Fat Angie (10 page)

“You ever wish you could meet someone in a photograph?” said KC. “Like, ask that guy there what he was really thinking when the picture went
snap
?”

“Sure. I mean, I guess so. But it’s . . . what you’re saying . . . it’s just make-believe.”

Fat Angie plopped on the bed. Fidgeting with loose threads, she made a hole in the knee of her jeans.

“I’m supposed to stay in reality. Be grounded,” Fat Angie said.

“Your shrink or your mother?”

Fat Angie shrugged. “Both, I guess. See . . .”

A hum spun inside of Fat Angie. Swirled with the taste of vulnerable and uncertain. Her lips parted for nothing but air.

“What?” KC asked.

“My sister . . . she signed up for the air force and was deployed to Iraq two years ago. She’s been missing since February, which is nine months, seven days, and”— she eyed her Casio calculator watch —“eight hours. But she’s not dead.”

“I knew. About your sister,” KC said. “I friended the Facebook page your father put up when she went missing. Plus . . . I saw you on
Dateline.
”

“You saw me on
Dateline
?”

“The two-part Valentine’s Day special,” said KC, turning to Fat Angie. “It was the one with you and your mom. Wang glassy-eyed stoned. Your dad via satellite from Seattle.”

“You saw me on
Dateline
?”

“It seemed really hard. That cutaway money shot, the video clip. You and your sister. Playing basketball in the driveway against your dad and Wang. It was kinda Norman Rockwell. Well, a suburban and extremely diverse Rockwell.”

“I am critically stupid,” said Angie.

“No,” KC assured Fat Angie.

“For some reason I just thought you didn’t know. Which is totally stupid ’cause the whole world knows,” said Fat Angie. “You could’ve said.”

“What?” asked KC. “‘What’s it like to have your sister taken hostage?’ Seems kind of a killjoy intro.”

Fat Angie nodded, biting the inside of her cheek.

“I really . . .” KC said. “I liked you before I knew you. Well, at least I thought I would. You seemed real. And uncomfortable. You were the only one in that interview who was uncomfortable. That was comforting. So, when Esther said we were moving to Dryfalls, Ohio — which I was not jumping on the joy for — I don’t know. I hoped we could be friends or something.”

“You don’t know me,” said Fat Angie, rubbing the scars on her wrist.

KC rolled her chair across the room.

“OK. You like Where Did You Come From? Italian cream soda with two shots of vanilla. You support the fight against cancer.” KC held up her yellow bracelet. “You care about your brother even though he’s crazy mean in public. And you try to please your mother but don’t know where to start. And you’d probably do anything to see your sister again.”

“Anybody could know that stuff,” said Fat Angie.

“Could they know I like you?” said KC.

Butterflies flapped their butterfly wings in belly time.

“Not that I’m not transparent,” said KC. “Clearly, Jake knows.”

Fat Angie, her stomach hatching cocoon after cocoon of butterflies, was unsure how KC was transparent. And what did Jake have to do with any of it?

“Jake knows what?” said Fat Angie.

“That I’m gay,” said KC, as though it were obvious.

“Like, gay-girl gay?” said Fat Angie.

“Well, definitely not like funny-ha-ha gay,” said KC. “Though I
am
a lot on the funny. It’s the cynicism, Esther says.”

“Does Esther know you’re gay-girl gay?”

“You’re totally weirding here,” said KC. “I’m sorry. I thought . . . I thought you . . .”

“That I was gay-girl gay,” said Fat Angie.

First the unexpected conversation with Jake at The Backstory about KC being different. Now. Now Fat Angie had been perceived as full-on gay-girl gay. But there had been no pamphlets. There had been no rainbow-in-the-sky epiphany. There had been nothing. Had there?

“Angie?” said KC.

There had been no dancing Care Bears blasting belly rainbows in Fat Angie’s dreams either. But were Care Bears a symbol of gay-girl gay? She really had not been confident when discussing masturbation with her therapist. She did not know if she preferred Lady Gaga to the long-tongued KISS singer Gene Simmons. But she did prefer either one of them to the image of Barbies when forced to choose. The Barbies were too perfect. Fat Angie did not like too perfect. That much she was certain of.

