Good Luck, Fatty?! Read online

  Good Luck,

  Fatty?!

  a novel by

  Maggie Bloom

  Copyright © 2012 by Tara Nelsen-Yeackel

  Cover Photo © iStockphoto.com/amber_b

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, places, or events is coincidental and unintended.

  To the special girls in my life:

  Brittany Cain

  Laura Nelsen

  Kym Nelsen

  and

  Pat Everett

  May we all have the strength and resilience (not to mention the spunkiness) of Bobbi-Jo Cotton.

  chapter 1

  I’VE SCREWED lots of boys. No, wait. Let me rephrase that. I’ve been screwed by lots of boys. It’s passive. They’re the actors, and I’m the flabby, pockmarked receptacle.

  “Hurry up in there, Bobbi-Jo!” my cousin Orville demands with a hearty thump of the bathroom door. “Miss Esther’s waitin’ on me.”

  Bobbi-Jo is short for Roberta Josephine. My last name is Cotton. “Almost done,” I say. I swipe some shimmery blue shadow over my eyelids and shove the makeup into my backpack, where it will no doubt vanish in a black hole of Milky Way wrappers.

  A car horn blares in the driveway, signifying Miss Esther’s waning patience. Orv sighs. “Jesus, Bobbi-Jo, if I told you once…”

  I turn the crusty old knob and yank, hauling the door past a catch in the jamb. Orv just brushes by and flips the toilet open, starts pissing right in front of me. I shake my head and slip out. Under my breath, I mutter, “Goddamn uncivilized ape.”

  Before I get two bites into my oatmeal—the cheapo instant kind with artificial apple flavoring Orv’s girlfriend, Denise, stuffs the cupboards full of as if it’s a health food—Orv is on my case again. “You never took the trash out yesterday,” he says as he rummages through the refrigerator for his lunch pail. He wiggles the pail out and sniffs the air. “Smells like a sewage plant in here.”

  Orv’s a decent enough guy: a little nice and a little annoying, like most people. I have a soft spot for him because of how he’s taken care of me. Maybe not soft enough, though. “Look who’s vying for Jerk of the Year,” I say, immediately regretting it.

  Miss Esther’s horn makes a last-ditch, squealing attempt at teasing Orv out of the house.

  Orv chews his thumb, hocks a loogie strait onto the chipped linoleum. “Just get this place cleaned up before Denise sees it,” he says stiffly, glancing around the ramshackle kitchen. “We had a deal.”

  I want to say something like, I didn’t ask for this or Don’t do me any favors. Instead, I force a plastic smile and shoot him a salute. “Aye-aye, Captain.”

  Orv huffs out through the screen door, which rattles as it skids shut across the uneven porch. I think about that door a lot, how it’s my protection from things like thunderstorms and random violence (like the shooting last week, a block from the toothpick factory where Orv works). That door also keeps out the taunts of my peers and the love of my wayward parents, not that they’d bother to come knocking.

  Sometimes it lets things in too. Things like Denise. Peppy, upbeat things that are so cheery I can’t help liking them when they bounce my way. “Did I miss Orv again?” Denise asks with a frown, an expression that seems to bother her face. She tosses her purse onto the countertop and plops down in a chair beside me.

  I nod and swallow. “By about half a minute.”

  Denise is twenty, which makes her a year younger than Orv and five years older than me. She pulls the overnight shift at Welcome Home, an assisted living facility by the train station. Usually she gets back here fifteen minutes after Orv slides across Miss Esther’s front seat, but today she’s early. “Want a ride?” she asks me.

  This falling-down house Gramp left Orv and me is only five-eighths of a mile from Industry High, where, four long weeks ago, I hit the tenth grade.

  I twirl a spoon in my oatmeal. “Nah,” I say, even though I should accept the quasi-parental escort. Bullies are energetic in the morning. “I told Dr. Lassiter I’d help out at the shop later.” This means I’ll need my bike to get across town.

  Denise pops out of her chair, smiles and pats my shoulder on her way to the sink. “Don’t say I didn’t offer.”

