Their mother heaved a heavy breath and raised her glass of wine to him. “You’re baiting me. You’re acting out. Your therapist has made that much clear.”
“I bet he has,” Wang said, under his breath.
“Excuse me?” said his mother.
Wang kicked back from the table. “You decide to stop being petty, I’ll gladly pack out. Until then, don’t act like we’re so stupid. Angie and I know you’re banging my therapist.”
“Sit down!” said his mother, shooting out of her seat.
He shook his head, his expression engaged in a serious smirk. “You sit down,” Wang said.
He jetted upstairs. The grinding of death-metal guitars blasted from his stereo.
“Why?” asked her mother. “Why. Can’t. Both of you. Just. Try, Angie?”
“Try what?” asked Fat Angie.
“To accept reality,” said her mother. “To be in reality.”
“You mean your reality,” Fat Angie said, glaring.
“Don’t ever feel the freedom to look at me like that, Angie.”
Fat Angie closed her eyes and silently counted in her head. Unaware that the numbers began to rip from her chapped lips. Chant-like.
“The numbers will calm you,” the therapist had said. “You will feel —”
The slap of her mother’s hand on the table startled Fat Angie. The wine spilled, rolling to the table edge, drip-smacking on the cream carpet. It would most definitely leave a stain.
“Damn it!” her mother said, sopping up the spill with her overpriced off-white napkin.
Her mother looked so much smaller on the floor, where she feverishly pressed the wounded carpet. The napkin did its best to minimize the injury.
“What?” her mother said.
“Nothing.”
“Then quit staring like you’ve never seen someone clean up a mess. Why do you have to act so incredibly special?”
A speedball of anger shot from head to heel. Angie broke for the stairs. She passed Wang’s obnoxiously loud music and went into her room. She dug into her backpack and pulled out the crumpled picture of her and KC Romance deep in smoochfest. She cut out the picture and forced it to fit within the confines of the plastic photo holder in her Velcro wallet. She dropped her head forward. The stretch of her neck felt great.
Her cell phone beeped. She flipped it open.
Mom’s such a bitch. Wang had attached his signature skull and crossbones to the message.
She sighed.
She started to text back.
She stopped. She could not trust Wang even though he had just called their mother out. He had all the traits and history of a turncoat.
Fat Angie jammed into a pair of jeans that did not fit quite as tightly as she would have expected and crawled out her bedroom window. With shaky muscles, she worked her way down the tree. Just above the dining-room window her sneaker slipped. Her heart revved into turbo pump. She pressed against the tree for absolute dear life. In spite of her being less than eight feet from the ground. Steadying herself, she watched her mother power through documents. The dining room emanated that gold glow common in cheesy made-for-T V Christmas movies. Fat Angie waited for some sign of the person who once was her mother. Not the angry kamikaze pilot-pod person who had taken over her mother when her sister had joined the armed forces.
Fat Angie tapped on KC’s bedroom window. The crisp chill crawled up her back and numbed her ears. She blew onto her hands and wished common sense would have had her wear, at the very least, a hoodie.
“KC?” Fat Angie knocked harder.
The neighbor’s dog raged at Fat Angie. The entire neighborhood of dogs went into a domino effect of howling, barking.
KC stood at the window, her arms crossed.
“I have to talk to you,” Fat Angie said, a gust of wind sending a shiver down her body.
“I’m busy.”
“Busy how?” said Fat Angie.
“Just busy.”
“I’ll be quiet,” said Fat Angie.
KC opened the rather sticky window. “You said you had to talk to me, right?”
Fat Angie nodded.
“How are you going to do that and be quiet?”
Conundrum. Fat Angie was in a clear, unexpected conundrum. She thought for a moment.
“I’ll show you,” said Fat Angie.
“Whatever,” KC said, plopping belly-first onto her bed.
Fat Angie struggled and flopped to KC’s hardwood floor. KC flipped through a textbook and jotted down homework in a binder. “You know, somebody might have taken a picture of you coming around the side of the house.”
Fat Angie dropped her head. This was not how she had imagined the conversation going.
“Or is that why you didn’t use the front door?” KC said. “To avoid the paparazzi?”
