Life in the Fat Lane

by Cherie Bennett

  I stood up. “So, you’re divorcing Mom. Fine. Have a good life with Tamara. Bye.”

  Dad stood up, too. “We’re not getting divorced.”

  This was like an instant replay of the conversation I’d had with Mom back in Nashville before we moved.

  “Sit down, princess,” Dad said. He sat. I did, too.

  “I don’t plan to explain this to Scott—he’s not mature enough to understand—but I think you will. Divorce is … messy. And expensive. And then there’s you kids to think of. Your mother has very generously agreed to let me have my own life and keep our marriage together.”

  My head was pounding. “What does that mean?”

  “Our marriage will stay together; we’ll have an arrangement.”

  I was stunned. “You mean you get to have them both?”

  “It’s a very loving thing for both women to do—”

  I stood up again. “Loving? You call that loving?”

  “Lara, I didn’t have to tell you about this, but I thought you were old enough to understand—”

  “You—You make me sick. You make me want to throw up!”

  “Lara—”

  I pushed past him, went downstairs, and found Mom in the family room looking through an old photo album, smoking.

  “Throw him out!” I demanded.

  She just gazed at me.

  “Don’t you have any pride? How can you let him do this to you?”

  “He told you,” she said dully.

  “What is wrong with you?” I demanded shrilly.

  Mom closed the photo album slowly and looked up at me. “I’m forty-one years old, Lara, that’s what’s wrong. You think I could ever attract a man like your father again? Well, think again, honey. My mother was right: A woman keeps herself together, keeps looking the other way, and keeps her man.”

  From behind me I heard my father clear his throat. I turned around.

  “I never meant to hurt either of you,” he said from the doorway. “I love you both very much. And we’ll still be a family.” His eyes beseeched mine. “You’re still my princess, you know.”

  I walked over to him and looked him in the eye. “We are not a family. You’re a cheater and a liar, and you disgust me. And don’t you ever, ever call me your princess again.”

  And then I walked out the door.

  Dear Jett,

  Remember Hilton Head, on the beach? I think I fell in love with you that first night we were together. I just felt so filled up with loving you. And now there is just this big hole inside me, where my heart used to be. I’m the same person inside, so what I really want to know is, how could you stop loving me?

  No. Way too needy. I crumpled up the letter and started again.

  Hey, Jett,

  So, what’s been going on? Things are really great for me here in Michigan, and

  The bell rang for the end of homeroom, and I stuck both letters inside my notebook. Who was I kidding, anyway? I wasn’t going to send Jett any of the dozens of letters I had written to him. What was the point? It was painfully obvious that he’d forgotten all about me.

  I got up and headed for the hallway. Fortunately for me, Mainstream Dave wasn’t in homeroom that day, so I had a brief reprieve from his insults.

  HOMECOMING IS COMING! TICKETS NOW ON SALE IN THE STUDENT CENTER, SUPPORT OUR COUGARS!!

  Overnight, the homecoming committee had filled the halls with signs and banners. Everyone seemed to be talking about it—who was going with who, who would be queen, whether the Cougars would keep their homecoming football winning streak.

  Homecoming. Had it really been just a year ago? I had been so happy then. I was thin. My family was still together. I was thin. I lived in Nashville with all my friends. I was thin. I was the queen. I was thin.

  I had Jett.

  I was thin.

  VOTE FOR HOMECOMING QUEEN! CAST YOUR VOTE AT THE STUDENT CENTER BY FRIDAY. Then, scrawled on the banner were the names of the cutest, most popular girls in my class: Christy-Lynn Lakewood, Allegra Royalton, Samantha Levine, Jane Neissan.

  Jane Neissan was in my bio class and played third violin in the orchestra. She had shoulder-length auburn hair, green eyes, and a slender, graceful figure. Kind of like mine used to be, before I got robbed of my real life. And she was actually nice. We had shared a frog for dissection and she hadn’t treated me like a leper.

  VOTE ALLEGRA R. FOR HOMECOMING QUEEN! ROYALTON IS OUR ROYALTY!

  “Hey! Hey, Lara!”

  It was Allegra Royalton, of all people, hurrying over to me with another girl in tow.

  A girl I recognized.

  She was very pretty, with long brown hair and dimples. Her name was Willow Larken, and she and I had been in many regional pageants together. I knew she lived in Michigan, but what was she doing here at Blooming Woods High?

  “This is Willow,” Allegra told me. “She’s been out with mono. She says she knows this really gorgeous girl from Tennessee who was in pageants with her, and this girl’s name is also Lara Ardeche.”

  Allegra turned to Willow. “See, I told you it was a different girl.”

  Willow stared at me. Her eyes got huge.

  “Lara?” she asked uncertainly.

  There was no place to run, no place to hide.

  “Hi, Willow,” I said.

  “What happened to you?” Willow asked me.

  “Wait—wait—wait,” Allegra sputtered. “You can’t be serious, Willow. You’re telling me she’s the same girl?”