  * * *

  My bike is in the garage, which is even more falling-down than the house. I jimmy the garage door a few inches off the cracked pavement and, with all of my two-hundred and twenty pounds, heave it toward the rafters. And, for once, it gives on the first try.

  Riding a bike when you’re as fat as I am is part algebra, part circus act. A bit of math and a touch of magic. I cinch the straps of my backpack tighter, shimmy onto the undersized seat and kick off to a wobbly start. But in no time, I’m coasting along the weed-infested sidewalk, a cool breeze undercutting the tenacious North Carolina sun.

  I don’t say this out loud, wouldn’t have the courage to let even Denise in on a dream so tender, but…

  I want to be a cyclist. A competitor. The female Lance Armstrong.

  When I reach the first crossroad on my route, Marigold Way, I stop at the sign and plant my feet in a patch of loose gravel, wait for the intersection to clear. Before it does, though, a shitty old beater car—a Dodge Dart, according to the once-proud insignia on its rear end—rolls up beside me, a cloud of pot smoke trailing out its open window.

  I try not to look, but I can’t help it.

  The guy in the passenger seat, a smartass freshman named Sydney Vale with goldfish-orange hair and giant, splotchy freckles, makes eye contact with me and bursts out laughing.

  I snort softly to myself, peer deeper into the Dart, where I note Evan Richter slouching behind the wheel, his sunken squirrel eyes glassy and dazed. He screwed me three weeks ago, behind a dugout at the Little League field. Took all of five seconds.

  The traffic on Marigold dies out, and the Dart glides away. As it goes, I spot Craig and Corey Benson, their twin black ‘fros unmistakable through the Dart’s rear window. They screwed me in the brush by the river over the summer, one after the other. Corey was better.

  I put my feet to the pedals and pump, do the math on the Dart as I clear the intersection. Three out of four. I’ve been screwed by everyone but twerpy little Sydney Vale (mostly because I have a rule: no one younger than me). Otherwise, I could’ve been nailed by a hundred percent.

  Around the corner from school, a scraggly stray cat I call Buttercup strides out from between two houses—much nicer houses than the hole where Orv, Denise, and I live—and starts trotting along behind my bike. By the way he hounds me, I figure the fleabag must have gotten it into his head he’s a dog.

  “Shoo!” I holler over my shoulder. I flail my arm around to convince him to go, but he refuses to bug off. I wouldn’t mind the puny sucker so much, but he’s one of the main sources of material for the jerkwad bullies. And I’m sort of sick of being referred to as “The Pussy Whisperer.”

  I pull over and drop my bike in the grass. I’m close enough to school now that the torment may begin at any moment, but, for now, no one seems to notice me.

  I slip my backpack off, unzip one of its cavernous pockets and root around. Buttercup mews a few words of encouragement, nudges my hand deeper. Eventually I come up with a mostly melted Milky Way (the end of my stash) and a few errant corn nuts that escaped the last garbage dump.

  “Good kitty,” I
coo. I deposit the corn nuts on the sidewalk, and Buttercup gives them a perfunctory sniff. With my teeth, I rip through the candy wrapper and squeeze the gooey chocolate into my mouth.

  I scratch Buttercup behind his ears and on the back of his neck. This is sad, I think. Pathetic even. As sick as it makes me to admit it, I love this doofus cat more than my parents love me.

  You know what’s worse than being abandoned by your parents, though? Not being allowed to be ticked about it. Because when your parents jet off to dig wells in remote third world villages, eradicate malaria, and funnel medicine to AIDS babies, your hurt turns selfish and insignificant pretty quickly.

  * * *

  Dr. Harvey Lassiter is the closest thing I’ve got to a parent nowadays, because as hard as Orv and Denise try, I’m not sure they’ve got it in ‘em.

  I fly over to Harvey’s shop on my Target-special Schwinn, jam on its brakes and squeal its tires to a dusty stop. At a chunky metal rack out front, I chain it up.

