She lets out a huge belly laugh. “Oh, baby. I’ll tell you another day. I don’t want to ruin your day any more than it already has been. Now, we’re still on for those pretzels, right?”
“We better be.”
Dear Miss Flora Mae,
At the playground yesterday, all the third-grade girls stood around and grabbed their tummies to see how much fat they could fit in their hand. I didn’t want to. But they were all looking at me. So I did it, but I needed two hands. Everyone laughed. My best friend didn’t.
Why can’t I look like them? Mom says everybody has a different body. But who gets to decide what is different and what is not?
Sincerely,
Two Handfuls of Fat
Chapter Six
The Difference Between Like and Like-Like
Since Miss Flora Mae didn’t say when her editor, Mr. Salazar, would be dropping off her letters, I decide to make a habit of checking her mail every day just to be extra thorough. There’s something sort of exciting about it. We never get anything good in the mail. Or at least I don’t.
On Tuesday at lunch, Oscar and I look for a place where both of us can sit together. We pass a table where Alyssa Chang, Samantha Powell, and Tyler Morales sit. Samantha, who is short and about my size with defined curves and milky white skin, whispers to Tyler, who is Mexican and has short curly hair and a light complexion with a few acne scars on his chin. Alyssa, a tall Chinese girl with long black hair twisted into a neat braid, waves Oscar over.
Oscar waves back. “There’s only one seat open at your table, and me and Sweet Pea want to sit together.”
Alyssa, Samantha, and Tyler all give me the same dry smile.
“Your Christmas-pageant friends don’t like me,” I say as soon as we’re out of earshot.
Oscar rolls his eyes. “They just don’t get people who aren’t into theater like they are.”
“Or they’re trying to steal you away from me?” I say, sort of, but not really, joking.
Oscar laughs. “I’m not a car. I can’t be stolen, Sweet Pea.” He points to the other side of the cafeteria. “Found a spot. Follow me.”
Against my better judgment, I follow Oscar and squeeze into the end of a lunch table beside Greg Gunther with his messy blond hair and black rimmed glasses.Oh, great. My stomach twists into a knot. I nearly yank Oscar over to a spot next to Safiyah Nazir, a short girl with medium brown skin who always wears the funkiest head scarfs, but I don’t move fast enough and the seat is taken. Greg Gunther it is.
Greg Gunther, a tall white boy who’s about as wide as a green bean, moved here halfway through the school year, and his arrival was the most exciting thing to happen to our grade since the class pet snake, Goober, went missing and was found in Alyssa’s cubby, coiled inside her rain boots.
Meeting Greg made me feel like my stomach was full of hummingbirds. Every night I’d go to sleep and pray that I’d wake up and the feeling would magically disappear in the same way I used to hope for green eyes, like Cheese’s.
I didn’t know how to describe my feelings until one day after school, while the opening credits ofAmerica’s Most Hauntedplayed on my TV, Oscar turned to me and said, “Truth or dare.”
“What?”
“Truth or dare,” he demanded again.
I paused the TV, freezing Cliff VanWarren so he looked like a neighing horse. “Dare.”
