Maggie Bloom's Blog, page 3

All Hail, Napoleon Dynamite!

I am ecstatic to report that, as of Sunday, 9/16/2012, the first draft of my new YA romance, Good Luck, Fatty! is complete and weighs in at 50, 081 words (or about 200 pages). My plan is to give the manuscript a few good edits and a final polish, then proceed with self-publishing, as I have for my other YA novels, Any Red-Blooded Girl and Film at Eleven.

As I was nearing completion of Good Luck, Fatty!, an observant family member pointed out that the manuscript bears a striking resemblance to the movie Napoleon Dynamite (a suggestion that made me smile–I’m a huge Napoleon Dynamite fan–and cringe, since I was striving to be original) .

How much of a resemblance, you ask? Here’s a handy checklist.

1. The protagonist is an outcast

2. The protagonist’s best friend is also his/her love interest.

3. The protagonist lives with extended family and without a consistent “adult” in the household.

4. The story is set in a poor, rural area.

5. The story is quirky, humorous and  heartwarming.

6. The story has a musical climax that goes (at least somewhat) awry.

(See? It’s impossible to tell the difference between GLF and ND!)

So…I’m now thinking of billing Good Luck, Fatty! as: The female Napoleon Dynamite. With sex. And a cat.

Or would that be ridiculous? (Then again, I’m quite fond of all things ridiculous, so…)

Good Luck, Fatty! (first draft, chapter 8)

Copyright 2012 by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel. All rights reserved.

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS MATURE YOUNG ADULT CONTENT. IF SUCH CONTENT MIGHT OFFEND YOU, PLEASE STOP READING HERE (or just read with your eyes closed)

As penance for a re-post earlier tonight (I couldn’t figure out how to edit my FB/Twitter update without posting a second time) I am offering another chapter of my WIP.

This story is slowly but surely working its way to the finish line (only roundabout 10,000 words to go! Rah-rah!). Thanks for coming along for the ride. Peace out.

Good Luck, Fatty!

by

Maggie Bloom

Chapter 8

Luckily Marie and Duncan decided they were above celebrating Christmas, despite their return to the motherland (too much commercialism, consumerism, and plain old American greed), which left me to enjoy a pleasant holiday with Orv, Denise, and Denise’s family.

By the time New Year’s Eve rolled around, I hadn’t laid eyes on my parents in nearly two weeks, and things had almost returned to normal. Then the phone rang.

“Hello?” Denise says in the kitchen.

It’s seven p.m., and Orv and I are settling in for a re-run marathon of Penal Code 911. Ever since I told Orv about Lex Arlington and the Yo-Yo race, he’s been obsessed with all things Lex-related. (I bet if I asked him Lex’s birth date or his favorite song, he’d know.)

I’m not paying strict attention to the conversation in the other room, but Denise’s tone has gone wildly animated. I slide off the couch and peek around the corner, just in case I’m missing something of consequence.

As soon as Denise spots me, she hangs up. “Get your coat,” she tells me, her voice tight and professional. “We’re going to the hospital.”

I wrinkle my brow. “Why?”

“Orv, come on!” she shouts into the living room. “Your Aunt Marie’s in labor!”

Something makes me stop breathing for a few seconds. Maybe it’s the realization that, as little as I’ve mattered to my parents thus far, their loyalties will now be even further divided. Or maybe it’s the fear that I may be walking in Marie’s shoes in another eight months, give or take.

Orv plods into the kitchen, his feet heavy even without those steel-toed boots he scuffs around in eight to twelve hours a day. “It’s New Year’s Eve,” he says, as if the stork should be getting snookered from the dregs of some hobo’s peach schnapps instead of ushering new life into the world.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Denise snaps. She hustles for the door, leaving Orv and me frozen and confused. Without looking back, she adds, “I’ll be in the car.”

When we get to the hospital, Denise wields the Royale into a fifteen-minute parking spot at the cusp of the emergency room and orders me and Orv out.

“Where are we going?” Orv asks with a disinterested yawn, the passenger door expectantly agape.

I slip out of the car and wait on the sidewalk for them to settle whatever nagging issue is ping-ponging between them. “Just head for the maternity ward,” Denise instructs with a flustered eye roll. “I’ll meet you there.”

Orv quits while he’s ahead, joins me on the sidewalk and hesitantly leads the way. At a second-floor nursing station, he stops and says, “Have you got a Marie…” He stares a second at my ear. “…Cotton here?”

The young lady behind the desk, a raven-haired beauty with a dash too much black eyeliner, consults an erasable white-board and tells us, “She just went into surgery. Y’all can wait in the visitors’ room, around the corner.” She waves a dagger-nailed hand to direct us.

I tug Orv by the shirt-sleeve and say, “Thanks.”

Duncan is perched on the edge of a boxy chair by the visitors’ room entrance, his elbows on his knees, his hands steepled in prayer. He fails to notice me and Orv as we approach.

Orv waltzes right past my father and plops down on an equally angular loveseat, but I figure it’d be just plain rude of me to do the same. “Duncan?” I say, stopping by an empty chair beside him. His eyes are closed, and they don’t look like they plan on opening any time soon. “Dad?”

He mouths the end of a prayer I should know by rote, the words escaping his lips as a solemn whistle. Finally his eyelids part. “Roberta!” he exclaims, then catches himself. “I mean, Bobbi, of course.” He rises and drapes his arm around me, gives my shoulder a squeeze.

Why does this feel so awkward? I think. Shouldn’t my father’s touch be more like home?

It isn’t. I wriggle away and take a seat, ask him, “How’s everything going?”

“Fine, fine,” he replies, pursing his lips and clasping his hands behind his back as he gears up for a round of pacing.

I glance ahead into the room and notice a gouge-my-eyes-out-adorable set of toddler twins with white-blond hair, checkered overalls (matching, obviously), and railroad conductors’ caps. I wonder what my brother, Roy, will look like. Or my baby.

“Mr. Cotton?” a shrill voice asks behind me. In the doorway is a chubby lady (maybe twenty pounds lighter than me), donning seafoam-green scrubs and a surgical mask pulled down around her neck.

“Yes?” my father says.

The lady (a doctor, I assume) tells Duncan that my brother weighs nine pounds, two ounces, possesses the expected ten fingers and ten toes, and, after a bit of scrubbing by the nurses, will be happy to receive visitors. Marie, she informs him, should rest–at least for an hour or two–before the swarm of company descends.

Duncan trails the doctor to the nursery, and Orv and I stay behind to catch Denise. Three or four minutes later, she bombs in, her eyes bloodshot and puffy. “What’s the matter?” I say.

She whacks what looks like a clump of snow off the shoulder of her denim jacket. “Nothing.”

“It’s snowing?” I say, unable to hide my awe.

“Yeah, I guess.”

Orv stands up, takes a sideways step toward the doorway. “Let’s get this show on the road, so we can get home before the bars let out.”

Bars? Plural? This is rural North Carolina, not downtown L.A. (Though I suppose Orv’s still right, since there isn’t much else to do around here but drink.)

