She stared at him.
“What?” he asked.
She pushed out the door as a car ripped into the parking lot. Music blaring with a garage band hoping to sound like the Smashing Pumpkins song “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”:
“Everything’s ending
No new beginning
No claim to little fame
There you go waking
In the middle of your hellish reign . . .”
With the Five ’N’ Go door still ajar, the punk-Goth-Amish kid in the midst of extreme Rumspringa popped out the driver’s side. His engine still running.
“Your leg’s, like, bleeding,” he said, nonchalant.
She looked down. In fact, it still was.
She nodded.
He shrugged and dipped inside. The music seemed to chase her as she marched on the spit-out-gum-and-stamped-out-cigarette-covered sidewalk to the back of the Five ’N’ Go.
“No matter where you turn
You’re everything you hate
No matter where you run
You can’t be anyone
EMPTY THING . . . !”
She hunkered beside a stack of pallets.
She tore at the Swiss Roll package with her perfectly straight teeth.
As if famished, she jammed the rolls into her plump cheeks. A wave of panic swam from her gut to her heart. Ripping at package after package, she stuffed one Little Debbie after another into her body. Tears streamed down her face. She sobbed, face full of Little Debbie’s sweet Swiss Rolls.
Fat Angie beat her temples with her palms. Harder and harder. Threw her elbows into the concrete store wall. Then leaned forward and upchucked.
It didn’t look at all like a Swiss Roll.
Shaking, she curled up on the greasy ground and pulled off her sweatshirt. Her chin doubled as she stared down at the HORNETS’ NEST T-shirt.
Her sister would never know of Fat Angie’s triumph of good over evil. She would never know about KC Romance. She would never know how utterly lonely Angie’s world was without her sister.
These facts were unbearable.
The gusty wind blew Angie’s hair straight back. She dragged her feet down Oaklawn Ends’ dead-end street. The press was packed in all along the cul-de-sac. Jake and Ryan cut through the crowd and jogged toward Angie.
“Hey,” Jake said. “Your leg’s bleeding.”
She nodded, stoic, and sat on a curb.
Jake sat beside her.
“I don’t think your mom meant to hurt you,” Jake said.
Angie leaned her head against Jake’s shoulder. Expensive cologne emanated from his gray name-brand hoodie.
“My sister’s not coming home, Jake,” Angie said.
Jake leaned his head on her head and Ryan sat in front of them. As a storm approached, the three of them waited. For whatever was next.
Fat Angie quietly suffered through her sister’s Catholic funeral Mass. She sat in such a way that she seemed to have shriveled, to have dramatically dropped thirty-nine and a half pounds. She had, in fact, not. Not in physical weight anyway.
She walked behind her couldn’t-be-bothered mother, who was accompanied by Wang’s therapist. Wang kept his iPod on during the wake, the Mass, and the exit from the church. This action did not feel disrespectful in the least to Fat Angie.
Her dad, his shiny wife, and his perfect kids, a boy and a girl of equal height, were also there. Fat Angie’s dad reached to hold her hand. She chose to let it brush by her.
Vans of television crews staked out every possible exit and descended on the mourners. Cameras flashed. Microphones were jammed in the family’s faces. The set of ridiculous questions that had befallen them when her sister went missing had been revived in her death.
Fat Angie said nothing.
Coach Laden and the Hornets’ Nest basketball team pushed the cameras aside, making a small path to the limousine. A limousine for the family — minus, of course, her sister. Her sister had come home in pieces. Parts. Igniting a maelstrom of opinions about the war. Generating headlines and sound bites. And in the midst of flowers and cards, her couldn’t-be-bothered mother was as poised as a grieving politician, granting exclusive interviews to national evening news programs. In the end, Fat Angie’s sister’s death had become a circus — a sideshow for hundreds of mourners along the edges of the church and anyone with TV or Internet access. It seemed to become everyone’s sadness. Except Fat Angie’s. She had yet to cry. Not a tear.
