Big Fat Disaster (42 page)

There’s no way I can face Anna and Sean at lunch. I head for the bathroom and enter a stall, close the door, and hang my backpack on the hook. I unzip the front pocket and pull out
The Scarlet Letter
, sit on the toilet fully clothed, and pick up where I left off. Reverend Dimmesdale is punishing himself for his sin by whipping himself and fasting, and Hester Prynne is setting herself apart from other women by thinking for herself, seeing as how they won’t have a thing to do with her anyway. If she can survive being hated by everyone, maybe I can, too.

I lift my feet when I hear someone come in, and I nearly fall off the commode when Tina’s face appears under the door. “I thought I’d find you in here.” She goes into the stall next to me. I keep watch, expecting her knees to hit the floor.

“I wish you wouldn’t make yourself throw up. It’s not good for you.”

She sits on the toilet, taps one foot. “You’re not exactly in a position to give advice to anyone about what’s good for them, Miss
I Tried to Commit Suicide
…Anyway, barfing’s not something that I like to have an audience for. If I’d known you were in here before, I wouldn’t have done it. What are you doing in there? Are you sick?”

“No, I’m reading.”

Tina snorts. “Seriously?”

“It’s better than facing all these people who hate me for what happened to Ryan.” My throat’s getting tight, and I’m on the verge of crying.

“Yeah, what were you
thinking
? Why didn’t you just tell the truth?”

“You wouldn’t understand…Look, Tina, if you want to yell at me for being a liar, you’d better get in line.
No one
can hate me as much as I hate myself. Why would I want everyone to know that I meant to die? Kara told me she wishes I’d died with Ryan.”

Tina sounds shocked. “God, she’s such a bitch sometimes!”

I’m blunt: “But you hang out with her!”

“I know.” She sounds like a sad trombone.

“Anyway, me telling everybody the truth is as likely as
you
letting on that the reason you’re skinny is that you barf all the time. I Googled that, by the way, and
you
have no room to judge
me
. You’re trying to die, too, you know. Bulimia can kill you. You could have a heart attack. And your teeth are going to rot out. It’s a sucky way to go.”

Her voice is flat. “So I’ve been told. My mom caught me a few months ago, and if the shrink I’m seeing can’t fix me by Christmas, she’s putting me into a treatment center.” Tina lifts her feet off the floor, too.

“But you barfed just the other day!”

She snaps, “Don’t judge me! It’s progress, not perfection. Anyway, I was freaked out because you were bugging me about the Facebook page.”

“I’m sorry—”

Tina slams the stall wall and says caustically, “No, it’s not
your
fault. My therapist would be
proud
to hear me tell you that
I alone
am responsible for
my
recovery. If I binge and purge, it’s my choice, because I always have another response that I can choose instead.
I
slipped, but
I
chose to get back up. What about
you
, Colby? You prefer death by semi-truck?”

I gasp, “No.”

She asks in a singsong voice, “Why’d you try to kill yourself?”

“Did you see the video that my cousin,
Saint Ryan
, recorded of me?”

“Yeah. So?”

“My mom said it was my fault that he made that video. Because I’m so fat.”

“So?”

It’s my turn to hit the stall wall. “What do you mean, ‘So’?”

She answers by kicking the wall. “So, just because your mom said that doesn’t make it true. It just means that your mom’s a hot mess.”

I feel pissed and more than a little stupid. “If
you’re
so smart, why did you start throwing up in the first place?”

“I told you, I’m trying to stop. I’m in therapy, and it’s fucking hard work.”

“Well, how hard can it be? Just don’t do it anymore.”

“Are you telling me that you have no idea what it’s like to be out of control when it comes to food? I mean, no offense, Colby, but you didn’t get to be the size you are without pigging out.”

I stand, unlock my stall door, and move to Tina’s. “Open your door.”

She slides the lock, and the door swings open.

“How do I stop? Eating like I do is the only thing that makes me feel better. I’ve always done it once in a while, but my whole life has gone to shit in the last few months and it’s like I have no control
at all
. You might have been fat like me, but you have
no idea
what it’s like to have my mom as a parent. She’s a former Miss Texas, for God’s sake.”

Tina stands and wags a finger at me. “
You
have
no idea
the kind of pressure my mom put on me to lose weight. I’m only fifteen and she was already worried that she’d never have grandchildren if I didn’t lose weight.
My
mom is certifiably crazy.”

“Oh, yeah? Has your mom ever given you diet books for your birthday?”

Tina makes a face. “No! That would be the absolute suckiest birthday gift ever!”

“
Mine
has.”

“No way!”

I nod. “It’s true.”

We spend the rest of our lunch period sitting under the windows in the girls’ restroom and comparing bizarre Mom stories.

“You
can’t
beat this one,” I brag. “My mother wanted to sneak a tapeworm egg into my food so that a parasite would make me lose weight, like, by eating me alive. She wasn’t going to tell me about it, but my dad caught her trying to order one online, and I heard them fighting about it.”

