“Do you want to go to church with us sometime?” Katie asked. “I get a ride with Janelle every week. I’m sure her family could pick you up too.”
“That’d be great!” Christy exclaimed. She noticed that Brittany was being awfully quiet, and she wondered if Brittany felt left out. Christy remembered how left out she felt last summer when her beach friends had talked about “the Lord” and she didn’t know what they meant.
“Brittany?” Christy asked. “Do you want to go to church with us too?”
She didn’t answer. She was already asleep—or at least pretending to be.
“Janelle invited her to go to Hume Lake last summer, but she didn’t want to go because Kurt wasn’t going. Maybe she’ll come now that she’s not with him anymore.”
As their conversation wound down, Christy yawned and stretched out in her sleeping bag. Within minutes she was asleep.
The next morning around nine-thirty Janelle’s mom put out orange juice and donuts for the girls, but none of them was very hungry. They bumped around getting their sleeping bags rolled up and crabbed at each other about getting into the bathroom.
All Christy wanted to do when she got home was sleep. But, instead, she was handed a rake. All day the family worked in the yard. They didn’t finish, so they spent Sunday doing the same.
Monday at school the girls were still talking about the slumber party and greeting Christy as if she were the life of the party. Brittany even invited Christy to come to her house after school. It was encouraging to be liked and included.
Christy called her mom from school at lunch to ask if she could go home with Brittany. To her surprise her mother said, “I suppose so. See if Brittany’s mom can bring you home.”
Brittany lived in a huge, ultramodern house with a swimming pool in the back, overlooking a lake.
“This is sure pretty,” Christy said as she lay back in the padded lounge chair. “What lake is that down there?”
“Lake Hodges. It’s not very exciting. You can’t go water skiing or anything. Just fishing.” Brittany pulled her hair back in a scrunchie and took a sip of her diet soda. “Sure is hot today.”
“Is your mom at work?” Christy asked.
“Who knows,” Brittany answered flatly.
“What does that mean?”
“My mom moved out last spring. Last my dad and I heard, she was living in Paris.”
“In Paris? Why?”
“She just flipped out. Went to go find herself or something, I don’t know. She and my dad haven’t gotten along for years. But I keep thinking she’ll show up someday.” Brittany sat up. “Do you want to hear something totally off the wall?” She went on before Christy could answer. “I have this dream that I’ll come home from school one day, and Mom will be in the kitchen, Dad will be in the den reading the paper, and my brother will be back from college. We’ll all sit down together to eat dinner, and everybody will be happy. Is that Leave It to Beaver, or what?”
Christy offered Brittany an encouraging smile. Everything within her ached for her new friend. Over the weekend Christy had argued continually with her brother. Their dad had yelled at both of them the whole time they were doing yard work (not that they didn’t deserve it), and their mom had floated around in her lethargic mood. Christy thought her family was a mess, but compared with Brittany’s, she had it made.
Christy ended up calling her mom and asking her to pick her up, which didn’t please her mother a whole lot. When Mom found out Brittany was alone every day after school, she insisted that Brittany come over to their house.
It seemed to work out well. The girls got together at Christy’s every afternoon that week, and Christy benefited tremendously from Brittany’s help on her algebra. Christy hated math, but when Brittany explained it, it made sense.
On Thursday afternoon, Mom and David went to pick up Dad while Christy and Brittany did homework at the kitchen table. Brittany got up to get a drink and bumped a butterfly magnet off the refrigerator. She picked it up and then told Christy, “My mom had a magnet like this on our refrigerator. She had all kinds of magnets. One of them was a little sign that said, ‘One moment on the lips, forever wear it on the hips!’ ”
Christy laughed.
“One day,” Brittany went on, warming up to the subject, “my dad gave my mom a magnet in the shape of a lamb that said, ‘Ewe’s not fat. Ewe’s fluffy’; you know, ‘e-w-e,’ ewe.”
“How cute!” Christy said.
