The Leftover Club (4 page)

“What are you doing?” I asked breathlessly.

“Dancing with a beautiful woman,” he murmured against my ear. “Is that allowed?”

“Sure,” I answered. “You should go find one.”

“I found one a long time ago,” he assured with that cockeyed grin. “I branded her with a kiss when we were nine.”

I chuckled. “You’re so full of it, Fenn.”

His eyes were dark as he stared down at me. “I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true,” he whispered. His eyes traveled across my face and down toward my chest. “You look amazing, Roni. Really.”

It war
med my soul to hear his praise, making me realize in an instant that I had been waiting for it for a very long time. In fact, nothing Wade had ever said to me came close to having the same kind of impact. Just one word, just one glance from Dylan Fenn, and I felt like Cinderella, perfectly fitted with a crystal slipper.

My eyes fluttered closed as his hand slid down my back, which had been bared by the dress I wore. I knew he could feel me tremble. This was very dangerous territory, especially since we were smack dab in the middle of a crowded ballroom. I pulled away slightly. “I could use a drink,” I murmured as I looked away from those dangerous brown eyes.

I raced right to my safe place, Bryan Dixon. He stood now with a breathtaking blonde in a tight, short, green dress. It took me a second before recognition finally set in. “
Charlie
?!”

She giggled as she bobbed her head happily. She opened her arms and I gave her a hug. She felt like a pixie in my arms.

Charlotte Ferndale was another esteemed member of The Leftover Club, crowned way back in tenth grade by committing the same cardinal sin of high school that I had: she was too fat.

Both
Charlie and I tipped the scales at more than two hundred pounds each. We would have been twins had it not been for the stark differences in our height and our hair. Mine was jet black and hers had always been dishwater blonde. Now she had lightened it almost platinum, which matched her size-4 figure perfectly.

“You look incredible!” I said as I glanced over her figure. She had been the shorter of the two of us, barely inching above five feet,
which had made her two-hundred- pound frame rounder and squatter. I could get away with a few more pounds than she could because I had extra inches to work with. I had had an hourglass figure with a whole lot of extra minutes. She was a Weeble that wouldn’t fall down.

Only now she looked like one of the Spice Girls courtesy of a skintight dress, sky-high stilettos and a hard working pushup bra.

I was still flabbergasted as someone handed me a glass of champagne punch. I turned, expecting to see Dylan, but it was Wade who handed me the drink. “Your dance partner said you were thirsty,” he murmured coolly, in a tone I knew that I would pay for later when we were alone.

“Thank you,” I said as I took the glass and nearly downed it all in one gulp. Wade waited as I collected myself to make the proper introductions. “Wade, this is my friend, Charlie Ferndale.”

“Charlotte,” she corrected as she held out a hand. “No one has called me Charlie since graduation, which was ten years and a hundred pounds ago!” She giggled and Wade smiled as he appraised her figure.

It dawned on me that we were
Roni and Charlie no more, in more ways than one.

“You look fabulous,” Wade praised. “You’ll have to tell
Roni your secret.”

Bryan
glared at Wade with open hostility. “A real man isn’t afraid of a few curves,” he remarked. “Only a dog wants a bone.”

Wade stared daggers
at Bryan. “And how exactly would you know?”

“Woof!” he said as he lolled his tongue out of his mouth to pant as he stared down at me.
“Let’s dance.”

He pulled me by the hand toward the dance floor, and was just as commanding as Dylan had been when he pulled me close to his hard body. “What. An. Asshole,” he declared as he swung me around to the sounds of Rick Springfield. “Please tell me you have two or three other lovers on the side.
A pool boy. Something.”

“We don’t have a pool,” I commented dryly.

“Put one in,” he grinned. “It’s worth it. Seriously, I don’t know what you see in him.”

I shrugged. “He’s my husband.”

“So?”

“We have a child.”

“So?”

I sighed. It was impossible to make
Bryan understand. He’d broken free from his family and the expectations he had been living under, but he had only himself to consider. My whole life was wrapped up in Wade, from my job to the registration on my car. It wasn’t like I could just walk away, even if I wanted to. And all the reasons I did want to were selfish. Yeah, he was cold and distant and I had to purchase an entire box full of vibrating toys to make up for years of sexual deprivation, but we had a child together, a beautiful, perfect little girl who needed, and loved, her daddy more than anyone else in the world.

I never wanted Meghan to grow up the same way Dylan had.

The same way I had.

I said as much to
Bryan, who dismissed it with a casual shrug of his shoulders. “People stay married for the kids all the time. It usually never works out. Kids need happy parents, and I can tell by looking at you that you’re miserable. Considering you’re at your thinnest and most successful, I think that says a lot. You have everything you thought you ever wanted, but it still isn’t enough. What’s missing, babe?”

