Size 12 Is Not Fat (4 page)

“Ohmigod,” Sarah says, making no attempt whatsoever to lower her voice so that it isn’t audible to everyone on the entire first floor. “Can you believe it? The phones are ringing off the hook back in the office. All these parents are calling to make sure it wasn’t their kid. But Rachel says we can’t confirm the deceased’s identity until the coroner arrives. Even though we know who it is. I mean, Rachel had me get her file and told me to give it to Dr. Flynn. And would you look at this file?”

Sarah waves the thickly packed manila file. Elizabeth Kellogg had a record in the hall director’s office, which means that she’d either gotten in trouble for something or been ill at some point during the school year…

…which is odd, because Elizabeth was a freshman, and the fall semester had only just begun.

“Getta loada this.” Sarah is eager to share all she knows with me, Brad, and Tina. The latter two are listening to her with wide eyes. Pete, over at the guard’s desk, is acting like he’s busy watching his monitors. But I know he’s listening, too. “Her mother called Rachel, all bent out of shape because we allow residents to have any guests they want, and she didn’t want Elizabeth to be able to sign in boys. Apparently Mom expected her daughter to remain a virgin until marriage. She wanted Rachel to make it so that Elizabeth was only to be allowed to sign in girls. Obviously there are issues at home, but whatever—”

It’s the job of the GA—or graduate assistant—to assist the director in the day-to-day operations of the residence hall. In return, GAs receive free room and board and practical experience in higher education, which is generally their chosen field.

Sarah’s getting a lot more practical experience in the field here in Fischer Hall than she’d bargained on, what with a dead girl and all.

“Clearly there was some major mother-daughter rivalry going on there,” Sarah informs us. “I mean, you could tell Mrs. Kellogg was jealous because her looks are fading while her daughter’s—”

Sarah’s undergrad degree is in sociology. Sarah thinks that I suffer from low esteem. She told me this the day she met me, at check-in two weeks earlier, when she went to shake my hand, then cried, “Oh my God, you’re
that
Heather Wells?”

When I admitted that I was, then told her—when she asked what on earth I was doing working in a college residence hall (unlike me, Sarah never messes up and calls it a dorm)—that I was hoping to get a BA one of these days, she said, “You don’t need to go to college. What you need to work on are your abandonment issues and the feelings of inadequacy you must feel for being dropped from your label and robbed by your mother.”

Which is kind of funny, since what I feel I need to work on most are my feelings of dislike for Sarah.

Fortunately Dr. Flynn, the housing department’s on-staff psychologist, comes hurtling toward us just then, his briefcase overflowing with paperwork.

“Is that the deceased’s file?” he demands, by way of greeting. “I’d like to see it before I talk to the roommate and call the parents.”

Sarah hands him the file. As Dr. Flynn flips through it, he suddenly wrinkles his nose, then asks, “What is that smell?”

“Um,” I say. “Mrs. Allington sort of—well, she, um…”

“She yorked,” Brad says. “In the planter over there.”

Dr. Flynn sighs. “Not again.” His cell phone chimes, and he says, “Excuse me,” and reaches for it.

At the same moment, the reception desk phone rings. Everyone looks down at it. When no one else reaches for it, I do.

“Fischer Hall,” I say.

The voice on the other end of the phone isn’t one I recognize.

“Yes, is this that dormitory located on Washington Square West?”

“This is a residence hall, yes,” I reply, remembering, for once, my training.

“I was wondering if I could speak to someone about the tragedy that occurred there earlier today,” says the unfamiliar voice.

Tragedy?
I immediately become suspicious.

“Are you a reporter?” I ask. At this point in my life, I can sniff them out a mile away.

“Well, yes, I’m with the
Post—
”

“Then you’ll have to get in touch with the Press Relations Department. No one here has any comment. Good-bye.” I slam down the receiver.

Brad and Tina are staring at me.

“Wow,” Brad says. “You’re good.”

Sarah gives her glasses a push, since they’ve started to slide down her nose.

“She ought to be,” she says. “Considering what she’s had to deal with. The paparazzi wasn’t exactly kind, were they, Heather? Especially when you walked in and found Jordan Cartwright receiving fellatio from…who was it? Oh yes. Tania Trace.”

