**Prologue**
“Mitch!”
I screamed, but I was thrown sideways as the truck lurched, careening violently toward the mountain wall.
I scrambled in my seat, no longer breathing, but feeling my pulse pounding in my head. The truck seemed to be moving in slow motion, and I knew where it was going—right into the mountainside. I was going to die.
The lights of the dash were extinguished and the throbbing of my heart ceased as I braced myself for impact. For death.
As quickly as all of this happened, I felt—at some point—a pair of arms encircling my waist. They seemed to come out of nowhere. But I struggled against them, trying desperately to move in my seat—to move away from the mountain wall about to crush me. Or had it killed me already?
***
I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t feel a thing.
Thick darkness surrounded me like a heavy blanket.
Am I dead?
I tried to reach out to my left.
Nothing.
Had I even moved my arm?
Arms. I could still feel them—two arms around my waist. Someone was holding me . . .
**Chapter 1**
Sirens pierced the early morning air, forcing my eyes to open. Tiny red lights helped me focus as I saw the numbers on my alarm clock—5:30 am.
With a reluctant moan, I batted at the clock and threw off my quilt while pushing my legs onto the floor—a trick for waking up early that I’d read about in one of those weight loss books. The cold floor was supposed to shock my warm, sleepy feet into wakefulness, I guess. With a shiver and a start, I realized that it worked.
Kneeling by my bed, I reached for the running shoes I kept just underneath. But while reaching for the running clothes on my nightstand, I let my eyes flit to the soft mound of bedding above me—big mistake. With slow dread, I pulled myself up off the floor and stared down at the yellow quilt that had been with me since infancy. Lumped up against my pillow like that, it reminded me of the lemon chiffon pie with whipped cream that Dad used to buy for me on weekends. I ached to dive back into those soft covers and let their sweet softness carry me back to sleep.
No! I groaned, forcing my eyes away from that luscious heap of comfort as I headed to the bathroom. I wasn’t taking orders from her anymore—the voice that was always telling me to go back to bed, to take it easy, or to eat just one more slice of pizza. The Fat Girl voice, as I liked to call her, always told me that I should take it easy today; I could do better tomorrow. But I ignored her now because I knew Fat Girl was a liar. Whenever I gave in to her, my tomorrows never got any better.
Twenty minutes later I found myself outside, standing at the foot of a towering enemy and shivering with cold. Before second thoughts could convince me to give up, I bent low at the waist and darted towards the unfriendly face of my nemesis, hoping that this time I’d emerge victorious. But after half a mile of uphill jogging, my aching calves and throbbing lungs declared me the loser. The monstrous mountain had won--again.
Okay, so it wasn’t exactly a mountain—it was a butte. But the difference between a mountain and the inactive volcano I jogged each day was one of those stupid details that only textbook authors ever understood anyway. All I knew was that it was tall and rocky, I could see it from my house, and ever since I’d started trying to jog away the layer of fat I’d donned in junior high, that butte had always been there, blotting the morning sunrise from my view as if to say, “Hey—if you want to see the light, you’ve got to get past me, first.” And so each morning, I fought a little harder to push past this arrogant volcanic mass.
Feeling defeated but energized by the run, I turned at the next switchback and started my descent, letting my frustration dissolve as the cold air sharpened my senses. My throat froze slightly each time I inhaled, and the crunching sounds of crystallized snow beneath my feet were like an energetic rhythm that followed me everywhere. Despite the darkness of this early hour, the farmers’ fields at the base of the butte were aglow with the moonlight that reflected off their snow-covered surfaces.
While jogging carefully down the last trail, I remembered that I was out of clean sweaters—and I had forgotten to put in a load of laundry last night. A quick mental inventory of my dresser didn’t bring anything to mind, either, so I’d probably have to settle for whatever lingered at the bottom of my closet. Or maybe Dawn had something I could borrow.
Dawn was my stepmom. She was the closest thing to a mother I’d ever known, because my own mother died when I was too young to remember. Dawn was definitely cool enough to call “Mom,” but the name just never seemed to fit.
The ramblings of my still-groggy mind came to a stop as a two runners got in my way.
