Fat School Confidential (3 page)

    “
It’s a private school?” I asked.

    “
Yes. Actually, it’s a therapeutic boarding school for overweight and obese adolescents.”

   
That was a mouthful.

   
A high school for fat kids? What a concept. I’ve heard of fat camp before, and I even wanted to go to one as a fat kid myself, but this was something else.

    “
Are there any other schools like this?”

    “
No. Not in the U.S. Actually, the Reedley campus is the only one of its kind on Earth.”

    “
Where is Reedley?”

    “
About two hundred miles north of you.”

   
Was he serious? Two hundred miles? Commuting was going to be out of the question.

    “
Would you be interested in an interview?”

    “
Yes,” I replied, trying not to sound overly desperate or enthusiastic.

    “
How does Wednesday sound?”

    ”
Wednesday is perfect.”

    ”
Ten o’clock?”

    “
Ten o’clock. I’ll be there.”

    “
Great. I’ll email you the directions as well as a link to familiarize yourself more about the school.”

    “
Great. See you Wednesday.”

    “
See you then. Thanks.”

   
He wanted to interview me.  Me, of all people.

   
I began to wonder. Was this going to be the opportunity of a lifetime, or another teaching job that was just going to burn me?

   
Ellie was excited, but, like me, she was more than a little apprehensive.

    “
Our family and friends are here,” she would say. She was right. My parents, her mom, and most of our siblings all lived within a dozen miles in the L.A. area. Okay, so I had cousins up in Fort Bragg, not to mention scores of relatives south-of-the-border. I couldn’t remember the last time I talked to them.

    “
But I don’t have anything here, El. Not job-wise, at least. We’ve got to take it,” I replied, attempting to convince her—and myself—that this was the right move at the right time. Other than Ellie’s six-month stint studying art in Paris (way before we were married), neither of us had lived away from friends or family. Despite the possible move, we were more concerned for our little boy. Were the schools better up north? Were the kids (and parents, for that matter) better behaved? Would we find a local church that would suit our needs? Would we make friends? We spent the night before my big interview tossing and turning.

   
I was awakened Wednesday by Bobby’s snuggling. His mop of brown hair tickled my nose. He was still asleep. He must have crawled out of his toddler bed and snuck into our room sometime in the early morning.

   
I studied his face. With his pale skin, long eyelashes and full, cherubic lips—surely he got Mama’s good looks. What a handsome boy he was.

   
Careful not to wake him up, I slid out of bed and got dressed. I kissed Bobby and El goodbye and was on the road by five thirty.

   
The trip to Reedley seemed simple enough. I would take the Ten Freeway going west for about seven miles. Then, going north, I’d catch the Five—or Golden State Freeway—for a good hundred miles. This stretch would include a good thirty miles or so on what was regionally known as the Grapevine. Mostly a steep grade through a mountain range, the actual “Grapevine” consisted of a few miles of vineyards on the north end of the pass. Nearing Bakersfield, I would merge with Highway Ninety-Nine. From there, it would be a straight shot through the middle of California to Reedley. Well, on paper it was a straight shot.

   
Other than the mountainous Grapevine, the drive was mostly through flat, desolate farm country. There were miles upon miles of crops, punctuated here and there by a grain mill or a Taj Ma-House. Billboards became increasingly conservative and religious. Radio options decreased. It was either preachers or country music that dominated the airwaves. Was I in the South?

   
Looking skyward, I found myself under an orange-gray haze. There was another added bonus: the heat. It was fairly early in the morning and the temperature was already pushing the mid-eighties. The air stank of manure and agricultural equipment. My car’s air conditioner mitigated the heat and some of the stink. But not all of it.

   
This was going to take some getting used to.

   
Crops.

   
Crops.

   
Crops.

   
Row of trees.

   
Crops.

   
Crops.

   
Crops.

   
Grain silo.

   
Crops.

   
Crops.

   
Crops.

   
Crops.

   
Truck stop.

   
Nearing my destination in Reedley, I found that I was going to be nearly an hour early. I glanced at my homemade map, and noticed that just a few miles south of Reedley sat the town of Kingsburg. It sounded quaint enough. I turned around and headed there. The marker that let visitors know that Kingsburg was an ideal tourist destination was a water tower in the shape of a gigantic, Swedish coffeepot. Yes, Kingsburg was founded by Swedes in the late 19th century. The main drag was all of three or four short blocks. Brick and wood buildings—some from the turn the century—lined the street. The Swedish motif was everywhere: on the shops; the banks; even on the local Mexican restaurant. Other than the intense heat, Kingsburg looked like a great place to live.

   
I had to get back to Reedley. To save time, I jumped back onto the freeway. I got off at Mountain View and drove east. Why they called it Mountain View, I’ll never know—there wasn’t a mountain in any direction.

   
After crossing the Kings River, I turned and headed north again. After passing an apple orchard to my right and a vineyard to my left, I found my destination. Made up of several low-slung buildings, the campus seemed benign enough. I parked my Beetle and made my way towards the main building.

   
The receptionist was on the phone. A bowl of fresh-cut radishes sat on her desk. Glancing around, I stood there. The interior was sparsely decorated. Student artwork shared the walls with corporate affirmations like “Excellence is not a single act, but a recurring habit.”