“No,” Fat Angie said. “I wanted to tell you . . . I made the basketball team. Varsity. My sister and me are the only ones to ever do that as freshmen.”
“Well, you’ll rise to high ranks of popularity and keggers with the cool kids now,” KC said. “Many congrats. You and Jake can be b-ball platonic sweethearts.”
“I thought you’d want me to make the team.”
“I thought you thought,” KC said. “But apparently I was cruising in the mistake lane just like you.”
Fat Angie sighed. It was the only response she could act on, though screaming was an option she had not completely ruled out.
“Look, this is getting stale,” said KC.
Fat Angie did not follow the trajectory of KC’s statement.
“We keep doing this thing,” KC said.
“What thing?”
“The kinda tragic breakup-reconciliation thing. You freak out. Then yo-yo back. Recycle. Again and again. It’s too teen-romantic-dramedy for me.”
Fat Angie, unfamiliar with the genre, was at a loss. Though she understood the underlying meaning. Sort of.
“It’s different for you,” said Fat Angie. “I’m . . . I like being with you. It’s just —”
“Yeah, that’s classic.” KC sat up and sipped a bottle of organic root beer. “Back in Beverly . . .” KC pulled the framed photo of her and Ms. Pom-Pom from a box beside her bed. “She liked to be with me too. When no one was looking. And if someone thought we might be a little too close, she’d just date another jockazoid. Then crawl through my window at night. Feed me some rich spiel with supersize lies on the side.”
“I don’t . . .” Fat Angie struggled. “I don’t date jockazoids. I don’t date. I don’t — I don’t know. I mean —”
“What?” said KC, throwing the picture frame on the bed. “Say it, Angie.”
“I . . .”
KC stood in front of her. “Say what you wanna say. Can you? Can you be the you that likes me inside of my room or behind some poorly kempt shrub?”
Fat Angie swallowed, her face contorting. She fought against her instinct to “um.”
“I don’t mean all PDA massive,” said KC. “But acting like you know me might go a few miles.”
“I . . . got scared,” Fat Angie said. “Seeing the picture on my locker. Wanting to make the team. I just . . . I’m not cool. I . . . I’m not pretty.”
“Yeah, I remember the self-deprecating speech,” said KC. “Was kinda standing in your direct line of fire today at lunch. Angie, I’m a cutter in recovery. You think people don’t hush-hush trash-talk about me?”
“The whole world hates me,” said Fat Angie. “Don’t you get it? They hate me. Me. Fat Angie.”
“Then hate ’em back. Besides, who needs the whole world?” said KC. “I mean, only a few parts of it are kinda important. And if they all hate someone named Fat Angie, then that’s not you. You’re Angie.”
And right then, the thinner-but-not-slim Angie melted inside.
“Can’t you see it? The ultra beautiful and sweet . . . goobtastic Angie. The person who laughs at my panda jokes.”
Fat Angie laughed.
“See? And they
’re really lame jokes,” KC said.
In what should have been a tension breaker, Fat Angie took note of KC’s arms exposed by a short-sleeved fitted T-shirt. It was the first time she had seen the full extent of KC’s scars. They climbed up and down her forearms — stretched to her shoulders. Staring was inevitable for someone like Angie. Shame was probable for a girl like KC. No matter how beautiful KC looked on the outside.
KC self-consciously jammed herself into a black punk-band hoodie. Ironically, the word SCAB was stitched into the hoodie’s breast.
Angie sat beside KC on the bed.
“I told you I’m over it,” said KC, sipping the longneck bottle of organic root beer.
“OK,” said Fat Angie.
“I mean, Johnny Depp had the same thing. The cutting thing.”
“OK,” Angie said again.
They sat on the edge of the bed and were wrapped in silence for approximately 12.3 seconds.
“I like your hoodie,” Fat Angie said.
“Thanks,” KC said.
“It’s a really cool kind of black.”
Pause.
HUGE PAUSE.
Something had to stop the pause. Then Angie remembered. “I got something for you.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a —
“A Japanese-imported light-up candy ring!” said KC. “Where did you find it?”
“The Five ’N’ Go,” said Angie. “I stopped by on the way thinking you’d maybe like it.”
