Текст книги "Size 12 Is Not Fat"
Автор книги: Meg Cabot
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
4
Don’t Tell
I’m begging you
It’s a secret and if you
Don’t Tell
I’ll make you glad
You didn’t
Don’t Tell
No one knows
I’ve exposed my soul
To you
So don’t tell
“Don’t Tell”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Valdez/Caputo
From the album Sugar Rush
Cartwright Records
The closest soda machine is located in the TV lounge, where all of the college’s crisis management people are congregated. I don’t want to risk asking Magda for a free one from the café when she’s already in trouble with her boss.
I only recognize a few of the many administrators in the lounge, and then only from being interviewed by them when I’d applied for my job. One of them, Dr. Jessup, the head of the housing department, detaches himself from another administrator’s side when he notices me, and comes over, looking very different in his weekend wear of Izod shirt and Dockers than he did in his usual charcoal suits.
“Heather,” Dr. Jessup says, his deep voice gruff. “How’s it going?”
“Okay,” I reply. I’ve already jammed a dollar into the machine, so it’s too late to run away—though I’d like to, since everyone in the room is staring at me, like,Who is that girl? Don’t I know her from somewhere? And what’s she doing here?
Instead of running, I make a selection. The sound of the can hitting the slot at the bottom of the machine is loud in the TV lounge, where conversation is muted out of respect for both the deceased and the grieving, and where the TV, which normally blasts MTV 2 24/7, has been turned off.
I retrieve my can from the machine and hold it in my hands, afraid to open it and attract more undue attention to myself by making noise.
“How do the kids seem to you?” Dr. Jessup wants to know. “In general?”
“I just got here,” I say. “But everybody seems pretty shaken up. Which is, you know, understandable, considering the fact that there’s a dead girl at the bottom of the elevator shaft.”
Dr. Jessup widens his eyes and motions for me to keep my voice down, even though I hadn’t been speaking above a whisper. I look around, and realize there are some administrative bigwigs in the TV lounge. Dr. Jessup is hypersensitive about his department being perceived as a caring, student-oriented one. He prides himself on his ability to relate to the younger generation. I realized this during my first interview, when he’d narrowed his gray eyes at me and asked the inevitable question, the one that makes me want to throw things, but that I can’t seem to escape: “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
Everyone thinks they’ve seen me somewhere before. They just can’t ever figure out where. I get “Didn’t you go to the prom with my brother?” a lot. Also, “Weren’t you and I in one of the same classes in college?”
Which is especially weird, because I never attended a single prom, much less college.
“I used to be a singer” was what I’d said to Dr. Jessup, the day of my job interview. “A, um, pop singer. When I was, you know. A teenager.”
“Ah, yes,” Dr. Jessup had said. “‘Sugar Rush.’ That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure. Can I ask you a question?”
I’d twisted uncomfortably in my seat, knowing what was coming. “Sure.”
“Why are you applying for a job in a residence hall?”
I’d cleared my throat.
I wish VH1 would do a Behind the Music on me. Because then I wouldn’t have to. Explain to people, I mean.
But it’s not like I’m Behind the Music material. I was never famous enough for that. I was never a Britney or a Christina. I was barely even an Avril. I was just a teenager with a healthy set of lungs on her, who was in the right place at the right time.
Dr. Jessup had seemed to understand. At least, he’d tactfully dropped the subject after I mentioned the stuff about my mom fleeing the country with my manager—and oh yeah, my life’s savings—my label dropping me, and my boyfriend, too, in that order. When I was offered the position of administrative assistant to Fischer Hall, at a starting salary that equaled what I used to earn in a week on the concert circuit, I accepted without hesitation. I wasn’t seeing much of a long-term career in waitressing—which, for a girl who doesn’t even like standing up to wash her hair, can be brutal—and getting a college education seemed like a good idea. I have to wait until I pass my six months’ probation—just three more to go—but then I can start enrolling in as many courses as I want.
The first class I’m going to take is Psych 101 so I can see if I’m really as filled with neuroses as Rachel and Sarah seem to think.
