Fat Angie Read online

  “Yeah, I thought so too. Um . . . I was just kidding about the spying picture thing.”

  Only she had not been kidding. Not entirely. Like most kids, Angie did not relish the thought of seeing her mother in lip-to-lip passion with Wang’s court-appointed therapist. But some part of her wondered what it would be like to see her mother care about someone . . . have affection for a person who was not herself. Angie’s father had wondered the same thing about his wife, according to deposition transcripts Angie had acquired by accident on purpose.

  “So, that’s it?” KC asked, not looking up from her graphic novel.

  “No.” Fat Angie cleared her throat. “I didn’t want you to go the other day. It wasn’t the other day. It was, um . . . a lot of days ago.”

  “Weeks,” added KC.

  “Yeah. When we were standing there and talking and almost . . . well, what I think we were gonna . . . and you touched my scars and I wanted . . . I didn’t want you to go.”

  “Yet I did,” said KC. “That’s the mystery of the new mystery girl. She always has the uncanny ability to vanish without anyone noticing.”

  “I noticed,” said Fat Angie.

  “Like you’ve noticed me at lunch or in the hallways or at gym?” KC asked.

  “I didn’t know what to . . . say.”

  “Uh, ‘Hey’ works,” KC said. “Or ‘Wanna lunch?’ ”

  “I’m not cool like that. I’m Fat Angie. I mean, I’m —”

  KC softened slightly. As she laid down her graphic novel, her hair fell away, revealing the purple heart. Fat Angie’s own heart went aflutter.

  “Look, seeing you on Dateline aside, I don’t know,” said KC. “From the moment I saw you in gym, it just seemed . . .”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah,” said KC. “But it’s way more complicated than just . . . yeah.”

  “Yeah,” said Fat Angie, brow quite furrowed.

  KC sat up, adjusting her peace-sign belt buckle.

  “That’s a swell buckle,” said Fat Angie.

  “Thanks,” KC said, a smirk capturing the essence of her face. “My dad. Technically his secretary, but technicalities are stupid sometimes.”

  “My dad does that too. I’m mean, he gets his new wife to do it. She’ll give me anything. There’s a good chance I’ll get a pony for Christmas.”

  The girls laughed.

  “I don’t even want a pony. It was a joke,” Fat Angie said.

  “Look,” said KC. “Let’s bypass all the heavy-strange-we-don’t-know-how-to-act-around-each-other thing and go do something pseudodangerous and fun.”

  Fat Angie nodded.

  KC grabbed her fitted leather coat and was halfway out her bedroom window when Fat Angie said, “Why are we going out the window?”

  “I don’t know. Seemed different. More dangerous.”

  Fat Angie followed, her exit lacking grace.

  The neighbor’s dog burst into a rampage. Fat Angie backed against the house.

  KC threw a handful of Chex Mix that scattered like buckshot into the dog’s yard.

  “No worries. He’s just lonely,” KC said. “So, lead the way.”

  “Where?”

  “To Wang’s head shrinker’s Den of Sin.”

  “Seriously?” asked Fat Angie, a pop of glee in her voice.

  “Absolute.”

  A cool breeze blew past them.

  “You ever get that feeling?” asked KC. “When you know something big is right around the corner? The wind whips up and the sky clears just enough for you to see a pocketful of stars —”

  “And one of them seems like it’s winking at you,” Fat Angie said.

  “Yeah,” KC said. “And just like that, it all feels like it’s gonna line right up. The way I see it, Angie, you and me are like Thelma and Louise, like Buffy and Willow, like . . .”

  “KC and Angie.”

  “Yeah. Just like that.”

  There was no turning back. Especially as they stood outside of Wang’s therapist’s house. Fat Angie’s couldn’t-be-bothered mother’s leased gas-guzzling vehicle sat in the modest driveway.

  “Did you hear that?” whispered Fat Angie, looking behind her.

  The spray of a street lamp caught the shadow of a figure in a hoodie.

  “Come on,” KC whispered back, tugging on Fat Angie’s elbow. “It’s nothing.”

  Fat Angie was sure it was not nothing. It looked like something. But they were midway across the lawn and ducked into the not-so-well-trimmed bushes before she could get a closer look.

