Size 12 Is Not Fat

13

Wow. That didn’t take long. I mean, considering we’ve only been broken up for, what? Four months? Five, maybe?

“Wh—” seems to be the only sound I am capable of making.

“Yeah,” Cooper says. “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

I just sit there, looking down at the photo of Tania’s ring. It looks just like MY ring. The one I’d ripped off my finger and thrown at them when I’d caught them going at it in our bedroom.

But it can’t be the same ring. Jordan is cheap, but not THAT cheap.

I open the paper, and flip to the page with the article on it.

Look at that. They aren’t just engaged. They’re going on tour together, too.

“You okay?” Cooper wants to know.

“Yeah,” I say, glad I’ve gotten back the ability to say something besides “wh.”

“If it’s any comfort to you,” he says, “her new single got retired from TRL.”

I know better than to ask Cooper what he’s been doing watching Total Request Live. Instead, I say, “They retire videos when they’ve spent too long on the list. That means the song’s still totally popular.”

“Oh.”

Cooper looks around, clearly seeking a way to change the subject. My office is sort of the reception area for Rachel’s office, which is separated by an attractive metal grate that I’ve been trying to get the maintenance department to replace since I arrived. I’d decorated my area with Monet prints upon my arrival, and even though Rachel had wanted to replace the Giverny water lilies with anti—date rape and community development posters, I had held my ground.

I read in a magazine once that Monet is soothing. That’s why you see prints of his work in so many doctors’ offices.

“Nice place,” Cooper says. Then his gaze falls on the jar of condoms on my desk.

I feel myself turning crimson.

Rachel chooses that moment to hang up the phone and lean out of her office to ask, “May I help you?”

When she sees that the visitor to our office is of the male persuasion, over six feet and under forty—not to mention totally hot—she says, in a completely different voice, “Oh.Hello.”

“Good morning,” Cooper says politely. Cooper is unfailingly polite to everyone but members of his immediate family. “You must be Rachel. I’m Cooper Cartwright.”

“Nice to meet you,” Rachel says. She shakes the hand he offers and smiles beatifically. “Cooper… Cooper… Oh yes, Cooper! Heather’s friend. I’ve heard so much about you.”

Cooper glances in my direction, his blue eyes crinkling more than ever. “You have?”

I wish the floor would open up and swallow me whole. I try to remember what I’ve ever said to Rachel about Coop. Besides the fact that he’s my landlord, I mean. Because what if I said something really indiscreet, like that Cooper’s my idea of a perfect mate and that sometimes I fantasize about ripping his clothes off with my teeth? I’ve been known to say things like that sometimes, when I’ve had too many Krispy Kremes combined with too much caffeine.

But all Rachel says is “I suppose you’ve heard about our troubles here.”

Cooper nods.

“I have.”

Rachel smiles again, a little less beatifically this time. I can tell she’s mentally calculating how much Cooper’s watch must cost—he wears one of those gadget-heavy black plastic ones—and deciding he can’t possibly be worth a hundred grand a year.

If only she knew.

Then the phone on her desk rings again, and she goes to answer it. “Hello, Fischer Hall. This is Rachel. How may I help you?”

Cooper raises his eyebrows at me, and I remember, in a rush, what Magda had said, about Rachel being Cooper’s type.

No! It isn’t fair! Rachel is EVERYONE’S type! I mean, she’s attractive and athletic and well put together and successful and went to Yale and is making a difference in the world. What about ME? What about girls like me, who are just… well, nice? What about the nice girls? How are we supposed to compete with all of these competent, athletic, shower-taking girls, with their diplomas and their Palm Pilots and their teeny tiny butts?

Before I have a chance to say anything in defense of my kind, however, one of the maintenance workers comes rushing in.

“Haythar,” Julio cries, wringing his hands. He’s a little guy, in a brown uniform, who without being asked to, daily cleans the bronze statue of Pan in the lobby with a toothbrush.

“Haythar, that boy is doing it again.”

I blink at him. “You mean Gavin?”

“Sí.”

I glance over at Rachel. She’s gushing into the phone, “Oh, President Allington, please don’t worry about me. It’s the students I feel for—”

I sigh resignedly, push back my chair, and stand up. I’m just going to have to face that fact that where Cooper is concerned, I’m always going to look like the world’s biggest spaz.

And there’s nothing I can do about it.

“I’ll take care of it,” I say.

Julio glances at Cooper, and, still wringing his hands, asks nervously, “You want I should come with you, Haythar?”

“What is this?” Cooper looks suspicious. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I say to him. “Thanks for dropping by. I have to go now.”

