I stopped moving. The music changed and I glanced around me to see that the girl with the glasses was gone; everyone was gone. I’d been all alone, dancing, in my big fat Misses Plus jeans and new shirt.

When this happens in the movies and in after-school specials, the fat, teased kid is always befriended by some nice person who sees her for the wonderful, worthwhile person she really is. But in real life, middle school just isn’t like that.

No one followed me as I walked back across the football field and sat beneath a stubby pine tree for two and a half hours, waiting for my mother. I could hear the music from the cafeteria. I could even hear voices through the woods, people sneaking away from the chaperones. When my mother pulled up at ten o’clock I climbed into the car and didn’t say a word the whole way home.

I told her later as I sat with her arms around me, crying, my voice hiccuping and ashamed. She just rocked me back and forth, her mouth set in that thin, straight line that meant she was angry. She stroked my hair and told me I was beautiful, but I was old enough by then to know not to believe it anymore.

Two weeks later, she gave up her job at the dentist’s and we moved to Massachusetts, where I was the fat new kid all over again. But I never forgot Central Middle or that dance. I never could.

There’s something about dancing that’s like being stripped naked; you have to be very self-confident to thrash around in public, deliberately attracting attention. I’d never been that way, even without the weight that once kept me in everyone’s eyes. Dancers were the lightest and brightest of butterflies, while girls like me stayed low, bellies scraping the floor, and watched from there.

Chapter ten

The first thing I saw when we stepped inside was Isabel, her hair in rollers, crossing the kitchen floor to turn up the CD player. She had on cutoffs and a short white shirt, and her bare feet had cotton balls between each toe. The polish on her toenails was bright red and still looked wet.

“Is this new?” Morgan yelled, as I put the eggs down on the coffee table. Isabel tossed her a CD case before heading back to the kitchen. Morgan turned it over, examining it.

“I love disco,” she said.

I nodded. I had my eyes on Mira’s house, my excuses ready. I could not stay.

“I bought supplies,” Isabel announced, coming back into the living room with a grocery bag. She started unpacking it, stacking its contents on the table and floor: two six-packs of beer, a six-pack of Diet Coke, Cosmo, two bottles of nail polish, a pack of Fudge Stripes, and a plastic container of what looked like cold cream. Then she picked up the bag and shook it, emptying out a handful of Atomic Fireballs, two packs of gum, and some cigarettes; there were a couple of boxes of sparklers, too.

“For you,” she said to me, handing over the gum. She gave Morgan the Atomic Fireballs and kept the cigarettes, tucking them in her shorts pocket.

“Isabel,” Morgan said disapprovingly. Actually, she yelled. We were all yelling to be heard over the Bee Gees. “You quit, remember?”

“I got you Fudge Stripes,” Isabel pointed out. “So hush.”

“Fudge Stripes don’t kill you,” Morgan fussed.

“Morgan.” Isabel shook her head. “Let it go, okay? Just for tonight.”

“They cause cancer,” Morgan said.

“Let it go. . . .” Isabel said, closing her eyes.

“And heart disease.”

“Let it go. . . .”

“And emphysema.”

“Morgan!” Isabel opened her eyes. “Let it go!”

Morgan reached for the Fudge Stripes and sat back on the couch. “Fine,” she said, ripping open the package and stuffing one in her mouth in a sloppy, very un-Morgan-like fashion. Then she held them out to me.

“No thanks,” I said.

“You never eat anything bad,” she said. To Isabel she called out, “Ever noticed that, Is?”

“Noticed what?”

“That Colie eats so healthy, it’s disgusting,” Morgan said. “I’ve never even seen her have a french fry.”

“And she runs every morning.” Isabel came back and plopped down on the floor, reaching for a beer. “I always see her when I get up to pee. She’s out there at some ungodly hour.”

“Eight o’clock,” I said.

“Exactly,” Isabel said.

“Well, if Kiki Sparks was your mother,” Morgan said, her mouth full, “I guess you’d have to be a health freak, right?”

I just nodded. People assumed that, never knowing my mother’s favorite food in the Fat Years—and now—was fried pork rinds.

Isabel popped the top off her beer, then handed one to Morgan. She gave me a Diet Coke. “I’d give you a beer,” she said, “but . . .”

“But you’re underage,” Morgan said primly. “And it would be illegal.”

Isabel rolled her eyes.

“Well, it would be.” Morgan pulled her legs up underneath her. “When I was fifteen I lived off Coke and Reese’s cups. I ate Twinkies for breakfast.”

“And never gained a pound,” Isabel said, reaching for the cold cream. When she opened it, however, it was bright green and oozy, like toxic waste.

“I wanted to gain weight in high school,” Morgan said to me. She was alternating between eating deviled eggs and sucking on an Atomic Fireball held between her thumb and forefinger. “I was so skinny you could see my collarbone from a mile off. Disgusting.”