Diary of a Mad Fat Girl

by

Stephanie McAfee

________________________

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED BY:

Stephanie McAfee on Smashwords

Copyright © 2010 by Stephanie McAfee

________________________

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you
share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it,
or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return
to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for
respecting the author's work.

This book is a work of fiction. Any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is
entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses,
organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2010 by Stephanie McAfee

1

All of my bags are packed and I’m ready to
go. If I had some white shoe polish, I’d do it like we did it in
the 80’s and scribble “Panama City Beach or BUST” on my back
windshield.

Spring Break is finally here and for the
next week, I’m a free woman. No students to teach, no projects to
grade, no paintbrushes to wash, and, best of all, no bitchy
Catherine Hilliard riding my ass like a fat lady on a Rascal.

I’m sick of her and I’m tired of my
job and I need a vacation worse than Nancy Grace needs a chill
pill. I wish we were leaving tonight. I squeeze a lime into my beer
and head out the back door with Se
ñ
or Buster Loo Bluefeather hot on my heels.
While Buster Loo does speedy-dog crazy eights around my flower
beds, I flip on the multi-colored Christmas lights, settle into my
overstuffed lounger, and start daydreaming about white sandy
beaches, pi
ñ
a coladas, and
hot men in their 20’s.

My phone dings and in the two seconds it
takes me to look at the caller ID, I wish a thousand times it would
be a text from Mason McKenzie.

I wouldn’t give Mason McKenzie the time of
day and he knows I wouldn’t give him the time of day so it's
ridiculous for me to wish that he would text me, but I still do.
Every day.

Of course, it’s not a text from him, it’s
from my best bud Lilly Lane.

Call me
. I
will never understand the logic of sending a text message that
says
call me.
Lilly Lane is
one of those cellular addicts who could carry on a full-fledged,
six hour conversation via text message. Sometimes her messages are
so encrypted with abbreviations that I just pick up the phone and
call her and that pisses her off. She’s like, “I’m texting you, why
are you calling me? If I wanted to talk then I would‘ve texted you
and told you to call me.”

Oh, so I’m the idiot? Right.

Then I’ll say something like, “Hey heifer,
save it for someone who cares and tell me what the hell that last
message was supposed to mean. I’m not Robert Langdon. I can’t
decode symbols and if you don’t want me to call you, then send me
some crap I can read.”

But I can read this, so I call her.

“
Ace,” she says and sounds like she‘s
been running, but she’s not a runner, “I’m not gonna be able to go
to Florida.”

“
What are you talking about?” I’m
confused because we have gone to Panama City Beach every Spring
Break since we were freshman in high school.

“
I can’t go,” she pauses, “I’m
sorry.”

“
Sorry?” I yell into the phone. “Are
you freakin’ kidding me right now? We‘re supposed to leave in the
morning, Lilly! Like nine hours from
right
now
! What the hell do you mean you can‘t
go?”

Silence. And in the silence, it dawns on
me.

For the past five months, Lilly Lane has
been seeing someone on the sly that she will only call the
Gentleman and she’s more tightlipped about him than she was about
that time she got a hot dog stuck in her cooter. I think he might
be a gross old man with tons of money and I thought about making a
list of all the gross old men with money around here and doing some
investigating, but I’m not much of a list maker so I probably won’t
do that.

Lilly, however, is a habitual list maker and
I don’t mean the kind you take to the grocery store. She can go on
a date with some dude and by the time they get to wherever they’re
going, she’s got a list a mile long of everything she thinks is
wrong with him.

I know this because she keeps me updated
with a continuous stream of text messages. Not because I ask for
them. I don’t. She just takes it upon herself to keep me
posted.

After the date is over, she documents the
potential suitor’s fault list on a piece or twelve of loose leaf
paper which, upon completion, she files in an alphabetized four
inch binder. I mean, God forbid she forget one small thing about a
guy nice enough to take her goofy ass out to dinner and a
movie.

Some poor fellows hang around long enough to
have their list read to them and the truly unfortunate get shown
the actual notebook. Imagine a man looking at a hot pink polka-dot
binder stuffed with twenty years worth of documentation on Mr.
Wrong.

The Gentleman, however, does not have
a list. As far as I can tell, he only has an itinerary. Since the
commencement of her super secret affair, Lilly has been to New York
City, Los Angeles, Steamboat Springs, Key West, and on a cruise to
the Cayman Islands. In the past five months.
Five months
. And she returns from these
escapades with truck loads of fancy shopping bags stuffed with
extravagant gifts.

I guess she may have finally found her Mr.
Right, although I have serious doubts about how right a man can be
that requires such secrecy concerning his identity.

Further adding to the mystery of this
surreptitious affair is that new BMW convertible she started
driving about two months ago. I mean, she has some serious cash
stacked up from her days as a lingerie model, but I don‘t think
she‘d blow every last dime of it on an automobile. Maybe the
Gentleman is a rich man in a mid life crisis. The car is red.

Whoever he is, I hate his guts because I‘m
pretty sure he’s the reason my vacation plans are now in ruins.

