Butter (3 page)

“Dr. Bandyopadhyay,” I said with a formal nod.

“What's this?” he asked. “Since when do you call me Bandyopadhyay?”

“Since the receptionist told me there's no Doc Bean here.”

Bean laughed and smacked his thigh with the hand that wasn't clutching my huge medical file. “When you are here, my friend, there is always a Doc Bean on call.”

He was still chuckling as he perched on a stool and prepared to test my blood sugar. I laughed with him, grateful to have such a laid-back doctor—and not just because I could barely pronounce his last name and he let me call him a legume instead, but because he made everything seem not so serious.

“How are you feeling today?” He pricked my finger with a
tiny needle, then used a glucometer to suck up the drop of blood he'd drawn.

“Well, that stung a bit, but otherwise I feel pretty good.” I winked.

My mom cleared her throat, a subtle cue.

“Okay, I've been a little tired the last few days,” I admitted.

Doc Bean nodded but didn't say anything. He checked the digital results on his gadget—much fancier than the one we had at home. “Hmm. Still a little high, but—”

“We've been cutting out sugar!” Mom blurted, then sunk down in her chair and turned pink. Mom was not one to blurt.

Doc Bean laughed. “Oh yes, Mom.” I loved it when Bean called her “Mom.” “I'm sure the diet is on track. Good carbs and lots of veggies and protein.”

I thought back to breakfast that morning and saw Mom sink farther down in her chair.

“We're not in a danger zone just yet. We should focus less on these levels”—he waved at the glucometer—“and more on
these
levels.” He plucked a weight chart from my file and studied it. “I see we've gained some since school began, yes?”

“Yes,” I mumbled.

Bean placed a hand on my arm. “Sometimes we step back before we step forward. But you must be careful about your diet. If you lose weight, your blood sugar and all the rest will follow.”

Then he plugged a stethoscope into his ears and set to work listening to my heart and lungs.

“Doc.” I interrupted his listening.

“Hmm?”

“I just want to be able to play the sax without getting tired.”

Bean chuckled. “Oh yes, the ladies love the music. And is there someone you want to serenade?”

I grinned. Mom shifted in her chair.

“Well, maybe once I lose some of this.” I gripped one of my front tires with my hand and gave it a shake. That sent the doc into a fresh fit of laughter. He pulled the stethoscope from his ears and once again pounded his thigh with a free hand.

“Your humor and your music will blind a good woman to that, but we do want to see a drop on the scale—for
you
, you understand? First we love ourselves; then we love the ladies, yes?”

“Yes,” I grumbled.

“Patience is a virtue, remember? The weight
will
come off. We have time yet.”

Sure we had time, but the message was clear: somewhere a clock was ticking down. I snuck a peek at Mom out of the corner of my eye. She was stone-faced. I wondered if she could hear the tick-tock—the countdown to my inevitable death of a heart attack or worse. I couldn't hear it. Yeah, I felt tired a lot, but I certainly didn't feel like I was in any danger of falling down dead.

That thought made me inexplicably depressed. I hated thinking about death—not because I was afraid of it, but because, for some reason, every time I did, I felt this strange wave of sadness that death was actually so far off. Sometimes I wished it would just hurry up and get here.

Morbid.

“I think one more checkup in two weeks.” Doc Bean's voice
brought me back to the room. “Then we should be able to go back to every three months, as long as you promise not to overdo it during the holidays.”

“I promise, Doc,” I said, standing up to shake his hand.

“No! Like the kids do!” he insisted. He rolled his hand into a fist and held it up to knock knuckles with me. I obliged, laughing.

“Then you blow it up, Doc!” I showed him, bumping his fist with mine, then stretching my fingers out fast like the fist was a bomb going off.

“Blow it up!” Doc Bean howled. He was still laughing as he shook my mom's hand and waved us out the door to the checkout desk.

• • •

Mom and I were halfway to the exit when I spotted a familiar face in the lobby.

“Tucker!” I called.

The face spun toward me, and I realized something was off. The features were as I remembered—wide eyes, thin lips, a dash of freckles—but the cheeks were less full, and this face clearly had
one
chin, not two. I staggered backward a step as Tucker stood up.

