“It’s not cancer,” Mom said. “And you’re not dying.”
“I’m sure it isn’t anything terrible,” Dad added.
“The nurses weighed me,” I told them. “I’ve gained two more pounds.”
“How is that possible?” Dad asked with distaste.
“We don’t know, Jim,” Mom told him with exaggerated calm. “That’s the whole point of her being here, isn’t it?”
“I know that, Carol,” Dad said, his mouth tense.
“Then why did you ask such a stupid question, Jim?”
“I meant it rhetorically, Carol.”
They spit out each other’s names as if they were insults. I couldn’t stand it.
“How was your business trip?” I asked Dad.
“Fine,” he said tersely.
“So, did you get the client in New York?”
Mom and Dad traded looks.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
No one answered. Then Dr. Laverly bustled into the room.
“Hello,” she said. “How are you today?”
“I’m waiting for you to tell me,” I replied.
She smiled and closed the door. “Yes, I guess you are. Mr. and Mrs. Ardeche, why don’t you have a seat?”
I had a terrible feeling of dread. My mom sat on the edge of my bed and took my hand. Dad sat on the chair.
“I have the results of all the tests we did on Lara,” she said. “As you know, we repeated the same tests we did a few weeks ago, plus we did many more, including some very new genetic tests.”
Both my parents nodded solemnly.
“The tests we repeated are, once again, negative,” Dr. Laverly said. “In fact, all the tests are negative.”
“But that’s crazy,” I said. “That can’t be.”
“According to your weigh-in today, Lara, you’ve gained two pounds while you’ve been here,” Dr. Laverly continued. “It defies just about everything we know about nutrition and weight loss.”
“That is just not acceptable,” my father snapped.
Dr. Laverly nodded, then turned to me. “The other odd thing we noticed is that your urine output is a fraction of what it should be, given that you are drinking so much water and living, basically, on liquid food. You should be urinating easily five times as much as you are.”
“So what does that mean?” I demanded.
“Have you also noticed that you don’t seem to sweat as much as you used to, Lara?” Dr. Laverly asked me. “Say, when you exercise?”
“Yes, now that you mention it,” I said.
Dr. Laverly nodded thoughtfully. “I can’t tell you that I know for sure what your problem is. But I read something awhile back about symptoms similar to yours, so I’ve been doing some research.”
She opened a file and looked down at some notes she’d made on a yellow legal pad.
“The year before last, Dr. Bernard Axell, an endocrinologist at Beth Israel Hospital, in Boston, wrote a casestudy paper about a teen patient of his who kept gaining weight, even on a very calorie-restricted diet. And last year, a British researcher, Dr. Maxwell Crowne, gave a speech at a symposium in London about two other young people—one in South Africa, one in Leeds, England—who were presenting the same symptoms. Crowne said that these teens ate next to nothing, under strictly controlled circumstances, yet continued to gain weight.”
“Just like me,” I said, nodding.
“Yes,” the doctor agreed. “Axell and Crowne are working together now, and they theorize that these patients’ bodies have somehow become superefficient, and just about all the food and water they take in is put to use. In fact, the less they eat, the more efficient their bodies are, so they actually gain more weight by ingesting less food.
“The other common denominator seems to be that the patient hardly sweats, urinates, or defecates,” she continued. “They’re preparing a paper now, which they hope to publish. They’re calling it Axell-Crowne Syndrome.”
“Is that what Lara has?” my father asked.
“I don’t know,” Dr. Laverly admitted. “There really isn’t a test for it, per se. It’s more an elimination of things, which is what we’ve done. Also, I should tell you, Axell and Crowne are catching a lot of heat. Many doctors don’t think Axell-Crowne exists. They believe that in each case the young person has somehow been able to sneak food, that it’s not a metabolic disorder at all.”
“I’ve been watched twenty-four hours a day!” I protested. “How could I sneak food?”
“If that’s what she has, how did she get it?” my father demanded. “And how do you cure it?”
