Diary of a Mad Fat Girl Read online

  I don’t need some hairy-ass bald man coming up, sweating all over the place, trying to talk to me about the economy or the weather or some stupid crap like that. I mean, how does a man loose every spring of hair on his head, but look like a wooly mammoth from the ears down? How does that happen? I honestly feel sorry for those dudes, just not sorry enough to listen to their slobbering opinions regarding the state of affairs in the world today.

  I push the start button and tell myself not to look down at the timer, but I do. I look down at it every three or four seconds. I try to stop, but dammit! I can’t. It makes me dizzy staring at that stupid monitor, but the only other place to rest my eyes is on that floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall mirror, and goodness knows I don’t want to feast my eyes that. Mirrors that size are not natural or normal and they insult my intelligence because they cannot reveal to me a single thing about me that I don’t already know.

  I know my pie-shaped face is red as a beet and my frizzy hair is soaking wet with sweat after ten minutes of warm up. Talk about a gorilla in the midst. Ha. I know my black yoga pants are spotted with bleach specks from the knees down, but it’s the only pair I have that aren’t worn out in the thighs. I know my socks don’t match each other or my faded Lane Bryant tee shirt and I didn’t think much of it until I realized that every female in this place is dressed like an Under Armor mannequin at sporting good store.

  What the hell am I doing here?

  And why doesn’t this gym have a separate area for fat girls? Girls who need to lose a little more than that last five pounds.

  That last five pounds. Is that supposed to be some kind of a joke? If I got that close to my ideal weight, I’d throw myself a three-keg pizza party. And that’s why I’ll never have to worry about that last five pounds because I’ll always be battling that first thirty. Or forty.

  At any rate, these gym owners need to take a hint from department stores and designate a plus size or a women’s area. We need a place of our own so we don’t offend the Under Armor wearing Bratz packs of the work-out world with our fatassness. I take a moment to fantasize about stretching out on the floor without someone thinking I look like the Michelin Man on a Twister mat. Or doing sit-ups without worrying about a roll of fat slipping out somewhere and being mistaken for a renegade boob.

  I think I’ll send an email to the gym manager and suggest he designate a separate room for big girls and while I’m at it, I’ll tell him to take down those billboard-sized mirrors and put up some posters of Justin Timberlake and Marky Mark. Then all the chubby girls could have their very own private room in the gym and maybe I wouldn’t be the only one here.

  A Fat Girls Only Work-Out Room.

  Throw in a big screen TV and every season of the Biggest Loser and we’re talking about fitness center perfection. Who knows, if I could exercise with other big girls while watching Bob and Jillian work their sadistic magic, I might come to the gym more than once a month. I might turn my flabby body into a Bratz doll, go buy a flat iron, and take a class on how to work those big fancy treadmills.

  Hell no I won’t.

  My left knee hurts and my hands are numb and I’ve only been on this bastard for 31 minutes and 42 seconds.

  I’m going home. And I’m not leaving for the rest of the week.

  4

  Monday morning arrives too soon and it’s back to school.

  Another day, another dollar, another anti-depressant.

  I get there fifteen minutes late and wish it would’ve been thirty. Coach Logan Hatter is standing in his usual spot between our classrooms with a smug look on his face.

  Coach Hatter has been on several of our Spring Break trips. Once as my boyfriend, once as Lilly’s, and the rest of the time just for fun. He said “I do” a few weeks before I married my first husband and his divorce was final a few days after I said “I don’t” to my second.

  “Still hung-over?” he asks, smiling. “You didn’t get much of a tan. Don’t tell me you’ve started using sunscreen.”

  “Not hardly, Hatt,” I mumble, “we didn’t go.”

  “What? Didn’t go? What are you talking about?”

  “Lilly couldn’t make it, so I stayed home and cleaned out my closets.”

  That got a laugh out of him. “Cleaned out your closets? Why didn’t you call me?” And there is a shining example of why guy friends are easier to get along with than girl friends. They don’t want a bunch of details; they just want a little action if they can get it.

  “You had baseball games, Coach Hatter, remember?”

