Big Boned

by Meg Cabot

  “What’s wrong?” Sarah wants to know, because Pete has put his hands out and is striding toward her, blocking her efforts to get into Dr. Veatch’s office. “What is it? Let me see. Let me see!”

  “Hello?” the emergency operator squawks in my ear.

  “Yes, hello,” I say. “I need the police at Fischer Hall, on Washington Square West.” I give them the address, even though it’s hardly necessary. Every emergency operator in Manhattan knows where Death Dorm is by now.

  “Just go sit down over there at Heather’s desk,” Pete is saying to Sarah, as he pulls the door to Dr. Veatch’s office closed behind him.

  “Why?” Sarah demands. “What’s going on in there? Why don’t you want to me see? This isn’t fair. I—”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Pete wants to know. “I told you to sit down, so go sit down!”

  “You can’t tell me what to do,” Sarah cries. “I’m not just a student, you know! I’m an employee of this college, same as you. I have as much right to know what’s going on as any other employee of this college. I’m tired of being treated—”

  “What’s the nature of the emergency, ma’am?” the 911 operator wants to know.

  “Um,” I say. I can hardly hear myself think, with Sarah’s whining.

  “—like a second-class citizen by President Allington’s administration,” she goes on. “We’re unionizing, and no amount of hiding behind a regressive administration’s labor board decision is going to deny us our right to do so!”

  “Ma’am?” the operator asks. “Are you there?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Sorry.”

  “And what is the nature of your emergency?”

  “Um,” I say again. “The nature of my emergency is that someone shot my boss in the head.”

  3

  * * *

  You’re not fat

  But put down the cake

  Here, eat this celery

  Give dessert a break

  “Big Boned”

  Written by Heather Wells

  * * *

  Okay, I’ll admit it. I wasn’t Owen’s biggest fan.

  Well, whatever! I mean, he was only assigned to Fischer Hall in order to do damage control. That’s what an ombudsman does. It wasn’t like he wanted to be here. The president’s office parachuted him into the hall director’s office to try to do what he could with the whole “Death Dorm” mess.

  But it wasn’t even like Owen ever fully concentrated on doing that, since he kept getting distracted by the grad-students-unionizing thing.

  And yet he managed to find time to gripe at me about borrowing supplies from the dining office.

  Okay, I know, it’s petty to complain about that when the man is dead.

  But at least I, unlike Sarah, refrained from saying he deserved to get shot.

  Of course, Sarah hadn’t seen the way that bullet had tunneled through Owen’s skull and come out the other side, leaving a black hole—surrounded by blood spatter—in the middle of his Garfield Month-at-a-Glance Day Planner (Garfield: a cat that wears sunglasses and eats lasagna).

  The actual damage to Owen’s skull had been surprisingly minimal. The bullet had entered the back of his head from the window—the street noise I’d heard had been audible because the window was open, not because someone had shot out one of the panes—and exited out the front. I guess Owen had wanted to enjoy the warm spring morning.

  He hadn’t even fallen out of his chair, but was instead sitting upright, his coffee untouched—but obviously cold—in front of him. Just his head was slumped over, like he was taking a nap. Clearly, death had taken him unaware, and been mercifully quick.

  But still. I’m pretty sure he didn’t deserve to go that way. Or at all.

  “Well, whatever,” Sarah says, when I mention this. We’re sitting in an empty storage room down the hall from our own office, which has been cordoned off as a crime scene by the police.

  Formerly used by the student government as their administrative office until after months of complaints we offered them a new one—not located directly across from the dining office like this one, and so reeking of smoke from the dining manager’s illicit cigarettes—upstairs, the storage room is supposed to be where we stack old broken chairs from the lobby and misdelivered boxes for the North American Man/ Boy Love Association, which has an office down the street, and whose mail I often “accidentally” forget to forward.

  For some reason, however, there is a small desktop computer set up in the storage room, along with several non-broken chairs, a sleeping bag, and what appears to be a fully functional Mr. Coffee with quite a few mugs scattered around it. I suppose the housekeepers or building engineers are using the space as an unofficial break room. It’s a good thing Owen is dead, because if he found out, he’d burst a blood vessel or two, let me tell you.