In truth, Fat Angie had not contemplated the notion of lip-to-lip contact with
anyone
as a serious possibility. That was until KC had been so close to her an hour earlier. In the bathroom. At the baby shower. Until then, the idea of anyone kissing her had been outside the realm of statistical reality. But there. With a collage of Johnny Depp’s tattoos . . . with a framed photo of KC with a very, very perfect kind of pretty girl and a grainy printout of an ultrasound image on a baby-shower cake . . . Fat Angie was engulfed in a huge conundrum.

Pause.

Pause.

Look-down-at-your-shoes kind of pause.

“Look, I’m sorry,” said KC, kick-rolling her chair back to the computer. “Let’s just forget the reveal part of the conversation.”

That was, as far as Fat Angie was concerned, impossible.

Could Fat Angie be releasing some gay-girl-gay vibe unknowingly? Clearly, being introverted was not the code key for the lesbian lockbox. Ellen DeGeneres was not introverted and was in all regards
very
gay.

“There it is,” said KC.

Fat Angie stood behind KC.

“Now 4,059 Facebook junkies know that photos of embryos on baby-shower cakes are the new
it,
” said KC.

“That’s a lot of friends,” said Fat Angie.

“Most of those people don’t know me,” said KC. “It’s like my dad says, ‘It’s not worth wasting your time letting people in.’ But a cynic can still dream.”

KC stood up. She was very, very close to Fat Angie.

Fat Angie’s armpits began to sweat. “I think I’m gay-girl gay with you,” she said.

“We’re crystal, don’t worry about it,” KC said. “You don’t have to say something because I blended the lines for a sec. We can just be friends.”

Friends? Fat Angie marveled at how “be friends” dug into her chest like some Syfy channel heart-devouring creature. It . . . really hurt. She shifted her weight from one foot to the next and looked down.

“Cool?” KC said, leaning in to Fat Angie’s eye line.

“Yeah,” said Fat Angie. “The best kind. Right?”

KC grinned halfheartedly. “Sure,” she said, and went back to the computer.

Fat Angie sat on the bed.

Maybe Fat Angie really preferred neither Lady Gaga
nor
Gene Simmons. Maybe it was because they were not really options. Could KC Romance be what she really preferred?

Fat Angie walked down the sidewalk of Oaklawn Ends, her mind swarming with the notion of potentially being gay-girl gay. The thought was both confining and freeing. But as soon as KC had revealed her liking for her, she had retracted it. Fat Angie was confused by this limited-time offer.

She was challenged to count beyond ten in her head as she neared her house. Desperate to clear her head, she mumbled the numbers under her breath. She stepped over the cracks in the sidewalk, not because of obsessive-compulsive disorder but because it somehow felt like a game. A game she played, of course, alone.

“Hey,” said Jake, throwing an orange tennis ball to Ryan.

She was perplexed by his instigation of chit-chat again.

“Hey,” Fat Angie said.

Ryan returned the ball and Jake threw it in Fat Angie’s direction.

Ryan bounded in full sprint after it and tried to halt the bounce with his paws.

Jake and Fat Angie met in the middle of the street.

“What’s up?” he said.

“Nothing,” said Fat Angie. “That’s not true.”

“So . . . ?” he said.

“This is really strange,” she said, tugging at her jeans.

His eyes were forced downward with the awkwardness of her tugging.

“What?” he said, tossing the ball for Ryan in the circle of the cul-de-sac.

“We don’t talk, Jake,” said Fat Angie.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. I mean, why would we? You know?”

“So . . . ?” said Fat Angie.

Ryan returned with the ball and stood between them for a cue. Jake reached down, tugging the ball back and forth. “You’re a little badass.
Rrrawr
. . .”

Jake tore the ball away and hurled it.

“Are you into me or something?” said Fat Angie.

“Wow. Wait. How?” asked Jake.

“Forget it.” She started to walk off, and he grabbed her arm.

“Listen, Angie.” Jake cleared his throat. “You know. I think it’s cool you think I’m hot.”

“I don’t . . . ,” Fat Angie said. “I mean, you are, I guess. But no.”

“Then?”

“Then why?” said Fat Angie. “Why stick up for me with Gary? Why give KC a hard time? She’s, like, the only one in the whole school who gives me a fair break, Jake. And it’s a pretty big school.”

“I just — what do you know about her? You met her only a few days ago.”

“I met you a few days ago,” said Fat Angie, walking away. “And we have lived across the street from each other for years.”

“It’s not like your sister and I never played ball.”

