The Next Big Thing

  I rolled my eyes. Here he went again with the dramatics.

  “But before I divvy up the challenges, how would you all like to get a look at your reward?” Jagger asked, producing a briefcase. Without waiting for an answer, he laid it on the table in front of us and flipped open the top.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  The others had similar reactions.

  “We get to keep all that?” Regan squeaked.

  “How much is it?” Alyssa demanded.

  Jagger pulled a wad of bills out and ran his fingers over the edge. “This briefcase contains seventy-five thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills. Finish today’s challenge successfully, and this will be added to your bank. Fail, and your bank accounts will be twenty thousand dollars lighter.”

  “Hold on,” Alyssa said. “So, if we don’t complete our assignments we’ll each lose twenty grand. But if we win, we’ll only get . . .” She thought for a minute. “Twelve thousand five hundred dollars. That doesn’t sound fair.”

  Jagger grinned. “You’ve underestimated us, Alyssa. If you win, you’ll be given seventy-five thousand dollars apiece. Still wanna call the competition unfair?”

  “Uh, no,” Alyssa said, “I think I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  “Finally,” I quipped, “my prayers have been answered.”

  She scowled at me. “You might want to try shoving a cork in it sometimes, too, Kat. God knows nobody around here wants to listen to you ramble on all day.”

  I was about to zing her with a comeback, when Jagger held up his hand for silence.

  “I wouldn’t advise you girls to start arguing. Like I said before, teamwork is a vital part of Weight of the World on Your Shoulders.”

  I folded my arms across my chest and sank back against the couch. As much as it burned me up, I knew he was right. From the sound of it, we were going to be required to accomplish some pretty tough feats. I didn’t need to waste any more energy on Alyssa than I already had.

  “Let the games begin,” Jagger said, pulling out an opaque black box, with Fat2Fab written on it in huge pink letters. “In this box are six envelopes, each containing the instructions needed to complete one of the challenges.” He fished out a small gold envelope and held it up for emphasis, then dropped it back in with the others. “You’ll each take turns drawing. Unseal the envelope . . . and seal your fate.”

  I groaned inwardly at the bad pun. “Whatever task you get you must complete. No exchanging.”

  Once again, the order had been predetermined. Alyssa was up first. She made a big production of digging around in the box for several minutes before finally selecting an envelope.

  “If you would be so kind as to read it to the group,” Jagger instructed.

  “Okay,” she said, ripping it open. “‘Get out those dancing shoes and sharpen up your vocals,’ ” she began, “‘because tonight you will perform in front of a crowd of hundreds at Club Mango in West Hollywood.’”

  I watched her eyes grow large as they scanned over the second half of the page. “Read it out loud, Alyssa,” Jagger prompted.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, startled.

  It took a lot to shock Alyssa. I couldn’t imagine what was next.

  “Okay, where was I? ‘Club Mango in West Hollywood,’” she repeated, finding her place. “‘From Fat to Fabulous has taken the liberty of entering you into Club Mango’s monthly Britney Spears look-alike contest. Pull out all the stops singing and dancing to two of Britney’s biggest hits. Make sure you put a little heart and a lot of soul into your routine. Because in order to successfully complete the assignment, you’ve got to get the crowd behind you.’”

  She stared at Jagger. “This is bullshit. I could try my best and there’s no guarantee I’ll win.”

  “You don’t have to win,” Jagger said. “All you have to do is get cheered, not jeered.”

  “It should really be enough that I enter.” She stormed back to the couch and plopped down. “I can’t control what other people do.”

  Maggie went next, drawing a challenge that was easier than Alyssa’s, though still humiliating. She had to walk up and down the Santa Monica Pier collecting one thousand signatures for “National Fat Acceptance Day.”

  “Is there such a thing?” she asked, confused. Jagger shook his head. “You’ll be attempting to establish it.”

  “I don’t understand why you want me to do this, but I won’t say no,” Maggie remarked, shaking her head.