Now Dr. Jessup is inquiring about Rachel’s mental health.
“How’s she holding up?” Dr. Jessup wants to know.
“I guess she’s okay,” I say.
“You should buy her some flowers, or something,” Dr. Jessup says. “Something to perk her up. Candy, maybe.”
I say, “Oh, that’s a good idea,” even though I have no clue what he’s talking about. Why should I buy flowers or candy for Rachel? Does Elizabeth Kellogg’s death affect Rachel more than it affects Julio, the head of the maintenance staff, who’ll probably be the person hosing Elizabeth’s blood out of the elevator shaft later on? Is anybody buying candy for Julio?
Maybe I should just buy flowers for both of them.
“Rachel’s not used to the city yet,” Dr. Jessup is saying, by way of explanation, I suppose. “This is bound to shake her up a little. She’s not a jaded New Yorker yet, like some of us. Right, Wells?” He winks.
“Right,” I say, even though I still have no idea what he means. Would a Whitman Sampler be enough, or did he want me to go all the way to Dean & Deluca’s and buy a bunch of those petits fours? Which would be okay, because then I can get myself some of those chocolate-covered orange peels.
Except… Rachel doesn’t eat candy. It’s not on the Zone. Maybe I should get her some nuts?
But our conversation comes to an abrupt end when President Allington comes striding into the lounge.
I’ll tell you the truth. I never recognize Phillip Allington at first glance, even though I’ve been seeing him get off the elevators every weekday morning since last June, when I started working at Fischer Hall.
The reason I never recognize President Allington is because President Allington doesn’t exactly dress like a college president. His ensemble of choice is white trousers—which he continues to wear well after Labor Day, regardless of Miss Manners—gold New York College T-shirt (tank top for really humid days), Adidas, and, in inclement weather, a gold and white New York College letter jacket. According to another article I found in Justine’s files, the president feels if he dresses like a student, he’ll be more accessible to them.
But I’ve never seen a New York College student dressed in the school colors. They all wear black, to blend in with the rest of the New Yorkers.
Today President Allington has opted for the T-shirt rather than the tank, even though the temperature outside is over seventy degrees. Well, maybe he had a meeting of the board of trustees to attend, and wanted to dress to impress.
It isn’t until all the other administrators immediately rush over to him to make sure the president knows what an integral part he or she is playing in the resolution of what will no doubt be referred to on Monday in the student-run newspaper as “The Tragedy” that I’m like, “Oh, yeah. That’s the president.”
Ignoring everyone else, Dr. Allington looks directly at Dr. Jessup and says, “You should do something about this, Stan. This is not good. Not good at all.”
Dr. Jessup looks as if he wishes he were the one at the bottom of the elevator shaft. I don’t really blame him, either.
“Phil,” he says to the president. “It happens. In a population this big, there are bound to be some deaths. We had three last year alone, and the year before that, there were two—”
“Not in my building,” President Allington says. I can’t help thinking that he is trying to sound like Harrison Ford in Air Force One (“Get off my plane”).
But he sounds more like Pauly Shore in Bio-Dome.
This seems to me like an appropriate time to go back to my office. I find Sarah there sitting at my desk, talking on the phone. No one else is around, but there’s still a disagreeable amount of tension in the room. It seems to be emanating from Sarah, who slams the phone down and glares at me.
“Rachel says we have to cancel the hall dance tonight.” She is practically glowering.
“So?” This sounds like a reasonable request to me. “Cancel it.”
“You don’t understand. We’ve lined up a real band. We stand to lose about fifteen hundred dollars from this.”
I stare at Sarah.
“Sarah,” I say. “A girl is dead.Dead.”
“And by veering from our normal routine because of her selfish act,” Sarah says, “we will only cause her death to be romanticized by the student population.” Then, coming down off her grad student high horse for a second, she adds, “I guess we can make back the lost revenue in T-shirt sales. Still, I don’t see why we should cancel our dance, just because some nutcase took a dive off the top of an elevator.”