  “You have to admit,” Sarah says, as if she were reading my mind. “He was kind of a dick.”

  “A big enough dick to get shot?” I demand. “I don’t think so.”

  “What about that whole paper thing?” Sarah wants to know.

  “He didn’t want me borrowing paper from another office!” I yell. “That’s just being a boss!”

  “You don’t have to yell,” Sarah says. “And it’s typical of you not to see how, through petty bureaucratic nitpicking, Veatch was micro-managing instead of looking into the broader issues that need addressing—such as the college’s disdain for the basic human needs of its hardest working employees.”

  “I don’t know if I’d call myself one of New York College’s hardest working employees,” I say modestly. I mean, I don’t, technically, receive free meals as part of my employment package. I basically just steal them…

  “I’m not talking about you,” Sarah snaps. “I’m talking about teaching, research, and graduate assistants like myself, who are being denied employer-paid health care, workload protection, child care benefits, grievance resolution procedures, and other workplace rights by an uncaring administration!”

  “Oh,” I say. I can’t help noticing that the desk I’m sitting at—the one with the computer on it—is very messy, littered with scribbled-on Post-it notes, unidentifiable food crumbs, and coffee-mug ring stains. I don’t remember the student government leaving this place such a mess when they moved out, but maybe they did. I’m going to have to ask the housekeeping staff to clean it, or we’ll get mice for sure. If Owen were to have seen this desk, I know he’d have shaken his head, sadly. Owen was a bit of a neat freak, as exemplified by the time he asked me how I could possibly find something on my own desk, prompting me to sweep everything into a bottom drawer when he wasn’t looking.

  Problem solved.

  Maybe Sarah is right. Maybe Owen chose to focus on dumb stuff, like messy desks, so he didn’t have to pay attention to big stuff. Like that someone wanted him dead.

  “The fact is,” Sarah goes on, “if the president’s office continues to fail to allow us to unionize—or even give us a space in which to meet—and sign our current contract, we will strike, and other local unions won’t want to cross our picket lines, meaning that campus-wide, there will be no custodial or janitorial services; no garbage pickup; and no protection service. We’ll see how long it takes President Allington to realize how important we are when he’s picking through trash bags piled waist-high in order to get into his office.”

  “Um,” I say. “Okay.”

  “And don’t think that Dr. Veatch didn’t know about any of this,” Sarah says. “We told him, point-blank, that if he didn’t relay our demands to the president’s office, this is what would happen.”

  I blink at her. “That he’d get shot in the head?”

  Sarah rolls her eyes. “No. That we’d strike. Dr. Veatch knew it. And yet they allowed another deadline for signing our contract to pass at midnight last night. Well, now they’re going to have to face the consequences of their actions.”

  “Wait. So you think Dr. Veatch got shot by someone in your org
anization? Because he wasn’t paying enough attention to your demands?”

  Sarah lets out a little scream. “Heather! Of course not! The GSC doesn’t believe in violence!”

  “Oh.” I blink at her some more. “Well,” I say, finally. “In light of the fact that the ombudsman was apparently murdered this morning, do you think you can get the, um—”

  “Graduate Student Collective,” she says. “We call ourselves the GSC for short.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Well, maybe, since the guy you normally go through to talk to the president’s office is DEAD, you could chill for a day, until we figure out who did this, and why?”

  Sarah shakes her head at me sadly, her long hair brushing her elbows. She’s wearing her finest no-nonsense “Graduate Student Collective” chic, which consists of overalls over a black leotard, paired with combat boots, wire-rimmed glasses, no makeup, and a serious case of the frizzies.

  “Don’t you see, Heather? That’s what they want. How are we to know the president’s office didn’t orchestrate Dr. Veatch’s murder themselves in order to delay our striking, knowing, as they must, how big a wrench our striking is going to throw in their daily operations?”

  “Sarah,” I say, reaching up to rub my temples. I can feel the beginnings of a headache coming on. “No one from the president’s office shot Dr. Veatch. That is a totally ridiculous suggestion.”

