Big Fat Disaster (36 page)

By the time we reach the U in the track, I’m wheezing. “Leave
[gasp]
me
[wheeze]
alone
[gasp-wheeze]
about it!” I bend at the waist with my right hand on my thigh. I concentrate on long, deep breathing, but mostly I just cough and watch Becca’s feet, hoping they’ll walk away.

Instead, they step closer. She puts her hand on my back. “Are you okay? Do you have asthma?”

I straighten, shake my head, and cough some more. “No; I’m
fat
, in case you haven’t noticed.” The sun is beating down on my hair, and it feels like my skull is melting. I wave my hand in front of my face. “Damn, it’s hot!”

A shrill whistle blasts and Coach Sharp yells from her place in the grassy center of the track, “Move it, you two! No stopping and standing!”

“We’d better keep going,” Becca says worriedly. “She’ll have us running sprints if we piss her off.”

I wave her off. “You go on. I’ll catch up.”

“No, I’m sticking with you. Think of me as a reminder of how much time you have left to tell the truth.” She glances at her watch. “Two and a half hours.”

I roll my eyes. “Lucky me: my very own time keeper.”

Becca gives me a close-mouthed smile and tilts her head at me. “Tick-tock.”

“The only help I need from you is keeping your mouth shut. It’s
not
like telling on me is going to bring Ryan back from the dead!” I turn on my heel and resume my lap.

From behind me, Becca calls, “5:00
P.M.
, Colby!”

I flip her the bird, walk on, and try to breathe instead of wheeze.

Mom’s waiting in the Sugar’s parking lot when Drew and I get off the bus. She’s got her purse on her shoulder and her car keys in her hand. “Hey, girls. Drew, go on inside. Colby’s got a doctor appointment, so you’re riding home with Leah today.”

“Is Colby getting her cast off? I want to go.”

Mom gives Drew a little nudge toward Sugar’s. “No, it’s not that kind of doctor. Just be a good girl and go inside so that we make the appointment on time.”

My sister digs in her heels. “What kind of doctor is it?”

“Enough!” Mom’s sharp voice seems to propel Drew toward the front door. My mother locks eyes with me and nods toward the car. I move to it and wait for her to unlock my door.

I slide in at the same time she does. “Where
are
we going?”

Mom sighs. “After what I saw in that bathroom yesterday, I know that you need help. I don’t know what to do, and I’m hoping that someone much smarter than me will be able to tell me.”

I blurt, “So why am I going?
You’re
the one who needs help.”
Go ahead, Mom. Tell me how you really feel, like you told Brenda last night.

Mom’s right hand flies off the steering wheel, and she stops just short of backhanding me. “Colby!” She breathes in deeply, exhales shakily, and wraps her fingers around the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles are white. She repeats her breathing thing a couple more times, then starts the car and backs out of the parking space.

We pass the memorial that marks where Ryan died. The flowers, teddy bears, and notes are beginning to fade in the late summer heat. A few of the items have blown into the road and been run over, but the white cross bearing his name and yearbook photo stands tall above everything else.
I’ll bet if I had succeeded, the only thing marking my spot would be the Coors bottle that was on the ground by my head.

The liquid rage flares up so suddenly that it takes me by surprise. “Doesn’t it strike you as weird that all these people are making such a fuss about Ryan, when he
chose
to put himself in the road like that? If he’d lived, can you imagine how many jobs Grandpa would tell him to get to pay off the medical bills?”

Mom scowls. “That’s terrible, Colby! How can you come up with such hateful ideas?”

I cross my arms tightly over my chest, glare out the window, and seethe. “Gee, Mom, I have no idea. I guess I got that from Dad, too.”

Thirty minutes later, Mom pulls sharply into a parking lot and stops so hard that my seat belt chokes me. She hasn’t spoken a word since she accused me of being a hateful person, but it’s obvious that she’s super pissed. She throws the car into Park and yanks her keys from the ignition. “Piney Creek doesn’t offer any free mental health counseling, so I’ve had to borrow money from Leah to pay for this. I
hope
it works.” She gets out and speeds toward the small red brick building that looks kind of like a house. I open my door and gaze up at the gigantic pine tree in the center of the yard.

It smells like sugar cookies when I push open the front door. I glance around, but I don’t see any cookies for the taking. Mom’s standing with her back to me, talking to some man behind a long counter. She tosses her hair and gives a little laugh.
Bitch Mom
may have driven us here, but
Beauty Queen Mom
has taken over now, charming as ever.

The place looks like somebody’s living room. There’s a fireplace, matching red and white checked sofa and love seat, and a little kid’s table and stools painted black and white to look like a dairy cow. I wander over to a bulletin board and study some faded cartoon strips. There’s a notice for a parenting class called “The Teenage Brain,” and a list of signs that a kid is depressed. I scan but don’t really read it.