Orv, Denise, and I form an orderly line and march to the nursery, where we peer through the glass at Duncan in his hospital gown-and-mask getup, rocking my swaddled baby brother to sleep.

My eyes begin to pulse with tears, but I can’t tell if they’re the kind of tears that make Yiddish grandmas clutch their chests with joy or the kind of tears that spring from a life of neglect and disillusionment.

Orv taps the glass, like patrons are warned against doing at the zoo. Then he lets out a high-pitched psst! sound, and Duncan looks up.

I wave him and the baby over. “Oh my God,” I murmur as he tips Roy’s perfect face our way. My brother is a dead ringer for Marie.

Denise forces a smile, conjures a few syllables of baby talk and a series of half-hearted cooing sounds before breaking out in a heaving sob. “I’m sorry,” she cries. She sucks a wad of snot down her throat (or at least that what it sounds like). “I…” (sob) “…just…” (sob) “…can’t…” (sob) She drags the arm of her jacket over her dripping nose and then turns and rushes down the hall.

And I run after her.

There is not a single chain drugstore in Unity, which makes shopping for a pregnancy test a pretty indiscreet affair when you’re a tubby teen who, one way or another, knows just about everyone in town.

I hoist the front tire of the Schwinn into a bike rack beside a restaurant called Big Daddy’s and around the corner from Marlowe’s Pharmacy and Sundries, the only place I can think of that might stock a First Response or an EPT. (What I wouldn’t give for a Walgreens or a Rite Aid right now.)

I never spent the twenty-five dollars I’ve had since before Christmas (Denise made me lump my items in with hers at Derby’s) so I’m hoping that, if I’m lucky enough to nail down a pregnancy test, the crinkly wad of ones and fives stuffed in my jeans will cover it.

As I slip in through the side door of Marlowe’s, which has a jingly bell over it, just like The Pit–Da-Ding! Da-Ding!–the pharmacist (Mr. Marlowe?), a crotchety-looking dude with an obvious toupee and wire-rimmed bifocals, glances up at me. Stupidly, I smile. Now there’s no way in hell I’ll have the guts to plop an EPT down on the counter, even if this place has one.

But I can’t leave yet (I just got here, for God’s sake), so I wander down the shampoo aisle, as if I’m searching for a new product to straighten, or volumize, or de-frizz my mane. Where in the world are the pregnancy tests anyway?

I pluck a giant bottle of Pantene off the shelf and spin it around, pretend I’m checking its label for pesticides or a cruelty-free logo. Meanwhile, two young mothers (former classmates of Denise) wrestle baby strollers through the aisle in tandem, one of the strollers rubbing my ankles as it goes by. I glance back and spot a cherubic little face smiling at me. Since when did infants get so gosh darn cute?

I refocus my efforts, case the joint so that, next time I show up (today is not my day, obviously), I’ll know exactly where the pregnancy tests are and will be able to grab one and run.

For the life of me, though, I can’t seem to find the damn things. After ten minutes of eyeballing shoe polish and denture cream and foot powder, I’m still at square one. “Can I help you?” Mr. Marlowe asks as I shuffle past his glassed-in pod.

I whip my head around, like he must be speaking to someone other than me.

Negative.

“Uh…” Quick! Grab anything! my brain squeals. I reach for a giant pack of watermelon-flavored gum. “I’ll take this,” I say as I slide it across the counter.

Mr. Marlowe floats down from his perch, rings up the gum and sends me on my way. A few steps past the cash register, I notice the condoms…and the pregnancy tests.

At least now I know.

“Have you seen Buttercup lately?” I ask Harvey between customers at The Pit. Sometimes my little buddy takes off for a few days at once, especially during what passes for winter around here, but this time it seems like he’s been gone a lot longer.

“Geez…” Harvey says, sounding concerned. “Now that you mention it, I don’t think the bugger’s been around for the better part of a month.”

I knew it. “Where do you think he went?” I ask absently as I thread a new seat onto a wrecked bike Harvey and I are restoring.

He clamps an air hose to the valve stem of the bike’s back tire and starts pumping the deflated thing up by hand. “He’s a stray, Bobbi,” Harvey reminds me gently. “He could be anywhere.”

Or nowhere. “I should look for him.”

Harvey shakes his head. “How’re you going to do that?”

“I don’t know,” I say with a shrug. I give the bike seat a tap into its ultimate position. “I can check the places he hangs out, see if he’s off hurt somewhere, or if anybody’s got a lead on him.”

“What about your training?” Harvey asks with an edge of disappointment. “The Yo-Yo’s only ten weeks away.”

I’ve been waiting for him to bring this up. Frankly, I’m surprised he’s held out this long. I twist a new rubber grip onto one of the bike’s handlebars and say, “I’ve been doing eight or ten miles a week with Tom.”

He stares at my stomach, as if he doubts I’m biking as many miles as I’ve claimed. “My offer still stands,” he tells me. “I’d be happy to take you on. And I’ve got quite a few tricks to jumpstart your progress. Don’t you want a shot at winning this thing?” He caps the valve stem of the back tire and moves on to filling the front. “The prize money for your age group is a thousand dollars.”

I wouldn’t mind a cool grand, but I’m also a realist. “I’m not trying to be a downer,” I say, “but I don’t think there’s much of a chance I’d win. Since Lex got involved, the Yo-Yo’s blown up.”

When the race consisted of thirty people, I’d assumed (probably erroneously) that I had as good of a chance as most folks. But at last count, we had twelve-hundred registered riders (the largest number for which the town would approve permits) and another thirty-five hundred cooling their jets on the waiting list. Near as I can tell, I’m dead in the water.

“I was hoping this would be a watershed moment for you,” Harvey says outright. “A challenge you could use as a springboard to bigger and better things. A pivot-point for charting your future.”

I try not to think about the future, mine or anyone else’s. But it’s comforting to know that Harvey does. “I’m not quitting,” I assure him, my hands going to my hips in protest. “I just have other things happening right now. With Marie having the baby, and…”

“Well, if you change your mind, let me know.”

“Will do,” I say, and leave it at that.

Oh, the Places You’ll Go!

The Paper Trail

I seriously debated whether this story was blog-worthy, but an unnamed twenty-year-old told me to roll with it, so…

First, I should explain my writing process.

When I’m working on a novel, I often compose in strange places (the cemetery, the hospital, the beach, in my car, the food court at the mall, in bed…you get the idea). For these writing sessions, I use junior-sized legal pads (the rainbow ones are my favorite!) and awesome steel mechanical pencils. Later (usually the same day, if not within the hour), I type these writings into my computer.

This system, although a little unruly, worked for me until…

One night last week I got inspired at bedtime and scrawled out a couple of pages for my current work-in-progress. Then I went directly to sleep. The next morning, I typed the pages into my computer and crumpled the hardcopies and chucked them in the trash.

Big mistake.

