Diary of a Mad Fat Girl (4 page)

I turn to the security camera and throw up
my middle finger, then mouth the phrase that goes along with the
gesture. I’d like to moon whoever has the birds-eye view up there,
but I know I couldn’t get my pants back up before Chloe saw what I
doing.

7

When the last bell rings, I breathe an
audible, “Thank you, Jesus,” and a get a few funny looks from my
students.

I grab the box with Lilly’s stuff in it and
make my way to the parking lot while the buses are still loading.
McGruff the Crime Hag said she would be off campus this afternoon,
so I’m not standing around here for fifteen minutes with my thumb
up my ass only to get behind thirteen buses that stop every ten
yards for twenty-six miles.

I head home to check on Buster Loo and he’s
layed out in the backyard with all four paws in the air, snoring
like a grown man. I run inside and throw on a tee shirt, shorts,
and flip-flops then head right back out because I’m anxious to get
this done. I want some answers from Lilly Lane and I intend to get
them as quickly as possible.

I swing by China Kitchen and pick up some
Kung Pao chicken and cream cheese wontons. She’ll think I’m trying
to be nice by bringing over a tasty peace offering, but the truth
is that I need a snack to calm my nerves.

I pull up at the pink and white dollhouse
that is the home of Lilly Lucille Lane. I park my dirty Maxima
behind her bad-ass BMW and wonder for the hundredth time what the
hell is going on with her.

I grab the Chinese food and go around to the
back door, which is unlocked as always. I go in and put the food on
the table, then hear a commotion in the living room so I walk in
there to see what’s going on. Much to my surprise and dismay, I see
Drake Driskall - All-American, All-Star, All-State, Mr. Bugtussle
High School himself - sitting on Lilly’s sofa wearing only a
colorful pair of swim trunks.

Lilly is perched on the love seat like the
cat who swallowed the canary and all I can do is stare.

“
Not what it looks like, Ace, I
swear,” she says, shaking her head and rocking back and forth like
a crack addict.

“
It never is, is it, Lilly?” I
absolutely do not know what to do at this point, so I say, “This is
too much. Too much. Gotta get outta here.”

“
Miss Jones, I promise-” Drake
Driskall begins.

I cut him off quick, fast, and in a hurry.
“You,” I point at him, “you shut your mouth, go put on a shirt, and
get the hell out of here. Don’t say another word to me. Got
it?”

“
Ace,” Lilly stands up, but doesn’t
take a step forward.

“
You’re on your own with this one,
sister,” I turn to leave. “I cannot believe this.”

“
Ace! Wait!” she calls as I’m walking
out the door, but I don’t look back.

I pop the trunk and grab her junk and sling
it out into the yard like a woman who just found out her husband
likes men. I hear a heated exchange going on inside, but I could
not care less what’s being said. I get in my car and get the hell
out of there.

I tell myself that I’m wrong. That she’s
right and that it isn’t what it looks like but, dammit! I’ve never
been good at lying to myself. She dropped our annual trip to the
beach to screw around with Drake Driskall.

The Gentleman is an 18-year-old kid.

That pisses me off so bad that I think I
might pass out.

I bet she went to Paris over Spring
Break.

Paris, Tennessee, maybe.

I stop by the Hill Top Country Store and buy
two packs of cigarettes and a 40-ounce Corona then hit the back
roads. I haven’t smoked in fifteen years, but today is like a good
day to fall back on some bad habits. My phone is buzzing like a
pack of bees at a garden festival, but I don’t give a rat’s ass. I
need some time to think.

When it gets dark, I take a paved road back
to town and head to Ethan Allen’s. The bar, not the furniture
store. People in Bugtussle don’t get the two confused because the
only Ethan Allen they’ve ever heard of besides the one who owns the
bar is the Revolutionary War hero who founded the state of
Vermont.

8

I walk in at 8:55 and Ethan smiles and
switches off the neon signs. Everything in Bugtussle closes at 9:00
p.m. and his bar is no exception. He fills a frosty mug with
Killian’s Red and puts it down on a beverage nap.

“
Hey babe!” he says affectionately.
“You look like you could use a drink!”

