Big Boned

Tom and I exchange glances. Tom rolls his eyes.

“Good,” Dr. Flynn is walking around each group saying. “Good. I see that you’re all coming together, working with one another. This is what Gillian and I were hoping we’d see. The staff, overcoming adversity, defying tragedy—”

“Where’s my Day Runner?” Tom mutters.

“—and now, because I see this is way too easy for all of you, I’m going to throw a spanner in the works, and—blindfold all of you!”

From out of a cardboard box Drs. Flynn and Kilgore have brought with them, Dr. Flynn produces a couple dozen cheap silk scarves, which he proceeds to distribute with the instructions that we’re to tie them around our eyes and proceed to build our newspaper houses without looking.

“But if we can’t see,” Simon from Wasser Hall wails, “our houses will look like shit and we’ll get a bad score!”

“Nonsense,” Dr. Flynn declares. “One teammate will remain unblindfolded. It’s up to all of you to pick that teammate. And that teammate will guide the others.”

“I pick Mark,” Muffy says quickly.

“Oh,” Mark says, looking up from his complicated woven wall with an embarrassed expression on his face. “Really, I—”

“I’d second that,” Gillian says mildly. She turns to look at me and Tom. “Do you two agree?”

“Um,” I say. We’ll be here all day if Mark is our team leader. I have no idea how he’s going to teach us to do origami house walls. Especially if we’re all blindfolded. But whatever. “Sure.”

“I don’t know,” Tom says slowly. He has a strange, dreamy look on his face that I don’t recognize. “I mean, Heather’s been so traumatized today, walking into her office and finding her beloved boss—not even her boss, but her mentor, really… isn’t that what you told me Owen was to you, Heather? Your mentor?”

I stare at him. “What?”

“Don’t be modest,” Tom says. “We’re all friends here. We know how badly seeing Owen like that freaked you out. You can admit it, Heather. This is a place of trust. I mean, seeing his blood spattered all over my old desk—”

“Oh, Tom, for God’s sake,” Gillian says, looking disgusted.

“I’m just saying. I really think Heather should be team captain,” Tom says piously. “After what she’s been through today, it would be cruel to make her wear a blindfold. She told me earlier that every time she closes her eyes, she sees Owen’s brain matter coating his Dilbert Month-at-a-Glance bulletin board—”

“Garfield,” I correct him.

“Would you two please—” Gillian begins, but Reverend Mark cuts her off.

“I agree with… Tom, is it?” Mark closes his eyes and shakes his head. “After what she’s been through, Heather should completely be team captain.”

“I think so, too,” Muffy says quickly. She looks at Gillian with tears in her eyes. “It’s only right.”

Dr. Kilgore looks like she’s about to have an aneurysm.

“Fine,” she says through gritted teeth, handing out the scarves she’s been handed by Dr. Flynn. “Everyone put on one of these. Everyone but Heather.”

“You, too, right, Dr. Kilgore?” Tom asks, with a smile.

“Me, too,” Gillian says grimly, tying on her blindfold.

“Mark,” Muffy says. “I can’t quite get mine. Can you help?”

“Oh,” Reverend Mark says. “Well, mine’s on already… but I’ll try… ”

Reverend Mark reaches out fumblingly for Muffy, and manages to grab a big handful of the boob she’s thrust directly into his palm.

“Oh my God!” he cries, blanching.

“Oh!” Muffy blushes prettily beneath her blindfold, though I know full well she’s thrilled. “That’s all right.”

“I’m so sorry!” Reverend Mark looks like he wants to kill himself. His handsome face has gone from snow white to beet red in three seconds flat. Even his neck, all the way to his shirt collar, is red.

“It’s not your fault. You can’t see!” Muffy reminds him. She manages to secure her blindfold the rest of the way herself, as she’d always been able to in the first place. “Oh, look at that. Never mind, I got it.”

“Are y-you sure?” Reverend Mark stammers. “Perhaps Dr. Kilgore… or Heather—”

“It’s all good,” Muffy purrs.

“Well, now that Heather is our team leader,” Gillian says dryly, “perhaps she ought to start leading.”

“Sure,” I say. “Mark, why don’t you show us how you make those wall thingies you’re doing?”

“Well, it won’t be easy,” Reverend Mark says. “Especially blindfolded. But I suppose, in the spirit of coming together as a team, I can try. First, you take a sheet of newspaper, and you tear it, like so—”

Gillian and Muffy both begin ripping strips of newspaper. Tom fumbles forward in an attempt to take a piece of newsprint off the pile, and leans in the direction of my ear—or what he approximates to be my ear, though it’s more like the top of my head. “This,” he whispers, “is the gayest thing I’ve ever done. And I don’t think I should have to remind you that I am, in fact, gay.”

“Could you just keep making those pole things you were doing earlier, before the Origami Master came along?” I whisper back. “Because we’re never going to beat Wasser Hall at the rate we’re going.”

“Heather,” Tom says, giving me a mockly disapproving look. “This isn’t about winning. It’s about coming together as a team.”

“Shut up,” I say. “We’re going to cream Wasser Hall if it’s the last thing I do.”

In the end, of course, that’s exactly what we do. Our “house” is completed well before anyone else’s. I corral the members of my team into it, then raise my hand and call, “Dr. Flynn! Oh, Dr. Flynn! I think we’re done.”

Dr. Flynn, looking pleased, comes over and examines my team’s handiwork.

“Oh, yes,” he says. “Great job. Just great. Really excellent teamwork, all of you.”