The Fat Girl Read Online Free Page B

of droopy.”
    “Meow!” I said. “You know, Norma, sometimes I think you’re jealous of Dolores.”
    “Me—jealous of Dolores?” We both looked over at the dark, intense girl whose dumpy figure was encased in white. Roger was pretending to be playing a panpipe and dancing around her.
    “She’s actually not bad looking.”
    “She has a very nice face,” Norma said kindly, with the generosity of one who knew she was much more beautiful. “And if she lost a little weight . . .” Norma sighed. “I guess I am jealous. The three of us are too close. It’s practically incestuous. We’ve been working together for years and trying to act like we’re not competing with each other. But did you see that stunning pot she finished yesterday, with the wide bottom and narrow top and those geometric designs? I could never do anything like that—never!”
    Roger moved over toward me, still playing his panpipes, and the kids started shouting for me to get up and dance. So up I rose, flung my arms up in the air, balanced on the tippy toes of my basketball sneakers, and twirled around, stepping on as many feet as I could and landing finally in Norma’s arms. She laughed so hard, she forgot all about being jealous of Dolores Kabotie.
    But not me. I was jealous of Dolores Kabotie, and I was jealous of Roger Torres and of Norma too. I was jealous of all three of them. Because they were set—they knew what they were going to do with their lives. All of them were going into ceramics—Roger as a designer, and the two girls as professional potters. And they were good. Nobody came up to them in the class. They were the inner circle.
    Now somebody else was playing the panpipes and Norma and Roger were dancing together. I watched them gloomily. What was going to happen to me when I graduated in June? I guess I’d go on to college, but what then? My mother wanted me to be a doctor, and my father . . . my father drove a bus, and he always said he’d be proud of me whatever I wanted to do. Actually, I figured he’d be just as pleased if I didn’t go on to college, if I went out and got a job and relieved him of my share of child support. But he always acted as if he thought I should go to college.
    I’ve got time to make up my mind, my advisor says. He doesn’t want me to waste his time sitting around discussing it with him, while all those hordes of students wait to see him. I still don’t know what I’m going to do. Sometimes I think that’s how I’ll spend my life, wondering what I’m going to be doing with it. I get mostly B-s in my classes and that’s probably where I’m going to end up in life, being a B- in whatever I do. The only thing I’ll ever get an A in is looks.
    “Come on, Jeff, dance with me,” Dolores said, pulling at my arm.
    I stood up, put my arm around her and we started dancing. Dolores was shorter than Norma, and her body felt warm and soft. Suddenly I wondered what the fat girl would feel like, and I wanted to puke.
    The fat girl always made a lot of noise whenever she came into class. Usually she was late—maybe because she moved so slowly. The rest of us could usually beat out the bell, darting through the door just as the teacher was about to close it. Ms. Holland yelled at anybody who came late, but when the fat girl lumbered through the door, banging against it and clumping noisily to her seat, she just shook her head.
    You always knew the fat girl was there. I always knew she was there. I could hear her heavy breathing when she sat near me on the bench, and it seemed to me she always tried to sit near me. I could smell her too, a fat, sweet smell that made me think of fried bananas. Yuck!
    Now she was learning to throw on the wheel and, as usual, Norma was working patiently with her. She was too big, and there wasn’t enough room for her to move her legs or her arms. She couldn’t seem to center the clay either. Even if Norma did it for her, it invariably collapsed under the weight of her