Empty (3 page)

“Nothing.” I wonder if Cara can really see me. I blink a few times, and she turns away. I follow her gaze to the Taryn and Brandon crew. I probably weigh the same as three of those girls combined. They’re all thin and skinny-jeaned, with shiny straight hair. The guys wear baseball hats, T-shirts, and long, baggy basketball shorts and have killer bodies.

I join Cara in her blatant staring, and after a while I see something I’ve never noticed before—this group does a lot of touching. Holy shit. If they’re not hugging, they’re high-fiving or linking arms or shoulder-shoving or head-nuzzling. The girls touch the girls. The boys touch the boys. The girls touch
the boys. And the boys definitely touch the girls. Everyone’s touching. All. The. Time.

I’ve seen enough of these beautiful people feeling each other up, and I study Cara’s face. Her raised eyebrows and slight grin paint her mug with blatant yearning. Lately, Cara’s been bringing up our social status during our walks to school. She wants us to break into that group somehow. She wants us to get invited to their parties.

I think I’m holding her back. Her funny, overweight sidekick seems to be repelling instead of attracting popularity. I get it.

I decide Cara can’t see me. Not the real me. Not past who I show to the world. I’m the first one to make fun of myself, the goofball who doesn’t fight back. Believe me, I can put on a decent show.

Deflection—I’ve perfected the art.

If I laugh first, then no one is laughing
at
me. We’re all laughing together. Most of the time, stuffing myself with this phony sense of happiness does an okay job of protecting my heart.

God, no wonder Cara can’t see me. I’m so padded with jolly bullshit that I could probably survive a ten-story fall. Hell, I’d probably bounce on the sidewalk.

I wasn’t always like this. I didn’t always wonder if people
could “see” the real me and shit. I used to be a size ten and only eat when I was hungry. Then my dad left, and I fell apart. I hate the label “daddy’s girl” because it sounds all pink and glittery and wimpy, which I’m not. But I was definitely a daddy’s girl. My dad and I were tight. I always went to him instead of my mom—for Band-Aids, homework questions, friend advice.

Now I blame him for everything.

I don’t know, I mean, tons of kids have parents who split up. They don’t eat themselves into a size twenty-four. But my father left a hole when he moved out, and this hole needed filling. I filled it with food. Lots and lots of food.

The first time I ate what my mother described as an “obscene amount of food,” I leaned back in my chair as this deep feeling of comfort overwhelmed me—it was so real, like an actual thing. I felt peaceful. Full. Whole. Then after a few minutes my stomach cramped up and I had to lie down.

Cara has abandoned her aching stare and is watching a video on her phone. Then a loud
moo
comes from somewhere in “the group.” I look up with pinched eyebrows. It’s louder this time. Brandon waddles over to us, his arms out to the side, puffing out his cheeks. He comes to a stop, like, three feet from us, and smiles that smile. “Come on, Dell, do it!”

Cara shoulder-shoves me playfully and grins. “Come on.”

I know what I have to do. Time to deflect.

I stand up, toss my backpack on the ground, and get into my stance. Squatting down like a sumo wrestler, I rest my forearms on my thighs. “You want it?” I tease, soothing the crowd so they don’t attack first.

Brandon nods. At a quick glance, it looks like maybe eight or ten guys followed him over. Nearly our entire baseball team. Taryn and her girls are off to my left. They’re watching, but obviously not wanting to be too close to the spectacle.

The morning sun beats down, and beads of sweat form above my lip. I want to crawl into a cool, dark cave and never be found. Instead, I’m about to pretend I’m a sumo wrestler for a bunch of guys.

I force a smile and give Brandon and his friends what they want: I moo. Loudly. Immediately the guys burst into hoots and cheers, high-fiving one another and me.

Brandon can barely speak. “Th-that was your best one, Dell!” He bites his lip and holds his hand out at me for another high five. Our hands smack together, skin-on-skin, and I wish I had the guts to look him in the eye.

The guys walk away, back to their usual place on the sidewalk. I’m left standing there, the happy fat girl.