Her mother had requested a military burial. Flag on casket and gun salute. The whole nine yards. Fat Angie would have preferred a few yards less. The guns fired. The bugle played. The American flag was folded and extended to the grieving mother, who was in a semi-stoic trance. Fat Angie took note of her mother’s behavior but did not save it for later recollection. Rather, she fumed.
In what would be remembered as the onset of Fat Angie’s second nervous breakdown, she walked away from her white wooden chair at the graveside and pulled something from inside of her coat. She placed the HORNETS’ NEST T-shirt on the chest of the casket.
This action, while not inappropriate to the mourners, was inappropriate to her mother, who tactfully approached her daughter. Coach Laden stood. The team stood. Even Stacy Ann Sloan stood. Everyone waited for what would be next.
“What are you doing?” said her mother, removing the T-shirt from the casket. “This is your sister’s funeral.”
Fat Angie’s head dropped, her chin doubling, her heartache tripling. Her eyes cut to the shirt dangling helplessly in her mother’s hand. The magic of it squeezed out beneath her mother’s grip.
“Please sit down,” said her mother. “This is all almost over.”
Over? No. No, no, she thought, with such precision, with such controlled understanding, that it frightened Fat Angie. She shook her head and stepped back. The sound of wet grass squeaked beneath her shoes. They were far too tight. Too new. Too not made for her.
“Angie!” Wang shouted, but she was already in full stride, leaping over grave markers and cutting between tombstones. The press pressing on her heels. For once, she did not care. Let them all see. Let them all gawk and analyze. Let them make up the truth of who she was.
She did not care.
She would run!
The day after the funeral Fat Angie stepped back into the gym, where her sister’s joy of the game was immortalized behind the trophy-case glass.
Fat Angie knocked on Coach Laden’s door.
“Hey, Angie,” said Coach Laden, setting her paperwork down. “Have a seat.”
Fat Angie shook her head and reached into a plastic grocery bag. She lay her sister’s folded basketball jersey on Coach Laden’s orderly desk.
“Thanks,” said Fat Angie.
It was strange for Fat Angie to hear her voice aloud. The sound was different. She could not identify the difference right then.
“Why thanks?” asked Coach Laden.
“Just seemed like that’s what I was supposed to say.”
Coach Laden ran her hand over the jersey numbers.
“She begged for this number,” Coach Laden said. “The jersey was too big. She didn’t care. She just wanted this number. Forty-two. Does that seem like a lucky number?”
Fat Angie shrugged, her hand holding her other arm.
Coach Laden held the jersey out to Fat Angie. “You could always come back. Even if not now, next year.”
Fat Angie shook her head.
“You remember what you said to me during tryouts?” Coach Laden asked. “You said you would follow through. That you wouldn’t quit.”
Fat Angie nodded, stuffing her hands into her hoodie pocket.
“You don’t have to quit, Angie.”
She backed away from Coach Laden’s desk. “I’m . . .”
A deafening pang twisted in her not-so-plump gut. It raged and screamed and then muted. The mute sent a shiver — a distinct panic — down Fat Angie.
“Angie, just —”
But she dipped out of
the office.
Fat Angie punched a wall and rushed out of the gymnasium, the image of her sister behind glass at her back.
Fat Angie continued to walk.
And walk.
Until her walk became a jog. A jog that became a sprint. Until she was gone.
A week after the funeral, Fat Angie had continued to run, pausing only for school, an hour and a half for meals, and six hours of sleep. Aside from that, she ran like Tom Hanks in Robert Zemeckis’s multi-million dollar blockbuster Forrest Gump. Only Fat Angie ran the length of Dryfalls. From one place to the next to the next, forming a rather imperfect circle. If she could be seen from Google Earth, there would be a brown head with a plain white T-shirt traveling from city edge to city edge. But how often were such images updated, and what was the likelihood that she would be captured by their outer-atmosphere satellites? But in fact, she once was. In half stride.
The image appeared on CNN along with moment-to-moment coverage. When asked if she ran to stop the war, she said nothing. When asked if she ran for the loss of her sister, she said nothing. When asked anything, she said nothing.
