Free Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot Page A

realize I’m probably going to spend this night as I spend most other nights—either doing Cooper’s data entry or twiddling around with my guitar, a pencil, and some blank sheet music, trying to compose a song that, unlike “Sugar Rush,” doesn’t make me want to puke every time I hear it.
    “Oh,” I say casually. “Nothing.”
    “Well, don’t stay up too late doing nothing ,” Cooper says. “If Jordan’s still out there when I leave, I’ll call the cops and have that Beemer of his towed.”
    I smile at him, touched. When I do get my medical degree, one of the first things I’m going to do is ask Cooper out. He can’t seem to resist super-educated women, so who knows? Maybe he’ll even say yes.
    “Thanks,” I say.
    “Don’t mention it.”
    Cooper goes inside, taking his radio with him, leaving Lucy and me alone in the slowly creeping shadows. I sit there for a while after he’s gone, finishing the rest of my beer, and gazing up at Fischer Hall. The building looks so homey, so tranquil. It’s hard to believe it had been the scene of so much sadness a little earlier in the day.
    It isn’t until it has grown dark enough that lights begin appearing in the windows of Fischer Hall that I finally go inside.
    And when I do, it hits me that Cooper’s warning when I’d told him I was going to do nothing tonight had been a bit on the wry side. Is it possible that he knows that I hadn’t really meant what I said? Is it possible that he knows what I do every night…and that it isn’t nothing? Can he hear my guitar all the way downstairs?
    No way.
    But then why had he said the word nothing like that? So…I don’t know. Meaningfully ?
    I can’t figure it out.
    But then, let’s face it, guys have always been something of a mystery to me.
    Still, when I get out my guitar that night, I play it extra softly, just in case Cooper does come home unexpectedly. I’m not about to let anyone—not even Coop—hear my latest stuff. Not after the way his dad laughed at me the day I played it for him, not too long before Jordan and I broke up.
    Angry-girl rocker shit , Grant Cartwright called my songs. Why don’t you leave the songwriting to the pros, he’d said, and stick to doing what you do best, which is belting out top forty and power ballads? By the way, have you put on some weight?
    One of these days, I’m going to show Grant Cartwright what an angry-girl rocker really looks like.
    Later, as I’m washing my face before bed, I look out the window and see Fischer Hall all lit up against the night sky. I can see the tiny forms of students, moving around in their rooms, and can hear, faintly, the sound of music being played from a few of those rooms.
    It’s true someone in that building died today. But it’s also true that, for everyone else, life goes on.
    And it’s going on now, as girls primp in front of their bathroom mirrors in preparation for going out, and boys chug Rolling Rocks as they wait for the girls.
    Meanwhile, through the vents along the side of the building, I see intermittent flashes of light as the elevators glide silently up and down their shafts.
    And I can’t help wondering what happened. What made her do it?
    Or…
    Who?

7
    ----
    Rocket Pop
    Like honey straight/From the hive
    Rocket Pop
    Only thing keeping/Me alive
    Rocket Pop
    Don’t knock it/Till you’ve tried it
    Rocket Pop
    You know you want it/Don’t deny it
    Rocket Pop
    When he’s around/I can’t stop
    Rocket Pop
    My eye-candy/My rocket pop
    “Rocket Pop”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Dietz/Ryder
From the album Rocket Pop
Cartwright Records
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    On Monday, Sarah and I let ourselves into Elizabeth’s room to pack up all her belongings.
    This is because her parents are too distraught to do it themselves, and ask that the residence hall director’s office do it for them.
    Which I can totally understand. I mean, the last thing you expect when you send your kid off to college is that three weeks later, you’re