“
Oh,” I say, “I get it. It’s him. The
Gentleman got bigger plans for you, Lilly? A little trip down to
the Redneck Rivera doesn’t quite measure up to your new travel
standards? I can‘t buy you six pair of Manolos and three Gucci
purses so I‘m out now?”

“
Ace, please don’t do this to me. Just
get someone else to go.”

“
Don’t do this to
you
?” I yell and feel my face getting hot. “How
about you don’t do this to
me
? And who the hell am I gonna get to go that
can pack up and be ready on such short notice? I’m the only person
I know who is that spontaneous.”

“
You could ask Chloe,” she
peeps.

“
Oh yeah, that’s a great idea, Lil,
why didn’t I think of that? Hey, do you think her husband will beat
the hell out of her before we leave or when we get back? Or if
she‘s really lucky, maybe both?”

Our friend Chloe is married to Richard
Stacks the Fourth, a prominent Bugtussle, Mississippi, citizen who
abuses her physically and emotionally, but she won’t leave him and
she won’t let me kill him. I’ve offered to do so on several
occasions and even came up with some good places to hide the body,
but she is determined to make her marriage work because she thinks
he can change. I think the only thing that can change a man like
that is a bullet to the skull. Just like that Dixie Chicks song
about Earl.

Silence on the line.

“
Well,” I say.

“
Well,” she says, “I think you should
go down there and patch things up with Mason. You could drive over
to Destin and have lunch or something and maybe y’all could work
things out, once and for all. Ethan told me the other day that he
isn’t seeing anybody and, honestly Ace, I think he’s just waiting
on you to come back”

“
Is that what you think?” I ask, heavy
on the sarcasm. “You think I should revisit the single most
disastrous moment of my life? How could you even bring that up
right now? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“
Well, it's how I feel and Ethan and
Chloe feel the same way, but they don’t bring it up because they
know you’ll go ape shit crazy. Everybody knows that you two are
meant to be together,” she pauses a beat, “everybody, it seems,
except you.”

“
Just stop right there,” I say and my
face is on fire, “you have got to be out of your damn mind. I mean,
first you text me and tell me to call you, which is stupid as shit
by the way; then you tell me you’re ditching our trip, a trip we
take every year and you
know
how much I look forward to it;
then
you suggest I take along our poor little
friend who can‘t go to the grocery story without being
interrogated, and after all of that,
all
of that,
you have the balls to start babbling about
how I need to patch things up with Mason. Seriously, Lilly? Are you
for real right now?”

Silence.

“
Are you serious?” I try to sound
calm. “You’re gonna ditch me the night before we leave?
Really?”

“
I’m sorry. It's not what you think. I
have to be somewhere.”

“
You have to be somewhere?” The
sarcasm oozes like lava. “Where exactly do you have to be,
Lilly?”

“
Paris.” She sounds like a baby frog
trying to find its first croak.

“
Really, I thought you quit
modeling.”

“
You know I’m not
modeling.”

“
Spring Break in Paris,” I say with
the sarcasm full throttle, “well don’t that just take the cake? I’m
so happy for you and your Gentleman friend. Or should I say your
Gentleman financier.” I put a little French twist on the last
syllable. For effect.

“
You are so cruel,” she
whispers.

“
Oh yeah, I’m definitely the bitch in
this relationship.” I could bend an iron skillet at this point.
“Who is it, Lilly?” I ask. “Who is this Gentleman whose plans for
you are so much more important than the plans you made with
me?”

“
You know I can’t tell you who he
is.”

“
Why not? I really wanna
know.”

“
Ace, stop, please. I
can’t.”

“
Right. Of course you can’t. I mean,
why would you? It's not like you can trust me. It's not like we’re
friends, right?”

“
Ace,” she says and I can tell she’s
about to start her stupid squalling like she always
does.

“
Okay, well. Hey! Thanks for waiting
until Friday afternoon to let me know. Have a great trip and I’ll
talk to you later,” I pause, “or maybe not.”

She starts mumbling a string of apologies
and I push the red button on my phone with enough pressure to drive
a nail through wood. Sorry means as much to me as that dog turd
Buster Loo just dropped in that dwarf yaupon holly.

2

All I can see when I open my eyes is a wet,
black nose and dog whiskers because Buster Loo is standing on my
pillow resting his snout on my face. I pat him on the head and
reach for my cell phone while the sun pours through the blinds like
a giant laser designed to obliterate my eyeballs.

Lilly and I should be well on our way to the
Emerald Coast by now. I think for a second about throwing my bags
in the car and setting out on a solo run to Panama City Beach, but
how pathetic would that be? What kind of idiot goes to Florida
alone during Spring Break? I think for one miserable second about
how nice it would be to hang out with Mason McKenzie, but I
wouldn’t try to get in touch with him if my life depended on it.
He’s probably got a lap full of college girls right now and its
only 11:30 in the morning.

I get out of bed and make my way to the
kitchen where I take four ibuprofen and fix myself a lemon-lime
soda on the rocks. With six cherries. I grab some saltines, wobble
into the living room, and ease down on the sofa. Buster Loo appears
from what he thinks is his secret hiding place behind the love seat
and curls up in the bend of my legs.