Headlamps! I groaned, and resignedly slowed my pace, to keep my less-flattering features from jiggling in the spotlight. What kind of idiots needed headlamps on a butte in the middle of an Idaho winter? Not a single animal could be found out in the open at these temperatures, let alone the more dangerous human attackers.
The runners—there were two of them—uttered a hasty “g’morning” which I returned, as is the custom among runners who pass each other. But as they separated to let me through, one of the runners turned, shining a light in my face as he passed.
“Hey!” His voice echoed off the volcanic rock of the butte.
I slowed my pace and turned. The headlamp was coming toward me.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” he asked.
By now I had stopped and was facing the voice, but I covered my eyes with one hand to block out the light of his lamp.
“She can’t see you with that light in her face,” the second runner scolded. “Turn it off.”
Both lights were extinguished, and when my eyes finally adjusted to the fading twilight, I recognized the guy in front of me—Mitchell Statham. Mitch was a well-known face at Burton High School—tall, blonde, good-looking, and a football player—the ultimately clichéd “hot guy” type.
I groaned inwardly. Why did I have to run into one of the best looking guys from school while wearing spandex and with messy morning hair? I looked up at his eyes—light blue eyes set in a chiseled, fashion model’s face. Of course his hair looked perfect.
“Yes, Mitch, you know me,” I reminded him. “I’m Jacey—from chem class last year.”
Mitch frowned in concentration. I looked past him to see what had happened to the second runner, who was bent over, stretching his legs in the darkness a few yards back.
“Jacey . . . Jacey Grobe?” Mitch asked incredulously.
“Yes.” I smiled. I was getting used this sort of reaction after losing so much weight.
“Wow.” Mitch sounded impressed. “I hardly recognized your, uh—”
“My new body?” I finished his sentence. Some people were uncomfortable pointing out how fat I used to be, but I reveled in the comparison.
Mitch stood with hands on hips and chest puffed out—a very “jock-like” stance, I thought. “Yeah,” he smiled. “Your, uh, body looks great.”
I changed the subject. “What are you doing up here?”
“Cross training,” he replied. “And Adam here has never run on a butte before.” Mitch hitched a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the person behind him.
“Yes I have,” Adam growled while moving towards us, “but in Colorado we call it a ‘mesa.’”
I squinted into the approaching morning light and recognized the face of Adam Lodge, who moved here from Colorado last year and was in my AP English class. He wasn’t as tall as Mitch, but an intimidating “popular guy” type just the same. I waved and smiled in his direction.
Adam barely gave me a passing glance, but in that fraction of a second, his eyes bore into mine with what felt like a long, icy glare. Then he disappeared completely.
What the—?
Shocked, I started to cry out to Mitch, but I instantly saw Adam—right where he had been a second ago—clapping a hand on Mitch’s shoulder and turning away as if nothing had happened. And nothing had. I shivered and wiped at my malfunctioning eyes, certain that my brain was at fault. I wasn’t always completely awake at this early hour.
Mitch was still looking squarely me at me—he hadn’t noticed Adam’s penetrating glance or my strange behavior. “So, Jacey—” He sounded as if he wanted to continue our conversation, but Adam cut him off.
“Hey man, are we gonna finish this run or what?” The rigid set of Adam’s retreating body seemed to broadcast his frustration, as if we were somehow inconveniencing him.
“Yeah, I have to go, too,” I told Mitch, wishing that he had gone running by himself this morning. Something in Adam’s voice told me that my presence wasn’t welcome.
I turned to resume my down the trail, but Mitch didn’t move.
“Hey, I never see you around school anymore,” he pressed. “Why not?”
“I’m only attending first period now,” I answered over my shoulder. “I’m taking the rest of my classes online—from home.”
“What class do you have first period?” Mitch called after me.
I trotted backwards for a few paces, long enough to call out—“English. I’m in Favarello’s class.”
“Good—I’ll watch for you!” Mitch called back, then turned and rejoined his friend.
While jogging on, I contemplated Mitch’s astonishment at my changed appearance and his apparent approval. But Adam’s withering glare killed any notion that I might be good enough for someone like Mitch, and made me feel as if I were the Fat Girl all over again. It made me run faster.
