Life in the Fat Lane
Read Life in the Fat Lane Online
Authors: Cherie Bennett
“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, Lara,” she began slowly, “but … well, I’ve been wanting to talk to you. You really have a very pretty face, you know? And I know it must be hard for you. I mean, some people in this school can be really cruel.”
I stood there, rooted to the spot, mute.
“In junior high,” she continued, “I weighed, like, fifteen pounds more than I do now, and I found this great diet to take the weight off, and it worked.”
My face burned with rage and humiliation. “You want to give me your
diet
?”
“I don’t want to offend you,” she said quickly. “I just know what it’s like to want to lose weight, and—”
“You don’t know anything,” I said in carefully measured tones. “You look at me and think you know, but you don’t.”
“Listen, just forget I said anything—”
“No,” I replied, “you listen. A year ago, at my old school, I was homecoming queen.
Queen!
I was thinner than you are. Then I got this disease called Axell-Crowne Syndrome, and it made me gain all this weight. You think I’m just this fat girl that you pity—”
“I didn’t mean it like that—”
“Yes, yes, you did,” I said earnestly. “I know you did, because I was once exactly like you.”
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Published by
Dell Laurel-Leaf
an imprint of
Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York
Copyright © 1998 by Cherie Bennett
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eISBN: 978-0-307-56921-9
RL:5.2
v3.1
For my grandmother Jessica Berman, who was so much more beautiful than I ever understood, and for my father, Dr. Bennett H. Berman, who always knew it.
And for my husband, Jeff Gottesfeld, who reads every word of every draft of every manuscript, including this one. His talent, brilliance, insight, and inspiration contributed to this book at least as much as the words I wrote.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following writers, media outlets, and publications: Fiona Soltes, staff writer, “Hard to Swallow,”
The Tennessean
(Sunday, June 9, 1996, Living Section, p. F–1); John Stossel, reporter, “Growing Up Fat,” ABC News, 20/20 segment aired July 28, 1995 (transcript courtesy of Journal Graphics); Karen S. Schneider, with Shelley Levitt, Danelle Morton, Paula Yoo (in Los Angeles), Sarah Skolnik, Alicia Brooks, Rochelle Jones (in Washington), Ron Arias, Liz McNeil, Jane Sugden (in New York City), Don Sider, Marisa Salcines (in Miami), Barbara Sandler (in Chicago), and Margaret Nelson (in Minneapolis), “Mission Impossible: Deluged by Images from TV, Movies and Magazines, Teenage Girls Do Battle with an Increasingly Unrealistic Standard of Beauty—and Pay a Price,”
People
(June 3, 1996, pp. 65–74); Zibby Schwarzman, “My Weight, Myself: Do Ten Extra Pounds Make Me a Less Worthy Person?”
Seventeen
(August 1993, pp. 102,
216); Corina Hughes, age fifteen, as told to Alison Bell, “I Was Fat,” ’
Teen
(January 1996, p. 42 ff.); Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, Ph.D., “Excessive Weight Preoccupation: Normative but Not Harmless,”
Nutrition Today
(March/April 1995, pp. 68–74); Janet Greeson, Ph.D.,
Food for Love: Healing the Food, Sex, Love and Intimacy Relationship
(Pocket Books, 1993, 1994); Ken Mayer,
Real Women Don’t Diet!: One Man’s Praise of Large Women & His Outrage at the Society That Rejects Them
(Bartleby Press, 1993); Mary Bray Pipher, Ph.D.,
Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls
(Putnam, 1994; Ballantine, 1995); Naomi Wolf,
The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
(Morrow, 1991; Anchor, 1992).
For medical information, special thanks to Kathleen Childers of the mobile unit of the Mental Health Coop of Nashville, Tennessee. Grateful thanks as well to Jeff Gottesfeld, my love, husband, sometimes collaborator, first reader, producer, and so much more than that; to Olga Silverstein, M.S.W., of the Ackerman Institute for Family Therapy (New York) for inspiration; to my teen readers around the world who have written me so many heartfelt letters on the subject of this novel; to Wendy Loggia, Beverly Horowitz, and my team at BDD; to the Charlotte Sheedy Agency and to Regula Noetzli; to the William Morris Agency; to the terrific teens and adults who critiqued early drafts of this novel—Amy, Claire, and Zoë Jarman, Gina Lodge, Carol Ponder, and Lisa Hurley. While actual people may be referred to in this novel, all situations (except for the
20/20
segment acknowledged above) and Axell-Crowne Syndrome are fictitious.
Entrant
: Lara Lynn Ardeche
Age
: 16
Hometown
: Nashville
D.O.B
.: May 9
Parents
: Mr. and Mrs. James “Jimbo” Ardeche.
Education
: Ensworth School; Forest Hills Middle School; currently a junior at Forest Hills High School, Nashville.
Special training
: piano—8 years; dance (ballet, jazz)—6 years.
Scholastic ambition
: to study music at Juilliard, in New York, and after college, to teach music to handicapped children.
Hobbies
: piano, dance, working with kids, working out, musical theater, going to Vanderbilt football games.
Sports
: dance, swimming, biking, tennis, field hockey, aerobic training.
Statistics
: Height—5′7″ Hair—Blond
Weight—118 Eyes—Blue
Scholastic honors
: National Honor Society, Who’s Who Among High School Sophomores, Tenth Grade French Honors Award, Superior rating for piano at Tennessee State Music Festival, Advisory board for Nashville Teen Peer Counseling Program.
Other accomplishments
: selected as Most Beautiful, Most Popular, and Best Smile in tenth grade; school orchestra soloist; voted Most Charming at Miss Willa’s School of Charm and Manners, age 12.
Employment
: summer job as junior music counselor at Bosley Camp for Children with Special Needs. Voted Best Junior Counselor.
Family
: Father James is an advertising executive; mother Carol owns an upscale catering business; and 13-year-old brother Scott is a skateboard champion.
Other facts
: Lara learned her winning, can-do attitude from her wonderful, supportive parents. She believes that she has been given many gifts and that it is her responsibility to share those gifts with others.
Personal motto
: “If you can dream it, you can achieve it.”
“
W
hich would you rather be, fat or dead?”
“Fat. Pass me the chips.”
“See, this is why I totally hate you,” my best friend, Molly Sheridan, said as she heaved the jumbo-sized bag of chips at me. “You can eat anything you want and not get fat. Frankly, Lara, you deserve to die painfully, squeezed to death in size-eighteen jeans.”
“Never happen,” I said as I stuck a handful of chips into my mouth. “I am metabolically blessed.”
“You’re blessed, period,” Molly said as she leaned back on the abs-crunch mat, balancing the Living section of
The Tennessean
, Nashville’s morning newspaper, on her bent knees. She read the headline aloud: “
HARD TO SWALLOW: Younger and Younger Children Receive Society’s Thin Message—and Find They Suffer from Eating Disorders
.”
“Bo-ring,” I sang out, reaching for another handful of chips. I scrambled to my feet so that I could look at my reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that line the home gym my mega-rich grandfather had installed two years earlier as a Christmas present.
I used the gym religiously, every other day. You can’t be a pageant queen and let yourself go.
Molly and I had just finished working out—well, I had worked out, she had kept me company—and I was feeling on top of the world. I was sixteen, madly in love with the most fantastic guy in the entire universe, and about to get ready for my school’s homecoming dance.