Meg Cabot - Size 14 Is Not Fat Either

“Um,” I say, thinking fast, “yeah. What you said.”

Scott rolls his eyes and pulls his beer out from the ball socket in which he’d stashed it. “Outside and down the hall, first door on your left. And be sure to knock, okay? The Winer usually has company.”

I nod, and Cooper and I retrace our steps back to the FAT CHICKS GO HOME hallway. The maid is nowhere to be seen. Cooper looks as if someone has hit him.

“Did you,” he breathes, “smell that?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Why am I thinking they’ve got a slightly better source for their weed than Reggie?”

“Isn’t this part of the Housing Department?” Cooper wants to know. “Don’t they have an RA?”

“A GA,” I say. “Like Sarah. But in charge of the whole building, not one for each floor. He can’t be everywhere at once.”

“Especially,” Cooper says, under his breath, “when Tau Phis are obviously paying him not to be.”

I don’t know what makes him think that… but I’m willing to bet he’s right. Hey, grad assistants are students, too, and more often than not, financially insolvent ones.

The first door on the left is covered with a life-sized poster of Brooke Burke in a bikini. I knock politely on Brooke’s left breast, and hear a muffled “What?” in response. So I turn the knob and go in.

Doug Winer’s room is dark, but enough gray light spills from around the shade to reveal a very large water bed, on which two figures recline, amid a plethora of beer cans. The predominant decorating theme, in fact, seems to be beer, as there are piles of beer cans, bottles, and cases strewn about the room. On the walls are posters of beer, and on the shelves creative stacks of it. I, who like beer just as much as the next person, if not slightly more, feel a little embarrassed for Doug.

After all, drinking beer is one thing. Decorating with it is quite another.

“Uh, Doug?” I say. “Sorry to wake you up, but we need to talk to you a minute.”

One of the figures on the bed stirs, and a sleepy male voice asks, “What time is it?”

I consult Cooper’s watch—since I don’t own one—after he presses the button on it that lights up the face. “Eleven,” I say.

“Shit.” Doug stretches, then seems to become aware of the other presence in his bed. “Shit,” he says, in a different tone, and pokes the figure—rather sharply, in my opinion.

“Hey,” Doug says. “You. Get up.”

Mewling fitfully, the girl tries to roll away from him, but Doug keeps poking, and finally she sits up, blinking heavily mascaraed eyes and clutching the maroon sheets to her chest. “Where am I?” she wants to know.

“Xanadu,” Doug says. “Now get the hell out.”

The girl blinks at him. “Who are you?” she wants to know.

“Count Chocula,” Doug says. “Get your clothes and get out. Bathroom’s over there. Don’t flush any feminine hygiene products down the john or you’ll clog it.”

The girl blinks at Cooper and me in the doorway. “Who’re they?” she asks.

“How the hell should I know?” Doug says crankily. “Now get out. I got stuff to do.”

“All right, Mr. Cranky Pants.” The girl swings herself out of bed, awarding Cooper and me with a generous view of her heart-shaped backside as she struggles into a pair of panties that didn’t make it to the shrubs outside. Clutching a spangly-looking dress to her chest, she simpers as she wriggles past Cooper on her way to the bathroom, but gives me a narrow-eyed glare as she passes.

Well, same to you, sister.

“Who the hell are you?” Doug demands, leaning over and lifting the blind just enough to allow me to see that he’s built like a lightweight wrestler, small, but muscular and compact. In the odd New York College campus fashion of the day, his head is shaved on all sides, but rises in a spiky blond flattop at the crown. He appears to be wearing a St. Christopher medallion and little else.

“Hello, Doug,” I say, and I’m surprised when my voice comes out dripping with animosity. I hadn’t liked the way Doug had treated the girl, but I’d hoped I’d be able to hide it better. Oh, well. “I’m Heather Wells and this is Cooper Cartwright. We’re here to ask you a few questions.”

Doug is fumbling along his bedside table for a pack of cigarettes. His square, stubby fingers close around a pack of Marlboros.

That’s when Cooper takes two long strides forward, seizes the kid’s wrist, and squeezes very hard. The kid yelps and turns a pair of angry pale blue eyes up at the larger man.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he brays.

“Smoking stunts your growth,” Cooper says, reaching down and pocketing the cigarette pack. He doesn’t let go of Doug’s wrist, but subtly begins applying pressure to it, in response to the kid’s trying to pull it away. “And have you ever seen a photograph of a smoker’s lungs?”

“Who the fuck do you guys think you are?” demands Doug Winer.

I think about saying something smart like,Your worst nightmare, but I glance over at Cooper and realize that what we are, really, is an assistant hall director whose BMI is in the overweight range, and a Shetland-sweater-wearing private detective, neither of whom has ever belonged to a fraternity.

Still, Cooper could intimidate by his sheer size alone, and apparently chooses to do so, looming over the kid’s bed like a six-foot-three headboard.

“Who we think we are doesn’t much matter,” Cooper says, in his scariest voice. And that’s when I realize Cooper hadn’t liked the way Doug had treated the girl, either. “I happen to be a detective, and I have few questions I’d like to ask you concerning the nature of your relationship with Lindsay Combs.”

Doug Winer’s eyes widen perceptibly, and he says, in a high voice, “I don’t have to tell the cops shit. My dad’s lawyer said so!”

“Well,” Cooper says, lowering himself onto the pitching water mattress, “that’s not strictly true, Douglas. If you don’t tell the cops shit, they’ll have you arrested for obstruction of justice. And I don’t think either your dad or his lawyer is going to like that.”

I have to hand it to Cooper. He’s scared the living daylights out of the boy, and without even lying to him. He is a detective… and the cops could arrest Doug for obstruction of justice. It’s just that Cooper isn’t a police detective, and wouldn’t be able to do any arresting himself.

Seeing the kid’s truculent expression go suddenly soft with fear, Cooper lets go of his wrist and stands back, folding his arms across his chest and looming quite menacingly. He manages to look as if he feels like breaking Doug Winer’s arm—and might still do it, if provoked.

Doug massages his wrist where Cooper grasped it, and looks up at him resentfully. “You didn’t have to do that, man,” he says. “It’s my room, I can smoke if I want to.”

“Actually,” Cooper says, with the same amiableness that, I’m sure, always misleads his less savory clients into thinking he was secretly on their side, “this room belongs to the Tau Phi Epsilon Association, Douglas, not you. And I think the Tau Phi Epsilon Association might be interested to learn that one of their pledges is conducting a lucrative business in dealing controlled substances from their property.”

“What?” Doug’s jaw drops. In the gray light, I can see now that the kid’s chin is peppered with acne. “What are you talking about, man?”

Cooper chuckles. “Well, let’s leave that aside for a while, shall we? How old are you, Douglas? Tell the truth, now, son.”

To my surprise, the kid doesn’t say,I’m not your son, the way I would have, if I’d been him. Instead, he sticks out his pimpled chin and says, “Twenty.”