Fat Angie Read online

  Although Fat Angie did not like confrontation, she did like Jake Fetch at that moment until he looked her way and said, “You cool?”

  The world had turned upside down. The sky would rain frogs by the end of the day, or at least sometime in the next week, because Jake Fetch had stood up for her.

  She ran.

  During lunch, Fat Angie wrote a letter to her sister.

  I am deficient in the art of numbers, Fat Angie wrote.

  She had begun the letter during her time at Yellow Ridge, the spa-like treatment facility Fat Angie’s mother had stuck her in after the pep rally freak-out. After a nine-day stay, she had been stamped as “cure in progress.”

  Even though Fat Angie’s pre–pep rally freak-out therapist had said to Angie’s mother, “Angie’s reaction isn’t surprising. Your daughter simply feels lost without her sister. And she thinks you don’t care.”

  Fat Angie’s couldn’t-be-bothered mother, quite bothered by the entire event, felt that her daughter’s therapist, a woman she had often referred to as the Hippie with a Harvard Degree, was inept in deciphering the fundamental problem with Angie: that Fat Angie was simply attention seeking.

  Consequently, her mother had placed Fat Angie in the care of a new therapist who treated adults. The therapist cost $125 an hour and the office was painted in salmon.

  Fat Angie did not like that color.

  I’m broke up in parts — fragments — it’s not an illness, she wrote. They say it’s “complicated.” She paused, considering the notion of complicated at great length . . . approximately 4.5 seconds. Returning to her spiral notebook, she scribbled, But all things by their very nature are complicated. They are —

  “Hey,” said Jake Fetch, launching a head nod while standing at the edge of the table.

  The move seemed forced, as if he had spent a significant amount of time practicing it in the mirror but had not gotten it quite right. His white polo was unnecessarily baggy. This puzzled Fat Angie. Jake had a body worth promoting.

  “So, you OK?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, drawing five lines and crossing through them with a sixth.

  “Seemed kinda freaked,” he said. “Gary Klein’s a tool and a half. You know?”

  Fat Angie struggled, as any smart outcast would, with the “why” of Jake speaking to her. In kindergarten, Fat Angie had eaten Elmer’s glue, nearly choked to death, and been rescued by then-first-grader Jake Fetch, new to her school and already well on his way to the throne of coolness. But except for her near-death experience, the only thing the two had in common was that they lived across the street from each other. Their proximity aside, they were different. Not Romeo-Juliet different. But different in that Jake was a good boy from a good home with both parents and a dog that most likely liked his name: Ryan.

  Fat Angie had witnessed the good boy and his good dog playing Frisbee or fetch many times from her evenly square window with a Pretty in Pink curtain that only 80s cult star Molly Ringwald could appreciate. Jake and Ryan were an inseparable duo. Just the way Fat Angie and her sister had been. Minus the game of fetch.

  Jake dropped his head to the right and rubbed the bottom of his chin. The smallest of scars was etched in the edge of his genetically perfect chin. A chin complete with the right amount of curve and line. “So you don’t say a lot much,” he stated matter-of-factly.

  “That’s redundant,” she said. “That I don’t say a lot much.”

  In spite of the pockets of kids zeroing in on him, Jake sat across from her.

  “You just got docked five superstar social points for sitting here,” Fat Angie said.

  He picked a French fry off her tray. “You don’t really like people much anymore, huh? Your sister wouldn’t dig that.”

  Fat Angie and Jake Fetch did have one other thing in common.

  She stopped writing as he fished for another fry. His eyes cut to her notebook. She closed it with a definite protectiveness and repositioned herself in her seat.

  “Angie, I just — look, your sister . . .” and before the stellar handsome Jake Fetch could get out another word, the energy of the cafeteria sparked wildfire.

  Over his shoulder the sea of noise and bodies seemed to part. Stepping away from the cashier at the food line was . . . her. The new girl from gym class. Her hair pulled to the side just enough to reveal that curvy, unbelievably intriguing purple heart tattoo. Fat Angie, helpless in the tractor beam of the girl’s strut, lost all sense of time — space — ability not to stare.

  Jake turned in his chair. A fry hung limply from his lips like a snapped cigarette.

  The scene was set.