  “As ridiculous as your suggesting one of us did it?” Sarah tosses her hair. “That’s just their cover, you know,” she adds darkly. “Don’t you see? Everyone’s going to dismiss the idea as ridiculous. Which is exactly how they might manage to get away with it. You know, if they did it. Which I’m not saying they did.”

  “Who did what?” A tall, pale young man appears in the doorway, wearing the requisite messenger bag—also commonly referred to as a murse—and long, unkempt dread-locks of the male version of a New York College graduate student. I recognize him from pictures in the campus newspaper—and a brief introduction one afternoon in front of the library while he and Sarah were picketing—as Sebastian Blumenthal, the head of the Graduate Student Collective, or GSC.

  And, if my superpowers don’t mistake me, the apple of Sarah’s eye.

  “And what’s with all the cops down the hall?” he wants to know. “Somebody leave a body part on the elevator again?”

  I glare at him. It’s absurd how quickly news travels around this place. “That was just a prank.”

  “Hey, I’m not the one who didn’t realize it was a prosthetic and called nine-one-one,” Sebastian says. “So what’s going on?”

  “Somebody shot Dr. Veatch,” Sarah informs him, matter-of-factly.

  “No shit?” Sebastian swings his murse onto the couch—seized from a student’s room and confiscated, since non-fire-retardant furniture isn’t allowed in New York College residence halls—beside her. “Gut shot?”

  “Head,” Sarah says. “Assassination style.”

  “Sweet!” Sebastian looks impressed. “I told you he had mob ties.”

  “You guys,” I cry, horrified. “The man is dead! There’s nothing cool about it! And of course Dr. Veatch didn’t have ties to the mob. What are you even talking about? It was probably just a stray bullet from some random drug shooting over in the park.”

  “I don’t know, Heather,” Sarah says, looking dubious. “You said the shot went directly through the back of his head. Stray bullets don’t tend to do that. I think he was shot on purpose, and by someone who knew him.”

  “Or was hired to kill him,” Sebastian suggests. “Like by the president’s office, to throw off our talks.”

  “That’s what I was saying!” Sarah cries, delighted.

  “A’ight?” Sebastian seems pleased with himself. Pleased enough not to remember that he’s from Grosse Pointe. And Caucasian. “Shit, yeah. That’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

  “All right,” I say. “Out. Both of you. Now.”

  Sebastian stops smiling. “Aw, come on, Heather. You have to admit, the man was cold. Remember when he yelled at you about the paper?”

  Now I glare at Sarah. I can’t believe she told him that.

  “Does everyone have to keep bringing that up?” I demand. “And he didn’t yell, he—”

  “Whatever,” Sarah interrupts. “Heather’s the one who found the body, Sebastian. She’s understandably shaken. I’m supposed to be keeping her company until the cops are ready to interrogate her. She had a known grudge against the victim on account of the paper thing.”

  “I am not shaken,” I cry. “I’m fine. And no one’s going to interrogate me. I—”

  “Oh, shit,” Sebastian says, reaching out to rest a hand on my shoulder. “Sorry about that. You all right? Can I get you anything from the caf? Hot tea, or something?”

  “Ooooh,” Sarah says. “I’ll take a coffee. And cake, if there’s any.”

  “Sarah!” I’m shocked.

  “Well, whatever, Heather,” she says, looking annoyed. “If he’s offering. When the GSC strikes—as we will, shortly—our meal plans will probably be taken away, so I’m not wasting my declining dollars if someone else is offering to pay for my—”

  “Heather!” Gavin McGoren, lanky film student, junior, and building resident with an unrequited—and unfortunate—crush on me, appears in the storage room doorway, out of breath and panting. “Oh my God, Heather. There you are. Are you all right? I just heard. I came as fast as I could—”

  “McGoren, just the man I want to see,” Sebastian says. “I need someone to work the mikes for the rally in the park tomorrow night. You up for it?”

