Life in the Fat Lane (27 page)

I sat down.

“I don’t know if the two of you ever officially met. Cleo, Lara Ardeche. Lara, Cleo. Cleo is probably the smartest woman I know. The only thing she lacks is a last name.”

“Correction.” Cleo grinned. “I’ve had many last names, my dear, I just don’t choose to use any of them.” She fanned herself with an advertising flyer that had been lying on the table. “I hear you play some tasty keyboards.”

“Only classical,” I said.

“Well, you need to broaden your horizons,” Cleo said, daintily pressing a napkin against her sweaty cleavage. “Get Suzanne here to teach you some jazz!”

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to stop her.”

“I need to find myself a drink,” Cleo said, getting up. “Can I get you anything?”

We said no, and Cleo worked her way through the crowd toward the bar in the back of the room.

“How’s your mom?” Suzanne asked.

“Better. I would have stayed home with her but she really wanted me to come tonight—”

“Hey, you don’t need to feel guilty,” Suzanne said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

We listened to the music for a few moments. Perry took a hot solo.

“Perry’s cooking,” Suzanne commented.

“I know him from school,” I told her. “He keeps asking me out.”

“You’re not interested?”

“Everyone would think we were going out because we’re both fat,” I said.

“Forget what other people think,” Suzanne said. “It’s
such a colossal waste of time. The question is, do you want to go out with him?”

I hesitated. “I’m not exactly attracted to him.”

“Would you be attracted to him if he was thinner?”

I thought about that a moment. “I think so,” I admitted. “God, that’s so terrible! I get mad because people are superficial and then I’m …”

She shrugged at me and smiled.

From across the room we could see Cleo talking with Captain Bizarro. He said something and she threw her head back and laughed, her tiny beaded braids dancing around her head.

“She is something else,” Suzanne marveled. “She’s fifty-eight years old, and she’s been singing jazz since she was fourteen. She’s half black and half Asian. Growing up, black kids dissed her for looking Asian, Asian kids dissed her for looking black, and everyone dissed her for being fat.”

We looked across the room at Cleo as she worked her way through the crowd.

“But they were blind,” Suzanne said. “She’s beautiful.”

I watched Cleo as she gracefully walked toward us. And it was so weird, because I really
did
think she was, kind of, in her own way, beautiful.

“It’s hot as a pistol in here, isn’t it?” Cleo said when she reached the table. She held a perspiring can of soda against her forehead.

“Come dance?” Tristan asked Suzanne, holding out his hand. She accepted and they went to the dance floor. He took her into his arms.

Cleo watched Tristan and Suzanne dancing. “Now, that man is fine as wine,” she said. “Husband number
three was that fine. He was walking bad news, my dear, but he was fine.”

She looked over at Perry, onstage. “Perry can’t take his eyes off you,” she told me.

“We’re just friends.”

“A boy that pretty and talented? My dear, you ought to be on that child like white on rice.”

“But he’s kind of overweight.”

Cleo just looked at me.

“I know I am, too,” I said in a rush. “I mean, in my case it’s—well, I used to be thin. And I’d lose weight if I could. But Perry doesn’t even try.”

Cleo took another sip of her Coke. “I want to tell you about husband number three, the fine one. He was always after me to lose weight. He’d told me I was fat and ugly so many times that when I looked in the mirror, I saw fat and ugly looking back.”

“So what happened?”

“I woke up one day and I said to myself, ‘Cleo, that man is not good enough to shine your red high-heeled pumps.’ And I got rid of him.”

“Just like that?” I asked dubiously.

“Just like that,” Cleo said, snapping her fingers. “I threw him out, threw a party, and invited all the other tasty men I knew. And now when I look in the mirror, instead of fat and ugly, my dear, I see fat and fine.”

“But you’d be thin if you could be.”

“Wrong, my dear,” she told me with a smile. “You’re young, Lara, and silly things like size seem so important to you. But I’m old. And I’ve learned to look at the size of someone’s heart, and not the size of someone’s waistline.”

