Size 14 Is Not Fat Either

“Magda,” I say. “You’re hysterical. You’ve got to calm down.”

But Magda can’t. Which is why, after heaving a sigh, I haul off and slap her.

And why she, in turn, slaps me back.

“Ow!” I cry, outraged and clutching my cheek. “What did you do that for?”

“You hit me first!” Magda declares angrily, clutching her own cheek.

“Yeah, but you were hysterical!” Magda has some arm on her. I’m seeing stars. “I was just trying to get you to snap out of it. You didn’t have to hit me back.”

“You aren’t supposed to slap hysterical people,” Magda snaps back. “Didn’t they teach you anything in all those fancy first-aid courses they made you take?”

“Magda.” My eyes finally stop swimming in tears. “Tell me what they found.”

“I’ll show you,” Magda says, and holds out the hand she hadn’t used to smack me in the face. There, in her palm, is nestled a strange-looking object. Made of gold, it resembles an earring, only much larger, and curved. There’s a diamond on one end of it. The gold is pretty banged up, like it’s been chewed on.

“What is that?” I ask, gazing down at it.

“WHERE DID YOU GET THAT?”

Both Magda and I are startled by the reaction of Cheryl Haebig as she and her boyfriend Jeff pass us on the way out of the cafeteria. Cheryl’s eyes are wide, her gaze glued to the object in Magda’s hand. Pete, who is trying to herd everyone out of the place, looks frustrated.

“Cher,” Jeff says, tugging on his girlfriend’s arm, “come on. They want us to leave.”

“No,” Cheryl says, shaking her head, her gaze still fixed on what Magda is holding. “Where you did get that? Tell me.”

“Do you recognize it, Cheryl?” I ask her—though it’s obvious from her reaction that she does. Also that I probably don’t want to know why. “What is it?”

“It’s Lindsay’s navel ring,” Cheryl says. Her face has gone as white as the blouse she’s wearing. “Oh, God. Where’d you get it?”

Magda presses her lips together. And closes her fingers. “Oh, no,” she says, in the singsong voice she only uses when students are around. “Never mind. You go to class now, or you’ll be late—”

But Cheryl takes a step forward and says, her eyes going hard as the marble floor beneath us, “Tell me.”

Magda swallows, glances at me, then says, in her normal voice, “It was stuck at the bottom of the garbage disposal. The one that hasn’t been working right all week. The building engineer finally got around to taking a look at it. And he found this.”

She flips it over. On the other side of the gold, the word LINDSAY is engraved—hard to make out, after all the mashing. But still there.

Cheryl gasps, then seems to find it difficult to stand. Pete and Jeff help her to a nearby chair.

“Tell her to put her head between her knees,” I tell Jeff. He nods, looking panicky, and makes his girlfriend lean forward until her long, honey-colored hair is sweeping the floor.

I turn back to Magda and stare down at the ring. “They put the rest of her down the disposal?” I whisper.

Magda shakes her head. “They tried. But bones won’t grind up.”

“Wait, so…they’re still down there?”

Magda nods. We’re whispering so Cheryl won’t overhear. “The sink was stopped up. No one thought to wonder why—it’s always stopped up. We just used the other one.”

“And the police didn’t look in there, either?”

Magda wrinkles her nose. “No. The water was all…well, you know how it can get back there. Plus they served chili Monday night….”

I feel a little bit of vomit rise into my throat.

“Oh, my God,” I say.

“I know.” Magda looks down at the belly button ring. “Who could do such a thing to such a nice, pretty girl? Who, Heather? Who?”

“I’m going to find out,” I say, turning away from her and striding blindly—because my eyes are filled with tears—toward Cheryl, still sitting with her head between her knees. I squat down beside her so that I can ask her, “Cheryl. Were Lindsay and Coach Andrews sleeping together?”

“WHAT?” It’s Jeff who looks astonished. “Coach A and Lind—NO WAY.”

Cheryl raises her head. It’s very red from all the blood that’s rushed into it while she was hanging upside down. There are tear tracks down her cheeks, and unshed tears still glisten on her long eyelashes.

“Coach Andrews?” she echoes, with a sniff. “N-no. No, of course not.”

“Are you sure?” I ask her.

Cheryl nods. “Yeah,” she says. “I mean, Coach A, he…” She looks up at Jeff. “Um.”

“What?” Jeff looks frightened. “Coach A what, Cher?”

Cheryl sighs and looks back at me. “Well, none of us are sure,” she says. “But we always just assumed Coach A is gay.”

“WHAT?” Now Jeff looks as if he’s the one who’s about to cry. “Coach Andrews? No way. NO WAY.”

Cheryl blinks up at me tearfully. “You can see why we kept that suspicion to ourselves,” Cheryl says.

“I can,” I say. I give Cheryl a pat on the wrist. “Thank you.”

And then I’m gone, brushing past Pete to head out of the caf and toward the elevator.

“Heather?” Magda trots after me in her stilettos. “Where are you going?”

I jab at the UP button, and the elevator door slides open.

“Heather.” Pete follows me out into the lobby, gazing after me in concern. “What’s going on?”

I ignore them both. I get in the elevator and stab the button for the twelfth floor. As the doors close, I see Magda tottering toward me, trying to stop me from going alone.

But it’s just as well she doesn’t come with me. She isn’t going to like what I’m about to do. I don’t like what I’m about to do.

But someone has to do it.

When the doors open on the twelfth floor, I get off the elevator and stalk toward Room 1218. The hallway—which the RA has decorated in a Tigger the Tiger motif, being a Pooh fan…only an ironic Tigger, since she’s given him dreadlocks—is silent. It’s just past nine in the morning, and the kids who aren’t in class are asleep.