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.”