Life in the Fat Lane (14 page)

Eighteen pounds. Three pounds a week. At night I had horrible nightmares: I had turned into a huge, hideous monster, and people were running from me, screaming in fear.

I was totally unrecognizable as my former self. My real self. I was a prisoner in a fat suit.

For three weeks I ate the diet the nutritionist had prescribed for me, and gained three pounds each week. The next week, I ate anything I felt like eating. I gained the exact same amount of weight.

So what was the point?

Not that I ever ate in front of anybody. I never did that. So what if I told people I had a metabolic disorder—if they saw me eating anything other than lettuce, they wouldn’t believe me. When you’re fat, you’re not just fat.

You’re sloppy.

Lazy.

A pig.

My father refused to believe we couldn’t find a doctor who could control my weight. He had my records sent to Duke and to two famous endocrinologists, one in Michigan, one in San Francisco. The Duke and the Michigan doctors both said the same thing: possible Axell-Crowne. Don’t know if it will last forever or be gone tomorrow. The San Francisco doctor said there was no such thing as Axell-Crowne and recommended an inpatient eating disorder facility.

An assistant from a lab at Duke’s medical center called and asked if I would join their proposed study. I would have to go to North Carolina for three months and be
monitored by video cameras twenty-four hours a day to confirm that I wasn’t sneaking any food.

Well, what was the point? I wondered. They didn’t have any medication for me. They weren’t offering me any hope.

The old pageant winner me would have said yes anyway, so that I might help others in the future.

The new me told the woman to drop dead.

It felt good not to care. Because too often, I still did. I cared what people at school thought. I cared when total strangers insulted me, laughed at me, as if my feelings didn’t matter, as if they had a right to punish me for the sin of being fat in their presence.

I knew it was a sin. Everyone made that clear in the way they treated me. My father made it clearest of all. The way he looked at me said everything.

“I’m not going to Opryland,” I told Jennie casually.

“But it’s going to be so fun!” she protested. “And it won’t be the same without you!”

“Thanks,” I said. “But Jett and I have other plans.”

Her face fell. “Jett isn’t coming, either?”

“That’s right,” Molly told Jennie, coming up behind her. “And you thought this would be your shot at him, huh?”

Jennie threw Molly a nasty look. “You need help, Molly. You are delusional.”

“Oh yeah, right,” Molly snorted. “Like you aren’t totally after Jett. Everyone knows it.”

Jennie gave me an earnest look. “I would
never
.”

“I know,” I lied.

She put her hand on my arm. “I mean, I just think the
world
of Jett! Standing by you after you got so … after
what happened to you. He’s like a
saint
to me, you know?”

“Excuse me while I barf up my sleeve,” Molly said.

Jennie narrowed her eyes and backed away from us. “You’d better watch it, Mouth. Lara can’t protect you anymore, you know.”

“Bye, Jennie, stay sweet!” Molly called, and steered me down the hall.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said. “Now she’ll be mad.”

“Am I supposed to care?”

“You know what she’s like when she hates someone at this school,” I reminded her.

“Jennie can’t hurt you,” Molly said. “Everyone at this school loves you. She can’t ruin your rep.”

“Molly, wake up.” I looked around to make sure no one could overhear us. “Jennie isn’t afraid of me anymore. I mean, look at me.”

“Your true friends haven’t turned on you,” Molly insisted as we rounded the corner.

“That would be …?” I asked as I watched Lisa James and Denise Reiser walk by without acknowledging my existence.

“Me and Jett, obviously,” Molly said, looking through her books.

Sarah Lodge waved to us from across the hall. “Have a great summer!” she called.

“Plus girls like Sarah,” Molly said. “And all the other people who aren’t in that stupid little clique that you seem to love so much.”

We stopped in front of the auditorium, where the end-of-the-year assembly for the entire school was about
to take place. I saw Jett down at the other side of the hall, talking to a pretty, slender senior girl I recognized but didn’t know.

“Oh, shoot,” Molly said, “I left a library book in precalc. They’ll
crucify
me if I don’t bring it back. Save me and Andy seats, okay?” She dashed off.

My eyes were glued to Jett and the girl. What was he doing with her? I walked over to the two of them.