I shrugged. “You can be thin and still be a good person, you know. My heart didn’t get any bigger when I got fat.”

She raised her eyebrows at me. “Didn’t it? Well, that’s a shame, then.”

“Would you like to dance?”

It was Perry, standing at our table. I hadn’t even noticed that he had come off the stage.

“Okay,” I said, and I started to get up.

“I didn’t mean you,” Perry said. “I meant Cleo.”

Cleo laughed. “You are a lying dog, Perry Jameson. You know you want to dance with this girl.”

“I don’t think she wants to dance with me,” Perry said.

Before I could answer, someone turned off the lights. Suzanne came into the room carrying a huge birthday cake, ablaze with candles.

We all sang “Happy Birthday.” Suzanne set the birthday cake down, and Captain Bizarro blew out all the candles. Everyone applauded.

“Hey, Captain, did you make a wish?” Mike called out to him from the stage.

“Didn’t need to,” Captain Bizarro said. He threw his arms wide. “I love you all, my
compadres
! Now, let’s kick up the jams and scarf this cake!”

Everyone began to laugh and talk, Suzanne cut the cake, and the musicians onstage began to play something upbeat and snappy.

“That’s my cue!” Cleo said, and hurried to join them.

“ ‘It’s very clear, our love is here to stay,’ ” she sang, snapping her fingers and swaying her outsized hips to the music. Her large arms reached out and beckoned to the
crowd—old and young, fine and plain, high-style, nostyle, and every color of the rainbow—and her voice dipped and swooped into the mike in front of her.

“Hey, Perry, wanna dance?”

It was Crystal. She gave him a very nervous smile.

“Go,” I told him.

“I guess this means you aren’t having wild fantasies about me,” he said sadly.

“I’m sorry.”

Perry smiled at me. “Hey, who knows? Maybe you’ll change your mind one day.” He reached out and took Crystal’s hand, and they went to the dance floor. And as I sat there alone, listening to the music, watching Perry and Crystal dance, watching the party swirl around me, I realized something. No,
two
somethings.

I wasn’t really by myself at all.

And for the first time in a long, long,
long
time, I was happy.

“P
eople, listen up!” Mr. Webster, our school orchestra conductor, called out, tapping his baton on his music stand. “I have an announcement to make.”

It was the following Friday, and we were onstage in the high-school auditorium, finishing up orchestra rehearsal. I was sitting with the other three pianists in our piano quartet. The pianos were arranged to form a box so that we could hear each other when we played.

Kyler Trustus was tickling Jane Neissan’s hair with the end of his trombone, but Mr. Webster shot him a look and he stopped.

“Thank you, Mr. Trustus,” Mr. Webster said dryly. “Concerning the winter concert, I want to announce one change in the program. We will have a soloist. Lara Ardeche will be playing Schubert’s Impromptus.”

I could feel people looking at me. From the saxophone section Perry gave me a thumbs-up.

“All right,” Mr. Webster said, “let’s take the Smetana one more time. And violas, please try to stay with us …”

We played the Smetana, and then the rehearsal was over. I was putting my sheet music into my backpack when Perry came over to me.

“What made you change your mind?” he asked me.

I shrugged. “Temporary insanity, probably.”

He grinned at me. “I like that in a woman.”

“Hey, Lara, congrats on the solo,” Jane Neissan said as she walked by with Kyler Trustus. “I think you just elevated our concert by about a hundred percent.”

“You’re gonna be great,” Kyler added.

“Thanks,” I replied.

“Have a fun weekend,” Jane said, and she and Kyler walked out the door.

“You ready to go?” I asked Perry. I assumed I was giving him a ride home, per usual.

He blushed. “Uh, actually, Crystal’s picking me up. She’s probably waiting for me, so …”

I smiled at him. “So, go.”

“Ready to turn out the lights, Lara?” Mr. Webster asked me. We were the only two left in the auditorium.