  Tables buzzed. Crossing in front of the long-legged beauty, guys cocked their heads for a detailed image for later recollection. Fat Angie pulled at her jeans, uncomfortably camel-toeing her crotch, while the new girl’s eyes locked on Fat Angie’s as they had in gym. The bombshell smiled and a voice screamed from the depths of the teen: Smile back!

  As she fought a host of self-loathing thoughts, Fat Angie’s crooked lip twitched ever so slightly before forming a dimple in her rosy right cheek. All seemed unspeakably speakable in the mind of Fat Angie. She had reacted beyond the “fat ass, ugly bitch, mad cow” comments. She had smiled!

  With an uncertain future but a seemingly happy ending in the midst, all was cut short between the new girl and Fat Angie. The new girl was intercepted. Stacy Ann, also in a red plaid skirt but cut exactly within the William Anders High–regulated dress code, sprung into gossip-girl mode with a coven of three forming a V behind her.

  Fat Angie’s smile vanished and her head dropped, forming the double chin her mother loathed so much that she had refused to frame Angie’s class picture.

  “I can’t believe you wore that HORNETS’ NEST T-shirt,” her mother had said, eyeing the photograph. “It makes you look so wide.”

  Fat Angie kept the 2.5 x 3.5 photograph in her butterfly-adorned Velcro wallet right behind a picture of her sister on graduation night. The whole family, together on the football field. Her sister in the middle, beaming beside a thinner but nevertheless fat Angie.

  Jake whipped back around to Fat Angie. “Who’s the bomb?”

  And right then, a voice said, “You’re in my gym class.”

  Angie lifted her sad eyes, and then they beamed. Jake looked back and forth between the girls as if taking note of the event.

  “I’m Jake,” he said to the new girl. “And the temporarily mute girl is Angie.”

  “Hey, Angie,” said the girl. “Can I?”

  “Can you what?” said Fat Angie.

  “Well, the chair is empty,” said the girl, holding up a lunch box depicting the Last Supper. Jesus’s arms were unusually buff.

  What they refer to in the theater as a beat occurred.

  Beat (v.): a representation of a pause in dialogue. A beat also refers to an event, decision, or discovery that alters the way the protagonist pursues his goal.

  Jake nudged the chair leg back with his foot.

  “Chivalry. Thanks,” said the mystery girl.

  “No worries,” Jake said.

  It suddenly occurred to Fat Angie that the new girl with the soon-to-be-famous intense purple tattoo might have invited herself to meet Jake. The rapid happy-sad-happy-sad confused Fat Angie.

  “I miss her a lot,” Fat Angie had said to the therapist. “I feel like I’m the only one who still notices she’s not here.”

  The therapist had made a note: Sees herself as a loner.

  The new girl popped the heart-shaped latches on her lunch box plastered with 80s hair band stickers on the bottom.

  “So . . . you’re new,” said Jake.

  “In a recycled-high-school-transfer way,” said the new girl.

  Fat Angie laughed. A half-snort-wedged-into-a-laugh kind of laugh.

  “So, where you from?” asked Jake.

  “You write for the Daily Planet or something?” asked the new girl.

  The mood went from lig
ht to heavy in a single question. Jake fell into a false smile and stamped the end of his index finger against the table. Fat Angie tugged at her jeans.

  “Well, I gotta cut out,” said Jake. “See you in seventh.”

  This stumped Fat Angie, as she and Jake never saw each other in seventh period.

  “So,” the girl said, “the inevitable awkward not-knowing-a-person moment.”

  Beat.

  “I’m KC.” She extended her hand. “KC Romance.”

  Thrown for a moment, Fat Angie realized this was not an attempt to be eccentric. It sent the oddest warmness into her tummy.

  “Angie.”

  “Yeah, your friend said. So . . . Jake, is it? Jockhead or ultra-even?” asked KC.

  Angie stumbled through translating the hip KC slang of ultra-even.

  “Sorry,” KC said. “The Midwest Adjust hasn’t kicked into my shop talk. I meant, jock or cool?”

  “Um, athlete but ultra, I guess,” said Fat Angie, nervously sketching. “He’s sort of a shape-shifter. Can fit anywhere. We live on the same block and —”

  “Do I detect a little interest?” KC asked.

