Teenage Waistland (3 page)

“Get moving,” she orders, standing up. “You’re so in outer space.”

There’s a cute guy wearing a football jersey walking by himself in the direction she’s pushing me. Dr. Weinstein is keeping the parents in the main auditorium and the kids are
being broken into groups for Q&A sessions in the smaller conference rooms. Through my ballerina flats—the only ballerina anything that could be linked with me these days—I feel the floorboards vibrate and imagine the building crumbling under the weight—all these fat teens wanting to be part of this trial. Or maybe, just part of something.

“Oh, great,” I mumble. “I’m already sweating.”

“Shut. Up. Shroud,” Char says, and pulls me along behind her as she strides toward this smiley nurse holding a clipboard. I groan and shake my elbow from her grip. The nurse says, “Ten,” to Hefty Quarterback, and, “Okay, number eleven,” to Char. Char whips around and yanks me forward.

“She’s twelve.”

Twelve is exactly how old I feel when Char speaks for me, which, in fact, she’s been doing since the day I turned twelve. Since the day my mother shoved me, my friends—my entire birthday party including the gifts and loot bags—out the front door with Char’s mom, Crystal, who piled us all into her minivan and took us to Jan’s Ice Cream Parlor. That was the party where I couldn’t speak, much less blow out the candles. The party where Crystal sobbed when they sang “Happy Birthday,” the party where Char whispered, “East, that’s so
you
,” as I numbly opened my presents.
So me?
Not that Char meant any harm or could have imagined I’d vomit my ice cream cake all over the table, but that was the moment I realized I had no idea at all who I was. The only thing I knew was that it was my twelfth birthday party, and an hour earlier, I had flung my cardboard party hat at the girl who called it babyish, and ran off to get my Little Miss Briarcliff tiara. I bopped down the drafty stairs to our basement, but never finished looking for the dumb pageant crown. I found
my dad—he was supposed to be at work—hanging from a beam instead, his feet dangling above my old wooden rabbit step stool, which lay in pieces on the concrete floor.

If not for Char, I wouldn’t still be here.
On earth
, I mean, not just here in Midtown. As I think about this, my annoyance fades. Really, I should kiss her feet for towing me along in her life.

We came here together, all 568 pounds of us; Char is five feet eight, two inches taller and carrying twelve pounds more. If this were an SAT math question, it might be:

Together, two obese girls weigh 568 pounds and want to shed 288 of them. If each of the girls wishes to lose the same amount of weight and still maintain the 12-pound difference, what does each girl hope to weigh?

I’ll just tell you. I’m 278 pounds—144 light-years away from my 134-pound target weight. Char weighs 290 pounds and her “so hot” target weight is 146. That’s as of yesterday, at least, when Char made me come over for a weigh-in on the digital scale Crystal ran out and bought in the midst of their Lap-Band mania. Char insisted we needed to know our
exact
weight because they’d use it along with our height to calculate our body mass index, and we needed to make sure we have BMIs of 40 or more or else we’d be disqualified. I didn’t see how there could be any doubt that we’d be well over the cutoff. But Crystal made it official by waving the calculator and announcing our winning BMI scores, and Char shrieked and stuck her palm in my face for a high five. Char said my high five was lame, but it was the best I could do. It’s official, all right. I’m not only morbid, I’m
morbidly
obese.

