Big Girl Small Read Online Free Page B

billion, six hundred and ninety-three million times, since we’ve gone to school together since first grade. You’d think someone like that could eventually get a grip, but apparently not. At least I stopped caring what Scott did or said when I turned eleven. If only I’d realized how delicious that safety was. I thought an escape to a more sophisticated school might benefit me, and that maybe I could become an intellectual powerhouse or Shakespearean actor like Peter Dinklage. Because I love Peter Dinklage. I even have a picture of him from The Station Agent that I keep in my wallet. And like I said earlier, I can really sing. And I can sort of write, at least school essays. I knew they’d let me in anyway, because how cool would it be to have a talented dwarf on their brochure for the rest of time? And even if I was wrong about everything else I ever thought in my whole life, I was right about that.
    Mrs. O’Henry, the school counselor, kept smiling at me from the stage during the orientation, and every time she said “Any questions?” she looked right at me all hopefully, like she was just so thrilled to have a real live special-needs victim there for her sensitivity demonstration. I was like the moment she’d been waiting for, except I didn’t ask anything, because, for one thing, I was chewing gum, and you’re not allowed to have gum so I was keeping my mouth closed. For another, I had already signed up for an arts education. I would have to sing and act and probably dance a dwarf jig in front of everyone in town—that would be enough attention for me.
    As soon as the meeting ended, I scuttled up to the library on the fourth floor of the building and sat alone, the hunchback in a dollhouse bell tower, clanging away. I arranged my books in a stack on the desk, opened a notebook, took out my favorite pink pen, and wrote “Judy” and “D’Arts.” Then I doodled patterns—tiny schools of fish, stars, and striped hearts—under my name. The silence echoed around me and I wished terribly to be in the car on the way home with my parents, or already at home, or even on the AATA bus up Washtenaw to our house. I clicked my orthopedic heels together, imagining the intersection where Washtenaw meets Stadium, the little dip in the road, the bike path, the left turn, down the hill, past the speaking-in-tongues church, to where our house is. I was climbing out of the car in my mind when I heard the voice. I turned, away from the dream of my brothers playing basketball in the driveway, and as soon as I saw who was talking I thought I’d been catapulted out of reality into that movie Mean Girls , because the girl standing there was so pretty and bitchy-looking that my bones froze and my blood fizzed through my veins like grape pop. She had streaky blond hair that looked all intentionally messed up, and was wearing black yoga pants, flip-flops, and a gray Darcy Arts hoodie sweatshirt, an outfit that looked on her like it had cost thousands of dollars. She was probably five feet ten barefoot. She smiled.
    “Um, hi,” she said.
    “Hi.”
    “I’m Ginger Mews,” she said, sticking her hand down at me. I looked at it for a minute before shaking it with my stumpy paw. Her fingers were long and thin, but the nails were bitten down below the line, all ragged and scabby. Some of them even looked freshly bloodied. Maybe we could be friends.
    “I’m Judy,” I said, and she nodded.
    “I know. I’m on the social staff, I mean, you know, the orientation staff. I just came by to welcome you to D’Arts and see if you needed anything, and, oh, to make sure you knew that there’s a party this weekend at Chessie Andrewjeski’s, so, you know, we hope you’ll come.”
    “The social staff ?”
    “Mmm. We just, you know, welcome new students and stuff.”
    We stood there for a minute, while I contemplated what to say. Only the dwarfs? Thank you? Had Mrs. O’Henry sent her after the meeting with my parents, and if so, what had