“Go where?” Cooper wants to know.

“I just have to deal with this one thing. I’ll see you later.”

Then I hurry out of the office and head for the service el evator, which is reserved for use of the maintenance staff only, and has one of those metal gates inside the doors to keep students out…

Only I know which lever to push to throw the gate back. Which I push, then turn to say, “Ready when you are” to Julio—

Only it isn’t Julio who’s followed me. It’s Cooper.

“Heather,” he says, looking annoyed. “What’s this all about?”

“Where’s Julio?” I squeak.

“I don’t know,” Cooper says. “Back there, I guess. Where are you going?”

From inside the elevator shaft, I can hear whooping. Why me? Why, God, why?

There’s nothing I can do about it, though. I mean, it’s my job. And it will mean a free medical degree, eventually, if I can stick it out.

“Can you work a service elevator?” I ask Cooper.

He looks even more annoyed. “I think I can figure it out.”

More whooping from inside the shaft.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go then.”

Cooper, looking curious as well as annoyed now, follows me inside, ducking so as not to hit his head on the low jamb, and I pull the grate shut and yank back the power lever. As the elevator lurches upward with a groan, I put a foot on the side rails and, with a heave, grab the sides of the wide opening in the elevator’s roof where a ceiling panel has been removed. Through it, I can see the cables and bare brick walls of the elevator shaft, and high overhead, patches of bright light where the sun peeks in through the fire safety skylights.

Cooper’s curiosity quickly fades, so that all that’s left is annoyance.

“What,” he asks, “do you think you’re doing?”

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m okay. I’ve done this before.” My head and shoulders are already through the hole in the elevator’s ceiling, and with another heave, I wiggle my hips through it, too.

Then I have to rest. Because that’s a lot of upper body lifting for a girl like me.

“This is what you do all day?” Cooper, down below me, demands. “Where does it say in your job description that you are responsible for chasing after elevator surfers?”

“It doesn’t say it anywhere,” I reply, looking down at him in some surprise through the opening between my knees. The dark walls of the elevator shaft slip past me like water as we rise. “But somebody’s got to do it.” And if I don’t, how am I ever going to pass my six months’ probation? “What floor are we on?”

Cooper glances through the grate, at the painted numbers going by on the back of each set of elevator doors.

“Nine,” he says. “You know, one slip, and you could end up like those dead girls, Heather.”

“I know,” I say. “That’s why I have to stop them. Somebody might get hurt. Somebody else, I mean.”

Cooper says something under his breath that sounds like a curse word… which is surprising, because he so rarely swears.

One floor later, two walls of the shaft open up, so that I can see into the shafts of the building’s other elevators. One of the elevators is waiting at ten, and by craning my neck, I can see the other about five floors overhead.

The whooping is getting louder.

Right then, Elevator 2 starts to descend, and I see, perched on the cab’s roof, amid the cables and empty bottles of Colt.45, Gavin McGoren, junior, film major, die hard Matrix fan, and inveterate elevator surfer.

“Gavin!” I yell, as Elevator 2 slides past me. Unlike me, he’s standing upright, preparing to leap onto the roof of Elevator 1 as it goes by. “Get down from there right now!”

Gavin throws me a startled glance, then groans when he recognizes me between the cables. I see several flailing arms and legs as the friends he’s surfing with dive back down through the maintenance panel and into the elevator car, to save themselves from being ID’d by me.

“Aw, shit,” Gavin says, because he hadn’t been quick enough to escape, like his friends. “Busted!”

“You are so busted you’re gonna be sleeping in the park tonight,” I assure him, even though no one’s ever gotten thrown out of the hall for elevator surfing… at least until now. Who knew, in light of recent events, if the board of trustees would get a backbone? You have to do something really bad—like hurl a meat cleaver at your RA, as a kid had done last year, according to a file I’d found—to be asked to leave the residence halls.

And even then, the kid was allowed back the following fall, after proving he’d spent the summer in counseling.

“Goddammit!” Gavin screams into the shaft, but I don’t worry. That’s just Gavin.

“Do you think this is funny?” I ask him. “You know two girls died doing this in the past two weeks. But you just woke up this morning and thought you’d go for a joyride anyway?”

“They was amateurs,” Gavin says. “You know I got the creds, Heather.”

“I know you’re a jackass,” I reply. “And stop talking like you come from Bed-Stuy, everyone knows you grew up in Nantucket. Now get down. And if you aren’t in Rachel’s office by the time I’m downstairs, I’m having the locks changed on your door and confiscating all your stuff.”

