Chubby Chaser (4 page)

Sara pulled up to the school’s student parking lot in her red Volkswagen Jetta with a grimace on her face: she had always bemoaned the return to school, because it meant another nine months of suffering the fools of the Tallis High student body. Fortunately, this was her last year, and if everything went according to plan, she would be attending Wesleyan University next fall, where she would finally be among her intellectual peers.

She came to school a little early that day to talk to her guidance counselor, Mrs. Townshend, about applying for early admission to Wesleyan. Reaching across her seat to the passenger side, Sara grabbed her backpack and then climbed out of her car, her bitch face firmly in place in case any of the jackasses who populated the school tried to mess with her, though they usually left her alone these days.

As she crossed the parking lot to get to the school, she turned and saw some dumb slut in a car giving a guy a blow job! In broad daylight! What the fuck! Sara turned away quickly, scrunching her face up in disgust.
One more year
, she told herself. Just one more year, and she would be free. Life would be much better after high school; “It gets better after high school” had to be a saying for a reason.

Mrs. Townshend was a sweet fifty-year-old woman, who kept a jar of bite-size candy bars on her desk (which Sara loved) and always smelled as though she bathed in perfume (which Sara didn’t love). She looked over Sara’s records on her computer before turning her attention to Sara. “Honestly, you’re a shoo-in for Wesleyan even if you don’t apply early admission. Your GPA is perfect, you’re a lock for valedictorian, you scored a twenty-two hundred on your SATs, an eight hundred on your SAT math subject test, and a seven hundred on your SAT writing subject test. Then you’ve got your art portfolio, which goes to show you’re well rounded and passionate about something. You still need two teacher recommendations though. How are you looking on those?”

“I’m on good terms with all my teachers, so I shouldn’t have any trouble getting recommendations.”

“Good. What about your essays? You can use your art for the one that requires you to write about one of your extracurricular activities or work experience, and you can write about anything you want for the other one.”

“Um, I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“What about your mother’s passing? You can write about how that’s affected you as a young girl going through puberty without her mother.”

“No way.”

“But—”

“No.”

“Okay, well, try to come up with some other ideas. You have until November, so there’s no big hurry. Your stats will be the most important part anyway.”

The bell rang.

“That’s the first bell. You better get to class.”

“Okay.” Sara grabbed her backpack (and a few candy bars) and left, wiping the sweat from her brow on the way out.

Mrs. Townshend was such a bitch. How could she even consider asking Sara to exploit her mother’s death for a college essay? If Sara had to stoop that low for admission to Wesleyan, then she didn’t want to go there. She did still need a topic for her second essay though. At first she thought about using her hunting and shooting experiences but then quickly decided against it: with all the school shootings that have occurred, that might make them averse to admitting her, and she didn’t want to seem too weird or out there.
Ooh
,
I know
! Sara thought as she finished her last candy bar. She tutored her fellow students to cover her National Honor Society community-service requirements. She could write about that and how it gave her so much joy to help her peers succeed academically. It was total bullshit, of course, but colleges ate stuff like that up.

Sara loved the order of her classes. It allowed her to get all of her least favorite subjects (AP English, French, and AP government) out of the way first and saved all of her favorites (physics, anatomy and physiology, and AP calculus) until after lunch. Sara didn’t like English class, because it usually involved reading some boring book or play, like Shakespeare’s
The Taming of the Shrew
, simply because it was a classic. She loved to read but preferred to pick her own material. She didn’t mind French that much, but it wasn’t the language she wanted to study. She wanted to learn how to speak Japanese and Chinese, but her school didn’t offer those. She had to take at least two years of a foreign language to graduate, and French was the best of a bad bunch (French, Spanish, and German). As for AP government, she simply found politics boring, but it was another class she had to take if she wanted to graduate. She could’ve taken regular government and regular English and regular calculus, but AP classes looked better to the college-admissions people. And because AP classes required at least a B-plus from last year’s class, there were fewer dunderheads in the classroom, though a few riffraff always managed to sneak in, usually jocks and their female counterparts (cheerleaders).

When it was time for lunch, Sara went out to her car to eat. She had been avoiding the cafeteria since eighth grade. Kids had always made fun of her for how much she weighed, how much she ate, and the way that she ate, but that year they had done something particularly heinous to her.

Sara was sitting by herself in the cafeteria, eating a slice of pizza, periodically dipping it into a small container of ranch dressing, when Kimberly Weitsel came over and sat next to her. Kimberly was pretty and popular, and for the life of her, Sara couldn’t figure out why Kimberly would want to sit next to her.

“Do you know who Lady Gaga is?” Kimberly asked.

“Y . . . yeah, I know who she is,” Sara stuttered, nervous.

“Everyone keeps saying I look like her, but I don’t know.”

“You’re a lot prettier than her.”

“I am?”

Sara nodded enthusiastically.

“Thanks. You’re really pretty too.”

Sara shook her head and looked down. “N . . . n . . . no.”

“No, really, you are. I just love your hair color. It’s so different looking.” She stroked a strand of Sara’s dark-red locks. “Is this your natural hair color?”

Sara nodded.

“I’m totes jealous. All I have is lame, boring brown hair.”

“B . . . b . . . but it’s very nice brown hair. Very pert and shiny.”

“Pert?” Kimberly clearly didn’t know what the word meant.

“Y . . . y . . . yeah, pert, as in ‘nice, attractive’, you know?”

“You’re so smart. Yet another thing about you to make me totes jealous.”

Sara smiled. Kimberly was one of the prettiest and most popular girls in school, and here she was, saying she was envious of Sara. It was as though her birthday and Christmas had fallen on the same day. To Sara’s surprise, Kimberly continued to have lunch with her for the next two weeks, and it was a great boon to her: she felt the anxiety and trepidation that had plagued her for years when it came time to go to school begin to dissipate; she felt more comfortable speaking up in public; and for the first time, she felt as though she had found a true friend.