Upon closer inspection of my WIP, I realized I’d omitted AN ENTIRE PARAGRAPH in the transcription process. A paragraph I couldn’t remember. A paragraph that was vital for the paragraphs preceding and following the omission to make sense.

So what, right? Just make up something new to tie those loose paragraphs together. No biggie.

But somehow that was impossible. (Don’t ask me how. I can’ t explain it. It just was.)

THIS IS WHERE THE STORY GETS GROSS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!

My only two options at this point were to scrap the pages I’d written the night before or go digging through the trash.

The trash in question  was not sterile, office-type trash. It was household garbage that was on the verge of needing to be emptied.

And we have a cat. An old cat with kidney problems (meaning: the cat pees a lot) and a sensitive stomach (meaning: she sometimes vomits). I had just emptied the cat’s litter box (thank God, it was bagged!!!) and cleaned up her kitty puke.

Oh, and I’d killed a spider.

So…under all this icky stuff somewhere was that missing paragraph.

I held my breath, put on a pair of gloves, and went to work. About five minutes later, I got my grubby paws on that ball of pink paper.

The paragraph was stupid, but essential. I memorized it, dropped it back into the trash, de-gloved my hands and rushed to the computer to bang it out.

Was all this trouble (and possible exposure to life-threatening germs) worth it, you ask? I’d have to say yes (mostly because it made me feel like I’d suffered for my art )

My advice: Always keep a paper trail! You might be sorry (like me) if you don’t.

Good Luck, Fatty! (first draft, chapter 7)

Copyright 2012 by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel. All rights reserved.

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS MATURE YOUNG ADULT CONTENT. IF SUCH CONTENT MIGHT OFFEND YOU, PLEASE STOP READING HERE (or just read with your eyes closed)

Here’s another chapter for your reading enjoyment

Good Luck, Fatty!

by

Maggie Bloom

Chapter 7

Tom has invited me over for Christmas Eve dinner and a Secret Santa gift exchange. I’m playing Kris Kringle to the dog, Hush Puppy, a mouthy Pomeranian that makes my phone conversations with Tom as obnoxiously loud as a heavy metal concert.

Denise drops me out front and toots the horn of the Royale as she pulls away. Before I can get within striking distance of the door, though, Tom appears on the porch wearing an attractive charcoal-gray dress shirt, a pair of borderline-trendy jeans, and an unmistakable excited-to-see-me smile. Now that I’m his girlfriend (and I’ve quit the extracurricular screwing cold-turkey), he seems nothing short of enamored. “Hey,” he says, taking my hand and guiding me up the steps.

This whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing has me feeling as if I’ve plunged headfirst into a fairy tale. “Hi,” I say, a sudden case of jitters wiggling around in my stomach.

The first thing that hits me when we get inside is the smoke. Say what you will about Orv and Denise, but cigarettes are one evil they’ve kept soundly at bay. “I’ll take your coat,” Tom says, an arm outstretched for me to drape it over.

I slip my windbreaker off and let him have it. “What about this?” I ask, holding up the chunk of rawhide I’ve brought for Hush Puppy, the shiny snowflake paper I’ve wrapped it in coming undone at the edges. I scan the living room and notice that I don’t recognize a soul.

“We’ve got a gift table,” Tom says, pointing the way to an elaborately festooned octagonal stand in the corner.

As I squeeze sideways toward the drop spot, I rub knees with an elderly lady tethered to an oxygen tank, a worried look pressed into her brow as a cloud of smoke drifts by. “Excuse me,” I say. Most of the time my size isn’t much of an issue, but in tight spaces, I immediately start wishing I was [insert skinny model’s name here].

I arrange Hush Puppy’s present atop the small pile, and Tom runs my jacket to some mysterious coat holding area. When he returns, the compact bundle of fur is hot on the trail of his black-and-gray Vans. “Come on,” he says, gesturing toward the kitchen. “Everyone’s out here.”

I steal a final glance around the living room, realizing that the old folks have been relegated to second-class party status. Then again, some of them look so frail they probably don’t mind. I follow Tom, waving and smiling to his great-aunts and grandparents as we go.

Unlike the living room, the kitchen is crammed with people. Smoking, laughing, drinking people. And music, food, and…kids. That’s what strikes me as strange: so many little ones jumping and running and crashing about. My life with Orv and Denise (and Gramp while he was alive), has left some holes in my experience of family. If I have any extended relations on Duncan’s side, I don’t know about them. Orv is Marie’s nephew, and Gramp was her father. I’m pretty much a loner.

I press myself into a spot between the dishwasher and the refrigerator, just to get out of the fray. “Want something to eat?” Tom says, sensitive to my growing claustrophobia. “We’ve got Swedish meatballs, macaroni and cheese…” He gives the island a one-eyed squint. “…and potato salad, I think.”

“Sure,” I say. “A small plate is fine.” I didn’t get this big by being particular about what I eat, a quality that will serve me well should there ever be a disaster that disrupts the food supply. Sardines? Beets? Pickled eggs? No problem.

While Tom loads a couple of Styrofoam plates with buffet fare, I dodge the eager hands and arms of thirsty partiers, a number of three-liters of soda pop stashed on the counter behind me. During a break in the action, I swivel around and pour a cup of ginger ale for me and an orange soda for Tom.

“My dad says ‘hi,’ ” Tom tells me when he shows back up with our dinner. “Wilma’s, uh…”

Drunk? I feel like saying, because it’s the God’s honest truth. I’ve only seen someone so intoxicated in the movies (and in an anti-drunk driving video the middle school showed us during an eighth-grade assembly, but I’m pretty sure that guy was an actor too). “Can we go somewhere?” I ask. Fat people get overheated quick, especially around so much other body heat.

A few steps from the kitchen is the glorious basement door, which Tom motions toward with his head. Our hands are full–mine with the soda and his with the food–so he drags his forearm over the doorknob to twist it open, then elbows the door ajar. A girl of about ten, with ringlet curls and a crimson velvet dress, gives us the hairy eyeball as we slip downstairs.

Tom sets the plates on a coffee table and takes the drinks from me, so I can sink into the sofa without making a sloshy mess. “How come we’re the only ones down here?” I ask, surprised at the tranquility given the cacophony above.

He chuckles, passes me a plate of food. “My cousin, Annabelle…she broke one of Wilma’s favorite Hummels last year. It was a rare one too. Cost her like two-hundred bucks. She was pissed.”

“So…?”

“Well, now the kids are banned. No more ‘horsing around’ in the basement,” he tells me with a mischievous grin.

I want to horse around with him right now. “That’s too bad,” I say, trying my hand at a little suggestive flirting.

We nibble through the meatballs and mac ‘n cheese, with me trying my darndest to come off as ladylike despite our lack of simple accoutrements like napkins. “This is good,” I say about the pasta, which dissolves on my tongue like a gooey fondue. “Is it homemade?”

He nods. “Yup. My uncle’s wife owns a catering company.” He has a step-aunt? It seems like the men in his family are unlucky in love.

