Size 12 Is Not Fat

32

I only end up spending one night in the hospital—on account of all my stitches tearing open and the multiple contusions and glass shards embedded in me.

And even that is one night too many, if you ask me. Do you know what their idea of dessert is in the hospital? Yeah, that’d be Jell-O. With fruit in it. Not even mini marshmallows. Everyone knows Jell-O is a salad, not dessert.

Plus they don’t even have bathtubs in the hospital. If you want to get clean, it’s a shower or sponge bath only.

Whatever. I try to use my time there wisely. My time in the hospital, I mean. I sneak off my floor to visit Julio, whom I’m happy to find is recovering nicely from his injuries sustained during the explosion. He’s supposed to be back at work next month, no worse for the wear.

I also stop by Jordan’s room while I’m there. In the hospital, I mean.

He’s plenty embarrassed to see me, and his bride-to-be, Tania? She’s downright hostile. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was feeling threatened by me or something.

But I don’t know why she would be. Her latest single, “Slut,” hit number ten on Total Request Live the other day.

I wish them well, anyway. I tell them I think they make the perfect couple.

I’m not lying, either.

I only have to spend one night in the hospital, but I get two weeks off—with pay—from my position as assistant director at Fischer Hall. I guess that’s how they reward you at New York College if you happen to bust your boss for a double homicide. Even if you haven’t accrued that many sick days, or whatever.

By the time I’m back to my desk, it’s starting to get cold out. The leaves on the trees in Washington Square Park are changing, turning shades of red and gold that pale in comparison with the colors the freshmen in Fischer Hall have dyed their hair in preparation for Parents’ Day.

Seriously. It’s like working in a clown college, or something.

Things at Fischer Hall have changed in other ways as well since I’ve been gone. For one thing, with Rachel in jail awaiting trial, I’m getting a new boss. I don’t know who yet. They’re still interviewing people.

But Dr. Jessup is giving me first pick.

I’m thinking it might be nice to work for a man for a change. Don’t get me wrong, female bosses are great and all. But I could do with a break from all that estrogen in the office.

Sarah agrees. She and all the student workers are a lot nicer to me now that, you know, I risked my life in order to catch the person who was killing their fellow residents. I hardly ever hear about Justine anymore. Except for the other day, when Tina turned to me and said, “You know, Justine used to never wear jeans to work like you do. She told me it was because she could never find any small enough to fit her. I sort of always hated her for that.”

Even Gavin is finally listening to me, and has completely given up elevator surfing. He’s taken up exploring the city’s sewers instead.

I figure he’ll be giving that up soon enough, too, though. I mean, the smell isn’t exactly making him the most popular guy on his floor.

Oh, and the Allingtons moved. Just to the building next door—the one Donatello or whichever teenage mutant ninja turtle it was jumped onto in the movie. But still, it’s far enough away that Mrs. Allington feels that she and the birds will be more comfortable… especially since they’re now living in a building that they don’t have to share with seven hundred undergraduates and a residence hall staff.

Those undergraduates weren’t sorry to see the Allingtons go, but the same can’t be said about their son. Chris’s turned into something of a celebrity himself, using the notoriety he gained from Rachel’s obsession with him—which made all the headlines—as leverage for his plan to open his own nightclub in SoHo. Law school, apparently, had been his father’s dream for him, and now that offers for his story have come pouring in from the Lifetime Channel and Playboy, Chris has broken free from the filial yoke and is pursuing his own devices.

I’m betting those devices will get him arrested fairly soon.

The Fischer Hall residents, student government, and staff came up with what we consider a fitting tribute to Elizabeth Kellogg and Roberta Pace: We planted two trees—twin dogwoods—in a pretty section of the park, with a plaque under them that reads In Memory Of and lists their names, the dates of their births and deaths, and the words They Will Be Missed. Millions of people will see it—both the plaque and the trees, which the guys from the horticulture department tell me will flower in the spring—just as hundreds of students will benefit from the scholarship, also started by us, in Beth’s and Bobby’s names.

I’m excited to see the trees in full bloom. It’s about the only thing I have to look forward to these days, since I already found out—at last—what Cooper thinks about me.

