Best Friends Forever (26 page)

Pilates for Weight Loss, and Skip Your Way

to Fitness! At the end of the hal was the third bedroom. Addie’s bedroom.

Here, for the first time, was the appearance of disorder. The king-size bed was rumpled, as if someone had lain on top of it, and one of the pil ows had fal en onto the floor. Jordan picked up the pil ow in its crisp cotton case. It was surprisingly heavy, dense with feathers. He set it on top of the bed. White sheets, a tan comforter, a scrol ed, painted metal headboard (Brass? Iron? It was the kind of thing his ex-wife would have known). There was a table on either side of the bed, both with reading lamps, one of them stacked high with books, the other with a glass of water and a tube of hand

cream

(Vaseline,

$7.49,

from

Walgreens; Jordan approved). He slid open the drawer of the nightstand closest to the unmade portion of the bed. There was a box of condoms, half of them gone, and he found himself suddenly, ridiculously, hotly jealous.

At the foot of the bed was a padded bench, covered in the same soft fabric as the couch downstairs. A pair of flannel pajamas was tossed on top of the bench. Jordan lifted the top in his hands, then, without planning it, he lifted the fabric to his nose, inhaling the fragrance of perfume and shampoo. Jesus. There was something wrong with him. If one of the patrolpeople could see him, standing in a suspect’s bedroom, sniffing her clothes, for God’s sake, with half a hard-on…Jordan dropped the offending garment back where he’d found it and turned away from the bed. More bookshelves against a wal that was lined with windows and overlooked the backyard. More paintings on the wal s, wise-eyed dogs and sly, clever kittens.

A bathroom with a deep jetted tub, big enough for two. Heated tiles on the floor. Heated towel racks on the wal s. Heavy, fluffy towels, pristine white, and an oversized shower stal with no fewer than half a dozen jets embedded in the glasstiled wal . “It’s like a whorehouse in here,”

he said out loud, but he thought that that wasn’t right. It wasn’t like a whorehouse, it was a place made for pleasure. He wondered whom Addie had been entertaining, who’d been enjoying the condoms in the drawer and the beer in the fridge.

He closed the closet door and walked downstairs, turning off lights, locking the door. He bent down and tucked the key back under the welcome mat, where he’d found it, and cut back across the crackling lawn to his car.

THIRTY-FOUR

I was never sure who started the graffiti. On the third day of my sophomore year, almost two years after Jon’s accident, I’d gone to use the bathroom and found it carved into the paint in a bathroom stal . Addie Downs

stinks. My heart started thundering in my chest, and I felt nauseous, like invisible hands were squeezing my guts. I looked around, which was sil y—I was obviously alone. The door was locked, and besides, there wasn’t room in here for anyone but me. Tentatively, I lifted one arm over my head and sniffed. Nothing but Secret spring fresh deodorant, which I’d applied that morning. I swal owed hard, then bent my head and sniffed between my legs. At first I didn’t smel anything besides the Downy my mother used to wash our clothes, but when I inhaled as deeply as I could, I smel ed—or thought I did—a faint whiff of something dank and fleshy.

Oh, God. I held my breath, stuck my head out of the door to make sure that I was alone, hurried over to the sinks, grabbed a wad of rough brown paper towels, covered them with foamy soap, dunked them under the cold water, hustled back into my stal , slammed the door, yanked down my blue sweatpants, and started scrubbing. Another peek out the door, another dash to the sinks, another wad of paper towels, this time minus the soap. Final y, I pul ed a Bic out of my backpack and painstakingly scribbled over each letter of what someone had written about me.

It didn’t matter. The next day, in study hal , I saw the same words on a desk, this time in black ink. ADDIE DOWNS STINKS. And underneath it, someone writing in blue had added she has big tits tho. I propped my math book in front of me, licked my fingertips, and started rubbing, managing to smear the letters but not erase them. I licked some more, rubbed some more, and looked up to find Mrs. Norita standing over me and frowning.

“Miss Downs? Would you mind tel ing me what you’re doing? Because it’s clearly not your math assignment.”

From the seat beside me, Kevin Oliphant snickered.

“Let me see,” said Mrs. Norita. I knew it was hopeless. I slid my math book aside. She looked at the words, then looked at me.

“We’l have the janitor take care of that” was al she said. “Okay,” I whispered, and slumped down as far as I could in my seat, my bel y pushing against the elastic waist of my skirt, my chest straining at the fabric of my top, wishing I could sink al the way down to the floor and then through it.

