Thirteen (14 page)

After Lars won the pool game and thrust his pool stick into the air and did a victory dance—go Lars!—the group took a break for Cokes and Doritos. Cinnamon sat on Bryce's lap, which I thought was extremely brazen, and perhaps even a bit much. But, whatever. I did a quick scoocheroo on the other sofa so that there wasn't room for Dinah beside me, forcing her to sit by Dave instead. I found Lars's hand and squeezed it.

We talked about Halloween and whether anyone was going to the school party—the consensus was “no”—and whether people were going to go trick-or-treating.

“Candy, dude,” Dave said. “You think I'm going to let that wealth go to waste?”

Candy
, I thought.
Very good—Dinah likes candy
. I nodded at her encouragingly, and she crinkled her eyebrows in confusion.

“You gonna steal it from some little kid like you did last year?” Adam said. He laughed, and Lars made the mistake of joining in. I elbowed him. Stealing candy from innocent children was
not
good. One point for Dave, one strike against.

“We're going trick-or-treating, right, Winnie?” Dinah said. “I love trick-or-treating.”

“Um…” I said. I was hesitant to commit, since maybe trick-or-treating, like the school party, was passé this year. And then I scolded myself for caring.

“Better not,” Cinnamon said, patting her tummy. At first I thought she was poking fun at herself, because she did have a little tub. But the way she was arching her eyebrows and giving Dinah a knowing look—an intentionally over-blown knowing look—clued me in that her comment wasn't aimed at herself.

The guys laughed, and Cinnamon grinned. Dinah turned red.

“We had our fat index measured last week?” Cinnamon said. “In PE?”

Adam and Dave nodded; they'd been through it as freshmen themselves. The PE coach used these barbaric metal pincher things to squish our fat, and it was all very public and humiliating.

“Dinah scored the highest of anyone,” Cinnamon said. “Didn't you, Dinah?” She said it like a tease, like something cute and funny to share with the guys, and I thought, as I'd thought so many times before, that Cinnamon was the master of underhanded digs. It was her delivery that complicated things, because her tone was joshing and friendly and
we're-all-in-this-together
. And because of that, you felt like you couldn't really blame her, or get mad, without it seeming as if you were overreacting.

But bringing up someone's fat index score was not joshing. Bringing up someone's fat index score was not friendly. And I'd promised myself that I wasn't going to do this anymore, sit silently while Cinnamon made herself look good at Dinah's expense.

I opened my mouth to speak, only no words came out, and it was because we were at Bryce's house, that's why. And Bryce was chuckling, and so were Adam and Dave. And Dave could just forget about marrying Dinah in a fabulous triple ceremony with matching bouquets, because it wasn't going to happen. He was a jerk. Dinah was way too good for him.

Cinnamon must have read something on Dinah's face, or maybe my own, because she backed off and said, “Oh, sweetie, I didn't mean to make you sad! Who cares what your fat index is?”

Dinah looked stricken.

“I know—we'll go on an exercise plan together!” Cinnamon said. “We'll start jogging, 'kay?”

“Gonna have to jog a long way,” Dave said under his breath, making Adam crack up.

“Don't be mean,” Cinnamon said to Dave.

“Yeah,” Bryce said, and it was hard to tell if he was adding to the joke or not. He tightened his arms around Cinnamon's waist, and Cinnamon flushed happily.

“Seriously, Dinah,” she said, “you have nothing to feel bad about. It just means there's more of you to love.”

 

Bad Cinnamon. Bad me
. That's what kept repeating itself in my mind the next day. And bad Dinah, too, for not just telling Cinnamon off once and for all! Instead, Dinah cornered me in the bathroom and said, “Am I fat? I want you to tell me the truth.
Am
I?”

“No,” I told her, just as I'd told her the night before on the phone, and over IM, and in response to her multi-exclamation-pointed e-mails. “No, no, no, you're not fat!”

“Well, do these pants make me
look
fat?” she pressed.

“God, Dinah, don't you have anything better to worry about?” I said. “People are dying! Babies are starving! Do you think you could maybe be a little less self-absorbed?”

She blanched. And then, because she was Dinah, she blinked and said in a chastened voice, “Babies are starving? Omigod. Where?”

It wasn't starving babies I was thinking about, though. It was Joseph with his red knit cap and fuzzy sweater. The container of antibacterial gel sitting on the corner of his desk. Yet I didn't tell Dinah that, because I didn't want to…I don't know, turn Joseph into a pity case? Make his disease more real by talking about it? Use the sadness in his life as a topic of conversation?

But later, alone in my bedroom, snuggled under the lovely, fluffy comforter I'd had since I was Ty's age, I felt like it was all so stupid, this business of being a human and caring what we
looked
like, for goodness sake. Although I cared, too. I knew that. And to some degree maybe physical appearance did matter, but certainly not as much as, say, being alive.

So I scooched out of bed and called Dinah. I said, “You know what? Maybe you are a little chubby. But who cares? That's just
you
.”

She was quiet for a few seconds, and I got a bad, clenchy feeling inside. Had I screwed up?

Then she said, “I'm not
fat
, though.”

“Not fat. Just chubby. And Cinnamon was wrong to bring it up in front of the guys.”

“Cinnamon can be kind of a jerk,” she said in a surprisingly forceful voice.

“Yep,” I said. What else could I say?

“I don't think she
means
to be,” Dinah continued. “At least, I don't think she sets out with the goal of making me feel like dirt. I think she just…sees the opportunity sometimes.”

“And doesn't stop herself,” I added. I paused, the whole of her sentence soaking in. “She makes you feel like
dirt
?”

“I think she was showing off for Bryce,” she said.

