Diary of a Mad Fat Girl Read online

  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 Señor 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, piña 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 tol
d 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.

  I flip the television on just in time to catch a commercial for the gym that docks my checking account $40 a month and that makes me feel worse than I already do.

  What the hell was I thinking when I gave a voided check to that Ken doll looking man with no hair on his arms? Was I thinking that I’d pack up and go to the gym five times a week and love every minute of it? Was I thinking I’d lose sixty pounds and be able to wear those Lucky jeans I haven’t been able to squeeze my ass into for three years? I don’t know what I was thinking and I’m not in the mood to try and remember.

  I don’t want to think about the damned gym. I don’t want to think about Lilly sitting pretty in her first class seat en route to the Charles de Gaulle. I don’t want to think about all the beer I drank last night. I don’t want to think about the beach or ocean or all the raw oysters I had planned to eat this week. And I don’t need to think about Mason McKenzie.

  The only problem is that I like thinking about Mason McKenzie and I can’t help it. It’s one of many bad habits that I have no desire to break.

  I met J. Mason McKenzie at the First Methodist Church shortly after my family moved to Bugtussle when I was eleven years old. My parents made me go to a youth fellowship meeting on a Sunday afternoon and that’s where we spoke for the first time. Our short conversation was stilted and awkward, but it was one of the happiest moments of my life and I remember it like it was yesterday.

  My mom had dropped me off at church thirty minutes early because she always got everywhere thirty minutes early. I distinctly remember sitting in the far corner of that rectangular room in a cold metal folding chair all alone and completely terrified. The youth leader wasn’t even there yet.

  After fifteen minutes of pure agony, other kids finally started showing up and I stared at the floor because I was embarrassed for being there so early. I could sense the room was filling up, but the chair beside mine remained unoccupied. I was entertaining the thought of bolting to the bathroom where I could hide until the evening services when Mason McKenzie made his dramatic entrance.

  I looked up when I heard his voice and the moment I saw him, I fell madly and deeply in love. My young heart was beating like a jungle drum as I watched him survey the room, looking for a place to sit.

  All the angels in heaven started to sing when he choose the seat next to mine.

  I started staring at the floor again because I felt like I might die if I didn’t and he tapped me on the arm said, “Hey! Who are you? I’m Mason.”

  I could barely utter my own name.

  We became good friends and then best friends and I fell more in love with him every day. In high school, we hooked up a few times in between his steady girlfriends and the losers I ran around with, then we married and divorced other people and lost touch for a few years.

  I ran into him again one chilly Saturday afternoon at an Ole Miss football game and he begged me to move to Florida and marry him and I quickly agreed. We were both thoroughly intoxicated at the time, but seven months later, I moved into his three story house two blocks from the ocean in Destin, Florida.

  I was so happy I couldn’t stand myself. I laughed more in the six weeks I spent with him than I had my whole life up until then. We walked on the beach and drank beer out of plastic wine glasses. We told each other our wildest dreams and darkest fears. We shopped at the local farmers’ markets and ate boiled shrimp and raw oysters whenever we liked. He bought me a sweet little chiweenie puppy and it took us two weeks to come up with the name Señor Buster Loo Bluefeather. I went to bed every night with the man of my dreams and woke up every morning to the smell of salt water and gourmet coffee.

  Shortly after I moved back to Bugtussle, Lilly told me he had a ring in his pocket the night I left. Then Ethan let it slip that he had purchased a building on Back Beach Road and was going to give it to me for my birthday. Ethan asked me what I would’ve done with the building and I couldn’t bring myself tell him about my dream of ownin
g an art studio.

  I take a long, slow sip of the lemon-lime tonic, flip off the television, and snuggle down into the couch with Buster Loo. He moans like a dying cow as I hug him up next to me and close my eyes.

  3

  I skip church Sunday because I don’t feel like answering ten thousand questions about why I’m still in Bugtussle, Mississippi, when I’m supposed to be at the beach in Florida and everyone will be asking where Lilly is and I don’t feel like lying to church people on the Lord’s day.

  So I decide to spend the morning at the gym instead. I pull into the parking lot hoping against hope that a good endorphin rush might lift my spirits or, at the very least, make me feel better about those monthly payments. As soon as I‘m in the front door, I pick up on something peculiar that somehow escaped my notice during my two previous visits to this voluntary torture chamber.

  I am, without a doubt, the fattest girl in this place.

  I look around to see if anyone else notices that I‘m the only person in the building who has to shop in the big and not so tall department, but no one seems to be paying attention. So I try to forget about it.

  But I can’t forget about it.

  I am keenly aware of my fatness as I feign invisibility on a walk of shame past a never ending line of big fancy treadmills with micro LCD screens and more USB ports that my home computer.

  “Who needs all that crap?” I mumble under my breath. “It’s a freakin’ treadmill, not a Boeing 747.”

  Even if I had sense enough to work one of those monsters, I wouldn’t step foot on the thing if my life depended on it. I would literally die before I hopped up there with that Bratz pack of little jogger ladies with their shiny, straight pony tails and their tight little gym shorts stretched over their tight little rumps.

  I make my way back to the old clunker treadmills and it only takes a second for me to spot the one I’m looking for. It’s parked between two dusty machines with “out of order” signs taped to the monitors. No Bratz dolls piling up next to me. Ha. Those little fitness freaks wouldn’t dream of abandoning their front and center Boeing 747 treadmills and I don’t give a rat’s ass anyway because I happen to prefer the guaranteed privacy.