I didn’t understand what I’d said, what I’d done, that had turned me into a target. I hurried to class in a head-down shuffle, clinging to the left edge of the corridor, with an eye on the open doors, the bathrooms I could duck into when I heard the hissed whispers that trailed in my wake. Hey, fattie.

Hey, stinky. Fat ass. Lard butt. Wide load.

Yo, Hindenburg (this was after we’d covered the Hindenburg disaster in history class).

“You

should

smile

more!”

Valerie

counseled on the bus home from school. She bared her own teeth in a tinsel y grin. That summer, she had final y gotten her wish and spent six weeks in California with her father. I had counted the days until she came back and had accompanied Mrs. Adler to the airport to meet her. Waiting by the gate, I’d felt my heart shrivel painful y when Val came down the walkway, tanned and tal er, with brand-new breasts pushing against the front of her brandnew Izod shirt, and her hair hanging in a heavy gold curtain down her back. Beside me, Mrs.

Adler had given a little yelp, her expression the strangest mixture of pride and sorrow, as Val pul ed off her sunglasses and flashed her braces in a smile. In the car, she’d babbled excitedly about the amazing time she’d had, showing me pictures of herself posing in front of the HOLLYWOOD sign, tel ing stories about visiting her father “on set” and having lunch at “craft services” with Tom Cruise’s stunt double. She’d come back with a suitcase ful of new clothes, even more confidence than she’d had already, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of advice about how I should behave. “Say hi to people,” she told me, as the bus labored up the hil toward home. “Be friendly!”

“They hate me,” I said. Saying hi and being friendly would never work for me, but it had worked for Val. That fal she’d made the JV cheerleading squad, where her enthusiasm and volume made up for whatever she lacked in rhythm and grace. She wasn’t the best-looking girl, or the most coordinated, and she was off-key as ever when the squad attempted to sing, but she was the one you’d watch anyhow, the one your eyes would fol ow as she cartwheeled on the sidelines or jumped in the air to celebrate a touchdown. She had a whole crew of new friends, fel ow cheerleaders, giggling, ponytailed girls.

As for me, I had Val, and that was it. Everyone else seemed to hate me, and I didn’t know why. I wasn’t even the fattest girl in our class. There were three girls bigger than I was (there’d been four once, before Andi Moskowitz had gotten shipped off to fat camp in the Berkshires). Yes, I was heavy, and yes, I was plain—I’d spent enough time studying myself in my bedroom mirror to know that even with makeup and my hair done just right, no one would ever be tempted to cal me beautiful, nobody from the cheerleading squad would be slipping a note in my locker inviting me to tryouts, the way they had with Val, not even if they needed a large, stable base for their pyramids—but I wasn’t outrageously heavy or ridiculously ugly. So why were they picking on me?

I wondered sometimes whether it had to do with Jon. Maybe they hated me because they couldn’t hate him. My brother was living, vacant-eyed, occasional y drooling proof that everything they were could be taken away. Just one bad decision, one wrong turn, a car’s wheels that went off the road instead of staying on it, and they could end up like he was. They couldn’t hate him, though; he was a victim, a survivor…but they could hate me, just by virtue of proximity.

I stayed as close to Val as I could, tagging along with her new friends, trailing in her perfume-and-mousse-scented

wake,

because nobody was mean to me when she was around. I also started carrying a bar of Dial soap in a plastic case, and a washcloth and a hand towel around in my backpack, plus fresh underwear and even an extra pair of sweatpants. I’d shower in the mornings for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, standing underneath the scalding water until my skin was bright red and my mother banged on the door and told me for the third time to come out. After lunch, I’d duck into the bathroom and change my underwear, just in case…and when I had my period, I’d change my napkin between every class and change my underwear, too. I went through cans of what the drugstore coyly cal ed “personal hygiene spray” at the rate of one a week. Val and I were in different classes except for science and English, and three days a week we didn’t even have the same lunch. I sat by myself at assemblies and in chorus, and two days a week, I’d be al by myself at lunchtime, at a table in the cafeteria corner. Sometimes Merry Armbruster would plop down for a few minutes. She’d bow her head in prayer, lips moving rapidly while I ate the carrot sticks and rice cakes that I’d packed. Merry belonged to some weird church. She didn’t cut her hair or wear pants or talk to boys, and she got sent to the office almost as much as Dan Swansea, because of her propensity for hissing things like “hel bound Sodomite” at girls who French-kissed their boyfriends in the hal s. She’d sit with me and talk to me, but I didn’t think she liked me very much. Merry viewed me as a lost cause, the closest thing Pleasant Ridge High had to a leper whose feet she could wash.