  “I have a metabolic disorder,” I told Willow. “It made me gain weight.”

  Willow put her hand on my arm in the sweetest, kindest pageant-winner way possible. “You poor thing!” she cried.

  “Time out,” Allegra said. “Are you telling me this fat tub was a beauty queen?”

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” Willow asked, her eyes full of pity.

  “Why do you hang out with her?” I blurted out.

  “What?” Willow asked, taken aback.

  “Her,” I said, cocking my chin at Allegra. “She’s such an ugly person.”

  “Now that is funny, coming from an ugly pig like you!” Allegra jeered.

  “Oh, she doesn’t really mean anything by it,” Willow said mildly. “Just ignore her. Well, nice to see you, Lara. And if there’s anything I can do …”

  Right. Sure. Super.

  I could feel them watching me as I headed down the hall: Pity. Disdain. Disgust.

  I tried not to care. About Willow, or Allegra, or homecoming, or the zillion little soul-crushing insults that came my way every day. I had other things on my mind.

  Like my mother, who now totally obsessed about her looks during every hour that she was awake. Some doctor had given her a prescription for sleeping pills, which conked her out early and kept her asleep until noon. After that, she worked out like a demon, chain-smoked, and consulted with new plastic surgeons about the facelift she was certain she absolutely had to have, which my grandfather would pay for. I asked her why she needed to consult still more surgeons when she’d already seen seven. She said she was looking for one who would promise to make her look twenty-five again.

  And then she laughed in a way that wasn’t funny.

  Like my father, who called daily from Tamara’s apartment in Nashville, leaving messages for me and Scott. He’d actually been hired back at his old advertising agency. Of course I had clued Scott in on the truth about what was going on with our parents. He wasn’t surprised. Dad’s messages on the answering machine said how much he wanted to talk to Scott and me, how much he loved us, how he’d be home to see us soon.

  It made me laugh in a way that wasn’t funny.

  “Hiya,” Perry said, running a little to catch up with me in the hall. “What’s shakin’?” He chewed on the last remnants of a muffin, peeling back the paper to get the crumbs.

  “Not much.” I dodged Kyler Trustus and his friends, who were ogling a copy of last season’s swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated, and
stopped at my locker to get out some books I needed.

  Allegra and Willow walked up to Kyler and his friends, and Allegra snatched the magazine out of Kyler’s hands. Then she leaned over and told them something, and then they all looked over at me.

  “No way!” I heard Kyler say. “That must have been a really big beauty contest!”

  They all cracked up. Willow told them to stop, but she was smiling when she said it.

  “Hey, Lard-ass belly-bumped me, I can’t sto-o-o-p!” Dave Ackerly yelled as he ran by, careening into a locker on one side of the hall, then pretending to bounce off and careen into a locker on the other side.

  Jane Neissan walked by and gave me a friendly wave. She looked very cute in a short suede jumper over a long-sleeved white T-shirt. She looked thin.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Oh, fine,” I said, closing my locker.

  “Did you study for the bio quiz?”

  “Two hours,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

  “I’ve got frog diagrams dancing in my head,” she said ruefully, and walked on by.

  “She’s kinda nice,” Perry said.

  “Yeah.” We headed down the hall.

  “I have a theory,” he said. “God doles out one decent human who is also popular to each high school. This is to partially make up for all the other popular people, who are essentially a human wasteland.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being popular,” I said as we turned the corner.

  “Confucius say: ‘To be popular with all is to be special to none.’ ”

  “Confucius didn’t say that.”

  “No, but he would have if he’d thought of it.” Perry handed me a cassette tape. “Here.”

  I looked at it blankly.

  “Johnny Winter. I told you I’d make you a tape. He’s out of control.”

  “Oh, thanks.” I slipped it into my purse.

  CHRISTY-LYNN SHOULD SURELY WIN! VOTE CHRISTY-LYNN OUR HOMECOMING QUEEN!

  “Whoa,” Perry said, wincing at the banner that hung over our heads. “I think the mental giants who created that banner meant to rhyme Lynn, win, and queen.”

  “You mean quin,” I said.

  He laughed. “Yeah. Homecoming is major lame, huh?”

  “I think it’s fun.” We headed up the stairs.

  “Yeah? You think?” He puffed up the stairs and threw the muffin paper into the trash can. “I guess it could be, ya know, if you went with the right person.” He gave me a pointed look. There was a lopsided grin on his hand some face. Funny, it was the first time I had really realized that his face truly was handsome.

  But that didn’t mean I was attracted to him, or that I wanted him to ask me out.

  “Excuse me, I need to use the girls’ room,” I told him, and ducked in the door of the john. It was the first thing I could think of to get away from him. I was sure he had been about to invite me to homecoming. What a frightening thought. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I didn’t want to go out with him, either.

  I brushed my hair and studied my reflection in the mirror, concentrating on myself from the neck up. A toilet flushed.