  “Yeah, but I like knowing I could’ve gone,” he grins and his navy blue eyes sparkle. “Good times, Ace, good times.”

  “Are you about to slap me on the ass?” He looks guilty. “Please don’t because here comes the Lard Lady.”

  I’d rather be shot in the face than to listen to anything Principal Catherine Hilliard has to say to me this morning.

  “Miss Jones, I’d like to see you in my office during your planning period this afternoon,” she hisses through crusty, chapped lips, “and try to be on time if it wouldn’t misput you too much.”

  “I’ll check my planner and see what I can do, Mrs. Hilliard,” I retort with all the smartassness I can muster up.

  “Your plan,” she says and snorts like a pig, “is to be in my office at 1:35, sharp.”

  Coach Hatter fidgets with his keys and looks like he’s squeezing back a surge of diarrhea.

  “I’ll see what I can do, Cathy.” I swear if I had a gun I would stop talking about it and shoot myself. Or her. “What’s this concerning?”

  “A private matter. I’m sure you don’t want to discuss it here.”

  “I don’t mind at all discussing it here.” Some people worry about write-ups and getting fired, but I don’t because I hate my job.

  I love art. I love teaching art. I just don’t love where I do it at. I work my ass off to give my students the best learning experience I can, but never get any credit or recognition because the only way to get credit in this school is to have your head stuck shoulder-deep up Catherine Hilliard’s barn sized ass.

  I’m too much of a chicken shit to quit a steady job with half-way decent insurance so I spend a considerable amount of time daydreaming about getting shit-canned. If I could just get myself fired, then I would have no choice but to start my own art studio like I’ve dreamed of doing my entire life.

  But that won’t happen. I’ll retire from Bugtussle School District with a comfortable retirement and twenty years worth of discontentment under my belt.

  “Be there, Miss Jones,” she smirks. “On time.”

  She turns to Coach Hatter, who flashes her a big, shaky smile.

  “Good Morning, Mrs. Hilliard, good to see you. How was your break?”

  Catherine Hilliard glares at him like she’s about to cram her fist down his throat, rip his heart out, and eat it with a side of fries.

  She says nothing.

  His smile falters and he looks at the floor.

  She turns and clicks down the hallway, maroon pumps bulging.

  “What was that all about?” Coach Hatter asks, obviously stung by her rudeness.

  “Hell if I know,” I watch her tromp past my students’ art displays without so much as turning her head. “Maybe she didn’t get to eat the full pig this morning.”

  That makes him snigger that ridiculous, obnoxious snigger of his and that always cracks me up so we just stand there laughing like hyenas waiting for the first bell to ring.

  5

  At lunch, my friend Chloe is a nervous wreck.

  Chloe Stacks takes her job, her life, and her self very seriously. Too seriously in my opinion, but that’s just me. She’s the best school counselor in the state of Mississippi and has the plaques in her office prove it.

  “What’s wrong, Chloe-sweets, have to counsel some nut cases this morning?” I ask as she gracefully takes a seat across from me and places her lavender monogrammed lunch bag on the table.

  �
��You don’t know?” she asks, like I’m stupid.

  “Know what?” I’m not stupid, so I look her like she’s crazy.

  “You really do not know?” She’s staring me down with those big, brown, saucer-shaped eyes.

  “Well, obviously I don’t, Chloe. What’s up? We gonna have a state test in Art this year and you just found out?” I snort at my own joke and open a ketchup packet with my teeth.

  She stares at me like I’m an insolent child misbehaving in church. During prayer.

  “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “How do you not know what just happened to your best friend?”

  “Lilly?” My mind starts spinning the crazy what-if scenarios. What if she got kidnapped in Paris? What if her plane crashed? What if it got hijacked? What if she tried to screw one of the hijackers? What if she had a wreck on the way home from the airport? What if she got car jacked in Memphis? What if she tried to screw the carjacker? What if the Gentleman’s wife found out about her and hacked her to death with a pick ax? It’s amazing how many ludicrous thoughts can dart though your mind in a millisecond.

