Big Fat Disaster (32 page)

Drum roll, maestro? The grand total is…460, unless I knock off 37.5 points because Ryan and I weren’t close friends, which leaves 422.5.

Mrs. Lowe claps her hands and says, “Time’s up! Did anyone have a score higher than 250?”

I start to raise my hand until I notice that no one else is as fucked up as I am.

Mrs. Lowe gives me another of her sympathetic looks. “That’s not surprising, Colby. Death of a loved one is extremely stressful.”

Why does everyone assume that I loved him?

Mrs. Lowe hands out another worksheet: This one is titled
Long-Term Stress versus Short-Term Stress
. There are five blanks, one for each type of stress. “Okay, now complete this chart by describing your stressors. I’ll be coming around to help you figure out if your stress is long-term or short-term.”

I stare at the page.
What’s the point? I’m not sticking around much longer anyway.
I raise my hand. “Um, may I please go see Mrs. Healey? She told me to check in with her if things feel too overwhelming for me.”

“Of course, sweetheart.” Mrs. Lowe scribbles a pass and hands it to me.

I give her a wobbly smile, then head for the hallway and make a left like I’m going to the counselors’ office, but I cut down the first hallway on the right and duck into the girls’ bathroom. I go into a stall, lock the door, sit on the toilet fully clothed, and put my head in my hands.

I hear footsteps and lift my feet so that I’m hidden. Someone tries to open my stall door, but they find it’s locked.

The person hisses, “Shit,” and goes into the other one instead. I guess whoever was in there before didn’t flush, because she groans, “Grossssss,” and pushes the handle. I wait for the usual bathroom sounds to happen, but instead I see knees on the floor, and soon I hear gagging, dry heaves, and spitting. It finally ends, and the toilet flushes. The stall door flies back against the wall. I leave my hiding place atop the toilet and peek out between the stall wall and door.

It’s Tina. She’s splashing water on her face and rinsing out her mouth. I open the door and step out. She straightens and sees me in the mirror but immediately looks away.

I ask, “Are you sick?”

She focuses on the running water. “Um…yeah, I think it’s something I ate.”

I move beside her at the sinks. “Who did it?”

She gives me a funny look. “Huh? Oh, we had, um, eggs for dinner last night, and—”

I set my jaw. “No, that’s not what I mean. Who made the Facebook page? Your note said that Ryan didn’t do it and that you know who stole his phone. So? Who did it?”

Tina pumps soap into her palm, runs a little water over her hands, and rubs them together. “Just—all you need to know is that
he
didn’t do it, okay?” She rinses her hands, shakes them off, and moves to the air dryer.

I step forward. “No; not okay.” I reach for her shoulder and kind of pull on it.

She jerks away like my hand is on fire. “Don’t touch me, Colby. I’m not going to tell you. I can’t.”

The liquid rage boils inside me. “Tell me who made that page, Tina.” My throat’s getting tight and I feel myself starting to cry, which makes me even angrier. “It’s not fair! Do you get that? It’s—not—fair!” I shove her hard.

“What are you girls doing in here?” Coach Sharp’s voice cuts through the blasting air dryer. She’s standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face.

Tina glances at me. “I was…sick, and Colby was…checking on me.” She tilts her head and gives me a warning look.

Coach Sharp narrows her eyes. “That’s not what it sounded like from out in the hallway, ladies.”

I rub my hand over my cast and stare at my feet. My heartbeat is pounding in my ears, and the air dryer’s whining like it’s stuck on. Something about it echoes the roar of the semi, and Ryan’s bloodied face whizzes through my mind.

“You girls get to class,” Coach Sharp says gruffly. She makes clear that she’s waiting for us to leave, so we walk out ahead of her. I pull the hall pass out of my pocket and find that it’s soaked through with my sweat.

I go back to life skills class. Mrs. Lowe is at the board, outlining the four stages of stress: alarm, resistance, adaptation, and exhaustion.

I put my head down on the table, and even though I’ve pretty much sworn off bothering to ask God for even the simplest things, I offer up a prayer that He’ll please make Ryan’s bloodied face disappear from my mind and never come back again.

Michael’s a no-show after life skills. I feel stupid, standing there holding my own backpack while waiting for him to arrive to carry it for me, so I head for lunch.

I’m standing outside the exit door of the cafetorium food line, watching for Tina, when my very own personal assistant emerges, carrying a tray of food. “Oh, my God,
there
you are. When I made it to your classroom after Ag, you were gone.” Michael shoves the tray of food at me. “Here…Oops, I’m supposed to carry it. Where do you want it?”

I make a face. “That’s
your
lunch—”

“I know, but I can get another one.” He tilts his head toward the long table at the back of the room where all the teachers eat and speaks through gritted teeth: “Crazy Miss Clay is watching us. Tell me where you want to sit. Now!”

Just then, Tina emerges with Kayley and Kara. I order, “Follow them.”

“Seriously?
Those
are your peeps? I had no idea.”

“Sure,” I say sarcastically. “Didn’t you know that we’re best friends?”

He shrugs but does as I ask.

