Size 12 Is Not Fat hwm-1

by Meg Cabot

  “But, Rachel, it will never work. I already went to the cops—”

  “And did they believe you?” Rachel asks calmly. “When they find your broken, bleeding body, they’ll know you just did the whole thing to get attention—planted that bomb, then killed yourself when you realized you’d been discovered. And it won’t even be so hard to understand, since your life’s been in such a downward spiral lately. Jordan getting engaged to that other girl. His brother—well, his brother just doesn’t seem interested, does he, Heather? And you and I both know how much you’re in love with him. It’s written all over your face every time he walks into the room.”

  Is that true? Does everyone know I love Cooper? Does Cooper know I love Cooper? God, how embarrassing.

  Wait a minute. What am I listening to this lunatic for, anyway?

  “Fine, Rachel,” I say, playing along because it seems like the only way out. “Fine. Kill me. But what about Sarah? I mean, what’s poor Sarah ever done to you? Why don’t you let Sarah go.”

  “Sarah?” Rachel glances at her graduate assistant as if she’s only just remembered she’s in the room. “Oh, right. Sarah. You know, I think Sarah’s going to just… disappear.”

  Sarah lets out a frightened hiccup, but a stony look from Rachel silences her.

  “Yes,” Rachel say. “I think Sarah is going to go home for a few weeks to recover from the horror of your death, Heather. Only she’s not going to make it. She’s going to disappear somewhere along the way. Hey. It happens.”

  “Oh no, Rachel, please,” Sarah chokes. “Please don’t make me disappear. Please—”

  “Shut up,” Rachel screams. She raises a hand to hit Sarah again, but freezes when the phone on my desk rings, jangling so loudly that Rachel jumps, and the blue streak of lightning between the blades of the gun sways dangerously close to me. I leap back, falling against the door, and spin around to grasp the knob.

  In a split second, Rachel is on me, a spindly arm going around my neck, choking me. She’s surprisingly strong for such a slight woman. But even so, I could have shaken her off…

  … could have if it hadn’t been for the sputtering stun gun, which she shoves beneath my nose, hissing, “Don’t try it. Don’t even think about it. I’ll blast you, Heather, I swear it. And then I’ll kill you both.”

  I freeze, breathing hard. Rachel is plastered to my back like a cape. The phone keeps on ringing, three times, four. I can tell by the ring that it’s an on-campus call. I whisper, my voice rough with fear, “Rachel, that’s probably the reception desk calling. You know I told Cooper to wait outside for me. He’s at the guard’s station.”

  “In that case,” Rachel says, releasing her stranglehold on my neck but keeping the stun gun within inches of my throat, “we’ll be on our way. I’ll deal with you”—she flings a warning look in Sarah’s direction—“later.”

  Then she opens the office door and, glancing furtively left and right, shoves me out into the empty hallway…

  … but not far enough that she isn’t within blasting range. She directs me to the elevators across from our office door—the elevators that were, unfortunately for me, unscathed by yesterday’s explosion in the service shaft—and pounds on the up button. I pray that the doors will open and the entire basketball team will emerge and tackle Rachel for me.

  But no such luck. The cab has been sitting empty on the first floor, and when the doors slide apart, there’s no one inside.

  “Get in,” Rachel orders, and I do as she says. Rachel follows, then inserts her pass key and presses twenty.

  We’re going to the penthouse. And there won’t be any other stops along the way.

  “Girls like you, Heather,” Rachel says, not looking at me. “I’ve been dealing with girls like you my whole life. The pretty ones are all alike. You go through life thinking everybody owes you something. You get the record contracts and the promotions and the cute guys, while people like me? We’re the ones who do all the work. Do you know that Pansy is the first award I’ve received in my field?”

  I glare at her. This woman is going to kill me. I don’t see any reason to be polite to her anymore.

  “Yeah,” I say. “And you got it for cleaning up after your own murders. That stuff in those girls’ files—about Elizabeth’s mom wanting her sign-in privileges revoked, and Mrs. Pace not liking Lakeisha—that stuff never even happened, did it? Those women never called you. You made all that stuff up, as a way to justify your meetings with those girls. What did you talk about when you were meeting with them, anyway? What kind of twisted, sick stuff were you terrorizing them with?”

