CHAPTER ONE) . . .
One
IF you’d asked me at the end of sophomore year, I would have absolutely, unequivocally declared junior year was going to be the year. After all, it was the year you got a license (and if you were super lucky, a car). It was the year you got your first lame, gag-me part-time job (and the spending money that went with it to blow on a shi-shi new wardrobe). It was the year you worried yourself sick about the SAT (but at least once it was over, you knew your fate: Ivy League elitist snob or community college girl-next-door). And it was the year that, if the stars aligned just right, you had your first real adult love affair—or so I’d heard anyway.
But in just a few short months, a lot can change. And doing things out of order can have tragic consequences. Take me, for example. I found the man of my dreams—a sexy, sophisticated gypsy boy named Mick Donovan—the summer before junior year. I loved him madly, and he loved me back. But it was the wrong time, the wrong place. And I ended up losing my sweet, sweet Mick—at least for the foreseeable future. Now nothing would ever be the same.
Okay…so maybe some things would be the same. The same old, that is. Like the same old skuzzy bus I’d have to ride to school. And the same old faces I’d have to stare at in homeroom. See, Punxsutawney is a pretty small place, and as different as I was, everything around me was still stuck in a pre-Flora-falling-head-over-heels time warp. Irritating, to say the least.
The bus pulled right up in front of my house, a convenience the Mental Hygienist (a.k.a. my mother) had arranged with the school department, probably by telling them I was such a fragile basket case I couldn’t be trusted to walk the two blocks over to my usual stop alone.
I moped aboard, shuffled to the back, and plunked down beside my best friend, Jessie Haskell, for another miserable day of my Mick-less existence.
“You are alive,” Jessie joked, as I shimmied in next to her.
I guess I’d been ignoring her pretty hard recently due to my severe separation anxiety/depression over losing Mick. “Sorry. I’ve been kind of out of it lately. I should’ve called you back,” I said. “Forgive me?” I offered her the best puppy-dog eyes I could muster.
“I suppose,” she relented easily. “But you owe me an explanation. No more of this strong, silent-type thing. I need details, you know. Or I can’t help you. Capiche?”
I hadn’t told Jessie anything yet. I wasn’t ready. And it was all too painful anyway. “Lunch,” I said. “I promise. I’ll tell you everything.”
What the hell. I needed to get some things off my chest. And Jessie was probably going to die of curiosity if I didn’t let her in on the specifics of my summer romance pretty soon anyway. Maybe once I’d spilled my guts, we’d both feel better.
“Deal,” Jessie said. “If we have lunch together, that is.”
“We better have lunch together, or I’m gonna make Ms. Aggie’s life a living hell.” See, Ms. Aggie is my guidance counselor; hence, she’s responsible for the good, the bad, and the ugly of my personal problems and my academic life. This year, I had a feeling she was going to have her work cut out for her.
“That would so suck,” Jessie said. “I think if you’re not in my lunch, I’ll eat with Mr. Morrison—as long as he doesn’t mind if I drool into my food.”
“He’s like forty, you know,” I pointed out, only mildly disgusted. After all, I’d found Mick’s father pretty attractive, so who was I to judge?
Jessie grinned. “Old guys rock,” she declared, pumping her fist in the air. And the sick thing was, she was only half kidding.
I rolled my eyes.
“Oh my God!” Jessie suddenly squealed, poking her finger at the grimy bus window.
We were at the last stop before Punxsy Middle, and a bunch of snooty twerps from the rich side of town were filing aboard. But from the aisle seat, I couldn’t see much. “What?” I whined. I mean, it’s no fair to yelp in excitement if you’re not willing to elaborate.
Jessie didn’t say a thing. She didn’t have to. Because as Carla Pearson boarded the bus, I followed Jessie’s shocked stare right to Carla’s swollen belly. Obviously, Carla was pregnant. Exceedingly pregnant. Pregnant beyond a reasonable doubt. And she was my age—sixteen—and just barely a junior, like Jessie and me. Plus, she was sort of my friend, which made the whole teen pregnancy thing pretty up close and personal.
I gulped.
“Hey, guys,” Carla said, all mellow and relaxed, like everything was just A-okay.
I tried not to stare too blatantly as she squeezed sideways into the seat in front of us. “Uh, hi,” I muttered.
Jessie had somehow managed to press her lips back together, but she was still unresponsive, so I elbowed her. “Yeah, hi,” she finally spat.
Carla turned around. “Huh?”
“Nothing. I just said hi,” Jessie repeated.
“Oh, hi,” Carla said, disinterested. Then she went back to focusing on the bus driver’s head.
Holy shit, I mouthed to Jessie.
She leaned over and cupped her hand to my ear. “Who’s the father?”
I shrugged.
She bit her lip, as if she was ticking through a mental list of all the sex-crazed boys who could’ve knocked up the relatively tame Carla Pearson. As for me, my mind was a total blank on the subject. Last I knew, Carla was a virgin—like Jessie and me.
Jessie shook her head. Apparently she’d drawn a blank too. And it wasn’t like Punxsy High lacked obvious man-whores either. I mean, the place had more testosterone-engorged apes than I cared to count. But to my knowledge, none of them had ever hooked up with Carla Pearson.
Since we couldn’t openly gossip about Carla’s sex life—or the resulting pregnancy scandal—Jessie and I just sat there like mimes as the bus rumbled along the last few blocks to school. Personally, I couldn’t stop thinking about Carla’s fingernails. Obsessing, really. Because ever since fifth grade, I’d secretly begged God for fingernails like hers: long, sculpted, always perfectly polished.
