Fat Angie (20 page)

In a week of young-love bliss accompanied by a heavy helping of social ostracism, the unbelievable reality that Fat Angie was the second freshman to make the varsity championship basketball team went as viral as Wang’s cell-phone photograph.

Kids huddled between bells and secretly tapped text messages:

Can u believe?

Can U?

But she’s so fat . . .

Not as fat . . .

At the height of the gossip frenzy, it was rumored that she had shot up performance-enhancing drugs, as there could be no other explanation for her sudden athletic prowess. Fat Angie was now under the microscope not for her vast pants size, but for how she continued to almost magically perform on the basketball court practice after practice. The buzz was red-hot!

Fat Angie no longer rode the bus with the heckling Duo of Geekdom. Basketball practice started every day at exactly 3:10 p.m. Drill after drill. At times it all began to blur for Fat Angie, but she fought the blur. She fought the dry mouth and pains in her diaphragm. And while speed and agility were not her strong suits, when the ball touched her fingers, she was almost unstoppable at the basket. With every release, she let out the slightest whisper from her lips . . . like a prayer. Not a wish for the ball to find its way through the hoop. A wish that her sister would come home, throw her arms around Angie, and say, “I’m proud of you,” or something all Hallmark special-esque. She just had to not quit!

Stacy Ann focused less on her Fat Angie attack campaign and more on Coach Laden’s developing her into the kind of point guard who stood out. Reason being that Stacy Ann came from a family of four overly successful siblings and overcompensated for her fear of failure.

“She’s overcompensating,” KC said, strutting into her bedroom with two steaming plates of whole-wheat fettuccine.

Angie followed with a couple cans of Sprite.

“Even so, Stacy Ann is
amazing
at point,” Angie said.

“Talent for the defense, I’ll grant you, but super flawed as an earthling.”

The girls plopped on floor pillows, KC clicking the remote.

“
Buffy
marathon on Syfy,” said KC. “Absolute. While not as retro as some of your faves — excluding
Freaks and Geeks,
which is ultra-even — I think this will be a
W
in the win column.”

Angie twirled her pasta on a spoon.

“Hey,” KC said, with fettuccine hanging from her lips. “Why the sad face?”

Angie shrugged. “I . . . miss her.”

“I know.”

“Sometimes. It’s like . . . I’m still there. In the kitchen, hearing about her missing. But then there’s this other . . . clawing guilt if a couple hours pass and I haven’t thought about her.”

“Maybe you can miss her and not have to hurt every second,” KC said.

Angie picked at a hole in her sneaker. She nodded with a repetition more to soothe herself than to agree with KC.

“Tomorrow,” Angie said. “I get to wear her jersey and be on the court and —”

Angie’s cell phone played Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

“My mom,” Angie said, clicking it to voice mail.

“Sweet ringtone,” said KC. “That would crack Esther into pieces if I did that to her.”

Angie listened to the message.

“What’s the verdict?” KC asked.

“She’s back from New York,” Angie said.

“Thought she was gonna be gone longer,” KC said.

“Yeah, me too. Anyway, she wants me home for a fake family meal.”

“It’s crystal,” KC said, softly squeezing Angie’s hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And if it goes south, I’m here.”

There was a simultaneous lean in. The kiss was effortlessly intense. The warm plates resting on their legs clanked. KC’s hand pressed against Angie’s face. Angie’s hand squeezed KC’s waist. The kiss kicked some most definite ass.

KC pulled back, their heads touching. “You better —”

“Yeah . . . I better,” Fat Angie said. “But . . .”

The girls locked lips once more with the
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
theme song playing in the background. It was not the most romantic music but would most definitely do.

Fat Angie hunched over her dinner. It was the first family dinner since the Slap That Spilled the Sake, as Fat Angie had written in her letter to her sister. Shifting in his seat, Wang picked at a zit with one hand and speed-texted with the other. His earbuds seeped goth metal. Fat Angie knew for a fact that Wang did not like goth metal and was playing the music to irritate their overly perfumed mother.

