Camp Utopia & the Forgiveness Diet (9781940192567) (12 page)

I knew I should have been freaking about
American Envy
. That was TJ's dream. And I know I'm biased, but TJ has skill. Like
American Envy
skill. Yet when I read the second to last word, a bead of sweat darted down my armpit. And then another. I took a deep breath and picked off the espresso-beaned “S” in sorry. My hands shook as I tore off the “O.” I moved on to a box of Whole Foods chocolate-covered graham crackers. I read TJ's card again. I must have stared at it for forty minutes. L-O-V-E. L-O-V-E. L-O-V-E.

TJ's just not the kind of guy to use the word lightly. “You my girl,” was about as sentimental as he got. He always thought about things. That's what made him an expert magician: deliberation and execution. Like that first night I kissed him. I knew he'd picked that moment for a reason. It's just how he was. Wanting to get it all right.

Of course my brain said,
It's just a word. His pen must have slipped. Get a grip, Bethany
.

Yet some other voice—who knew where it came from?—was calling to me. And it was loud. Loud like Miss Marcia's. It screamed: HE WANTS ME. HE WANTS ME. HE WANTS ME.

Did it matter to me that it was Saturday night and I was sneaking around like a stalker, eating chocolate-covered espresso beans addressed to someone else, which, I'm thinking, was some kind of felony? Did it matter that last summer, when the “smack” went down, when the words, “I love you” flew out of my mouth like a man shot from a cannon, TJ'd just sat there. Silently.

It didn't matter a bit. Something made him use the word love now, on that postcard. Perhaps absence does make the heart grow fonder. I dipped into some trail mix priority-mailed from Cambridge's apologetic father.
Yes indeed
, I thought mightily, basking in yet another indulgence.
TJ totally misses me
.

I stayed in the office looking at the postcard until the sun stretched its yellow self across the horizon. Then I cut across the quad back to the dorms where a hair dryer hummed from Hollywood's room.

“Baltimore, where have you been?” asked Liliana when I eased open our door. “Today is Sunday, girl. Domingo.”

21

POWERING DOWN

HOLLYWOOD LED US downstairs to MontClaire Hall's common room, where the boys had already gathered. The garbage bag with the life jackets and balls spilled next to the sofa. The files fanned across the desk. The scale had been positioned in the center of our circle, and Miss Marcia stood in front of it, all of us bending our necks like sunflowers to check out her long, long legs.

This Sunday our team captain got weighed first.

“I'm so nervous,” Hollywood said calmly. Her hair was brushed; the ends curled up suggesting she hadn't been awake for an hour getting it precisely that way. When she stepped on the scale she looked, unfortunately, a little thinner.

Affirmed!

According to the traitorous scale, Hollywood had peeled off another four pounds from some place that didn't need it. No doubt her father would be ecstatic.

Next up, Liliana Delgado.

She sashayed up in her sweatsuit and star-studded socks. Obviously the sugar-free diabetic candy Gabe tossed to her hadn't touched her game. She was down three pounds. Liliana hip-hopped back to her spot in the circle. Next, Miss Marcia fished out Atlanta's file. Though Miss Bumpit's bouffant was looking a little tired these days, it got a jolt of electricity when she screamed annoyingly over her two-and-a-half-pound loss. Clearly we were on a roll.

The boys' team, scattered across the floor, seemed nervous. Even Tampa Bay, whose parents were probably fighting over who got the couch this very minute, looked tense, worried. Cambridge squeezed my hand. “Me and Tampa Bay had some marshmallows two nights ago,” she whispered. Then Miss Marcia plucked her file, and Cambridge sauntered up to the scale.

Check that out. She and Tampa Bay must've burned those extra calories in some imaginative way because Cambridge's red number was three pounds less than last week's.

“That's a total of seventeen pounds for your team, girls,” said Miss Marcia, beaming. We were rocking her world. You could tell. Our counselor perched next to the scale holding one last hospital-blue file. My file. The one I'd shoved back in the cabinet a few hours ago, careful not to smear any chocolate on it. Miss Marcia crossed her arms. “Your turn, Baltimore.”