  “It’s. No. He and my sister — they, um —”

  “Completely tragic,” KC said, offering a swig of her low-fat organic milk. “Crushing on your sister’s boyfriend. I, of course, have no siblings to end up in such a dilemma. Unless you count my dad’s new wife and her two guppy-yuppie heathens, which I don’t. Parents. Di-vorced.”

  “Mine too. Guess we’re kinda in common,” said Angie, immediately realizing how utterly geeked-out that sounded. “I mean we have something . . . in common.”

  While Angie was prone to nervous, incoherent jabber, that particular moment was set apart from any other. It was a nails-scratching-on-a-chalkboard, winning-first-place-in-a-relay concoction of nervousness.

  KC unwrapped a hearty sandwich worthy of a TV commercial. Cheese. Roast beef, turkey, pastrami. Leafy lettuce, luscious tomato, and the smell of expensive mustard. Fat Angie salivated.

  “I know it’s a beast. Esther always makes me a ginormous sandwich for every first-day new-school move. Mover’s guilt, I guess.”

  “So. About Stacy Ann,” said Fat Angie.

  Stacy Ann stared from six tables away. Classic kung fu films would portray this moment with a zoom-in by the camera. Fat Angie had watched such cinematic techniques with Wang before he’d become obsessed with his crime-driven alter ego.

  “I’m not so into the rah-rah, in case you didn’t figure from the getup,” said KC. “Besides, there’s been a Stacy Ann at every school I’ve been to. Too into chick lit and cruising the mall, maxing out Mommy’s credit cards on name-brand purses and overpriced clothing made in sweat factories. What about you?”

  “I hate sweat factories.”

  KC smiled. “I mean, what do you do? For fun? When you’re not reforming developing countries’ labor laws?”

  Fat Angie kicked into the CBS-required five-second delay before asking, “Fun?”

  Fat Angie had not considered the notion of fun for some time. She spent most afternoons alone in her bedroom surfing the Internet on the divorce-guilt computer from her dad. Researching the war in Iraq, tickets to Baghdad, and the application process for a passport. All the while, the Weather Channel on mute in the background on the thirteen-inch television she’d bought at a garage sale for fourteen dollars. The screen flickered between channel changes. Occasionally, she propped herself against a pile of overpriced pillows and watched the obligatory pregnant weather woman block part of Texas or California with her profoundly robust tummy. This was the closest she came to fun, but in no way was it worthy of sharing with others.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean it to be a showstopper,” said KC, returning to her meal.

  “No, I just . . . I’m not really the person who’s in the know. You know? What I mean is . . . I don’t really fun much. But a lot of kids fun — I mean, have fun. Everybody pretty much hangs out at The Backstory. Lattes and open mics. Live band stuff. Mostly garage . . . bands. They have great German appetizer specials on Friday nights and Skewer Saturdays.”

  “Cool,” said KC. “Sort of the Bronze without vampires and demons.”

  Fat Angie did not follow the trajectory of KC’s comment.

  “BTVS?” KC said. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer? One of the best shows ever. Entertainment Weekly’s top 100. A classic but definitely not dated.”

  “Oh. I’m into the classics too,” said Fat Angie, crossing her arms awkwardly over her chest. “Growing Pains, 7th Heaven . . .”

  KC nodded but showed no signs of genuine interest. Be ultra-even, Angie thought, but her concentration splintered. Algebra . . . images of Japan’s tsunami . . . the theme song to Growing Pains all whipped wildly in her head. Then there was a sound. Laughter. Angie and her sister laughing. Angie remembered —

  “Freaks and Geeks,” she blurted out.

  “Freaks and Geeks is massive fierce!” KC nearly spit out her food. “Cutie James Franco. He’s James Dean in the making. Hopefully without the tragic ending. Love Freaks.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Absolute ultra, no doubt. The others are way dead. Not that that’s bad. My mom owns a season of Melrose Place, I think, and I can’t wrong her for a guilty pleasure,” said KC. “People need them, you know. But classic old school is still cool. You know, paving the way and all. Like no Lynda Carter Wonder Woman, no Buffy. And Wonder Woman is mid-70s ultra retro.”

  “Yeah, Wonder Woman,” said Fat Angie. “The lasso where you have to tell the truth.”

  “I know, totally beast,” said KC.

  “And — and the invisible jet,” Fat Angie continued.

