I can't even hear what she says back, but I can tell by the look on her face that we are OK, that there won't be any more misunderstandings -- that this time, we are friends for life.
Backstage is fantastic.
It's like nobody in the audience wants to leave, like they're on this high and they don't want it to stop. Honestly, they look the way we all felt after
Wicked.
I can't believe we could do that to people. Mom and Dad are all over me hugging and crying, but Karl manages to pull them off and he shakes my hand and says, "I'm proud of you kid," and of course I start crying, but I figure that's gonna happen a lot tonight.
I've just finished a rib-crunching hug with Taylor when I find myself face to face with the guy I thought was from the firing squad.
"Miss Stockdale," he says, holding out his hand. "Arthur Grant, from the North Carolina School of the Arts."
"I thought I recognized you," I say, shaking his hand. Taylor steps back and motions to Cameron and Elliot to come watch this little piece of drama. "You were at my audition, right?"
"Exactly," he says. "I don't usually come to things like this, although I have to say your producer was quite persistent on the phone, but then I got a call from an old fraternity brother of mine, Bob Watkins -- he's your principal, I believe -- and he said I should come."
Squatty Watty? Who'd have believed it?
"I hope you enjoyed it," I say.
And everyone around me has gone quiet now and is waiting to hear what he will say.
"I'm glad I came, Miss Stockdale," he says. "It was a most illuminating evening."
"I don't know what the hell 'illuminating' was supposed to mean," says Cameron after Mr. Grant has gone, "but at least he said he was glad he came."
I convince Cynthia
to come to the cast party -- she doesn't want to at first because she claims she didn't really help with the production, but finally I tell her that if she has to do more than she has already done she can come tomorrow afternoon and help with strike. The party is at Cameron's house, which is another good sign that things are getting better with his parents. He's not kidding himself by believing that they're just going to accept him overnight. "But they're trying," he says, "and that's a start."
This time Elliot doesn't make anybody go home early. We all want to stay as long as we can stay awake, not just because we feel like we really have something to celebrate and we want to ride this high as long as we can, but also because we know that tomorrow afternoon we have to go back to the church and take down the set and face the fact that it's really over -- and that will suck big time. So the grey of dawn is just creeping into the sky when Elliot and I are once again sitting in his car outside Dad's house.
"Some night, huh?" I say.
"Yeah," says Elliot. "Hard to believe it's over."
"Don't say that yet," I say. "As long as I'm awake it's still the night of our triumph."
"Listen, Aggie, there's something I wanted to talk to you about," says Elliot.
"Sure," I say. He sounds all serious and it flashes across my mind that maybe he has a crush on somebody, but who? Suzanne? Taylor? Cameron?
"I didn't want to mention it before the show was over because I didn't want to, you know, distract you or anything."
"OK, well, I guess I'll admit that it's over if that will get you to talk," I say, and I poke him in the side, which usually makes him laugh. Only now he doesn't laugh, and now I'm thinking maybe he has a disease. Mono? Lupus? Cancer? So now I'm worried.
"It's just I wanted to explain to you why I didn't get all excited about your news about Roger asking you out last night."
"Oh my god," I say, "is this one of those Wickham things?"
"What?"
"You know, like in
Pride and Prejudice
, all the girls have crushes on Wickham and then it turns out he's kind of a jerk."
"No," says Elliot, "Roger's a perfectly nice guy. It's just that I -- I love you."
"You're sweet, Elliot," I say.
"No, I'm not sweet," he says. "If I were sweet, I wouldn't be imagining you naked."
"What?"
"I love you. I don't mean I'm your friend and I feel warm and fuzzy -- I mean I have strong feelings of romantic attraction. I live for the moment at the end of the day when we're alone in my car and you give me a kiss on the cheek. I dream about you constantly, and right now it's all I can do to restrain myself from grabbing you and basically sucking your face off. I love you, I have loved you, and I will love you. I want to date you. I want to be your boyfriend. I want to make out with you. There, OK I said it. It wasn't exactly the speech I had planned, but I said it."
"Oh my god," I say.
"I know, right. It sucks to be me. After three years I finally get up the nerve to tell you and Roger Morton beats me by twenty-four hours."
"Three years?" I say.
"More or less," says Elliot.
"But why?" I say.
"Why?" says Elliot. "Why not? You're smart, you're funny, you're beautiful and talented and sexy -- and you're the best friend I've ever had. You're the one person I can talk to about anything. Why wouldn't I fall in love with you?"
"You think I'm sexy?" I say.
"Don't even go there, Aggie," says Elliot, staring ahead. "Friday night you're gonna be on a date with Roger and I'm gonna be home writing a paper."
Suddenly Elliot is the cutest person I have ever seen. "Listen," I say, "I never said anything to Roger about being exclusive."
"Aggie," says Elliot, turning to face me, "if you and Roger were not exclusive, that just might make me the happiest man in the world."
"I'd like for you to be happy," I say, and I'm about to give him a kiss on the cheek, but it's six a.m. and I'm emotionally drained and my best friend just told me he loves me and -- well, what the hell, right? So I kiss Elliot on the lips and he kisses me back and it lasts a long time and it's my first real kiss with a boy and it's -- well, frankly, it's none of your business.
So you wanted to know why I am
applying to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and I guess that's pretty much the whole story. I imagine next year you'll change the application to say "Limit your answer to three pages" or something like that -- live and learn, right?