“Axell and Crowne don’t know yet what precipitates the syndrome,” Dr. Laverly said. “The best theory they’ve got is that a virus or bacteria or an allergic reaction turns on something else genetic, and gives the body false signals that any and all nutrition should be stored.”
“My allergies!” I exclaimed. “The rashes—”
“Possibly,” Dr. Laverly said. “Also the fact that thus far all reported cases are adolescents leads Axell and Crowne to theorize that something in the growth process may be a catalyst to the onset of symptoms.”
“Tell us more,” Dad demanded, folding his arms.
“Frankly, we just don’t know much more,” Dr. Laverly admitted. “And as I said, much like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, there is a whole school of thought out there that Axell-Crowne doesn’t even exist.”
“Okay, let’s cut to the chase,” my father said. “How do we get rid of it?”
“Unfortunately, Mr. Ardeche,” Dr. Laverly said, “there is no known cure at this time, but—”
“No known cure?” I blurted out. “Wait, what do I do, just keep getting fatter and fatter until I explode? Until I die?”
“Axell and Crowne report an eventual leveling off of weight in all cases,” Dr. Laverly said, “a halt in the syndrome, if you will. One girl leveled off at a gain of ninety pounds. Another gained one hundred and—”
“But I can’t!” I wailed. “I can’t! I have to stop it!” Tears coursed down my cheeks.
“Lara, this is not hopeless,” Dr. Laverly said earnestly. “Of the six reported cases, two have begun to lose weight again. The boy in Leeds who had gained one hundred pounds is back to nearly his normal weight. No one knows why.”
“So she could lose it all,” my mother said, grasping at the possibility.
“Yes, it’s possible,” Dr. Laverly said. “And I want to add that Axell and Crowne are working right now to find out if, in fact, there are many more cases of Axell-Crowne that have just not been recorded. Duke University Medical Center is planning a pilot study—”
“That won’t help me very much,” I said bitterly, wiping the tears away.
“Hopefully, Lara, it will help you, eventually. I wish I had better news for you. And as I said, I can’t be certain of a diagnosis of Axell-Crowne, either.” She looked at my parents. “Do you have any questions?”
“Could she die?” my mother asked shakily.
“No,” Dr. Laverly said. “If, in fact, this is Axell-Crowne, it doesn’t seem to involve any other organic functioning.” She turned to me. “I want you to make an appointment with the nutritionist, who will prescribe a diet for you that we can monitor closely. That will be coupled with a very specific exercise plan. Then you’ll be weighed each week. We need to find the optimum program that will lead to the least weight gain.”
“The lowest calories ingested and the highest degree of exercise, obviously,” my father said.
Dr. Laverly turned to my father. “Perhaps you didn’t hear what I said, Mr. Ardeche. In Lara’s case, that simply isn’t true. Her body could become more efficient and she could gain weight by eating less. Think of it like faulty chips in a computer. Her body gets sent the wrong signals.”
The room was silent.
“That’s it?” my father asked incredulously. “That’s all you have to say?”
“I’m sorry.” Dr. Laverly patted my hand. “Maybe if
Duke does the study, you’ll volunteer to join it. And there is hope that you’ll go into full remission.”
“When?” I asked bluntly.
She just patted my hand again.
“Well, I’ll leave you alone now. I’m releasing you, Lara. Go home and go back to school. Full activities. Mr. and Mrs. Ardeche, if you’d just stop by the nurses’ station and sign the release papers. If you have any questions, please call me.” She walked out of the room.
“It can’t be true,” I whispered. “It just can’t be.”
“At least you don’t have cancer,” Mom said.
“I wish I did have cancer!” I yelled viciously. “I’d rather have cancer than this!”
My mother got up. “I’ll go sign the papers.”
“Look, this doctor could be completely wrong,” my father said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll find the best endocrinologist in the country. We’ll fly to wherever he is. You can beat this thing. This … this isn’t you, Lara,” he said, waving his hand at my fat body.
Only this was me. The new me. A me he hated and loathed. A me I hated and loathed.