  When Luisa’s turn came, she bounded up to the front of the room. “I cannot wait. A chance to get out of this house!” she said, rubbing her hands together in anticipation. Her tone changed as soon as she opened the envelope. “Oh, no . . . It says, ‘Laughter is the best medicine and tonight you will be playing doctor. Crack up the crowd at The Laugh Lizard on the Sunset Strip with your fifteen-minute comedy act. The joke’s on you—literally. Your comedy routine will consist of nothing but fat jokes, supplied for you by From Fat to Fabulous ’s talented writing staff.’” Luisa stood there for a minute, speaking rapidly to herself in Spanish before finally agreeing to do it.

  Janelle went next, drawing the most horrible challenge of all: posing nude for a group of art students at UCLA. Her face went white as a ghost when she saw it, but she quickly recovered.

  “Piece of cake,” she said, looking sick to her stomach.

  “I’m so sorry,” I told her when she’d rejoined us on the couch. “That sucks.” But what I really thought was, Thank God it’s not me.

  “No, no. Don’t be sorry,” Janelle insisted. “I can do this. Really, I can do this.”

  If Janelle handled it the best, then Regan certainly handled it the worst. “I have to dance with the Laker Girls!” she wailed, after ripping open her envelope. “During the halftime show at tonight’s play-off game!”

  “Regan, please read the clue out loud in its entirety,” Jagger said firmly.

  She ignored him. “I have to put on that tiny uniform and dance in front of all those people!” She burst into tears.

  Janelle and Luisa rushed forward to console her. “It’s going to be okay,” Janelle said, stroking her long hair.

  “It’ll be over so quickly you won’t have time to think about it.” Luisa agreed. “And you get to go out into the world tonight.”

  Regan sighed.

  “Think how good it will be to leave this house. Maybe you will get to see some of La La Land.”

  “I don’t wanna see Los Angeles!” she cried.

  “I want to stay right here where I am, safe in this house.”

  Jagger let Regan bawl for a little bit, then he summoned me. I had gotten so caught up in the commotion that I’d forgotten to take my turn.

  “Kat, by process of elimination this last golden envelope belongs to you.” He held out the box, making me reach inside to claim my fate.

  “All right,” I said, “here goes nothing.”

  I tore into the envelope and began to read. It was a poem. “‘Love is in the air tonight/ Beneath the flickering candlelight/ Will you dine with your soul mate?/ Or suffer through a painful blind date?/ At six-thirty your chariot will arrive/ Steal a kiss and win the prize.’”

  I stopped to consider this for a minute. Bad poetry aside, the clue hadn’t made a whole lot of sense.

  “So let me get this straight—I have to make out with some strange guy in order to win? What is this? Playboy TV?”

  Jagger flashed me a quick sympathetic smile, then focused his attention on Regan. “A car will pick you up in two hours,” he told her. “Make sure you’re ready.”

  Regan had temporarily calmed down but at Jagger’s words, she started crying all over again. “Now that you’re all aware of your roles in the Weight of the World on Your Shoulders, I’d advise you to start preparing. Kat, your date will arrive at six-thirty tonight, and Janelle, your posing session will take place Monday afternoon. As for the rest of you . . . it’ll be a waiting game. You won’t know when your time will come.”


  Regan sniffled loudly, and Janelle leaned over to give her a hug.

  “As you’ve already seen, the hardest part of this competition will be mental,” Jagger said. “Remember, all six of you must successfully complete your individual challenges. If one of you fails, all of you lose. Additionally, the outcome of the game won’t be revealed until all the tasks have been completed. In other words.” He stopped and looked around at us. “You cannot breathe a word to anyone. When the time is right, I’ll announce the results.” With that, he made his way down the hall and into the production room.

  Despite Jagger’s suggestion to keep the in-fighting to a minimum, we started arguing the second he’d left.

  “I think we should forget this whole thing,” Regan said. “Since we’re all competing together, it doesn’t matter if we win or lose.”

  Luisa disagreed. “Seventy-five thousand dollars is a lot of money. It matters very much.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Regan insisted. “Only one of us can win the From Fat to Fabulous bank—the one with the most money in it at the end. I think we should forget about it.”

  “Are you nuts?” Alyssa demanded. “That’s seventy-five thousand dollars extra one of us could walk out of here with.”