  “Heather.” Rachel looks at me critically. “You’ll never understand, will you? I’ve worked hard all my life for what I have. I never got anything easily, like you. Not anything, men, jobs, friends. What I do get, I keep. Like Christopher, for instance. And this job. Do you have any idea how hard it was to get myself a position at this school, in the same building as him? So you understand why you have to die. You’re jeopardizing too much for me. If you hadn’t started snooping around, I’d have let you live. We made a nice team, you and I, I always thought. I mean, when I stand next to you, I look extra thin. That’s a real bonus in an assistant.”

  The elevator pings, and the doors slide open. We’re on the twentieth floor, in the hallway outside the president’s penthouse. I know the minute we step onto the gray carpeting that the motion detector will be set off downstairs at the guard’s desk. Would Pete glance at the monitor and see Rachel and her stun gun?

  Please look, Pete.I try to use Vulcan mind control on Pete, even though he’s twenty floors down.Look, Pete, look. Look, Pete, look…

  Rachel pushes me out into the hallway.

  “Come on,” she says, pulling out the building’s master key. “I bet you always wanted to see where the president lives. Well, now’s your chance. Too bad you won’t live long enough to enjoy it.”

  Rachel unlocks the front door to the Allingtons’ apartment and steers me into the foyer. Tiled in black and white, this is where Mrs. Allington had stood and accused me of chasing after her son like a harlot. The foyer opens into a spacious living room, walled on two sides by French doors leading out onto the penthouse terrace. Like the Villa d’Allington, the predominant decorating theme appears to be black leather, and lots of it. Martha Stewart, Mrs. Allington apparently is not. Well, I kind of already guessed that.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” Rachel says conversationally. “Except for those hideous birds.”

  Just off the foyer, in that six-foot-high wicker cage, the cockatoos whistle and dance, eyeing us suspiciously. Rachel aims the stun gun at them and laughs as they shriek at the sight of the leaping blue flame.

  “Idiot birds,” she says. Then she grabs hold of my arm and starts pulling me toward a set of French doors. “Come on,” she says. “It’s time for your big finale. I figure a star like you would make a really dramatic exit. So you’re not going the elevator surfing route. You’re going to plunge off the roof of Fischer Hall… kind of like that turtle, in that movie your psychotic friend in the cafeteria is always talking about. Only you, unfortunately, won’t be saved by a rope shot from inside your shell.”

  Before I have a chance to react, a door on the far side of the living room is thrown open, and Mrs. Allington, in a pink jogging suit, stares at us.

  “What the hell,” she demands, “are you two doing here?”

  Rachel smiles pleasantly. “Don’t mind us, Eleanor,” she sings. “We’ll be out of your way in no time.”

  “How did you get in here?” Mrs. Allington begins striding toward us, looking furious. “Get out, this instant, before I call the police.”

  “I wish we could, Eleanor,” Rachel says, to the woman who, in a different world, might have been her mother-in-law. “But we’re here on official residence hall business.”

  “I don’t give a damn why you’re here.” Mrs. Allington has reached a wall phone. Now she’s lifting up the receiver. “Don’t you know who
my husband is?”

  “Look out, Mrs. Allington,” I yell.

  But it’s too late. Like a striking cobra, Rachel lashes out with the stun gun.

  Mrs. Allington stiffens, her eyes going wide, like someone who’d just gotten some very bad news… maybe about her son’s LSAT scores, or something.

  Then she seems to fling herself over the back of one of the leather couches, twitching until she lies in a heap on the parquet floor, her eyes still wide open, her jaw slack and shiny with saliva.

  “Oh my God,” I cry. Because it is, without a doubt, the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen… worse even than what I’d seen Tania Trace doing to my then boyfriend. “Rachel, you killed her!”

  “She’s not dead,” Rachel says, the disgust in her voice obvious. “When she comes to, she’ll have no idea what hit her. She won’t remember her last name, let alone me. But that won’t be unusual, for her. Come on,” she says, and grabs my arm again.