I sighed again and my eyes traveled across the room to Dylan, who watched me dance with
Bryan with a strange, unreadable look on his face.

“Life is too short to be this miserable,”
Bryan continued. “Sometimes you just gotta say fuck it and go for it.”

I couldn’t argue
Bryan’s logic. It had worked well for him. I’d never seen him so happy. “Enough about my love life, let’s talk about yours. Is there anyone special?”

He grinned.
“Yeah. A pool boy.”

I giggled and rested my head on his shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Wade pull Charlie – I mean,
Charlotte
– to the dance floor.  I fought the bitter taste in my mouth as I clutched tighter to Bryan. He assessed the situation within a half-second, hugging me close for comfort.

The next song was a Kenny
Loggins classic, and we really did cut footloose as Bryan spun me around the dance floor. I followed his lead the best I could, but no one could cut the rug quite like a confident gay man. People formed a circle around us to watch us dance. Wade sneered down his nose at us as he hovered over Charlotte like a hawk poised above its prey. Suddenly I didn’t care. It felt good to let go and have a good time, and Bryan and I deserved our moment in the sun after so many painful years of being ostracized in high school.

I decided to follow Dylan’s colorful advice.

Fuck ‘em.

I was breathless and giggly as the song ended.
Bryan lifted me up high in a twirling hug as our spectators clapped for our performance. We joined Wade and Charlotte at the table they had secured, and I could feel the hatred emanate from Wade in waves. “Feel better?” he wanted to know.

“Much,” I answered.

“Is this a private party or can anyone join?” Dylan asked over my shoulder. I saw Charlotte light up like the Fourth of July as he scooted a chair toward our table.

“Dylan!” she squealed. “It’s so good to see you.”

He didn’t miss a beat. Thanks to her name tag, he was able to greet her personally, with all the charm he had always withheld for people like Charlie and me. “Well, don’t you look like a super star? Where were you hiding in high school, Charlotte?”

In the Leftover Club
, I answered silently.
Next to me
.

She preened under his praise.

I watched Wade’s ego deflate as Charlotte leaned closer to Dylan. She was wowed by everything that came out of his mouth, virtually forgetting that the rest of us were at the table. I watched their interaction with interest. I had seen Dylan in action before, and the moves hadn’t changed all that much in the decade since we had graduated. I supposed there were some men so inherently desirable that women of any age would devolve to a giggly teenager under the direct assault of their attention, especially after she had waited more than a dozen years to get it.

Dylan offered to escort her to the buffet, but she declined. She wasn’t hungry.
But she would take a glass of champagne, so he led her by the hand to the bar. Wade toasted me with his cocktail glass. “Fine group of friends you have, Roni,” he remarked derisively.

Bryan
wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “The best.” He planted a loud kiss on my lips.

Over the course of the evening my mood soured by the second. It wasn’t because of Wade, though he did his level best to make me as miserable as possible. He flirted with every attractive girl in the place, while treating my best friend
Bryan repeatedly like an annoying waiter that wouldn’t get his order right. I wasn’t so much worried about the latter; Bryan knew how to handle jackoffs like Wade Connor.

Truth be told, I wasn’t even
that upset about the flirting. I knew Wade had affairs because he wasn’t exactly coy about hiding them. They, like everything else that went wrong in our life and in our marriage, were my fault for falling short of his expectations. He was ten years older and supposedly this made him wiser, and he had no trouble treating me like a naughty child when the occasion warranted. Honestly I was relieved when he found some other place to invest his interest.

No, the problem was with the cozy couple on the dance floor, molded together like two
vinyl LPs that had been left out in the sun. Dylan Fenn pulled out all the stops to seduce Charlotte Ferndale, who had won, hands down, the title as unexpected vixen of the Ten Year Reunion for the Class of ’88.

She was, after all, one of the few women present that he hadn’t yet conquered.

The problem was that I kind of hoped, planned… maybe even plotted for that spot to go to me. I’d done the diet, I’d bought the dress; I’d even dropped hints to my mother that I was going to be there, hoping it would be incentive enough for Dylan to go. I had set the stage carefully to finally prove I was good enough for Dylan Fenn. As the night wore on, I realized I was still stuck soundly in the Friend Zone, and there would be no hot night of revenge sex to make up for my current, tangled existence.

That rejection burned a whole lot deeper than my asshole husband’s.

When Dylan and Charlotte left early that evening, I knew that his number of conquests was about to go up by one. When Bryan’s eyes met mine, we both knew that The Leftover Club’s ranks would diminish by exactly the same number.