  Luisa nodded vehemently. “Exactly what I’m trying to say.”

  “There’s no guarantee that I’ll win it,” Regan said. “I could humiliate myself tonight and for what? If I don’t win the show, I won’t see a penny of that seventy-five grand I helped earn. Plus, I have to do my task tonight. What’s to stop the rest of you from changing your minds and backing out later?”

  She had a point.

  “Let me get this straight. You’re afraid you’ll humiliate yourself at the Lakers game and then we’ll all decide to blow off our challenges?” I asked.

  She stuck out her lower lip. “Yep.”

  “We won’t do that,” I assured her, hoping I was right. “We’re in this together. You do your part, and we’ll do ours.”

  Secretly, I was glad I’d drawn the easiest task. Sure, I had to go out on a blind date with some guy who, in all likelihood, would turn out to be a giant oaf. I even had to kiss him on national television. But as far as I could tell, my challenge had nothing to do with weight and it wasn’t even all that embarrassing. Besides, I’d never been out on a blind date before and I had no idea what to expect—tonight would serve as a practice run for when I met Nick.

  “Girls,” Maggie, ever the mother-figure, interjected. “We have to consider the bottom line. Stop thinking about the money. Stop thinking about your pride. Think about why you came on From Fat to Fabulous in the first place—to prove something to the world. To prove that overweight people are just as good as anyone else. What kind of a message will we send out if we quit? I have my son to think about. What kind of example will it set for him if Mommy gives up in the face of adversity?”

  I didn’t know about Maggie, but proving something to the world hadn’t been my primary motivation for being on the show. It was in the mix, all right, but it was shoved beneath the more pressing reasons: weight loss, Nick Appleby, and money. In that order.

  “Maggie’s right,” Janelle chimed in. She’d remained uncharacteristically quiet during our conversation. I noticed, now, that some of the color was starting to return to her face. “The last thing I want to do is pose nude in front of a group of art students. But you know what? I’m going to do it if it kills me. And”—she gave us a crooked smile—“it very well may.”

  Alyssa looked thoughtful. “I have a suggestion. Let’s take a vow. We’ll all swear right here and now not to throw these competitions. Win or lose, we’ll all give it our best shot. Deal?”

  “I’m in,” I told her.

  Janelle, Luisa, and Maggie quickly agreed.

  It all came down to Regan. “Okay,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll do it. But don’t expect me to be happy about it.”

  “It doesn’t have to make you happy. You just have to do it,” Luisa said.

  Janelle snickered. “My ex-husband Matt used to say those very words to me, every single night.”

  It wasn’t until an hour later that I realized what Regan was up to.

  I overheard her in the kitchen, pleading with Alyssa. “It’s fixed,” Regan griped. “Why else would Janelle—the only artist in the whole house—be the one who gets to pose nude?”

  She had to be joking. “What do you mean, ‘gets to pose nude’? You say that like it’s some kind of a prize,” I said, walking into the room. Regan jumped in surprise. Alyssa shot me a foul glare.

  “Compared to cheering at the Lakers game, it is a prize!” Regan wailed. “I have to put on a teeny uniform and dance around in front of a crowd of twenty thousand people! I’m going to be sandwiched out there between all those beautiful girls.”

  “Would you honestly rather trade places with Janelle?” I asked, in disbelief. Crowd or no crowd, getting naked in public sounded horrifying to me. The sort of thing I had recurring nightmares about.

  “I’d rather trade places with you,” Regan snapped.

  “No kidding,” Alyssa agreed. “But Regan, I think you’re wrong. There’s no way the competition is fixed. Otherwise, I’d be the one going out with the hot young stud, not Kat. That would make for much better TV.”

  “Get over yourself,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “Kat’s task is the only one that doesn’t have anything to do with weight,” Regan continued. “It isn’t fair.”

  “It’s a reality show,” I reminded her. “Of course it’s not fair.”

  “Don’t stress about it, Regan,” said Alyssa, patting her on the head. “Kit Kat’s ‘hot date’ will probably be so dull they won’t even air it. My guess is it ends up on the cutting room floor.” She ran her fingers across her throat in a slashing motion.