“You look thinner,” said her mother, not looking away from her BlackBerry.

“I guess,” said Fat Angie. “How was New York?”

Scrolling through her e-mail, her mother said, “Unusually cold.”

“Yeah?” asked Angie.

“Don’t eat too many noodles,” her mother said. “Here. Try the soup.”

“I don’t like soup.”

“Everyone likes soup,” said her mother. “I met a Belgian man in New York. He eats soup before every dinner. Every one.”

“I’m not Belgian,” said Fat Angie.

Her mother sighed. “That isn’t the point, Angie.”

Her mother positioned the soup container in front of Wang, who acknowledged it with the slightest raise of his eyes before tapping on his iPod.

Fat Angie’s mother poured a second glass of red wine, which would have been inconsequential if she had not mentioned drinking two glasses already on the plane from New York.

“How hard is it to leave out the things you don’t ask for?” asked her mother, tucking snow peas in the crevices between her plate and charger. “I order the same thing every time.”

“Mom,” Fat Angie said.

“What?”

“My first game’s tomorrow.”

“What game?” asked her mother, distracted by an incoming text.

“Varsity basketball,” said Fat Angie.

Her mother nodded. “Right. And you’ll be starting? Featured player?”

“I probably won’t play, no,” said Fat Angie. “Just thought if you were in town you might want to come or something.”

“Did you go to therapy on Tuesday?”

Fat Angie sensed a trap.

“Didn’t think so,” said her mother, picking up her plate with cell phone in tow.

Connie dispensed of the healthy takeout, slipped the plate in the dishwasher, and left the room.

Wang, who seemed engrossed in his loud music and texting, directed his attention toward his sister. “Hey.”

“Turncoat,” she said, getting up from the table.

“Huh?”

Fat Angie scowled at him and, racing upstairs, tugged at her shorts leg creeping up her thigh.

She was halfway out her bedroom window when Wang knocked. Fat Angie smacked her head against the windowsill.

“Do we no longer have a front door?” he said.

Rubbing her head, Fat Angie crawled back in. “Thanks to you I have to crawl out windows to avoid Mom.”

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“Like you care. What do you want?”

“You seem to be doing all right. The basketball thing,” he said.

“Why, do you wanna ruin that too?” she asked.

“I said I was sorry.”

“I said I hate you,” Fat Angie countered.

“Yeah.” He flipped the brim of his hat around.

“So?” she asked.

He picked at a fleck of paint on the doorway.

“I could come to your game tomorrow,” Wang said sheepishly, stepping into the room.

She half-laughed. “Why? So you can take a picture of me bent over and explode the size of my butt on the Internet?”

“Look, OK. I know I’ve kinda been a douche cake to you.”

“I don’t even know what that is,” Angie said. “But if it’s like being a jerkface, then yeah, you have. How could you do that, Wang? You’re my brother. I mean, why?”

“Shit, I don’t know,” Wang said. “It just sorta happened. It seemed like it would be funny. But then it wasn’t. And I’d already sent it to, like, ten people. Then it was, like, boom-gone everywhere.”

Angie stood with her arms crossed, not giving him an inch.

“So . . . I have a picture of Stacy Ann without a bra,” Wang said.

“Do not.”

“Do,” he fired back.

“Do not.”

“Do to infinity and beyond,” he said, a twinge of superiority in his voice.

“Do not to infinity and beyond times pi,” said Angie.

The ultimate bluff-calling challenge had been made.

He slid his phone out of his back pocket. In three quick clicks, there was Stacy Ann without a bra. “A chick in your gym class sold it to me. It wasn’t cheap.”

“That’s gross,” Fat Angie said.

“You’re into girls.”

“But not Stacy Ann. And not all pervy-photo-without-permission.”

He clicked the keypad. “I thought you’d think it was fresh.”

Fat Angie, being Wang’s recent archenemy, found this pseudoreconciliation perplexing.

“I guess it’s kinda cool. But still pervy,” she said. “Get a hobby that doesn’t involve nudie pics.”

