Fatty Patty: A Romantic Short Story (San Juan Island Stories #1)

  Fatty Patty

  San Juan Island Stories #1

  by

  Wendy Lynn Clark

  Smashwords Edition

  *****

  Published on Smashwords by:

  Wendy Lynn Clark Publishing

  PO Box 1993

  Vancouver, WA 98668

  wendy@wendylynnclark.com

  San Juan Island Stories #1: Fatty Patty

  Copyright 2013 Wendy Lynn Clark

  ISBN13: 978-0-9896920-0-7

  ISBN10: 0989692000

  This estory is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This estory may not be used for any purpose other than enjoyment. If you would like to share this estory with another person like your mom or your book club or your psychic advisor (who already knows), please preface it with your estimation of exactly how much enjoyment you think they will receive from reading it. (Somewhere above a 7 on a scale of 1-11 is fine). If you're reading this estory and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, I hope that you support your local library. With your wallet. And not just to reach in and pull out your library card. In fact, please buy this story for your local library. Buy every story for your local library. Think of the children and the elderly who might not enjoy the same advantages you do, you successful, healthy, attractive-looking adult you. Thanks for respecting the awesome.

  Fatty Patty is a short [7,000-word] story about: A woman attends her five-year high school reunion to prove herself to the classmates who tortured her and to the boy who broke her heart.

  Table of Contents

  Fatty Patty

  Thank You

  Acknowledgements

  Biography

  What's Next?

  Pepper McKay lived fabulously.

  It was the best revenge.

  She was no longer the fat klutz who couldn't walk a mile in PE. She was no longer the sad blob who overheard the other girls whisper about body odor—which she never had—and sweat stains, which were unavoidable in the humid coastal classrooms. She was no longer the victim of the unknown bully who kicked her wobbly seat at the start of assembly. The plastic had given way with a sickening crack and everyone had watched her fall.

  Her four-inch Kate Spade Licorice heels, size-five Ella Moss strapless mini, and Sixth Sense chocolate Burberry satchel all proclaimed that refined adulthood had arrived. Five years too late, maybe, but sophistication had arrived, in her life and at the sultry Bellingham, Washington marina.

  She was thin now.

  Thin like a Thin Mint.

  And tonight, everyone would finally know it.

  Pepper waved her boarding pass before the attentive, muscular dock hand, curved her lips in a confident smile coated with Yves Saint Laurent iced plum Sheer Candy, and strutted up the gangplank onto the Island Spiriter, a hundred-foot cruise ship decorated in the purple and gold of Friday Harbor High School. Welcome, class of the Millennium, the sign at the top step proclaimed. She mentally capitalized the "C" of "class" as she continued onto the deck, to the table manned by the reunion officer.

  Time had not been universally fabulous. Allison Payne, who had once lit up the stage as Rizzo of Grease and taken the over-excited athletics department to the state championships in Cross-Country, licked a swelled finger and squinted up at Pepper. "Who are you with? I don't—" Her jowls flattened. "Oh my god. Patty?"

  The name hit her like a curse, burning a hot flush onto her cheeks. She cleared her throat. "It's Pepper."

  Allison's lips dropped further and her neck rolls gobbled up her silver "Mother" necklace. She grabbed Pepper's nametag and a thick black Sharpie. "I wondered! When did you change your name?"

  Pepper gripped her satchel and struggled to maintain her iced smile.

  In high school this woman had been one of them, the blade-slim girls who sprawled in patches across the sunlit cafeteria, waving flirty fingers at the hottest boys, pushing ugly people like Pepper to the cold retreat of study rooms.

  She coughed. "Actually, it's always been Pepper."

  Allison uncapped the Sharpie. "Nobody will recognize you unless I fix this."

  Dread uncoiled in Pepper's stomach.

  The Sharpie touched the laminate.

  Pepper snatched her tag away, black ink drawing a long, wobbly line across the top. She tried to wipe it off. The line smeared like the grease of an old food stain.

