Life in the Fat Lane (15 page)

“So, this summer is going to be great, huh?”

I nodded.

“We’ll be able to spend a lot of time together,” he promised.

I nodded again. Something wasn’t right.

“Hey, I meant to tell you,” Jett said, his voice forced. “You know that job I’m starting at the art supply store? The guy called and said it’s only for the summer.”

“So, you’ll find another job in the fall,” I said reassuringly. “That shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Yeah.” He brushed some hair off his face and stared at the celery. “I was thinking … maybe I should just go to New York this fall. My parents said they’d pay my tuition at Visual Arts. I could get a part-time job, and everything will be all set for us by the time you graduate.”

Something turned over in my stomach. “But how could you do that? It’s too late to apply to art school for this fall.”

He wouldn’t look at me. “I already applied.”

“You already—”

“A few months ago,” he admitted, his voice low.

“You applied to art school a
few months ago
and you didn’t even
tell
me?”

“It was just a fallback kind of a thing,” Jett said nervously. “I mean, I don’t have to go …”

“You want to go,” I accused him.

“I don’t know.” He rubbed his face anxiously. “I want to be there, but I want to be here with you, too.”

Even though I was dying inside, I forced myself to smile. “Well, I think you should go.”

I would do anything, say anything, to keep him.

He looked stunned. “You do?”

“Sure,” I lied, a bright smile on my face. “Your art is really important. Why should you wait a year? I’ll get there when I get there.”

Now he came to me and wrapped his arms around me. “Lara, I was so sure you’d be upset.”

“There’s nothing to be upset about.” I smiled my best pageant smile.

He hugged me. It felt like a hug my grandfather might give me. “You’re terrific, Lar.”

“Thanks,” I said, moving out of his embrace. “So, want to eat?”

“How about if we take a swim? It’s still so hot out.”

“Oh, no, you go ahead.”

“Oh, come on,” he coaxed, “it’s no fun to swim alone.”

“I’m not really in the mood,” I said with feigned casualness.

“Hey, sparkling pool, privacy fence, no family …” He smiled at me and pulled off his jeans. He had a bathing suit on underneath.

“Come on, Lara, come swimming with me.” He pulled me by my hand.

“No, really—”

“Oh, yes, really.” He backed me toward the pool, a teasing look in his eyes. He went to lift me. It used to be so easy—I was a feather in his arms. Now he couldn’t get me off the ground.

But neither one of us wanted to admit that. So I hopped up a little, hoping to compensate for my weight. To my horror I lost my balance and toppled over into the water. Jett jumped in after me.

I came up sputtering. Jett was laughing.

“It isn’t funny!” I yelled, splashing water at him. My new outfit was now transparent, plastered to my rolls of fat like pink-tinted plastic wrap. Mascara ran down my face. My hair was glued to my head, which I knew only emphasized how fat my face was.

“Oh, come on, lighten up!” he told me. “It’s funny!”

It would have been funny ninety pounds ago, when I looked cute dripping wet, when I wasn’t afraid to be seen without makeup or without my hair fixed perfectly because I felt confident that I looked cute anyway.

It wasn’t funny now.

I swam to the shallow end heaved myself out of the pool, quickly wrapping a huge towel around myself to hide the sight of my disgusting fat. “I’m going in to change.”

Jett got out of the pool. “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said, water dripping off him. “I didn’t realize it would upset you so much.”

“Forget it,” I snapped.

“It’s not important—”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “It’s really important!” I couldn’t help it, tears were coursing down my cheeks, mixing with the tracks of mascara. “I worked so hard so everything would be perfect. I got a new outfit, new perfume, new makeup. And you didn’t even notice.”

“I’m really sorry, Lara, I—”

“You applied to art school so you could get away from me! You don’t want to be with me because I’m disgusting!” I reached out and slapped at him viciously. I knew I was ruining everything, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

“I don’t think you’re disgusting,” he said. He reached out for me.