By the time I reached the base of the trail, I was winded. Looking at my watch, I realized that my brief exchange with Mitch had really slowed me down—I now had time for only half a shower. But as I sprinted for home, I smiled to myself.
Late or not, Mitch was worth it.
***
Back at home, I started the dryer and went upstairs to my little bathroom. I stripped off my running clothes and jumped into the shower before the water was completely hot.
As the water grow steadily hotter, it alleviated the intense cold that drenched me outside. I loved running outside in wintertime, but hated the way its chill seemed to stay with me all day. Recalling Adam’s icy glare, I felt even colder.
After my shower, I dressed quickly in jeans from a pile on the floor of my bedroom and grabbed a ratty sweater off of the “last resort” shelf in my closet. With a headband in my wet hair and my backpack in hand, I was halfway down the stairs when I heard the crash.
Eli!
I bounded down the stairs two at a time, afraid of what I would find this time. A broken cookie jar? An overturned chair? Please—anything but an injured little boy!
At the end of the central hallway downstairs I rounded the corner into the kitchen and spotted the wriggling body of my clumsy, three-year old brother sprawled on the floor and screaming in pain.
I knelt down beside a sobbing Eli, who was struggling to gain a foothold in the puddle of orange juice. Apparently, he had been trying to pour himself a drink—again.
Eli wailed with outstretched arms as I approached him, the tears coursing down his soft baby cheeks. “I fall!”
Leaning in to his arms, I let Eli grab on to my neck, even though I knew the orange juice would make me sticky. I just couldn’t resist that angel face. “You okay, buddy?” I asked as I pulled him out of the puddle and set him down on the kitchen table.
Above Eli’s screams, another tiny voice called out—“Not me! Eli did it—not me!”
“I know, Kaily,” I assured her.
Poor Kaily. Barely three years old, yet she constantly worried that we would accuse her of hurting her twin brother—something we used to do until we discovered that Eli wasn’t a victim of sibling rivalry after all. He was just a hopeless klutz.
Before I could assess the damage to Eli’s skinned knees, Dawn rushed into the room and moved me aside.
“Eli—baby!” she crooned, while pushing the tangled mass of long reddish hair away from her face so she could get a better look at him. Dawn had obviously been sound asleep when Eli fell, but I bit my tongue to keep from pointing out that if she had been awake and helping her son, Eli wouldn’t have fallen.
I moved away from them and over to the sink, where I found a rag to clean up the mess.
“Eli fell, Mama—I didn’t do it,” Kaily said, reprising her role as speaker for the twins, because Eli’s vocabulary was nowhere near as extensive as hers.
Dawn yawned and nodded absentmindedly while adjusting the knot on her long satin robe, cinching it tighter to fit around the slender waist that made me cringe with envy. Dawn got to sleep in and she was naturally thin. Must be nice.
“Daddy?” Eli whimpered while looking past Dawn for the familiar face.
My heart sank and I immediately turned back to the spilled juice, fighting to stifle the surge of tears that accompanied Eli’s innocent pleas. I knew that at three years old, he couldn’t understand a concept as complicated as death, but I hated how we had to tell Eli over and over again that Daddy was gone.
“I’m here, Eli,” Dawn assured him as she pulled him up off the table and into her arms. “Mommy’s here, so don’t you worry.”
Before I could mentally rebut the idea that Dawn was actually here—because she so rarely got out of bed anymore—the doorbell rang, and I tossed the wet rag into the sink.
“Gotta go,” I said, reaching out to hug and kiss the twins before grabbing my backpack and heading for the front door.
“Hi, Lecia. Perfect timing,” I said as I greeted my friend on the front porch. “Let’s go.”
Lecia—short for Leticia—laughed and followed me out to the driveway, where her tiny red Honda was purring, ready to carry us over the icy streets to school. For what must have been the zillionth time, I thanked my lucky stars that Lecia gave me a ride to school every day--my life didn’t exactly jive with bus schedules.
While climbing into the passenger seat, I glanced at Lecia’s cashmere sweater and new wool coat.