“Holy shit, man!”

“Hey! Language!” Mom snapped, darting her eyes around the room to see how many people might have heard my slip.

“Sorry. Ma, remember Tucker from FitFab?”

FitFab—a.k.a. fat farm—was the shorthand for “Fit and
Fabulous,” the summer camp I shipped off to each year for two months of tiny portions and torturous hikes. Tucker had been my bunkmate every summer for three years, but looking at him now I wondered if I'd be getting a new roomie next summer.

He looked almost
thin
.

“Tucker! I didn't even recognize you!” My mom stretched out her arms for a hug. “Look at you. You look amazing.”

Tucker raised his skinny arms to meet my mom's. Okay, maybe they weren't skinny, but they were definitely too lean to qualify for the fat farm.

“Tuck, what the hell—” I glanced at my mom. “Sorry. Tuck, what happened? You look like you've lost a hundred pounds!”

“Fifty-six.” He puffed up his chest. “It'd be more, but the doctor says I'm gaining muscle weight.”

“Well … just—
congratulations
, Tuck!”

I meant it. Or at least I tried to mean it; I really did. They always taught us at FitFab to support each other's weight loss and that jealousy could cause both you and the person you envy negative feelings that led to overeating. But standing there in the lobby of Doc Bean's office, staring at Tucker, the word “
congratulations
” tasted like acid on my tongue. Tuck and I were a team. He never weighed anything near what I weighed, but still—we were supposed to gain and lose together. And here he was standing in front of me all of what? Two hundred pounds? And that grin on his face. He didn't even feel bad about it!

I guessed this was why I hadn't heard from Tucker in a while. We often lost touch during the school year; we'd tried a few times over the years to hang out, but I could sense how
out of place he felt in my Scottsdale neighborhood, and to tell the truth, I didn't like parking the Beemer in his Phoenix hood. Still, we kept in touch online, and while I barely noticed anyone on my friends list other than Anna, it occurred to me now that Tuck's name hadn't popped up in a while.

“Fifty-six pounds! Really? How wonderful!” Mom crooned.

Tucker shifted from foot to foot. “Yeah, well, thanks.” He looked up at me, right at my face, careful not to look below my neck. I knew that move. “What about you, Butter? You losing any … um, you sticking to the diet?”

“Does it look like I'm sticking to the diet?” I rolled my eyes and gestured with my hands, forcing Tucker to follow their movement down my body. Normally that kind of sarcasm would give Tuck a laugh, but he only shuffled his feet more.

“Well, keep working at it,” he said, sounding like a FitFab counselor. “You just have to find what works for you.”

“Uh, yeah.” I pulled a face. “I'll do that.”

“Tucker Smith?” The quiet nurse was suddenly next to us. “Are you ready?”

“Ready,” he confirmed. “Later, Butter.” He didn't even look at me as he said these parting words, “Good luck.”

Good luck? Fuck you, dude
.

I turned to Mom. “Can we go?”

“I didn't know your friend Tucker came to this office.” It was like she didn't even hear me.

“Yeah, he sees Doc Bean too.”

“He does?”

“Yes, he—Ma, I told you all this. That's why we bunked together in the first place—same doc, both from the valley.”

“You did?”

“Yes. Look, can we go please?”

My mom had been staring thoughtfully after Tucker; now she came to and heard the urgency in my voice. She wrapped a frail arm around my thick shoulders. “Of course, baby, let's go.”

I pigged out at dinner. I mean
pigged out
.

It was like I was determined to eat as many pounds as Tucker had lost. Normally, after an appointment with Doc Bean, Mom would subtly try to serve me smaller portions or force more vegetables onto my plate. I wasn't having it that night. I loaded my own plate with mashed potatoes and pot roast, and when I went back for seconds, I even skimmed off the fat that had congealed on the roasting pan juice and spread it over my potatoes.

If Mom noticed, she didn't say anything. She only hummed, as usual. Dad tried to pretend neither I nor my plate existed, but by my third helping, he looked physically ill and excused himself from the table.

