13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl Read Online Free Page A

choice of words. “Number One Fan,” you should have put. Of course, it’s too late now.
    Some People is waiting at your doorstep, tapping her witch-toed boot, drumming her fingers on her narrow white hips, frowning at you through feathers of layered red hair. She takes one look at the cat hair on your clothes, breathes your Banana-Rama-and-flesh scent, and knows where you have been and what you have done.
    â€œPathetic,” she says. “Disgusting. With her? That
child
? What is she, like, seventeen?”
    Child?
    She closes her eyes, shakes her head, sighs the way she does whenever you pull your guitar from its lovingly stickered case. “I can’t believe you,” she says at last. “I really can’t.”
    And if your mouth weren’t so full of cotton, if your throat weren’t so parched from all that fat-girl wine, you would say, Neither can I. Neither can I.
    A week later, the fat girl still won’t take your calls. You sit alonein your basement apartment, leaving message after message—mainly drunken, but sometimes sober—waiting for her to call you right back, can’t believe that she doesn’t. Mistake. Surely there must’ve been. It’s only when you see her front window abruptly darken as you tipsily turn in to her driveway one night that you understand there has been no mistake.
    Three weeks after that, you’re paying your first non-drunk visit to the fat girl. You don’t know why. You only know you need to see her.
    It’s the only time you’ve been to see her dry—or during the day, for that matter—and the house seems different, somehow. Smaller. Not swaying. Less lethal lawn ornaments.
    Standing on the doormat, you knock a gentle knock. You knock and knock until the bundle of birch twigs tumbles to the ground and still there is no answer. But you do not give up. After all, she never gave up on you. You go around back like she always asked you to. That’s when you hear the sound of inexpertly strummed chords wafting out of her open window, smell nag champa burning, Banana-Rama bread freshly baked. You hunch down in the hydrangea beds and peer into her half-open window.
    She’s lying on the bed wearing what appears to be some sort of uniform. Jesus. A high school uniform. Lying on the bed beside her is a tall, thin, lanky man with long hair. He looks older than you are. Mangier. Less gainfully employed. He’s sitting reclined on her Indian cushions, your Indian cushions, his legs crossed at the knee, torturing the strings of an acoustic guitar. The fat girl lies with her eyes closed, her hands clasped on her vast stomach like she’s dead. Her hair is fanned out all around her. She’s doing her nod. Her slow, grave, listening nod.
    â€œWow,” she says, eyes still closed. “This is so epic, Samuel.”
    â€œSeriously?”
    She nods slowly, her eyes still closed. “Oh yeah. Really gritty too. And so . . . what’s the word I’m looking for?”
    The man looks down at the fat girl like she’s an oracle. “What? Like, raw or . . . ?”
    â€œEthereal,” she says at last. “Incandescent.”
    â€œWhoa. Really? You think so?”
    â€œI know so.”
    â€œRad. I really don’t know what I’d do without your support, Eleanor.”
    â€œElizabeth. But most people call me Lizzie.”
    â€œRight. You
get
it.”
    The fat girl, your fat girl, is blushing. “Oh my god, anytime, seriously.”
    You watch this fucker help himself to Banana-Rama bread. He doesn’t even use a napkin.
    â€œWould you like to hear this poem I wrote?” she asks him. “I think it goes with your music pretty well.” You see her reach toward her faery journal, which is sitting on the armrest of the couch, at the ready.
    â€œSure. But hey, can I play you some new stuff I’ve been tinkering with first?”
    â€œOf