Being fat’s hard. I know there are lots of other fat people—the latest study I read said that almost thirty percent of Americans are obese—but somehow that doesn’t make me feel better. I hold on to hope that I’ll find the right diet and get a hot body sometime before I graduate, but some people aren’t that strong. I have this friend named Stephanie who’s fat too. She and I don’t hang out much in public because we don’t want to be the fat twins. Anyway, Stephanie has really low self-esteem, so she goes down to the train station and hooks up with skeevy older guys who have fat fetishes. She’s only fifteen, but being fat makes you look older, so she gets away with it. She says she feels pretty when men want to do her.
I have another friend named Emily who’s anorexic. She likes hanging out with me in public because I make her look skinny. I actually tried to be anorexic once. We watched a movie about it in health class, and I was like, that looks like a fast way to lose weight. Some of the girls in the video lost thirty pounds in like a month! I even asked Emily for tips, and she said I should make Crystal Light and drink it all the time so I’d feel full. My anorexia lasted for a day and a half, and then I broke down and ate everything in the fridge. Mom was really pissed about that because I’d eaten all the ingredients for dinner and the leftover half of my brother’s birthday cake. Even the pickle jar was empty when I was done with it, and I don’t even like pickles! The next day, in health class, I learned that what I had done was called bingeing.
Emily and I like the same guy—Teagan Zarelli—but we don’t fight over him like girls on the CW fight over boys because he doesn’t even know either of our names on account of me being fat and Emily being freaky skinny and very weird. Teagan’s not even a jock, though. He’s the kind of sensitive, artsy type who plays his guitar in the hallway during lunch. He has thick, glossy, dark hair that flops around his chiseled face. Mm, I’m drooling just thinking about his hair. He’s a junior, too, which is really spun because he’s going to be around for a whole ’nother year. Emily and I—this is so retarded—get together at my house and have Teagan parties where we basically worship him as a demigod. We’re not stalkers or anything—we just like to get together and talk about how amazing he is. I cut all the photos of him out of last year’s yearbook and pasted them on this posterboard under the word TEAGAN written in my most fancy handwriting. I also taped on some photos Emily took with her cellphone when he wasn’t looking; a program from the MLKHS Battle of the Bands, which he totally rocked; and a number 2 HB pencil.
That pencil has a story, actually. You see, at the beginning of the school year, my parents convinced me to take the PSAT. It was only for practice because I’m a sophomore, but as long as my parents wanted to pay for it, I thought, what the heck. I’m pretty good at school, so if I do well on the PSAT and SAT next year, I might get a scholarship. Anyways, for the test, we showed up at school at eight in the morning on a Saturday, and they led us into the auditorium. The auditorium! We had to sit in those little auditorium seats with those dinner plate–sized fold up desks. They made us leave an empty seat between all of us so we wouldn’t cheat, and I was glad because my fat was kind of spilling into the seat next to me. But guess who took the next seat over? Teagan! I almost died. Then, with a minute left before the test started, I reached into my purse to take out my three brand-new, perfectly sharpened pencils out of my purse and I really almost died. I had my graphing calculator, my good white vinyl eraser, my hot pink pencil sharpener, my labelless water bottle, my granola bar to eat during the break, but not my pencils. I think my face must have gone white because I could feel my lips tingling. I dug through my purse, desperate.
“Do you need a pencil?” Teagan’s manly, musical voice interrupted my panic. He had noticed that I didn’t have a pencil on my desk yet and that I was looking a little frantic. He’s so observant!
“Um,” I replied giving my purse one last shake to see if a pencil would magically appear among the gum wrappers and ticket stubs, “I totally failed. I think I left my pencils on the kitchen table this morning because I was sharpening them and—”
“That’s okay,” Teagan interrupted. “You can have one of mine. I brought lots.” He held out a brown pencil, and when I took it, our fingers brushed for like a second. Electricity!
My face was burning, so I mumbled “Thanks” and pretended to be examining my desk but was really examining the pencil. It was the good kind—Ticonderoga—but brown instead of yellow because it was made of recycled wood or something. So he’s environmentally conscious too! Melt!
The pencil also had a few teeth marks near the end, which means that it had been in his mouth! I was touching a pencil that Teagan Zarelli personally chewed on! I thought I’d never be able to concentrate on the test if I was using Teagan’s pencil the whole time, but I ended up getting a really good score. I won’t tell you what it was because I don’t want you to be jealous, but I’m definitely going to use the same pencil when I take the PSAT and SAT next year. I’m superstitious like that.
After the test, I tried to give Teagan his pencil back, but he just shook his head and was all, “You keep it.” That’s where the story stopped when I told Emily all about it later. However, after he said I could keep the pencil, Teagan asked me if I wanted to go to YoCream with him to celebrate the test being over.
I said no. Maybe after I lose fifty pounds.