  Now that I’ve seen firsthand what that gun could do, I’m in no hurry to experience it. I realize I’d been stupid not to try to get away from Rachel downstairs. Sure, she might have zapped me, then hauled me into the elevator. But I’d have been dead weight, and it would have been difficult for her. This way, it’s too easy for her, and more difficult for me. The only place I have to go is down.

  This thought is enough to cause me to make a break for it. I yank my arm from Rachel’s grasp and run. I don’t know why, but I head for the door through which Mrs. Allington had come. I can’t run fast, being so stiff from what had happened in the elevator that day before, and all. But I know I’ve surprised her when Rachel lets out a furious scream. Surprising her feels good, because it means she doesn’t have the upper hand anymore.

  I have only fleeting glimpses of the rooms I tear through. A dining room that looks as if it hadn’t seen any diners in a long time, the long mahogany table highly polished, seating for twelve, a sideboard with fake fruit on it. Fake! Then a kitchen, spotlessly clean, blue and white tiles. A kind of den, again with French doors on two sides, and a wide-screen TV in front of another leather couch, this one in avocado green. On the TV is a Debbie Reynolds movie.Tammy and the Bachelor, I think. On the couch is a basket of yarn and a bottle of Absolut. Mrs. Allington doesn’t mess around with her leisure time.

  I bang through the only door in the den that doesn’t lead to the terrace and find myself in a bedroom, a dark bedroom, all the curtains pulled shut over the French doors. The bed is king-sized and unmade, the gray silk sheets in a tangle at one end. Another wide-screen TV, this one tuned to a talk show, the sound off. There’re a pair of black briefs on the floor. Chris’s room? But Chris lives in the law school dorm. Which can only mean the Allingtons sleep in separate rooms. Scandal!

  There are no more doors, except one to President Allington’s bathroom. I’m trapped.

  I can hear Rachel coming, slamming doors and screaming like a banshee. I look frantically around the room for a weapon, and come up empty-handed. Because of the track lighting in the mirrored ceiling—I’ll think about that one later—there isn’t even a lamp I can unplug and swing at her head. I think of sliding under the bed, hiding behind a set of those damask curtains, but I know she’ll find me. Can I talk my way out of this? I’ve talked my way out of worse jams than this. I can’t quite think of any right now, but I’m almost sure I have.

  Rachel comes careening into the room, stumbling over the threshold and blinking as her eyes adjust to the sudden darkness. I stand on the opposite side of the room, behind the massive bed, trying not to be distracted by my reflection on the ceiling.

  “Look, Rachel,” I pant, talking low and fast. “You don’t have to kill me. Or Sarah, either. I swear we won’t tell anyone about this. It’ll just be our secret, between us girls. I totally understand where you’re coming from. I’ve had guys jerk me around, too. I mean, Chris definitely isn’t worth going to jail for—”

  “I won’t be going to jail, Heather,” Rachel says. “I’ll be organizing your memorial service. And my wedding. I’ll be sure to play all of your greatest hits at both. That is, if there’s more than one. Weren’t you kind of a one-hit wonder, anyway? Such a shame. I wonder if anyone will even show up at your funeral. After all, you’re already a has-been at—how old are you, anyway? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? Just an ex-pop star who’s let herself go.”

  “Twenty-eight,” I say. “And fine. Kill me. But not Sarah. Come on, Rachel. She’s just a kid.”

  “Aw.” Rachel smiles and shakes her head at me. “Isn’t that sweet? You begging for Sarah’s life like that. When in real life, I know how much she annoys you. See, that’s the problem with girls like you, Heather. You’re too nice. You have no killer instinct. When the going gets tough, you cave. You’re born with all the advantages, and you just throw them away. You let your body go, your man slip away, your career go down the toilet. Jesus, you even let your own mother rob you blind. And yet you’re still so… nice about it. I mean, you and Jordan? Still friends. You can’t stand Sarah, and here you are, pleading with me not to kill her. I bet you still send your mom Mother’s Day cards, don’t you?”

  I gulp. And nod.