Charlie was one of us no longer.

September 3, 1985

The gymnasium of Hermosa Vista High was as vast and daunting as the dystopian landscape of several popular movies from the 80s, and just as dangerous to navigate. I fell in line behind the other students assigned to second period P.E. as we took our seats among the bleachers and waited for instruction. I already had my assigned uniform, but I wasn’t about to change until directed to do so. Our colors were green and gold, so that meant green shorts and a gold T-shirt, and no matter how hard we looked, the shorts designed to fit a size-18 girl didn’t fit like those that fit a size-10. They rode up too high, leaving my whiter than white lumpy legs in full view for the world – or at least a co-ed class of about thirty – to see.

My throat constricted with apprehension as boy after boy entered the gymnasium. I stood out like a sore thumb until a short, squat blonde walked in, her shoulders hunched over, her eyes wide as she scanned the crowd of teenagers who looked about as friendly as a firing squad.

Finally her eyes landed on me. I could almost hear her sigh of relief from across the gym. She gave me a shy, grateful smile, which I immediately returned, and the next thing I knew she made a beeline to where I sat on the lower bleacher.

“Hi,” she said as she sat.

“Hi,” I answered back.

“My name is Charlie. Well, really it’s Charlotte, but no one ever calls me that.”

“Roni,” I supplied.

“Tell me
. What sadist made physical education a required credit to graduate high school?” she asked as disgust wrinkled her nose.

“Congress,” I answered blithely, which made her giggle.

“Figures.” She surveyed our fellow classmates. “God, do there have to be so many boys here?”

“Girls aren’t much better,” I said. “I had all-girl classes in junior high and they were ruthless.”

She nodded. She knew. She held up her gym clothes in her hand. “This doesn’t make it any better. By their definition they should make us all look uniform, but nothing accentuates our differences like tight clothing.”

I laughed. I liked her already. “Where are you from?”

She named the junior high and I nodded. They had been our rivals. It was funny how our worlds were expected to expand with each passing year, often turning enemies into friends just because of one shared commonality, like where we happened to attend school. Made me wonder how college would change and shape our ever-widening perspective.

At moments like this one, when the stern looking coach in shorts was striding across the polished floor toward his newest batch of “recruits,” I honestly couldn’t wait to find out.

“Welcome to second period P.E.,” he said. “My name is Coach Marcus, and I will be your instructor.” He met every single student’s eyes as he continued. “This class will not be easy. It is my job to push you to your limits, and that’s a job I take very seriously. It is your job to listen and to follow instruction, and I expect you to take that seriously. Every morning when you arrive to my class, you will be expected to suit up within the first five minutes. If you’re late, you will run laps. If you want to talk back to me about the way I run my class, you will run laps. If you whine or complain or otherwise cut up and disrupt the students here who take their education seriously…”

“You will run laps,” I whispered to Charlie, who snickered behind her hand. This caught the coach’s eye
. He was not amused.

He walked over to where we sat. “Something funny?” he wanted to know.

Charlie blushed beet red and shook her head.

“I see nothing funny,” he said as he inspected the both of us head to toe. “There’s nothing funny about heart
disease, or diabetes, or stroke. Think about that the next time you’re reaching for a hamburger or a candy bar.”

Giggling filtered through the rest of our class as
Charlie and I both shrank under his judgmental glare.

He put his hands on his hips and surveyed us all. “Looks like it’s time to run some laps. Suit up!” he barked and blew a whistle so shrill my ears nearly
bled.

The locker room was even more daunting than the gymnasium. It was a smaller, narrow room separated by rows of lockers that had long benches in between.
Showers lined the outer wall, which had high windows that opened outward, casting regrettably bright light into the white room painted accented with green and gold trim. Thin, milky white curtains offered minimal privacy at best. It was then and there I decided I would not, in fact, be using those facilities.

In fact, I was already trying to figure out how to have menstrual cramps for the next nine months solid.

Charlie and I walked close together as we tried to find a remote corner to change. Other girls were peeling off their clothes while they spoke together candidly, giggling and unaware that certain rules of modesty still applied even in the freewheeling 80s.

But girls with taut little bodies they’d showed off in skimpy
, two-piece bikinis every summer didn’t quite understand that clothes provided a necessary barrier for girls like Charlie and me. Decency, shmecency. Every protective layer of clothes was yet another mask that helped us fit in with all the “normal” girls.

In a locker room, there were no secrets. Just ask Carrie White.

With every layer of clothes we removed, and every jiggling inch we exposed, we removed ourselves from the crowd and inevitably drew the attention we didn’t want. This usually included shameless giggling and whispers loud enough for us to hear.

