“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, Lara,” she began slowly, “but … well, I’ve been wanting to talk to you. You really have a very pretty face, you know? And I know it must be hard for you. I mean, some people in this school can be really cruel.”
I stood there, rooted to the spot, mute.
“In junior high,” she continued, “I weighed, like, fifteen pounds more than I do now, and I found this great diet to take the weight off, and it worked.”
My face burned with rage and humiliation. “You want to give me your diet?”
“I don’t want to offend you,” she said quickly. “I just know what it’s like to want to lose weight, and—”
“You don’t know anything,” I said in carefully measured tones. “You look at me and think you know, but you don’t.”
“Listen, just forget I said anything—”
“No,” I replied, “you listen. A year ago, at my old school, I was homecoming queen. Queen! I was thinner than you are. Then I got this disease called Axell-Crowne Syndrome, and it made me gain all this weight. You think I’m just this fat girl that you pity—”
“I didn’t mean it like that—”
“Yes, yes, you did,” I said earnestly. “I know you did, because I was once exactly like you.”
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM DELL LAUREL-LEAF BOOKS
STARGIRL, Jerry Spinelli
TWENTY PAGEANTS LATER, Caroline B. Cooney
DRIVER’S ED, Caroline B. Cooney
THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS, Ann Brashares
LUCY THE GIANT, Sherri L. Smith
WHEN ZACHARY BEAVER CAME TO TOWN, Kimberly Willis Holt
GHOST BOY, Iain Lawrence
Published by
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Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York
Copyright © 1998 by Cherie Bennett
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press.
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eISBN: 978-0-307-56921-9
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v3.1
For my grandmother Jessica Berman, who was so much more beautiful than I ever understood, and for my father, Dr. Bennett H. Berman, who always knew it.
And for my husband, Jeff Gottesfeld, who reads every word of every draft of every manuscript, including this one. His talent, brilliance, insight, and inspiration contributed to this book at least as much as the words I wrote.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following writers, media outlets, and publications: Fiona Soltes, staff writer, “Hard to Swallow,” The Tennessean (Sunday, June 9, 1996, Living Section, p. F–1); John Stossel, reporter, “Growing Up Fat,” ABC News, 20/20 segment aired July 28, 1995 (transcript courtesy of Journal Graphics); Karen S. Schneider, with Shelley Levitt, Danelle Morton, Paula Yoo (in Los Angeles), Sarah Skolnik, Alicia Brooks, Rochelle Jones (in Washington), Ron Arias, Liz McNeil, Jane Sugden (in New York City), Don Sider, Marisa Salcines (in Miami), Barbara Sandler (in Chicago), and Margaret Nelson (in Minneapolis), “Mission Impossible: Deluged by Images from TV, Movies and Magazines, Teenage Girls Do Battle with an Increasingly Unrealistic Standard of Beauty—and Pay a Price,” People (June 3, 1996, pp. 65–74); Zibby Schwarzman, “My Weight, Myself: Do Ten Extra Pounds Make Me a Less Worthy Person?” Seventeen (August 1993, pp. 102, 216); Corina Hughes, age fifteen, as told to Alison Bell, “I Was Fat,” ’Teen (January 1996, p. 42 ff.); Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, Ph.D., “Excessive Weight Preoccupation: Normative but Not Harmless,” Nutrition Today (March/April 1995, pp. 68–74); Janet Greeson, Ph.D., Food for Love: Healing the Food, Sex, Love and Intimacy Relationship (Pocket Books, 1993, 1994); Ken Mayer, Real Women Don’t Diet!: One Man’s Praise of Large Women & His Outrage at the Society That Rejects Them (Bartleby Press, 1993); Mary Bray Pipher, Ph.D., Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (Putnam, 1994; Ballantine, 1995); Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (Morrow, 1991; Anchor, 1992).