“I thought so too, but my mom got really mad at him and smashed the poor little lamb into a thousand pieces.”
“Was your mom …” Christy hesitated. “… ‘fluffy’?”
“No, not at all. She was super thin. She was always dieting, and she was always thin.” Brittany paused for a moment and then added, “She had a little help.”
“What do you mean?”
Brittany lowered her voice. “She took some diet pills that the doctor prescribed for her.”
“Oh,” Christy said, unimpressed.
“She left a bottle when she moved out.”
Christy didn’t understand why Brittany was looking at her so intently or why she was acting as though the diet pills were a big secret. She gave Brittany a look that said, “So?”
“Can you keep a secret?” Brittany asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t tell anyone, but I took the bottle to the pharmacy, and they refilled it without even asking who I was or for a signature or anything.”
Christy gave her another “So?” look.
“I’ve been taking the pills for a couple of months, and I’ve lost more than twenty pounds.”
“I don’t think you need to lose any more,” Christy said.
“I’m not,” Brittany said defensively. “I’m just telling you in case, well, if you might want to lose a few pounds. I could give you some of the pills. They’re totally safe.”
Christy sat still, her mind soaking up what Brittany was saying. For a long time Christy had been intrigued by those TV and magazine ads about losing weight. She thought she could stand to lose some weight, just around her stomach and her thighs. She never seriously considered taking anything to help her accomplish her goal, but the thought now made her heart race.
“I don’t know,” she stammered.
“If you don’t like feeling hyper, there’s something else you could take. That’s what the diet pills do. They make you feel as if you have all this energy, and you only need about an hour’s sleep every night. But when you crash, you really go out. Lately I’ve been taking laxatives. They work great. Make me feel healthy because they help clean out my system, especially when I’ve eaten a lot of junk food.”
“You take laxatives?” Christy asked.
“Yes.” Brittany tilted her chin down, turning her head and looking up at Christy like an innocent child.
“That sounds gross!”
“The kind I take are mild. You just swallow them like an aspirin. Here, I’ll show you.” Brittany opened her purse and lifted out a small box of laxatives along with a prescription bottle of diet pills.
“Why don’t I give you some of these laxatives, and if you feel like losing a few pounds, you can take them. Or if you want to try the diet pills, I’ll give you what’s left in this bottle.” She handed the prescription bottle and box of laxatives to Christy. “There are only a few left in here, but I’ve got another whole bottle full if you want some more.”
“I don’t know,” Christy said, scrunching up her nose. “I don’t think I should.”
Brittany gave her a motherly look. “They won’t hurt you, Christy. It’s not like taking drugs or anything. The best part is, since I’ve lost a few pounds, I’ve gotten more attention from guys than ever before in my life. Which reminds me of something. Did you see Janelle today after lunch?”
“No. Why?”
“She told me in English class that Rick Doyle found out she had the sleepover last Friday night. He came up to her in the hall and asked about yo
u!”
“You’re kidding!” Christy felt excited and nervous just hearing his name. “What did he say?”
“He said he wanted to find out who the girl was who ran away from him.”
“What did Janelle say?”
“She had some fun teasing him. She didn’t tell him your name. She said he’d have to find out on his own, and then she said, ‘What’s the matter, Rick? Are you so used to girls flocking in your direction that you can’t handle it when one runs away from you?’ ”
“Oh, no!” Christy groaned, tilting her head down and staring at her algebra book. “I feel so stupid. I don’t ever, ever, in my whole life want to meet him face-to-face.”
“Oh, come on! You’ve got a wide-open invitation to catch the most desirable guy in school. And, Christy, if I can be honest with you, if you were to lose about five, maybe ten pounds, the guy wouldn’t be able to take his eyes off you!”
“Brittany!” Christy said in a long, drawn-out wail. “He’s not interested in me, okay?”
Brittany ignored her and went back to work on her algebra, humming to herself.