“Hi,” I said, taking his arm. I put my head on his shoulder and stared daggers at the girl.

“I gotta run,” the girl told him. “See you.”

“Who was that?” I tried to sound friendly. I failed.

“Suzi Farly,” Jett said. “She’s a terrific artist—you should see the oil she did for the art show. She’s going to Visual Arts in New York this summer.”

“Too bad you made plans to stay here with me, huh?” I said, an edge to my voice.

“She’s just a friend, Lara.”

Just a friend
. How many times had I told a jealous boyfriend that one?

I forced myself to let it drop. “You sure you don’t mind missing the Opryland trip tonight?” I asked him. “I mean, just because I don’t want to go …”

“Neither do I,” Jett said. “I’ll come over, we’ll just hang out, maybe barbecue, okay?”

“Sure,” I said. My mom had left that morning for Los Angeles to visit her sister, my aunt Deana, and she’d taken Scott with her. Dad was, as always, away on business.

“I’ll bring my suit, we can swim,” Jett said.

Right. Like I was going to let him see me in a bathing suit. And to think I used to believe he was so sensitive to my feelings.

Danny Fairway, my ex, walked by, his arm around his latest girlfriend, Carrie Ambrose, who had only been at Forest Hills High for a few months.

As they passed, she turned around to look back at me. “You really used to go out with her?” I heard her ask. “I mean, she’s as fat as Patty Asher.”

Jett pretended he hadn’t heard. I knew he had.

“Oh, hey, I forgot to tell Suzi what time I’m picking her up for the art show,” Jett said, snapping his fingers.

“Picking her up?” I repeated dumbly.

“I thought we could give her a ride—she doesn’t have a car. I’m gonna go catch her—save me a seat in there.” He took off down the hall.

In the olden days, before I turned into Blimp Woman, Jett would have asked me if it was okay if we took some other girl with us, especially a cute girl I didn’t know, who wasn’t one of my friends.

But all that had changed.

The olden days were over.

A
few hours later I pulled my car into the Rivergate Mall parking lot. As I walked toward the mall doors my eyes darted around, looking for people I knew. I had chosen Rivergate because it was clear across Nashville—no one I knew
ever
shopped there.

So far, so good.

I had to go shopping. I couldn’t last anymore in black stretch pants, oversized sweaters, and T-shirts. For one thing, it was too hot out. For another, I couldn’t go anywhere that required other clothes. Because the new me didn’t have any real ones that fit.

The old me shopped with my friends. The new me
shopped alone. The old me could shop at a zillion stores, choosing from all the cute clothes out there that all looked so great on me. The new me headed directly for the fat ladies’ store: Lane Bryant.

I knew about Lane Bryant, of course. Molly’s mom shopped there. And I supposed that was where Patty Asher got her lovely ensembles. But never, ever in a million years did I think I would be caught dead in that store, shopping for
myself
.

I slunk past The Limited, The Gap, all my old favorites. The outfits in the window display mocked me. I saw my own fat reflection in the window of the 5-7-9 Shop, superimposed against a slender mannequin in a tiny dress.

“Oh my God, look at that girl!”

I turned around. A group of cute, thin girls my age ran by, laughing together. One of them pointed at me, then said something else that I couldn’t hear, and her friends looked back at me and laughed again.

A cute, thin couple walked past me, their hands in the back pockets of each other’s jeans.

Lane Bryant. There it was. I walked inside.

“Can I help you?” the young saleswoman asked as I walked into the store. She was very fat, with perfect blond hair and perfect makeup, a pathetic attempt to compensate for her hugeness. She wore a denim jumper over a white T-shirt in a size I could not even imagine existed, it was so big.

“I’m just looking,” I said nervously, politely.

“We’re having a great sale on denim,” she said. “In fact, I just got this outfit.” She pointed to herself. “It’s cute, huh?”

“Wow,” I agreed, like a well-bred pageant-head.

“It would look really cute on you. I’d guess we wear about the same size. You should try it on!”

No, no, no. We couldn’t possibly wear the same size. She was massive. She was probably some foodaholic who stuffed her face day and night.
I
was a normal person with a disease. We were nothing alike. Nothing.

“What size are you?” she asked pleasantly. I didn’t have a clue.