  “She was fired this morning,” Chloe whispers.

  “What?” I spray the table with tater tots and get the insolent child stare again. “What for? Are you serious? What?” Jealousy sweeps over me as I imagine being free from the stifling chains of public education. But not Lilly. She loves everything about her job and quit a gravy train modeling career to do it.

  “I overheard it this morning while I was in the conference room,” she whispers. “Cheap walls, very thin.” She eyeballs the other teachers filing into the cafeteria. “If you don’t know, then probably no one does. I guess they’re not going to make it public.”

  “Make what public?”

  She cups her hands around her mouth and whispers, “She was fired after Catherine Hilliard accused her of having an affair with one of her students.”

  I choke on my chocolate milk and it takes me a second to recover.

  Not jealous of that. No, buddy.

  “Would you please stop eating for a second?” Chloe asks, wiping milk and tater tots off of her side of the table. “Please?”

  “She’s banging one of her kids. No shit? Which one?”

  “Watch your language! Does it matter which one?”

  “Hell yeah it matters.”

  “No, it does not matter because she would not do that.” A thoughtful pause. “What are we going to do, Ace?”

  “Hell, nothing. Watch her on the news tonight, I guess.” I’m not feeling the pity party vibe for the promiscuous Lilly Lane. Not even a little bit.

  “So you think she’s guilty? You think she did this?” Chloe is giving me her saucer-eyed stare again, “Because I do not think that she would do such a thing and I think we need to help her.”

  “Help her what? Clean out her desk and find a pedophile lawyer?”

  When we were 13-years-old, Lilly and I took a six pack of root beer to Chloe’s house and acted like we got drunk on it. She almost stroked out before we finally convinced her that it was a just a joke. She doesn’t know about the Gentleman.

  “You think she would do something like that?” Now she’s boring a hole through me with those eyes. Perfectly arched eyebrows drawn; perfectly lined lips quivering. “How could you say that? She is our best friend. What is wrong with you today?”

  “I don’t know, Chloe.” I can see she’s about to burst into tears so I paddle backwards like I usually do when having a conversation her. “No. You know what, Chloe? No. I do not think that Lilly did anything wrong. There is absolutely no way she would do something like that.”

  “So we’re going to help her then?” Her brown eyes light up and she smiles like little girl looking at lollipop balloons.

  “Yes. Absolutely. We are absolutely going to help her.” I look down at the tater tot shrapnel floating in a pool of chocolate milk on my plastic lunch tray. “Forget lunch. Let’s go check out her classroom. See what we can find out.”

  “Yes, let’s do that!” She jumps up and runs right into Logan Hatter.

  Coach Hatter eats lunch with us every day but Chloe can’t tell her husband that.

  “Hey ladies, where y’all off to?” He takes a look at Chloe, then eyeballs me. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  “We gotta run, Hatt. I’ll fill you in later, I promise.”

  “So I’m eatin’ by myself? That’s no fun. Where’s Lilly?”

  Awkward silence.

  “Here comes Coach Wills. He’ll keep you company.” I give him a quick wink and he rolls his eyes. He can’t stand Coach Wills.

  6

  The hallway is empty so I imagine for one disillusioned second that this might go off without a hitch. The door to Lilly’s classroom is slightly ajar, so we scurry down there like field mice sneaking past a sleeping cat. I stop short and Chloe bumps into to me from behind and I spin around and put a finger over my mouth.

  Someone is in Lilly’s classroom.

  We freeze.

  And wait.

  Then, a voice.

  It’s Principal Catherine Hilliard.

  I can’t tell if she’s talking on a cell phone or just mumbling to herself, but either way, she’s stupid and I want to knock her ass over with a tire tool. I can’t make out what she’s saying; I can only hear papers rattling and stuff hitting the floor.

  Suddenly, she articulates a sentence that comes through loud and clear.

  “Who? Oh, of course. Right now? Out in the hallway?”

  “Shit!” I whisper and Chloe takes off running in a dead sprint to the girls’ bathroom. “What are you doing? Get back here!” I scream-whisper, but she’s gone.