  Fat Angie and KC held the ledge to Wang’s therapist’s window. The two girls watched Fat Angie’s couldn’t-be-bothered mother, Connie, curl up on a dark pleather sofa. Muffled jazz music muted what Angie thought had to be a mundane monologue, as her mother’s lips were in constant movement.

  “Don’t you feel kinda like Cagney and Lacey on a stakeout?” KC said quietly.

  “You know Cagney and Lacey?” said Fat Angie.

  “Yeah . . . hot cop and mom cop paving the way for women on TV. Totally retro feminist. There would be no Buffy the Vampire Slayer without Cagney and Lacey. And trust me, the world is a better place with BTVS.”

  The shrub rustled behind them.

  It was the nothing. Now a definite something. Fat Angie held her breath when —

  “Hey,” said Jake. “What are you doing?”

  “What are you doing?” asked Fat Angie.

  “Shh . . .” said KC.

  “I saw you up on Main,” Jake whispered. “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “No,” said Fat Angie.

  Jake threw a disapproving look at KC, who did not seem to care.

  “Well, how did it go at tryouts?” he asked Angie. “Thought you were gonna text.”

  KC grabbed Fat Angie’s hand. “She was golden. Absolute.”

  Fat Angie had not shared the experience with any detail to KC and was consequently confused by her praise. And the hand-holding.

  “Yeah,” said Jake, eyes on KC’s sudden cling to Fat Angie’s hand. “And you’re hiding in somebody’s bushes why?”

  “Thought I’d take some candid photos of my mom making fun with Wang’s court-appointed therapist. Just in case she ever threatens to institutionalize me again.”

  “That’s a little dark,” said Jake.

  “That’s what I said,” KC affirmed. “Relax. She’s using my cell and is under strict orders not to photograph any nudies.”

  Jake pushed up along the wall and looked in the window.

  The therapist and Angie’s couldn’t-be-bothered mother were engaged in first-base making out.

  “Your mom really is a steam.”

  Both girls grimaced.

  “What?” asked Jake. “Moms can be hot.”

  “If you’re a freak,” Fat Angie whispered.

  “Anyway, let’s go to The Backstory. I mean, if you’re done with the peeping creeper routine.”

  Fat Angie shrugged. “I’m not exactly Backstory material.”

  “Says who? Gary? Stacy Ann? You can’t expect people to know you if you’re always running from them,” said Jake.

  “She said she didn’t wanna go,” KC said.

  “She can speak for herself,” said Jake.

  “Not with you thinking for her,” KC said.

  “Whoa,” said Fat Angie. “Remember, still here.”

  Jake shook his head and squat-walked along the edge of the bush.

  “Jake . . .” Fat Angie squat-walked behind him.

  “What is this?” he whispered. “This spy-girl thing. Was it her idea?”

  “No. It was mine.”

  Jake shook his head. “It doesn’t seem like an Angie idea.”

  “Well, maybe I have . . . Angie ideas you don’t know about. Besides, I like her, Jake. I told you that. You seemed kinda cool with it and now you’re being all weird-big-brother?”

  Jake scratched his head and looked down. He clearly was hiding something.

  “If you change yo
ur mind, kick me a text,” said Jake. “I’ll meet you at the door.”

  Fat Angie crawled back to KC and propped herself against the cheap siding. “He didn’t mean anything.”

  “It’s just a guy thing,” KC said.

  “Jake’s not a guy thing. What I mean is . . . he’s different. He practices with me every day. When he could be with his friends. He’s really OK.”

  The girls quietly chomped on bits of Chex Mix that KC had retrieved from her jacket. A new version of awkward crept between them and the creeping vine on the shrub. A classic tune from the multi-award-winning group Chicago seeped through the edges of Wang’s therapist’s window. It set a mood of tentative romance for Fat Angie and KC. It had been approximately twenty-one days, eighteen hours, and seven minutes since they had openly in closed quarters admitted they were gay-girl gay with each other.

  Fat Angie’s cumbersome first move of hand-to-knee contact with KC edged the moment into supreme geekness. Fat Angie took a gulp of gulp and tried not to tremble.

  “Hey,” said KC, tipping her head toward Fat Angie.

