Grandma wakes me up early on Wednesday morning. I can tell she’s glad to have me home. She also wants me to feed the dog.
I realize a few things.
One, I want my friend Tommy back.
Two, I’m not giving up on my dream of being the next great sportswear designer.
Three, I want a bagel for breakfast.
I hit the Starbucks and have the mocha that I want with the whole milk that I want. And I get the bagel that I want.
It’s not because I feel bad or sad or angry. Gareth Miller’s not driving me into a pint of ice cream. It’s because I’m hungry for a bagel and I have one. I’m ready for the little food accountant who’s been keeping an office inside my brain to take a permanent vacation. It’s time to say goodbye to NutriNation forever.
This is the fourth thing that I realize.
My weight will no longer control me.
I’m going to be who I want to be and do what I want to do and eat what I want to eat. And I am going to get where I want to go.
I leave the old me there in the coffee shop. The me who thought being happy meant looking perfect. I don’t know if she’ll stay there forever, but I kind of hope she will. Today, I am light. Free. Floating into the future.
I call Piper on the way to school and we discuss the situation.
“I’ll miss you,” she tells me. “But I’m proud of you. You’ve finally done it, as I knew you would. You have become a Giver of Zero Fucks. Welcome to the best club on earth, my friend.”
This makes me grin as I park my car.
“And don’t worry,” Piper goes on. “We’ll unplug even more people when I’m able to prove that yo-yo dieting shortens your lifespan more than fat does.”
I hang up the phone. If anyone will be able to do this, it will be Piper.
I make my way across campus to meet Lydia Moreno. Her new office is in the art building, and it’s pretty fabulous. She has some of the same fashion paper dolls as I do, and she’s hung them up strategically around the room. We have our meeting. It’s not too bad. I’ll be busy for a while doing makeup work, but I sew fast and can catch up.
She offers to help me with my makeup work and gives me my own worktable on one side of her office. I’m unpacking my shears and scraps of fabric when Tommy’s head pops in the doorway.
Dr. Moreno, or Lydia, as she keeps reminding me, glances between the two of us and says, “I think I’ll hit the vending machine. Want a Coke?”
“Sure,” I say with a smile.
Tommy still looks like a walking Ralph Lauren ad in his navy polo shirt and khaki cargo pants. “I saw you come in here. I thought I’d say hi. We haven’t seen each other since...”
My smile spreads into a rueful grin. “That thing at Chad Tate’s funeral? Yeah. Sorry about that.”
Tommy presses his lips into a frown. “It’s not your fault.” There’s a pause. “Are you still with him?”
“No. Are you still with her?”
His face flushes red. “Kennes said she saw you in New York. That you were really nice to her. I thought maybe things had changed. That you might want to...”
I put down the cheap green tackle box. “I really want things to go back to the way they were. But I’m not sure they can. The world doesn’t need more people to make excuses for the bad behavior of all the beautiful people. To dry the crocodile tears that roll down their symmetrical faces. It needs a line in the sand. Something that says there’s a dignity to being human that all people deserve. Right now, I’m on one side of that line and you chose to be on the other side with Kennes.”
“I’m not sure if you’ve looked in the mirror lately, but you have way more in common with the beautiful people than I do.”
I shake my head and resume unbundling my fabric swatches. “I will always be that same fat girl on the plane. The one who knows what it’s like to have people refuse to look you in the face. Knows what it’s like to face a world that wants to sideline you because you don’t look the right way. Well, I’m taking a stand. I think there’s something beautiful about everything, and I’m going to discover what it is.”
Tommy shuffles over to stand right in front of me. “You’re wrong. We’re on the same side of the line, Cookie.”
I look up into his brown eyes, which are watching me with a kind of fear. The right kind. It’s a fear of hurting me. Of making me unhappy. “You once told me that my world was like a cartoon, full of black and white. Good and bad. Well, your world is like the solar system, and you think people can orbit around you without ever touching each other. But it doesn’t work like that. Kennes has done things that have impacted me, like...like...” I trail off, struggling to finish the analogy.
“Like the Tunguska event?” he supplies. “You know, the meteor that...” He trails off at the sight of my blank expression.
“Yeah. I guess,” I say with a laugh. “I can try to play nice, but for this to work, you have to respect me and her.”
He leans across the cutting table. “Yeah. I see that now.” He adds, “You’re not all that different, you know. You and Kennes.”
I smile at him. It’s not the massive insult it once was, but Tommy’s wrong. Seeing Kennes outside the Morgan Library, huddled down like a lost puppy...I knew that look. I used to be that person. Desperate and unsure. Tommy needs to save somebody. The old Cookie Vonn, the one I left at the coffee shop, she needed to be rescued. The new one wants to save herself.
This is how I know I’ll be okay with being just friends.
Tommy shoves his hands in his pockets. “Want to grab a coffee sometime?”
“Sure.”
He goes back the way he came. As his footsteps disappear down the hall, Dr. Moreno peeks back around the corner. “How’s the next great American designer? Ready to get started on those makeup assignments?”
I grin at her. I’m already unpacking my notions from my green case. “Yep.”
Cool light comes through the narrow window near the ceiling of Dr. Moreno’s office. Soon it will be twilight and everything will be bathed in blue.
“I’m ready.”
* * * * *