“Wow,” I say, gazing at Sarah with genuine wonder. “You really put that photographic memory of yours to good use, don’t you, Sarah?”

Sarah smiles modestly while Tina’s jaw drops.

“Heather, you went out with
Jordan Cartwright
?” she cries.

“You caught him getting head from
Tania Trace
?” Brad looks as happy as if someone’s just dropped a hundred-dollar bill in his lap.

“Um,” I say. It’s not like I have much of a choice. They can easily Google it. “Yeah. It was a long time ago.”

Then I excuse myself to go search for a soda, hoping a combined jolt of caffeine and artificial sweeteners might make me feel less like causing there to be yet another death among the building’s student population.

The closest soda machine is located in the TV lounge, where all of the college’s crisis management people are congregated. I don’t want to risk asking Magda for a free one from the caf when she’s already in trouble with her boss.

I only recognize a few of the many administrators in the lounge, and then only from being interviewed by them when I’d applied for my job. One of them, Dr. Jessup, the head of the housing department, detaches himself from another administrator’s side when he notices me, and comes over, look
ing very different in his weekend wear of Izod shirt and Dockers than he did in his usual charcoal suits.

“Heather,” Dr. Jessup says, his deep voice gruff. “How’s it going?”

“Okay,” I reply. I’ve already jammed a dollar into the machine, so it’s too late to run away—though I’d like to, since everyone in the room is staring at me, like,
Who is that girl? Don’t I know her from somewhere? And what’s she doing
here
?

Instead of running, I make a selection. The sound of the can hitting the slot at the bottom of the machine is loud in the TV lounge, where conversation is muted out of respect for both the deceased and the grieving, and where the TV, which normally blasts MTV 2 24/7, has been turned off.

I retrieve my can from the machine and hold it in my hands, afraid to open it and attract more undue attention to myself by making noise.

“How do the kids seem to you?” Dr. Jessup wants to know. “In general?”

“I just got here,” I say. “But everybody seems pretty shaken up. Which is, you know, understandable, considering the fact that there’s a dead girl at the bottom of the elevator shaft.”

Dr. Jessup widens his eyes and motions for me to keep my voice down, even though I hadn’t been speaking above a whisper. I look around, and realize there are some administrative bigwigs in the TV lounge. Dr. Jessup is hypersensitive about his department being perceived as a caring, student-oriented one. He prides himself on his ability to relate to the younger generation. I realized this during my first interview, when he’d narrowed his gray eyes at me and asked the inevitable question, the one that makes me want to throw things, but that I can’t seem to escape: “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

Everyone thinks they’ve seen me somewhere before. They
just can’t ever figure out where. I get “Didn’t you go to the prom with my brother?” a lot. Also, “Weren’t you and I in one of the same classes in college?”

Which is especially weird, because I never attended a single prom, much less college.

“I used to be a singer” was what I’d said to Dr. Jessup, the day of my job interview. “A, um, pop singer. When I was, you know. A teenager.”

“Ah, yes,” Dr. Jessup had said. “‘Sugar Rush.’ That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure. Can I ask you a question?”

I’d twisted uncomfortably in my seat, knowing what was coming. “Sure.”

“Why are you applying for a job in a residence hall?”

I’d cleared my throat.

I wish VH1 would do a
Behind the Music
on me. Because then I wouldn’t have to. Explain to people, I mean.

But it’s not like I’m
Behind the Music
material. I was never famous enough for that. I was never a Britney or a Christina. I was barely even an Avril. I was just a teenager with a healthy set of lungs on her, who was in the right place at the right time.

Dr. Jessup had seemed to understand. At least, he’d tactfully dropped the subject after I mentioned the stuff about my mom fleeing the country with my manager—and oh yeah, my life’s savings—my label dropping me, and my boyfriend, too, in that order. When I was offered the position of administrative assistant to Fischer Hall, at a starting salary that equaled what I used to earn in a week on the concert circuit, I accepted without hesitation. I wasn’t seeing much of a long-term career in waitressing—which, for a girl who doesn’t even like standing up to wash her hair, can be brutal—and getting a college education seemed like a good idea. I have to wait until I pass my six months’ probation—just
three more to go—but then I can start enrolling in as many courses as I want.