Somebody laughs, and I turn to see a lady with a girl about my age on the love seat. They’re passing a smartphone back and forth and smiling. The phone makes a sad trombone sound and the lady exclaims, “You beat me again, Ashley! Think we have time to play again before your dad gets here to pick us up?”

The girl nods. “Let’s try, Bev.”

I watch them.
Why can’t my mom and I do stuff like that? Oh, wait: that girl’s normal-size. I’ll bet if the girl was a big fat disaster, Bev wouldn’t want a thing to do with her.
The girl catches me staring and gives me a quizzical look.

Mom calls, “Colby, have a seat.” I join her on the sofa. She’s got a clipboard with several pages to fill out. I plop down next to her and try to spy what she’s writing, but she turns away to keep me from seeing. Finally, she turns the clipboard face-down. “Just…um, there’s some magazines over there; go pick one and read it. The doctor said he’ll be with us in a little while.”

“Thought you wanted me to sit next to you,” I snap.

“No, I just wanted you to sit
somewhere
.” Mom gives me a warning look. “You’d better fix that attitude, young lady. I’m doing this to try to help you.”

I return her laser-like stare. “You mean like I helped Ryan? That worked out well, didn’t it?”

“Colby Diane Denton, you are out of contr—”

“Mrs. Denton? Would you and Colby like to come back now?” The same guy Mom was talking to before stands in the doorway beside the long counter. He’s about my dad’s height but not as stocky, and he’s wearing a navy blue T-shirt, black jeans, and cowboy boots. He looks more like he should be on a tractor mowing a field than shrinking people’s minds.

“I’m not quite finished with the paperwork,” Mom says in her honey-sweet voice.

“That’s okay; you’ll have time to complete it while I talk to Colby.” He smiles and holds the door open for us, waiting.

“If you say so.” Mom picks up her purse, and I follow her to the doorway. My heart is pounding in my ears; I dread having to listen to Mom tell a perfect stranger what a complete clusterfuck I am.

My head’s down, and I nearly miss it when he holds out his hand to me.

“Hi, Colby. I’m Dr. Matthews. But you can call me Dr. Matt if you want.”

We follow him down a short hallway and into a small office. It’s lined with bookcases, and there are kids’ toys on the floor in front of a wall of windows with closed blinds. His desk is against the same wall as the door, and there’s a chair next to his desk, a rocker in the middle of the room, and a small love seat opposite his desk. Mom takes the rocker. I take the love seat. He settles into his desk chair and pivots it so that he’s facing both of us.

“What brings you in today?” He leans back in his chair and crosses his legs. I grab a throw pillow and hold it over my stomach. It doesn’t even begin to cover all of me, but at least I don’t have to look down and see that part of myself.

“First of all, thank you for getting us in so quickly. It’s our good luck that you had a cancellation.” Mom smiles and tilts her head at him. I swear it looks like she’s posing for a picture.

“How can I help?” Dr. Matthews asks. He glances at me, then back at Mom.

“Well, it’s like I told you on the phone; I caught Colby covered head-to-toe in cake icing yesterday. She’d locked herself in the bathroom of my sister-in-law’s bakery. About a week ago, I caught her with a bag of sugar cookies that she stole from the bakery. She’d eaten them all. A. Gallon. Sized. Bag.” Mom pauses for effect, then continues. “But yesterday, eating the cake icing in the
bathroom
? That’s just gross, don’t you think?”

Dr. Matthews’s only response is a stony gaze.

Mom rushes to fill the silence. “I mean,
look at her
: You can tell that she’s not missing any meals.” She punctuates her sentence with a nervous laugh.

Still nothing.

Mom sits up straight, smoothes her blouse over her tummy, flicks her hair back over her shoulder, and seems to be waiting for him to agree that I’m a big fat pig, but instead he slowly turns back to his desk for a bottle of water, untwists the lid, takes a drink, twists the lid, and just as slowly places it back on his desk. It reminds me of how everything seemed to be in slow motion after I blabbed about Dad’s kissing photo, but this time it’s for real.

I study my fingernails. I scrubbed and scrubbed my skin and nails last night, trying to make the redness go away, but I can still see the icing stains. I close my eyes and visualize the shiny steel grill of that semi-truck heading straight for me.
Boy, do I wish Ryan had stayed out of it.

Mom’s shrill voice interrupts my nail-gazing. “So, Colby? What do you have to say for yourself?”

I readjust the pillow on my lap and stare at a loose thread.

“How’d you break your arm?” Dr. Matt’s voice is soft. I glance at him to make sure he’s talking to me—well,
of course
he is; I’m the only one in the room with a cast—and he raises his eyebrows and gives a little nod.