“Don’t.” I moved away from him. “Don’t do it when you don’t mean it!”

He pushed his wet hair off his face. “Lara, please, I love you.”

“No.”

“Yes,” he insisted. “Please.” He held his arms out to me, waiting for me to walk into them.

And I wanted to. So much. I gulped down my tears.

“Jett, do you want to make love to me?”

“What?”

“You heard me. Do you want to make love to me?”

He was silent.

“Do you want to draw me naked, then? How about that?”

He just stood there. He couldn’t lie to me.

“What about how there are all different kinds of beauty?” I asked him, remembering something he’d said to me. I was barely able to speak because of the tears coursing down my cheeks. “I know you love me. But you aren’t
in love
with me anymore. You never kiss me,
you don’t touch me, not the way you used to. And I miss it so much.”

“I never meant to hurt you, Lara,” he whispered, tears in his eyes. “And going to New York isn’t … I’ll never leave you.”

I took a deep, ragged breath. “You don’t have to, Jett. Because I’m leaving you.”

And then I did the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.

I turned around and walked away from Jett Anston.

“Y
ou
what
?” Molly yelped.

“I broke up with Jett.”

It was two days later, and Molly had just come over to my house. She’d called many times before, but I’d never answered—I just let the machine pick up. Since Mom and Scott were still in Los Angeles, there were no witnesses to my spiral down into the depths of despair. Until Molly had arrived, all I had done since I’d turned my back on Jett was lie in bed and weep.

And I came to a conclusion: You probably really
can
die from a broken heart.

I’d wanted to call Jett, so many times. But I stopped myself. As much as it hurt, I knew that what I had said to him had been the truth. One part of me said: So what? Wouldn’t you rather just be grateful that Jett still loves
you, and keep him, than break up with him and be alone?

The other part of me, the part where I still had any self-respect at all, said no. It would all be a big lie. He wanted to leave, he just didn’t want to be the one to say it. You did the right thing.

The right thing. Big deal.

Knowing that didn’t make me feel any better. The heart is not such a strong muscle. The truth is, I would have gone back to him in a millisecond, would have flown back into his arms. All he needed to do was pick up the phone and call me, tell me that I was wrong, that he loved me as he always had. Even if we both knew that was a lie, I was weak. I wouldn’t have cared and I would have been so happy, at least for a little while.

Only he didn’t call. Not once. Oh, God, he didn’t call.

Mom called from Los Angeles. Molly called four times. I heard their messages on the answering machine. Jett never called.

Molly finally came over to see what was wrong. She found me huddled in bed in my bathrobe, unwashed, unbrushed, un-anythinged.

She asked me if I was sick. That was when I told her what had happened. Saying it out loud made the pain even worse.

“You’re telling me that of the few great guys on this planet, you actually
broke up
with the greatest of the great?” Molly asked. “Has Axell-Crowne destroyed your brain stem?”

“He isn’t in love with me anymore, Mol,” I said, wiping my red-rimmed eyes with a tissue.

“Of course he loves—”

“Don’t you get it?” I cried. “He isn’t attracted to me anymore. He was staying with me out of pity!”

“I don’t believe that,” Molly said firmly.

“Well, it’s true.” Then I told her that he was going to Visual Arts this fall. “He applied months ago. I wasn’t even that fat then. It hurts so much, Molly.”

She sat down next to me and opened her arms, and I dived into them. Then I sobbed even harder. We sat there together on my bed, and she rocked me like a baby. When my tears slowed, she plucked a handful of tissues from the nightstand box and handed them to me.

I blew my nose and wiped my eyes. “I hate my life.”

Molly didn’t say anything.

“Isn’t this where you’re supposed to tell me how life is worth living, and all that?” I asked.

She drew her knees up to her chin. “Can’t,” she said. “What happened to you just sucks so hard.”

“You’re not exactly cheering me up,” I said, half laughing through my tears.

