Good Luck, Fatty

 
    chapter 1
     
    I’VE SCREWED lots of boys. No, wait. Let me rephrase that. I’ve been screwed by lots of boys. It’s passive. They’re the actors, and I’m the flabby, pockmarked receptacle.
    “Hurry up in there, Bobbi-Jo!” my cousin Orville demands with a hearty thump of the bathroom door. “Miss Esther’s waitin’ on me.”
    Bobbi-Jo is short for Roberta Josephine. My last name is Cotton. “Almost done,” I say. I swipe some shimmery blue shadow over my eyelids and shove the makeup into my backpack, where it will no doubt vanish in a black hole of Milky Way wrappers.
    A car horn blares in the driveway, signifying Miss Esther’s waning patience. Orv sighs. “Jesus, Bobbi-Jo, if I told you once…”
    I turn the crusty old knob and yank, hauling the door past a catch in the jamb. Orv just brushes by and flips the toilet open, starts pissing right in front of me. I shake my head and slip out. Under my breath, I mutter, “Goddamn uncivilized ape.”
    Before I get two bites into my oatmeal—the cheapo instant kind with artificial apple flavoring Orv’s girlfriend, Denise, stuffs the cupboards full of as if it’s a health food—Orv is on my case again. “You never took the trash out yesterday,” he says as he rummages through the refrigerator for his lunch pail. He wiggles the pail out and sniffs the air. “Smells like a sewage plant in here.”
    Orv’s a decent enough guy: a little nice and a little annoying, like most people. I have a soft spot for him because of how he’s taken care of me. Maybe not soft enough, though. “Look who’s vying for Jerk of the Year,” I say, immediately regretting it.
    Miss Esther’s horn makes a last-ditch, squealing attempt at teasing Orv out of the house.
    Orv chews his thumb, hocks a loogie strait onto the chipped linoleum. “Just get this place cleaned up before Denise sees it,” he says stiffly, glancing around the ramshackle kitchen. “We had a deal.”
     I want to say something like, I didn’t ask for this or Don’t do me any favors. Instead, I force a plastic smile and shoot him a salute. “Aye-aye, Captain.”
    Orv huffs out through the screen door, which rattles as it skids shut across the uneven porch. I think about that door a lot, how it’s my protection from things like thunderstorms and random violence (like the shooting last week, a block from the toothpick factory where Orv works). That door also keeps out the taunts of my peers and the love of my wayward parents, not that they’d bother to come knocking.
    Sometimes it lets things in too. Things like Denise. Peppy, upbeat things that are so cheery I can’t help liking them when they bounce my way. “Did I miss Orv again?” Denise asks with a frown, an expression that seems to bother her face. She tosses her purse onto the countertop and plops down in a chair beside me.
    I nod and swallow. “By about half a minute.”
    Denise is twenty, which makes her a year younger than Orv and five years older than me. She pulls the overnight shift at Welcome Home, an assisted living facility by the train station. Usually she gets back here fifteen minutes after Orv slides across Miss Esther’s front seat, but today she’s early. “Want a ride?” she asks me.
    This falling-down house Gramp left Orv and me is only five-eighths of a mile from Industry High, where, four long weeks ago, I hit the tenth grade.
    I twirl a spoon in my oatmeal. “Nah,” I say, even though I should accept the quasi-parental escort. Bullies are energetic in the morning. “I told Dr. Lassiter I’d help out at the shop later.” This means I’ll need my bike to get across town.
    Denise pops out of her chair, smiles and pats my shoulder on her way to the sink. “Don’t say I didn’t offer.”
     

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    My bike is in the garage, which is even more falling-down than the house. I jimmy the garage door a few inches off the cracked pavement and, with all of my two-hundred and twenty pounds, heave it toward the rafters. And, for once, it gives on the first try.
    Riding a bike when you’re as fat as I am is part algebra, part circus act. A bit of math and a touch of magic. I cinch the straps of my backpack tighter, shimmy onto the undersized seat and kick off to a wobbly start. But in no time, I’m coasting along the weed-infested sidewalk, a cool breeze undercutting the tenacious North Carolina sun.
    I don’t say this out loud, wouldn’t have the courage to let even Denise in on a dream so tender,