Fat Cat (28 page)

Except I probably would have still been fat.

Or maybe not. I've been thinking about it all weekend. Amanda made that comment about me losing the weight for Matt, but I strongly disagree. Because I know in my heart I didn't lose it for anyone but myself. I did it because I wanted to win the science fair, get an A in Mr. Fizer's, and finally look good for once in my life. For me. Not for anyone else. I'm a hundred percent certain of that.

Okay, and to beat Matt, too. But that's not the same as losing weight for him.

And I have to admit that my looking better changed things today--for me. Because maybe if I'd been sitting there in my old body, feeling fat and self-conscious, I might not have had the guts to imagine the possibilities. Even if what Matt said on Valentine's was true--that he never cared how I looked--I cared. I cared from the minute Willie Martin called me "Fat Cat," and I probably cared before then, too.

So what would my life have been like? If I hadn't lost the weight? I'd still be Matt's fat friend. And I'd still be in love with him. I wouldn't tell him--I'd just suffer in silence. I'd watch while he dated
other girls, and I'd let him tell me about them because I was his pal. His fat platonic friend.

But what if Matt really didn't care how I looked? Is it possible he might have learned to love me, exactly as I was? I suppose, although it's hard for me to imagine. Not because of Matt, but because of me.

I think I've really hated myself these last four years. I've finally started to see that. I've been blaming Matt for how miserable I've been, when really it's all on me. I'm the one who's doled out all these secret punishments over the years. I'm the one who's been mean.

I'm the one who deprived myself of swimming--no one else took that away. Even if I never went back to the team, I could have swum somewhere else. I could have given myself that gift.

I'm the one who fed myself all that garbage and junk food, then hated what my body had become. I could have stopped at any point--I didn't need a science project to force me.

I'm the one who swallowed my anger toward Matt and never just confronted him with what I'd heard. Maybe he would have apologized four years ago. Or three. Or anytime before now. Instead I guarded it like a treasure and hated him every day.

And yet I'm also the one who held on to the dream of the two of us--this fantasy of what could have been if only I'd been a skinny little thirteen-year-old. Then he would have loved me. Then he never would have said such horrible things about me. Then I'd be happy.

I was wrong. I could have been happy anyway. I just refused to let myself.

All this looking backward only hurts me. Jordan is right: I have to go forward. I can decide for myself right now what I want my relationship with Matt to be. He's paid his debt. Now it's up to me.

I can decide never to forgive him, never to enjoy his friendship
again, or I can let it go. It doesn't mean it never happened or that it didn't hurt me or it wasn't wrong, it just means I get to decide right now, today, whether I want to carry this burden another mile. I'm not betraying myself if I just leave it on the side of the road. I'm doing myself the kindness of lightening my load. It's like taking your thumb off a bruise.

"Want to go?" I asked when we had both finished eating and Matt had downed the last of his coffee. "Sure."

We took the long way home. Walked ten or more extra blocks. I could have walked twenty more. The morning was beautiful, and I was content.

"What are you doing tonight?" Matt asked me at some point.

"Homework."

"Want to go to a movie?"

"Can't." I saw no reason to say why. "Want to hang out?"

"Sure," he said.

I smiled and kept on walking.

When we got back to Matt's house, I told him I had some stuff to do. I left him in front of his house and kept walking back to mine. We didn't set a time, didn't talk about any of the details. Because this was us again, and there was no need for all that.

I did what I wanted to do. I swam, cooked myself lunch, put in some hours at Poison Control. And finally around five-thirty I strolled back to Matt's house.

As soon as I walked in, he asked me what I wanted to eat and I told him Ethiopian. Amanda turned me on to this great vegetarian platter they serve there. Matt ordered takeout and we drove over to get it.

When we got back his parents were home, and after a few obligatory, "How you been's," Matt and I retreated to his room. It
wasn't so bad--he'd obviously picked up a little, since his clothes were piled in a corner instead of strewn all over the room. I noticed he'd also showered and shaved.

We settled onto the floor, takeout containers between us, and shoveled in a few bites. He clicked on his TV and I said, "No TV," and he clicked it back off.

And this time when our eyes met, I didn't look away. And when his gaze softened, I smiled. This time when I knew what was coming next, I let what could happen, happen.

He pushed aside the takeout and gathered me in his arms and gave me the kiss I've waited for for a lifetime. I wove my fingers into his hair and felt his smooth face against my chin and breathed in the smell of him that I remembered.

It wasn't like Nick. It wasn't like Greg. It wasn't like anything but what I've always hoped for. No, it was better than that. Because we were older, not kids. This was real in a way the little girl in me never could have imagined.

They say your muscles have memory. Once you've trained your arms to swing a tennis racket or your legs to ride a bike, you can quit for a while--for years, even--and all it takes is picking up a racket or jumping on a bike again and your muscles remember what to do. They snap right back to performing the way you taught them.

The heart is a muscle, too. And I've been training mine since I was a kid to fall in love with one particular person.

All it took was four years, a rainy day at the zoo, a box of chocolates, a crumpled valentine, a sincere apology, and an order of spicy lentils, and my heart snapped right back into form. It knew just what to do.

I am still in love with Matt McKinney.

And Matt McKinney told me he loves me, too.

84

Day 207, Sunday, March 15

Done.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler
.

I simply want to win.

Not for the reasons I did before, but just because it's time. If you're going to keep competing at something every year, you need to bring home first place once in a while, just to keep your spirits up. People can only take disappointment for so long.

Tomorrow we'll set up our displays. I've got my abstract, my research notebook, my project board.

Amanda helped me with the board this weekend. I needed her artistic eye. The board is three-sided, just like the map I wore for Halloween. Bigger, though--enough to partition off my area so when you're standing in front of it, you can't see anyone's project but mine.