   
Carmen, a heavyset Latina, greeted me with a generous “Hi, May I help you?”

    “
I’m here for Daniel Abrams.”

    “
And your name?”

    “
Joe Rourke.”

    “
I’ll let him know. Have a seat.”

   
Carmen led me to the lobby, and then went to fetch Daniel. I sat down across from a similarly suited applicant—another teacher I assumed.

    “
You’re here for the interview?” the applicant asked.

    “
Yeah. You?”

   
He nodded. I shook his hand.

    “
Joe Rourke.”

    “
Frank Mills.”

   
Frank seemed nice enough. Sporting wire-rimmed glasses, his countenance was one of intelligence and education. But he seemed a bit too polished. Was he really a teacher?

   
Frank was black, but I couldn’t tell for certain if he was all black, or of mixed Asian blood. Then again, people always had a hard time figuring out my race. Or races. They would look at me—at my olive skin and my green eyes and guess I was Jewish or Italian or Armenian or anything else except the fact that I was of mixed Mexican and Irish descent—like Anthony Quinn. In sizing up Frank, the last thing I wanted to do was make that kind of judgment call, regardless of the significance of that call.

   
Carmen stepped into the room. She faced Frank.

    “
Daniel is ready to see you.”

   
Frank and I exchanged a brief, but warm glance.

    “
Good luck,” he said, standing up.

    “
Thanks. You too.”

   
Alone in the lobby, I looked for something to keep me occupied. The magazines on the coffee table were all on obesity and psychology. Dry reading, that’s for sure. Of course, if anything, these magazines clued me in to the philosophy of the school. Didn’t Daniel say the Academy was a boarding school for overweight and obese teenagers?

   
A chill came over me. Not only was I a chunky teenager myself, I was still quite heavy. To Ellie and a few of my friends, I was perhaps thirty to forty pounds overweight. Clinically, I was closer to ninety. I’d had some success losing weight in the past, thanks primarily to a Twelve Step-based support group I joined when I was eighteen years old. But after dropping eighty-five pounds in less than a year, I experienced a kind of culture shock. I was thin—thin for the first time in nearly a decade. Longtime friends didn’t recognize me. Family didn’t know how to treat me. I was a stranger in a strange land. But the world was my oyster, and I was damned sure I was going to make up for a miserable adolescence. As one of the support group’s old-timers would say about me, I was “hip, slick, and cool.” But this hip, slick, and coolness led me to either forget or disregard everything I learned to lose the weight to begin with.

   
After a brief, desperate foray into bulimia, I started to pack on the pounds. In short order, I gained the original eighty-five, plus an additional seventy pounds. From then on, I depended less and less on the support group, instead relying on my own self-determination. Needless to say, I yo-yoed between thirty and seventy pounds—depending on the diet or weight-loss fad of the moment.

   
But here, in the Academy’s lobby, I tried not to dwell on the past or on my personal battle of the bulge. I certainly wasn’t going to disclose the whole embarrassing history with Mr. Abrams.

   
Maybe I could use that history to my own advantage, I thought to myself.

   
I glanced at the stack of glossies again. Tucked in the pile was a backpacking magazine. I scanned through the pages.

    “
Joe?”

   
Daniel Abrams extended a hand. I shook it. He was tall and slim, definitely a runner on his off time. Wearing glasses, and in a button-down shirt and khakis, he made a good-looking geek. He led me to his office. On the short walk, I couldn’t help but

think about the fate of Frank Mills. I never saw him leave the building.

   
Daniel’s office was lined with dark wood paneling and the sort of modernist touches one would find in a sixties-era psychiatrist’s office. Bulky tomes on psychology, human behavior, and sociology filled the bookshelves. A square coffee table, surrounded by square couches, sat near his desk. Daniel motioned me to one of the couches. Grabbing a copy of my resume from his desk, he sat across from me. 

    “
So. How was the drive?”

    “
Not bad. But I don’t know if I want to be commuting like this everyday—”

   
Daniel interrupted my obvious sarcasm with a laugh.

    “
Once you’re hired, you won’t have to worry about a commute.”

   
He sounded so sure that I was going to be hired. Did he already make up his mind? He glanced at my resume.

    “
L.A. Unified, huh?”

    “
Yes,” was all I could muster. I didn’t want to fill him in on the details of what happened at Franklin and why I left. I wanted to get hired. The less he knew, the better.

    “
L.A.’s a tough crowd. You won’t find students like that here,” Daniel replied.

    “
You said this was a boarding school, right?” I asked.

    “
Right. Tuition, room and board add up to just over five thousand a month.”

    “
Wow.”

    “
The students who come here are generally from well-to-do families. We have a few scholarships set up for those who need it, but for the most part, this program is not for the financially timid.”

    “
I understand.”

    “
While you’ll find some students having to lose a relatively small amount of weight, say twenty to thirty pounds, the majority are obese.”

   
Daniel placed my resume on the table. He gave me a long, hard look. I felt self-conscious. I wasn’t used to such scrutiny—well, other than from Ellie and my mom anyway. Maybe he was just trying to figure me out; to size me up against the unseen hordes of wayward teachers needing a job. And then, the trick question.