Life in the Fat Lane (11 page)

I felt strangled by the rapid pounding of my heart.

“I’ve … gained a lot of weight,” I managed to choke out.

She nodded.

“I used to weigh one hundred eighteen pounds. I’d win beauty pageants. I was homecoming queen.”

She nodded again, waiting.

“Well, look at me!” I blurted out. “I’m some kind of fat freak now!”

“Is that how you think of yourself?”

No, I think I’m walking perfection
.

I took a deep breath, folded my hands prettily in my lap, and smiled at Karen’s skinny face. “I work out every single day,” I explained. “My mother found a doctor who put me on a diet drug. Even though I hardly ate, I gained weight, plus it made my heart race. Then he tried a different drug. It made me sick, but I would have stayed on it anyway if I had lost even a little weight. I didn’t. I just gained more. I’ve tried everything and I’ve had all these tests. Nothing works.”

“How are you doing in school?” she asked, changing subjects.

“I get practically straight A’s.”

She nodded. “Homecoming queen and straight A’s. You must be a very hard worker.”

“I like to do my best,” I replied.

She nodded again. “Sometimes it’s a lot of pressure to do your best all the time. How are things for you at home?”

They suck. My parents are ashamed of me
.

“Just fine,” I said.

“Tell me about your family,” she suggested.

I ran through the basic family unit quickly. “And my parents are really wonderful. perfect.”

“Perfect?” Karen echoed.

“And my mom is gorgeous. And thin.”

“How do you feel about that?”

I swallowed the monster feelings of rage and tried to answer her question. “I used to always think it was great. Everyone said I looked just like her.”

“And now?”

“And now … I don’t look like her anymore.”

“How do you feel about that?” she asked again.

“How do you
think
I feel?” I replied, my voice rising. “That is a
stupid
question!”

“I sense you’re feeling some anger,” Karen said.

Well, aren’t you a rocket scientist
.

I took a deep breath. I smiled. Control. “Excuse me. What I meant was that the answer to that is obvious.”

Karen leaned toward me. “Sometimes our own motivations are hard for us to see.” She slid one thin leg over the other. My legs didn’t do that anymore. My thighs rubbed when I walked. I hated her and her thin thighs.

“Let’s talk about your dad a little. How do you feel about him?”

He’s so disappointed in me
.

“He’s great.”

“What is his reaction to your gaining weight?”

He hates me
.
He doesn’t even call me princess anymore
.

“He encourages me to lose,” I recited dutifully.

“He’d like to see you thinner?”

No, you bony twit, he’d like to see me fatter
.

“Yes,” I said sweetly. “Of course. He loves me.”

“And how do your parents get along with each other?”

None of your business
.

“Perfectly.”

“Perfectly?”

“That’s what I just said. Perfectly.”

Karen nodded. I could tell she didn’t believe me. She was so sure she knew better.

“Perfect parents, perfect life,” Karen mused. “It’s not uncommon for perfectionistic, overachieving young women who feel great pressure to succeed, to develop eating disorders.”

“But I don’t think I have an eating disorder. I mean, I don’t eat that much,” I mumbled guiltily. “I think there’s something wrong with me—physically, I mean.”

“Your mom mentioned that you’d seen a number of doctors, and you had a battery of tests done to see if there was any metabolic cause for your weight gain,” Karen said. “What were the results?”

Yeah, like you don’t know
.

“They were negative,” I admitted. “But … the doctors could have been wrong. Couldn’t they?”

“It’s possible,” Karen said.

You don’t believe me. Humor the fat girl
.

“You’re feeling …?”

I stared at her blankly.

“Angry with me for asking you these questions?” Karen prompted me.

“No,” I said. My smile didn’t crack.

“You’re not angry?”

“No.”

“Really? Even though you’ve gained so much weight?”

I wanted to smack that supercilious look off her skinny face. I couldn’t take it one more minute. I stood up. The monster had finally gotten loose.

“Okay, I’m angry!” I yelled, looming over her. “Now that’s a big duh, huh? You sit there, all smug and superior,
and you don’t even know me! You’ve decided I have an eating disorder because you think my family is messed up. Well, my family is
not
messed up. They’re fine. I’m the one who has a problem. I’m not eating, and I
keep gaining weight
. That’s why I’m here and they’re not, get it? Now, do you believe me, or not?”

