Chocolate Chocolate Moons
Read Chocolate Chocolate Moons Online
Authors: JACKIE KINGON
Copyright © 2012 Jackie Kingon
All rights reserved.
ISBN-10: 1477561803
EAN-13: 9781477561805
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62110-610-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011919692
CreateSpace, North Charleston, SC
TO AL
FOR HIS SUPPORT AND LOVE
Contents
T
HESE WORDS CHANGE
my life:
“Congratulations, plus-size student! Based on your cholesterol readings, body-fat ratio, Fibonacci number sequence for digesting chocolate, and high school cafeteria records, you have won the Good and Plenty Scholarship for two at Neil Armstrong University on the Moon. Call this toll-free number to collect your prize.”
Until this moment, my life has been filled with diets, promises to diet, failed diets, exercise, therapies, nutritionists, acupuncture, hypnosis and memories of falling over the marbles rolled in my path at school as my classmates laughed and yelled, “Molly Marbles, round as a marble, fat as a moon.”
I suck in my breath, pull up my bra straps, push my hair behind my moon-shaped face, crack each finger and toe, and call the number. Then I call my boyfriend, Drew Barron, who is far heavier than I am.
“Pack your bags, sweetheart. We’re joining the class of 2333 at Neil Armstrong University on the Moon where the gravity is light, the classes are right, and the livin’ is gonna be easy.”
One month later Drew and I sit on the Earth–Moon shuttle feeding each other our favorite candy, Chocolate Moons. We savor its rich dark chocolate coating for as long as we can before our tongues slip into the dense truffle center. We pucker our lips, kiss, and swallow. I lean back wide-eyed and look at Drew.
“These are so delicious,” I sigh, “they should be called Chocolate Chocolate Moons.”
“You’re right,” Drew says, closing his eyes and letting the last sweet morsel slide down his throat. “Can’t have too much of a good thing.”
I turn toward the window on my left. When I crane my neck I can see the Moon coming very close. Drew leans in to get a better look. Its glowing gray surface is slowly covering the window until it is the only thing we can see. I sit silently and wonder if I made the right choice, my excitement masking my nervousness. Suddenly a red light above blinks “Warning: Gravity Change” and under that, blinking green, “Seat Belt Release.”
We yank to attention.
“So soon,” I murmur.
Drew pales and white-knuckles his armrest.
“It’s time,” I say, prying his sweaty fingers free.
We stand, shift from foot to foot, and shuffle with the others toward the door.
My damp palms flutter like little birds. I spread my arms, lower them to the smooth cool railing, and slide forward until I stand at the threshold’s flashing lights. I descend a few steps, extend a toe and step on to the Lunar Port’s silver-and-black tiled floor.
My body looks the same, the soft skin jiggling beneath my arms, my butt reaching way beyond its proper place, forming a humongous Z with my tummy, but I feel as light as a whipped egg white in a floating island dessert. I leap, higher than I thought I could, toward a sign that says “Weighing Area,” step on a large round circle embedded in the floor, and read the numbers floating before me. My 287 Earth pounds are 47.6 Moon pounds. I raise my arms in triumph. I throw my head back and shriek, “Miracle! Miracle! It’s a miracle!”
Drew hesitates in the doorway. “Outta my way, fat boy!” snarls a man shoving him through. Drew quivers, and then he bounces like a ball on springs toward the weighing area laughing out loud ignoring the stares. His 385 pounds are 65.
A flight attendant shakes her sleek blond hair, frowns into the confusion of sights and sounds surrounding her, and mutters to no one in particular, “You can always tell the new arrivals.” She waves her luggage chip over a bag and scoots to the slide-run.
I squint through the high clear dome that protects us from the vacuum outside and gasp at the billions of unblinking diamond sharp stars against black velvet space. Without an atmosphere the familiar words
twinkle twinkle little star
are now as meaningless as my former weight.
Drew slows and jelly-rolls near me, pushes his dark curly hair from his eyes, and gives me a serious look. He straightens and stands; his elephantine shape stops jiggling. He walks toward me on legs that look like hundred-year-old oak trees. I grab his hand. My voice cracks. “You know, we’re never going to see a blue sky if we stay on the Moon.”
Drew grins and pulls me close. “But, sweetheart,” he says and laughs, “we never have to see a scale either.”
Part frontier town, part research center, every café and market in Armstrong City crackles with the energy buzzing from scientists, architects, engineers, and more miners than those who finally dug the hole from some kid’s backyard in North America to China.
My scholarship for writing the winning essay, “The Joy of Salami,” pays the rent on a small condo in a crater near the university. It is the first school either of us has attended where we look average and fit right in. Everyone jokes that the Moon is made not of green cheese but full-fat mozzarella. We hold hands and march around singing, “When the Moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.”
Drew studies media and marketing. I major in culinary arts and, which I thought was a whim, minor in criminology. It was a strange combination of classes that overlapped when studying chemical compositions of foods, and poisonous reactions on worlds with different gravities and atmospheric pressures. I also learned techniques for observation that come in handy sooner rather than later.
Like college students everywhere, we party hard and drink the local moonshine that tastes a lot like beer. We eat and dance, eat and make love, and have heated philosophical discussions like if Eve made apple pies from the forbidden apple tree in the Garden of Eden, would God let her and Adam remain so they could open a bakery? And, if not, is there a God?
Several times a week we swim at the university’s pool floating like balloons in bathing suits we were too embarrassed to wear on Earth. Shopping is divine: everything fits or has to be taken in.
It doesn’t matter that Earth’s light shining on the Moon doesn’t look as romantic as moonlight shining on the Earth; I’m happier than I have ever been in my life.
But, alas, my happiness is briefer than a frozen margarita on a hot summer day.
One morning when soap slips from my hand and slides to the floor, I bend to pick it up and find a half-empty bottle of vanilla birth control pills stashed under the bathroom sink.
Mine are chocolate!
Three weeks pass. The mystery of the vanilla pills is solved at the Man in the Moon costume ball. Wearing my salad costume, in memory of all my former diets, I watch as Drew is called onstage. Dressed as a ball of green cheese encased in a floating onion ring, he receives the Best Costume award from last year’s winner, a student named Colorful Copies. CC, as she likes to be called, is a plain-looking girl with brown hair and brown eyes. She is heavier than I am, wears a 50DD bra, and dyes her brown eyebrows rainbow colors. Her fondue-pot costume with its multicolored fork headdress is stylish if you like that kind of thing.