Crystal’s not just on board for Char’s latest brainstorm for
everlasting happiness, she is, as Char gleefully put it, “scrubbing the deck.” When I muttered that
my
mom was going to sink this surgery scheme of hers faster than the iceberg sank the
Titanic
, Char smacked me and said I was awfulizing again. But it’s true. How can I possibly dream my mother will help me get this surgery, when she refuses to leave the house for a carton of milk? All she does is eat, sleep, watch TV, shop online, and knit—obsessively. She doesn’t notice I never wear her sweaters, and I doubt my brother, Julius, likes them either. He’s six years older than me and a junior at Cornell. Less than halfway through his senior year in high school—only two months after my father died—Mom sent him away to prep school in Virginia. It’s true, Julius had begun drinking alcohol—during school, even. But he was an A student before everything happened, and was just in a lot of pain. Instead of helping him through it, though, Mom turned her back on him. Julius suddenly was gone, and I can count on one hand the times I’ve seen him since. He didn’t even come home the first Thanksgiving or Christmas after the funeral, and now it’s two or three days at most during Christmas vacation—if at all. We used to talk on the phone a little, but even that stopped when Julius moved off campus with his fiancée. Now we just text once in a while. But I don’t blame Julius for making a new life without us—Mom’s the one who shipped him off to be somebody else’s problem. I’ve always been terrified that if I gave her the slightest bit of trouble, I’d be sent away too, but maybe that would have been the best thing—it’s me and Mom who got morbidly obese, not Julius.

Our family of three—fat, almond-skinned Japanese girl with long jet-black hair; even fatter pale and graying blond
woman; and lean, dark-haired white boy with big green eyes—would be hard to figure to someone on the outside. Or maybe they’d just think I was adopted.

Mom probably won’t attend Julius’s graduation next year—or his wedding for that matter. She doesn’t seem able to be out of the house and around other people anymore—for any reason. That’s why I have to be there for him—so he doesn’t feel like he’s completely alone in the world. But Julius has no idea how much more weight I’ve gained since he last saw me—fifty pounds at least. Either Mom hasn’t noticed, or she’s just not saying anything.

I should be paying attention. That’s the look Char’s flashing me. Her brow is raised and she’s jerking her head in the nurse’s direction as if spacing out alone could nix our chances for getting into the trial. The sides of the chair are digging into my hips and I notice I’m not the only one constantly shifting. Suddenly, Hefty Quarterback’s huge arm goes up.

“I was wondering—”

“First, please introduce yourself and tell us your age,” the nurse says.

“Bobby Konopka, sixteen,” Hefty Quarterback says. He’s got wavy dark brown hair and gentle blue eyes, and I like his deep voice. His Syosset varsity football jersey is emerald green, probably 4XL, and
Refrigerator
is scrawled in Magic Marker down the right sleeve. A bull among cows. Char raises both her eyebrows at me this time, and I look away so she doesn’t detect the heat racing to my cheeks. “Um, where do you lose weight first, and like, how much, how soon?” His voice is unsteady, like mine when I answer a question in class, even when I’m sure I’m right.

“It’s different for every person,” she says. She’s elaborating
when Bobby looks up and catches me watching him. I yank my head so fast in the other direction that I feel my neck spasm, but in the split second before I gave myself whiplash, I think he smiled at me! I’m staring at a section of the floor now, fighting the impulse to check if there’s any evidence of his smile left or if I imagined it. When the nurse finally finishes talking, a hand shoots up from the side of the room opposite Bobby, and I keep my eyes fixed on it as I slowly raise my head.

A fat girl with short, frizzy brown hair and tiny tortoise shell glasses stands up. She’s wearing a lime green New York Philharmonic T-shirt over black stretch pants with gray sneakers.

“Marcie Mandlebaum, sixteen. My question is about the amount of weight you lose with the Lap-Band compared to gastric bypass surgery. I went for a consultation with a bariatric surgeon, and he said that even if I were old enough to get the Lap-Band, he would recommend the gastric bypass because you lose more weight with it.”

The nurse is delighted.

“Not so,” she says, clapping her hands. “The Lap-Band has only been used in this country since 2001, when the FDA approved it for adults, so up until recently, we didn’t have enough data to compare it with gastric bypass. The small pouch created with bypass surgery is a permanent physiological alteration that can stretch, so that over time people can regain some or all of their weight back—”

“Like Randy Jackson on
Idol
,” someone calls from behind Char and me.

