Free Big Girl Small by Rachel Dewoskin

middle-aged guy named Bill, who has apparently been living here for more than a year. This is the kind of place that rents rooms by the week or month. Sometimes, late at night when there’s no wall of sunshine between me and my terror, I think I’ll be like Bill, just settle down and stay here for the rest of my life. It’s only $106 a week; I could last a long time with the money I took.
    I wonder who’s paying for Bill’s room. Maybe he has some money saved up from when he used to go to Alaska every winter to catch fish. That’s what he told me when we first met in the hallway. He seemed harmless in some hard-to-define but certain way, so I stopped to talk to him when he said hi, and he told me he used to go every winter and work on an Alaskan fishing boat and then he would come home and “just live” the rest of the year on the money he’d made, once it wasn’t fishing season anymore. I guess you can make a lot of money if you’re willing to go to Alaska and work on a fishing boat. Although I don’t really understand what it means to “just live,” especially if you do it at the Motel Manor.
    Bill is a good friend for me here because he’s too daft to realize that I’m a teenager and shouldn’t be here on my own, or that my story about being between jobs and “down on my luck” can’t possibly be true, that there’s probably a manhunt across the Midwest for a missing dwarf, or that I’m three feet tall. That’s why I like him; in his worldview, I’m as normal as the next person. The truth is, there are so many freaks on this wretched strip of highway that I barely stand out. I like that aspect. And I bought enough cans of SpaghettiOs to live for at least another week before I have to emerge and walk down the street to Kroger.
    The funny thing is, even though I started out by lying to Bill about the whole “between jobs” thing, I decided almost right after that to tell him my whole story, the way the reporters, and maybe even my parents and brothers and friends, would have liked to hear it. Bill doesn’t know how lucky he is to be the recipient of the epic dwarf download. Which is why he’s perfect. At first, I wasn’t sure how to tell him, even. I thought maybe I’d start with the hardest part, but then I rethought it, and decided I’d do it chronologically. I mean, I hinted that things turned out badly for me, and of course he knows—in whatever way it’s possible for a guy like him to know anything—that I ended up here and that that’s not good news. But I started with the beginning of my life at D’Arts.
    I’ve already told him up to the part about Chessie’s party. Bill’s a good audience for drama, probably not comedy. I don’t think he’d get jokes. But he’s kind, and he listens. And he nods a lot. Maybe he’s on drugs and can’t manage much information. That’s basically why I decided I’d tell him—it’s like practice in case I ever have to talk about it with my family, a rehearsal. During the whole nightmare, I managed to say impressively close to nothing for someone with such a big mouth. But I might have to explain it at some point, my perspective, I mean. Maybe to Sam. The thought of Sam makes me feel like my heart might bite its way out of my chest, fangs all over the place. He must be so grossed out and hurt and—I wonder if everyone at Tappan is making fun of him. I wonder if he’s seen—I can’t think about it.
    If I survive this, and leave the Motel Manor, even if I can’t ever bring myself to talk about it with Sam or Chad, I might need to tell my kids. I mean, if I ever have kids and they’re daughters or teenagers or something. I could make it like one of the “morality tales” Ms. Doman liked to talk about.
    Ms. Doman had this whole thing about how we have to tell stories about whatever happens to us, and then we can use those stories to decide whether our lives are happy or not, whether events have redeeming aspects or are totally hopeless,