And people say show biz is rough. They’ve obviously never worked in a dorm.
Excuse me, I mean, residence hall.
5
I don’t see how
We could have drifted so far apart
Seems like just yesterday
You were calling me baby
Now I’m alone
And I can’t help crying
Do Over
Baby I want a
Do Over
’Cause I’m not ready
To let you go
“Do Over”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Dietz/Ryder
From the album Sugar Rush
Cartwright Records
Being this is New York City, where so many unnatural deaths occur every day, it ends up taking the coroner’s office four hours to get to Elizabeth’s body.
The coroner arrives at three-thirty, and by three thirty-five, Elizabeth Kellogg is declared dead. Cause of death, pending an investigation and autopsy, is recorded as acute trauma, in the form of a broken neck, back, and pelvic bone, in addition to multiple fractures to the face and extremities.
Call me a dreamer, but I don’t think anybody in the student population will be romanticizing her death when they find this out.
Worse, the coroner says he thinks Elizabeth has been dead for nearly twelve hours. Which means she’s been lying in the bottom of that elevator shaft since the night before.
And okay, he says she died on impact with the cement floor, so death was instantaneous. It’s not like she’d lain there, alive, all night.
But still.
There’s no hiding the coroner’s van, or the body that is eventually trundled out of the building and into it. By four o’clock, the entire student population of Fischer Hall knows there’s been a death. They also know, once the elevators are turned back on, and they are finally allowed to take them back to their floors, how she died. I mean, they’re college students: They’re not stupid. They can put together two and two and come up with four.
But I can’t be too concerned with how the seven hundred residents of Fischer Hall are dealing with the news of Elizabeth’s death. Because I am too busy being concerned with how Elizabeth’s parents are dealing with the news of her death.
That’s because it was decided by Dr. Jessup—a decision backed up by Dr. Flynn—that because of Rachel’s previous contact with Mrs. Kellogg concerning Elizabeth’s guest privileges, she should be the one to make the call to the dead girl’s parents.
“It will be less of a shock,” Dr. Flynn assures everyone, “for the Kelloggs to hear the news from a familiar voice.”
Sarah is unceremoniously banished from the office once the decision is made, but Dr. Jessup asks me to stay.
“It’ll be a comfort to Rachel,” is what he says.
He clearly hasn’t seen Rachel in action in the cafeteria, cussing out the salad bar attendants for accidentally putting full-fat ranch dressing in the fat-free ranch dispenser, the way I had. Rachel is hardly the type who needs comforting.
But who am I to say anything?
The scene is excruciatingly sad, and by the time Rachel hangs up the phone, I have what feels like an oncoming migraine as well as an upset stomach.
Of course, it could be the eleven Jolly Ranchers and the bag of Fritos I’d had in lieu of lunch. But you never know.
These symptoms are made worse by Dr. Jessup. Chagrined by Dr. Allington’s remarks, the assistant vice president has thrown caution and New York City health codes to the wind, and is smoking energetically, his rear end resting against the edge of Rachel’s desk. No one offers to open a window. This is because our office windows are on the ground floor, and every time you open them, some wit walks up to them and yells, “Can I have fries with that?” into our office.
It is right then that it occurs to me that Rachel is finished with her phone calls, and that I am no longer needed to be a comfort to her. There is nothing more I can do to help.
So I stand up and say, “I’m going to go home now.”
Everyone looks at me. Fortunately Dr. Allington has long since departed, as he and his wife have a house in the Hamptons and they head out there every chance they get.
Except that today Mrs. Allington wouldn’t leave through the front door—not with the coroner’s van parked out there on the sidewalk, behind the fire engine. I had to turn off the alarm so she could leave by the emergency exit off the side of the cafeteria, the same door through which the security guards usher the Allingtons’ more prestigious guests—like the Schwarzeneggers—when they have dinner parties so that they don’t have to be bothered by any students.