“So I should try out for the basketball team and act like my dead sister?”

“She’s not dead,” Fat Angie said. “Take it back, Wang.” She punched his shoulder. “Take it back.”

“OK, recanted,” he said. “But Mom’s gonna lock you up again if you don’t snap back into goody-goody sane. And you can take that to the bank. The —”

“The blood bank. I know. Stop quoting that stupid Steven Seagal film. He’s not a good role model anyway.”

“Better than
Growing Pains,
” he said.

“It’s a perfectly good family show.”

“If you live in a glass house and grew up in the 80s, maybe. Touch down on planet Earth and watch some MTV.”

“They don’t even play music videos.”

“Who cares?” He tapped a text. “It will at least make you feel like everyone else.”

“We were never like everyone else.”

Pause.

“You gonna split?” he asked.

Fat Angie dropped back on her bed. “Maybe not.”

Wang sat down beside her. She wiggled, creating an additional foot and a half to equal two and a half feet between them. Her bed was only five feet in length and she slept in the fetal position to maintain all body parts on the mattress.

Wang speed-tapped another text. “She sent a text.”

“What?” Angie sat up.

“It was a couple of days before she was taken. I didn’t tell anybody.”

“What did it say?”

“Stuff, you know,” Wang said.

“Don’t be a jerk. Wang . . .”

He clicked through his phone and showed Angie a locked message. It was a photo of her sister and a puppy in Iraq. She was decked in her camo gear and smiling with all the light that was her. The message read, “Miss U.”

“Why didn’t you ever show me this?” Angie asked.

Wang got up off the bed. “I wanted something to be mine, I guess. After she went missing, I dunno. That’s all I had. I knew she wasn’t coming back.”

“You don’t know that. She never quits.”

“That’s what pisses me off about you,” he said. “Why can’t you see what’s really happened? Yo, I have. Instead you stuff your face or go shooting hoops like you’re her —”

“So I should just thug it? All baggy-blasting clothes, and, um, rap music you hate? Getting into trouble to just check out? You were different before.”

“Well, it’s not before. Don’t you get it? She’s not some comic-book hero. She’s just like us. She’s lost.” Wang jammed his cell phone in his jeans. “Maybe they won’t find her. Ever.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Fat Angie.

“Yeah, OK,” Wang said dismissively. “I gotta jet.”

Wang strutted toward the door.

“Wang?”

“Yeah?” he said.

“I really liked it better when you weren’t a turncoat.”

His smile kicked to one side. Then he left.

Fat Angie’s family gave up on her sister when the weeks tallied into months. Her dad could not afford the luxury of a hotel beyond the first ten days. And her mother only let him in the house for an ABC
World News
interview. She did, after all, need everyone to know that the family was intact. Even if the dust on the divorce papers had more than settled.

Angie had told her therapist,
“My mom says, ‘We can’t let the terrorists think they are ripping us apart.’ And I said, ‘They
are
ripping us apart.’ ”

“How did your mother respond?”

“She told me not to slouch in front of the camera.”

The therapist had made a note:
Struggles with interpersonal communication.

Fat Angie sat in the thick stench of Wang’s — of her family’s — shared reality. But she would not be swayed. Her sister was going to come home.

Fat Angie had mastered bench warming as the Mighty Hornets’ Nest squad pounded through their first three games. But the key to an undefeated season started with beating the state-ranked Tamblyn Titans. The Titans were wicked tall, wicked mean, and just plain wicked young women.

The crowds on both sides of the gymnasium were revved long before the game began and exploded with the game in full throttle.

Jake and KC sat at opposite ends of the bleachers. Both cheered Fat Angie on as she sank every basket during the warm-up. But with the game in play, she was firmly on the bench once again. Two senior players separated her from Stacy Ann, who still refused to give Fat Angie her due for her on-the-court skills. Fat Angie stared, as she was prone to do at times, at her rival. Her rival who was being called in to the game with two minutes left in the first half. Throwing attitude and a slick set of ball-handling skills, Stacy Ann leveraged her team ahead by three at the half.