Free Size 14 Is Not Fat Either by Meg Cabot Page A

saw.”
    “People saw it,” I say to him crossly. “Don’t you have something you should be doing?”
    He sighs. “I’m waiting for someone from Counseling Services. We’re going to be holding grief counseling here in the office from five to seven, to help residents cope with what happened to Lindsay.”
    I don’t say anything. I don’t have to. He already knows.
    “I told them no one was going to show up,” he says beleagueredly. “Except maybe Cheryl Haebig and the RAs. But it came down from the president’s office. The administration wants to look like we care.”
    “Well.” I nod at a sobbing Magda. “Here’s someone who needs some grief counseling.”
    Tom pales at my suggestion. “She’s your friend,” he says accusingly.
    I glare at him. “You’re the one with the master’s degree.”
    “In college student personnel! I have to tell you, Heather.” He looks frightened. “I don’t know about this. I mean, any of this. Things were a lot simpler back in Texas.”
    I glare at him even harder. “Oh, no,” I say. “You arenot quitting on me, Tom. Not because of one little murder.”
    “Little!” Tom’s face is still ashen. “Heather, nobody back home ever got their head whacked off and left in a pot on a stove. Sure, couple kids got crushed to death every year under the bonfire structure. But murdered? Honestly, Heather. Home’s looking pretty good right now.”
    “Oh, right,” I say sarcastically. “If it was so much better back there, how come you waited until you got here to come out of the closet?”
    Tom swallows. “Well…”
    “Let’s talk about your quitting later, okay?” I flop down on the couch beside Magda. “I’ve got other things to worry about right now.”
    Tom throws Magda one last panicky look, then mutters, “Okay, I’ll just, um, finish up this paperwork,”
    and disappears back into his office.
    I sit beside Magda, resting a hand on her back as she cries. I know this is the right thing to do as a friend…but as someone who works in a helping field, I’m not sure this is what I’m supposed to do.How could Dr. Jessup have hired someone like me? I wonder. I mean, I know I’m the only who applied, and all. But I am thoroughly unfit for this job. I don’t have the slightest idea what to do in the face of sorrow like Magda’s. Whereis that grief counselor, anyway?
    “Magda,” I say, patting her back through her pink cafeteria smock. “Um. Look, I’m sure they don’t really suspect you. I mean, anyone who knows you knows you couldn’t have had anything to do Page 38

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    with…what happened. Really, don’t worry about it. No one thinks you did it. The police are just doing their job.”
    Magda raises her tear-stained face to peer at me astonishedly.
    “That’s…that’s not why I’m upset,” she says, shaking her head until her—tiger-striped blond, this week—curls swing. “Iknow they’re just doing their job. That’s all right. None of us did it—none of us could do that.”
    “I know,” I say hastily, still rubbing her back. “It’s horrible of them to suspect you. But, you see—”
    “It’s just,” Magda goes on, as if I hadn’t spoken, “I heard…I heard it wasLindsay . But that couldn’t be.
    Not little Lindsay, with the eyes, and the hair? The cheerleader?”
    I stare at her. I can’t believe she didn’t recognize Lindsay back when she’d been looking into the pot.
    It’s true I probably saw Lindsay more often than Magda did, on account of her affection for my condom jar. So it isn’t any wonder I had no problem recognizing her. Is it?
    Or isthis the job I’m suited for? Recognizing the faces of dead people who’ve been boiled for a while?
    What kind of position would this even qualify me for? I mean, there can’t be any demand for someone with a skill like this, except maybe in the few societies that are left that still practice