The Allingtons’ only child, Christopher—a very good-looking guy in his late twenties, who wears a lot of Brooks Brothers, and is living in graduate student housing while attending the college’s law school—was behind the wheel of their forest green Mercedes when they finally left. Dr. Allington solicitously placed his wife in the backseat, their overnight bags in the trunk, then hopped into the front seat beside his son.
Christopher Allington peeled out so fast that people attending the street fair—oh yes. The street fair went on, in spite of the fire engine and coroner’s wagon—jumped up onto the sidewalk, thinking someone was trying to run them down.
I’ll tell you something: If the Allingtons were my parents, I’d have tried to run people down, too.
Dr. Flynn recovers from my announcement that I’m leaving before anybody else. He says, “Of course, Heather. You go on home. We don’t need Heather anymore, do we, Stan?”
Dr. Jessup exhales a stream of blue-gray smoke.
“Go home,” he says to me. “Have a drink. A big one.”
“Oh, Heather,” Rachel cries. She leaps up from her swivel chair and, to my surprise, throws her arms around me. She has never been physically demonstrative with me before. “Thank you so much for coming over. I don’t know what we would have done without you. You keep such a level head in a crisis.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. I hadn’t done a single thing. I certainly hadn’t bought her those flowers Dr. Jessup had recommended. I’d calmed the student workers down, maybe, and talked Sarah out of having her dance, but that’s it, really. Not exactly anything life-saving.
I look everywhere but at anyone else’s face as Rachel hugs me. Hugging Rachel is a lot like hugging—well, a stick. Be cause she’s so thin. I sort of feel bad for her. Because who wants to hug a stick? I know all those guys who go after models do. But I mean, what kind of normal person wants to hug, or be hugged by, a lot of pointy bones? It would be one thing if she were naturally pointy. But I happen to know that Rachel starves herself in order to be that way on purpose.
It’s just not right.
To my relief, Rachel lets go almost immediately, and as soon as she does, I hurry from the office without another word, mostly because I am afraid I will start crying if I speak. Not because of her boniness, but because it all just seems like such a waste. I mean, a girl is dead, her parents devastated. And for what? A thrill ride on top of an elevator?
It just doesn’t make any sense.
Since the alarm to the fire exit is still turned off, I leave the building through it, relieved that I don’t have to pass the reception desk. Because I seriously think I might lose it if anyone says a single word to me. I have to walk all the way down to Sixth Avenue and around the block to avoid running into anyone I know—passing right by Banana Republic, which does carry size 12 clothing, but rarely has any in stock, because, being that it’s the most common size, they can never keep enough of it on the racks for everyone—but it’s worth it. I am in no shape for small talk with anyone.
Sadly, however, when I get to my front door, I discover that small talk is exactly what I’m in for. Because lounging on my front stoop is my ex-fiancé, Jordan Cartwright.
And I’d truly been convinced my day couldn’t get any worse.
He straightens when he sees me, and hangs up the cell phone he’d been jawing into. The late-afternoon sunlight brings out the gold highlights in his blond hair, and I can’t help noticing that in spite of the Indian summer heat, the lines pressed into his white shirt and—yes, I’m sorry to have to say it—matching white pants look perfectly crisp.
With the white outfit, and the gold chain around his neck, he looks like he’s AWOL from a really bad boy band.
Which, sadly, is exactly what he is.
“Heather,” he says, when he sees me.
I can’t read his pale blue eyes because they’re hidden by the lenses of his Armani sunglasses. But I suppose they are, as always, filled with tender concern for my well-being. Jordan is good at making people think he actually cares about them. It’s one of the reasons his first solo effort, “Baby, Be Mine,” went double platinum. The video was number one on Total Request Live for weeks.
“There you are,” he says. “I’ve been trying to reach you. I guess Coop’s not home. Are you all right? I came down as soon as I heard.”
I just blink at him. What is he doing here? We broke up. Doesn’t he remember?
Maybe not. He’d obviously been working out. Like majorly. There’s actual definition to his biceps.
Maybe a dumbbell fell on his head or something.
“She lived in your building, didn’t she?” he goes on. “The girl on the radio? The one who died?”