Apparently it’s much more socially acceptable to be cruel than it is to be fat.

By the time we fell into step behind all our other uniformed classmates, our faces were flushed red with humiliation.

It was only the beginning.

We all walked single file toward the outdoor track that circled the grassy football field where, as luck would have it, several other classes were already working out. This included a class with Dylan Fenn, who made short Kelly green shorts and a golden T-shirt look much better than anyone else on the field. My heart sank the second I saw him. He had never even seen me in my pajamas at home, and here I was, stuffed like a pale, puffy sausage in clothes that had to be a size too small. I ducked my head and shrank into myself as much as I could as we made our way onto the track.

Coach Marcus stood on the field and faced us. “This is where you test yourself,” he bellowed. “Four times around this track equals one mile. In six weeks, you will all,” he emphasized as he looked at Charlie and me, “be able to run
that mile. Or you fail. Period.”

I glanced around the vast track. Once around looked about ten miles long, I couldn’t imagine running around it four times without the benefit of being chased by
demon-possessed Rottweilers. I gulped as I glanced back at the coach.

“Since you all look pretty soft, I’ll go easy on you. You only have to run two laps today.”

With that he blasted that shrill whistle again and set us all on our way.

I tried to pace myself, I really did. But little by little I fell further back from the crowd of runners who tackled that track like it was nothing. I gulped air and tried not to think about how far around the track I actually was. Was I really only a fourth of the
way around? Please, GOD, let me make it to half. Each gasping breath burned my lungs like lava and a sharp pain stabbed my side, and I wasn’t even done with the first lap yet. Charlie wasn’t fairing much better. She lagged a few steps further back than I did, and with one glance I knew she was in dire straits. Her face was the color of a stop sign as she dragged each step.

Mercifully I finally passed Coach Marcus, who hollered, “Pick it up! Move it!” to both of us as we passed by. Another blast of tha
t stupid whistle made me cringe. I felt like my rubbery legs were about to come out from under me. I didn’t even make it a fourth of the way before I finally had to stop, otherwise I would have dropped on the spot.

The minute I stopped running, so did Charlie. Once we no longer worried about dying on a high school running track, we both became acutely aware that we were being watched by al
most everyone on the field, including the majority of our class who had already completed their laps. It made the walk around that lap seem even longer.

My eyes met Dylan’s, but I couldn’t re
ad the expression on his face. It was probably embarrassment from being associated with someone like me, even indirectly.

“Oh, my God, who is that?” Charlie asked when she caught up to me. Her eyes followed mine until they landed right on Dylan.

“Long story,” I muttered.

I started running again simply because I just wanted the whole humiliating affair to be over. Charlie jogged after me and we finally met up with Coach Marcus and our class. His face was stern as he watched us approach.
“Welcome back,” he said as we slowed to a stop in front of him. I wanted to collapse onto the ground like the other kids in my class, who sat there waiting for us to finish.

From the look in Coach Marcus’s eyes, I knew better.

He looked at the rest of the class. “Can anyone tell me what these two students did wrong in my class?”

A perky blonde raised her hand. “They didn’t follow instruction.”

His eyes landed on our faces. “That’s right. You were told to run two laps, not take some afternoon stroll.”

“I ran as far as I could,” I tried to explain.

“Funny. I don’t remember issuing that caveat.”

“It’s different for people like us,” Charlie mumbled, which drew the coach’s ire.

He read her name off of her uniform shirt. “No, Ferndale. It’s exactly the same. You put one foot in front of the other, just like they do. The only reason you carry extra weight and they don’t is because they don’t give up half-way. You give yourself a free pass and expect people to make allowances for you because you’re ‘different’.”

She shrank from his vitriol.

“There are no excuses in this class. There is doing what you are told, and that’s it.” He glanced over the other students who were sitting and standing nearby. “Two more laps. Right now. Come on.”

I could feel the hatred from our other classmates pour over us as they all grumbled to their feet and fell in line on the track.
I turned to Coach Marcus. “Please don’t make us do this. I’ll do situps, pushups, anything. But I can’t run more two laps. I’ll puke up a lung, I swear to God.”

“
Then puke up a lung,” he said, unconcerned. “But you will do as you are told, Lawless. If it takes all year long.”

Another blast from the whistle and off we went. Though I jogged as slowly as I could to actually qualify as ‘running,’ I found myself throwing up the runny oatmeal I had eaten for breakfast on the side of the track, in front of all my classmates, my coach and Dylan Fenn, who thankfully had the decency (or repulsion) to look away.

Charlie linked her arm with mine and we trudged on, barely running, until we both collapsed over the line together.

From that day forward we were comrades in a war we both knew we’d never win.