In short, there was no comment.
At first, she mostly ran alone. Early before school and immediately thereafter. Even when she was seemingly stationary in her classrooms, she was running in her mind. Soon Jake and Ryan ran beside her. Ryan was distracted by the occasional hissing cat or red-chipped fire hydrant. He would gallop to their side after such distractions. The three became inseparable, but to Fat Angie, she ran alone.
December became January. Weeks and weeks had passed since her winning basket against the Tamblyn Titans. She had not spoken to anyone in class. She had not spoken to her mother or Wang in their super-tensed-up obligatory family meals. It seemed as though she wanted to live out her life as a cross-country running mute.
One evening, she slouched in the dark of her room. Her computer screen illuminated her desk in a pale blue-white, as it had every night since the funeral. The illegally downloaded YouTube video of her sister held hostage was on replay. How could she not see before? How could she not know that she had created a sister who was not in that video? Her sister was frightened. She was badly hurt. And if you looked closely into her eyes, the supersister Fat Angie knew on the basketball court of Dryfalls, Ohio, was gone. She was just a girl who knew she was about to die.
For the first time, tears streamed down Angie’s face. The quiet cry broke into a deep, Earth-is-gonna-swallow-me cry. Her mother’s reality — Wang’s and Jake’s reality — everyone’s reality was now hers. Her sister was dead. She was never coming home.
“Hey . . .” The voice was faint.
Fat Angie was alone, beside her locker at William Anders High. The hallway was decimated. She climbed over the debris of bent metal and textbooks. Rain sprayed in from the gutted ceiling. Blinding white light punched through the windows. Loose-leaf paper leaped into the air. Fat Angie shuddered. Then —
Dribbling . . . a basketball —
“Angie.” The voice became more distinct.
KC waited at the end of the hall. Her forearms exposed and scarless.
The dribbling grew louder . . .
A shutter clicked.
Fat Angie turned to —
“Wake up,” said Wang.
Fat Angie robotically shifted her stiff body.
“You drooled on your keyboard,” Wang said.
She squinted, orienting her eyes to the light of her room.
He closed out the window to the video that was still in loop on her computer. “It’s six.”
“So?” she said.
“So, isn’t this when you run all Forrest Gump?”
“Huh?” she asked.
“Here.” He threw a pair of sweatpants and sneakers at her. “I’ll run with you today.”
“Right,” she said.
“Yo, I’m gonna do it,” he said. “You coming or not?”
She kicked into the sweatpants, jammed into a hoodie, and they were off.
Down the stairs and past the framed photos of the former family perfectly posed. Fat Angie and Wang grabbed their house keys.
Jake stood in his driveway with Ryan at his side. He blew on his hands. “Hey,” he said. “About time.”
After a few quick stretches, they began to jog. Cutting past the Oaklawn Ends sign and through the sleeping streets.
It began to snow lightly. It had not snowed in Dryfalls all winter but there it was, fluttering down.
As they came up on Main Street, four runners in gray hoodies and sweatpants cut in behind them. Fat Angie crooked her head back. The four became eight. Then sixteen. Boys and girls — basketball players from William Anders High. All with the number 42 pinned across their chests. Coach Laden and even Stacy Ann jogged among them. Though Stacy Ann’s facial expression was a clear indicator she did not want to be there.
“What’s going on?” Fat Angie asked Wang and Jake.
“Guess they just wanted to run,” said Wang.
Fat Angie’s heart raced.
“I don’t get it,” she said to Wang.
He shrugged. “Yeah, you do,” he said.
The snow showered in sheets. The basketball players raised their hoodies’ hoods almost in unison.
Fat Angie led the pack of runners as the town went from yawn to full awake. Dryfalls was abuzz with the sight. Snow sticking to the sidewalks, windshields, rooftops. Still they all ran. Together.
People lined the streets. They clapped. Some cheered. No numbers were chanted. No names. It was just a sound. A good one.