  Blank. Fat Angie drew an unfathomable big blank. She shifted her leg under her, only her jeans were so tight they pinched at the creases of her knee. This was, in fact, an uncomfortable position but one she had committed to. To move again would suggest that she were nervous.

  “So,” KC said, “when you wanna go?”

  “Go?” said Fat Angie.

  “To The Backstory,” said KC. “Sounds sweet. Foaming coffee and skewer adventure.”

  “I’m . . . I don’t drink. Caffeine. Acid reflux,” said Fat Angie.

  “Yikes!” said KC. “Me too. But I’m sure they’ve got water. The nonbubbly kind. Or we could do something else.”

  Doing something with KC threw Fat Angie for what one might refer to as a loop.

  “Why?” asked Fat Angie.

  KC paused midbite, a clear indication she did not follow.

  “You’re new here,” said Fat Angie. “There’s lots of people . . . in the school. And I’m not really what you’d call in the cool. Not that I don’t want friends. I mean . . . It’s just . . . I —”

  “Listen,” said KC, “I saw what Stacy Ann did in gym class. It was beast the way you took her on. Most girls wouldn’t take on a Stacy Ann.”

  “You saw?” said Fat Angie.

  “Yeah.” KC bit the inside of her full lower lip. “I saw.”

  Fat Angie had never studied a mouth so closely. She wondered —

  “You OK?” said KC.

  “Stacy Ann had it coming,” said Fat Angie.

  KC nodded her head. “So about The Backstory. What do you think? Could be kinda fun. Even if you’re not all fun-zees.”

  The Backstory was not simply a teen retreat beneath dim lights with trendy IKEA furniture and a shallow stage. It was the place where Fat Angie’s sister had spilled the so-called beans of enlisting in the armed forces. Fried Freudian Mozzarella balls had congealed between the sisters then. All the while, Fat Angie had slumped in her chair and contemplated the universe on a stick, also fried. Deep, deep-fried. She had wanted to vomit. She had —

  “Can I? Think, I mean,” said Fat Angie. “Not that I don’t wanna. I just . . .”

  “Sure. Thinking’s good,” said KC. “Question. You gonna finish your fries? Kinda like to stick them in the middle of the sandwich.”

  Fat Ang
ie slid over her tray, and KC Romance ate, like Fat Angie wanted to; savoring the taste of each tantalizing bite. Mixing homemade chocolate chip cookies with the main course, a no-no in Fat Angie’s world.

  “You gotta try one of these,” KC said, holding a cookie out to Angie. “It’s massive ultra.”

  Fat Angie lifted her arm, the sweaty armpit unsticking. The two girls held the cookie in midair. Then laughed.

  Fat Angie noticed a stringy scar on the inside of KC’s arm.

  KC released the cookie. “So, this panda goes into a bar . . .”

  Fat Angie smiled. “Yeah.”

  For a moment, Angie forgot that she was fat. She forgot about Wang’s criminal behavior and shady mood with her and her couldn’t-be-bothered mother detesting her. A model kind of beauty beneath the bad-girl garb with eyes that matched her last name, KC Romance was not seated at the “rah-rah” crowd table. There she was, defying the gravity of the social chain of Stacy Ann Sloan and the rest of William Anders High, sitting across from Fat Angie.

  Then the lunch bell rang.

  After school, Fat Angie stood at the transportation hell hub, otherwise known as the school bus pickup.

  Wang shoved her from behind. “What up, Tubs?” he asked, tearing into a hunk of beef jerky.

  A week of in-school suspension (ISS) and nothing had changed. Angie had prayed each night for a metamorphosis in Wang. Even as the dubbed-over cooking show Iron Chef seeped from beneath his door while she watched Jake and Ryan play fetch from her window, she had held out hope. But Fat Angie’s prayers were often convoluted by notions of her sister’s return and staving off her mother’s passive-aggressive comments about applying to the reality series The Biggest Loser.

  Fat Angie hated reality TV. She especially did not like that show.

  Wang adjusted his white ball cap splashed in black splats and skulls. His rap style of baggy and bling teetered on the edge of too much.

  “Heard you had a throw-down with Stacy Ann,” said Wang.

  “And?”

  “And mom’s gonna kick your ass,” he said, keeping an eye out for his friends.