“About a twenty-two is my guess,” she said. “Would you like me to pull this for you in a twenty-two?”

A
twenty-two
? That wasn’t possible. Molly’s
mother
wore a twenty-two! No. This girl felt so awful about being fat that she wanted me to feel awful, too.

“I’m sure I don’t wear a twenty-two,” I said coolly. “What’s the smallest size you have?”

“A fourteen/sixteen. You aren’t a fourteen/sixteen.”

“If I need your help I’ll call you, okay?” I said sharply.

“Fine,” she said smoothly. “My name is Janet, if you need me.” She walked away.

I looked through a rack of satin shirts in bright colors, so huge each could house a small nation. Then I looked at dresses. Many of the styles were the same as those in the stores where I usually shopped. The difference was they looked ridiculous in such gigantic proportions.

I grabbed some clothes: a pair of jeans, a white cotton shirt, a long floral dress, all size eighteen. Maybe Janet was right and I wasn’t a fourteen. But I couldn’t possibly be that much bigger.

I went into the dressing room and pulled on the jeans. I couldn’t even get them all the way up my legs.

“Oh, God, Chrissy, I am such a pig,” I heard a young voice say from the next dressing room. “I can’t zip this.”

“Try the dress, then. It’s cute,” another voice said.

“Maybe it would be cute on you, ” the first voice said. “I am so disgusting.”

I tried on the white shirt. It didn’t come close to buttoning.

“Nothing fits,” the girl moaned from the next dressing room.

“I thought you were going to Weight Watchers.”

“I did, but the third week I gained weight, and I was too ashamed to go back to weigh in. I wish I were dead.”

She must be enormous, I thought. I tried on the dress. I couldn’t even pull it up over my hips.

“How you doing in there?” Janet called in to me.

Go away. Leave me alone. Drop dead
.

“Just fine!” I called out to her.

She had seen me go into the dressing room with my size eighteens. “Just let me know if you need me to get you a larger size!” she sang out.

Shut up. I hate you. Go to hell
.

“Okay!”

I used to love helpful salesgirls. “Could you find this for me in a smaller size?” I would ask sweetly. “I can’t decide between the pink bikini and the yellow,” I would muse. They would tell me how great both of them looked on me. How lucky I was to have such a great figure.

I put my own clothes back on and slunk out of the dressing room at the same time as the two girls in the next dressing room came out.

They were my age, and both were way thinner than I was.

I grabbed a handful of clothes in sizes twenty, twenty
two, and twenty-four. Then I ran back into the dressing room.

I pulled a navy dress with white piping over my head. It was ugly and looked horrible, emphasizing every lump, but it fit. I looked at the tag.

Size twenty-two.

The same size as Molly’s mother.

“L
ara?” Jett called.

“I’m out here,” I called back to him.

It was that evening. I had spent hours preparing for my date with Jett. On the way home from the mall I had vowed that I would work extra hard, be extra nice, extra everything, so he wouldn’t break up with me. Thank God I still had Jett and Molly. And thank God Jett still loved me enough to stay in Nashville during my senior year so that we could go to New York together.

Thank God I wouldn’t be alone.

I had made us a picnic dinner with all Jett’s favorites, and it was already laid out on the redwood patio table. I had on one of my new Lane Bryant outfits—pink-and-white cotton drawstring pants with a matching pink-and-white shirt. It was the first time he would see me in something new in months. I had taken extra pains with new makeup I’d purchased, made sure my hair was perfect, and put on a new, sexy perfume. It was the first time I had made a real effort in, oh, about fifty pounds.

“Hi,” he said as he came over and kissed my cheek.

Not my lips. But still. He loved me. He
did
.

He looked over at the picnic table. “What’s all this?”

“Surprise!” I said gaily. “We’re celebrating your graduation.” I wrapped my arms around his neck.

“It’s not until next week,” he reminded me. He didn’t put his arms around my waist—or where my waist would have been if I’d still had one.

“I know that,” I said. “Consider it an early bonus dinner. I made all your favorite everythings.” I leaned into him again.

“That was really sweet of you,” he said. But there was something funny about his smile.

He sat on the redwood bench and picked up a celery stalk stuffed with cream cheese. He put it down again.