That was all shot to hell when Kimberly brought a bag of homemade chocolate-chip cookies for lunch and gave two to Sara. Sara thought they tasted great. She didn’t even notice a problem until near the end of the class she had after lunch. Her stomach cramped, and became hot and bloated, as though it were filled to the brim with molten lava, and she could feel intense pressure in her anal region. She had diarrhea.

She trotted up to the desk of Mr. Whitman, her English teacher. “Mr. Whitman, may I use the restroom, please?”

He looked at the clock. “I can’t give you permission to do that. There’s only five minutes left until the end of class, and as you know, Ms. Krason, students aren’t allowed out during the first or last five minutes of class.”

“Please, Mr. Whitman, it’s an emergency.” She leaned toward him and whispered, “I have diarrhea.”

“Oh, I’ve heard that one before, Ms. Krason,” Mr. Whitman chuckled. “I never thought I’d hear it from you though.”

Sara held her stomach and clenched her anal sphincter muscles; the heating and bloating were getting worse, as was the intense pounding in her anal region. The sound of laughter made her turn around. Kimberly and the people she was sitting with were looking at Sara with sly grins on their faces and tittering. Sara knew immediately what had happened. It was the cookies. Kimberly had pretended to be her friend to set her up with the cookies.

Sara had never disobeyed a teacher before, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to hold it in until the end of class, and she didn’t want to give her enemies the satisfaction of seeing her suffer anymore. So she ran for it, and several strides later, she involuntarily expelled the contents of her bowel, but she kept running. Behind her she could hear the entire class laughing.

That day was the last time Sara had eaten in public. It was also the last time she had ever tried to befriend anyone.

It had been two weeks since the start of school, and so far, everything had been going great for Jason: he had led the Tallis Eagles to victory during their first game of the season, he had obtained a homecoming-king nomination, and the weather had cooled down enough to allow him and the rest of the guys on the football team to wear their blue-and-white letterman jackets.

He still wasn’t enjoying the school part of school though: all the teachers had such a bland way of teaching that it was next to impossible to pay attention to them. The last time he’d had a teacher that had fun with lessons was in eighth grade when he had taken Mrs. Weinstock’s history class. It had been great. He had never had to open a book but had still managed to learn from all the awesome projects Mrs. Weinstock had had the students do and all the cool field trips she had taken her classes on. They didn’t make teachers like that anymore.

Now, they made them like Mr. Henderson, his punctilious AP calculus teacher, who rigidly followed the book and whose class Jason, Eric, and Andy were in. They sat in the back, so they could talk and make fun of people.

“That bitch is such a know-it-all.” Eric was talking about Sara Krason, a fat-ass blob of a girl sitting in the front of the class, answering most of Mr. Henderson’s questions and correcting anybody who dared to answer incorrectly. She had a reputation for being a major bitch. Andy had told them she had acted like a vile cunt when she had come through his lane a couple of weeks ago at Harold’s.

“Yeah, too bad she can’t use all her smarts to figure out how to lose some weight,” Jason joked. All three chuckled.

“Hey, fat girls need love too,” opined Andy. “Besides, I’ve always wondered what it’s like to fuck a chubby chick.”

“Ew! Man, you’re disgusting.” Jason was playing, although he really did find fat girls repulsive. “But if you really wanna know what’s it’s like to bone a fat chick, why don’t you go for it? Sara’s right there for the taking. I mean, it’s not like she’s got any other guys beating down her door.”

“Uh-uh.” Andy shook his head. “There’s no way that fat bitch is giving it up.”

“I could get it,” Jason boasted. He could never resist taking on a challenge or a bet.

“Bullshit,” said Eric.

“I bet ya’ll two hundred I could get it.”

“Deal. You have until the end of the marking period. And you have to get her panties for proof or record it. I hope you record it. That way we can see this epic car crash for ourselves.”

The three of them dapped on it.

The bell rang. Everyone began to clear out.

Jason saw Sara getting up to leave. He turned to his friends and smiled. “Watch and learn, bros.” He chased Sara as she left, calling her name, but she didn’t turn around.
She can
’
t be ignoring
me. He raced to get in front of her. He put on his player smile. “Hey, Sara, right?”

“Uh-huh,” she said curtly while not even looking at him. He could see drops of sweat on her forehead. She tried to go around him, but he blocked her way.

“I’m Jason.” He put his hand out to shake. She didn’t take it.

“Did you want something?” she asked. She had an annoyed look on her pudgy face.

“I . . . I need your help with calculus. See, I’m only pulling a C, and I need to get it up to at least a B to keep my scholarship to SCU, and you’re such a math whiz, and I know you tutor other kids, so I thought you could tutor me.” He shrugged and smiled in an effortlessly adorable way that would’ve made most girls and sexually confused boys melt; Sara, however, remained ice cold.

“Okay. Meet me at 232 Pilstine Drive an hour after school—”

“I have football practice on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays until six.”

Irritated, she sighed. “Okay, then meet me Tuesdays and Thursdays an hour after school. My tutoring sessions last an hour. Don’t be late and be ready to work.”

“Thank you.” He nodded and smiled. “Can I have your phone number in case—”

“Jason, we go to school together, we have a class together, and in case you haven’t noticed, it’s the one you need help with. If you need to tell me something, you can do it sometime during school.” She walked away.

Jason stood there, taken aback: no girl had ever treated him that way—at least not before he had failed to return her calls or she had caught him
cheating
. This was going to be harder than he had thought, but he did love a challenge.