It is totally unfair that someone who looks so hot can be so… well, lacking in anything remotely resembling human emotion.
I dig my keys out of the front pocket of my jeans.
“You shouldn’t have come down here, Jordan,” I say. People are staring—mostly just the drug dealers, though. There are a lot of them in my neighborhood, because the college, in order to clean up Washington Square Park for the students (and, more importantly, their parents), puts all this pressure on the local police precinct to scoot all the drug dealers and homeless people out of the park and onto the surrounding streets… like, for instance, the one I live on.
Of course when I’d accepted Jordan’s brother’s offer to move in with him, I didn’t know the neighborhood was so bad. I mean, come on, it’s Greenwich Village, which had long ago ceased to be a haven for starving artists, after the yuppies moved in and gentrified the place and the rents shot sky high. I figured it had to be on par with Park Avenue, where I’d been living with Jordan, and where “those kind of people,” as Jordan calls them, simply don’t hang out.
Which is a good thing, because “those kind of people” apparently can’t take their eyes off Jordan—and not just because of the prominently displayed gold chain.
“Hey!” one of them yells. “You that guy? Hey, are you that guy?”
Jordan, used to being harassed by paparazzi, doesn’t bat an eye.
“Heather,” he says, in his most soothing tone, the one he’d used during his duet with Jessica Simpson on their Get Funky tour last summer. “Come on. Be reasonable. Just because things didn’t work out between us romantically is no reason why we can’t still be friends. We’ve been through so much together. Grew up together, even.”
This part, anyway, is true. I’d met Jordan back when I’d first been signed by his father’s record label, Cartwright Records, when I’d been an impressionable fifteen years of age, and Jordan had been all of eighteen. Back then, I’d truly believed Jordan’s whole tortured artist act. I’d believed him when he insisted that he, like me, hated the songs the label was giving him to sing. I’d believed him when he’d said he, like me, was going to quit singing them, and start singing the songs he’d written himself. I’d believed him right up to the point I’d told the label it was my songs or no songs, and the label had chosen no songs… and Jordan, instead of telling the label (also known as his dad) the same thing, had said, “Maybe we better talk about this, Heather.”
I glance around to make sure his current performance isn’t for the benefit of a hidden camera. I totally wouldn’t put it past him to have signed up with some reality show. He’s one of those people who wouldn’t mind watching his own life broadcast on national television.
That’s when I notice the silver convertible BMW parked by the hydrant in front of the brownstone.
“That’s new,” I say. “From your dad? A reward for taking up with Tania Trace?”
“Now, Heather,” Jordan says. “I told you. The thing with Tania—it’s not what you think.”
“Right,” I say with a laugh. “I suppose she fell down and just happened to land with her head in your crotch.”
Jordan does something surprising then. He whips off his sunglasses and looks down at me very intently. I’m reminded of the first time I ever met him—at the Mall of America. The label—namely Jordan’s dad—had arranged for Jordan’s band, Easy Street, and me to tour together, in an effort to bring out the maximum number of preteens—and their parents, and their parents’ wallets—possible.
Jordan had given me the same intent look then that he was giving me now. His “Baby, you got the bluest eyes” hadn’t sounded a bit like a pickup line then.
But what did I know? I’d been yanked out of high school my freshman year and had been on the road ever since, heavily chaperoned and making contact with guys my own age only when they came up to ask for my autograph. How was I supposed to know “Baby, you got the bluest eyes” was a pickup line?
I didn’t realize it until years later, when “Baby, you got the bluest eyes” showed up as a line from one of the singles off Jordan’s first solo album. It turns out he’d had a lot of practice saying it. With sincerity, even.
It had certainly worked on me.
“Heather,” Jordan says now, as the rays of the sun, filtering through the treetops and apartment buildings to the west, play over the even planes of his handsome, still slightly boyish face. “We had something, you and I. Are you sure you really just want to walk away from that? I mean, I know I’m not exactly blameless in all this. That thing with Tania… well, I know how that must have looked to you.”