Sure, I should've been worried, but I wasn't. I was still swinging on the cloud TJ whisked over when he sent that postcard. You know the one. In my happy pink universe, things could not have been better. So what if I'd just burned through a dozen chocolate-covered graham crackers? I felt light. So light I knew The Forgiveness Diet had finally kicked in. I could've positively floated away on my wispy-light featheriness. Soared right out of MontClaire Hall and chillaxed in a fluffed-out sky. TJ signed it L-O-V-E. Let the record show, people. I was still his girl.

Miss Marcia stood behind the scale, her pen poised on my file. She nodded.

As I steadied on the platform, no one made a noise. Nothing. If gravity made a sound pressing down on Earth, I could have heard it. I'm talking silence, and not the good kind either. The funeral kind. It was Hollywood's voice that shattered it.

“Jesus CHRIST!” she screamed. “What. The?”

I did not look.

“Do you have some change in your pockets?” asked Liliana. “Or some weights?” God bless her for trying.

Hank and Belinda, who I never even saw arrive, now shot up like the couch had burst into flames. Only they weren't running to silence Hollywood. They were running to check the scale.

The owners had me step off then step on again.

More silence.

It was safe to assume the number was not what they expected. Obviously The Forgiveness Diet had not delivered yet. Maybe the care packages I accidentally consumed might've had something to do with it. I turned around to explain to the campers about the mailroom, how the very owners who stood beside me were blacking out letters like we were in prison, and holding our care packages hostage!

Only just as my mouth made efforts to open, Hollywood's beat me to it.

“You fat bitch,” she hissed like it was a line she was supposed to deliver. She was far enough away that Belinda and Hank couldn't hear her, but close enough that I could. “Don't ... make … us … lose,” she warned me, a little louder this time.

“Amber,” Miss Marcia snapped. “Is there something you'd like to share?”

Hank and Belinda reset the scale while Hollywood addressed Miss Marcia. “Isn't there some rule about gaining weight? Some intervention?” She tried to say this as innocently as she could muster, but it came out like a whine. “I don't think she even wants to be here.”

“You don't know what you're talking about,” I mocked. “This is a dream come true.”

“You're lying,” Hollywood shot back, louder still. “I'd bet it was you hiding cotton candy that first day.” Captain Thin actually stomped her feet. “I bet you're still hiding it. My dad says he's sending me stuff, and I think you're stealing it. I want you off the team or I will sue your f—”

“Enough!” Miss Marcia interrupted.

Near me, Hank and Belinda seemed more flummoxed by my weight gain than Hollywood's tantrum. “It has to be the scale,” said Belinda, tapping a square fingernail on the display. “Maybe we should measure her.”

Miss Marcia sighed. “Put your arms out,” she instructed before wrapping the tape measure around my waist. Unfortunately, though, that number wasn't any good either.

On the floor in front of me, Hollywood rapidly approached core meltdown. Her breathing was ragged and quick. She looked possessed. “Have you even been doing the diet?” she asked. “By the size of you, I'm guessing you have a lot of people to forgive. Like an entire city.”

“Hollywood, calm down,” coaxed Miss Marcia. She looked at me the way you would a crushed dog on the highway.

“Calm down? Are you serious? I want a lawyer because this poor heifer is making us lose.”

Did she really call me that? Judging by the muffled laughter from the boys, she had indeed. Her green eyes burned into mine. “Look at your clothes. Fashion Bug PLUS called and said you can keep them! Oh, let me guess your phony boyfriend likes them.” She rolled her eyes. “He's probably not even real. I'd bet you Photoshopped that picture in your room.”

“Hollywood!” warned Hank.

“Like anyone would ever look at her.”

There were twenty-five campers in the room hearing this. And maybe because of all the fog, everything she said seemed deafening. Her voice was shrill.

“Come on. No boy would ever want her.”

“Amber Gold. Thop.”

