Free Fatty Patty: A Romantic Short Story (San Juan Island Stories #1) by Wendy Lynn Clark Page B

the teacher's nagging in his
salt-accented Québécios , and she bit the end of her
mechanical pencil while she pretended to study.
    Julian was kinetic, tipped forward as though by
the weight of his hair fluffed out in a wedge from his head, a
brown sea sponge of strands that would not be tamed by ties nor
headbands nor Mia's borrowed blue barrettes. His dad was French
Canadian, but his mom had dragged them all around the world and
they finally washed up here, on the shores of San Juan Island,
where she dumped them and continued on to some exotic unreachable
place.
    His eyes were blue, she knew. It was general
knowledge; everyone knew. She conjugated the verb to know. Savoir. Je sais, tu sais, il sait. Je sais qu'ils yeux sont
bleus .
    He slept through Manon of the Spring in
weekly 20-minute increments and stared hungrily out at the busy
soccer fields during the Cyrano de Bergerac season.
    " Tu aimes football ?" she finally got up
the nerve to ask.
    His gaze settled on her. Warm, lazy. He
stretched. " Oui, oui ," and slipped out a string of words
like an oyster spitting out pearls. He dropped to the desk and
tilted his head, smiling up. "That's not all I love."
    The way he said it, and the knowingness in his
gaze, as though he could feel the waves of shy desire emanating
from her seat, made her unable to even ask what the other things
were that he loved. But she found out soon enough. He also loved
rugby and watersports and basketball and something called
luge.
    They talked to each other while Gerard
Depardieu used his dying words to lie to his true love. Julian sat
by her during her shaded study room lunch. On the club days, he met
her at her locker, never minding that such kindness carried its own
danger.
    When the other boys walked by with their chests
puffed out and their chins lifted like dominant sea walruses,
Julian didn't look away. He never looked away. Not from her, and
not from the boys who broke from the pack and approached her,
razor-tongues sharpened for a new torture.
    "We have to go to club," she said to Julian,
under her breath.
    Julian dipped his head and slowly, too slowly,
shouldered his backpack.
    Ellis slammed her locker shut and started the
chant that had chased her from second grade throughout the rest of
her life. "Fatty, fatty, ate too many Peppermint Patties. You're
glistening today. Are you half whale or does your family have to
oil you in blubber fat?"
    She cowered.
    He sneered over her red face at Julian. "Hey
Frenchie. You like fat girls?"
    Julian squared up to Ellis. "Yeah. I
do."
    White waxy fear churned in her belly. The hall
squeezed in, hot and sweaty. Ellis and his friends laughed with a
rictus, forced sound at her puffy body, white as the inside of the
candy, and at Julian's warmer tone for his crueler
words.
    Ellis elbowed his friends and turned back to
them. "You get it up for puffy chicks?"
    Julian tilted his head. "You must have read my
diary."
    Ellis stepped forward, shoulder first, cheeks
taut. "You keep a diary? Fag."
    Which was usually the kind of thing he said
right before he slammed a person.
    Pepper tugged Julian. "We have to
go."
    Julian moved easily with her to the club room.
Not intimidated. Not even the slightest put out. Indifferent to the
walruses in a way that inspired loud fury.
    Ellis and his friends followed to the lip of
the classroom. The teacher was engaged with a freshman, so he
swaggered inside with all of his jock friends. "Frenchie.
Fat-girl-lover. You're a fag, aren't you? You're a total
fag."
    Julian's easy smile narrowed. He slowly
stretched and leaned back in his seat, his feet resting on the back
of her chair with a little bump. "Why? Are you
interested?"
    Ellis screwed up his wedge-shaped face.
"What?"
    "Are you asking me because you want to know?
Or—" he tilted his brow in calculated amusement "—are you hoping my
answer is yes?"
    Ellis reddened from his neck up. "What the hell
are you saying?"
    "I'm saying you spend all day clinging to
sweaty boys in