For medical information, special thanks to Kathleen Childers of the mobile unit of the Mental Health Coop of Nashville, Tennessee. Grateful thanks as well to Jeff Gottesfeld, my love, husband, sometimes collaborator, first reader, producer, and so much more than that; to Olga Silverstein, M.S.W., of the Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy (New York) for inspiration; to my teen readers around the world who have written me so many heartfelt letters on the subject of this novel; to Wendy Loggia, Beverly Horowitz, and my team at BDD; to the Charlotte Sheedy Agency and to Regula Noetzli; to the William Morris Agency; to the terrific teens and adults who critiqued early drafts of this novel—Amy, Claire, and Zoë Jarman, Gina Lodge, Carol Ponder, and Lisa Hurley. While actual people may be referred to in this novel, all situations (except for the 20/20 segment acknowledged above) and Axell-Crowne Syndrome are fictitious.
MISS TEEN PRIDE OF THE SOUTH
Entrant: Lara Lynn Ardeche Age: 16
Hometown: Nashville D.O.B.: May 9
Parents: Mr. and Mrs. James “Jimbo” Ardeche.
Education: Ensworth School; Forest Hills Middle School; currently a junior at Forest Hills High School, Nashville.
Special training: piano—8 years; dance (ballet, jazz)—6 years.
Scholastic ambition: to study music at Juilliard, in New York, and after college, to teach music to handicapped children.
Hobbies: piano, dance, working with kids, working out, musical theater, going to Vanderbilt football games.
Sports: dance, swimming, biking, tennis, field hockey, aerobic training.
Statistics: Height—5′7″ Hair—Blond
Weight—118 Eyes—Blue
Scholastic honors: National Honor Society, Who’s Who Among High School Sophomores, Tenth Grade French Honors Award, Superior rating for piano at Tennessee State Music Festival, Advisory board for Nashville Teen Peer Counseling Program.
Other accomplishments: selected as Most Beautiful, Most Popular, and Best Smile in tenth grade; school orchestra soloist; voted Most Charming at Miss Willa’s School of Charm and Manners, age 12.
Employment: summer job as junior music counselor at Bosley Camp for Children with Special Needs. Voted Best Junior Counselor.
Family: Father James is an advertising executive; mother Carol owns an upscale catering business; and 13-year-old brother Scott is a skateboard champion.
Other facts: Lara learned her winning, can-do attitude from her wonderful, supportive parents. She believes that she has been given many gifts and that it is her responsibility to share those gifts with others.
Personal motto: “If you can dream it, you can achieve it.”
Contents
Cover
Also Available from Dell Laurel-Leaf Books
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 118
Chapter 118 (Continued)
Chapter 118 (The End)
Chapter 128
Chapter 136
Chapter 158
Chapter 180
Chapter 190
Chapter 208
Chapter 210
Chapter 218
Chapter 218 (Continued)
Chap
ter 218 (Continued)
Chapter 218 (Continued)
Chapter 218 (Continued)
Chapter 218 (The End)
Chapter 213
Chapter 211
Chapter 210
“Which would you rather be, fat or dead?”
“Fat. Pass me the chips.”
“See, this is why I totally hate you,” my best friend, Molly Sheridan, said as she heaved the jumbo-sized bag of chips at me. “You can eat anything you want and not get fat. Frankly, Lara, you deserve to die painfully, squeezed to death in size-eighteen jeans.”
“Never happen,” I said as I stuck a handful of chips into my mouth. “I am metabolically blessed.”
“You’re blessed, period,” Molly said as she leaned back on the abs-crunch mat, balancing the Living section of The Tennessean, Nashville’s morning newspaper, on her bent knees. She read the headline aloud: “HARD TO SWALLOW: Younger and Younger Children Receive Society’s Thin Message—and Find They Suffer from Eating Disorders.”
“Bo-ring,” I sang out, reaching for another handful of chips. I scrambled to my feet so that I could look at my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that line the home gym my mega-rich grandfather had installed two years earlier as a Christmas present.
