Free Diary of a Mad Fat Girl by Stephanie McAfee

can’t stop thinking about Rodney King.
    “ Give me your school ID!” I whisper.
“Now!”
    “ Okay, we can handle this,” she says,
and starts digging in her pockets. “I just need to take a deep
breath and get my head back on and handle this.”
    She comes up with the ID card just as
Deputy Dumbass starts knocking on my window with his stupid billy
club. I roll down the window and decide that now is not the time to be
bitchy.
    “ Good evening, Deputy,” I say and try
to smile.
    “ What’re you ladies doin’ parked
around here?”
    “ We were just working out in the gym,”
I say, hoping that will stave off any questions about why I’m
sweating like a whore in church.
    “ We both teach here and sometimes we
come in on the weekends to work out, but not very often because
it’s so unbearably hot in
there.” I mop my forehead with one hand and offer him our school
ID’s with the other. He looks at Lilly’s, raises his eyebrows, and
smiles like men do when they feast their eyes upon her image. He
flips mine over, jumps a little, and hands them both back to
me.
    “ I ain’t never seen ya’ll back here
before and I patrol this parking lot every night ‘cept
Sundays.”
    “ Who patrols it on Sundays?” I ask and
Lilly punches me in the arm.
    “ Officer,” Lilly says sweetly and
leans over so her tank top falls at just the right angle to expose
her pink polka dot bra. “It seems like we run into you every time
we turn around and, you know what? I don’t even know your
name.”
    She throws open the passenger side door and
struts around to where the deputy is standing and it’s clear to me
that she has his full attention.
    “ Lilly Lane,” she says sweetly and
holds out a delicate hand, “and you are?”
    “ Dax, ma’am,” he says with
goofy-looking smile. He takes her hand and I think for a second
that he might drop to one knee and kiss it. “Dax Dorsett. I’m from
the Delta and don’t know many folks around here or where they work
and what not, but I’m trying to get it all together.” Dax taps
himself on the head and is unsuccessful in keeping his eyes off her
boobs.
    “ Well, Dax Dorsett from the Delta,
have you had supper?” Lilly asks and I shoot her a hard look that
she doesn’t see because she is all about Deputy Dax Dorsett right
now.
    “ Why, no ma’am, I haven’t,” Dax says,
and relaxes his stance. “I always ride by the school here, then
take a break for supper.”
    How convenient.
    “ Well, why don’t you come join us over
at Pier 57? You like pizza?” Lilly says and I’m shaking my head no,
but have apparently ceased to exist.
    “ Yeah, I love pizza. ’Specially
theirs.” He’s grinning and looking at her tits again.
    “ We’ll follow you there,” she pauses,
“unless you were going to arrest me for being a bad girl.” She bats
her eyelashes like a 14-year-old girl feeling the first sting of
Cupid’s arrow.
    “ Oh, no ma’am,” he says and his cheeks
turn red. “No, ma’am, I wouldn’t do that.”
    “ Oh, you big sweetie!” Lilly says.
“See you at the pizza place.”
    She blows him an air kiss and Deputy Dax
Dorsett hustles back to his patrol car like he’s been called to the
scene of a triple homicide.
    “ Lilly,” I say when she gets in, “what
the hell was that about?”
    “ Making friends, Ace,” she smiles at
me. “You should try it sometime.”
    18
    After a remarkably pleasant dinner at Pier
57 Pizza with the surprisingly funny Deputy Dax Dorsett, Lilly and
I set out to stalk that rat bastard Richard Stacks.
    “ Ol’ Deputy Dax is a real a sweetie,”
Lilly muses after we get in the car and buckle up.
    “ Yeah, and who knew he served in Iraq
and Afghanistan?” I say. “You know I have this image in my head of
veterans being sweet little old men with mesh back caps or long
haired fellows on motorcycles, but now there’s like this new wave
of veterans and it’s all these hot young fellows that don’t look
old enough to drive, let