Ethan Allen Harwood spends his days on a
tractor, his nights at the bar, and his Sunday mornings at the
Methodist Church sitting next to his grandparents. He drives a
spotless Chevrolet pick-up with gigantic mud tires and only listens
to country music. He’s got on his usual get-up which consists of
Wrangler jeans, a plaid shirt with metal buttons, worn-out cowboy
boots, and one of his four state championship rings. His dusty
Stetson hangs on a hook next to the liquor shelf.

“
What’s goin’ on, gal?” He fixes
himself a frosty mug of Mountain Dew and sniffs the air. “You been
smokin’?”

“
You might as well sit down, Ethan,” I
say, “cause this is gonna take a while.”

He walks around the bar and parks his long,
lean body on the stool next to mine and listens with great interest
as I tell him everything that’s transpired. He asks a bunch of
questions like he always does and when his antique cuckoo clock
strikes ten, I get up to go to the bathroom and realize I’m too
drunk to walk.

“
I’m hammered, Ethan,” I
slur.

“
Really, Ace? I hadn’ noticed,” he
laughs and pats me on the butt as I teeter past him.

I feel my way back to the restroom and when
I get back out to the bar, he has his cowboy hat on his head and my
keys in his hand.

“
C’mon. I’m taking you home,” he says
with a warm smile. “I know you gotta go to work in the morning. You
know the drill.”

He holds my hand while we walk across the
parking lot, then helps me up into his huge truck.

“
Is this a monster truck, Ethan? Is
that what you’re going for here?”

He laughs, pops in a Toby Keith CD, and
serenades me all the way to my house. After helping me out of his
huge truck, he walks me around to the back door like he’s done a
million times before and I know that my car will magically appear
in my driveway before morning.

“
Ace, your backyard out here is
unbelievable,” he says as he squints into the dark. “Is that okra
stalks comin’ up over there?”

“
Sure is buddy, you like it pickled or
fried? I do it both ways.” I start sniggering. “Okra that is, you
pervert.” I almost lose my balance laughing at my own idiotic joke
and Ethan puts a hand on my hip to steady me.

“
You are plum retarded, Ace, plum
flippin’ retarded.”

“
Thank you very much.” I hear a small
commotion and turn to see Buster Loo running speedy dog circles
around the patio table. “What the hell is my dog doin’ out here,
Ethan? He is not a night crawler.”

“
Maybe he wants up in that chair.”
Ethan walks over to the table, leans down, and says, “Why is there
bacon on your out-a-doors table, Ace? That’s mighty
unsightly.”

“
I’m puttin’ it in the black-eyed peas
I’m cookin’ tomorrow. Okay, not really. I’m havin’ it for breakfast
in an omelet. Oh no, wait, that’s not it. I’m savin’ it for a
midnight BLT. You got any lettuce I can borrow?” I turn around and
look at him, snorting and laughing. “Seriously, Ethan, what are you
talking about?”

“
There’s bacon on your table and
that’s what your little dog here wants. You want me to give it to
him?”

I walk over to get a closer look at the
alleged bacon. It’s the kind you don’t have to fry.

“
What the hell is that doing on my
table? I don’t eat that weird ass bacon from a box.” Buster Loo is
bouncing like a ball and whining like a derelict feline.

“
Me neither, sister, that’s some nasty
stuff right there,” he snarls his nose. “It ain’t
right.”

I pick up the bacon and toss it to Buster
Loo and he gulps it down in three bites. I see a pink piece of
paper on the table and when I reach for it, it flitters off in the
direction of my potted herb garden.

“
What the hell?” Ethan hollers,
watching the note fly through the air. “Somebody stuck a pile of
bacon on top of a note on your out-a-doors table? Now that beats
all I ever saw.”

I make a move to catch the note, trip over
Buster Loo, and go down face first onto the porch. I land close to
my Christmas lights, so I reach over and plug those in like that
was my plan all along. Buster Loo is clucking like a chicken and
looking like his feelings are hurt, so I pull him over and
apologize for booting him in his little chiweenie ribs. He shows
his forgiveness by speed licking my right eyeball and pawing me on
the head.