But it didn’t make any difference.
It was still me.
“ ‘School’s out for summer!’ ” two seniors sang as they ran by me in the hallway. They were singing an old Alice Cooper song, recently covered by a new metal group, Scream. It was getting lots of radio play.
The last day of my junior year. Normally, I really looked forward to summer. I had planned to get a part-time job at the music store at the mall, hang out with my friends at our backyard pool, and spend time with Jett.
Well, now all that was one big fat joke.
The music store didn’t hire fat girls, and I wouldn’t be seen dead in a bathing suit at our pool.
I could hang with Molly, of course. She would stick by me through thin and, in my case, thick.
And there was Jett.
We had decided back at Thanksgiving that he’d spend an extra year in Nashville working while I finished my senior year, and then we’d move to New York together. He’d go to Visual Arts. I’d go to Juilliard.
Of course, back at Thanksgiving, I’d only weighed 130-something pounds and I had thought I was fat! I would give anything to go back to 130-something pounds. Instead of the 208 that I now weighed.
I didn’t go anywhere anymore. Where can a fat girl go without getting ridiculed or humiliated? I would have even refused to go to the prom with Jett, if he’d had any interest in going. Fortunately for me, Jett wasn’t the prom type. I could just picture Blake Poole laughing at me like he had laughed at Patty Asher at homecoming.
The new me. Lara Ardeche, fat girl. I hated the new me. And I didn’t understand why Jett didn’t hate me, too.
“Aren’t you hot in that?” Jennie Smith asked as she stopped to spin the combination lock on her locker.
I had on the same black stretch pants I had been wearing almost daily for months, with one of three oversized sweaters that still fit over my huge body. I used to love to shop for clothes. Now the idea seemed like the worst torture imaginable.
“I’m fine,” I stated, taking the books out of my locker.
Jennie opened her own locker and took out her backpack. “Tonight’s going to be a major blast, don’t you think?”
She was referring to the junior-senior trip to Opryland amusement park. I had told Jett I didn’t want to go. That wasn’t really true. The truth was that I was afraid I wouldn’t fit into the little seats they had on the rides. Can you even imagine the humiliation of getting onto a ride and not being able to fit?
I could. Just the week before, my French class had gone to an old movie theater near Vanderbilt, to see a showing of Truffaut’s Small Change. The theater’s Doric architecture was beautiful, but the faded red velvet seats inside were from a bygone era—a bygone era where no one weighed what I weighed, evidently.
I was talking with Molly as I slid down into my seat. I wedged into the space, my fat bulging into the armrests. I couldn’t put my arms down, either, because when I tried, the guy sitting on my left made a noise of disgust—I was spilling over into his space. I tried to cross my arms over my chest. That felt ridiculous. So I pushed my elbows into my body as much as I could, and locked my hands under my thighs.
“Wow, these are small seats,” I said.
Molly sat down. Easily. Room to spare.
During the movie, the circulation was cut off in my legs from being wedged so tightly into the seat. And when I tried to get up at the end of the movie, I was basically stuck. I had to heave my body forward twice before I could stumble to my feet. Blake Poole, who was sitting a row behind me with Amber Bevin, saw me trying to get out of the seat. He made a sucking sound and bellowed, “Vacuum packed!” Amber dug her elbow into him and told him to shut up.
I was only thankful that Jett took Spanish, so he didn’t witness this particular humiliation. I wanted to die. But that was nothing new. Daily I faced new humiliations, new tortures, each one killing me a little more than the one before.
It had been six weeks since I’d gotten out of the hospital. In that time I had gained another eighteen pounds and passed the 200-pound mark.
Eighteen pounds. Three pounds a week. At night I had horrible nightmares: I had turned into a huge, hideous monster, and people were running from me, screaming in fear.
I was totally unrecognizable as my former self. My real self. I was a prisoner in a fat suit.
For three weeks I ate the diet the nutritionist had prescribed for me, and gained three pounds each week. The next week, I ate anything I felt like eating. I gained the exact same amount of weight.