“Wow, you do that so well,” Taryn deadpans. She reaches up and smoothes down her long black hair. It looks like she’s
petting herself. Emma, Melissa, and Sydney stand behind her, nodding in agreement. Everyone’s smiling at me like they’re in a beauty pageant or are robots stuck in uberhappy mode.

“I guess it’s because I’m part sumo wrestler and part cow,” I say. “You should’ve seen my old house at Thanksgiving—half of my family wore white diapers, and the other half chewed the lawn out front. It’s one of my favorite memories.”

They all laugh. Even Cara.

As I join in, I watch their faces, Cara’s in particular. Her eyes are bright and full of life. She’s laughing so hard, she reaches over and grabs Sydney’s arm to steady herself. Her volume reaches a root-beer-snorting level, and my eyes well up. None of the girls look at me. They’re having a moment
together
. Even though I’m standing right there with them, I’m not included. I can tell.

With a chorus of “ahhhhs” they compose themselves. I wipe away my tears and give a few exaggerated exhales as if I, too, have laughed so hard I’ve cried. The girls form a circle, and I am mostly out of it. Actually, just my shoulder is included. I make no attempt to insert myself, because if I did, I’d have to shove Sydney and Cara out of the way.

Taryn strokes her hair again and looks at me. “I love Thanksgiving, because of the food.” She grins, tilting her head to the side. Those are some well-practiced bitch moves. She
licks her lips and eyes me up head to toe. “You understand what I’m saying. Right, Dell?”

My backpack suddenly feels so heavy. It presses on my shoulder with absoluteness, and my knees give a little. I break eye contact with Taryn, swinging my backpack around and setting it at my feet. They all look at me expectantly. With a straight face I say, “Food is everything to me. I want to marry food and have food babies and a food pet.”

This gets everyone going again. The rise and fall of their laughter mixes with the din of morning—hissing buses, slamming car doors, the murmur of half-awake teenagers, and my pounding heart.

Taryn says to everyone but me, “So, who saw that picture of Ronnie on Facebook? She looks like a whore.”

Emma’s and Sydney’s eyes bulge and they exchange an uncomfortable giggle at Taryn’s comment. Melissa says, “I did. Ever since she got boobs, she’s had them hanging out in every freaking picture. Get over yourself, Boobie.”

They laugh. They nod. They make no attempt to widen the circle to let the rest of me in. Cara is definitely part of the circle. If she could radiate happiness, she’d be the damn sun right now.

The first bell’s piercing buzz fills the air. From across the way Brandon calls out, “Taryn, you have any gum?”

She skip-walks away, taunting, “Why, do you want a kisssssss?” The other girls turn and follow their leader. Cara stays put, but I can see the longing on her face. She watches them walk away, and her eyebrows lift slightly. I’m waiting for her to bite her lip, to throw her arms out and shout, “Don’t leave me!”

She likes that my mooing brings us attention. I wish that she’d tell me not to do it. Plead with me to have some self-respect. The last time I slept over at her house she made me moo for her. She wet her pants. We never get too deep about stuff. It’s just how our friendship works.

I scoop up my backpack and start walking. “Coming, Cara?” She’s still frozen in place. She suddenly reanimates and smiles.

I want to tell her how the tears I just wiped away were real and how it hurt me that she didn’t make room for me in that circle. But I know that would make her uncomfortable, and I’d probably cry again, so I change the subject. “You playing the piano in the talent show this year?”

Cara nods. “You should try out too. Why don’t you sing, Dell?”

I’ve got a good voice. My freshman chorus teacher said I have “perfect pitch.” He wanted me to try out for Vocal Ensemble, which is the honors chorus he runs. They always
win first place in the state competition. They sing at all of our assemblies—and they even sang the national anthem at a Phillies game last year. They’re freaking good. But they sing
in front
of people. I don’t like an audience.

I sing to my little sister, Meggie. I sing in Cara’s bedroom, but I make her turn the other way so she isn’t looking at me. One time Cara cried when I sang
Angel
by Sarah McLachlan. She even showed me her goose bumps. She told me I have a gift, and she’s been bugging me to perform in a talent show since seventh grade.