  “I’ve got a great idea!” Regan burst out. “Maybe you could switch with Kat and I could switch with Maggie,” she said, going on as though I wasn’t even in the room. “Wouldn’t that be exciting?”

  “We’re not allowed to trade,” I reminded her.

  “I know that’s what Jagger said, but if anyone can talk Zaidee into it, you can,” she prodded Alyssa.

  “It might be worth a shot,” Alyssa mused.

  “You have this way with Zaidee,” she continued, gaining enthusiasm. “Remember when you complained about the breakfast food and the next morning she put out fruit? Come on, Alyssa, she listens to you.”

  “She does, doesn’t she?” It was all I could do to keep from screaming. “You two are so full of it,” I burst out. “A game’s a game! You can’t change the rules just because you don’t like the outcome!”

  “Easy for you to say,” Alyssa criticized, at long last acknowledging me. “You’d be crying your eyes out if you had to cheer at the Lakers game. I think Regan’s handling it remarkably well, all things considered.”

  “Thank you.” Regan beamed.

  Alyssa tousled her hair. “Don’t worry, Regan. We’re going to tough it out together.”

  “Oh puh-leeze,” I groaned. “You’ve got an awful lot of nerve, acting like your task is sooo hard. All you have to do is enter a glorified karaoke contest. Big whoop.”

  Alyssa glared at me. “I never said it was hard. I just said I didn’t want to do it.”

  “Yeah, well I don’t want to go on this ‘blind date’ either,” I confessed. “So what’s the difference?”

  “There’s a big difference,” Regan argued. “While the rest of us have to suffer, you get to do something fun. Who knows, you might even meet a wonderful guy and fall in love.” She sighed.

  “You may think it’s fun, but I’m a nervous wreck.”

  Alyssa eyed me curiously. “Kit Kat, don’t take this the wrong way, but have you been out on very many dates before? Because I get the distinct feeling that you haven’t.”

  Regan cracked up.

  “No,” Alyssa said, holding up a hand to silence her. “Jokes aside. I’m being absolutely ser
ious.”

  I was stung. I wanted to shout into her face, to tell her all about Nick Appleby, my sexy, wealthy, European boyfriend. But I wasn’t stupid.

  “Boy, you’d love that wouldn’t you? Big old Fat Kat going on her first date on national television,” I snarled. “To answer your question, yes, I’ve been on many, many dates.”

  Luisa chose that exact moment to come sauntering in. It was a good thing, too, because Alyssa and I were gearing up to have a major fight.

  “They gave me the script,” she said, waving around some papers in the air. “The jokes I have to tell.” She made a face.

  “Oh, God, how bad is it?” I asked.

  “Not good,” she said. “I have to talk about being a BBW, or Big Beautiful Woman. I have to give them our ‘battle cry.’ What that is supposed to mean, I don’t know.”

  “What do you have to say?” Regan asked, momentarily distracted from her own impending doom.

  “Ahem,” Luisa cleared her throat and began reading. “‘It’s not the size of the ocean, it’s the motion of the ocean.’”

  “Yuck!” Alyssa cried. “That’s absurd. And everybody knows it isn’t even a valid point.”

  “No,” Luisa agreed. “It’s not. I also have to say, ‘It’s good to be large and in charge.’ Then I have to say, ‘Once you go fat, you never go back.’”

  “That’s the truth,” Regan said solemnly. “Ever since I gained weight in the third grade I haven’t been able to take it off.”

  “I think they mean the guy,” I told her. “Like, once a guy gets with a fat girl he’ll never want another thin girl again, which is complete crap. Most guys hate dating bigger women and, on the rare occasion they do it, it’s a onetime thing.”

  Luisa nodded. “Damn straight. Oh, I also have to go, ‘Fat girls are better because we serve up meat with our gravy.’”

  “That’s enough!” Alyssa burst out. “They can’t make you stand up and spurt this trash. It’s not even funny, it’s just plain dumb. Nobody’s going to laugh; they’re going to stare at you like you’re some kind of a moron.”