“I thought they banned them from the U.S.,” said KC. “Kids were eating the batteries or something.”
“It’s Dryfalls, Ohio. It’s sorta like living in a different country. As you probably noticed. Look, unwrap here. See. You pull —”
“Here?” asked KC.
“Yeah. And it lights up. For something like two hours.”
KC pulled the tab to the Japanese-imported light-up candy ring and read aloud, “ ‘Warning! Not for children under four years of age.’ Guess we’re cool then.”
KC placed the blinking red ring in her mouth. Her cheek flashed like a turn signal.
They sat wrapped in that stifling silence for another 12.3 seconds, give or take a few.
“I was way gay-girl gay before I met you,” KC said, her words jumbled by the candy blinking in her mouth.
“Oh. Yeah. Me, too,” said Angie.
KC seemed unconvinced by Angie’s statement.
“I must’ve been,” Angie said. “I just didn’t . . . know.”
KC pulled the candy out of her mouth. “The whole freaky arm scar thing. Slice and dice? Started, like, way back in the day. Back when my dad and Esther split ways.”
“Sure,” said Angie. She had no idea why she said it.
“It’s just that . . . sometimes things get really . . . complicated. Really loud. I just want it to be quiet. Sounds crazy, huh?”
“I’m kinda the authority on crazy around here and it doesn’t so much sound . . . crazy.”
“Yeah. But it’s all over now,” said KC. “I mean. You know, the slice and dice.”
“Did it hurt?” said Fat Angie.
“Of course it hurt,” said KC. “Sorta. It’s complicated.”
“Oh, well, sure it is. I mean, you’ve said it is.”
Pause.
Another pause!
“So your dad . . . ?” asked Angie.
“Complete wedge about the cutting thing . . . the everything. He’s been MIA for over a year. He’s always got a solid on the excuse. Working late. Working weekends. He’s an MD at one of those urgent-care doc-in-the-box places. It’s pretty lame.”
“Yeah, I haven’t really seen my dad much either,” said Angie. “He’s kinda moved forward in a backward way.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Angie said.
“Yeah,” said KC. “You know, I guess I’m lucky. Esther would love me even if I were a Martian. You know, with twelve tentacles sprouting from my head and eyeballs in my palms.”
Angie knew her couldn’t-be-bothered mother would find such appearances unacceptable and seek out whatever medical procedures were available to make her daughter normal.
“My mom said I can’t talk to you ever again,” Angie said.
KC considered this statement with the light-up candy ring blinking once again in her mouth. She removed it quickly and took a deep breath.
“Do you like me?” said KC on the exhale.
The answer seemed so obvious, how could it be anything but a rhetorical question?
“You don’t have to answer that,” KC said, getting up from the bed. “I’m . . . I push. I don’t let people evolve into their answers. That’s what my last therapist said.”
“Therapy sucks,” Angie said.
“I don’t know. I thought it was pretty cool.”
“Mine always says everything backward,” Angie said. “Like I’m saying green and he repeats red. But sometimes it’s green.”
“Sometimes it’s red,” KC said, watching the candy ring blink on her finger.
Angie zeroed in on the blinking candy ring.
The sheriff’s lights had sprayed against the faces of people from the pep rally. So many watching, waiting for something else to happen as they loaded Fat Angie into the back of the ambulance.
“Hey,” KC said. “You know what? I’m sick of giving my dad a Get Out of Jail Free card.”
What did the game of Monopoly have to do with KC’s father? That was when Angie clued in that she was being far too literal.
“See, Angie, I keep lying — pretending I’m someone else with him. Like when he is all Go Fish about my life I say, ‘Yeah, I’m dating — a guy!’ And I’m not.” KC sat on the bed again. “I mean, I’m not all gay pride rah-rah paint-me-like-a-rainbow. But I like . . .”
This juncture confused Angie tremendously. Plus she suddenly felt the very warm urge to pee but felt it wasn’t the best time to leave the room. Even if KC did have a private bathroom.
“I wanna tell him,” KC said.
“Yeah,” Fat Angie said. “Who?”
“My dad,” said KC.
“He doesn’t know you’re gay-girl gay?”