“Style—you’ve got it,” I chuckled. Lecia just laughed and shook her mahogany-colored curls—yet another feature I envied. She claimed to admire my gringa coloring and stony blue eyes, but I knew it was all a ruse to make me feel better. Whenever I looked in the mirror, all I ever noticed was my thick body and ash-colored hair.
“You look tired!” Lecia scolded me while glancing over her shoulder to reverse her car out of the driveway. “I swear, all this babysitting and housework is making you old before your time.”
“No it’s not,” I countered. “I just haven’t put any makeup on yet.” I looked deathly pale without it, so I unzipped a pocket in my coat and retrieved a few tubes of makeup, then flipped down the sunshade so I could use the small mirror to monitor my actions.
“Hah!” Lecia snorted. “I don’t even call what you wear ‘makeup’ because you hardly wear any at all.”
“Not as much as you, no,” I agreed, “but you look good with a lot of color. When I try to do my makeup like yours, I just come off looking trashy.”
Lecia laughed and peeked into her rearview mirror as if assessing my statement. I often wished that I had her beautiful Latina coloring and flawless skin. Especially her hair—it was a short mass of curls that touched the nape of her neck and seemed to sprout in all directions up top. On me, such curls would have looked messy, but on Lecia, they looked like something a sculptor would design. I sighed.
“What?” Lecia asked.
“Nothing. I’m just coveting your hair. Mine is so bland—I’m getting tired of headbands and ponytails.”
“Oh no,” Lecia countered. “I have bad hair days all the time. Trust me, you wouldn’t want my hair.”
The song on the radio changed just then, and Lecia turned up the volume. I closed the mirror, leaned back my head, and let my mind wander while the radio played. Then I remembered—I sat up quickly.
“I almost forgot to tell you!” I gasped. “I ran into Mitch Statham today. Literally! He was out running the butte, and he stopped to talk to me.”
“Mitch Statham?” Lecia turned down the radio to make sure she had heard me correctly. “Get outta here! What did he say?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “I think he was impressed with my weight loss, though”.
“Girl, you look so good now, he’d be blind not to notice!” Lecia was always complimenting me on my hard work.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think his friend was too impressed.”
“Friend? What friend?” Lecia downshifted to make a right-hand turn.
“Mitch was out running with that new guy—Adam—from Colorado.”
“Adam Lodge?” Of course Lecia knew him—she knew everybody. “Isn’t he in your English class?”
“Yeah. But the minute he got here, he fell right in with the uber-popular crowd. He’s never spoken to me before.”
“Figures.” Lecia chuckled. “He’s dating Becky Page.”
“The ballerina?”
“Yep.”
I tried to remember her face. “Isn’t she a senior?”
“Yeah, but guys with his looks aren’t limited to their own grade.”
“Or to rules of etiquette,” I complained. “You should have seen the look he gave me this morning. I’m obviously not cool enough to be talking to Mitch.”
“What’d he do?” Lecia demanded, sounding like an angry parent about to seek retribution for an offense against her child.
“Relax, Lecia. He just glared at me, that’s all.”
“What a snob!” Lecia added vehemently. Her loyalty to me was always a boost. “But Mitch—he was nice?”
“Very.”
“I bet he stopped to talk because you totally turned his head.”
“You think so? I mean, I’ve lost a lot of weight, but I’ve still got a good fifteen pounds to go.”
“Hey—those fifteen pounds make you look curvy, not fat.” Lecia began another of her favorite lectures. “Maybe Hollywood wants us all skin and bones, but guys like curves—trust me!”
“I dunno,” I wavered. “Mitch usually dates the skin-and-bones type.”
“What do you care?” Lecia demanded. “You still caught his attention.”
I just laughed. Lecia caught guys’ attention all the time, but to me, this was a rare and exciting occurrence. After so many years as the lonely Fat Girl, I wanted all of that dieting and exercise to earn me more than just a new wardrobe.
At school, Lecia and I separated with a few words and a wave. For some reason I felt anxious while walking to class. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, but everything felt different today. Whether it was something inside of me or related to my surroundings, I couldn’t tell. Considering the unexpected encounter that had interrupted my run this morning, I was curious to see what else the day would bring.