Kayley’s eyes widen when I slide into the chair opposite Tina, whose lunch tray is overflowing with pizza, chips, cookies, and fries. Her head’s down and her hand is set on “shovel.”

Kara’s right next to me, but she’s so focused on Tina that she hasn’t even noticed. “Jeez, girl, did you leave any for the last lunch group? I thought you didn’t eat that kind of stuff anymore. Aren’t you afraid you’ll turn into
El Tubbo
again?”

Tina speaks through her food but doesn’t look up. “I’m just hungry, that’s all.” I’m vibrating with anger that she knows who made the Facebook page but refuses to tell me. She may be determined to focus on her food, but I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to get an answer.

I have a pretty good idea and I go for it, setting my sights directly on Kara. “Sooo, you found Ryan’s phone in the bathroom, huh?”

Kara’s head snaps to the left. “Huh? Oh. Hey,
Hallis
—I mean, Colby. Um, yeah.” She looks away, and redness starts in the center of her neck, then crawls toward her head. “Yeah, it’s like I told Ryan’s mom. I found it in the bathroom. On the sink.”

I tilt my head. “Tina says she knows who made that Facebook page…you know, the
Colby Denton Fan Club
.” My voice is shaking, along with my insides. I look down at the food on my tray and start to pick up a French fry, but my hand is trembling too much.

Kara shoots lasers at Tina, who is too busy gorging herself on cookies to notice, then turns the hateful look on me. She gets it right back. “Are you trying to say that
I
made that page?” She bares her bucked teeth and wrinkles her rat-like nose. “I wouldn’t waste my time creating anything with your name
or
your fat ass on it.” She leans in so close to me that I can see where she has plucked away what would be a unibrow. “Want to know what I think, Colby?”

My anger-fueled confidence vanishes, and I’m hyper-aware of my overwhelming fatness in comparison to her. I say nothing; my heartbeat is thundering in my ears.

Kayley leans forward, grips Kara’s forearm, and speaks in a sing-song warning tone: “Hey, K-K, don’t forget what Mr. McDaniel said…” She waits for Kara to meet her gaze, but she won’t. “Hey. K-K—”

Kara shakes free and turns her upper body until it mirrors mine. It feels like my mass is casting a shadow on her small shape, like an eclipse.

She whispers, “I think the biggest tragedy of all is that you weren’t killed alongside your asshole cousin.” She pulls her lips back over her buckteeth into a horrible smile and nods slowly, watching my reaction. “
Everybody
feels that way,
Hallister
. They’re just acting like they care because Mr. McDaniel held this tear-jerker of an assembly and told us that when you came back to school, we’d better”—she throws up air quotes—“show compassion, or else.” She snorts. “
As
.
If
.”

I finally find my voice, even though it’s only a whisper: “You’re a miserable bitch, Kara.”

Suddenly, Tina pushes back from the table and runs for the hallway. I bolt after her, partly to escape Kara and partly to demand that Tina confirm my suspicions. She dashes into the bathroom, and I’m hot on her trail.

Tina chooses a stall with a faulty lock, and the door swings open just as she deposits her lunch into the toilet.

I step forward. “Are you o-ka—”

She violently wretches again: her shoulders rounded, her back a perfect curve. A moment later, she reaches up and flushes the toilet.

My voice echoes off the walls. “Tina? Do you need me to get the nurse?”

Still kneeling on the floor, she shakes her head furiously and says weakly, “No—no. Just—just get out. Leave me alone.” She wobbles to a standing position and moves to the sink, bends down and rinses her mouth under the tap. She repeatedly runs her hand over her mouth, echoes of my own strange habit. She might be half my size now, but in that moment, I know who she is:
Tina is me.

“It’s gone,” I say. “There’s no evidence.”

She furrows her brow. “Huh?” She turns to the mirror and closely examines her face.

“Nothing.” I turn toward the door to go, but stop and pivot back. “I’m not going to ask you anymore. I know why you won’t tell me that Kara made that page.”

Tina’s face is ghostly white, and beads of sweat on her forehead are visible in her reflection in the mirror. She closes her eyes. “I can’t do this with you right now.”

I take a step toward her. “It’s because if you tell the truth, you’ll lose Kara as a friend, and you’d rather keep things the way they are than be alone again. Right?”

She shrugs. Then nods.

I move to the wall by the sinks and lean against it. “Can I ask you something else?”

Tina places her forearms on the edge of the sink and bends until she’s practically folded in half. “Why not?” Her voice is rough, like she has sandpaper in her throat.

“Is this how you did it? How you lost eighty pounds? You know…throwing up?”

She nods. “Not at first. And…I don’t do it very often. Well…I try not to do it more than once a day. It’s just…I…I can’t gain it back. I can’t go back to being like—” She catches herself, stops.

“Like me.” I step forward. “You can say it. You don’t want to be like me. A big fat disaster.”

Tina straightens and turns to me. The sunlight through the high horizontal windows perfectly captures the shadows under her eyes. She swallows and grimaces in pain; clutches her throat. “Right,” she says hoarsely. “I can’t do that.”