“Would you mind if I stay and practice my solo?”

“Not at all,” Mr. Webster said. “I have some papers to grade in my office. Just let me know when you’re done.”

I walked to the edge of the stage and looked out at the empty seats. In just two weeks those seats would be filled with hundreds of people, and I would be right up here again, playing a piano solo.

And I would still be really, really fat.

I’d lost another pound. One measly pound. Dr. Goldner still wasn’t certain whether or not my Axell-Crowne
was going into remission. My tests revealed nothing. But even if—please God—I was going to lose a lot of weight, there was only so much I could lose before the concert.

I had been so sure I would never play solo again in public, as long as I was fat. But that afternoon I had found myself walking up to Mr. Webster, and I’d heard myself tell him that, if he still wanted me to, I would play a solo in the winter concert.

It was like
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
.

So, now I was committed. I half closed my eyes, blurring my vision, imagining the seats full of people. You can do this, I told myself. You are a musician.

Allegra Royalton’s face came into my mind. She was in the audience, jeering at me, yelling out some ugly insult that made everyone laugh, and—

No. Forget Allegra Royalton. Pretend Suzanne is out there, I told myself.

I stood a little taller and bowed to my imaginary audience. Then I walked over to the piano, sat down, and began to play.

I closed my eyes. The music washed over me, through me, and I could hear Suzanne saying, “passion, with control,” and the music swelled under my dancing fingers, filling me up, until the final chords,
fortissimo
, thrilling, and then the silence that is also music.

Now everyone would be applauding, perhaps cheering. Or maybe they would yell, “Bravo!” I stood up to bow again to my imaginary audience, and that was when I heard the sound coming from the back of the auditorium: one person clapping.

I looked up.

Standing there, in the back of the auditorium, a huge grin on her face, was Molly.

“Molly!” I screamed. I ran down the steps from the stage and she ran toward me, and we threw our arms around each other.

“I guess you’re surprised,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time.

“I can’t believe you’re really here!” I cried. I pulled away to make sure it was really her. It was. I hugged her again. “I’ve missed you so much!”

“Me too,” she said fervently. “You look wonderful!”

“I do?”

“Yeah!” she said.

“How did you find me?”

“Your mom gave me directions,” Molly said.

“But why didn’t you tell me you were—”

“I didn’t even know until the night before last,” she explained. “Right after you called me and told me what your doctor said, in fact. My parents were ready to give birth—they were like, no, you are not driving from Tennessee to Michigan, no, you can’t miss school, it’s stupid and irresponsible, and like that. Finally I told them you were deeply depressed and needed me desperately. They love that girl-power thing—it’s so p.c.—so they finally gave in. I waved
adiós
, jumped in the car, and we’ve been on the road ever since.”

“We’ve?”
I echoed. “As in you and—”

“Me,” said a deep voice from behind Molly.

I looked up.

And standing there, like some dream, like a wish I had wished a thousand times to come true only I knew it never could, was Jett Anston.

“He came by my house Wednesday night and asked me if I was up for a road trip to come visit you,” Molly explained.

I couldn’t move.

“Hey, I’ve got a brilliant idea,” Molly said. “Why don’t I go check out Jett’s car? Yep. That’s what I’ll do. Cool. So, that’s where you’ll find me.”

She slipped out of the auditorium. Jett walked over to me. His eyes searched mine.

The next thing I knew, his long, skinny arms were around me, and I was crying so hard.

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed, “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m—”

“It’s okay,” he said, but his voice sounded funny, muffled, and that was when I realized that he was crying, too.

“Excuse me, Lara?”

It was Mr. Webster, up on the stage.

I wiped my eyes and walked down the aisle. “Some friends from Nashville just surprised me.”

“Go have fun,” he said, smiling down at me. He handed me my backpack and my coat. “I’ll close up.”

We walked out the back doors of the auditorium, and I turned to Jett, to make sure he was really there. “I’m not dreaming this, am I?”