“Yeah, I know,” Molly agreed. “What can I say? I have a pathologically honest streak. And God, I used to be so jealous of you.”

“You were?”

“I desperately wanted to look like you instead of looking like me.”

“Past tense,” I noted.

“Well, yeah,” Molly agreed. “It wasn’t that I wanted your life. I just wanted to be me and look like you, you know? I wanted a guy like Jett to fall in love with me …”

“Not a guy
like
Jett,” I corrected. “Jett.”

Molly stared at me. “Okay, you’re right. Jett.”

“He’s free now,” I said bitterly.

“Oh yeah, right.”

“He is!”

“First of all, Jett would never see me as more than a friend …”

“You’re wrong,” I said bluntly. “He told me so himself.”

“He did?” Molly was incredulous. “You actually
discussed
it?”

I nodded. “So go for it, if you want to.”

Molly gave me a funny look. “Now I’m positive that Axell-Crowne has short-circuited your brain. Lara, you’re my best friend. Whether or not you and Jett are together, you still love him. I would never, ever in a bazillion years go out with Jett. I would never hurt you like that.”

Tears leaked from my eyes again. “I don’t even deserve you, Mol.”

“That’s true,” she teased. “I am beyond wonderful.”

“I mean it.” I twisted the tissue between my fingers. “I used to feel so superior because you had fat thighs and big hips …”

“Well, I do,” Molly said.

“Not compared to me.”

“But you have a disease. It isn’t your fault!”

I wiped my eyes again. “Mol, when I got fat, were you ever … ever glad?”

“Never,” she said staunchly.

“Never? Not even for one day?”

Her gaze wavered. “Okay, I’m not such a saint. The day you wore jeans larger than mine, I got a brief thrill of satisfaction.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said.

“But after that I felt bad that I was so low,” Molly
continued, “and then I just felt bad that you felt so bad. I mean, I’d wish fat on Jennie Smith. Or Amber Bevin. Or Lisa James …”

“I used to think they were my friends,” I said sadly.

“Yeah, right,” Molly snorted. “Notice how much they hang with you now.” She got very involved in picking at the chipped nail polish on her pinky. “I never understood how you could be with those girls.”

“You hung out with them, too.”

“Please. They tolerated me because of you, and I tolerated them because of you. They treated me like shit.” Her eyes met mine. “And you let them.”

“What was I supposed to do?” I protested.

“You were supposed to say ‘Molly is my best friend, and you can’t talk to her like that,’ ” Molly replied, her voice quavery.

“I did!”

“But you didn’t mean it,” Molly said. “Not enough to stop them. Sometimes you even laughed with them. ‘Molly the Mouth.’ What a riot.”

I gulped hard. “I didn’t mean to—”

“You think I don’t have any feelings?”

“Oh, Mol, I’m so sorry.”

She shrugged.

“Know what, Mol? I don’t miss them. Not at all. It’s like … like I never saw who they really were. I just hung with them because they were popular and I was
supposed
to hang with them. And I liked being the most popular one of all,” I confessed. “Do you hate me?”

“No, you idiot,” Molly said. “I love you.”

Hearing Molly say that made me cry all over again, which made Molly cry, which finally made both of us laugh. Then she forced me to take a shower, wash my
hair, and brush my teeth. And return, for whatever it was worth, to the land of the living.

“L
ara?”

It was Mom, home from Los Angeles. I was in the living room, playing the piano. That was mostly what I had been doing for the past two days, ever since Molly had come over. Molly had wanted me to stay at her house, but I wanted to be alone. Alone with my piano. I thought I had given it up, but now the only solace I found was losing myself in the music. I had even set up a lesson.

“I’m in the living room,” I called back to her.

She came in, looking tired and pale. “Hi, sweetie.” She kissed the top of my head. “I called you and called you, but you were never home.”

I didn’t bother to correct her assessment of the situation.

She looked over the sheet music that I had been practicing. “You’re playing again,” she said approvingly.