Meg Cabot - Size 14 Is Not Fat Either

Dad orders chicken noodle soup to go with his coffee. The waitress nods and goes away. She looks distracted. She’s probably worrying about the impending snowstorm, which a weatherman on New York One, playing on the TV hanging over the counter, assures us is due at any moment.

“So,” I say. “The bus.” For some reason I can’t stop thinking about Morgan Freeman’s ride to freedom on that bus in the movie The Shawshank Redemption. Well, I guess it isn’t too surprising. Morgan Freeman had been a prisoner, too. “Isn’t that like a parole violation? I mean, for you to leave the state of Florida?”

“Don’t worry about me, kiddo,” Dad had said, patting my hand. “I’ve got things under control. For a change.”

“Great,” I say. “That’s great, Dad.”

“So what do you hear from your mother?” he wants to know. I notice that he doesn’t make eye contact when he asks this. He busies himself adding more half and half to his coffee.

“Well,” I say, “you mean since she took off for Buenos Aires with the contents of my bank account? Not a whole heck of a lot.”

Dad purses his lips and shakes his head. Now he makes eye contact. “I’m sorry about that, Heather,” he says. “You can’t know how much. Your mother isn’t like that. I don’t know what could have come over her.”

“Really? Because I have a pretty good idea,” I say, as the waitress comes back with his soup and my hot chocolate.

“Oh?” Dad digs into his soup like it’s his first food of the day. For such a skinny guy, he has a pretty good appetite. “What’s that?”

“Her meal ticket lost her recording contract,” I say.

“Oh, now, Heather,” Dad says, looking up from his soup. “Don’t say that. Your mother loves you very much. She’s just never been a strong woman. I’m sure it wasn’t her idea—taking your money, I mean. I’m positive that Ricardo character put her up to it.”

And I’m positive it was the other way around, actually, but I don’t say so, because I don’t feel like getting into an argument about it.

“How about you?” I ask instead. “Have you heard from her?”

“Not in quite some time,” Dad says. He opens one of the packs of crackers that came with his soup. “Of course, given the way I let her down, I don’t suppose I deserve to.”

“I wouldn’t beat yourself up over that one, Dad,” I say, feeling that twinge in my stomach again. Only this time, I realize the twinge is actually north of my stomach. It’s more in the vicinity of my heart. And it appears to be pity. “She hasn’t exactly been Miss Parent of the Year herself.”

Dad shakes his head over his soup. “Poor Heather,” he says, with a sigh. “When they were handing out parents up in heaven, you certainly got the short end of the stick.”

“I don’t know,” I say, surprised to find myself prickling a little. “I think I’ve done all right for myself. I mean, I’ve got a job, and a nice place to live, and… well, I’m getting my BA.”

Dad looks surprised… but pleasantly so. “Good for you!” he says. “At New York College?”

I nod. “I get tuition remission through my job,” I explain. “I have to take this remedial math course before I can start taking real courses, but—”

“And what are you going to study?” Dad wants to know. His enthusiasm about the subject takes me aback, a little. “Music? I hope you’re studying music. You’ve always been so very talented.”

“Uh,” I say. “Actually, I was thinking more of criminal justice.”

Dad looks startled. “Good heavens,” he says. “Why? Do you want to be a policewoman?”

“I don’t know,” I say. I’m too embarrassed to tell him the truth… that I’d hoped, with a BA in criminal justice, Cooper might take me on as a partner in his business, and the two of us could detect crimes together. Like Remington Steele. Or Hart to Hart.

It’s a little sad that all my fantasies are rooted in eighties television shows.

“You should study music theory,” Dad says firmly. “To help with your songwriting.”

I flush. I forgot that I sent Dad a tape of myself singing some of my own stuff for Christmas one year. What had I been thinking?

“I’m too old for a singing-songwriting career,” I tell him. “I mean, have you seen those girls on MTV? I can’t wear short skirts anymore. Too much cellulite.”

“Don’t be silly,” Dad says dismissively. “You look fine. Besides, if you’re self-conscious, you can just wear slacks.”

Slacks. Dad kills me sometimes. He really does.

“It would be a shame,” Dad says. “No, not just a shame—a sin—to let God-given talent like yours go to waste.”

“Well,” I say, “I don’t think I have. I did the singing thing already. I think maybe now it’s time to try a different talent.”

“Criminal justice?” Dad looks confused. “That’s a talent?”

“Well, at least one where no one’s going to boo me off a stage,” I point out.

“No one would dare!” Dad cries, laying down his spoon. “You sing like an angel! And those songs of yours—they’re much better than some of that garbage I hear on the radio. That girl, going on about her lumps, or her humps, or whatever she’s talking about. And that other one—that Tracy Trace, the one that old boyfriend of yours is marrying this weekend. Why, she’s half naked in that video!”

I have to repress a smile. “Tania Trace,” I correct him. “And that’s the number one video on TRL right now.”

“Well,” Dad says firmly, “regardless. It’s trash.”

“What about you, Dad?” I ask, thinking I’d better change the subject before he gets too overexcited. “I mean, you were at Camp Eglin for… gosh. Almost twenty years. What are you going to do now that you’re out?”

“I have a few irons in the fire,” Dad says. “Some of which look quite promising.”

“Yeah?” I say. “Well, that sounds good. Here in New York?”

“Yes,” Dad says. But I notice he’s gotten more hesitant in his replies. And he’s not making eye contact with me anymore.

Uh-oh.

“Dad,” I say. Because suddenly I have a new feeling in my stomach. And it isn’t horror or pity. It’s dread. “Did you really call me because you wanted to see me and catch up on old times? Or was there something else?”

“Of course I wanted to see you,” Dad says, with some asperity. “You’re my old daughter, for goodness’ sake.”

“Right,” I say. “But… ”

“What makes you think there’s abut?” Dad wants to know.

“Because,” I say, “I’m not nine anymore. I know there’s always abut. ”

He lays down his spoon. Then he takes a deep breath.

“All right,” he says. “There’s a but.”

Then he tells me what it is.

I’m fifteen minutes late to work the next day. Personally, I don’t think fifteen minutes is all that long. Fifteen minutes shouldn’t even count as tardy… especially when you take into account what happened to me the night before—you know, the whole return of the prodigal dad thing.

But fifteen minutes can be quite a long time in the life cycle of a residence hall. Fifteen minutes is long enough, in fact, for a representative from Counseling Services to find my desk and station herself at it.

And when I run breathlessly into the office and see her there, and go, “May I help you?” those fifteen minutes she’s been at my desk are apparently long enough to make her feel enough at home at it to go, “Oh, no, thank you. Unless you’re going for coffee, in which case I could use one, light, no sugar.”