“Yeah, you and her. Sometimes
with
me, but not you and me,” Fat Angie said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Look, KC’s not — I just think she’s —”

“Gay?” Fat Angie finished.

“Yeah,” said Jake. “For starters. And while smokin’ hot, she’s down with the ladies.”

“So what?”

“Seriously?” Jake asked. “When people figure it out, they —”

“It’s just gay.”

“Drew Haligner. Cool guy. Cool grades. Cool at sports. Comes out. Boom! It’s like a bomb nobody wants to get near.”

“She’s different. People won’t care like they did with Drew.”

“Even if that’s true, she’s got history,” Jake said.

“History? What does that mean, and why does it even matter to you?”

“Maybe I just . . . care,” Jake said.

“You? Everyone’s rock star cares about Fat Angie?”

“Don’t call yourself that,” he said.

“Why? It’s what everyone else does.”

“Look, I dunno. I care. OK?”

“Right. That’s like admitting to seeing the latest
Rocky
sequel. It doesn’t happen. I’m not stupid, Jake.”

“I don’t think . . .”— he stretched his neck —“that you’re stupid.”

She raised an eyebrow. An unattractive gesture, as it made her lip simultaneously rise. She stopped the action.

Jake continued. “Before I moved here, I lost my uncle. I was . . . I don’t know, six. But he was kinda my world. And then he just wasn’t . . . there.”

“And?”

Ryan returned with the tennis ball. “What happened with your sister . . . it makes sense that you came off the hinge. You two were tight. Playing basketball in the driveway . . . hanging out all the time. I could see how she always made sure you were OK. And now that she’s —”

“She’s fine,” said Fat Angie.

Jake did not follow her absoluteness.

“You think she’s
dead
but she’s not,” Fat Angie said. “That’s what they’re all trying to make me believe. Did my mom — did she get you to do this? Be all nice to me.”

“No,” said Jake. “It’s just that . . . Angie, she’s been missing for nine months.”

“Missing,”
Fat Angie repeated. “That’s
not
dead.”

Jake took the ball from Ryan and pitched it into the backyard.

“Look,” Jake said, “I’m just trying to help you out. And I guess I hurt your feelings. But I’m not gonna say sorry.” He walked toward his house. “And don’t ask me why.”

Fat Angie had been about to ask why.

“Because I don’t know why,” said Jake. “Just doesn’t seem right.”

“And you’re all . . . um . . . right. Right clothes, right family, right dog! You’re oozing with right.”

“No, I’m not,” he said, turning back to her. “Your sister — she lit up this street, you know? But lights burn out.”

“Did you steal that from the Morbid Hallmark Collection?”

“No, it’s a Jake Fetch original.”

Fat Angie stood there, minus the pseudoclever comeback.

“You’re not the only one who lost something,” Jake said. “This neighborhood — Dryfalls. We all lost.”

“You don’t know,” said Fat Angie. “They
don’t
know.”

“Right,” said Jake. “You’ve cornered the market on
know.
”

Awkward I-don’t-know-what-to-do-now pause.

“You’re weird,” said Fat Angie. “You’re weird and mean.”

“People are mean to you,” said Jake. “I know that. People are jerks — people are messed up in all kind of ways. People do . . .
stupid
stuff when they’re freaked. And yeah, you freak them. But quit sizing me up with everyone else, like I’m some life-size cutout jockazoid. That really pisses me off, Angie.”

He shook his head and spoke under his breath: “If only I knew what to do.”

“About?” said Fat Angie.

“You wouldn’t get it,” he said.

Jake walked off to play fetch with Ryan in their perfectly manicured backyard. Edge to edge, Jake was the epitome of perfect. No matter what he said. He did not know the depths of her pain — her fight to keep her sister’s memory alive. Regardless of the drugs the therapist pumped into her, they could not mute her love for her sister. They couldn’t take away her hope.

And right then Fat Angie looked up. Not into the sun, because that would most likely have damaged her retina. It was the basketball hoop. She had unknowingly stopped underneath it. Day in and day out for nine months, there had not been a single sound of a basketball pound-swooshing through the net.

That was when it happened.

The idea came to her, the way ideas often did: out of nowhere. As if growing on an invisible tree above her head and suddenly ripe for the picking. Fat Angie knew what she had to do.

Try out for the William Anders High School girls’ varsity basketball team.