“Mitch!”
I screamed, but I was thrown sideways as the truck lurched, careening violently toward the mountain wall.
I scrambled in my seat, no longer breathing, but feeling my pulse pounding in my head. The truck seemed to be moving in slow motion, and I knew where it was going—right into the mountainside. I was going to die.
The lights of the dash were extinguished and the throbbing of my heart ceased as I braced myself for impact. For death.
As quickly as all of this happened, I felt—at some point—a pair of arms encircling my waist. They seemed to come out of nowhere. But I struggled against them, trying desperately to move in my seat—to move away from the mountain wall about to crush me. Or had it killed me already?
***
I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t feel a thing.
Thick darkness surrounded me like a heavy blanket.
Am I dead?
I tried to reach out to my left.
Nothing.
Had I even moved my arm?
Arms. I could still feel them—two arms around my waist. Someone was holding me . . .
**Chapter 1**
Sirens pierced the early morning air, forcing my eyes to open. Tiny red lights helped me focus as I saw the numbers on my alarm clock—5:30 am.
With a reluctant moan, I batted at the clock and threw off my quilt while pushing my legs onto the floor—a trick for waking up early that I’d read about in one of those weight loss books. The cold floor was supposed to shock my warm, sleepy feet into wakefulness, I guess. With a shiver and a start, I realized that it worked.
Kneeling by my bed, I reached for the running shoes I kept just underneath. But while reaching for the running clothes on my nightstand, I let my eyes flit to the soft mound of bedding above me—big mistake. With slow dread, I pulled myself up off the floor and stared down at the yellow quilt that had been with me since infancy. Lumped up against my pillow like that, it reminded me of the lemon chiffon pie with whipped cream that Dad used to buy for me on weekends. I ached to dive back into those soft covers and let their sweet softness carry me back to sleep.
No! I groaned, forcing my eyes away from that luscious heap of comfort as I headed to the bathroom. I wasn’t taking orders from her anymore—the voice that was always telling me to go back to bed, to take it easy, or to eat just one more slice of pizza. The Fat Girl voice, as I liked to call her, always told me that I should take it easy today; I could do better tomorrow. But I ignored her now because I knew Fat Girl was a liar. Whenever I gave in to her, my tomorrows never got any better.
Twenty minutes later I found myself outside, standing at the foot of a towering enemy and shivering with cold. Before second thoughts could convince me to give up, I bent low at the waist and darted towards the unfriendly face of my nemesis, hoping that this time I’d emerge victorious. But after half a mile of uphill jogging, my aching calves and throbbing lungs declared me the loser. The monstrous mountain had won--again.
Okay, so it wasn’t exactly a mountain—it was a butte. But the difference between a mountain and the inactive volcano I jogged each day was one of those stupid details that only textbook authors ever understood anyway. All I knew was that it was tall and rocky, I could see it from my house, and ever since I’d started trying to jog away the layer of fat I’d donned in junior high, that butte had always been there, blotting the morning sunrise from my view as if to say, “Hey—if you want to see the light, you’ve got to get past me, first.” And so each morning, I fought a little harder to push past this arrogant volcanic mass.
Feeling defeated but energized by the run, I turned at the next switchback and started my descent, letting my frustration dissolve as the cold air sharpened my senses. My throat froze slightly each time I inhaled, and the crunching sounds of crystallized snow beneath my feet were like an energetic rhythm that followed me everywhere. Despite the darkness of this early hour, the farmers’ fields at the base of the butte were aglow with the moonlight that reflected off their snow-covered surfaces.
While jogging carefully down the last trail, I remembered that I was out of clean sweaters—and I had forgotten to put in a load of laundry last night. A quick mental inventory of my dresser didn’t bring anything to mind, either, so I’d probably have to settle for whatever lingered at the bottom of my closet. Or maybe Dawn had something I could borrow.
Dawn was my stepmom. She was the closest thing to a mother I’d ever known, because my own mother died when I was too young to remember. Dawn was definitely cool enough to call “Mom,” but the name just never seemed to fit.
The ramblings of my still-groggy mind came to a stop as a two runners got in my way.
