Teenage Waistland (16 page)

The restaurant is alive with loud, rhythmic thumping as we go back to find Bobby and Jen. Bobby’s sitting by himself and looks happy to see us. Jen is still whooping it up with one of Coco’s guests. The guy puts his hand on her ass, and I’m thinking that maybe she’s too drunk to realize how old this guy is—twenty-five, at least—and that we should just get her away from him and give her some cofee or something. Jen can’t show up at Marcie’s house wasted.

“Buffet table’s open,” Bobby says. Char is bouncing her
head and shimmying to the beat. More than back to normal. Back to Char Gone Wild.

“Char …,” I say. I want to ask her if we should do something about Jen, but Char is too busy horsing around with Bobby to respond.

“Not so fast with the buffet.” She’s grabbing his hand and then Marcie’s and dragging them past the DJ, toward the dance floor. “You too, East! I don’t have three hands.” She finally yanks them onto the floor and shrieks, “Conga!” She places Bobby’s hands on her hips and yells at me to grab Bobby’s. While I’m shaking my head in violent protest, Marcie takes hold of Bobby and starts kicking out her legs, following Char’s lead. Coco and her father grab on next, then some older ladies wearing pink straw sombreros. In about two seconds flat, there’s twenty of them in the line, shaking, kicking, and shrieking, “Ba-ba, ba-ba, ba ba,” to the beat. Char is the only one with free arms as the big pulsing snake winds around the dance floor, and she’s waving them over her head, laughing like a hyena.

“C’mon, East,” she screams as she tries to pull me in when the line comes around, but I wriggle out of her grasp. Her bag is banging against her leg and Bobby’s holding her tight and cracking up. Coco’s got her dad behind her and he’s nuzzling her. I didn’t even know Char knew how to conga.

I head over to the Teenage Waistland table. It’s empty except for a few gifts and sweaters left on the chairs. I sit down, nibble on a tortilla chip, and try not to look at Coco and her father. And I especially can’t look at Char and Bobby. His long arms are fully around her waist and her head is against his chest. A rush of anger flows over me, and I try to push it away by thinking about how bad Char must feel.
She’s the one who made this whole Teenage Waistland thing happen, and now her surgery is on hold. But I just can’t let go. As incomprehensible as the idea is, the only thing my mind can focus on is that if not for her, Bobby’s arms might be around
me
.

There are few things in life more poignant than a heifer’s final gorge on the eve of gastric surgery. Even the last meal of a death-row serial killer can’t compare. See, the killer’s last encounter with food is beside the point—he’s got his impending demise to deal with. (Though chicken-fried steak smothered in mashed potatoes and gravy, with a side of slaw and chocolate pudding, certainly must ease the pain somewhat.) For the heifer, however, the appetite-dampening properties of being dead aren’t going to kick in for many years; she faces decades of craving and longing before it’ll all be over.

It’s the night before my Lap-Band surgery, and Jen’s gone. She spent last night puking in my bathroom after being a drunken slob at Coco’s and then announced this morning that she was so hungover, all she wanted to do was go back home.

“But my surgery’s tomorrow!” I shrieked at her. “You can’t abandon me when I need you most. Eat something, or just go back to bed. You’ll feel better soon.”

“C’mon, Marce,” she groaned. “I was here all last weekend—I spoke to your group because you wanted me to, I showed up at Coco’s party because you wanted me to, and right now I just don’t feel well and I want to go home to my own bed. Not such a big thing to ask.”

“I went to Mexico with you,” I grumbled.

“And got a great suntan. Big sacrifice,” Jen snapped, and then held her hand to her head—her hair is freshly blown out and her makeup’s perfect. “Please, Marce. I’d never leave you like this unless I was really sick.”

“You don’t look so sick,” I said under my breath, and if Jen heard it, she chose to ignore it. I let her wrap her arms around me, and then she picked up her bag and headed down to meet Carlo in the driveway.

“I’ll call you tonight, Marce—and I’ll be there with you via text until the minute you go under,” she yelled from the steps.

Gran was the second-to-last person I wanted at the table tonight for my last supper before surgery, but when I complained about it this afternoon, Abby exploded. “She’s your grandmother, and you’re her only grandchild. I’m sorry she says things that hurt your feelings, but she only wants the best for you. Gran’s sick, and when she’s gone, you’ll feel horrible about how you treated her. So I beg you—for me: act like a human being.” Okay, maybe Gran
is
looking thinner and frailer than the last time I saw her, but I’m sure her big trap is still working just fine.

The table is heaping with some of my favorite foods—
macaroni and cheese (emphasis on cheese), barbecued chicken wings with four-alarm sauce, and steak fajitas. Well,
heaping
isn’t exactly the word. The special dishes Abby made at my request are on small plates—single servings, a tasting, really. What
are
overflowing are the salad bowl and salmon and veggie stir-fry. I can’t believe they’re torturing me with paltry portions on the night before surgery.

I’m not even done polishing off my first fajita when Liselle starts in. “Ya know, Marcie,” she says in her idiot East Coast Valley Girl accent, “June’s mother got a Lap-Band last year, and she’s gained, like, thirty pounds.”

Gran is out of the gate before Abby or Ronny can respond, lest Liselle, God forbid, talk me out of anything. “Liselle, honey, your friend’s mother is obviously eating things she shouldn’t—”

“And the Lap-Band is a tool for weight loss, not an automatic cure,” Abby cuts in, probably terrified that Gran will say something to set me off.

