawed hands, and a single eye. Then again, was there really much of a difference? Fat Angie thought.
“Well?” said Stacy Ann.
Fat Angie stepped around Stacy Ann and her ominous posse, when Stacy Ann grabbed the back of Fat Angie’s hair.
“Squeal, wacko,” commanded Stacy Ann.
That phrase was not foreign to Fat Angie. She had endured some variation of it, with the occasional tummy poke or oink sound, for some time. However, Stacy Ann’s direct command while holding Fat Angie’s hair threaded between her fingers brought the girl to her knees, a position of submission she had never assumed for anyone.
“Squeal,” Stacy Ann said, twisting Fat Angie’s unkempt hair.
Fat Angie’s resistance only increased the sting-ouch pain penetrating her scalp.
“Squeal,” Stacy Ann demanded.
Then Fat Angie let out, however faintly, a squeal.
“Louder,” said Stacy Ann.
Fat Angie’s body shook. It sweated. Tears welled in her eyes though none fell.
The posse giggled. They snickered. Their lip gloss glowed a muted red-green beneath the fluorescent hallway lights. What a vicious group of vixens they were. Even if one of them was the vice president of the Christians Against a Violent Society (CAVS). Clearly, she was not suited for that office.
Then the tardy bell buzzed.
“Shit,” said one of the posse. “We gotta go, Stacy Ann.”
“Mrs. Ermis will cut us slack,” said Stacy Ann. “Besides”— the girl’s grip twisted even tighter —“Fat Angie hasn’t squealed loud enough yet.”
Fat Angie’s jaw fell open. She panted in pain. Her head throbbed.
“Squeal louder,” ordered Stacy Ann, yanking Fat Angie to the floor.
Whether it was fate — or simply a teacher stepping out to urinate during his off period — the universe intervened.
“Hey,” said the teacher. “What’s going on there?”
Stacy Ann’s jaws-of-life grip loosened and the four of them smiled innocently.
“She fell,” said Stacy Ann. “We were trying to help her.”
The girls attempted to help Fat Angie to her feet but she flung loose like a crazy thing.
“It’s Angie,” said Stacy Ann. “The girl from the pep rally.”
The teacher stepped toward them.
“Oh. Yeah,” he said.
Stacy Ann leaned in to Fat Angie. “You say anything, pig, and I’ll kick your ass every day for the rest of the year.”
The teacher helped Fat Angie to her feet. “The rest of you get to class.
“You OK?” the teacher asked.
“Um,” said Fat Angie, massaging her head.
She wanted to rat out Stacy Ann. Describe every hair-pulling detail, leaving not one single agonizing moment of the humiliating experience to the imagination.
But she said nothing to implicate the rising pride of William Anders High — the honor-roll-listed, up-and-coming athletic queen. The girl most envied for playing the good, the bad, and the beautiful and still managing to seem like a fully fleshed-out character in a well-thought-out novel. Stacy Ann Sloan was scared of nothing. That much Fat Angie believed.
Fat Angie stood awkwardly, tugging at the inner thighs of her jeans to release a very uncomfortable pinching.
“You sure you’re all right?” said the teacher.
“I’m late. . . . Can you get me a pass or something?” said Fat Angie.
“Sure,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Let’s go.”
The two walked side by side, but Fat Angie was clearly walking alone.
Fat Angie eyed her Casio calculator watch. There were only five minutes left in lunch period. She saw Jake at a table of whiz-kid smart jocks. She saw Stacy Ann Sloan with the goodie-baddies. She saw the world of William Anders High in its pockets of cloistered peeps. And she sat sequestered from them with a trough of yuck in front of her. And no KC.
She slid the tray to the side and flipped open her spiral notebook to the ongoing letter to her sister.
She wrote: Today I stood up to Stacy Ann Sloan. You would’ve loved it!
Fat Angie stared down at the two false statements, the exclamation point pointing to no real excitement. She had cowered — she had caved. She had been nothing like her sister. She had been nothing but the “special” fat girl who’d squealed for Stacy Ann Sloan.
Beat.
Maybe that was what had kept the tough-cool KC Romance out of the cafeteria. Maybe she had heard — maybe everyone knew. Fat Angie surveyed the cafeteria with a more defined paranoia. She slammed her spiral notebook closed and dumped out her tray. Looking over her shoulder as she pushed through the glass double doors, she saw Stacy Ann sneering at her. Of course, everyone knew. Fat Angie could hide nothing.
After school, Fat Angie sat on a railing with the school bus brigade. It was an unpleasant ritual that only counting in her head could get her through. Until —
“Hey,” said KC from behind her.
Fat Angie stood. “Hey.”
“Sorry about lunch,” said KC, ripping into a Swiss Roll package. “Mr. Español-Is-My-Life-and-I-Never-Got-Any-in-High-School got his tighty-whities in a bunch when I mouthed off to him. So, I got stuck at lunch writing, in Spanish, some crap about maturity. Do you think food deprivation is grounds for a lawsuit? Your mom does the law gig.”
“Um . . .” said Fat Angie, her eyes on the Swiss Roll. “Yeah, but she’s more into mergers and contract stuff.”
“You want one?” said KC, holding up the Swiss Roll package.
“No. My mom’s . . . she’s kinda on me, you know.” Fat Angie covered her belly with her arms. “She says I’m not . . . um . . . that I . . .”
“What?” said KC.
“That I’m fat,” she said, ashamed.
KC nodded, all the while pensively chewing. “What do you think?”
“Hu
h?”
“Well, do you think you’re . . . overweight?” KC asked.
“Sure,” said Fat Angie. “I mean, everyone does.”
“You know, back in Beverly Hills, people thought I was so pretty . . .”
“ ’Cause you are,” said Fat Angie, immediately feeling self-conscious. “Um . . . you know. Like in the way new girls from somewhere else who are total packages are. Um . . . that’s not . . . um . . . what I . . .”
KC grinned. “Thanks.”
Dramatic pause.
“But see, it’s like, people are dense. Like, look at this package.” KC held up the Swiss Roll wrapper. “Doesn’t this Little Debbie chick look wholesome and happy?”
Fat Angie shrugged. “Yeah.”
“If she ate this shit all the time, she’d be all diabetic and miserable. She’s just a face. It’s make-believe. It doesn’t mean anything. You know?”
Fat Angie clearly did not know. More so, she did not know how to begin to know the complexities of KC’s analysis of body image.
“Esther is always on about marketing being the devil,” said KC. “And maybe I mostly see her POV but don’t tell her.”
Fat Angie nodded. She was good at nodding.
“There’s just more to you than how you look,” KC said, biting into the second Swiss Roll. “It’s more than a package.”
Fat Angie tugged once again on her jeans. They were camel-toeing again.
“But packages. I mean, if they’re not all diabetes inducing,” said Fat Angie, “they’re kinda still important. Like . . .”
KC listened. Fat Angie struggled with such focused attention.
“Is it because no one treats you weird that you’re not afraid to be who you are?” Fat Angie asked.
“I don’t know,” said KC. “I mean, I just moved here, so the level of weird is still relative to the level of mystery. Things weren’t as easy back in the Hills.”
“But you just said people thought you were pretty.”
“They did,” said KC, outlining an invisible heart with the toe of her boot. “Why are you the way you are?”
“Kinda by default,” said Fat Angie. “And a host of mood-stabilizing drugs. Besides. Everyone thinks I’m crazy.”
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