  Allison reached for her nametag. "But no one will know—"

  "I want to be myself now. Thanks." Pepper pinned the badge above her left breast. A smudge was still better than what was about to be written. Her heart beat, hard and regular, in her chest and she shifted her handbag higher on her shoulder.

  The waning sun seared her pale shoulders. Pale slim shoulders.

  She tucked her salon-relaxed walnut hair behind her silver-pierced ears. "Is Julian here?"

  "He's already inside." Allison leaned forward. "You won't recognize him. He's changed so much. It's huge."

  No way. "He's fat?"

  Allison's brows knit. "Huh? No, he's turned into … well, you'll see." And then her brows lifted, as though she had solved a problem. She heaved herself to her feet, crossed the deck to the main cabin, and threw open the doors.

  The other members of their class stood in cliques—the same ones as in high school, it seemed—an odd mix of optometrists, seafood vendors, and hair dressers milling around under long swathes of purple and gold decorations. She knew from their MySpace profiles, the ones who had let a few months go by and then suddenly had the guts to friend her. She had friended them back, sure, but never posted a self-portrait. Let them think she was the same, let them settle into the routine of their lives, let them post their own fattening photos as they gave up intramurals and exercise to settle into grad school, marriage, and kids. Things she didn't have. Things they probably thought she never would.

  Her stomach twinged again. She tightened her Pilates-toned abdominals. This was not Homecoming. She was no longer the only one stepping into a dim music-filled room without a friend or a date.

  And even if she were, that wasn't why she was here. She wasn't here for herself.

  She was here for revenge.

  Across the almost-familiar faces, across the almost-filled buffet, across the almost-emptied wine bar, she locked eyes on the one man she had come to see.

  Julian.

  He chatted with a shorter man and a buff woman in skin-tight bike shorts. Tanner and taller, fitter and full-postured, Julian settled on his heels as though he had finally discovered his true center. Why had Allison thought he looked different? He was still a snowboarder without a mountain, a surfer without a swell, an athlete without a field to dominate. Except for his hair, and maybe his posture, he was exactly the same.

  Without any reason, without any rhyme, he turned in her direction and looked up. His gaze locked on her.

  The intensity hit her with a hot force. A pulse-beat in her belly, sure and strong, regular as the tremble of her fingers curling around her purse straps, undeniable as the awareness flushing through her body. His chin rose and his gaze raked her figure once from tip to stern to tip again. His hands tightened around his drink and his brows lowered.

  He was going to be so sorry for what he had done to her.

  She would make sure of that.

  Pepper smoothed her mini, tucked any stray locks behind her ears, and started forward with a radiant step.

  Allison stepped forward at the same time and threw her arms wide. "Look who's here, everybody." Her hand swung at Pepper's cheek.

  She jerked back, too committed to duck
.

  "It's Fatty Patty!"

  Pepper's Kate Spade four-inch heels slipped out from under her as though skidding across a seaweed-coated rock. In front of everyone's shocked gaze, she tumbled like so many scattered pebbles to the unforgiving deck.

  Julian was smart. Smarter than she was, even though she worked a thousand times harder to make it show in her grades.

  He was also brave, strong, and beautiful.

  She snuck glances at him in third-year French class while he fended off the teacher's nagging in his salt-accented Québécios, and she bit the end of her mechanical pencil while she pretended to study.

  Julian was kinetic, tipped forward as though by the weight of his hair fluffed out in a wedge from his head, a brown sea sponge of strands that would not be tamed by ties nor headbands nor Mia's borrowed blue barrettes. His dad was French Canadian, but his mom had dragged them all around the world and they finally washed up here, on the shores of San Juan Island, where she dumped them and continued on to some exotic unreachable place.

  His eyes were blue, she knew. It was general knowledge; everyone knew. She conjugated the verb to know. Savoir. Je sais, tu sais, il sait. Je sais qu'ils yeux sont bleus.