The first class I’m going to take is Psych 101 so I can see if I’m really as filled with neuroses as Rachel and Sarah seem to think.

Now Dr. Jessup is inquiring about Rachel’s mental health.

“How’s she holding up?” Dr. Jessup wants to know.

“I guess she’s okay,” I say.

“You should buy her some flowers, or something,” Dr. Jessup says. “Something to perk her up. Candy, maybe.”

I say, “Oh, that’s a good idea,” even though I have no clue what he’s talking about. Why should I buy flowers or candy for
Rachel
? Does Elizabeth Kellogg’s death affect Rachel more than it affects Julio, the head of the maintenance staff, who’ll probably be the person hosing Elizabeth’s blood out of the elevator shaft later on? Is anybody buying candy for
Julio
?

Maybe I should just buy flowers for both of them.

“Rachel’s not used to the city yet,” Dr. Jessup is saying, by way of explanation, I suppose. “This is bound to shake her up a little. She’s not a jaded New Yorker yet, like some of us. Right, Wells?” He winks.

“Right,” I say, even though I still have no idea what he means. Would a Whitman Sampler be enough, or did he want me to go all the way to Dean & Deluca’s and buy a bunch of those petits fours? Which would be okay, because then I can get myself some of those chocolate-covered orange peels.

Except…Rachel doesn’t eat candy. It’s not on the Zone. Maybe I should get her some nuts?

But our conversation comes to an abrupt end when President Allington comes striding into the lounge.

I’ll tell you the truth. I never recognize Phillip Allington at
first glance, even though I’ve been seeing him get off the elevators every weekday morning since last June, when I started working at Fischer Hall.

The reason I never recognize President Allington is because President Allington doesn’t exactly dress like a college president. His ensemble of choice is white trousers—which he continues to wear well after Labor Day, regardless of Miss Manners—gold New York College T-shirt (tank top for really humid days), Adidas, and, in inclement weather, a gold and white New York College letter jacket. According to another article I found in Justine’s files, the president feels if he dresses like a student, he’ll be more accessible to them.

But I’ve never seen a New York College student dressed in the school colors. They all wear black, to blend in with the rest of the New Yorkers.

Today President Allington has opted for the T-shirt rather than the tank, even though the temperature outside is over seventy degrees. Well, maybe he had a meeting of the board of trustees to attend, and wanted to dress to impress.

It isn’t until all the other administrators immediately rush over to him to make sure the president knows what an integral part he or she is playing in the resolution of what will no doubt be referred to on Monday in the student-run newspaper as “The Tragedy” that I’m like, “Oh, yeah. That’s the president.”

Ignoring everyone else, Dr. Allington looks directly at Dr. Jessup and says, “You should do something about this, Stan. This is not good. Not good at all.”

Dr. Jessup looks as if he wishes
he
were the one at the bottom of the elevator shaft. I don’t really blame him, either.

“Phil,” he says to the president. “It happens. In a population this big, there are bound to be some deaths. We had three last year alone, and the year before that, there were two—”

“Not in my building,” President Allington says. I can’t help thinking that he is trying to sound like Harrison Ford in
Air Force One
(“Get off my plane”).

But he sounds more like Pauly Shore in
Bio-Dome
.

This seems to me like an appropriate time to go back to my office. I find Sarah there sitting at my desk, talking on the phone. No one else is around, but there’s still a disagreeable amount of tension in the room. It seems to be emanating from Sarah, who slams the phone down and glares at me.

“Rachel says we have to cancel the hall dance tonight.” She is practically glowering.

“So?” This sounds like a reasonable request to me. “Cancel it.”

“You don’t understand. We’ve lined up a real band. We stand to lose about fifteen hundred dollars from this.”

I stare at Sarah.

“Sarah,” I say. “A girl is dead.
Dead
.”

“And by veering from our normal routine because of her selfish act,” Sarah says, “we will only cause her death to be romanticized by the student population.” Then, coming down off her grad student high horse for a second, she adds, “I guess we can make back the lost revenue in T-shirt sales. Still, I don’t see why we should cancel our dance, just because some nutcase took a dive off the top of an elevator.”

And people say
show biz
is rough. They’ve obviously never worked in a dorm.

Excuse me, I mean, residence hall.