I stare at him incredulously.
“You mean like she was giving you head? Because that’s how it looked to me.”
Jordan flinches as if I’d hit him.
“See?” He folds his arms across his chest. “See, that’s exactly what I mean. When we first met, Heather, you never said crass things like that. You’ve changed. Don’t you see? That’s part of the problem. You’re not the same girl I knew all those years ago—”
I decide that if he drops his gaze to my waistline, where I’ve changed the most since ten years ago, I was going to belt him.
But he doesn’t.
“You’ve gotten… I don’t know. Hard, I guess, is the word,” he goes on. “And after what you’ve been through with your mom and your manager, who can blame you? But Heather, not everyone is out to steal all your money and flee to Argentina with it like they did. You’ve got to believe me when I say that I never meant to hurt you. We just drifted apart, you and I. We want different things. You want to sing your own songs, and you apparently don’t care if doing so destroys your career—what’s left of it. While I… well, I want—”
“Hey!” yells the drug dealer. “You’re JORDAN CARTWRIGHT!”
I can’t believe this is happening. First Elizabeth, now this.
What does Jordan want from me, anyway? That’s what I can never figure out. The guy is thirty-one years old, six-two, and worth a lot of money—way more than the hundred thousand a year Rachel is looking for in her ideal mate. I mean, I know his parents weren’t exactly thrilled when the two of us moved in together. It hadn’t looked good, two of their most popular teen performers, shacking up…
But had our entire relationship just been an elaborate attempt to get back at Mr. and Mrs. Grant Cartwright for allowing their youngest son to audition for the Mickey Mouse Club, like he’d begged them to back when he was nine, to his everlasting shame? Because of course serious rockers don’t have photos of themselves in Mickey Mouse ears being shown in Teen People every other week…
“Jordan,” I say, cutting him off as he is listing the things he wants out of life, most of which have to do with bringing a little sunshine into people’s lives, and why is that so wrong? Except that I never said it was. “Could you please just go away?”
I jostle past him, my keys in my hand. I guess my plan was to unlock the door and get inside before he could stop me.
With three locks to undo, though, a quick escape is kind of tough.
“I know you don’t take me seriously as an artist, Heather,” Jordan goes on. And on and on. “But I can assure you that just because I don’t write the songs I sing, that doesn’t make me any less creative than you are. I do practically all my own choreography now. That move I did on the ‘Just Me and You Now’ video? You know, this one?” He does a quick step-ball-change, accompanied by a pelvic thrust, on the front stoop of the brownstone. “That’s all mine. I know to you that might not be much, but don’t you think it’s time you took a good look at your own life? I mean, what have you been doing that’s so artistically fulfilling lately? This stupid dorm thing—”
Two locks down. One to go.
“—and living down here with drug addicts at your doorstep… and with Cooper! With Cooper, of all people! You know how my family feels about Cooper, Heather.”
I do know how his family feels about Cooper. The same way they feel about Cooper’s grandfather, who came out of the closet at the age of sixty-five, bought a bright pink stucco brownstone in the Village, then willed it to his black sheep grandson, who’d moved into the garden apartment, turned the middle floor into a detective agency, and offered the top floor to me, rent-free (in exchange for doing his billing), when he’d found out about my walking in on Jordan and Tania.
“I mean, I know there isn’t anything going on between you two,” Jordan is saying. “That’s not what I’m worried about. You aren’t Cooper’s type.”
He can say that again. Sadly.
“But I wonder if you’re aware that Coop has a criminal record. Vandalism. And yeah, he was a juvenile, but still, for God’s sake, Heather, he has no respect for public property. That was an Easy Street marquee he defaced, you know. I’m aware that he always resented my talent, but it’s not my fault I was born with such a gift—”
The third lock springs open. I’m free!
“Good-bye, Jordan,” I say, and slip inside, shutting the door carefully behind me. Because, you know, I don’t want to slam it in his face and hurt him, or anything. Not because I still care, but because that would be rude.
Plus his dad might sue me, or something. You never know.