After school, Val had cheerleading practice. I would walk the two miles home (I’d quit taking the bus by myself after we’d had to back down a blocked-off street and the meep-meepmeep noise had prompted some wit to shout, “Hey, that’s how Addie Downs sounds when she’s getting on the toilet”). The yel ow-and-black bus would labor past me, up the hil just beyond the high school parking lot, and usual y, someone would stick his head out the window and yel “Burn it off, fattie!” as I climbed. I kept my head down, biting my lip, feeling my thighs rubbing together, feeling myself start to sweat, start to chafe, start to stink.

At home, I’d take another shower, and then I’d go to my job, babysitting Mrs. Shea’s youngest children, a set of three-year-old twins. I’d stay until seven, sometimes later. I would take the twins to the park, pul ing them in their Radio Flyer wagon, and at dinnertime, we’d play restaurant, where I’d take their order in a little notebook, then bring them their mac and cheese or cut-up hot dogs, rice or chicken noodle soup. I’d hot dogs, rice or chicken noodle soup. I’d bathe them, read to them, supervise teethbrushing and pajama selection, and leave them on their beds, waiting for their mother to come home and tuck them in.

The Sheas lived at the end of our street. Most days, I’d go straight home, but once or twice a week, I’d cross the busy road and walk to the convenience store on the corner of Main and Maple, or the drugstore down the street, and wander through the aisles slowly, sometimes murmuring “milk” or

“bread” or “butter” to myself, to make it sound like I had a legitimate reason for being there. Meanwhile, I’d fil my basket with bags of cookies and chips, family-sized Cadbury candy bars wrapped in crisp blueand-white paper and gold foil, boxes of SnoCaps, plastic cups of butterscotch pudding so loaded with artificial colors and flavors and preservatives that they didn’t require refrigeration,

chocolate-iced

cupcakes,

raspberry-fil ed doughnuts, and lemon pies. I’d shove my money across the counter without meeting the clerk’s eyes (“Having a party?” an older lady in a dark-blue apron had asked me once, and I’d been forced to mumble my assent), cram the treats into my backpack, and hurry out the door.

At home, my mother would have dinner waiting: broiled chicken breasts, sweet potatoes with a sprinkling of cinnamon and Butter Buds, a bowl ful of chopped iceberg lettuce doused with fat-free vinaigrette. The four of us would sit at the kitchen table, cutting and pouring and moving food into our mouths and answering questions about our days. Jon would work on word searches, or read Omni magazine at the table, his cheek propped up in one hand, his mouth hanging open.

When we were done with our meal, I’d wash the dishes, wipe off the table, and sweep the floor. My father would head to the basement. Jon would drift toward the television set. He liked sitcoms with laugh tracks, shows that told him what was funny. I’d hear his own hoots of laughter, a scant second after the taped audience started laughing. My mother would change into sweatpants, and we’d take our evening constitutional, ten laps around the block. I’d take another shower, my third of the day.

“Goodnight,” I’d cal before locking myself into my bedroom.

Every night I’d promise myself I wouldn’t do it, that I’d just finish my homework and go to sleep like a normal person. Some nights I’d last until eight-thirty or even nine. I’d rinse my mouth with mouthwash so astringent it would make my eyes water. I would brush my teeth until my gums bled. I’d chew sugar-free gum and gulp mint tea. I’d sketch frantical y, using charcoal and colored pencils to capture a scene from the day—the twins in the sandbox, their round faces crinkling when they laughed; the sun coming up over the cherry tree in our backyard; my mother’s hands on Jon’s shoulders. I’d replay the day’s taunts in my head. I would review what I’d eaten, and think about how wel I had done, how I hadn’t had as much as a spoonful of the twins’ mac and cheese or a single cookie from their box. None of it did any good. Eventual y I’d think, Just a taste. Just a little taste of something sweet. And then, almost before I knew it, I would find myself with my hand down deep in one of the plastic bags, the stiff waxed paper and foil wrappers crinkling as I tore the packages open. I’d turn off al the lights except the smal one by the side of my bed, and I’d lie on my side, curled around my sketchpad, or one of the heavy art books I’d take out of the library, looking at