Now I watch him across the crowded gymnasium pulling at the ponytail of the blond flute player who sits in front of him. The snow day was a long time ago, but I remember. Every >detail, every day since. And I wonder, how could he have forgotten?
“As we move forward toward graduation and our lives to come . . . blah blah blah.” I’m vaguely aware Tracey is still speaking into the microphone.
No warning. One minute I’m a million miles away in a snow-covered field tasting flakes on my tongue and Jackson’s lips on mine. The next minute I am sitting on top of a broken wooden chair in a crowded high school gym. My teeth snap together with the force of the fall, my head jerking upward. A collective gasp echoes through the rafters. Rows and rows of horrified eyes stare down at me. I’m no longer in the chair. I’m on the floor. I’m on the floor. I try to take it in. The sound of the crash echoes. The speech stops. The chatter stops. The world stops. All eyes focus on the fat girl sitting on top of the crushed remains of what was once a wooden chair. Kristen stares down at me from her seat with a horrified expression of absolute disbelief. By sitting beside me somehow the ultimate humiliation has spread to her.
“Oh. My. God,” she whispers, mortified.
I look beyond her — up and up to the rows of shocked eyes. Tracey stumbles over her speech but somehow keeps going. I know she will never forgive me for spoiling her moment. A teacher jumps out from behind the curtain, leaning over me.
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” I say, struggling to my feet. “I’m fine.”
Tracey keeps going at the microphone. “Our lives will be forever changed by our high-school experiences.” You think?
Another teacher pulls a chair out from somewhere. He puts it behind me and I have no choice but to sit down, though I’m careful not to lean back. All I want to do is leave. Run as fast as my fat little legs can carry me. Behind the curtains and out of sight of all the eyes. But I can’t leave. So I sit there. My legs shake from the strain of trying to not put any weight on the chair, and I try to ignore Skinny’s voice in my ear.
“I knew that would happen one day. Did you see that fat girl?
I can’t believe I just saw that. Wonder if anybody got that on video — got to post it online!”
My eyes are full of tears, but I will not cry. I’ve already done enough to draw attention to myself. But there is one thing I can’t stop myself from doing. I look at Jackson. He is staring at me now. Just like everyone else in the gym.
“He feels sorry for you. He thinks you’re pitiful.”
I look away, down at the floor in front of me, feeling like I have a huge red target right over my heart. I feel Wolfgang shift restlessly in the chair beside me, and he glances over quickly. His look is intense.
“Every hunter knows you have to kill something when it is wounded. It’s just a question of how deep the wound goes before it’s put out of its misery,” Skinny says softly in my ear. “There’s a point when he realizes the poor thing is so wounded it can no longer be fixed.”
I bite my bottom lip until I taste the blood. I’m not at that point. I can be fixed. I clench my hands into fists at my side. There is still something alive deep inside of me. I can feel it beating against my rib cage with iridescent shades of ruby and amethyst wings. The next time I’m on a stage and people are looking at me, it will be different. Jackson will look at me the way he looked at Gigi. I will be in the spotlight — to sing for everyone and to hear only applause.
“Are you crazy? There aren’t parts like that for fat girls like you.”
Then I won’t be fat.
The idea of talking back to Skinny is appalling. Something I’ve never done before. But it’s a simple solution, really. Girl loves boy. Boy loves girl. Girl gets fat. Boy leaves. Girl cuts her stomach up into a little bitty pouch to get boy back.
“You will die,” Skinny hisses in my ear.
I don’t care. If I die, I die. I will do whatever it takes. I will let them cut my stomach open and change my internal organs forever. Even if I have to have a stomach the size of an egg for the rest of my life, I will never feel this way again. I focus my whole being on trying not to cry. I don’t hear the speech at the microphone or the applause that comes from the crowd. I don’t hear the principal calling out the names for the awards. I only hear one sound in my ear. I’ve never heard it before, but it bounces off the inside of my brain and pounds against my ears. It’s Skinny, and she’s laughing and laughing and laughing.
Chapter Five
About two weeks after the chair incident, I have my first appointment for the surgery. Dad goes with me. They do a lot of tests, and we fill in a ton of paperwork, and then sit silently in the waiting room until a tall, silver-haired nurse comes in with a laptop. She’s wearing a headband with a sparkly pink bow on top that would have been more appropriate for an eight-year-old, but she’s old like a grandmother. She says hello to my dad, but talks to me.