I try to eat slower, just so I don’t finish before him, but it’s no use; my jaw muscles are too well-trained. I leave the empty plate behind on the coffee table and get up to wander.

And Tom watches me. “There’s some cool stuff back there you can check out, if you want,” he tells me as I approach an orderly tower of mismatched furniture and caved-in cardboard boxes (leftovers from when Wilma ditched her condo and took up residence here?).

I tug at the flap of a box that looks like it’s about to disintegrate, and, sure enough, one whole side of the thing comes apart in my hands. “Shoot,” I say, pressing my jellyroll forward to stop an avalanche of stuff that’s headed my way.

Tom hops up from the sofa, drops his plate on top of the mini-fridge and speeds to my aid. “I got it,” he says, squeezing against me from behind and wrapping his arms around my sides, steadying the box in place.

I have an unclean thought that involves me and Tom and that secluded old tree house. “Now what?” I whisper.

His body is hot against mine. “Turn around,” he says.

I am pinned in place and will be just as trapped if I’m able to wiggle myself to face him. “I don’t…know if…”

Out of nowhere, his tongue shoots to my ear (a crime of opportunity?) and something tightens in his frontal pants region. I want to scream (in a good way). He says, “Trust me.”

I do as he says, twist and shimmy between his arms (all the while massaging my squishy flesh into his considerably leaner bod) until we end up eye to chin. Now I can barely breathe, and the junk in the box is digging a hole into the small of my back. “You’re up, Houdini,” I say.

“What’s your rush?” He cocks his lips fiendishly. The stuff behind me shifts, and he gives it (and me) a good ramming. “That should do it.”

There is a release of pressure from my backside but not from his front. Impulsively, I tip my face up and mold my lips to his, that anxious tongue of his darting and probing. I settle my hands on his hips and try to inhibit the memories of other boys probing me that are squiggling through my naughty parts and my mind.

Tom’s a virgin, I remind myself. And, oh yeah, there’s a teeny-tiny speck of a chance I might be pregnant.

His hands go from holding up the box to caressing my back and hips and…

Crash!!! Bang!!! Boom!!!

The contents of the box clatter about our feet, a fair amount of the noise absorbed by the speckled beige carpet. Still, I glance at the stairway, expecting someone to come running. But no one does, the merriment upstairs in full swing.

Tom and I bend over at the same time, conking heads “Ow,” I whine, an instant headache developing. (Can his head really be that hard?)

He rubs at his temple. “Wow, do you drink titanium-fortified milk or something?”

So he thinks I’m thick-headed too? Fantastic. “As a matter of fact, I do,” I declare, with mock indignation.

From the looks of the items strewn across the floor, the box belongs to Mr. Cantwell, not Wilma (unless she’s a little on the freaky side). I reach for an upside-down magazine and turn it over. It’s a Playboy, circa nineteen eighty-five.

Tom and I exchange embarrassed (but excited) glances, the Playmate on the cover enticing us to look further with her moony blue eyes and cherry-kissed smile. I pass him the magazine and say nothing.

We gather up a bunch of other personal memorabilia and “guy stuff” (matchbooks from various motels and diners; a giant marble and a brittle, peeling baseball glove; a couple of Penthouses to complement the Playboy; a magnifying glass with half an inch of dust caked to it; and a cache of vinyl records).

“These are awesome,” I say, sifting through the 33s (the big, old albums the size of pizza boxes) and 45s (the smaller records with one track on each side). Until I was eight, Gramp had a Pioneer turntable, which he’d fire up every Sunday evening for some Chubby Checker, Elvis Presley, or The Platters. When the thing died, we couldn’t afford a replacement.

Tom takes the records from me and, one at a time, stacks them in a neat pile. “Holy shit,” he says when we get to a particular 45 with a jacket image of a voluptuous topless chick riding a bike and wearing nothing but bikini bottoms and tube socks. “I remember this,” he says, turning the record over in his hands as if he’s unspooling a filmstrip of old memories.

“What is it?” I ask (besides a little soft-core porn, since the cover model is mostly naked but is pictured back-to).

He gets a faraway look in his eyes. “My mom used to sing this to my dad every year, instead of Happy Birthday.”

I glance at the record jacket and note that the tunes are by Queen, a band about which I know next to nothing. “Bicycle Race?” I say, reading the title of the A-track.

Tom chuckles, shakes his head. “Uh-uh,” he says. “The other one.”

I feel weird reading the title of the B-track aloud, but I do it anyway. “Fat Bottomed Girls?”

He grins. “She thought it was about her, I guess,” he says, without a trace of self-consciousness, or pity, or meanness.

“Do you have a record player?” I ask, wondering how a song about an overgrown body part could inspire an actual fat person to adopt it as their anthem.

He raps his knuckles against a blond-wood cabinet that’s the base of our archeological dig.

I blink. “Huh?”

He raps again. “Right here.”

“That’s a record player?” I ask. The turntable Gramp had was the size of a suitcase.

“Not the whole thing,” he says, in a tone that suggests I may be brain-dead. “Just the guts.”

“Does it work?”

“Last I knew.”

Without me having to ask, he begins unearthing the cabinet, and I arrange the boxes out of the way, along the ecru wall. Together we drag the cabinet over by the sofa, where there’s access to an electrical outlet. With a what-the-hell shrug, Tom plugs it in (since when do we plug in furniture anyway?). Then he flips the lid open, revealing the turntable inside. “Got the record?” he asks, his string bean fingers extended.

“Oh, hang on.” I slip over and fetch the 45 from the floor and return it to his waiting hand.

“Here goes nothin’,” he says, an air of skepticism underlying his optimistic tone as he slides the vinyl disc into place, powers the turntable on (it’s spinning!!!) and gingerly coasts the needle to the sweet spot at the record’s edge.

All I can do is stare at that glossy black disc revolving and revolving (this thing won’t put me into a trance, will it?) as the music starts to crackle out. “It’s working,” I squeak, suddenly giddy at our success in resurrecting a bygone technology. “I can’t believe it.”

As Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, a band I know next to nothing about but not absolutely nothing (they do sing Bohemian Rhapsody, after all) croons about the virtues of rounded feminine derrieres, Tom gets inspired to sample a bit of this fat girl’s bottom.

And I let him, at least for now. But before things can progress to the next level between me and Tom Cantwell, I’m obligated to bring him up to speed on the whole sordid truth of my sexual promiscuity, including the fact that I may now be carrying Brent Flynn’s (or Justin White’s or Craig Benson’s) baby.

Good Luck, Fatty! (pitch, first attempt)

Okay, so I’m going to admit something right now: writing a novel is, for me, easier than composing a 300-word pitch to convince readers (most importantly!), agents, and editors that my book is worthy of their time, money, interest, etc. Normally I wait until the manuscript is complete, has been edited MULTIPLE times and is, IMO, ready to go to print before I even think about the pitch.

That said, I’m going to flip-flop my process this time. With 100 pages of the first draft of Good Luck, Fatty! under my belt, I’ve taken a tentative stab at composing the sort of blurb I dread. And now I’m going to share it with you.

