Fat Angie (5 page)

Fat Angie had told the therapist,
“I don’t know why he always says that. That I’m special. Doesn’t that seem unusual?”

The therapist had made a note:
Incapable of forgiving her father.

The bus came to a stop at Oaklawn Ends, an upper-middle-class suburban cul-de-sac tucked at the edge of Dryfalls. As Fat Angie made her way down the aisle, the Duo of Geekdom shouted, “Fatty Freak!”

Accustomed to the name-calling, she continued to walk, as if ceremoniously stepping off into a better place. Unfortunately, Fat Angie’s bland cookie-cutter two-story house nestled in the heart of the cul-de-sac wasn’t that place. Wang’s Jeep hogged the two-car driveway. She huffed, eyes pinned to the well-worn basketball hoop over the garage. The net remained unswooshed since her sister had left. Fat Angie dropped her head back, squinting. An airplane flew overhead, eclipsing the sun for a moment.

Only for a moment.

Fat Angie did not like the muted roar of planes.

Fat Angie did not like her neighborhood.

Fat Angie did not like that she disliked so many things lately.

She slipped in the back door and closed it ever so carefully in the hope of avoiding her mother.

“Angie?” called her mother from the kitchen.

A blanket of
uggh
wrapped around the girl. In the last month, Fat Angie had seen her mother for 3.6 hours, and that was a generous estimate. Her mother’s way of dealing with Fat Angie was not to deal with her directly. E-mails, text messages, and the occasional voice mail kept them in their out-of-sync connection.

Fat Angie ambled into the kitchen.

“Um . . . thought you were in Phoenix for another week,” said Fat Angie.

“They settled. They always settle,” said her mother, sorting through stacks of mail. “Which is good because we have to go to your aunt’s baby shower Saturday.”

Her mother dismissively slid the invitation across the counter to Angie. The card was conservative, like most of Angie’s family. Cute in a baby-duck-and-pink-pastel way but refined in font and border.

Fat Angie’s mother swiftly slit the tops of envelopes, her technique careful and cruel. Discarding the envelopes’ hollow bodies, she moved ruthlessly through the contents. Only a few missives were deemed worthy of further attention.

“Um . . . do you think I could not go to the baby shower?” asked Fat Angie.

Her mother continued sorting the mail. “Why?”

Aside from the uncomfortableness of all gatherings with her mother’s side of the family, there was the unbearable expectation to adapt to her mother’s idea of normal. Which tended to lean toward being like her triplet cousins who consistently wore new clothes designed to flatter their brittle bodies fueled on energy drinks and eating disorders. Fat Angie was neither brittle nor acquiring new clothes until she dropped twenty-nine pounds exactly.

“I just . . . I thought I’d stay home and do homework and stuff,” Fat Angie said.

“It’s a couple of hours,” said her mother. “You can bear to be normal for a couple of hours, can’t you? Besides, your cousins will be there.”

Triple Threat confirmed. Fat Angie needed to be soothed. Craving leftover Papa Johns, she opened the refrigerator. She asked, “Where’s the food?”

“There’s a grilled chicken salad from the airport in the back,” said her mother.

“Where’s the rest of the food?”

“No one is ever going to love you if you stay fat,” said her mother.

The cool air of the refrigerator melted against Fat Angie’s fiery flushed cheeks. It had taken less than two minutes for the fat digs to emerge from her mother’s mouth. Fat Angie headed for the stairs, but not fast enough.

“I’m not done talking,” said her mother. “Another fight.”

Wang had no doubt been honest about selling her out. This reaffirmed his position as King of the Jerkfaces.

“I didn’t technically start it,” Fat Angie said.

“Technically?” asked her mother.

“There’s this girl in my gym class,” Fat Angie struggled to explain. “She — she was talking about her and —”

“We agreed you would stay on the medication,” said her mother, in a calculated deflection of any and all talk of Angie’s sister.

“I am,” said Fat Angie.

“Then?”

Fat Angie did not like confrontation.