“Shit!” Gavin disappears, slithering through the elevator cab’s roof and scraping the ceiling panel back into place behind him.

Elevator 2 begins its long descent to the lobby, and I sit for a minute, enjoying the darkness and the lack of noise. I really like the elevator shafts. They are the most peaceful places in the whole dorm—I mean, residence hall.

When people aren’t falling down them, anyway.

When I let myself down—and no judge would give me a ten for my dismount—Cooper is standing in one corner of the car, his arms folded across his broad chest, his features twisted into a scowl.

“What was that?” he asks, as I reach for the control lever and start bringing us back down to the main floor.

“That was just Gavin,” I say. “He does that all the time.”

“Don’t give me that.” Cooper sounds genuinely angry. “You did that on purpose. To show me what areal elevator surfer is like, and how much the two dead girls don’t fit the bill.”

I glare at him. “Oh, right,” I say. “You think I prearranged that whole thing with Gavin? You think I knew in advance you were going to come over to shove my ex’s engagement announcement in my face, and I called Gavin and was like, ‘Hey, why don’t you take a spin on Elevator Two and I’ll come up and bust you to prove to my friend Cooper the difference between real elevator surfers and wannabes’?”

Cooper looks slightly taken aback… but not for the reason I think.

“I didn’t come over to shove it in your face,” he says. “I wanted to make sure you saw it before some reporter from the Star sprang it on you.”

Realizing I’d maybe been a little harsh, I say, “Oh yeah. You said that.”

“Yeah,” Cooper says. “I did. So. Do you do that a lot? Climb on top of elevator cars?”

“I wasn’t climbing. I was sitting,” I say. “And I only do it when someone reports hearing someone in the shafts. Which is another reason it’s so weird about Elizabeth and Roberta. No one reported hearing them. Well, until Roberta fell—”

“And you’re the one who has to go after them?” Cooper asks. “If someone hears them?”

“Well, we can’t ask the RAs to do it. They’re students. And it isn’t in the maintenance workers’ union contract.”

“And it’s in yours?”

“I’m nonunion,” I remind him. I can’t help wondering what he’s getting at. I mean, is he actually worried about me? And if so, is it just as a friend? Or as something more? Is he going to throw on the brake and stop the elevator and snatch me into his arms and whisper raggedly that he loves me and that the thought of losing me makes his blood run cold?

“Heather, you could seriously injure, if not kill, yourself doing something that stupid,” he says, making it pretty obvious that the snatching me into his arms thing isn’t going to happen. “How could you—” Then his blue eyes crinkle into slits as he narrows them at me. “Wait a minute. You like it.”

I blink at him. “What?” Yeah, that’s me. Miss Ready with a Comeback.

“You do.” He shakes his head, looking stunned. “You actually enjoyed that just now, didn’t you?”

I shrug, not sure what he’s talking about. “It’s more fun than doing payroll,” I say.

“You like it,” he goes on, as if I hadn’t even said anything, “because you miss the thrill of standing up in front of thousands of kids and singing your guts out.”

I stare at him for a second or two. Then I burst out laughing.

“Oh my God,” I manage to get out, between guffaws. “Are you serious with this?”

Except that I can tell by his expression that he is.

“Laugh all you want,” he says. “You hated singing the schlock the label gave you to sing, but you got a kick out of performing. Don’t try to deny it. It gave you a thrill.” His blue eyes crackle at me. “That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? Trolling for murderers and chasing elevator surfers. You miss the excitement.”

I stop laughing and feel color heating up my face again. I don’t know what he’s talking about.

Well, okay, maybe I did. It’s true I’m not one of those people who get nervous about performing in front of a crowd. Ask me to make small talk with thirty people at a cocktail party, and you might as well ask me to define the Pythagorean theorem. But give me a song set and stick me in front of a microphone? No problem. In fact…

Well, I sort of enjoy it. A lot.

But do I miss it? Maybe a little. But not enough to go back. Oh no. I can never go back.

Unless it’s on my terms.

“That’s not why I went after Gavin,” I say. Because really, I don’t see the connection. Chasing after elevator surfers is nothing like performing in front of three thousand screaming preteens. Nothing at all. Besides, don’t I get enough psychoanalyzing from Sarah every day? Do I really need it from Cooper, too? “He could have killed himself up there—”

“You could have killed yourself up there.”

“No, I couldn’t,” I say, in my most reasonable voice. “I’m really careful. And as for—what did you call it? Trolling for murderers? — I told you, I don’t believe those girls were—”

“Heather.” He shakes his head. “Why don’t you just give your agent a call and ask him to schedule a gig for you?”