I used the gym religiously, every other day. You can’t be a pageant queen and let yourself go.
Molly and I had just finished working out—well, I had worked out, she had kept me company—and I was feeling on top of the world. I was sixteen, madly in love with the most fantastic guy in the entire universe, and about to get ready for my school’s homecoming dance.
The only thing that could possibly be any better would be to win homecoming queen. I didn’t really believe I had a chance, but other people seemed to think I did. After all, I was only a junior, and there were at least two senior girls who I knew would get it before I would.
But that would be okay. I could win next year. This year I would just be named to the court and have fun with my boyfriend, Jett, and all my friends.
“You think Jett would like my hair up?” I asked Molly, holding my long, blond hair up off my neck. “Does this look sophisticated or stupid?”
“ ‘According to the National Institute of Compulsive Eating’—now there’s a depressing place to work—‘eighty percent of ten-year-old girls have worried about their weight enough to diet,’ ” Molly read, her head still buried in the newspaper. She reached for the chips. “It says here that there are, like, zillions of anorexics, or something.”
Molly gave me a wistful look. “Hey, maybe I could get a mild case of anorexia. You know, just until I lost thirty pounds or something, and then I’d, like, snap out of it.”
I snatched the paper out of her hands. “Mol! Tonight is homecoming. Amber and Lisa are coming over any minute. We need to plan.” I pulled her to her feet.
“No, you need to plan,” Molly corrected me. “You’re the one who has an actual short at homecoming queen. You’re the one who bagged Jett Anston, world’s hottest guy, and—”
“Cut it out,” I interrupted, nudging her with my hip. We stared at our reflections. “I say we put your hair up, too. What do you think?”
“I hate standing next to you.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Molly repeated. “Look in the mirror!”
“I’m looking.” I peered more closely at my chin. “Am I getting a pimple?”
“Ignore your zit for a moment,” Molly urged me. “Just tell me what you see.”
“Me and you.”
“Want to know what I see? One perfect blond goddess and one short, fat girl with a Lifetime Bad Hair Day.”
“You’re not fat, Mol—”
“Ha. I slide ever so gracefully into a size twelve—”
“Don’t put yourself down like—”
“Okay, a tight size fourteen in jeans but if you tell anyone, I’ll personally make sure you meet an untimely—”
“Mol—”
“In short,” Molly concluded, “you are a future Miss America, the hopes and the dreams of—sob—an entire generation, whereas I am a walking Chia Pet. And this pet has to pee.” She took off for the bathroom.
I had to laugh. Molly could always make me laugh.
We had met in third grade. I was very popular, and my mother had, as always, sent me to the first day of school looking like the little pageant winner I already was (Miss Tiny Tennessee, among others)—frilly dress, hair curled and held back with a perfect bow. When our teacher, Mrs. Pissitelli, called on me, I addressed her as “ma’am.”
Molly had sat next to me. She was the new girl, and she wore overalls and high-tops. She called Mrs. Pissitelli “The Pisser” behind her back and made fart noises when Mrs. Pissitelli bent over to get the chalk she had dropped. Molly leaned toward me and whispered that The Pisser probably had armpit hair so long she could braid it.
We had been best friends ever since that day. Most of my other friends didn’t like Molly. They called her “The Mouth.” But I thought she was funny, nervy, brave—all the things I wasn’t. And I loved her for it.
From the first day I met Molly, she was plump and I was slender. It was just the way we were, and it didn’t matter to us at all. Until, I remembered, gazing in the gym mirror, a certain day when we were both thirteen.
Molly had worn a babydoll dress to school, and Tommy Baigley had yelled out in the lunchroom in front of dozens of kids, “Hey, Sheridan, are you pregnant?”
“Yeah,” Molly had shot back, “with Michael Jackson’s love child.”