She especially did not like confrontation with her corporate lawyer mother.

“What do you want, Angie? Attention?” asked her mother.

Fat Angie felt her large self begin to shrink. It was an incredibly uncomfortable feeling. More uncomfortable than her too-tight jeans.

“You get into fights. You skip therapy. They bill us whether you go or not. You understand?”

Angie gripped the railing and made a feeble attempt at straightening her posture.

“You have to start being normal,” said her mother. “Give people the chance to forget about . . . I don’t even know what to say. Do you know what I’m supposed to say to you?”

Fat Angie’s chin doubled in her defeated stance.

“Don’t you want to be happy?” asked her mother.

And there it was. The million-and-three-dollar question. Angie honestly did not know. Not in the absolute way that she thought she should know. There was too much pressure for a quick response. Plus, she thought she might have to pee.

“Just go,” said her couldn’t-be-bothered mother.

Cheeks burning red, Fat Angie trotted up the stairs only to find Wang sitting cross-legged in her room.

“Get out,” she said.

“Look, I didn’t know she’d be a complete bitch.”

“Quit lying.”

“You better go to the baby shower or she’ll have them up your dose of Paxil —”

“Leave,” she said.

But Fat Angie made a fatal error in raising her palm. The beautifully inked-on numbers were now in clear view of Wang.

“Angie’s got a boyfriend.”

Wang reached for her hand. She flailed.

“Cut it out,” she said.

Wang was more than a stink-breath bomb; he was
The Flash
fast. He snapped onto her wrist, almost making out the numbers when she yanked it back. The ink smeared.

Fat Angie heaved one of those big chest-swelling breaths. Then again. Then —

“Get out or I’ll tell Mom you’ve been masturbating to her Martha Stewart magazines.”

“Whatever. Like I care.”

“Gross! You really are?” she asked.

“No.” He laughed. “But I’d love to see you tell her ’cause then she’d really up your meds.”

He peeled out of her room. ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” soon swelled from Wang’s stolen surround-sound stereo system. Stolen even though he had the money to buy it.

Fat Angie studied her hand. Her predictably miserable existence had in fact become:

An equation formed in her number-deficient mind. She reached for a scrap of paper and a mini IKEA pencil.

Less Predictable + Not As Miserable = KC Romance

KC Romance had been inserted into the equation of her life.

OMG!

Fat Angie held up her hand to admire it and to prove the day actually had happened when the most daunting reality set in. Two of the numbers were missing. Smudged from her sweaty palm, two of the numbers had been erased.

Panic panged her. She held her hand as near to the desk lamp as possible without searing her palm. A seven, she thought. The last number was a seven. But she wasn’t sure. She was absolutely 99.5 percent unsure. The middle number might have been an eight or a zero — possibly a four depending on how you made out the faded ink. Only the heart had remained fully intact. But the numbers — what she needed the most, should confidence overcome her — had been nervously sweated out of existence.

She yanked open her desk drawer. As she awkwardly twisted her arm, her fingers scraped the underside of the desk for her hidden stash. After a prolonged ripping of duct tape, she emerged relieved with a PayDay candy bar. Surely a PayDay could calm her, comfort her through such a crisis. It could —

No!

She threw the candy on the floor and stomped on it. Again and again, jumping with both feet, shaking the furniture in her room. The flattened caramel peanut goo stuck to her sneaker.

Fat Angie made out all the numbers with the exception of the initial two that had been erased. She held the Post-it she had jotted them down on and bit her thumbnail. The options lay before her: call the coolest girl to ever talk to her or pretend she’d called the coolest girl to ever talk to her. Fat Angie deliberated a long while on this question. Approximately 4.5 seconds, give or take.

She picked up her tricked-out cell phone, a not-so-cleverly conceived bribery tool from her father after the divorce. Angie had scratched out every variation one phone number could be. The total equaled ten variations per number counting zero to nine. Then she scribbled down the total number of calls given that two numbers were missing. The sum total of phone numbers she would have to call, assuming the last set of numbers was correct, would be one hundred. Fat Angie fell back on her bed and examined her palm once more. Regardless of how hard she stared, the two numbers were simply not there.