Headlamps! I groaned, and resignedly slowed my pace, to keep my less-flattering features from jiggling in the spotlight. What kind of idiots needed headlamps on a butte in the middle of an Idaho winter? Not a single animal could be found out in the open at these temperatures, let alone the more dangerous human attackers.
The runners—there were two of them—uttered a hasty “g’morning” which I returned, as is the custom among runners who pass each other. But as they separated to let me through, one of the runners turned, shining a light in my face as he passed.
“Hey!” His voice echoed off the volcanic rock of the butte.
I slowed my pace and turned. The headlamp was coming toward me.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” he asked.
By now I had stopped and was facing the voice, but I covered my eyes with one hand to block out the light of his lamp.
“She can’t see you with that light in her face,” the second runner scolded. “Turn it off.”
Both lights were extinguished, and when my eyes finally adjusted to the fading twilight, I recognized the guy in front of me—Mitchell Statham. Mitch was a well-known face at Burton High School—tall, blonde, good-looking, and a football player—the ultimately clichéd “hot guy” type.
I groaned inwardly. Why did I have to run into one of the best looking guys from school while wearing spandex and with messy morning hair? I looked up at his eyes—light blue eyes set in a chiseled, fashion model’s face. Of course his hair looked perfect.
“Yes, Mitch, you know me,” I reminded him. “I’m Jacey—from chem class last year.”
Mitch frowned in concentration. I looked past him to see what had happened to the second runner, who was bent over, stretching his legs in the darkness a few yards back.
“Jacey . . . Jacey Grobe?” Mitch asked incredulously.
“Yes.” I smiled. I was getting used this sort of reaction after losing so much weight.
“Wow.” Mitch sounded impressed. “I hardly recognized your, uh—”
“My new body?” I finished his sentence. Some people were uncomfortable pointing out how fat I used to be, but I reveled in the comparison.
Mitch stood with hands on hips and chest puffed out—a very “jock-like” stance, I thought. “Yeah,” he smiled. “Your, uh, body looks great.”
I changed the subject. “What are you doing up here?”
“Cross training,” he replied. “And Adam here has never run on a butte before.” Mitch hitched a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the person behind him.
“Yes I have,” Adam growled while moving towards us, “but in Colorado we call it a ‘mesa.’”
I squinted into the approaching morning light and recognized the face of Adam Lodge, who moved here from Colorado last year and was in my AP English class. He wasn’t as tall as Mitch, but an intimidating “popular guy” type just the same. I waved and smiled in his direction.
Adam barely gave me a passing glance, but in that fraction of a second, his eyes bore into mine with what felt like a long, icy glare. Then he disappeared completely.
What the—?
Shocked, I started to cry out to Mitch, but I instantly saw Adam—right where he had been a second ago—clapping a hand on Mitch’s shoulder and turning away as if nothing had happened. And nothing had. I shivered and wiped at my malfunctioning eyes, certain that my brain was at fault. I wasn’t always completely awake at this early hour.
Mitch was still looking squarely me at me—he hadn’t noticed Adam’s penetrating glance or my strange behavior. “So, Jacey—” He sounded as if he wanted to continue our conversation, but Adam cut him off.
“Hey man, are we gonna finish this run or what?” The rigid set of Adam’s retreating body seemed to broadcast his frustration, as if we were somehow inconveniencing him.
“Yeah, I have to go, too,” I told Mitch, wishing that he had gone running by himself this morning. Something in Adam’s voice told me that my presence wasn’t welcome.
I turned to resume my down the trail, but Mitch didn’t move.
“Hey, I never see you around school anymore,” he pressed. “Why not?”
“I’m only attending first period now,” I answered over my shoulder. “I’m taking the rest of my classes online—from home.”
“What class do you have first period?” Mitch called after me.
I trotted backwards for a few paces, long enough to call out—“English. I’m in Favarello’s class.”
“Good—I’ll watch for you!” Mitch called back, then turned and rejoined his friend.
While jogging on, I contemplated Mitch’s astonishment at my changed appearance and his apparent approval. But Adam’s withering glare killed any notion that I might be good enough for someone like Mitch, and made me feel as if I were the Fat Girl all over again. It made me run faster.