  “Yeah,” Fat Angie said, staring at her untied shoe.

  She shifted forward and tied it. Double knots . . . like her stomach. When she pushed back against the wall, KC had mysteriously edged closer. KC leaned in, her luscious lips parting, and . . .

  “I once kissed a guy with a prosthetic leg,” said Fat Angie.

  This phrase definitely threw a wrench in the Chicago-fueled mood.

  “Really?” KC asked.

  “No,” said Fat Angie. “Just his picture from the Special Olympics article I tore out of a magazine in my dentist’s office.”

  KC grinned. “Cool.”

  She leaned forward again.

  “You know . . .” said Fat Angie, turning away.

  KC grabbed the girl’s chin midturn and pulled her in.

  The kiss was . . . disastrous.

  Fat Angie had no idea what to do. This was not like her experience of kissing the prosthetic boy’s photograph. This was real lips and real tongue and real scary.

  Their lips remained in strained smushed position for approximately seven seconds.

  KC pulled back, her fingertips pressed to her cherry ChapStick lips.

  “Wow,” KC said. “That sucked.”

  Fat Angie shriveled in place.

  “It sucked for you, right?” said KC.

  “Oh, yeah,” Fat Angie said, unsure if playing it nonchalant was standard first-kiss protocol. Surely it wasn’t KC’s first kiss. Surely KC knew it had been hers.

  “I’m usually . . . I mean, wow,” said KC.

  “Oh, me too. Usually,” said Fat Angie.

  “Usually what?” asked KC.

  “Usually, um . . .” Fat Angie searched the recesses of her brain. Nothing but a vacancy sign blinked in the immediate foreground of her thought process. “Do you wanna block out our caller ID and crank call Stacy Ann?”

  “Cool,” said KC, scratching at her fitted black long-sleeved T-shirt with a portrait of Gandhi on the chest.

  Fat Angie caught a glimpse of KC’s arms. The scratches . . . scars.

  “You OK?” said Fat Angie.

  “Yeah. Relax. I told you I’m over that. It’s so ancient. Like the miniseries as an art form.”

  KC casually tugged her sleeve into her palm and scooted closer to Fat Angie. Angie tingled when KC’s shirt brushed against her forearm.

  “I’m gonna crank my dad,” said KC.

  “Yeah. Oh, and then my mom.”

  “That’ll killjoy the romance,” KC said.

  “No doubt. Ultra joykill.”

  Fat Angie had no doubt repackaged the word. Much to Angie’s chagrin, KC surprised her when she said, “Sweet word twist. Joykill rocks.”

  And this was an absolutely swell moment.

  “Crank on?” Angie said.

  The girls fiercely dialed one number after another. Pissing off a string of unhappy answerers.

  KC hung up on her dad and, floating on the high, leaned in and kissed Angie. This time, Angie recalled the upside-down Spider-Man movie kiss that had been her fantasy study guide for kissing, and she kissed back!

  The two girls came up for a breather and touched heads.

  “That so didn’t —” said KC.

  “Yeah, so didn’t,” said Fat Angie.

  “Wanna . . . ?” asked KC.

  “Yeah . . .”

  When the girls resumed their smooch, there was a sound. A snap-of-a-twig sound.

  Fat Angie paused. “Did you hear . . . ?”

  “What?”

  Fat Angie did not want to be paranoid. Especially right then.

  She had told her therapist, “Everyone thinks I’m paranoid. What if they’re paranoid and are projecting?”

  The therapist had made a note: Struggling with social norms in relation to adulthood.

  “Angie,” said KC.

  “It’s nothing,” Fat Angie said.

  KC asked, “You freaking?”

  “No. I mean, it’s . . . different?” said Angie. “Not bad different.”

  “Definitely?” asked KC.

  “Absolute,” said Angie.

  The two leaned toward each other.

  “KC?”

  “Yeah, Angie?”

  Angie. Her name fit her when KC said it. It was the perfect size.

  “Nothing.”

  The smoochfest was a breath from resuming when the door to Wang’s therapist’s house whipped open. Fat Angie and KC peeked out from beneath the bottom of the bush.

  A pair of sneakers sprinting from grass to concrete was muffled by the clicking of her mother’s high heels.