Not that he knows I know. He probably has no idea I remember. It was when he came bursting out onto the penthouse terrace, just seconds after Mrs. Allington knocked Rachel senseless with her Absolut bottle. He’d gotten the message I’d left on his cell, and had come rushing over to the hall with Detective Canavan, only to learn from Pete—who’d seen Rachel and me going into the penthouse on his monitor—that not only was Rachel alive, but that the two of us had apparently gone upstairs to pay a call on Mrs. Allington (the film quality on the security monitor wasn’t fine enough for Pete to see that Rachel was actually holding a stun gun to my throat at the time, something we’re working on correcting, campus-wide).

While Detective Canavan dealt with the unconscious Rachel and wobbly Mrs. Allington, Cooper knelt beside me in the rain, asking if I was all right.

I remember blinking up at him, wondering if what I was seeing was just some weird hallucination, like the one of Rachel getting her head bashed in. I’d been pretty sure, at the time, that I was dying, on account of the sting of the pepper spray in my stitches, and the glass shards piercing my back, and my sore shoulder and stuff.

Which might be why I kept saying—the way I remember it—over and over, “Promise you’ll take care of Lucy. When I’m dead, promise you’ll take care of Lucy.”

Cooper had taken his leather jacket off—the one with my bloodstains all over it—and draped it over me. It was still warm from his body. I remember that. And that it smelled like him.

“Of course I will,” Cooper had said to me. “But you’re not going to die. Look, I know you’re hurting. But the paramedics are their way. You’re going to be fine, I promise.”

“No, I’m not,” I’d said. Because I’d been sure I was going to die. Later, the paramedic told me I was in shock, on account of the pain and the cold and the rain and all.

But I’d had no way of knowing that at the time.

“I’m going to be dead at twenty-eight,” I’d informed what I’d taken to be a hallucination of Cooper. “A one-hit wonder. That’s all I am. Make sure that’s what they put on my headstone.Here lies a one-hit wonder.”

“Heather,” Cooper had said. He’d been smiling. I’m sure of that. That he’d been smiling. “You’re not going to die. And you’re not a one-hit wonder.”

“Oh, right.” I’d started laughing. Then I’d started to cry. And I hadn’t been able to stop.

It turns out this is a pretty common symptom of shock, too. But again, I hadn’t known that at the time.

“Rachel was right,” I remember saying, bitterly. “She’s right! I had it all, and I blew it. I’m the biggest loser in the world.”

That’s when Cooper forced me to sit up, took me into his arms, and said, very firmly, “Heather, you’re not a loser. You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. Anyone else, if they’d been through what you have, what with your mother and my brother and your career and all of that, they’d have given up. But you kept going. You started over. I’ve always admired the way, no matter what happens, you just keep going.”

I’m sorry to say that at this point, I responded, “You mean like that little pink rabbit with the drum?”

I like to think that was the shock, too.

Cooper played along. He’d said, “Exactly like that little pink rabbit with the drum. Heather, you’re not a loser. And you’re not going to die. You’re a nice girl, and you’re going to be just fine.”

“But… ” To my shock-clouded brain, this assertion sounded troubling, given my earlier conversation with the woman who’d been trying to kill me. “Nice girls finish last.”

“I happen to like nice girls,” Cooper had said.

And then he kissed me.

Just once. And on the forehead. The way, you know, your ex-boyfriend’s big brother would kiss you if, say, you’d been attacked by a homicidal maniac and were suffering from shock and he didn’t think you’d remember it anyway.

But I did. And I do.

He thinks I’m brave. No, wait: He thinks I’m one of the bravest people he’s ever met.

And he likes me. Because he happens to like nice girls.

Look, I know it’s not much. But you know what?

It’s enough. For now.

Oh, and one last thing:

I never did go back to that store and buy those size 8 jeans. There’s nothing wrong with being a size 12, for one thing. And for another, I’ve been too busy. I passed my six months’ probation. I start my freshman year at New York College in January. My first class?

Intro to criminal justice.

Well, you have to start somewhere, right?