Ethan is laughing his ass off and when he
gets his breath back, he says, “Oh, so I guess that’s how you
always get them lights on? I’m gonna go get you a football helmet
to wear around here.” Still chuckling, he asks, “That little
Mexican wiener dog okay?”

“
He’s fine. Did you see where that
note went?”

“
Landed in your marijuana grove over
here.” He waves the rectangular shaped paper back and forth. “Pink
polka-dot paper. Wonder who that’s from?”

“
That's an herb garden, you geek.” I
squint at the note, “And I know who it from and so do you. You
gonna read it?”

“
Ain’t my note. Ain’t my
business.”

“
Oh good word, Ethan Allen Harwood! I
just spent over an hour giving you the juiciest news in town and
now you’re gonna stand over there and act like you’re a
mind-your-own-business kind of guy? Puh-leese. I don’t even care
what it says! Throw it away then.”

“
Okay, jus’ calm down and I’ll see
what it says.” He unfolds the paper, reads the note, then gives me
an odd look.

“
What?” I ask, feeling a killer
headache coming on.

He looks down at the paper, out toward the
yard, then back at me.

“
You look like you saw a ghost, Ethan.
What is it?”

“
You better look at it. I don’t think
I was meant to read this.”

“
Lilly Lane and her stupid
pink-polka-dot-stationary-using-ass ditched me nine hours before we
were supposed to go the beach so she could screw around with a
stupid kid and I spend my Spring Break cleaning out my stupid
closets, then she gets her stupid self fired and Catherine
Hilliard’s fat stupid ass wants to see me go down with her and now
she’s stuck a stupid note out here and used stupid fake bacon as a
stupid paper weight so my dog would be going crazy and you think I
give a stupid flyin’ shit what it says?”

“
No really, you better read
it.”

“
I don’t give a stupid flyin’ rat’s
ass what she has to say, Ethan!”

“
No really, Ace. Get up and read it
yourself. It’s about Chloe.” He walks over and holds his out both
hands. “Here. C’mon, now.”

He pulls me up and I’m thankful he’s a big
strong country boy because I don’t think a little fellow would be
able to get that job done.

I squint down at the note and sobriety comes
fast and hard.

“
I’ve gotta get to the hospital,
Ethan. Can you take me?” He looks at me, uncertainly evident in his
eyes. “Will you take me? Please?”

“
I don’t know if you
should-”

“
I have to go. You know I have to
go.”

“
Alrighty then. Whatever you
need.”

I run inside with Buster Loo hot on my
heels, splash water all over my face, and grab a Diet Mountain Dew
out of the fridge.

“
You want a drink?”

“
I don’t think now’s the
time-”

“
Not a
drink
drink! Some water or a Coke or
something.”

“
Naw, I got a dip, but grab me an
empty bottle if you got one handy.”

I grab an empty water bottle, blow Buster
Loo a kiss, and run out the door.

Ethan helps me climb back into his massive
truck and he leaves rubber on the road at the end of my
driveway.

9

Lilly is sitting alone in the lobby of
Bugtussle Memorial Hospital. She doesn’t see us come in and we
startle her out of a daze.

“
Did you know she was pregnant?” she
asks quietly, looking at the floor.

“
I had no idea.” I focus on trying not
to hurl. When my nerves are shot, my stomach gets really upset and
that’s without nine beers and a pack of Virginia Slims. I look
around for a drink machine.

“
I didn’t either,” she says, still
looking at the floor.

“
Have you seen her, Lilly?” Ethan
asks.

“
No,” she mumbles, “Richard had
security escort me down here and said he’d call if anything
changed.”

“
Security? Are you kidding me?” I yell
and then a little quieter, “You know, Lilly, maybe they just don’t
allow pedophiles in the ICU.”

“
Ace!” Ethan barks.

“
What? Sorry,” I’m really not sorry at
all, so I continue, “but I mean, you never know when Chris Hansen
and his Pedophile Prevention Van might roll up and I’m just sayin’
that maybe the doctors and nurses don’t wanna be featured on an
episode of
To Catch a
Predator
.”