Then she walked through the crowd. Unmistakable as she had been on her first day in Fat Angie’s gym class, KC Romance pushed through a pack of people to the street corner. Her cell in snapshot position fell to her side as the two girls locked looks. The longing . . . it was still there. Somewhere in the cadence of the running pack. Somewhere in the rocky history the two girls shared. Somewhere in the first snow in Dryfalls, Ohio, that year.
The girls . . . they longed.
The run completed approximately one hour later, back at Oaklawn Ends. Not all the team members finished. Some had hitched a ride in one of the many cars lining the cul-de-sac.
Coach Laden lovingly leaned in to Fat Angie and said, “Never quit.” She gave the not-so-plump Angie her sister’s basketball jersey. “Exceptional people just don’t.”
Coach Laden met up with the basketball teams. A few kids waved to Angie — not in a cruel way.
Wang collapsed against the garage. Jake threw his arm around Angie.
“You know, this won’t change everything,” she said.
“Yup,” Jake said.
“Maybe it’ll change me,” she said.
“It’s a little early for introspection,” he said.
“Nice word,” she said, mockingly. “Someone’s been reading.”
“Shut up,” he said.
“Hey!” Wang said. “Let’s eat, man. I’m wicked ten kinds of hungry, yo.”
Wang led the way, opening the front door.
Their mother stood in her robe, espresso in hand.
“Shit,” said Wang.
“Are you hungry?” asked Connie.
They suspiciously followed her into the kitchen.
“Jake, how’s your mother?” said Angie’s mom.
Jake poured orange juice from a pitcher. “Great.”
“I guess you enjoyed your run,” said her mother. “Amber Stevens said she saw you with the entire basketball squad. So you’re back on the team?”
Angie set her sister’s jersey on the marble countertop. “No.”
Her couldn’t-be-bothered mother acknowledged the jersey only with the slightest of pauses. But it was an acknowledgment nevertheless.
“Your color is off,” said her mother.
“What?” Angie said. Her teeth cut into a Gala apple.
“All of this running,” her mother continued. “I understand. . . . Actually, I don’t.
“Anyway,” said Angi
e’s mother. “Bacon and eggs, Wang? Jake?”
“Lots of bacon,” said Wang, mouth full of Frosted Flakes.
“What about me?” said Angie.
Connie braced herself against the refrigerator.
“Maybe I want breakfast,” said Angie.
“I meant to include you,” said her mother.
Angie shook her head. “No, you didn’t.”
“I did. Do you want —”
“All you see is fat,” said Angie.
“Can you conceive that I just hadn’t said your name yet?” asked her mother.
“It’s not just breakfast,” said Angie. “It’s how you look at me. Or how you don’t look at me.”
Jake and Wang held out for what seemed to be quite the showdown.
“I’m looking at you, Angie. I’m watching you run all over CNN —”
“Because me running on CNN makes you look like what?” said Angie. “A heartless mother.”
“Don’t,” her mother warned. “I’m just trying to have a civil exchange.”
Her mother’s eyes cut to Jake.
“What are you afraid of?” Angie asked. “That Jake might give an exclusive on how we continue to be screwed up?”
“You think I’m so shallow. You think I don’t feel anything?”
“Not really,” said Angie.
“I just accept that I have a life that goes beyond this one event.”
“Event?” asked Angie. “Her death is not an event.”
“Fine. Poor choice of words,” said her mother. “That’s the way it always is with you.”
“Why can’t you just say it?” Angie asked.
Her mother went back to the eggs and announced to everyone, “We’ll all have breakfast.”
“No,” said Angie.
Her mother busied about the kitchen in an attempt to deflect any potential for further discussion of her recently buried daughter. But Angie was not letting things slide any longer.
“You want me to be skinny. You want me to be normal. You want —”
“I want you to be happy,” said her mother, cracking an egg with a chef’s precision. “You and Wang. All of us.”
“Happy?” said Angie, throwing the apple in the stainless steel garbage can.
Wang zipped his Tony Hawk lamb-lined hoodie and scratched his sweaty head.
Fat Angie Page 17