What if I accidentally tell someone off so that I become the Sassy Fat Girl? What if some well-meaning skinny girls adopt me as their own and I become the Fat Best Friend? What if it’s clear to everyone that my homeschooling has really only equipped me for eighth grade, not eleventh, because I’m too stupid to understand any of my classwork?
My dad says, “All you have to do is today, Libbs. If it completely and totally sucks, we can go back to homeschooling. Just give me one day. Actually, don’t give it to me. Give yourself one day.”
I tell myself: Today. I tell myself: This is what you dreamed of when you were too scared to leave the house. This is what you dreamed of when you were lying in your bed for six months. This is what you wanted—to be out in the world like everyone else. I tell myself: It’s taken you two and a half years of fat camps and counselors and psychologists and doctors and behavioral coaches and trainers to get ready for this. For the past two and a half years, you’ve walked ten thousand steps a day. Every one of them was pointing you to now.
I can’t drive.
I’ve never been to a dance.
I completely missed middle school.
I’ve never had a boyfriend, although I did make out with this boy at camp once. His name is Robbie and he’s repeating his senior year somewhere in Iowa.
Except for my mom, I’ve never had a best friend, unless you count the ones I made up for myself—three brothers who lived across the street from my old house. The ones I called Dean, Sam, and Castiel, because they went to private school and I didn’t know their names. The ones I pretended were my friends.
My dad looks so nervous and hopeful that I grab my bag and push out onto the sidewalk, and then I’m standing in front of the school as people walk past me.
What if I’m late to every class because I can’t walk fast enough, and then I get detention, where I will meet the only boys who will pay attention to me—burnouts and delinquents—fall in love with one of them, get pregnant, drop out before I can graduate, and live with my dad for the rest of my life or at least until the baby is eighteen?
I almost get back in the car, but my dad is still sitting there, hopeful smile still on his face. “You got this.” He says it louder this time and—I swear to you—gives me a thumbs-up.
Which is why I join the crowd and let them carry me along until I’m waiting my turn at the entrance, opening my bag so that the guard can check it, walking through metal detectors, stepping into a long hallway that splinters off in all directions, bumped and jostled by elbows and arms. I think, Somewhere in this school could be a boy I fall in love with. One of these fine young men might be the one who at long last claims my heart and my body. I am the Pauline Potter of Martin Van Buren High School. I am going to sex the rest of this weight right off me. I’m looking at all the boys going by. It could be that guy or maybe this one. That’s the beauty of this world. Right now, that boy right there or that one over there means nothing to me, but soon we will meet and change the world, his and mine.
“Move it, fat-ass,” someone says. I feel the sting of the word, like a pinprick, like the word itself is trying to pop me the way it pops my thought bubble. I forge ahead. The great thing about my size is that I can clear a path.
Like the hair, the car is part of the image. It’s a restored 1968 Land Rover that Marcus and I bought from an elderly uncle. It was originally used for farmwork before it sat rusting for forty-some years, but now it’s part Jeep, part all-terrain vehicle, and one hundred percent total badass.
In the passenger seat, Marcus sulks. “Asshole.” This is said low and to the window. Unfortunately for me, he got his license a month ago.
“You’re adorable. I hope eleventh grade won’t spoil your boyish charm. You can drive next year when I’m at college.”
If I go to college. If I ever leave this place.
He holds up his middle finger in my direction. From the back, our younger brother, Dusty, kicks the seat. “Stop fighting.”
“We’re not fighting, little man.”
“You sound like Mom and Dad. Make the music louder.”
A couple of years ago, my parents got along pretty well. But then Dad was diagnosed with cancer. The week before he was diagnosed I found out he was cheating on my mom. He doesn’t know I know, and I’m not sure Mom knows, but sometimes I wonder. He’s cancer-clear now, by the way, but it hasn’t been easy, especially on Dusty, who’s ten.
I turn up the song, an oldie—Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack”—and I can feel myself settling once again into my zone. I’ve got four soundtrack songs that I wish would start blasting every time I walk into a room, and this is one of them.
We pull up outside Dusty’s school, and he goes leaping out before I can stop him. I get out after him, taking the keys so Marcus can’t drive off with the car.
This summer, Dusty started carrying a purse. No one talks about it—not my mom or dad or Marcus.
Dusty is halfway up the walk before I chase him down. I have to keep my eyes on him so I don’t lose him. He has the darkest skin of the three of us, and his hair is the color of a copper penny. Technically, Mom is half black, half Louisiana Creole, and Dad is white and Jewish. Dusty is dark like Mom. Marcus, on the other hand, couldn’t be whiter. Me? I’m just Jack Masselin, whoever the hell that is.
Dusty says, “I don’t want to be late.”
“You won’t be. I just wanted to … Are you sure about the purse, little man?”
“I like it. I can fit everything in here.”