  “Hi again.”

  I turned around. It was Jane Neissan.

  “Hi,” I said.

  Jane washed her hands. “I saw you talking with Perry Jameson.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He’s nice,” she said.

  “He’s okay.”

  “Did he invite you to homecoming?” Jane asked.

  “We’re not dating!” I said, aghast. “He’s so … I mean, we’re just friends.”

  She pulled out some paper towels and dried her hands. “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.”

  She gave me a kind look. “If it makes it easier to say it’s because of some disease—”

  “It is!” I cried. Two girls came barreling through the door of the bathroom, laughing about something, but I ignored them. “I’m telling you the truth.”

  “Okay, sure,” Jane said. She checked her reflection in the mirror. It was perfect. She turned back to me. “Well, if you ever change your mind or anything …” She smiled at me again, then walked out of the bathroom.

  All I could do was stand there. She didn’t believe me. Neither did Allegra and Willow, probably. They all thought I was a big fat liar. And even if they did believe me, it wouldn’t make any difference.

  I mean, fat is fat.

  “All your test results look fine, Lara,” Dr. Goldner told me over the phone.

  Every month he gave me the exact same news.

  All the tests looked fine. No change.

  “Are you staying on your food plan?” he asked.

  I plucked at a stray thread on my bedspread. “Most of the time.”

  “Well, try to stick to it. And the aerobics plan, too. The best way for us to know if you go into remission is for you to follow this plan.”

  I sighed. I had heard this same thing from him each time I’d seen him. I said good-bye and hung up the phone.

  Remission. It seemed too much to hope for. Thin again. I would destroy Allegra Royalton. I would demolish Dave Ackerly. Jett would come groveling back to me on his knees, but I wouldn’t even take him back because—

  I caught my fat reflection in the mirror on my dresser.

  Who was I kidding?

  I grabbed my car keys. I had a piano lesson. There was zero point in dreaming dreams that would never come true.

  “More flowing into the fortissimo,” Suzanne said, leaning toward me. She cupped her hands as if she were playing the keys of the piano and sang a line of my sonata. “And then dum-dum-de-dum!—like a volcano at the end there, but with control, right? Okay, try it again.”

  I closed my eyes, willing myself to block out the world except for the music, and played the last movement of the sonata again. It was my third lesson with Suzanne. She talked about music like it had color, weight, passion. She got so excited, and her excitement was infectious.

  “Yes, that’s it!” Suzanne cried, jumping up and applauding when I finished playing. “Didn’t it feel great?”

  “Yeah, it did, actually,” I said, “but I’m curious. You’re so passionate about music, but you love jazz. And jazz is so cold.”

  “Nah, I just need to turn you on to the good stuff.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got an hour before my next student. You want to get some dinner?”

  “I’d have to call home …”

  “So call.” She indicated the phone on the desk in the office outside the studio.

  I left a message on the answering machine. It didn’t matter, since we never ate dinner as a family anymore, anyway. That little charade was history. Scott grabbed food and ate in his room. My mother didn’t seem to eat at all.

 
“You like Italian?” Suzanne asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Good. We’ll go next door to Antonio’s. It’s great.” The restaurant was small, with red-and-white-checked tablecloths and a blackboard listing the daily specials.

  “It doesn’t look like much, but the food is amazing,” Suzanne said. As she studied the blackboard I studied her.

  She had on shocking-pink denim overalls over a white lace T-shirt, and a faded denim jacket. Her hair was up on her head in a cute, messy ponytail. One of her little dangling earrings was a bass clef, the other one a treble

  Why would someone so fat wear shocking pink? I wondered.

  “You know what you want?” She looked over at me and caught me staring.

  I blushed. “Oh, I’m not that hungry.”

  “Well, I’m starved, and I hate to eat alone, so order something.”

  A young waitress with spiky black hair came to the table, depositing a basket of fresh, hot rolls. The smell was fantastic. “Hey, Suze,” she said. “Wazzup?”

  “This is a new student of mine, Lara Ardeche. Lara, this is Carolyn Tucci. Her mom owns this place.”

  “How ya doin’?” Carolyn asked.

  “Fine.”

  “So, what’ll it be, ladies? The lasagna is to die for today, by the by. Mom says to push it.”

  “Sold,” Suzanne said. “And a green salad with blue cheese dressing, and tea.” She looked over at me.

  “Oh, a small salad, no dressing,” I said. “And water.”

  “Uh-huh,” Carolyn said. “What else?”

  “That’s it.”

  Carolyn looked at me like I was crazy. “Be back in a jiff.” She hurried off.

  Suzanne reached for a roll. “Are you on a diet or something?”

  “I told you, I’m just not very hungry.”

  “That still doesn’t answer my question.” She buttered the roll and took a bite.

  “Obviously I don’t need to be force-fed, okay?” I eyed her buttered roll pointedly.

  “Oh, that look is supposed to tell me you don’t think I should be eating this, right?” She took another bite.