Tina makes a face. “That’s off the charts wacko! Hello, CPS? Come arrest Miss Texas!…This one isn’t
that
crazy, but my mom tried to get the pediatrician to prescribe weight loss drugs to me when I was eight years old.”

I’m shocked. “That’s terrible!”

She waves her hands. “No, no, that’s not
even
the worst of it! When
my
doctor refused, she asked
her
doctor, but she told him they were for me! So
he
said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘Aw, hell, just prescribe them to me, then, and I’ll cut them in half for Tina.’”

“Did you take them?”

“Not for long. The pills were basically speed, and my teacher kept complaining that I wouldn’t shut up and that I was vibrating in my chair.”

“Wow. Okay, it’s a draw. Our moms are both nuts.”

We laugh so hard that I snort. I can’t remember the last time I did that.

It feels good, and sort of normal.

We walk to English together. I’m still getting the stares and whispers, but I’m not alone.

Mr. Van Horn starts class by displaying Jonathan Edwards’s fifteen
Resolutions
again and asking for volunteers to share their progress. I silently reread the one I chose:
Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.

I can practically feel the scratchy rope around my neck and the way the table wobbled when I stepped up onto it. Would I really have stepped off?

Leah’s question: What the fuck are you doing, Colby?

Yeah: what the fuck?

Mr. Van Horn’s voice: “Colby? You look like you’re deep in thought. Care to share your
Resolution
with us?”

Kara hisses, “I don’t see lying about killing somebody on the list!”

Mr. Van Horn snaps, “What’s that, Kara?”

“Nothing.”

He moves over to stand by her, arms crossed over his chest. “Since you’re so eager to speak up, share your
Resolution
with the class.”

Kara stammers, “I…um…the one about…not talking bad about other people.” She reads aloud, “
Resolved, never to speak evil of any person, except some particular good call for it
.” She sits up straight and squares her shoulders. “That one.”

The class breaks out in laughter. Even Mr. Van Horn seems to be having a hard time not busting out.

Anna blurts, “You’re supposed to be
already
keeping the
Resolution
, Kara. You couldn’t make it through ten minutes without talking shi—I mean, talking bad about other people!”

Kara’s neck is breaking out in red splotches, but she sits up as tall as she can in her seat. “Um, you’ll notice the part that says, ‘
except some particular good call for it
’?” She scrunches her face up, which just makes her look like a scrunchy-faced rat, and jabs a finger in my direction. “If
anybody
deserves to be trash-talked, it’s Colby Denton. She
lied
to
everyone
about what happened to Ryan, and he was one of us!” She sits back in her seat, like that settles everything.

My eyes fill with tears; I stare at Becca’s note inside my binder cover, and the words jump off the page at me:
Find your voice.

Mr. Van Horn strides over to my desk and stands between me and the rest of the class. He puts his hand on my shoulder, and minutes seem to tick by before he speaks. “Guys, it’s like I told Fredrick the other day, when he was talking about Hester Prynne being a dirty skank. When you know the whole story, your perspective can change. I know that a lot of you go to church, so perhaps you remember this Scripture:
Do not judge, or you, too, will be judged
.”

He looks down at me. “I, for one, am here to support you, Colby. I know that what you’re going through can’t be easy, and that none of us would want to be in your place right now. What happened was tragic.” He pauses, looks around at everyone, and emphasizes the word: “
Tragic
. And, given the right circumstances, it could have happened to
any
of you. Before you sentence Colby to stand on the scaffold, I suggest that you consider how you would want to be treated if you were in her shoes. Open your books. We’re on to
Chapter 13
.”

Becca clop-clops quickly past me on the way to the gym. She has her chin tucked into her binder like always, and her eyes are on the ground. She nearly smacks into a pole, and to be honest, I’m disappointed when she doesn’t. She may have felt that she had no choice but to tell what she saw, but she’s right: I do hate her.

The next morning, I have to get through a crowd of people to reach my locker. Then I see why they’re standing around: “
Killer
” is written on my locker door in blood-red nail polish, and my reaction is the payoff they’ve been waiting for.

Mr. McDaniel’s voice can be heard from far off. He claps his hands and says gruffly, “Break it up, people. Get to class.” He finally makes it through the throng to see the artwork on my locker. He scowls, turns to my classmates, and bellows, “Any one still standing here in ten seconds will have three weeks of detention!” People take off, and he pivots back to me.

“I-I didn’t do it—”

Mr. McDaniel crosses his arms, frown firmly in place. “I know you didn’t.” He steps back and takes in the other lockers, but no one else’s has been painted. “I’ll get the custodian to start working on this immediately.” He turns abruptly and starts toward the office.

The voice in my head whispers,
“I want to die.”
I press my forehead against my locker door and answer, “Shut up.”