  A little bell over the door jingles merrily as I rumble inside. “Hey, kiddo,” Dr. Lassiter says with an open smile. He doesn’t even have to look up from the jumble of tools and bicycle parts on the carpet in front of him to know it’s me. “Hope you’re ready to roll up your sleeves today.”

  Dr. Lassiter—Harvey, as he insists I call him—is sixty-something years old with a full head of silver-white hair (the only feature that makes him look his age) and a trim, sinewy build. He used to be the principal of Industry High, where I landed in his office because of a schoolyard brawl I decided to win. A month later, he caught Noah Rice screwing me in the janitor’s closet. We both got a week of in-school suspension.

  Harvey retired in June. The same week, he opened The Pit, a bicycle sales and repair shop in Industry’s shuttered downtown. Besides The Pit, three other establishments survive on this strip of baked earth: a payday loan store, a liquor emporium, and a Baptist church.

  “Whatcha got for me?” I ask, trying to sound nonchalant. The phrase “roll up your sleeves” has me hoping Harvey’s going to let me do more than spiff up displays or punch sales into the computer.

  “I need you to design some fliers,” he tells me. “I tried to do a mockup, but it didn’t go very well, I’m afraid.” He frowns, gestures at the counter. “Have a look-see.”

  I wander toward the register, dip my hand in a fishbowl of Milky Ways and pull one out. “A race?” I say, more to myself than Harvey, as I eye the stick-figure drawing he’s scrawled across the back of a paper grocery sack. I peel the wrapper from the candy and pop it (the candy, not the wrapper) in my mouth. As I chew, I gurgle, “You’re having…a bike race?”

  “Not until spring,” he says. “I want to give folks a long lead-time, so they can train. Plus, I’ve gotta iron out some kinks with the town clerk. Permits and such.” A slippery grin tugs at the corners of his mouth, as if he knows what I’m about to say next.

  “Can I…?” I ask, tucking my lip under my teeth. “Do you think I’d be able to…?”

  He shrugs. “No reason why you couldn’t,” he says optimistically. “But this is going to be a pretty rigorous affair. Not for the faint of heart.”

  The paper sack advertisement, in its charming, childish way, informs me that competitors in The Pit’s inaugural “Yo-Yo” race will zing from Industry to Desolation, North Carolina and back (hence, the Yo-Yo moniker, I assume). “How far is it?” I wonder aloud. With just one car and forever-limited gasoline, Orv, Denise, and I seldom venture beyond a three-mile radius from home.

  “Twenty-four miles and some change,” Harvey says. “Clocked it myself the other day. Of course, I’ll have to get a more precise measurement before the starting gun blazes.”

  There’s a tub of art supplies jammed in the back of the closet in The Pit’s grubby office, including a quality array of acrylic paints I hauled down here myself (a final gift from Gramp) and used to decorate the display windows with exploding fireworks and lopsided, wavy American flags. That was back on Independence Day, and the damn paintings are still there. You’d almost think this place is too busy for me to take them down.

  I duck out and return with the tub balanced on my hip, its handles digging into a roll of flab around my midsection and compressing my liver. “What about the windows?” I ask. I shuffle over to the bigger of the two panes and struggle to tuck the tub into a corner, where the few customers we get in this place won’t be bound to trip over it. “I could paint a sign up here.” I give the glass a friendly tap. “Something eye-catching and colorful. A kid on a bike, walking the dog?” I suggest, referencing the yo-yo trick.

  Harvey shakes his head, smirks as if I’m the smartest person he’s ever known. “That’s why you get the big bucks,” he says, and we both laugh.

  Harvey doesn’t pay me in money. He can’t afford to. Instead, he keeps the fishbowl stocked with candy and slips me a few cans of cat food here and there, which I pass along to Buttercup.

  The truth is, Buttercup is about as much of a stray as I am, since he’s always welcome at our falling-down door. (Not inside, though. Orv claims to be allergic.) At least the cat’s got people who care about him, I figure, even if they’re not the ones who are supposed to.

  * * *

  Tom Cantwell is waiting for me outside The Pit when Harvey locks the place up for the evening. Tom wants to screw me. He’s a virgin. And my friend. I don’t do friends (another rule). Virgins, on the other hand? My specialty.