  He slept through Manon of the Spring in weekly 20-minute increments and stared hungrily out at the busy soccer fields during the Cyrano de Bergerac season.

  "Tu aimes football?" she finally got up the nerve to ask.

  His gaze settled on her. Warm, lazy. He stretched. "Oui, oui," and slipped out a string of words like an oyster spitting out pearls. He dropped to the desk and tilted his head, smiling up. "That's not all I love."

  The way he said it, and the knowingness in his gaze, as though he could feel the waves of shy desire emanating from her seat, made her unable to even ask what the other things were that he loved. But she found out soon enough. He also loved rugby and watersports and basketball and something called luge.

  They talked to each other while Gerard Depardieu used his dying words to lie to his true love. Julian sat by her during her shaded study room lunch. On the club days, he met her at her locker, never minding that such kindness carried its own danger.

  When the other boys walked by with their chests puffed out and their chins lifted like dominant sea walruses, Julian didn't look away. He never looked away. Not from her, and not from the boys who broke from the pack and approached her, razor-tongues sharpened for a new torture.

  "We have to go to club," she said to Julian, under her breath.

  Julian dipped his head and slowly, too slowly, shouldered his backpack.

  Ellis slammed her locker shut and started the chant that had chased her from second grade throughout the rest of her life. "Fatty, fatty, ate too many Peppermint Patties. You're glistening today. Are you half whale or does your family have to oil you in blubber fat?"

  She cowered.

  He sneered over her red face at Julian. "Hey Frenchie. You like fat girls?"

  Julian squared up to Ellis. "Yeah. I do."

  White waxy fear churned in her belly. The hall squeezed in, hot and sweaty. Ellis and his friends laughed with a rictus, forced sound at her puffy body, white as the inside of the candy, and at Julian's warmer tone for his crueler words.

  Ellis elbowed his friends and turned back to them. "You get it up for puffy chicks?"

  Julian tilted his head. "You must have read my diary."

  Ellis stepped forward, shoulder first, cheeks taut. "You keep a diary? Fag."

  Which was usually the kind of thing he said right before he slammed a person.

  Pepper tugged Julian. "We have to go."

  Julian moved easily with her to the club room. Not intimidated. Not even the slightest put out. Indifferent to the walruses in a way that inspired loud fury.

  Ellis and his friends followed to the lip of the classroom. The teacher was engaged with a freshman, so he swaggered inside with all of his jock friends. "Frenchie. Fat-girl-lover. You're a fag, aren't you? You're a total fag."

  Julian's easy smile narrowed. He slowly stretched and leaned back in his seat, his feet resting on the back of her chair with a little bump. "Why? Are you interested?"

  Ellis screwed up his wedge-shaped face. "What?"

  "Are you asking me because you want to know? Or—" he tilted his brow in calculated amusement "—are you hoping my answer is yes?"

  Ellis reddened from his neck up. "What the hell are you saying?"

  "I'm saying you spend all day clinging to sweaty boys in spandex and you ask if I'm gay."

  His friends tittered.

  Ellis's shoulders rose and his hands formed meaty fists.

  His friends dropped silent.

  He stepped forward.

  Julian looked up at him like a manatee facing down a powerboat, nothing but idiocy to protect him from the rippling blades.

  The teacher bustled over. "What is happening here, mes amis? Ooh la la la, you're not in this club."

  Ellis's friends shifted, edging towards the door. Ellis didn't take his eyes off Julian.

  Julian turned to the teacher. "He asked me out."

  Ellis's friends laughed.

  The jock blistered red.

  The teacher raised one brow. "Club hour is not the time for affairs de coeur, Julian."

  "He's not my type." Julian looked up at Ellis again. "Don't be too upset."

  Ellis glared at him, then at Pepper, and slammed out of the room.

  The teacher shooed the others out and the air pressure rose and fell, rose and fell, as in the passing of a storm.