  I smell moth balls and old lady muff powder and turn around like a girl in a horror movie about to get axed in the skull. I’m eye level with a giant gold cross hanging on a thin rope chain. There is a tiny little Jesus on the cross.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing, Miss Jones? And where did Mrs. Stacks run off to?” she hiss-snorts and I wonder for a second how she can breath out that fat ass pig nose and speak at the same time.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Probably not the best response I’ve ever come up with.

  She stares at me like I’m a dog turd in the lima beans on the Sunday dinner table. I look back down at Jesus.

  “You should’ve taken Miss Lane to Florida like you always do.”

  That caught me off guard.

  “Okay, seriously, Mrs. Hilliard, now I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You will. Now why don’t you be a nice girl and get in there and clean out Miss Lane’s personal effects?”

  “Why? Is she getting a new classroom?”

  She snarls and points like I’m going to trot right in there and do exactly what she says.

  “What’s that you have in your hand there, Mrs. Hilliard?”

  “School property.”

  “Picture frames and post cards are school property?” I wonder when the pictures were taken and where the post cards are from. I wonder why I can’t just keep my mouth shut and live a normal life. I think about grabbing that stuff out of her hand and slinging it down the hallway just for fun.

  “Don’t stand there and act like you don’t know what’s going on, Graciela Jones. I haven’t decided yet what your role is in all of this,” she whisper snorts.

  This bitch is driving me crazy. Crazier, that is. I think about grabbing her by the hair and bashing her head against cinder block wall. Repeatedly.

  “All of what, Mrs. Hilliard?” I’m not sure I want The-Whole-Truth-So-Help-Me-God when it comes to what’s going on with Lilly, but I press on anyway. “What exactly is ‘all of this’ and who do you think you are, some kind of educational casting director?” I decide to skate backwards with a tactical conversational maneuver. “I come down here to check on Lilly because she wasn’t at lunch and find you going through her personal stuff, so why don’t yo
u tell me what you mean when you say, ‘all of this’ and please, for the love of God, tell me how I might have a part in it.”

  “Don’t play stupid with me, Miss Jones, even though we both know how good you are at that,” she smirks and I fight off the urge to gouge her eyes out with the dry erase marker in my back pocket. She continues, “So tell me, why were you standing at the door eavesdropping? And where is your prim little side kick?”

  “Well, she ran to the bathroom, so common sense would dictate that she had to pee and I was standing outside the door here because you don’t look or sound anything like Lilly Lane because, you know, she used to be an underwear model and all,” I make a show of looking at her from head to toe, “so it gave me pause when I heard you in there tearing down the place.”

  “You are on thin ice, Miss Jones, and you better tread lightly.”

  “I think you mean skate. And is that a threat? Do I need to call the Mississippi Association of Educators and report that?” I can feel my face burning.

  “Like that would make any difference,” she snorts. “By the way, your presence is no longer required in my office this afternoon because, as it turns out, something far more important has come up.”

  “Oh really? Like what?” I can’t wait to hear this.

  “I’ll be at the district office,” she says and smiles at me with those gigantic yellow horse teeth, “filing the papers to have Miss Lane’s teaching license revoked.” And with that little victory under her 64-inch belt, she puts her super-cankles in action and stomps off down the hallway. She stops at the girls’ bathroom and calls, “Yoo hoo, Mrs. Stacks, you can come out now. Coast is clear.”

  I stare at the back of Catherine Hilliard’s man-suite that is masculine in every way except for the fabric, which looks a floral tapestry cerca 1989, and wonder what the hell is going on.

  Could Lilly really be sleeping with one of her students? Why is Catherine Hilliard such a hateful bitch? Could I kill her and make it look like an accident? What the hell does she think I’ve done? What did Chloe accomplish by running to the bathroom and leaving me here by myself looking like an idiot? What if Lilly really is doing it with one of her students? Wonder which one it is? What was Catherine Hilliard looking for in her classroom? Why didn’t Lilly talk to Chloe before she left? Would she really do it with one of her kids and risk throwing her entire career away? Could Lilly possibly be that stupid?