My jaw drops.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“It’s obvious you’re aching to get out there again. I respect the fact that you want to get a degree, but college isn’t for everyone, you know.”

“But—” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. My hospital ward! My Nobel Prize! My date with him! Our joint detective agency and three kids—Jack, Emily, and baby Charlotte!

“I… I couldn’t!” I cry. Then latch on to my one excuse: “I don’t have enough songs for a gig.”

“Could have fooled me,” Cooper says, his gaze on the numbers of the floors we’re passing at a dizzying speed, 14, 12, 11… .

“What—what do you mean?” I stammer, my blood suddenly running cold. It’s true, then. He can hear me practicing He can!

It’s Cooper’s turn to look uncomfortable, though. From his scowl, it’s clear he wishes he hadn’t said anything.

“Never mind,” he says. “Forget about it.”

“No. You meant something by it.” Why won’t he just admit it? Admit that he’s heard me?

I know why. I know why, and it makes me want to die.

Because he hates them. My songs. He’s heard them, and he thinks they suck.

“Tell me what you meant.”

“Never mind,” Cooper says. “You’re right. You don’t have enough songs for a gig. Forget I said anything. Okay?”

The cab hits the main floor. Cooper yanks back the gate and holds it open for me, looking less polite than murderous.

Great. Now he’s mad at me.

We’re standing in the lobby, and since it’s still pretty early in the morning—for eighteen-year-olds, anyway—we’re the only ones around, with the exception of Pete and the reception desk attendant, the former engrossed in a copy of the Daily News, the latter listening enraptured to a Marilyn Manson CD.

I should just ask him. Just come out and ask him. He’s not going to say it sucks. He’s not his father. He’s not Jordan.

But that’s just it. I can take criticism from Cooper’s father. I can take it from his brother. But from Cooper?

No. No, because if he doesn’t like it—

Oh God, stop being such a baby and DO IT. JUST ASK HIM.

“Heather,” Cooper says, running a hand through his dark hair. “Look. I just think—”

But before I have a chance to hear what Cooper just thinks, Rachel rounds the corner.

“Oh, there you are,” Rachel says when she notices us. “Gavin’s in my conference room. I’m going to have a word with him in a minute. Thanks so much for making him come down. In the meantime, Heather, I was wondering if you could have the student worker go around and tape up these fliers.”

Rachel hands me a sheaf of papers. I look down at them, and see that they are announcements for a lip-synch contest the student government has decided to throw in the Fischer Hall cafeteria after dinner.

“At first I wasn’t going to let them,” Rachel seems to feel the need to explain. “I mean, holding something as silly as a lip-synch contest, in light of two such tragic deaths… but Stan thinks the kids can use something to take their minds off it. And I couldn’t help but agree.”

Stan. Wow. Rachel sure is getting chummy with the boss.

“Sounds good to me,” I say.

“I was just heading into the cafeteria for a refill before tackling Gavin.” Rachel holds up her American Association for Counseling and Development coffee mug. “Anybody care to join me?”

She says it to both of us, but her gaze is on Cooper.

Oh my God. Rachel has just asked Cooper to have coffee with her. My Cooper.

Of course, she doesn’t know he’s my Cooper. He’s not my Cooper. And the way things seem to be going, he’ll probably never be…

Say no.I try to send my thought waves into his brain, like on Star Trek. Say no. Say no. Say no. Say—

“Thanks, but I can’t,” Cooper says. “I’ve got work to do.”

Success!

Rachel smiles and says, “Maybe some other time, then.”

“Sure,” Cooper says.

And Rachel click-clacks away.

When she’s gone, I say, showing no sign that I had, seconds before, been using Vulcan mind control on him, “Look. I gotta get back to work.” I hope he isn’t going to bring up what we’d been talking about in the elevator. I don’t think I could handle it. Not on top of the announcement of Jordan’s engagement. There’s only so much a girl can take in one day, you know?

Maybe Cooper senses this. Either that or the fact that I won’t meet his gaze tips him off.

In any case, all he says is, “Gotcha. I’ll see you later, then. And Heather—”

My heart gives a lurch. No. Please, not now. So close. I’d been so close to escaping—

“The ring,” he says.

Wait. What? “Ring?”

“Tania’s.”

Oh! Tania’s engagement ring! The one that looks exactly like the one I threw back in his brother’s face!

“Yeah?”

“It’s not yours,” Cooper says.

Then he leaves.