Elliot is Puck and Cynthia is Titania to Roger's Oberon and Cameron is Peter Quince, the director of the Rude Mechanicals -- those horrible actors who do the play within the play. And me? I'm Bottom, the overacting buffoon -- perfect, right? I get turned into a donkey, Cynthia falls in love with me, and then I get to steal the show.
"Sorry," Mr. Parkinson said to me on the first day of rehearsal, "I just couldn't resist."
The costumes are going to be fantastic, because after
The Fat Lady Sings
we donated over four thousand dollars to the theatre department -- Mrs. Baxter wouldn't take any of it back. She said it was money well spent.
As far as my love life is concerned -- let's just say that's complicated. But then, everything is more complicated than it used to be.
I mean, honestly, life was simpler in black and white. Not better, just simpler. Mom was a drunk -- but now she's been sober for three months and is actually trying to parent. Karl was my own special grownup -- but it turns out Cameron needs his advice as much as I do. Cynthia was the living embodiment of all evil -- now she drives me crazy sometimes, but I love her. Mr. Parkinson offered me a crap part in my favorite show -- but if he hadn't I never would have discovered playwriting. And then there's religion -- I never really had much time for it, but then a bunch of kids from a church saved our show. So, yeah, the world is more complicated now.
I guess, in a way, everything in the world is like fat -- sometimes you hate it, other times, it's not so bad. Like today, for instance. Today I come home after school to discover two envelopes on the kitchen counter -- one from the School of the Arts and one from Iowa -- and they're both fat!
Today fat is a very good thing.
A new weight-loss clinic in New York City has an offer for you -- give them $5,000 and they'll make you as thin as a supermodel. You can eat whatever you want and you'll never gain an ounce. Tempted? Fledging journalist Karen Sumner would be -- if only she had $5,000.
But when Karen finally walks through the blue and gold doors of The Program, she's on the trail of the hottest story of her career. If she and her friends are right, The Program is doing something even worse than creating an army of unnaturally thin women. Will they be able to stop The Program before it's too late?
"A lively first novel. Highly recommended."
Library Journal
"Would you sell your soul to lose weight? What if you did and your husband found you less attractive?..The size-positive characters are heartfelt and quirky, the suspense keeps building and the bombshell on page 25 is not to be missed. Enjoy!
Lynne Murray
author of
Bride of the Living Dead
,
Larger Than Death
&
The Falstaff Vampire Files
He is the author of 12 previous books, including the novel
The Program,
works on Lewis Carroll, and the acclaimed memoir
Love, Ruth.
More information about Charlie and his works is available at www.charlielovett.com.
Pearls are formed when a piece of sand or grit or other abrasive, annoying, or even dangerous substance enters an oyster and triggers its protective response. The substance is coated with shimmering opalescent nacre ("mother of pearl"), the coats eventually building up to produce a beautiful gem. The self-healing response of the oyster thus transforms suffering into a thing of beauty.
The pearl-creating process reflects our company's desire to move outside a pathological or "disease" based model of life, health and well-being into a more integrative and transcendent perspective. A move out of suffering into joy. And that, we think, is something to sing about.
Pearlsong Press endorses Health At Every Size,
an approach to health and well-being that celebrates natural diversity in body size and encourages people to stop focusing on weight (or any external measurement) in favor of listening to and respecting natural appetites for food, drink, sleep, rest, movement, and recreation. While not every book we publish specifically promotes Health At Every Size (by, for instance, positively featuring fat heroines or educating readers on size acceptance), none of our books or other resources will contradict this holistic and body-positive perspective.
We encourage you to enjoy other Pearlsong Press books, which you can purchase at www.pearlsong.com or your favorite bookstore. Keep up with us through our blog at www.pearlsongpress.com.
Fiction:
Syd Arthur
-- a humorous novel by Ellen Frankel
Fallen Embers
(Book One of The Embers Series)
-- paranormal romance by Lauri J Owen
Bride of the Living Dead
-- romantic comedy by Lynne Murray
Measure By Measure
-- a romantic romp with the fabulously fat by Rebecca Fox & William Sherman
FatLand
-- a visionary novel by Frannie Zellman
The Program
-- a suspense novel by Charlie Lovett
The Singing of Swans
-- a novel about the Divine Feminine by Mary Saracino
Romance novels and short stories featuring Big Beautiful Heroines:
by Pat Ballard, the Queen of Rubenesque Romances:
The Best Man
Abigail's Revenge
Dangerous Curves Ahead: Short Stories
Wanted: One Groom
Nobody's Perfect
His Brother's Child
A Worthy Heir
by Rebecca Brock --
The Giving Season
& by Judy Bagshaw --
At Long Last, Love: A Collection
Nonfiction:
Fat Poets Speak: Voices of the Fat Poets' Society
-- edited by Frannie Zellman
Ten Steps to Loving Your Body (No Matter What Size You Are)
by Pat Ballard
Beyond Measure: A Memoir About Short Stature & Inner Growth
by Ellen Frankel
Taking Up Space: How Eating Well & Exercising Regularly Changed My Life
by Pattie Thomas, Ph.D. with Carl Wilkerson, M.B.A. (foreword by Paul Campos, author of
The Obesity Myth
)
Off Kilter: A Woman's Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother & Her Polish Heritage
-- a memoir by Linda C. Wisniewski
Unconventional Means: The Dream Down Under
a spiritual travelogue & memoir by Anne Richardson Williams
Splendid Seniors: Great Lives, Great Deeds
inspirational biographies by Jack Adler