“Why don’t I sing? Hmmm. Let’s see. I’m picturing a moment of pure humiliation. Can you see it? Oh, I can see it.” In an attempt to lighten the moment, I grab Cara’s hand and pull it to my forehead. “There I am onstage, in that green dress I’ve wanted. The music starts, and it’s so quiet that you can hear a pin drop. Or a
moo
. Can you hear the mooing? Listen, it’s sort of low. But wait, there’s a second cow in the audience. Oh yes, there it is. Wait . . . there’s another one. I’ve missed my cue—the music is a few lines beyond where I was supposed to come in. I smile and bob my head so the audience thinks I know what I’m doing. Then you know what happens? I moo into the microphone. I bring the house down. The whole auditorium is hysterical. That, Cara Suddreth, is why I won’t sing. In the talent show. In public. Ever. Any
questions? Good. Period. End of story. Good night. The end.”

Cara jerks her hand away and rolls her eyes. “You always think the worst, Dell. God. How do you know it would be like that? You don’t
know
that.”

“I know, that’s all.”

“You have a good voice. You should sing on a stage. Whatever.”

“Whatever, back to you,” I say. “Relax. Can’t you take a joke?”

Again Cara rolls her eyes. “Me? Take a joke? I’m your best friend, Dell. All you ever do is joke.”

IT’S SATURDAY MORNING. MY EYES FLUTTER OPEN,
and the first thought that pops into my head is: I hate how I look.

Like I said, I’m a big girl. You know the kind of fat when people say, “But she has such a pretty face”? Yeah, that’s not me.

I’m fat and what you might call mannish-looking. That’s what Taryn Anderson told me in sixth grade. She didn’t even have the decency to say it
about
me. No, she said it right to my face.

My eyes are close together, and my brown hair is both
curly and frizzy, which is the worst hair possible. My nose is wide in the wrong place. My lips are the only thin part of me.

Mentally ripping myself to pieces is such a great way to start the day. I roll over and try to fall back asleep. It is pointless. I don’t need an alarm clock on the weekend; I have my sister.

“Dehwy? I get out,” Meggie says from her crib.

We’ve been in this cruddy apartment for over a year now. I don’t mind sharing a room with my sister. I don’t. But I miss my old room. It was double the size, with two big windows. This room is small, dark, and has the underlying odor of dirty diapers.

I stretch for a second and then get out of bed. “Good morning, Meggie-bideggie.” I pick her and her pink-and-white checkered blanket up out of her crib (they’re one unit), and I breathe my sister in. No matter how deeply I inhale, I can’t hold on to her smell. My little sister smells pure and buttery and white and crisp and cinnamony and perfect. She smells like love. But I can never conjure her smell when I’m having a bad day. Like when I’m mooing or being excluded by Taryn’s crowd.

I change Meggie’s diaper and strap her into her high chair in record time. Meggie munches on Cheerios as I multitask, devouring a pile of frozen waffles and scrolling through my
phone reading new texts from Cara. In between squishy/syrupy bites I text her back. She’s been trying to get me to go to the mall today—which I can’t do because I’m babysitting.

A drip of syrup falls on my phone screen. “Shit.” I lick it off. Crisis averted.

“Shit,” Meggie repeats.

I burst out laughing. “Meggie! Don’t say that.” I phony-scowl and shake my head.

She grins. “Shitshitshitshitshitshi—”

I reach over and cover her little mouth. She kisses my palm. I take my hand away and kiss her forehead. “Don’t say that word. That’s not a nice word. Okay?”

She grabs two handfuls of Cheerios and playfully shoves them in her mouth.

I take a big bite of waffle. “Chew, baby girl.” If my mother wasn’t at work, she’d reprimand both of us for not using our table manners. Then she’d give me crap for eating eight frozen waffles as one meal. She’d detail the following very important dietary points:

1. The box clearly says a serving size is two waffles.
Two
, Adele. Not eight.

2. Butter is pure fat. Why aren’t you using that butter-flavored spray I bought you?

3. The regular syrup is for your sister and me. It’s full of sugar. I bought you the sugar-free stuff, and you never use it.