“I think it worked. Did you see them today after lunch?”

Dinah snorted. Cinnamon had ditched us to play arm-tickling games with Bryce out on the quad, and I'd half-wished our vice-principal, Ms. Bolletieri, had spotted them and written them up for PDA.

“I'm going to call her and tell her she was really mean,” Dinah said. “After I hang up with you, that's what I'm going to do.”

Whoa
. Was she really? And why did that surprise me? Was it just because I never had?

“Good for you,” I said.

“Or maybe I'll e-mail her, so I'll be less likely to chicken out.”

“I totally think you should,” I said, suspecting that if it were me, I probably
would
chicken out—even over e-mail. Holy pickles, was I an even bigger wimp than Dinah???

“Yeah,” Dinah said. “'Cause if I let her treat me like that, then I'm part of the problem. That's what I've been thinking. And if our friendship is going to mean anything—if the three of us are going to stay friends forever, which I so so so so want—then we've got to be honest with each other, right?”

“I totally, absolutely agree.”

She paused. “Can I tell
you
something?”

“Uh…sure.” My fingers tightened on the phone.

“Sometimes…well…”

“Spit it out.” My heart thumped, because I had no clue where she was headed.

“It's nothing, really. It's just that sometimes…your hair gets a little stringy. Like, if you haven't washed it that day.”

At first I felt relieved. My hair got stringy sometimes? Duh! Especially my bangs, because they got oily from my forehead, I guess. Which was gross, but having stringy hair was far better than being a jerk. Or—truth—being fat. Not that Dinah was fat. She wasn't. But whenever I saw a truly obese person, like at the mall or at a restaurant, I couldn't help thinking that existing in such a body would be an awfully hard row to hoe.

“Winnie?” Dinah said. “Are you mad?”

“What? No, no, I'm not mad. You're right, my hair does get stringy sometimes.”

And then, as the words came out of my mouth, a huge wave of shame washed over me, completely disproportionate to the situation.
My hair was stringy. Everyone knew it. Everyone saw me and thought, God, that girl should take a shower.

“Winnie? Um…you sound kind of funny. Are you sure you're not mad?”

Had Dinah brought up my stringy hair to punish me? If so, she was certainly justified. I hadn't stood up for her at Bryce's. I hadn't told Cinnamon to shut up.

Maybe Dinah needed me to hurt a little, too, and that's why she said it.

“Yeah, no, I swear I'm not mad,” I told her. “But I've got to go, okay? I've”—I worked up a laugh—“got to wash my hair.”

But then…I didn't. I needed to—oh boy, did I need to. Dinah was right!—but I did not get in the shower, and I did not squeeze a dollop of Neutrogena Clarifying Shampoo into my hand, and I did not scrub and scrub until my hair was shiny and clean. What good was it for me to say all these grand things about appearance not mattering if I wasn't willing to allow appearance
not
to matter? At least for one day. At least for tomorrow, which was Halloween, and which made it all the more perfect.

I'd dress up as Ugly Girl, and I'd do it with pride. I'd dedicate it to all the Dinahs and Josephs of the world, and obese people, and kids with bad skin. I wouldn't say it out loud, but that's what I'd be doing: dedicating my ugliness to beauty within, to everyone taking a chill pill and just being
nice
, for God's sake.

 

Cinnamon was the first of my friends to see me that next morning. She approached me at my locker, and her expression told me without a shred of doubt that my costume was a success.

“What the
heck
?!” she said. She tried to shield me from the other kids in the hall, but I pushed her away.

“Cinnamon, stop,” I said, giggling. I was sweating and nervous, but I refused to back down.

“Okay, you can
not
laugh at a time like this,” she said. “Did you take crazy pills this morning? Did an anvil fall on your head, and that's why you look like this?”

Perhaps she was referring to my hair, which had gone overnight from stringy to outright lanky, and which hung in clearly defined grease-clumps. Or perhaps she meant my face, utterly unbeautified with mascara or lip gloss or my Rock Star glitter dust. Then again, it could have been my stiff and ridiculous jeans, high-waisted as all get out, or my white turtleneck with the little blue whales all over it. Which I'd tucked in, thank you very much, and which, when I dug it out of my drawer, made me marvel at how many hideous articles of clothing I actually possessed, bestowed upon me by relatives and family friends and plain bad judgment.

Pulling on the whale shirt made me think of “Wonderful Whales” and “Hilarious Humpbacks,” which made me think of Joseph. Which was good, because otherwise I might have abandoned my plan. It was remarkably hard to look bad on purpose, I discovered. But I lifted my chin and added a gold lamé belt with a clasp in the shape of a heart. (God only knew how I'd ended up with that gem.) I finished the look with a hat. It was jaunty. It was plaid. Enough said.

“I'm Ugly Girl,” I informed Cinnamon, who was still gaping at me.

“Yes. Yes, you are. You do not see me arguing. But
why
?”

“For Halloween,” I said. For my protest to count, I couldn't explain it further than that.

Cinnamon shook her head. “No. Uh-uh. Go change.”

“I'm not going to change,” I said.

Dinah hurried up to us, looking quite pretty in a pink sweater that brought out the rosiness of her cheeks. “Guys, I ran into Louise, and she said I had to go find you, Winnie, because—” She broke off, taking in my fashion statement.

“Because why?” I said.

“Er…she said you'd gone 'round the bend. Which I didn't understand…but now I do?” She gave a pained smile that said,
Oh, God, Winnie, what have you done?

“She's Ugly Girl,” Cinnamon explained with narrowed eyes. “Only she's going to march right into the bathroom and change, because she's not allowed to wear a costume to school.”