Tah-dah!

Spunky North Carolina teen Bobbi-Jo Cotton is overweight, oversexed, underloved and misunderstood. When her former high school principal turned bicycle shop owner–with the help of a hometown celebrity–sponsors a charity bike race, Bobbi sees an opportunity to test her Schwinn and her fortitude. And when Tom Cantwell, her best childhood friend, reveals he’s crushing on her, Bobbi figures it’s time to quit passing out screws like they’re dentist’s office suckers.

What Bobbi’s having a harder time letting go of is the resentment she feels toward her missionary parents, who, after abandoning her in the night, have flitted back into her life with a surprise: she’s about to be a big sister.

Will Bobbi win the race (and maybe even lose the weight)? Can she overcome her promiscuous past and capture the heart of the boy she just may love? Will her parents care enough about her–or her new baby brother–to stick around (and if they don’t, will she be tough enough to survive another of their betrayals)?

The only way to know for sure is to come along for the ride. The way Bobbi sees it, all of life’s questions can be answered from the seat of a bicycle. And if they can’t, at least your hair will look great fluttering in the breeze.

Good Luck, Fatty! (first draft, chapter 6)

Copyright 2012 by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel. All rights reserved.

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS MATURE YOUNG ADULT CONTENT. IF SUCH CONTENT MIGHT OFFEND YOU, PLEASE STOP READING HERE (or just read with your eyes closed)

Sadly, the September 1st timeline for completion of this manuscript is now blown (but, I swear, it’ll be done by October 1st–wink, wink). The good news? 100 pages down as of today!

Here’s another chapter for your reading enjoyment

Good Luck, Fatty!

by

Maggie Bloom

Chapter 6

I’m starting to think the “old wives” might be onto something, because ever since I gave up the Milky Ways, my acne has been receding. The scars, on the other hand, are stubborn reminders of the old, weaker me.

It’s taken Tom’s leg more than six weeks to heal, but finally his doc says he can get back on the BMX. I hike up the front steps of his house and ring the doorbell, which I somehow missed last time I was here, even though it’s shaped like a bullfrog. If I didn’t know better, I might figure the kitschy thing was one of Wilma’s macramé projects gone wild.

The door jerks open and Tom smiles. “It’s about time,” he says in a tone that sounds like a joke but also kind of serious. I guess if I’d been caged like a grizzly for so long, I’d be itching to scale some trees too.

“I got a charley horse,” I say. “Had to pull over.”

He chuckles at my foolishness, shuts the door behind him and accompanies me down the steps. Once we get situated on our bikes, an eerie flash of déjà vu hits me. “You sure you’re okay?” I ask. “Maybe you should wait another week. Or two.”

He glides into the road. “Why? You afraid I’m gonna beat you?”

I chug along behind him, just like before. “Well, excuse me for caring,” I say with a mock-huff. “See if I bother doing that again. Oh…and there’s no way you’re beating me.” It felt nice to say something cocky and know that 1) maybe I actually could beat him, since he was injured and all, and 2) even if I didn’t, he wouldn’t rub it in my face.

“We’ll see about that.”

Like Tom had planned last time, we make the rounds from Pebble to White Sands to Boardwalk and then back again. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. “Whew,” I say, grinding the Schwinn to a halt at the intersection of Pebble and…whatever cross-street this is, which I have no ability to discern based on the lack of signage. “What’s that? Eight miles?”

Tom stops a few feet ahead of me. Always. It must be a guy thing. “Yup,” he says. “A mile out and a mile back, times four.”

I’d like to quit now, since my knees ache like they’ve got screws twisting around inside them and my lower back is on fire with pain. But Tom is almost vibrating with energy. “What’s next?” I ask.

He stares at me for a few seconds (a few silent, intense seconds that somehow tell me that he wants me, or loves me, or both) before saying, “We should probably take a break.”

Is my pathetic state that obvious? I wonder. Then again, it’s sweet of him to notice. “Okay,” I agree, only too happy to rest my sore ass (this bike seat needs a pillow bungeed around it) and my overtaxed lungs.

It was a balmy fall this year, but now, a week before Christmas break, a chill has begun to set in. Good thing I’m too overheated to take much notice of it.

Tom tells me to leave the Schwinn by his back fence, where he wedges the BMX between a riding mower and the pickets (is that what you call the vertical boards of a fence?). He unties the gate and we waltz past the chicken house for the pre-fab deck (another feature I don’t recall from my last visit, leading me to conclude that it’s new) and then mosey into the house, him holding all the doors as we go.

This time when we get inside, he springs a surprise on me. “I meant to show you something…” he says, purposely vague, “…when you came before. But, uh,…we never…”

I don’t know the layout of his house well enough to anticipate where he’s leading me (although, since it’s a double-wide trailer, it probably isn’t much different than the compact little ranch where Orv, Denise, and I live). Across from the bathroom he stops and opens a door that I figure is a linen closet.

But it isn’t. “You have a basement?!” I squeal. There are steps behind that door. Stairs to the underground.

He grins, and for the first time, I appreciate how bright and welcoming his mouth is. “Uh-huh.”

In my fifteen years, I have never been inside a basement. Most of the houses around here are on slabs, their owners (like Orv, Denise, and me) too poor to invest in such upscale amenities. “That is so cool,” I mutter, more to myself than Tom, who clicks on a number of tap-lights randomly stuck to the walls of the stairwell and then starts descending.

“Be careful,” he tells me, the stairs creaking and groaning under my considerable girth. “These things are pretty steep.”

I grip the railing tighter. “No problem.”

When we get to the landing, my mind is blown even further. Not only does Tom have a basement, he has a finished basement (soothing, earth-tone paint, speckled carpeting, a sofa that’s a notch above the one I lounge across every day). And that’s only the half of it. The opposite side of the place has a retro-looking black-and-white tiled floor and two giant game tables: ping-pong and air hockey.

Tom nudges my arm. “You wanna watch some TV? I’ve got Seinfeld on DVD.”

I love sitcoms, especially the old ones, where people had cell phones the size of winter boots. And don’t get me started on Kramer. “Sure,” I say. I sink into the squishy sofa and wait.

Tom rummages around in the entertainment center until he finds the discs, which he fires up on the flat-screen. “Here,” he says, passing me an icy Coke.

I crane my neck curiously. “Oh, a mini-fridge,” I say. “Nice.” Even though I’m a Diet Coke girl, I pop the top and take a few long gulps.

As the perky theme music bings and crackles, Tom eases in next to me on the sofa. When his thigh touches mine, I get a freaky, hot charge, as if I’ve narrowly escaped being struck by lightning. Tom wastes no time in saying, “You look pretty today.”

Why is this boy so set on screwing me? If he doesn’t knock it off, he’s going to demolish a perfectly good friendship. I roll my eyes and say, “Right.”

“You shouldn’t do that, you know.”

I wrinkle my brow. “Do what?”

“Be so jerky about compliments. People are just trying to be nice.”