So by the time we careened into the drop-off loop at school, I’d devised a preliminary theory about Carla’s situation: The fingernails were to blame. Maybe sexy fingernails led to other sexy things, which led to the whole pregnancy predicament in the first place.
I glanced down at my own nails, pondering what they might predict about my future. If Carla Pearson’s alluring nails led to sex and pregnancy, my disastrous nubs had nunnery written all over them. Or ninety-year-old virgin. Maybe I should have taken advantage of Mick while I’d had the chance, since it might be quite a while before I got another shot at any serious action.
“Mr. Xavier! Mr. Xavier!” I chirped, bouncing around in my seat like one of those annoying know-it-alls who’s dying to answer the super-hard question nobody else even understands. “I have to go to Guidance.”
My homeroom teacher sighed. “For what, Miss Fontain?”
“My schedule. It’s all wrong,” I declared. “The computer must have had a…a malfunction.”
“A malfunction?” Mr. X said, narrowing his eyes.
Okay, so the old guy wasn’t as gullible as I’d hoped. “Or someone made a mistake,” I offered, not naming any names.
Mr. X shook his head. “Add/drop for seniors starts tomorrow. Juniors are Thursday. You can take it up with Guidance then.”
“But…”
I glanced around the room for some emotional support or a little backup muscle, but nobody came to my defense. Nobody but Ryan Goodman, my not-so-secret admirer.
“My schedule’s wrong too,” Ryan claimed. “They’ve got me in Latin instead of Spanish, and I’m no good at languages. If I miss even two days, I’ll fail for the year.”
Ryan winked at me a couple of times, but instead of coming off as slick, he just ended up looking like he was having a mild seizure. Still, I could tell he was going to get away with putting the screws to Mr. X.
“If you insist, Mr. Goodman,” Mr. X said reluctantly. “If two days will make or break you, then I
guess you should…”
Ryan stood up and offered me his hand, but I had no interest in even going to Guidance if it meant I’d owe Ryan Goodman a favor—even if the result was two days of AP hell. Don’t get me wrong, Ryan’s a nice guy and everything, but he’s definitely not my type. Plus, I already had a boyfriend—at least a long-distance one anyway.
“Thanks anyway,” I said, frowning. “But I’ll talk to Ms. Aggie later. I don’t want to be late for first period.”
“Oh, okay,” Ryan said, leaving his hand stuck out in midair for a couple more awkward seconds. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
Hoping he’d take a hint, I ignored him and stared down at my schedule. But I could tell he hadn’t taken my hint at all. Instead, he was hovering over my shoulder like a stalker-freak.
I pretended not to notice.
“Hey, Flora. Do you have Braeburn for AP History?” Vivian Fisk asked, saving me from an uncomfortable confrontation with Ryan the stalker Goodman.
I took my schedule over to Viv’s desk, and Ryan finally got the hint—or at least I assume he did, since as I set my schedule down next to Viv’s, he stomped out into the hallway in a huff.
“Uh…no. I’ve got Emerson. Not that I’m staying in there, but whatever,” I said, wrinkling my whole face in disgust. “Braeburn’s teaching AP again?”
Viv shrugged. “I guess so. According to this thing,” she said, shoving the paper aside.
Great. If like half the junior class wanted to nix their schedules, we were all going to get screwed. I mean, there was no way Ms. Aggie could make everyone happy.
So if the worst happened and I got stuck with the crappy classes I’d already been assigned, junior year would suck according to the following schedule:
1-Fundamentals of Theater
(They must be joking)
2-AP U.S. History
(Ugh)
3-Spanish III
(I’ll suffer through it)
4-Advanced Math
(Thank God for small miracles)
Lunch Block 2 (Jessie had better be in my lunch, or I’ll…)
5-Honors English
(Ugh, again)
6-Study Hall
(Snooze-fest)
7-Astronomy
(Maybe I’ll learn how to read tea leaves)
8-Probability/Statistics
(A light at the end of the tunnel?)
Okay… so at least they’d given me the two math classes I’d requested. And maybe Astronomy would turn out to be tolerable. But that was about it. Mostly, junior year was shaping up to be a heavy load of doom and gloom, and it hadn’t even started yet. If I had the energy, I would’ve sighed.
Good Luck, Fatty?!
by
Maggie Bloom
Spunky North Carolina teen Bobbi-Jo Cotton is overweight, oversexed, underloved and misunderstood. When Dr. Harvey Lassiter—her former high school principal turned bicycle shop owner—sponsors a charity bike race, Bobbi sees an opportunity to test her Schwinn and her fortitude. And when Tom Cantwell, her best (and only) friend, reveals he’s crushing on her, Bobbi figures it’s time to quit passing out screws like they’re dentists’ office suckers.
What Bobbi is having a harder time letting go of is the resentment she feels toward her missionary parents, who, after abandoning her in the night, have flitted back into her life with a surprise: she’s about to be a big sister.
Will Bobbi win the race (and maybe even lose the weight)? Can she overcome her promiscuous past and earn the trust of the boy she just may love? Will her parents care enough about her—or her new baby brother—to stick around (and if they don’t, will she be tough enough to survive another of their betrayals)?
The only way to find out is to come along for the ride. The way Bobbi sees it, all of life’s questions can be answered from the seat of a bicycle. And if they can’t, at least your hair will look great fluttering in the breeze.
GOOD LUCK, FATTY?!
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