Christy’s mind raced. Could Rick actually be interested in me? What if I were a few pounds thinner? Or what if I started wearing more makeup, like Brittany and her friends?
Somewhere deep inside of Christy the seeds were planted, and somehow she knew it was going to be very hard to ever be happy with herself the way she was.
If only I could lose some weight. Hmm … What would it be like to have a guy like Rick pay attention to me?
Christy ate dinner slowly, chewing every bite twenty times. She had read in a magazine at Brittany’s house that counting her bites would help her eat less and lose weight.
David rattled on and on about his day at school and how some kid in his class got in trouble for cheating. Dad looked more tired than usual, but he wasn’t grumpy, which was good. Mom looked as if she had something on her mind. After David excused himself from the table and planted himself in front of the TV, Mom asked Dad if he would like a cup of coffee.
Aha! Christy thought. I knew you wanted to talk to Dad about something.
Mom always used a cup of coffee as her buffer between herself and her husband when she had something to ask. Christy was still slowly chewing her twenty bites. Her mom didn’t seem to mind if she stayed at the table. Maybe it would even give her mom more buffer.
“Norm, I’ve been thinking.”
“Um-hmm,” Dad answered, sipping his coffee.
“I think it would help out all around if I found a part-time job. Just while the kids are in school, of course. I could do some kind of secretarial work or maybe work at a fast-food restaurant.”
“No wife of mine is going to wear a Burger King hat.”
“Well, all right. I don’t care what I do, but I need to find something. Yesterday I called our landlord to ask if we could put in a fall garden, now that the yard is all cleaned up, and he said no.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I think he was having a bad day. The phone rang at his office about fifteen times, and he was the one who finally picked it up.”
“There’s your answer,” Dad said.
Mom looked at Christy; Christy looked at her dad. Nineteen, twenty, she counted, then swallowed and looked back at her mom.
“What?” Mom asked. “What answer?”
Dad slowly took a swig of coffee. “The man obviously needs office help if he can’t get someone to answer the phone for him. Go see him tomorrow. Tell him you’ll answer his phones. What’s his name? Hank?”
“I have his card,” Mom said, jumping up and rummaging through a basket by the phone. “Here it is. Hank Taylor. Taylor-Made Properties. I wonder if he does need office help? Part-time, of course. Norm, what do you think?”
“Like I said, there’s your answer.”
Her dad’s bluntness made Christy smile. I hope Mr. Taylor hires her. That would be perfect! Then Brittany and I would get to do things together all the time.
Not until she was in bed and almost asleep did she remember the laxatives and diet pills Brittany had given her. Brittany told her to take one or two before going to bed.
They were in her backpack, which she’d left in the living room. Of course, her parents were sitting on the couch, watching TV. They wouldn’t go to bed until ten.
She tossed and turned. Brittany’s voice echoed in her head: “Christy, if I can be honest with you, if you were to lose about five, maybe ten pounds, the guy would not be able to take his eyes off you.”
Maybe if I take only one, Christy reasoned. What harm can one do?
Then she remembered last summer when she had said no to marijuana. This was different, but still, she never regretted saying no then. She knew she would have regretted it later if she’d tried even one puff. No, she didn’t need to try diet pills or laxatives. Tomorrow she would throw them away.
She picked up Pooh Bear and whispered in his ear, “And if Rick Doyle is truly interested in me, he can be interested in me, five extra pounds and all!” Christy hoped she could always convince herself of the same thing so easily.
The next morning, right before first period, Brittany met Christy at her locker, her eyes full of anticipation. “Well, how are you doing?” she asked with hidden meaning.
“Fine,” Christy said brightly.
“How many did you take?” Brittany asked.
“Oh!” Christy caught on. “Those! I didn’t take any. I didn’t want to. You can have them back. Here.” Christy reached in her purse for the prescription bottle. Brittany stepped in front of her and grabbed Christy’s wrist.
“Not here!” she said through her teeth, looking over her shoulder at the crowd of students in the hallway. “Give them to me later, okay?”