Who are these people? “I’m not really used to compliments,” I say. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, I figured. That explains why…”

I feel like I’m on one of those reality shows where the friends and family of some disturbed soul (a bulimic, or a meth head, or an exercise freak, or a cutter) pop out of closets to “intervene” in their shitty lives. “Why I let so many trolls screw me, you mean?”

Tom winces. “You’re better than that.”

“How would you know?”

“I’m not trying to be an asshole,” he says, shaking his head, “but somebody has to…”

“I don’t think so.”

“What if somebody wanted to ask you out?”

I shimmy to the edge of the sofa, preparing for a speedy getaway. “What if?”

“You’re not very approachable.”

Gee, really? “That’s the point.”

“I like you,” he says bluntly.

Every muscle in my body freezes. I think I might like him too. I can’t afford to like him. “Oh.”

“Do you want to go out?”

Just like that? He’s proposing a boyfriend/girlfriend situation?

Just.

Like.

That.

Suddenly I want to puke. “Um…” My leg starts doing this jumpy, twitchy move that’s totally out of control.

“It’s no big deal,” he says.

To him, maybe. I figured I’d breeze through the rest of high school getting screwed every couple of days, sucking down Milky Ways (already a shattered dream), and avoiding all possible scenarios that would expose my heart.

I shrug. “I didn’t think… I mean, don’t you want…?”

He squeezes up next to me, pushes his face to within a few inches of mine. “I want to know if you’ll go out with me,” he murmurs. And then he kisses me, for the second time.

With all the screwing I’ve done, you’d think a simple kiss, the soft, wet meeting of lips and tongues, would be inconsequential. Pedestrian. Mundane. Instead it’s monumental. Erotic. So exhilarating that I have no choice but to reciprocate. “Yes,” I agree between breaths and (is this really happening?) more kissing.

Tom moves his hands over my hips, and I cringe. A smidgen more upward motion and he’ll be wallowing in blubber. I coax one of his hands toward my boob and the other toward the crease of my thigh, territories that’ve got their fair share of mileage.

But he resists. “Not yet,” he says, pulling his hands and lips away. “There’s plenty of time.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Tom Cantwell likes me. A lot, apparently. And not just for a screw.

Dear God, what have I done?

I’ve spent years ignoring bullies, a skill I’ve honed to a firewall of a point. But every now and then, a vicious verbal barb or a purposeful kick to the back of my ankle (accompanied by a rash of giggles and an insincere “sorry”) cracks its way through my hard candy-shell.

Today is one of those days.

I whip around in the hall following a blatant shove of my shoulder, by what felt like a feminine hand. “What the…?”

It is a girl. Sort of. A quasi-butch chick, androgynously named Casey. Her hair is gelled and spiky, but she sports a pink headband with a poufy fake flower pushed off to one side. Her face reminds me of Abraham Lincoln.

“Problem?” she says in a menacing tone. I stare at her, debating whether a confrontation is worth the trouble. She crosses her arms over what there is of her chest, takes a cowboy stance and plants her feet, creating a human median that divides the flow of students on their way to their third period classes. “Huh?” she demands.

A face peeks over Casey’s shoulder. It’s one of her best buds, Melissa (a.k.a. Brent Flynn’s girlfriend).

“Keep your hands to yourself,” I say flatly.

Casey cracks her knuckles, as if we’re in our own little version of West Side Story. I can’t help laughing. “Something funny?” she says.

I face forward again, take a step. “Comical, actually.”

“We know what you’re doing,” Melissa’s quivery squeak of a voice says from Casey’s side, “and you better stop.”

This is the closest anyone has ever come to outing me. Like I said, the rumors about my sexual “openness” have been floating around for a while, and they have been roundly dismissed (by the girls at school, at least). The boys, of course, know better. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” As soon as I say the words, I realize that I should’ve kept my big yap shut.

I start to walk away, but Casey grabs my backpack and stops me. “You want to be left alone?” she asks. I’m sure she’s being rhetorical. “Then close your legs and stay away from other people’s boyfriends.”

“Yeah,” says Melissa.

I shake my head. Not to disagree with them (I wasn’t planning on screwing anyone other than Tom, if he even wants to), but because no matter what I utter next, it’ll be wrong. “Whatever you say.”

Casey gives me another little shove. “That’s right.” And then the bell rings.

The Pill is 99.9% effective, or so I’ve been telling myself every morning for the past eight days, since my period went MIA.

At our mail-cluttered kitchen table, I gobble the same apple-cinnamon oatmeal I have eaten for breakfast every morning this week and rack my brain over birth control pills (did I miss any this month, as I’ve been known to do?) and sexual “partners” (who are the possible daddies, if this screw-up in my cycle turns out to be more than a fluke?).

“Are you okay?” Denise asks with a note of serious concern. “You don’t look so good.” She dumps a couple of big scoops of coffee into the coffeemaker and starts it brewing, even though she’s just come off the night shift and is about to go to bed.

Great. Even Denise can tell there’s something wrong with me. “It’s kind of hot in here, don’t you think?” I say instead of answering.

“You got a fever?”

Maybe it’s morning sickness. “Nah,” I say, shoving my chair away from the table. With Denise being only a few years older than me, you’d think I’d be able to talk to her about this sort of stuff. And sometimes I do, but only in hypothetical terms.

“Want me to stay up for a while?” she offers. “We could finish the last of our Christmas shopping at Derby’s.”

Derby’s is a local discount chain that scoffs up expired, salvaged, and overstocked goods and peddles them to customers on less-than-no-frills budgets. It’s my–and Denise’s–favorite store. “Maybe,” I say, picturing racks of baby clothes that have been rescued from a flood and, consequently, look like they’ve already been puked on.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Denise asks again, studying me as I wobble to the cast iron sink and lean against the faux-marble counter.

The reason I can’t tell Denise about missing my period is that it would upset her too much. Not because she’d (necessarily) be mad if I turned up pregnant, but because she can’t have children of her own. She has a medical condition (don’t ask me which one, because I can never remember the name), and a doctor told her she has less than a one percent chance of conceiving, even without birth control. “I’ve only got twenty-five bucks,” I say, steering the conversation back to the subject of shopping. “Think that’ll be enough?”

Denise smiles. “Yesterday was payday,” she tells me unnecessarily. We all know each other’s business in this house. “I had five hours of overtime last week, so don’t you worry about it.”

I wish I could trade Marie for Denise. “Cool,” I say. I give her the broadest smile I can muster. “Let’s go.”

Good Luck, Fatty! (first draft, chapter 5)

Copyright 2012 by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel. All rights reserved.

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS MATURE YOUNG ADULT CONTENT. IF SUCH CONTENT MIGHT OFFEND YOU, PLEASE STOP READING HERE (or just read with your eyes closed)

Behold the next installment…

Good Luck, Fatty!

by

Maggie Bloom

Chapter 5

Exactly one important person has ever hailed from Unity, North Carolina, as far as anyone can remember anyway: Lex Arlington (at least that’s his stage name). As the legend goes, he began his career in local theater (meaning three counties over, in Guilford), where he honed his craft before launching for the big-time: a squalid Los Angeles apartment and a steady trickle of TV spots for soda pop and mini hamburgers. Two years ago, he got cast as a hunky young lawyer on Penal Code 911. Now he’s a household name.

