Fat Cat

Chapter 2

2

Amanda was waiting for me after class. “How’d it go?”

“Great. I need a Snickers.”

“Oh, yeah?” she said, perking up. “Does that mean the diet is over?”

“Um, pretty much.” Although I knew the real answer was going to shock her.

“Thank goodness,” Amanda said. “No offense, Kit Cat, but you have been seriously cranky these past few days. I think some people just need their sugar and carbs.”

Matt came out of class just then and gave us both a nod. “Hey, Amanda. See ya, Cat.”

Neither of us answered, of course. Usually Matt’s only that friendly when Amanda’s boyfriend Jordan is around. They’re on the swim team together, and Jordan is always telling us how “solid” and “quality” Matt is, whatever that’s supposed to mean. What it really means is Matt continues to fool most people into thinking he’s this sweet, charming guy who happens to be a brilliant scientist on top of it.

But Amanda and I know the truth. And unfortunately, it’s not something we can share with Jordan or anyone else. So people go right on believing what they want to about Matt.

“He is looking slightly better than normal,” Amanda said, watching him disappear down the hall. “I think he’s discovered the comb.”

“Can we talk about something else, please?”

“Sure,” she said. “I wrote a new poem last period. Want to hear it?”

She recited it for me as we headed toward the vending machines. It was another in her series of poems exploring the secret thoughts of inanimate objects. This one was about a blender.

Don’t laugh. Or do. The poems are supposed to be funny, but they’re also sweet and sometimes a little sad in their own way. The blender, so the poem goes, can touch food, but never actually taste it. By the time it swirls everything around into a liquid form it can ingest, someone pours it out and takes it away.

“Ever chewing,” Amanda concluded, “never satisfied.”

We both nodded in silent appreciation.

“I really love it,” I told her. “But no offense—I still like the La-Z-Boy one best.”

“Yeah,” Amanda agreed, “that was a classic.”

We hit the vending machines, and I bought not only a Snickers, but also a Butterfinger and some peanut M&Ms.

“Wow,” Amanda said. “You weren’t kidding.”

I bit off about half of the Snickers and said with my mouth full, “You’ll understand in a minute.”

I made her wait until we were safely in her car, since I couldn’t let Mr. Fizer or anyone else see me showing her the picture. His secrecy rule is fine—in fact, I’m grateful for it, since it means no one will know what I’m doing until I unveil the whole thing next March—but there was no way I was going to keep it secret from Amanda.

As soon as we were settled I pulled the picture out of my backpack.

“Oh,” Amanda said.

“Right,” I said.

Amanda pointed to the guy closest to the dead deer. “He’s sort of hot.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“What?” she said. “Nice butt, nice legs—I’d go for it.”

“Good to know.”

“Don’t tell Jordan.”

I finished my Snickers, started in on the Butterfinger, and explained to Amanda how the whole thing came about—how with time running out my brain finally came to understand exactly what I should do.

People always want to know how scientific discoveries are made.

They like the stories about the apple falling on Newton’s head (myth) or Archimedes leaping out of the bathtub and running n***d through the streets shouting, “Eureka!” (“I found it!”) (True.) (Unfortunately for the neighbors.)

For me, it was the hominin’s killer butt.

Not the guy’s, like Amanda noticed, but the woman’s.

“Ten minutes,” Mr. Fizer had called out. I was in full-on, meltdown panic. I didn’t have a single idea in my head.

Meanwhile everyone else was furiously scribbling away in their notebooks. Everyone except for Matt, of course, who was already done and just sat there reading what he’d written.

I squeezed my eyes shut. This was horrible. Silently I pleaded with my new n***d friends to give me inspiration—any sort of inspiration at all.

When I opened my eyes again, there was the woman’s butt. And the rest of the woman. And for some reason, it occurred to me in that moment that she was actually kind of cool in her prehistoric way—strong, determined-looking, ready to haul off and hurl that rock while the guys just shouted and looked concerned.

And she was thin. Not emaciated, fashion-model-thin, but that good muscular thin like you see on women athletes. She looked like she could run and hunt and fight just as well as the men—maybe even better.

And that’s when I realized: I wanted to be her.

Not her in the sense that I wish I had to fight saber-toothed hyenas just to get a decent meal, but her in looks. I want—and I know this sounds incredibly shallow, but science requires the truth—I wouldn’t mind for once in my life seeing what it’s like to actually look ... good. Or at least better than I do right now. Maybe even pretty, if that’s possible.

It’s not that I’m hideous, but I’m also not stupid. I know how people see me. I might spend an hour every day straightening my hair and getting my makeup just right and picking out clothes that camouflage at least some of my rolls, but the truth is I’m still fat and everyone knows it. When I wake up in the morning it’s like I’m wearing this giant fat suit, and if only I could find the zipper I could step out of it and finally go start living my real life.

And that was my Eureka.

Because seeing the hominin woman, just out there in all her glory, n***d boobs and butt and stomach and everything, and noticing how lean and fit and strong she looked, made me realize something.

When anthropologists or forensic paleontologists find a skeleton, they bring it back to the lab and build a clay model over it, to see what the person might have looked like. They have to decide how much muscle and flesh to give the person to make it look like a real body, but here’s the thing: they never ever make the person fat.

Because obviously each person’s skeleton is made to hold a specific amount of weight, right? A small skeleton gets a little bit of weight, a big one gets a lot more.

And that made me think about what some scientist would do with my bones if she found them thousands of years from now. She’d build a body that looked normal for my skeleton, and she’d think that’s what I looked like. But she’d be wrong. Because she wouldn’t have factored in all the pizza and ice cream and chocolate and everything else I’ve been using as materials over the years to sculpt this particular version of me.

That’s when I knew what I should do. I knew if I made this my project, I’d really have to take it seriously. I couldn’t back out. I couldn’t cheat. This would be for a grade and for the science fair, so I’d have to do it for real. Once I committed to it—once I wrote my idea on a piece of paper this afternoon and turned it in alongside everyone else’s research topics—I’d have no choice but to take it all the way.

Mr. Fizer said he wants big ideas. He wants us to be creative and to really push ourselves. He wants us to throw ourselves into our projects, mind and body and soul.

Well, you can’t get more committed than this.

“I’m going to do it,” I told Amanda. “I’m going to become prehistoric.”