Everyone had laughed, and Tommy had used his spoon as a catapult to shoot his peas at Molly, which got him kicked out of the cafeteria. After that, Tonika Ramone got one of her nosebleeds, which grossed every one out, and everyone forgot all about what Tommy had said to Molly.
Everyone except Molly, that is. That night she’d slept over at my house. And as she lay there on my other twin bed I heard her voice in the darkness.
“You know what’s really weird, Lar?” she’d asked me. “How you put on a certain outfit and you think it looks really good, so you go around feeling kind of cute. And then someone says something, like that you look pregnant, and you realize you don’t look good. You never looked good. You look like a big fat slob and you were the only one stupid enough to think you looked good—”
“You did look good, Mol—”
“I’m never wearing that stupid babydoll dress again.”
I had gotten up on one elbow and searched out her face in the moonlight that was streaming in through my window. “Listen, Molly, the dress is cute. Tommy is just an idiot—”
“He never would have said that to you,” Molly had said, her voice low. “No one ever says anything mean to you.”
“That’s not true,” I’d said, even as my mind scrambled for something. “In fifth grade Teresa Baker said I was stuck-up.”
That’s when I saw one tear curl down Molly’s cheek. It was the first time I had ever seen her cry. I was amazed.
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about,” she’d said, her voice flat. She fisted the tear off her cheek. “It must be so great to be you. And it sucks being me.”
I sighed at the thought. Molly was still chubby, still funny, and still brave. And she was still my best friend in the entire world. So what if my cool and popular friends didn’t really appreciate her? So what if they only put up with her because of me? They just didn’t understand. Molly didn’t love me because I was popular or a pageant winner any more than I had stopped loving her because she wasn’t.
With Molly, I could be myself.
“You know that icky little inspirational plaque in the bathroom about positive thinking?” Molly asked, walking out of the bathroom and over to me. “I’ve decided to take it to heart. I positively want to be as thin as you are.”
“All you have to do is—” I began.
“God, can you imagine if I end up as fat as my mother?” Molly asked, making a face at her reflec
tion in the mirror. “She’s so fat I don’t think my parents even do it anymore. My father has all these Playboys he hides in his bathroom.”
I held my hair up a different way, trying to decide if I liked it. “Yeah, you told me.”
“But here’s what I didn’t tell you,” Molly said. “This morning—you’re not even going to believe this—taped to our refrigerator was Miss September herself. Only Dad had drawn this little bikini on her with Magic Marker. And he stuck a Post-it note on it, for my mother: ‘Margie: This is to inspire you to lose weight. I love you, Alan.’ ”
I made a face at our reflections. “That’s so—”
“Lara, you are totally not gonna believe this!” Amber Bevin cried as she and Lisa James, both good friends of mine, ran into the gym, dropped their backpacks off their arms, and laid their plastic-covered homecoming dresses carefully over the handles of the StairMaster.
Amber is a petite brunette and Lisa is slender, with gorgeous, straight red hair and a darling face. They’re both really popular.
“Guess who has chicken pox and can’t go to homecoming tonight?” Amber asked.
“Elvis?” Molly guessed.
“Denise Reiser!” Lisa squealed, ignoring Molly and grabbing my fingers between hers.
“Denise Reiser?” I echoed, my jaw hanging open.
“She called Angela Morgan and Angela called me,” Amber reported. “Denise is totally covered in ugly scabs—”
Lisa squeezed my fingers. “Denise was, like, a shoo-in—”
“—but no way they’re crowning a queen who isn’t there—” Amber continued.
“Not to mention a human scab,” Molly put in.
“—so half your comp is gone,” Lisa crowed.
“Wow,” I breathed, leaning against the mirror. “Are you … are you sure?”
“I’m totally sure,” Lisa said, checking out her reflection in the mirror. “God, my hair looks like dog meat. I called her and acted like I felt really terrible for her, just to make sure it wasn’t all a rumor. But it’s true.”
“Isn’t that fantastic?” Amber asked me.
Life in the Fat Lane Page 1