And he just strolled into The Pit.

I’ve heard the rumors of Lex sightings around town, which seem to pop up once or twice a year, especially around Christmastime. But I never imagined I’d be lucky enough to witness one firsthand. “May I help you?” I say in my pleasant, public-persona tone to Lex and his companion, a leggy, sunglass-clad brunette with a warm, orange glow and pouty, silly-putty lips.

Where the hell is Harvey? He’s missing the biggest thing to hit The Pit since…well, ever.

Lex is athletic and blond, with eyes like freshly mowed grass. The irises of a pharaoh. “Didn’t this place used to be a barbershop?” he asks, a hand nonchalantly draped over the handlebars of a Trek Speed Concept 9.5, the most expensive bike in the shop. Maybe now that he’s rich and famous, luxury goods are drawn to him like planets to the sun.

I form my lips into a nervous smile. “I think it did,” I find myself saying, not at all sure this is true.

The brunette laces her fingers around Lex’s and pulls him toward our meager selection of rollerblades, which conjures a wholesome image in my mind of her and Lex skating hand-in-hand along a sunny California boardwalk. “Looking for anything in particular?” I ask, following along behind them but keeping my distance.

While the brunette spins the wheels of a sweet K2 skate with her thumb, Lex asks me, “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

This is perhaps the strangest thing anyone has ever said to me. I glance toward the backroom in hopes of spotting Harvey, but he must be bogged down with the monthly inventory. “You’re on TV, right?” I say.

He smiles. “You’re good. You had me going for a minute there,” he says with the same wink he’s employed to melt the hearts of a hundred gorgeous starlets back in Hollywood. “What’s your name?”

I have the weirdest feeling that he should know my name already, like we’re friends through the TV. “Bobbi-Jo Cotton.”

“These should work,” the brunette interjects, dangling a raspberry-colored K2 by its tongue. “Size eight and a half.”

My feet are tiny. Size six. Stumps on a bloated tree. “Okay,” I say. “Let me check out back.” I scurry for the stockroom and, as I pass Harvey’s office door, raise my voice slightly and say, “Hey, Harv, come here.”

I don’t wait for him to answer, my eyes trained like a laser beam on the neat rows of rollerblades I can see through the door-less stockroom entry. When I reach the K2s, a glad rush washes over me for the fact that Harvey’s made me organize the back-stocked merchandise so meticulously.

But there are no eight and a halfs. I pull an eight and, miraculously, a nine (a size we don’t order too often due to its sluggish sales rate) and spin back out into the hall, where Harvey drifts from his office into my path.

The size-nines bang into his arm, then crash against the wall. “Sorry!” I gasp.

Harvey rubs at his elbow and eyes me with confusion. “Everything all right?” he asks.

“Come on,” I say, pushing past him. “You’ll never believe…”

Harvey trusts me, no questions asked. With a minimal sigh, he shuffles toward the sales floor.

Lex and the brunette are curled around each other on the extra-deep window ledge, my advertisement for the Yo-Yo race looking childish over their tilted heads, which are poised to kiss.

I clear my throat as I approach. “We’ve got an eight and a nine,” I say in a hopeful tone, “but no eight and a half.”

The brunette stands up and Lex leans back, tucks his hands behind his head. I glance over my shoulder at Harvey, whose expression is inscrutable. “Can I help you with something?” he asks the brunette.

I dart my bulging eyes from Lex to Harvey and back again, but Harvey remains immune to my eyeball pointing. The brunette says, “I’ll try the eights.”

I lead her to a rickety Asian-style bench in front of the cash register, where she slips off her rhinestone-encrusted flip-flops (those can’t be diamonds, right?!) and crams her bare foot into one of the blades. I hold out its mate and say, “You can try ‘em on the sidewalk, if you want.”

She gives me a closed-lipped smile that is quite lovely and not the least bit bitchy, as I’d expected. (The tabloids portray all of Lex Arlington’s conquests as money-grubbing trollops.) Softly she says, “Thank you.”

While the brunette ventures out onto the pothole ridden walk, I pretend to dust the front counter. And I eavesdrop.

“How many’ve you got so far?” Lex asks Harvey.

“Mmm…let’s see,” Harvey says. “Twenty-six? No, no. Twenty-eight, counting Mr. and Mrs. Willard.”

“That’s it?”

Harvey shrugs, his back to me, his frame just wide enough to eclipse my view of Lex. “It’s meant to be an intimate affair. Not more than fifty riders, tops–although the permit covers us for a hundred.”

Lex lowers his voice, and for a few seconds, I am in the dark. Then Harvey’s voice comes back, bright and bouncy. “Ten thousand?” he says, as if the number astounds him.

Lex stands. “To divvy up as you see fit,” he says. “And another ten for charity. Asthma’s prevalent around here, isn’t it?”

“It is,” replies Harvey.

“So the American Lung Association might make sense. It’s your call.”

Harvey simply nods. “That’s mighty generous of you.”

The brunette struggles with the door, so I rush over and shove it open from the inside. She blows by me, splashes down on the bench and says, “I’ll take ‘em.”

Lex grins at Harvey. “Do you accept out-of-state checks?”

“Sure do.”

“And where are those registration forms?” says Lex.

If I could do a cartwheel, I would. Instead I say, “Right this way.”

Brent Flynn is a repeat customer and the only boy who calls to schedule appointments to screw me. I like that he knows my name and brings me little gifts (trinkets from the vending machine at the Bowl-A-Rama) as some kind of reward for when it’s over.

“Hello?” I squeak when I pick up the phone, my throat tense in anticipation of hearing Marie or Duncan.

“Bobbi?” It’s Brent. He’s called enough now that I recognize his voice.

I lean against the kitchen wall and spiral the phone cord around my finger. “Oh, hi.”

“What’re you doin’?”

“Nothing much.” I think about Brent, how he might be a good guy (unlike the rest of the trolls who screw me), how he’s never uttered a mean or degrading word in my presence, how he’s extraordinarily sweet and polite to Melissa, his long-term girlfriend, who’s a virgin and intends to stay that way until they’re married.

“I’ve got my dad’s car until nine,” he says. “Can I come get you?”

Between my legs, a sneaky little humming sensation begins percolating. Even though it’s wrong to keep letting these boys screw me, I can’t stop. Probably I’d have better luck quitting the Milky Ways. “Okay,” I say. If I’m going to give up the screwing, at least I could end on an up-note, with the quasi-respectable Brent Flynn.

Brent says something else that I don’t hear due to the way Orv’s just clomped into the house. “Gotta go,” I blurt into the phone and then quickly hang it up.

Orv stops in his tracks and stares me down. “Who was that?”