“What I believe isn’t important,” Karen said.

“
Then what the hell am I doing here?
” I screamed.

She looked at me mildly. “Would you care to sit down again?”

I sat. My whole body was vibrating.

“It’s hard to live up to perfection, Lara. You’ve set extremely high standards for yourself—straight A’s, pageants. It’s a lot of pressure.”

She glanced at her watch. “I hope you’ll think about this, Lara. Sometimes it can be more difficult to be from a family with high expectations than from a family that expects nothing at all.”

She stood up. “The weight is just a symptom, a release valve, if you will, for the pressure within. If you’d like to work with me, I think we can go on quite a journey together. Just call my secretary if you would like to set up regular appointments.” She reached for my hand.

Not on your life, bitch
.

I stood up, too, pointedly ignoring her outstretched hand, which hung in the air between me and her, at the end of her skinny arm. I knew I should take it. The old pageant me would definitely have taken it, no matter how much I disliked her. The new me looked at it with disdain.

So I won’t win Miss Congeniality. So fucking what
?

Karen left her hand there, but turned it palm up when she spoke. “Lara,” she said. “One last thing. You’re not alone.”

I
got into the Saturn my grandfather had bought me and pulled out of Karen DeBarge’s parking lot, turning up the radio as loud as it would go. I never, ever,
ever
planned to go back there. I hated everything about her. The monster-creature me wanted to strangle her and watch her skinny arms plead for mercy.

But it was over, behind me. I told myself not to think about her anymore. Instead I’d think about all the good things that were still in my life.

Molly was still my best friend. And miracle of miracles, Jett still loved me.

Impossible to believe, but it was true. He still seemed to find me beautiful. I just couldn’t figure that out. He joked around, and tried to tell me that there had been different standards of beauty in different eras and that, by today’s standards, Marilyn Monroe was overweight.

In public, now, I found myself touching him, hanging on him in the same annoying way Mom hung on Dad. I kissed him a lot, held his hand, leaned my head on his shoulder, as if to say: Look, I might be fat, but I can still get a cute guy.

The fatter I got, the more Jennie Smith flirted with Jett. In fact, she’d invited him to her indoor pool party the week before, and she hadn’t invited me. I knew all about the party. Everyone at school was talking about it. They all just assumed I had been invited. I didn’t tell them different.

Then, in study hall, Amber had told me that Jennie
had told her that she hadn’t invited me. But that Jennie had invited Jett. “I’m telling you this as a friend,” Amber had said. “I don’t think it’s right.”

I didn’t ask Jett about it, because I knew he wasn’t going to the party. We had a date that night. He was going to hide the invitation from me, to spare my feelings.

Then, the day before her party, Jennie had stopped over at my house. And she had explained why she hadn’t invited me.

“I didn’t want you to be embarrassed, Lara,” she had told me, all sweetness and light. “I mean,
you
? In a
bathing suit
? I wouldn’t put you through the
humiliation
!”

My hands tightened on my steering wheel as if it were Jennie Smith’s throat. Murder colored my most vivid fantasies.

Lunch. I wanted to eat lunch. I vowed to stay on my diet. Wendy’s had a salad bar. I pulled into the parking lot of the Wendy’s on White Bridge Road, grabbed my purse, and went in.

“Welcome to Wendy’s, can I take your order?” asked a short guy with a blond crew cut and bad skin. I recognized him, but clearly he didn’t recognize me. Jimmy Porter. I had sat next to him the year before in history. He’d had a hard time keeping up, and some of the kids used to goof on him. I’d heard he’d transferred to a private school.

“Just the salad bar,” I mumbled, trying not to make eye contact.

He cocked his head at me. “You look kinda familiar.”

I shrugged and tried to duck my face down into the neckline of my sweater. It was warm out, but it was still too early in the year for the restaurant to use its airconditioning.
I felt flushed, and even though I wasn’t sweating, I knew my fat face was candy-apple red.