  “Night,” I call over my shoulder at Harvey, who is already strapping his helmet on and mounting his Trek. (He doesn’t own a car, only the most awesome bike known to man.) He throws me a courtesy wave and vanishes.

  I turn to Tom. “What’re you doing here?”

  He stares into space and kicks his stumpy BMX’s front tire, which is underinflated, as I unchain the Schwinn. “Nothing,” he says.

  I roll my eyes, straighten up and, with a sigh, say, “Not this again.” The whole lack-of-screwing thing has driven a wedge between me and Tom, one of the few people in town I can count as a friend.

  “What?” he says with mock confusion, as if screwing me wouldn’t dial down the tension between us.

  “You know very well what.” I get the Schwinn going (admittedly slowly, since I’m not really trying to flee him).

  “Maybe I do,” he says coolly, following me in a nice straight line, his bike upright and all business as I sway mine playfully from side to side.

  “I told you my policy.”

  He snorts. “What if I hated you, like them?” he says, the word them sounding as if it’s infested with maggots.

  “What if?” I shake my hair in the breeze, pretend not to care.

  He buzzes ahead of me, waits for me to catch up. “Your policy is dumb,” he says. “I mean, it’s dumb that you have a policy.”

  As I go to pass him, he cuts me off and skids to a halt, forcing me to stop too. Barely. I dig my toes into the dirt and say, “Can we change the subject?”

  I pause long enough to really look at Tom (not my usual M.O.), something about the way his pale eyes shimmer in the setting sun weakening my defenses.

  Another thing seducing me is the aching strum of cricket wings bowing against one another, their songs consuming the early autumn air. It’s been nine years since my parents dumped me (quite literally) on Gramp’s stoop in their harried rush to catch a midnight flight to Uganda. I stopped sensing the crickets seven years ago.

  But tonight they return. “Do you hear that?” I say, my voice tinged with awe.

  Tom cocks his head, strains as if he’s listening across a great distance. “Hear what?”

  I rock my bike closer to his until we’re side by side, near enough to touch. “The crickets,” I whisper. “They’re singing.”

  He chuckles faintly, leans in and says, “Yes, they are.” Awkwardly he lays a hand on my arm. Then, with supreme boldness, he kisses me, his lips as moist and warm as I’ve ever imagined any boy’s.

  It’s my first time.

>   chapter 2

  I MISSED nineteen days of school last year. If you miss twenty, you automatically flunk and repeat the grade. The fact that I got so close to the wire wasn’t an accident. It was a plan. A dangerous one, since a bout of food poisoning nearly shoved me over the line at the end of May. But there’s no way I can spend even one extra minute in a place that has so soundly rejected me.

  Tom is an outcast too, but for different reasons than I am. He’s all overgrown and gangly, nothing but arms and legs and an upside-down peanut of a head. I suspect he reminds people of an insect.

  It doesn’t help that he has a mind of his own, either. Not too many kids our age appreciate that kind of thing, unless you’re blessed with the immutable good looks of a pop star or an underwear model.

  Today I have somehow made it past the closing bell at school without anyone messing with me. But as soon as I hustle the Schwinn off Industry High property, Malcolm Gates starts in.

  “Cotton!” he bellows from a few steps behind me. I don’t answer. “Yo, Cotton!” He sounds agitated, which makes me wonder what kind of hassle I’m in for. Truth be told, I prefer the kind where the jerkwad and I slip off for a quick screw to the kind where said jerkwad belittles and intimidates me for the whole world to see.

  And I’m in luck.

  Malcolm catches up and steers me by the handlebars of the Schwinn down a dead-end street where a bunch of old folks hibernate behind their neatly manicured lawns and freshly sealed driveways.

  I’ve been down this road before. Several times, in fact. A hundred yards beyond the last house—a golden rancher with a scattering of pink flamingos in the yard—is a dilapidated tree house at the edge of the woods, probably a relic from a time when the geezers on this block had kids my age.