  Well, what else am I going to say?

  “See,” Rachel says. “Now that’s just sad. Because nice girls, they always finish last. I’ll actually be doing the world a favor by killing you. It’s natural selection, really. One less blond to watch go to waste.”

  With that, Rachel comes at me, diving across the bed, stun gun first.

  I whirl around and throw back the curtains. I unlatch the first set of French doors I reach and hurl myself out onto the terrace.

  31

  Wake up, look around

  Everybody’s got their feet

  On the ground

  No way I’ll do the same

  I’m over you,

  No one to blame

  Get out, out of my life

  I’m not your mother

  Won’t be your wife

  Go on, go out that door

  Don’t you mess

  with me no more

  It’s all over

  Just leave it be

  I’m over you

  Get away from me

  Heather Wells, “Get Out”

  It’s still raining—harder than ever, actually. The sky is a leaden gray all around me.

  I’ve never realized it before, but Fischer Hall is the tallest building on the west side of the park, and the penthouse terrace affords spectacular views of Manhattan on four sides, of the Empire State Building to the north, just visible through the mist, the fog-shrouded void where the World Trade Center had once stood to the south, the sodden East and West Villages.

  An excellent place, I realize, to shoot a scene from a movie.Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, perhaps.

  Except that this is no movie. This is real life.My life. For however much longer it lasts.

  The wind up on the twentieth floor is strong, and drizzle spits in my face. I have a hard time figuring out just where I’m headed, since everywhere I look, I see only geranium planters precariously perched on low stone balustrades over which I can picture my body very easily tumbling.

  Not knowing where else to go, I duck my head and start running around the sides of the Allingtons’ apartment, to the opposite side of the terrace. With no sign of Rachel following, I have a minute to pause and open my backpack, still hanging from its strap across my shoulders, and fumble inside it for that canister of pepper spray I could swear was still in it. I have no idea if the thing will still work, but at this point, anything that will keep me from meeting the volts from that stun gun is worth a try.

  I find it. I release the safety catch when a deafening crash occurs just behind me, and in a shower of splintering wood and flying glass, Rachel leaps through a set of French doors—like Cujo, or a teenage mutant ninja turtle—not even bothering to unlatch them first. She hits me with the full force of her body, and we both go down onto the wet flagstones.

/>   I land solidly on my sore shoulder, effectively knocking all the breath from my chest. But I try to keep rolling, over shards of wood and glass, to get away from her.

  She’s on her feet before I am, and coming toward me at full charge. Through it all, she’s managed to hang on to the Thunder Gun.

  But I still clutch the pepper spray, hidden in my fist. When she bends over me, her dark hair already becoming plastered to her face by the rain, her lips are curled back in a snarl not unlike Lucy’s when she’s riled by a tennis ball or a Victoria’s Secret catalog.

  “You’re so weak,” Rachel sneers at me, and she waves the stun gun under my nose. “How can you tell a brunette?”

  I try to maneuver myself into a position from which I can spray her directly in the face. I don’t want the wind whipping the stuff back at me.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I wheeze, still breathless from the impact of my fall. God. I can’t believe I once bought this woman flowers.

  And okay, they were only from the deli. But still.

  “You know how you can tell a brunette?” Rachel grins, her face just inches from mine. “Turn a blond upside down!”

  As she lunges to blast 120,000 volts into my right hip, I lift my hand and launch a stream of pepper spray into her face. Rachel shrieks and backs up, throwing an arm up to protect her face…

  Only the nozzle won’t push all the way down. So instead of a jet of chemical poison hitting her in the eye, the stuff just foams down the side of the canister, soaking into my stitches and burning me badly enough to make me go, “Ow!”

  Rachel, realizing she hasn’t been hit after all, starts to laugh.

  “Oh God,” she brays. “Could you be more pathetic, Heather?”

  But this time, when she lunges at me, I’ve rolled to my feet, and I’m ready for her.

  “Rachel,” I say, as she comes at me. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time. Size twelve”—wrapping my stinging fingers around the hard canister, I slam my fist as hard as I can into Rachel’s face—“is not fat.”