  “Come back in, Connie,” said the therapist. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

  Her couldn’t-be-bothered mother abruptly got in her car and sped out of the driveway.

  “Wonder what we missed,” KC said.

  Fat Angie shook her head. “I better go.”

  “Hey,” said KC. “You OK?”

  “I’m fine. But if she’s heading home, I better be there.”

  Fat Angie made to leave but veered back to KC. “The kissing thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You think we could try that again?” Fat Angie said. “Maybe soon sometime?”

  “Definitely soonish,” KC said.

  From ear to beautiful ear, Fat Angie grin-glowed.

  “Text me,” KC said.

  “Right. I gotta go. Bye. Thanks, I mean.” Fat Angie stumbled out from beneath the hedge.

  She sprinted though her sore muscles said, “Briskly walk, please.” She ran on the taste of her first kiss with the luscious KC Romance.

  The girl huffed.

  The girl puffed.

  The girl, in Fat Angie–style, barreled through the front door.

  Fat Angie’s couldn’t-be-bothered mother said, “Where have you been?” The shrillness in her voice should have blown the girl right down.

  “Thought you were working late,” Fat Angie said, catching her breath.

  Wang strolled in, popped a Coke, and poured a packet of Pop Rocks in his mouth. He gargled the mixture. This was an annoying distraction to Fat Angie.

  “I asked you where you were, Angie,” said her mother.

  The tension in her mother’s voice confused her.

  “I was, um, out.”

  Wang stuck out his tongue, Pop Rocks crackling. Fat Angie glared at him. He glared back. They were in a free-for-all glare-off that could have continued for quite some time if —

  “Where were you?” her mother asked.

  “Nowhere,” said Fat Angie. “Why don’t you ask him where he was?”

  “I knew you’d start again,” said her mother. “It always has to be something big with you, Angie.”

  Fat Angie knew this was more than just being busted for coming in after 11:30 on a school night. It had to be about tryouts.

  “Look, I really want to do this,” Fat Angie said.

  “You what?
” snapped her mother.

  “Try it . . . for a while,” said Fat Angie. “It feels right — like maybe it’s who I am. Can’t you just support me?”

  Her mother unhooked her cell phone from the harness.

  “Mom, I’m really good at —”

  But before Fat Angie could finish talking about basketball tryouts, her jaw dropped.

  Her chin doubled.

  A fly could have nested in her mouth.

  Right there in dimly lit but high resolution on her mother’s BlackBerry was a picture of KC and Fat Angie in full lip-lock action. This was very, very bad.

  “I sent it to your father,” said her mother. “Not that he’ll do a damn thing.”

  Fat Angie’s jaw was still dropped.

  Her chin remained doubled.

  Wang leaned over his mother’s shoulder and chuckled.

  “Way to go, deep-fried,” said Wang.

  This did not please his mother.

  “How? Where . . . did this . . . ?” Fat Angie asked.

  “There is always someone watching us, Angie,” said her mother. “My God. You want me to support you doing this?”

  “No . . .” said Fat Angie. “I meant . . . what I was talking about . . . I wasn’t talking about that.”

  “I don’t care what you were talking about,” said her mother.

  “Mom —”

  “The only thing I can ever imagine supporting you in is a genuine attempt at losing weight,” said her mother.

  “What?” said Fat Angie.

  “Don’t think I don’t know you sneak food,” said her mother.

  Fat Angie covered her belly. Wang’s interest in the showdown between mother and obese sister diminished with the need to text.

  “There’s nothing you won’t pull, is there?” her mother asked. “Nothing you won’t do to make us the freak show of the neighborhood. Of Dryfalls.”

  “Don’t you have that in reverse?” said Fat Angie.

  “Why, because I want to get on with our lives?” asked her mother.

  Connie + Get On With Life = Accept Angie’s Sister Is Dead

  Fat Angie’s sister was not dead.

  Her body had not been found.

  Fat Angie’s cotton socks stuck to —

  “Answer me.” Fat Angie did not like confrontation. She especially didn’t like confrontation with her mother.

  “I don’t want you talking to this girl ever again.”

  “What?” Fat Angie asked.

  Wang cut in. “She said you can’t lock lesbo lips with the —”