“Huh?”

I slink into the living room as if I was headed there all along, and Orv follows. “Who was on the telephone, Bobbi-Jo?” he persists.

I’m not supposed to get calls from boys (and usually I don’t, with the exception of Brent and, sometimes, Tom). I click the TV on, one of those clunky, prehistoric tube sets that looks like an overgrown robot’s head, and say, “Ruby?”

Orv collapses into the thrift-store La-Z-Boy and begins unlacing his work boots. “Don’t lie; you ain’t very good at it.”

I flip through the stations until I land on one of Orv’s favorite shows: Swamp Loggers. As borderline-poor as we are, we still manage to squeak out the thirty bucks a month for satellite TV. “I have no reason to lie,” I proclaim to a symphony of chainsaws and earth-movers. “We have a study group for Biology. I’ll be gone an hour or so.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Orv asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Me, Ruby, Brent, and…I forget the other kid’s name.”

“Where’s it at?”

“Ruby’s house. You can call her mother, if you want,” I bluff.

Orv’s eyes widen as a mud-caked guy on TV is nearly pancaked by a runaway load of timber. “How’re you gettin’ there?”

“It’s too far to bike,” I say, baiting the hook. “Either you can give me a ride, or…” I pause as if I’m awaiting his response. “…or Brent can pick me up.”

Out of the side of his mouth, Orv says, “How long’s he had his license?”

I shrug, even though Orv is now staring past me in a TV daze. “At least six months,” I say with confidence.

“Be back by ten.”

I don’t need a psychiatrist to tell me why I treat my body like a trash heap. I’m not an idiot. What I am is a sucking black hole of neediness with an utter lack of boundaries and an underdeveloped conscience.

I ease into the passenger seat of Mr. Flynn’s late-model sedan (the nicest car I’ve ever been screwed in) right in our cruddy driveway. Brent gives me an uneasy grin and reverses the car into the street, but he doesn’t clear the lawn before Denise comes barreling alongside us clutching my lead brick of a Biology text.

“Hang on,” I say.

Brent stops the car and I power down the window.

Denise skids to a stop. “Gosh, Bobbi,” she says in the most exasperated tone she allows herself, “you forgot your book.” She hands it to me with a shallow huff.

“Oops.” I lay the tome across my knees. “Thanks.”

“Hi, Bret,” Denise says, leaving out the n in his name, like half the student population of Unity High. Denise works with Brent’s mom at Welcome Home (well, sort of, since their shifts only overlap by fifteen minutes). Mrs. Flynn has the day shift and Denise is perpetually on graveyard.

Brent leans over and squints at her. “Hey.” I swear I can feel his pulse quicken, as if he expects us to be caught.

The only “sex incident” Orv and Denise are privy to is the time Harvey caught Noah Rice screwing me in the janitor’s closet. They went even more ballistic than real parents would’ve, or so I assume.

“Did you get any dinner?” Denise asks me. “I made Tuna Helper.”

“That’s all right,” I say. “We’re gonna have something at Ruby’s.”

With a polite smile, I try to suggest that she’s overdoing the mother thing. After all, if Marie didn’t care to fill the role, why should Denise (who’s only a few years older than me) go to such trouble?

“Okay,” she says, sounding disappointed. “See ya later, then.”

Brent pops the car back into gear and I shoot him an apologetic eye roll. Then, for the ten minutes it takes to get across town (to a secluded spot a block away from the Greyhound station, down a blind alley where no one will bother us), I quietly ponder whether I’m about to break one of my steadfast rules: no screwing friends. I’ve never thought of Brent as a friend per se, since he’s out of my league on every parameter imaginable (looks, brains, money, respect), even as a potential pal. But maybe our relationship (if you can call it that) is changing.

It’s not like I keep track or anything (honestly, I’m afraid to know the total number of lewd acts or the even the running tally of boys), but I think Brent’s screwed me ten or eleven times–all of them in this long-forgotten alley.

He kills the headlights as we round the corner, and we coast the last fifty yards in total darkness. Finally the car stops and the engine shuts down. And that tiny voice in the back of my mind starts wagging its finger.

I kick my shoes off.

“You ready?” says Brent.

I unzip my pants and tug them down, freeing one leg and leaving my underwear bunched around the other ankle. Brent strips off everything but his t-shirt. I recline the seat as far back as it will go and open my legs, and then he climbs over.

I’m pretty sure Harvey is gay, but I don’t plan on asking him about it. It doesn’t matter to me. Quite a few folks around here still get riled up over that sort of thing, though, so it’s probably wise of him to keep his private life…private.

“Bonjour!” I say in my best French accent as I stride into The Pit, buoyed by the first decent day of sophomore year. If anyone had snide comments to lob at the back of my head today, I must have surreptitiously dodged them. Plus, I’ve been off the Milky Ways for thirty-six hours and going strong.

Harvey is behind the counter wearing a frazzled expression and tapping the retractable end of a ballpoint pen on a legal pad: click-on, click-off; click-on, click-off. He doesn’t seem to notice me approaching.

I halt in front of him and say, “What’s happening?”

He clicks the pen twice more before looking up, and when I catch a glimpse of the curled, ink-whiskered edges of the legal pad, I understand why his brain is in knots. There must be ten sheets worth of haphazardly scribbled names and numbers and dollar signs. “Need some help?” I inquire.

He slaps the pen down on the counter. “This damn race has just…” When his gaze hits mine, he finally registers my presence. He shakes his head. “I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew, so to speak.”

I spin the legal pad my way. “What’s wrong?”

The bell over the door signals a customer, causing Harvey to lower his voice. “Since Lex Arlington put up that prize money and turned the Yo-Yo into a charity ride, I’ve been fielding calls from every corner of the state. I can hardly keep track of the entrants and pledges, let alone wrangle with the town over new permits.”

“Forget about this,” I say, clasping the legal pad to my chest. “I’ll have a spreadsheet whipped up in no time, color-coded and everything.”

Harvey’s eyes crinkle. “Maybe tomorrow you can man the fort while I twist some arms at city hall?”

“Absolutely.”

I leave Harvey to deal with the potential customer, a guy in his mid-twenties with a cockeyed baseball cap and saggy pants, while I fire up the old desktop computer in the office. I get halfway down the second page of data entry before I spot something odd and unexpected: the name Duncan Cotton. My father has entered the Yo-Yo race and claims to have collected three hundred and fifty dollars on behalf of the American Lung Association. I force my fingers to tap out his name in the column for adults, age thirty to fifty. (Harvey’s divided the race into heats, each vying for a portion of the ten thousand dollars in prize money; the other ten grand, along with all the pledges, goes to asthma prevention and treatment.)

The next name on the list is Mario Smith (isn’t there always a Mario Smith?), but I can’t bring myself to type it through the tears that sting and blur my eyes. As I rake a yellow, number-two pencil over my father’s name, a tragic factoid whacks me: I was born on March twenty-first, the same as Duncan, and still he doesn’t find me worthy enough to love.