  She twisted the pages of the Asterix & Obelisque comic they were supposed to translate, struggling to concentrate.

  Julian went to sleep.

  She poked his elbow. "You shouldn't say you like fat girls."

  He made a sound as though jerking awake. Muffled, "Why?"

  "I bet you don't even know any." Aside from herself, of course.

  He rose up on his elbows, yawning and stretching. "My mom's fat."

  A harpoon of hurt sank in with those words. "Don't say that."

  "She's two hundred and eighty-two pounds. Or she was last Christmas." He rested his hard cheek in his palm and studied her with his blue, blue eyes. "She can kick my ass at life. And at Scrabble."

  Pepper bit her Bic. Believe him or not? If he was being mean, he was nasty subtle. She might be an idiot for her heart popping to the surface of her chest, bobbing and light.

  As if he read her skepticism, he leaned forward. "Want to see a picture? Come to my house."

  So she met him that very night after her private tutoring in town. He tossed the drink he'd bought while waiting with his other friends and the two of them boarded the hot bus.

  He lived in a one-bedroom that smelled like unwashed dog, though they didn't have any sort of animal. Cigarette burns littered the brown carpet and his dad snored on the one couch. Their blocky TV, the kind she'd seen in thrift shops, alternated between QVC and static.

  Julian stepped over food-crusted paper plates and ant trails to the kitchen. He opened the dull fridge. "Want a beer?"

  She shook her head.

  He took her outside, along secret back steps, across a neighbor's fence, and down the hill to the edge of the world. Clinging to the underside of an oak tree, he swung over the broken rocks to the beach.

  She picked her nimble way after. Careful, because whatever happened she did not want to be the fat klutz in front of him. Just for once, she wanted to be light on her feet, and when he looked up to smile at her, she actually felt like the air itself would hold her up if she fell.

  They talked about nothing and watched the sunset lengthening, red and orange and yellow rays crashing across blue sky. His shoulder brushed hers, thin hoodie to thin hoodie, and his hand rested so close to her leg that it melted her outer shell of cold.

  Her whole body pulsed like the ticking of a clock. Counting down, endlessly down. Wishing it faster. Willing it slower. She hung every second on his long curved eyelashes and short nose, the mois
t yeast from his aluminum beer, his sensitive brows and the circular scar at his neck just below the jugular.

  She knew his eyes were blue, but the French had another word for knowing, a word deeper than the surface knowledge. Comprendre. Up close, his eyes were deep green radiating brilliant from black irises. Brilliant like a sun-swallowed sea. Je sais que tes yeux sont bleus, mais je comprends que tes yeux sont verts comme la mer. Untouchable. Dangerous. Forever out of her reach.

  Her watch alarm finally beeped. Her parents. Dinner.

  She stood. "I've got to do homework."

  He crushed the can on driftwood. "You don't have to do anything, you know."

  Well, except for graduating, going to college, talking her parents out of oceanography as her "dream" career, and figuring out how to become attractive enough to interest a guy like him.

  "You can leave the island. Do whatever you want. Go wherever you want."

  "My parents are starting a new intern today and they will kill me if I don't show."

  He smiled at the can and then out at the sea, as though she had proven his point rather than arguing against it. "I'm stuck here. Destined to drink myself into a stupor." He threw the can.

  It arced through the air and dropped into the waves.

  His face twisted. Bitter. "Just like my papa."

  Probably not the time to tell him that littering was bad and also made her parents' organization super angry. "Well, yeah, if you keep staying up late and drinking all the time."

  He wrinkled his nose, edged his initials into the spongy driftwood with a ragged nail. "He'd just drink it himself."

  "Well, you drinking it obviously hasn't stopped him. It's just makes you a drunk."

  He looked at her. Bitter and hard.

  She bit the skin at her cuticle, softening it, gnawing it to nothing.

  Her watch beeped again.

  He rubbed away the initials, swung his legs over the branch, and easily caught her laboring up the hill. "You leave too early. Make it up to me."