Free Disappearing Acts by Betsy Byars

couldn’t be sure. Finally you ran out, and I followed a little way down the hall and heard you telling everybody about what you’d found. Then that guy who owns the club came back.”
    â€œMike.”
    â€œYes, good old Mike.” Her smile turned cruel as she said the name. “I barely had time to get out the door. I watched through the window as good old Mike dragged the body out and put it in the janitor’s closet.”
    Meat glanced sideways for an escape and saw a blank wall. Other side, blank wall.
    â€œMaybe he was going to get rid of Bennie’s body later,” she said. “He couldn’t risk Bennie’s body being found in Funny Bonz any more than I could.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBennie told me Mike owes big money to the wrong people, and if the club doesn’t make it, he won’t either.”
    â€œBut why didn’t you want the body found there?‘
    â€œOh, I had reasons.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œBecause if Bennie’s body was found in Funny Bonz, then the murder could be connected to me.”
    â€œHow?” Meat checked again. Yes, the blank walls were still there.
    â€œIf Bennie’s body was found in the club, then the police might start asking questions about why he was there and then they would ask about his routine. Did you ever hear Bennie’s routine?”
    â€œNo, no, I didn’t know he had one. I just saw him that one time—and I thought he was a dead girl—the purse and the ponytail and all.”
    â€œHe had a routine all right.” She smiled. She was a girl of a hundred smiles, and Meat didn’t like any of them. “And it was all about me.”
    â€œYou? You’re not funny.”
    â€œNo, but I’m fat.”
    â€œHis routine was about fat?”
    â€œHis fat girlfriend. That was his routine—being in love with a fat girlfriend, having to kiss a fat girlfriend. ‘My girlfriend has so many rolls of fat you can’t tell the boobs from the tubes.’”
    â€œBut that’s terrible.”
    â€œYes, he was cruel. ‘You know how bra cups come in sizes A, B, and C? Her size is WOW.’”
    Meat knew that would hurt because he had seen one of those WOWs himself.
    â€œAnd he was getting ready to start going all over the country with his routine. He claimed he’d get on the Tonight Show and David Letterman. And there wasn’t any doubt who he was talking about—he even used my name. Mullet the Gullet. ‘Restaurants have signs that say, Maximum Occupancy: 240 or Mullet the Gullet.’”
    She looked at him. “You don’t know how it hurts to be laughed at.”
    â€œI do, I do. Look at me.”
    She looked. “You’re not fat.” “I am.” He held his arms slightly out at his sides so she could get the whole miserable picture. And all of a sudden he was back at the newsstand, the book of fat jokes in his hand.
    â€œListen, I’m so big I have my own area code. When I put on my blue suit and stand on a corner, people try to drop mail in my mouth.”
    â€œWell, when I put on my yellow raincoat, people yell, ‘Taxi!’”
    â€œWhen I step on the scale, it goes, ‘We don’t do livestock.’”
    â€œWhen I step on the scale, it goes, ‘One at a time, please.’”
    Meat swallowed, mentally flipping through the hurtful pages.
    â€œThe last time I saw 2001, I was standing on a scale.”
    â€œMy blood-type is Ragu.”
    â€œI’m so fat I eat Wheat Thicks.”
    Marcie Mullet seemed to be doing some mental flipping of her own.
    â€œWhen I was floating in the ocean, Spain claimed me for the New World.”
    â€œI had to go to Sea World to get baptized.”
    â€œI have more chins than the Hong Kong telephone book.”
    â€œWhen I was lying on the beach, Greenpeace tried to push me back in the water.”
    They paused, both out of breath. Her eyes