  “Sure, whatevs,” Gavin says, letting his backpack slump to the floor, but keeping his gaze on me. “Is it true? Was he really a victim of a random drug shooting? I knew it was dangerous not to have those street-level windows bricked up. You do realize it could easily have been you, don’t you, Heather?”

  “Cool it, Gavin,” Sarah says. “She’s skeeved out enough. What are you trying to do, make things worse?”

  “Oh my God,” I say. “I am not skeeved out. I mean, I am. But—look, do we have to talk about this?”

  “Of course we don’t have to talk about it, Heather,” Sarah says, in her most soothing voice. Then, to Sebastian and Gavin, she says, “Guys, please leave Heather alone. Finding a corpse—particularly one belonging to someone with whom you worked as closely as Heather worked with Dr. Veatch—can be very unsettling. It’s likely Heather will suffer from post-traumatic stress for some time. We’re going to need to watch her for signs of unexplainable aggressiveness, depression, and emotional detachment.”

  “Sarah!” I’m appalled. “Would you please zip it?”

  She says, in the same soothing voice, “Of course, Heather.” Then, to the boys, she stage whispers, “What did I tell you about unexplainable aggressiveness?”

  “Sarah.” I seriously need an aspirin. “I totally heard that.”

  “Uh.” Sebastian is looking at his feet. “How long does this post-traumatic stress thing usually last?”

  “It’s impossible to say,” Sarah says, at the same time that I say, “I do not have post-traumatic stress.”

  “Oh,” Sebastian says, looking at me, now, instead of his feet. “Well, good. Because I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

  I groan. “Not you, too.”

  “She doesn’t date students,” Gavin informs him. “I already tried. It’s like a policy, or something.”

  I drop my head into my hands. Seriously. How much more can I take in one day? It’s bad enough I actually jogged this morning (only for a few steps, but still. I could have dislodged something. I still don’t know. All my lady parts seemed to have been working fine back at Tad’s, when we took them for a test run. But how can you ever be sure without a visit to the gyno?), but now my boss has been shot, my office taken over by CSI: Greenwich Village, and Gavin McGoren is expounding on the official New York College stand on student-employee relations? I want those two and a half hours of sleep I misse
d out on back.

  “Uh, I wasn’t going to ask her out, dude,” Sebastian says. “I was going to ask her if she could come to our rally tomorrow night.”

  I separate my fingers and peer out at him from between them. “What?”

  “Come on,” Sebastian pleads, throwing himself onto his knees. “You’re Heather Wells. It would mean a lot if you’d show up, maybe lead us in a little round of ‘Kumbaya’—”

  “No,” I say. “Absolutely not.”

  “Heather,” Sebastian says. “Do you have any idea how much it would mean to the GSC if we had a celebrity of your stature come out in support of us?”

  “Come out in support—” I echo weakly, dropping my hands. “Sebastian, I could lose my job for that!”

  “No, you couldn’t,” Sebastian says. “Freedom of speech! They wouldn’t dare!”

  “Seriously,” Sarah says with a grunt. “They’re fascists, but not that fascist…”

  “Watch them,” I say. “Come on. I totally support you guys, and everything. Have I said anything about the fact that you, Sebastian, are constantly hanging around this building, even though you are not, in fact, an undergraduate, and do not, in fact, even live here? But sing at your rally? In Washington Square Park? In front of the library, and the president’s office? You have to be kidding me.”

  “Really, Sebastian,” Sarah says, in the kind of voice only a woman who adores a guy who is frustratingly oblivious to her feelings for him ever uses. “Sometimes you do go too far.”

  He throws her an aggrieved look. “You’re the one who said to ask her!” he cries.

  “Well, I didn’t mean now!” Sarah says. “She just found her boss slumped over dead, for crying out loud. And you want her to host some union rally?”

  “Not host it!” Sebastian cries. “Just show up and do a number. Something inspiring. It doesn’t have to be ‘Kumbaya.’ ‘Sugar Rush’ would be great, too. And it can be unplugged. We aren’t choosy.”

  “God,” Sarah says, shaking her head in disgust. “You are too much sometimes, Sebastian.”