But Gran
never
lets anyone derail her train of thought. “Marcie is dedicated to losing her weight, and I know she’ll do beautifully.”

Dedicated?
Hounded and harassed is more like it. The macaroni and cheese congeal in my mouth. I put my fork down. “Liselle, you’re a brain-dead little bimbo. Which makes anyone who likes you, like June, a brain-dead bimbo. And, given how genetics work, it’s highly likely that June’s mother is also brain-dead. Therefore, I ask that you please keep your whole network of stupid out of my face.”

Liselle cocks her head and puts on a little pout.
Poor angry fat girl
. I’m noticing that she’s wearing the silvery blue eye stick that came in the Sephora makeup kit Abby got
each of us, and it goes much better with her pale blue eyes than my crap brown ones. I’m tempted to wash it off her with my peach iced tea.

“Listen, Marcie,” Liselle tries again in her fake sugary voice. “It’s just so radical. I could help you with your diet and exercise, you know. Look at me, and I love to eat.” I glance at Liselle’s plate. A small lonely pile of overcooked vegetables. Yeah, a real gourmand. And that’s when she
remembers
to eat.

I want to say—sweetly, of course—
Liselle, I know you don’t like facts getting in your way, but nearly ninety percent of people who lose weight gain it all back—and more—within five years. And, surgery is the only clinically proven solution for long-term weight loss for people who get to be my size
. But my idiotic lip is quivering and I’m afraid my voice will break if I try to speak.

Abby smells another disaster and jumps in. “Sweetie, I’m sure Marcie appreciates your concern. But she’s tried very hard to diet and she’s convinced—we all are—that this surgery is the right answer.”

“And she’s going to do just beautifully, you’ll see,” Gran rasps again.

“She’s going to have scars, you know,” Liselle mutters before going back to moving food around on her plate. She knows how to hit the old lady where it hurts.

“Shucks! Now I won’t be able to be like you and wear a thong bikini with my butt cheeks hanging out,” I snarl. “So classy.”

Gran shakes her head like she’s bewildered about how a vile creature like me could descend from someone as delicate and refined as she, while Abby launches into her usual diatribe
about my filthy mouth. She’s halfway through the part about not raising a guttersnipe, whatever the hell that is, when I push away from the table and walk out.

My dad’s not picking up his cell and he’s not in his office, so I dial his home number on a lark—he’s hardly ever there. Tonight, someone is—a woman answers, and I slam down the phone and hit redial to make sure I dialed right. But the number’s right. Dad’s seeing someone and he didn’t tell me. I speed-dial Jen to vent and maybe see what she knows, but her cell rings once and goes to voice mail. Out cold, probably, still sleeping off the booze. Some best friend! WTF?

I hop out of bed and pull out my stash from behind a huge bag of clothes in the back of my closet. It’s not even seven p.m. yet—I have a good five hours before all food and drink must stop. Barbecue chips and an Almond Joy sound about right. And my favorite book,
Special Topics in Calamity Physics
. Blue van Meer is a smart and freaky sixteen-year-old who gets to travel around the country having adventures with her professor father after her mother is killed. Not that I’d ever want Abby dead. Just absent. That way I’d
have
to live with my dad. It’d be the two of us.

Book in hand, goodies in lap, propped up by a mountain of fluffy down pillows covered in cream Ralph Lauren linens, and sinking deliciously into my Tempur-Pedic queen-sized bed, I begin to calm down. Abby disapproved when she saw how Ronny’s decorator outfitted my new bedroom when we moved in last year. White and cream everywhere, except for the part of the walls above the wainscoting, which are a cool
mint green. “Marcie is going to get it filthy in no time,” she wailed. Then she shook her finger in my face. “No food in bed—no chocolates, candies, nothing.” Ronny just laughed.

My bedroom is the only aspect of my life that improved when we moved to Alpine. And I’ve been pretty good about keeping the duvet cover clean. There’s only a small area of discoloration, from the time Jen came down two Thanksgivings ago—a few weeks before we went to Mexico for her surgery—and we ate pizza on the bed while watching
The Parent Trap
for the zillionth time. Yeah, on my thirty-six-inch flat screen that pulls out of the antiqued white armoire across from my bed. My father’d have a stroke if he knew. We didn’t have any TVs in our old house, so I was an outcast as a young child, not knowing the Barney song. But while the other kids were still pooping themselves and laughing with glee at the moronic antics of a purple dinosaur, I was reading on my own by age four. Dad taught me how. He had teachers’ hours and Abby was always working late. We didn’t dissect the universe on long road trips, like the father and daughter in
Calamity Physics
, but we did go to lots of museums and libraries together. I’m back to the part where Blue van Meer starts hanging around with the Bluebloods, the cool, artsy clique at her new prep school. I glance at my clock radio. Nearly eight and Jen hasn’t called me back. Neither has Dad, but at least he’ll be there tomorrow. Dad wasn’t all that hyped about this surgery—he asked me the same question about fifty times: Were Abby and especially Gran bullying me into it? “Of course,” I told him, but I also told him that I wanted this too, especially after the writing-seminar chair episode. I’m not going to be gorgeous or anything, like Jen, when I’m thin, but my body won’t get in the way of things like it does now.