"I was thinking some before and after pictures," I said.

"Excellent," Amanda said. "We have to find one where you're really your heaviest. Then that one they took at the Winter Formal. Hot."

I winced a little to remember that night, but Amanda was right--the contrast was too great. She had made me look like a movie star for that, and even though I'm smaller now than I was then, she really did show me at my best.

We also used the picture she took of me in the skirt and boots--the outfit I wore to the zoo. That seems like so long ago.

Matt and I agreed not to see each other this weekend. We're both in last-minute mode, trying to get our displays as perfect as we can. We still haven't told each other what we're doing. I like it that way.

I thought it might feel weird to compete against him, after what's happened lately, but I realize it didn't make me uncomfortable when I was younger, and it still doesn't. What's made it so intense these past four years is that I wanted to beat him so bad. It's been my main goal--more so than even winning for its own sake. It's taken some of the joy out of it, I think.

I still want to win. Badly. But I don't think I care if I beat Matt. Obviously if I win other people won't, but I don't need one of those people to be Matt anymore. If that makes any sense.

We're competing in different categories--I'm in Behavioral & Social, he's in Physics & Astronomy--but besides winning our categories, we still have to win overall. There are just three slots to go to internationals--one for a team, two for individuals. I plan on winning one of those spots.

Amanda worked with me on my project board most of yesterday and today, and I have to say it shows. My best friend is the most artistic, talented person I know. She could make a clump of dirt look like a pile of gold.

"A poem," Amanda said when we were through. "From Kit Cat's project board."

I think she made it up on the fly.

"Tomorrow she will leave me in the cavernous hall
Among other, more pitiful boards.
The judges will see me, they will love me, they will need me
And shower me with all of their awards.
But Catherine will forget me, she will fold me away
And go on to more glorious pursuits.
But I will e'er remember, because it's pasted on my chest
How hot she looked in that wicked skirt and boots."

How could you not love a friend like that?

85

T
hey let us start setting up
our displays at noon. Mr. Fizer didn't hold class today, but told us to meet at the convention center instead. I caught a ride with Matt.

I kept my board carefully folded as I loaded it into his car. Matt's was folded up, too, so I couldn't read it. It's stupid how secretive we were, since we were going to see them anyway in about an hour, but somehow we both wanted to keep the mystery.

Once we got there we found our separate sections and both went off to work. It only took me about fifteen minutes to make everything look the way I wanted it to. Then there was nothing more to do until tomorrow.

Here's the schedule: Monday is setup, Tuesday is judging. The younger kids like Peter are judged just on their displays, but at the high school level we have to do presentations for the judges, too. Tomorrow. And then we won't find out who's won until Friday. So basically it's a whole week of agony.

Once people finished setting up, we all started cruising the place, snooping around each other's projects.

Nick's was a study of lichen and fungi. I still have no idea how "cat's gill" factors in. Alyssa studied some rare eye disease. Kiona did hers on aphids. Lindsay analyzed how climate change affects the caterpillar population. Lots of plants and insects this year. My fig wasps would have fit right in.

And then finally I saw Matt's.

COMMUNICATION BEGINS AT HOME

Why do we believe we will be able to communicate with alien species who share none of our DNA, when we can barely communicate with species who share over 97 percent of it?

Right beneath that was the picture of the baby gorilla. And on either side, pictures of other apes--gibbons, chimpanzees, orangutans.

And other pictures: Matt in front of the gibbon cage, doing some sort of hand signals to them. Matt at the back door of the enclosure, helping one of the zookeepers feed them. Matt standing right up against the chain link, one of the gibbons' fingers intertwined with his.

"You learned to communicate with them?" I asked.

"Not really. I'm still trying. It's not as easy as it looks."

I flipped through his research notebook--day after day spent at the zoo, trying this strategy and that. He included all sorts of clippings and scientific studies about the efforts made to bridge the human-ape gap. Matt was trying to take things another step beyond.

He also included graphs and other details about the amount of
money and manpower spent trying to communicate with alien creatures, including the project he'd interned for over the summer.

"I can't believe you did all this."

"You like it?" he asked.

"I love it, but ..."

Matt smiled. "Say it."

"You entered this in Astronomy. Why? It could have been in Animal Sciences. Don't you think the Astronomy judges--"

"Are going to hate it?" he finished for me. "Yeah. I think they will."

"Then why?"

"Because I'm done with all this." "All what?" I asked.

He waved his hand around the conference hall. "This. The science fair. The competition. I just want to do science, Cat. I want to investigate things I'm curious about without worrying whether I'm impressing anyone. And I don't want to be stuck with astronomy anymore. I'm tired of it."

This from someone who has been staring through telescopes since he could focus his little eyes. This from the guy who could talk about black holes and galaxies and quasars until even I, in my devoted girlish state, couldn't take listening to a word of it anymore.

"You don't really mean that."

"Yeah," he said, "I do."

"Why? Just because that one professor was a pig?"

"No, he proved to me what I already knew--that I'm not that interested in it anymore. It sort of ran its course."

It was as if Amanda had told me she was tired of words.

Matt smiled and wrapped his arms around my waist. "Don't look so serious. It's fine. I worked on something this year that I thought
would be interesting, and it was. I know I'm not going to win anything for it, and I don't care."

"You might win," I said, knowing it probably wasn't true.

"It doesn't matter, Cat. Really. I wouldn't have even entered the science fair this year if Mr. Fizer didn't require it."

"But you knew that's the only thing his class was about--that's the whole point of it. Why did you even take it in the first place?"

Matt brought his lips against my ear. "Because I knew you'd be in there."