“He’s one example,” the nurse says. “Weight loss is certainly slower with the Lap-Band, but after two years, overall
weight loss is about the same. We believe the Lap-Band is superior to gastric bypass because it’s much less risky, it’s reversible, and it’s adjustable—we can tighten or loosen the band to adjust your food intake.”

“How long will it take to lose weight with it, though?” another girl cuts in.

“It’s individual,” the nurse says again. “Teens have faster metabolisms, so you could lose one hundred pounds or more in a year. But you have to eat right, because it’s easy to cheat the band. Liquids go right down, so if you eat ice cream, milk shakes, candy, or anything that melts or starts digesting in your mouth, it’s not happening.”

One hundred pounds in one year
. My mind is shifting back and forth between imagining being thin and forfeiting Fribbles.

“It’ll be horrible when school starts,” I tell Char on our way home. “I mean, two fat girls in the cafeteria sharing a four-ounce container of plain yogurt. What’s that gonna look like?”

Char sighs and rolls her eyes. “We barely eat at school anyway, so it’s going to look exactly like what it looks like now—two high school girls on a diet. The only thing different will be all the
after
-school eating we won’t be doing, like Mario’s. So stop awfulizing, Shroud. The crazy stuff you worry about so never amounts to anything.”

“I’m trying to imagine our lives without food, that’s all.”

“East. Imagine your life with a boyfriend. That’s all
I’m
saying.”

I don’t tell her I already am. Or that the boyfriend already has a name—Bobby, the Refrigerator. “I guess,” I just mumble, twisting my hair back into a bun. As if any guy could ever like me.

“I mean, girl, we so could be bopping. Strutting—like, check us out.” She’s shimmying her big melons. “Check us.” I don’t point out how they could deflate, become tangerine-sized by Christmas. “Happy! East, we could be
really
happy.”

It’s then that I realize that this might be what I’m afraid of most.

I don’t feel like talking. I just want her to get me into this trial thing and not tell her friends.

“Bobby, sweetheart? Bobby?” It’s normally an eight-minute ride from here, but the GPS shows arrival at home in twelve. Either way, I’ll probably miss the whole first inning.

“Bobby,
slow
down!”

“I’m going fifty-five.”

“Fifty-eight!
Slow down now!
”

Syosset is the next exit. Mom flicks off the radio so we can talk. That’s a lot of talking time.

“My phone’s buzzing. Bet it’s Dad.”

“Leave it. You’re driving. So, did you talk to anyone in the Q and A session? What did the other kids seem like?”

“Fat.”

“No.” She makes that clicking sound with her tongue. “You know, do they all want to be in the trial?”

“I don’t know.”

“I spoke with a few of the mothers. Park Avenue
Bariatrics has a good reputation. That Dr. Weinstein is one of the top laparoscopic surgeons in the country.”

I nod. “Can I put the game back on?”

“This is not a small decision, Bobby.”

“Yeah,” I mutter.

“Did you ask about, y’know?” She’s waving her hand across her chest. It’s bad enough having
moobies
—man boobies—but that they’re anything remotely similar to my mom’s makes me want to crash the car into the guardrail.

Even with my big pipes, I’m a fat slob. But the worst is the damn breast meat. Me and MT are the only virgins in our crew—eight of us in the group since middle school, five on varsity football together, six done the deed. One, me, not even coming close. The guys have been busting on me. At parties,
they’re
always hanging with hotties, but they push me toward the fugly girls or the Coke-bottle-glasses type—the ones they think are the charity cases. Zoolow’s pretty big too, and he, like every guy on first-string varsity football, has no problem getting girls. Every guy on varsity except for me.

This twig at the Massapequa party said, “Whoa. You need a mansiere, like a
bra
ssiere, but for men. Ha-ha.” I’d have strangled her with
her
padded brassiere except she’s dating one of the guys on the team. “Shut up, Boney” was all I said. But since then, it’s been out there—that skinny girl’s laughter in my head. Even when it’s not in the locker room, or the halls, or at other parties, it, her, the whole moobie thing—it’s always there.

“Bobby?”