By the time I reached the base of the trail, I was winded. Looking at my watch, I realized that my brief exchange with Mitch had really slowed me down—I now had time for only half a shower. But as I sprinted for home, I smiled to myself.
Late or not, Mitch was worth it.
***
Back at home, I started the dryer and went upstairs to my little bathroom. I stripped off my running clothes and jumped into the shower before the water was completely hot.
As the water grow steadily hotter, it alleviated the intense cold that drenched me outside. I loved running outside in wintertime, but hated the way its chill seemed to stay with me all day. Recalling Adam’s icy glare, I felt even colder.
After my shower, I dressed quickly in jeans from a pile on the floor of my bedroom and grabbed a ratty sweater off of the “last resort” shelf in my closet. With a headband in my wet hair and my backpack in hand, I was halfway down the stairs when I heard the crash.
Eli!
I bounded down the stairs two at a time, afraid of what I would find this time. A broken cookie jar? An overturned chair? Please—anything but an injured little boy!
At the end of the central hallway downstairs I rounded the corner into the kitchen and spotted the wriggling body of my clumsy, three-year old brother sprawled on the floor and screaming in pain.
I knelt down beside a sobbing Eli, who was struggling to gain a foothold in the puddle of orange juice. Apparently, he had been trying to pour himself a drink—again.
Eli wailed with outstretched arms as I approached him, the tears coursing down his soft baby cheeks. “I fall!”
Leaning in to his arms, I let Eli grab on to my neck, even though I knew the orange juice would make me sticky. I just couldn’t resist that angel face. “You okay, buddy?” I asked as I pulled him out of the puddle and set him down on the kitchen table.
Above Eli’s screams, another tiny voice called out—“Not me! Eli did it—not me!”
“I know, Kaily,” I assured her.
Poor Kaily. Barely three years old, yet she constantly worried that we would accuse her of hurting her twin brother—something we used to do until we discovered that Eli wasn’t a victim of sibling rivalry after all. He was just a hopeless klutz.
Before I could assess the damage to Eli’s skinned knees, Dawn rushed into the room and moved me aside.
“Eli—baby!” she crooned, while pushing the tangled mass of long reddish hair away from her face so she could get a better look at him. Dawn had obviously been sound asleep when Eli fell, but I bit my tongue to keep from pointing out that if she had been awake and helping her son, Eli wouldn’t have fallen.
I moved away from them and over to the sink, where I found a rag to clean up the mess.
“Eli fell, Mama—I didn’t do it,” Kaily said, reprising her role as speaker for the twins, because Eli’s vocabulary was nowhere near as extensive as hers.
Dawn yawned and nodded absentmindedly while adjusting the knot on her long satin robe, cinching it tighter to fit around the slender waist that made me cringe with envy. Dawn got to sleep in and she was naturally thin. Must be nice.
“Daddy?” Eli whimpered while looking past Dawn for the familiar face.
My heart sank and I immediately turned back to the spilled juice, fighting to stifle the surge of tears that accompanied Eli’s innocent pleas. I knew that at three years old, he couldn’t understand a concept as complicated as death, but I hated how we had to tell Eli over and over again that Daddy was gone.
“I’m here, Eli,” Dawn assured him as she pulled him up off the table and into her arms. “Mommy’s here, so don’t you worry.”
Before I could mentally rebut the idea that Dawn was actually here—because she so rarely got out of bed anymore—the doorbell rang, and I tossed the wet rag into the sink.
“Gotta go,” I said, reaching out to hug and kiss the twins before grabbing my backpack and heading for the front door.
“Hi, Lecia. Perfect timing,” I said as I greeted my friend on the front porch. “Let’s go.”
Lecia—short for Leticia—laughed and followed me out to the driveway, where her tiny red Honda was purring, ready to carry us over the icy streets to school. For what must have been the zillionth time, I thanked my lucky stars that Lecia gave me a ride to school every day--my life didn’t exactly jive with bus schedules.
While climbing into the passenger seat, I glanced at Lecia’s cashmere sweater and new wool coat.