I knew Mom had whipped up some sort of cake, but I wasn't going to touch it. I had already seen the box in the trash can—“no sugar added.”
Well, cake, then you don't need to be added to
my meal
. I don't know if Mom caught my mood or if she just couldn't bear to watch me eat anymore, but she didn't even take the cake out of the fridge.

When she kissed me on the head and hummed her way out of the kitchen, I dropped my fork at last. The food didn't taste as good without an audience. If I had to be the one to carry the weight, it was only fair that they be forced to watch.

So it was just me, a pile of dirty dishes, and a dining table covered in crumbs and splattered juice. The suddenly nauseating smell of pot roast overwhelmed me. I fought the urge to puke. That's right, I fought it. I was a binge eater, not a bulimic. That shit is for girls.

Okay, that's not entirely true. Lots of guys at FitFab were purgers. But if there was a fat-camp hierarchy, let's just say those guys were at the bottom. Sorry if that's not PC; that's just how it was.

After dinner, I shut myself up in my room and attended to my usual routine—homework, insulin shot, a few songs on the sax—then I settled in at my laptop to wait for Anna. Unlike at lunch that day, she didn't keep me waiting long.

What's up stud muffin?

My bitterness over her cafeteria absence evaporated.

Stud muffin huh?

I imagined her tinkling laugh at the other end of the connection.

I'm in a silly mood I guess.

How was your day?

I held my breath waiting for her answer.

It was … interesting.

She was typing again before I could respond.

Actually, I have a confession to make.

Excellent. This was going to be easier than I thought.

A confession? I'm intrigued. Spill it, gorgeous.

It took so long for her to respond, I thought maybe she'd changed her mind, but then the message came. It was everything I'd been dying to know all day, and reading her words—I suddenly wished I was still in the dark.

I went to Brophy today to try to find you. I heard you guys have off-campus lunch so I cut class with Jeanie to drive over to Phoenix to try to spot you. We followed a couple of boys from Brophy to this little deli on Central. I was too shy to talk to anyone but Jeanie started asking all the guys if they knew you. None of them had heard of a J.P. Do you not go by J.P. at school? Anyway, we obviously didn't find you, and skipping school was reaaally stupid.
Jeanie and I called school and pretended to be our moms calling us out for doctor's appointments. We almost got caught! But it would have been worth it if we found you. I hope you're not mad.

My head was swimming. Brophy was the private school I told Anna I went to—a good half-hour drive into Phoenix from Scottsdale High. Skipping school to drive all that way was a pretty crazy stunt to pull just to catch sight of some guy. And she'd asked around about me. Thank God I'd given her fake initials and not a whole fake name, or my cover would have been blown apart!

And worse—Jeanie would have known about it. Jeanie: the skinny gossip queen of Scottsdale High, who'd been nothing but a bitch to everyone who'd crossed her path since second grade. It would have been bad enough if Anna had uncovered my secret. But Jeanie would have spread it all over school.

All of those thoughts were clouded by one piercing realization—Anna wasn't at lunch that day because she was out looking for
me
. Something in my chest fluttered, skipped a beat, then began to pound furiously against my sternum. The fact that Anna wanted me enough to come looking for me made me feel as though I had wings, but the knowledge that she would never find me sat like a boulder in my stomach.

My brain worked furiously to come up with a reply.

You are one crazy girl. What, you can't wait until New Year's? Where's your sense of mystery?

I hoped she could sense my teasing. I didn't actually want to make her feel bad, but I did want to discourage her from trying it again.

I know! I don't know what I was thinking! I'm so impatient. But don't worry. I'm not doing that again. It was too scary lying to school. Guess I'll just have to wait. But where were you anyway? It seemed like all the Brophy boys were eating on Central.

At last, I didn't have to lie.

I ate in the cafeteria. My mom still packs my lunch.

That answer worked for Anna, and we chatted about less terrifying topics for another hour before her parents forced her to unplug—the “Internet curfew,” Anna called it. She wished me sweet dreams, as always, and sweet dreams I had.