Size 12 Is Not Fat

Oh my God. Rachel has just asked Cooper to have coffee with her. My Cooper.

Of course, she doesn’t know he’s my Cooper. He’s not my Cooper. And the way things seem to be going, he’ll probably never be…

Say no. I try to send my thought waves into his brain, like on Star Trek. Say no. Say no. Say no. Say—

“Thanks, but I can’t,” Cooper says. “I’ve got work to do.”

Success!

Rachel smiles and says, “Maybe some other time, then.”

“Sure,” Cooper says.

And Rachel click-clacks away.

When she’s gone, I say, showing no sign that I had, seconds before, been using Vulcan mind control on him, “Look. I gotta get back to work.” I hope he isn’t going to bring up what we’d been talking about in the elevator. I don’t think I could handle it. Not on top of the announcement of Jordan’s engagement. There’s only so much a girl can take in one day, you know?

Maybe Cooper senses this. Either that or the fact that I won’t meet his gaze tips him off.

In any case, all he says is, “Gotcha. I’ll see you later, then. And Heather—”

My heart gives a lurch. No. Please, not now. So close. I’d been so close to escaping—

“The ring,” he says.

Wait. What? “Ring?”

“Tania’s.”

Oh! Tania’s engagement ring! The one that looks exactly like the one I threw back in his brother’s face!

“Yeah?”

“It’s not yours,” Cooper says.

Then he leaves.

14

You think she’s got

So much sophistication.

I think she’s just

In need of medication.

Why’d you pick

Her instead of me

When she’s in so much

Need of therapy?

What’s she got that I don’t have?

What’s she give you that I can’t?

How did she become your girl

Instead of

Me?

“What’s She Got?”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by O’Brien/Henke
From the album Staking Out Your Heart
Cartwright Records

It’s actually kind of appropriate that the student government decides to throw a lip-synch contest at Fischer Hall. Because, let’s face it, New York College is primarily filled with kids who, like me, love to perform.

Which is probably why they asked me to be one of the judges, an honor I readily accepted. But not because I needed to—as Cooper had suggested—feel the thrill of performing again, but because I figured if I were ever going to find the mysterious Mark/Todd (if he existed at all), it was going to be at some Fischer Hall social function, since the guy evidently lived in the building.

And possibly worked there, as well, as Detective Canavan had—teasingly, I know—suggested to me.

It seemed pretty impossible to believe that any of the people I work with could be a killer. But how else to explain the apparent access to the key cabinet? Not to mention the fact that both of the dead girls had had files in the hall director’s office. Not that that necessarily had anything to do with their deaths. But, as Sarah would no doubt put it, both Elizabeth and Roberta had had issues…

And those issues had been recorded in their files.

The thing is, all fifteen RAs, as well as the maintenance staff, have keys to the office Rachel and I share. So if there really is some guy cruising the files for potentially fragile, inexperienced girls he can easily seduce, then it has to be someone I know.

Only who? Who did I know who could be capable of doing something so awful? One of the RAs? Out of the fifteen of them, seven are boys, none of whom I consider real particular swingers, much less psychopathic killers. In fact, in the tradition of RAs, all of them are kind of nerdy—the sort who actually believe their residents when they insist they were smoking clove cigarettes, not pot. They seriously can’t tell the difference.

Besides which, everybody in the whole building knows who the RAs are. I mean, the staff performs safer sex skits and stuff at dinnertime. If Mark or Todd had been an RA, Lakeisha would have known him by sight.

As far as the maintenance staff is concerned, forget it. They’re all Hispanic and over fifty, and only Julio speaks enough English to be understood by someone not bilingual. Plus they’ve all worked in Fischer Hall for years. Why would they suddenly start killing people now?

Which, of course, leaves just the women on the staff. I should, in light of diversity awareness, include them on my list of suspects…

Only none of them could have left that condom in Roberta’s room.

But I guess I’m the only one who considers it odd that two girls—who each had a file in my office, and who each happened to have found a boyfriend within a week of each other—both happened randomly to decide to go elevator surfing, then plunged to their deaths at around the same time the key to the elevator doors went missing, only to reappear shortly after the discovery of at least one of their bodies.

Which is why at seven o’clock that night, I slip from the brownstone—I haven’t heard a peep from Cooper since the elevator incident that morning, which is fine with me, because frankly, I don’t know what I’m going to say to him when I do see him again.

It’s also why I consequently walk right into Jordan Cartwright, who is just coming up the front stoop.

“Heather!” he cries. He has on one of those puffy shirts—you know, like the kind they made fun of on Seinfeld—and a pair of leather pants.

Yes. I am sorry to have to say it. Leather pants.

What’s worse is, he really does look quite good in them.

“I was just coming to see how you are,” he says, in a voice that drips with concern for my mental health.

“I’m fine,” I say, pulling the door closed and working the locks. Don’t ask me why we have so many locks when we also have a burglar alarm and a dog and our own Rastafarian community watch program. But whatever.

“Have a nice evening,” one of the drug dealers urges us.

“Thank you,” I say to the drug dealer. To Jordan, I say, “I’m sorry, I really don’t have time to chat. I’ve got somewhere to go.”

Jordan trots down the steps behind me.

“It’s just,” he says, “I don’t know if you’ve heard. About Tania and me. I meant to tell you the other day, but you were so adversarial—I didn’t want you to find out this way, Heather,” Jordan says, keeping pace with me as I tear down the sidewalk. “I swear. I wanted you to hear it from me.”