Christy didn’t talk to Brittany again until after school, but Brittany was too busy sharing the latest news flash on the school’s hottest couples to ask for her diet pills back. “Did you hear that Janelle likes Greg now? He’s a senior! Can you believe it? And you’ll never guess who was waiting for me at my locker after school. Give up? It was Kurt. He said he’d been thinking about me. He put his arm around my waist and said, ‘I see you’ve lost your baby fat.’ And I told him, ‘Oh, yeah? Well, you wouldn’t know, would you?’ And then he said he wanted to take me out this Friday, and I said, ‘Only a fool would go out with you, Kurt, and I’m no fool.’ ”
“That was kind of cruel, don’t you think?” Christy asked.
“After the way he messed up my life? Are you kidding? I would never go out with him again. I can’t stand him! Once it’s over, it’s over, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Can’t you still try to be friends with him?”
“Why? He used me, Christy. That’s how most guys are. They use you, and then they drop you. You can’t squeeze a friendship out of that kind of treatment.”
“Not all guys are like that,” Christy said sharply.
“Oh yeah? What about Todd? Did he ever write you, like he promised?”
“Well, no. Not yet.” Christy felt a familiar throb pounding in her throat. It came every time she thought about Todd. Maybe Brittany was right. Maybe he never would write to her.
“Guys are famous for making promises they never keep, Christy. You need to get Todd out of your mind. Forget about him and start concentrating on Rick. I heard today that Rick is still trying to find out who you are.”
“Oh, really? Did he mention the way I ‘ran into’ him this morning in the hall?”
“No!” Brittany’s voice perked up. “Tell me what happened.”
Christy proceeded to tell her about the incident in the hall—how she ran right into Rick on her way to her locker. He acted as though he recognized her, but he didn’t say anything, and she kept going without looking back.
“This is too good to be true!” Brittany said triumphantly. “You’ve got the guy hooked! Just think, by the time you two actually meet, you’re going to be so thin you’ll be totally irresistible t
o him.”
“Forget it, Brittany. It’s never going to happen. Oh, and I just remembered something. My mom is thinking about getting a part-time job. Do you know if your dad needs anyone at his real estate office?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll ask him. He probably does.”
That night after dinner Brittany’s dad called and asked Mom to come in for an interview for a receptionist position the next day. Mom acted strangely after she hung up the phone. She hadn’t been able to get ahold of Mr. Taylor that day, and she seemed pleased yet somehow irritated that Christy had managed to set up the interview through Brittany.
About twenty minutes later the phone rang again. This time it was Uncle Bob and Aunt Marti. Mom chatted excitedly about her upcoming interview, sounding confident and eager.
“Christy,” her mom called out cheerfully, “come to the phone. Your uncle would like to speak to you.”
“Hi, Bright Eyes. How’s everything going for you?”
“Fine. How are you?”
“Good. We’re doing real well. Listen, I’ve got a letter here that came for you.”
“Really?” Christy felt her heart begin to race. “Who’s it from?”
“I don’t know; there’s no return address.”
Christy felt a burst of hope that the letter was from Todd. Then she remembered the last letter that had come for her at Uncle Bob’s. “It’s probably from Alissa,” Christy said, feeling horribly guilty because she hadn’t written Alissa back yet. She didn’t have an answer to Alissa’s questions about why Jesus was different than Mohammed or Buddha. She hadn’t thought much about it, since she was so involved with her new friends.
“Could be,” Bob said slowly. “I’ll round up the carrier pigeon and shoot it off to you tomorrow. Hang on. Your aunt wants to talk to you.”
“Christina dear, I just had a thought. Bob and I are going out to Palm Springs next weekend. Perhaps you and David would like to join us.”
“Really?” Christy tried to think fast. She would love the chance to go to Palm Springs, but not with David! She lowered her voice and turned toward the wall so the others couldn’t hear what she was saying.