“I got a postcard,” I said belatedly, pathetically. Just then I desperately wanted to collect that postcard and shove it in her face. But as that scene played out in my imagination, I knew Hollywood would only laugh at it. It was, after all, only a crab. Only a word.

She cackled. “A postcard?”

“He signed it ‘love,' ” I said, my voice trailing off.

“Don't they have mirrors in Baltimore? Have you looked at yourself lately?”

“Thop it!” Hank yelled, but it was really hard to take him seriously when he spoke like a Loony Tune. “Enough with the inthults!”

It was Belinda who ended it. She waved her arm laden with bracelets and said, “You're treading on thin ice, Amber Gold. Don't make me call your father, because I will.”

At that, Hollywood flinched. We all saw it.

“It's not about winning,” ordered Miss Marcia.

“Yes it is!” blasted Hollywood.

Of course it was about winning. At least to Hollywood it was. Which was why I wasn't surprised to see Hollywood, right then, reach into her pocket. As Belinda made her way over to her, I saw angry Hollywood's arm cock back. Then seconds later, something hit me. Literally—something knocked me on the side of my face so hard my teeth rang. My eyes were closed so I didn't see anything, but when I opened them, a certain lavender rhinestone cell phone pivoted on the floor beside me. It spun around cleanly, artfully, like a pinwheel.
She must really have an arm
, I thought,
because that was hurled with incredible velocity
. Then something wet slipped down my mouth. When I wiped my lip, I saw blood. A lot of blood. First my lip tingled. Then it throbbed.

After that, Belinda, Hank, and Miss Marcia tackled Hollywood. They pounded her with their fists. Hank slammed her heart-shaped face into the floor again and again.

Not exactly.

Instead we all collectively watched that violet cell phone spinning on the floor. Hank blew his whistle and everything—even time—seemed frozen inside a magic trick. The campers looked at their shoes or their hands like something very important had happened inside them. Ever so slowly, cell phone still pirouetting, lip still pulsating, I slid my feet into my flip-flops. One small step at a time, I stumbled toward the door. Holding my lip that hammered, and swallowing my iron-tasting blood, I tried not to cry. And by some mercy, I didn't.

Walking to the door seemed to take fifteen years. When my fingertips finally grazed the door's metal handle, and Hank's whistle finally quieted, I knew one thing for sure: I was done. Done. The deepest part of myself—that part that doesn't even have a name, that part that's a red hot lava—boiled up and howled at me:
Leave. Leave. LEAVE!

“Take that, mudder-fubbers,” I said, making sure the door hit my ass like the easy target it was on the way out. “I'm ou-wa here. I'm leab-ing Uto-ia.”

Bumblingbee: TJ?

Voodooyoo is offline.

Bumblingbee: R u there, TJ? IM me.

Voodooyoo is offline.

Bumblingbee: I need to talk to you. PLS IM ME.

Voodooyoo is offline.

From: Bethany Stern

To:
[email protected]

Subject: WARNING! WARNING! UR DIET IS A SCAM!

Dear Forgiveness Diet Inventor,

newsflash, ur diet is fake. Too bad I learned this @ fat camp, but hey, u take ur chances. You should stop leading ppl on with ur dumb forgiveness hocus pocus. It's a lot of crap, and what's worse, u probably know it. Being fat sucks, it absolutely sucks, so don't make it any worse with ur phony claims.

Forgiveness MY ASS.

Sincerely, Bethany (another dicked around customer) Stern

Bumblingbee: TJ WTFRU? You wont believe what just happened.

Voodooyoo is offline.

Bumblingbee: someone threw a PHONE AT ME

Voodooyoo is offline.

Bumblingbee: AND CALLED ME A POOR HEIFER

Voodooyoo is offline.

From: Bethany Stern

To:
[email protected]

Subject: WARNING! WARNING! UR DIET IS A SCAM!

I hope u die a long, drawn out painful death. Then I hope u are buried in a sewage plant next to all the other crap in the world. U SHOULD B ASHAMED OF URSELF. every single person I meet I'm gonna tell them what a liar u are. And by the way, I hate ur guts. And another thing. I hope you get REALLY fat.