“Style—you’ve got it,” I chuckled. Lecia just laughed and shook her mahogany-colored curls—yet another feature I envied. She claimed to admire my gringa coloring and stony blue eyes, but I knew it was all a ruse to make me feel better. Whenever I looked in the mirror, all I ever noticed was my thick body and ash-colored hair.
“You look tired!” Lecia scolded me while glancing over her shoulder to reverse her car out of the driveway. “I swear, all this babysitting and housework is making you old before your time.”
“No it’s not,” I countered. “I just haven’t put any makeup on yet.” I looked deathly pale without it, so I unzipped a pocket in my coat and retrieved a few tubes of makeup, then flipped down the sunshade so I could use the small mirror to monitor my actions.
“Hah!” Lecia snorted. “I don’t even call what you wear ‘makeup’ because you hardly wear any at all.”
“Not as much as you, no,” I agreed, “but you look good with a lot of color. When I try to do my makeup like yours, I just come off looking trashy.”
Lecia laughed and peeked into her rearview mirror as if assessing my statement. I often wished that I had her beautiful Latina coloring and flawless skin. Especially her hair—it was a short mass of curls that touched the nape of her neck and seemed to sprout in all directions up top. On me, such curls would have looked messy, but on Lecia, they looked like something a sculptor would design. I sighed.
“What?” Lecia asked.
“Nothing. I’m just coveting your hair. Mine is so bland—I’m getting tired of headbands and ponytails.”
“Oh no,” Lecia countered. “I have bad hair days all the time. Trust me, you wouldn’t want my hair.”
The song on the radio changed just then, and Lecia turned up the volume. I closed the mirror, leaned back my head, and let my mind wander while the radio played. Then I remembered—I sat up quickly.
“I almost forgot to tell you!” I gasped. “I ran into Mitch Statham today. Literally! He was out running the butte, and he stopped to talk to me.”
“Mitch Statham?” Lecia turned down the radio to make sure she had heard me correctly. “Get outta here! What did he say?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “I think he was impressed with my weight loss, though”.
“Girl, you look so good now, he’d be blind not to notice!” Lecia was always complimenting me on my hard work.
“Yeah, well, I don’t think his friend was too impressed.”
“Friend? What friend?” Lecia downshifted to make a right-hand turn.
“Mitch was out running with that new guy—Adam—from Colorado.”
“Adam Lodge?” Of course Lecia knew him—she knew everybody. “Isn’t he in your English class?”
“Yeah. But the minute he got here, he fell right in with the uber-popular crowd. He’s never spoken to me before.”
“Figures.” Lecia chuckled. “He’s dating Becky Page.”
“The ballerina?”
“Yep.”
I tried to remember her face. “Isn’t she a senior?”
“Yeah, but guys with his looks aren’t limited to their own grade.”
“Or to rules of etiquette,” I complained. “You should have seen the look he gave me this morning. I’m obviously not cool enough to be talking to Mitch.”
“What’d he do?” Lecia demanded, sounding like an angry parent about to seek retribution for an offense against her child.
“Relax, Lecia. He just glared at me, that’s all.”
“What a snob!” Lecia added vehemently. Her loyalty to me was always a boost. “But Mitch—he was nice?”
“Very.”
“I bet he stopped to talk because you totally turned his head.”
“You think so? I mean, I’ve lost a lot of weight, but I’ve still got a good fifteen pounds to go.”
“Hey—those fifteen pounds make you look curvy, not fat.” Lecia began another of her favorite lectures. “Maybe Hollywood wants us all skin and bones, but guys like curves—trust me!”
“I dunno,” I wavered. “Mitch usually dates the skin-and-bones type.”
“What do you care?” Lecia demanded. “You still caught his attention.”
I just laughed. Lecia caught guys’ attention all the time, but to me, this was a rare and exciting occurrence. After so many years as the lonely Fat Girl, I wanted all of that dieting and exercise to earn me more than just a new wardrobe.
At school, Lecia and I separated with a few words and a wave. For some reason I felt anxious while walking to class. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was, but everything felt different today. Whether it was something inside of me or related to my surroundings, I couldn’t tell. Considering the unexpected encounter that had interrupted my run this morning, I was curious to see what else the day would bring.