Fat Angie decided in a swift moment of judgment that it was, in fact, now or never. Do or die. Be . . . well, the point seemed clear.

So, she began to dial. One set of numbers after another. She was well into hearing “Piss off,” “Screw you,” and other obscenities when she punched in the ninety-eighth phone number and said, “Um . . . can I speak to KC?”

Fat Angie’s fingertip edged for the
END
button just as the woman on the other end of the line said, “Sure. KC! Your phone!”

And just like that, Fat Angie’s life changed.

Fat Angie stood alone. In a corner. Opposite a set of beeping, blasting, monster-growling arcade games. Far from the crowd on the dance floor. Far from the crowd at the counter ordering pretentiously named coffees like James Dean Crashed Why?, How Did This Begin?, and You Talkin’ to Me? It was as if she were staring at categories for the Daily Double on
Jeopardy
rather than a menu of what was mostly foam and adrenaline-pumping caffeine.

She searched through the crowded pockets of populars energizing the warehouse-esque setting. Enlarged pages from screenplays and novels, and posters of cinematic legends plastered the ceiling, their edges burned for effect. At the center of the wordtopia was a mural of a 1950s suburban family wearing 3-D glasses and watching a swelling nuclear cloud.

Fat Angie’s neck cramped.

She shook the ice in her Where Did You Come From? Italian cream soda, puckering her lips to the straw when —

“Hey, hey, hey . . . it’s Fat Angie!”

Gary Klein cleared a path of kids to stand right in front of her. He smelled like Mad Dog 20/20 and herbal tea. Fat Angie inched as close as possible to the wall without literally tiptoeing.

“Fat Angie at The Backstory. Now that’s a first,” said Gary.

She clenched her teeth. Her teeth should have shattered under the pressure.

“I’ve been here before, Gary,” she said.

Clearly savoring the taunt, he inched closer, leaning more with his crotch than with anything else. “Oh, yeah, when?”

“Just before, OK?” she said. “Leave me alone.”

He mocked, “Leave me alone. You know, how do you live with your kind of pathetic?”

Gary scoped out the small crowd gathering around. The semi-OK live band, Tortoise in the Shell, headlined by William Anders High’s star quarterback, could not hold their attention. And
everyone
liked looking at Mr. Quarterback. But right then, they were more interested in looking at her. Sort of reality television minus the high-def screen.

“You go,” said Gary. “Running out on the gym floor, during
my
speech. Screaming ‘We’re all killers, wah-wah-wah. Look at me, I’m bleeding.’ ” He reached for her wrist. “Come on, show us your cat scratches —”

In a defensive move, she struggled with his meaty grip and pulled loose.

He turned back to the crowd. There was a smell of dissension in the ranks. The sense that maybe Gary had gone too far. Unfortunately, he was too buzzed to catch the shift in sentiment.

“You don’t belong here,” Gary said to Fat Angie. “You see, the freak show isn’t until tomorrow at nine.”

Then the impossible happened.

From somewhere deep — very, very deep — traveled a comeback to remember.

“Then I guess you’re a day early,” said Fat Angie.

The crowd
ooo
’ed in Fat Angie’s favor.

“What did you say,
Fat
Angie?” Gary asked.

A hand snapped onto his shoulder. “She said, for the hearing impaired, ‘you’re a day early.’”

When Gary spun around, Fat Angie saw that her hero was actually a heroine. KC Romance.

Gary sized up KC, still wearing the Catholic school skirt and crossbones-adorned fishnets. Her top tied at the bottom exposed a pierced belly button accessorized with what would now seem to be the KC trademark: a purple heart. Her arms were hidden by a tattered fitted gray tee with a faded peace logo.

“Wow,” Gary said, looking back at Fat Angie. “You paying people to pretend to care about you?”