“No way. My dad?” KC said. “I hinted at it once and he blew an entire fuse box. He’s super down with the religion since he remarried.”
“Then maybe it’s not a good idea.”
“I’m his daughter,” KC said. “He has to love me. It’s in the rule book in the ‘Don’t Be a Jerk’ chapter.”
KC grabbed her cell from beneath the pillow and hit speed-dial number nine.
“Wait,” said Angie. “Maybe . . . maybe you should . . .”
KC’s attention hung in the balance of the mighty should.
“It’s ringing,” said KC. “What am I gonna say?”
Angie picked at a thread in KC’s purple heart pillow.
“Voice mail,” KC said. “Figures.”
“KC,” said Angie.
“Hey, Dad. It’s KC. That’s stupid. You know it’s me. I’m your daughter. Your only daughter, I might add. Unless you dropped seeds that I know absolutely nothing about. OK, that’s gonna annoy you. Look, it’s cool that you canceled the trip out here this month but I really . . . listen. I’m not being trendy or influenced by Esther, who left you not because she’s a feminist lesbian but because she thinks you’re manipulative and controlling. But that’s between the two of you.” KC paused. “Anyway, I need to tell you something. And it’s really important to me, Dad. Please call me back. I need to tell you —”
His voice mail beeped through her phone. KC dropped her head on the bed. “Voice mail cut me off. I finally have the courage to cards . . . lay them out on the table and I get a disconnect.”
“There’s a bright side,” said Angie.
“What?” asked KC.
“I don’t really know. I just kinda said it. It’s . . . stupid.”
KC sat beside Angie. “No, it’s not. Thanks for my ring.”
“Sure. I mean, yeah.”
&nbs
p; “Wow!” KC said, flying back on her bed.
Angie was startled by KC’s exclamation.
“I did it,” said KC. “Can you believe it? I mean, he won’t get the message for a decade because he’s a major loser with voice mail but . . . I said it. Well, kind of. I’m gonna say it, Angie! I’m gonna say, ‘Dad, I’m totally into girls.’ No, that’s weird. ‘Dad, I’m gay.’ Huh.”
“That’s swell,” said Angie.
“You think?”
KC reached out and touched Angie’s quickly blushing cheek. Her candy ring flashed on and off. “You get this brave thing going on for me.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you,” said KC. “I’m not some superhero girl. I mean, that would be way cool. But it’s not who I am.”
Angie gulped. “You are to me. In a human sorta kinda way. Without a cape.”
KC leaned forward, in kissing distance, and that was all Angie could think of. Kissing KC Romance. That and her need to go to the bathroom.
“Um . . .”
“Yeah?” said KC, her root-beer breath breathing onto Fat Angie’s lips.
“Capes are stupid,” Fat Angie said.
And just like that, their lips met . . . longer than they had during that first session of smooches. This was officially their first kiss. It had fireworks and lightning. It had . . . romance!
Most of all, it didn’t have Wang’s camera phone lurking in the distance.
In a week of young-love bliss accompanied by a heavy helping of social ostracism, the unbelievable reality that Fat Angie was the second freshman to make the varsity championship basketball team went as viral as Wang’s cell-phone photograph.
Kids huddled between bells and secretly tapped text messages:
Can u believe?
Can U?
But she’s so fat . . .
Not as fat . . .
At the height of the gossip frenzy, it was rumored that she had shot up performance-enhancing drugs, as there could be no other explanation for her sudden athletic prowess. Fat Angie was now under the microscope not for her vast pants size, but for how she continued to almost magically perform on the basketball court practice after practice. The buzz was red-hot!
Fat Angie no longer rode the bus with the heckling Duo of Geekdom. Basketball practice started every day at exactly 3:10 p.m. Drill after drill. At times it all began to blur for Fat Angie, but she fought the blur. She fought the dry mouth and pains in her diaphragm. And while speed and agility were not her strong suits, when the ball touched her fingers, she was almost unstoppable at the basket. With every release, she let out the slightest whisper from her lips . . . like a prayer. Not a wish for the ball to find its way through the hoop. A wish that her sister would come home, throw her arms around Angie, and say, “I’m proud of you,” or something all Hallmark special-esque. She just had to not quit!
Fat Angie Page 14