“That’ll be four dollars and twenty-nine cents,” Jimmy said. I handed him the money, and he looked at me again. “I know you from somewhere,” he said, handing me my change.

I was about to escape with my plastic salad plate when his face lit up with recognition. “Hey, I know! You’re Lara Ardeche!”

A sickly little smile came to my lips.

“God, what happened to you?” he blurted out. “I mean, no offense or nothing, but, jeez-o-Pete!”

I dropped the plastic plate and ran out the door, practically colliding with two young guys wearing matching Nine Inch Nails T-shirts. “Thar she blows!” one of them yelled after me, and the two of them cracked up.

I sat in my car, shaking, wanting to die. I put my head down on the steering wheel and sobbed.

“Excuse me, ma’am, are you pulling out of that space?”

I looked out my window. In the car next to me were two very cute college-age guys.

“This spot is handicapped parking,” the guy in the passenger seat explained to me. “So if you’re pulling out, we can take your spot.”

“Sure,” I managed, choking back my tears.

“Thanks, ma’am.”

And as I pulled out of the parking space, I realized he had called
ma’am
. He thought I was
old
! Because I was fat.

I had become a sexless, ageless, faceless blob.

I wasn’t a pretty girl anymore.

I was the same person inside, the same girl that those two guys would once have flirted with. Only now I was a
different girl on the outside, a girl who lived in the land of the fat girls. Teased. Shunned. Pitied. Overlooked.

The only guy who still thought I was beautiful was Jett, whose love I wore like a shield against my exile into fat land.

But without Jett by my side, I was just this disgusting blob. I was nothing. Less than nothing.

I pulled out of Wendy’s parking lot and drove. I wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and pull the covers over my head. I wanted to hide forever, someplace where no one could call me names, laugh at me, pity me.

Lara Ardeche
, a voice in my head said to me,
you are not a quitter. You can change this. And you don’t need anyone’s help. All you have to do is stop eating. Totally. No matter how hungry you get, or how bad that is, it can’t be as bad as this is
.

Yes. That was what I would do. I’d just stop eating.

One of two things would happen.

I would get thin again. Or I would die.

Either way, I would win.

“L
ara, you can’t not eat at all,” my mother said, sucking on her cigarette nervously.

“Yes I can.”

It was that evening, and my mother and I were in the kitchen after dinner. Her dinner. I had consumed only water. Dad was out of town. Scott was at a friend’s house.

“You’ll get sick,” she said. “Don’t you think that therapist could help you?”

“I hate her,” I said, “and I don’t need her help. I’ve made a decision. I am not going to eat anything.”

“We’ll go to a different diet doctor—”

“No. I’ve made up my mind.”

She inhaled on her cigarette and let the smoke out slowly. “I can’t let you do that, honey.”

“It’s not up to you,” I snapped. “It’s up to me. You can’t force me to eat.”

“What if we don’t keep any fattening foods in the house anymore?” she asked brightly. “I’m sure Scott would be willing to—”

“Mom, when is the last time you saw me eat anything except diet food?” I interrupted.

“I know you try, Lara, but—”

“I mean it, Mom. When?”

“You don’t eat in front of me,” my mother said, her eyes full of pity. “But Tammie told me she found candy-bar wrappers behind your bed.”

“Our housekeeper’s
reporting
to you now? You’re
spying
on me?”

Mom got up and went to the drawer in the kitchen counter. She opened it and pulled out a small package. SKINNY STRIP was the return address. The package was addressed to me.

“This came in the mail last month,” Mom said. “I can’t believe you fell for such a—”

“It isn’t mine,” I protested. “It’s Molly’s! I only agreed to let her send it here because—”

“Lara, this lying has got to stop.”

“I’m not lying!”

My mother rested one palm on her forehead, her elbow on the table. Her eyes peered at me from beneath her shaggy blond bangs. “Honey, I’m just worried about you. You sneak food, you keep gaining. The other day when Jennie Smith stopped over I looked at her and I realized: ‘God, my daughter is twice as big as that girl.’ ”

“Listen to me,” I said, my voice low. “Sometimes I eat candy. Maybe once a week, after I’ve spent days starving—”

“And you lose your self-control, I know.”

I stood up. “You love me, right?”