I think, You’re the one that’s dumb. And I move past him. I’m aiming for the swings, where I see Bailey Bishop along with a hundred other girls. Moses steps in front of me. “Go home, Flabby Stout …”
I step the other way, and he blocks my path again. So now I move toward the jungle gym, where I can sit in peace, but he says, “I can’t let you do that. You might break it.”
“I won’t break it. I’ve been on it before.”
“But you might. Your flab has probably cracked the foundation. The next time you go on it, I bet that whole thing’ll collapse. Maybe the playground too. You’re probably cracking it right now just standing here. You probably killed your mom by sitting on her.” The boys die over and over. One of them rolls along the ground, hooting his face off.
I’m not as tall as Moses is, but I stare directly into his dark, soulless eyes. All I can think is For the first time in my life, I know what it’s like to have someone hate me. I can see the hate in there like it’s lodged in his pupils.
I spend the rest of recess standing against the wall on the edge of the playground wondering what I’ve done to Moses Hunt to make him hate me and knowing that whatever it is, there’s no coming back from it. It’s my stomach that tells me He will never like you no matter what you do, no matter how thin you are, no matter how nice you try to be to him. This is a terrifying feeling. It’s the feeling of something turning. Of coming to a corner and going around it and seeing that the street ahead is dark and deserted or filled with wild dogs, but you can’t go back, only forward, right into the middle of the pack.
I hear a shriek, and my friend Bailey Bishop jumps off the swing in midflight, legs reaching for the earth, hair sailing for the sky, bright gold as the sunrise.
I wave but she doesn’t see me. Doesn’t she notice I’m missing? I wave again, but she’s too busy running. I think, If I were Bailey Bishop, I’d run too. She has legs as long as light poles. If I were Bailey Bishop, I wouldn’t even look for me to see where I’d gone off to. I would just run and run and run.
NOW
* * *
The girl’s name is Iris Engelbrecht. These are the things I’ve learned in the past five minutes: She’s been heavy since birth, thanks to a double whammy of hypothyroidism and something called Cushing’s syndrome. Her parents are divorced, she has two older sisters, and everyone in her family is overweight.
“You need to tell the principal.”
Iris shakes her head. “No.”
We are back inside the school, just the two of us. I’m trying to lead us toward the main hall, toward where the principal’s office is, but Iris is dragging her feet.
“I’ll go with you.”
“I don’t want to make it worse.”
“What makes it worse is Dave Kaminski thinking he can do that to you.”
“I’m not like you.” And what she means is I’m not brave like you.
“Then I’ll just go.” I walk away from her.
“Don’t.” She catches up to me. “I mean, thanks for chasing after him, but I want the whole thing to go away, and it’s not going away if I tell. It does the opposite of going away. It gets so big I have to look at it all the time, and I don’t want to. It’s the first day of the school year.” And again I can hear what she isn’t saying: I don’t want this thing to follow me the whole year, even if I’ve got every right to kick his teeth in.
My counselor, Rachel Mendes, meets me at the park. For two of the past three years, I’ve seen her every day. Back when I was in the hospital, she was the first person, other than my dad, who spoke to me like I was a regular girl. Later she became my tutor and also my caregiver, the one who stayed with me while my dad went to work. Now she’s my best friend and we meet here once a week.
She says, “What happened?”
“Boys. Idiots. People.”
There used to be a zoo in the heart of the park, but it was shut down in 1986 after the bear tried to eat a man’s arm. All that’s left of it is this wide stone bench, which used to be part of the bear’s habitat. We sit on that and look out toward the golf course, and I’m fuming so much I’m worried the top of my head is going to blast right off.
“This boy did a cruel thing, and the person he did it to doesn’t want to speak up.”
“Is the person in danger?”
“No. The boy probably thought what he did was harmless, but he shouldn’t have done it and he shouldn’t get away with it.”
“We can’t fight another person’s battles, no matter how much we want to.”
But we can chase the bastards who terrorize them down the street. I think how much simpler life was when I couldn’t leave the house. It was just Supernatural reruns all day long, reading, reading, reading, and spying on the neighbor boys from my window.
“How’s the anxiety?”
“I’m mad, but I’m breathing.”
“How’s the eating?”
“I didn’t stress-eat, but the day’s not over.” And there’s an entire school year left to experience. Even though I’ve spent almost three years eating nutritiously and boringly without a hiccup, Rachel and my doctors are worried I might end up spiraling into some wild, bottomless binge because I’m so deprived. What they don’t understand is it wasn’t about the food. Food was never part of the Why. Not directly, at least.
“Here’s the worst thing of it,” I say. “You know how far I’ve come and I know how far I’ve come, but everyone else just sees me for how large I am or where I was years ago, not who I am now.”