So what was the point?
Not that I ever ate in front of anybody. I never did that. So what if I told people I had a metabolic disorder—if they saw me eating anything other than lettuce, they wouldn’t believe me. When you’re fat, you’re not just fat.
You’re sloppy.
Lazy.
A pig.
My father refused to believe we couldn’t find a doctor who could control my weight. He had my records sent to Duke and to two famous endocrinologists, one in Michigan, one in San Francisco. The Duke and the Michigan doctors both said the same thing: possible Axell-Crowne. Don’t know if it will last forever or be gone tomorrow. The San Francisco doctor said there was no such thing as Axell-Crowne and recommended an inpatient eating disorder facility.
An assistant from a lab at Duke’s medical center called and asked if I would join their proposed study. I would have to go to North Carolina for three months and be monitored by video cameras twenty-four hours a day to confirm that I wasn’t sneaking any food.
Well, what was the point? I wondered. They didn’t have any medication for me. They weren’t offering me any hope.
The old pageant winner me would have said yes anyway, so that I might help others in the future.
The new me told the woman to drop dead.
It felt good not to care. Because too often, I still did. I cared what people at school thought. I cared when total strangers insulted me, laughed at me, as if my feelings didn’t matter, as if they had a right to punish me for the sin of being fat in their presence.
I knew it was a sin. Everyone made that clear in the way they treated me. My father made it clearest of all. The way he looked at me said everything.
“I’m not going to Opryland,” I told Jennie casually.
“But it’s going to be so fun!” she protested. “And it won’t be the same without you!”
“Thanks,” I said. “But Jett and I have other plans.”
Her face fell. “Jett isn’t coming, either?”
“That’s right,” Molly told Jennie, coming up behind her. “And you thought this would be your shot at him, huh?”
Jennie threw Molly a nasty look. “You need help, Molly. You are delusional.”
“Oh yeah, right,” Molly snorted. “Like you aren’t totally after Jett. Everyone knows it.”
Jen
nie gave me an earnest look. “I would never.”
“I know,” I lied.
She put her hand on my arm. “I mean, I just think the world of Jett! Standing by you after you got so … after what happened to you. He’s like a saint to me, you know?”
“Excuse me while I barf up my sleeve,” Molly said.
Jennie narrowed her eyes and backed away from us. “You’d better watch it, Mouth. Lara can’t protect you anymore, you know.”
“Bye, Jennie, stay sweet!” Molly called, and steered me down the hall.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said. “Now she’ll be mad.”
“Am I supposed to care?”
“You know what she’s like when she hates someone at this school,” I reminded her.
“Jennie can’t hurt you,” Molly said. “Everyone at this school loves you. She can’t ruin your rep.”
“Molly, wake up.” I looked around to make sure no one could overhear us. “Jennie isn’t afraid of me anymore. I mean, look at me.”
“Your true friends haven’t turned on you,” Molly insisted as we rounded the corner.
“That would be …?” I asked as I watched Lisa James and Denise Reiser walk by without acknowledging my existence.
“Me and Jett, obviously,” Molly said, looking through her books.
Sarah Lodge waved to us from across the hall. “Have a great summer!” she called.
“Plus girls like Sarah,” Molly said. “And all the other people who aren’t in that stupid little clique that you seem to love so much.”
We stopped in front of the auditorium, where the end-of-the-year assembly for the entire school was about to take place. I saw Jett down at the other side of the hall, talking to a pretty, slender senior girl I recognized but didn’t know.
“Oh, shoot,” Molly said, “I left a library book in precalc. They’ll crucify me if I don’t bring it back. Save me and Andy seats, okay?” She dashed off.
My eyes were glued to Jett and the girl. What was he doing with her? I walked over to the two of them.
“Hi,” I said, taking his arm. I put my head on his shoulder and stared daggers at the girl.
“I gotta run,” the girl told him. “See you.”
“Who was that?” I tried to sound friendly. I failed.
Life in the Fat Lane Page 10
