Meg Cabot - Size 14 Is Not Fat Either

There are no other messages on the machine—not even, weirdly, from my dad, though he’d said he was going to call. A quick scan of New York One shows the meteorologist still talking about this blizzard we’re supposed to get—now it’s hovering somewhere over Pennsylvania. I lace on my Timberlands, fully expecting that I’ll just be taking them off later that night without having encountered a flake of snow. On the plus side, at least my feet will get gross and sweaty from wearing snow boots inside a hot, crowded gymnasium.

Back outside, I’m hurrying around the corner to Fischer Hall when I spy Reggie conducting a transaction with someone in a Subaru. I wait politely for him to finish, then smile as he approaches.

“Business is picking up,” I observe.

“Because this storm they predicted is holding off,” Reggie agrees. “If we’re lucky, it will pass us by completely.”

“From your lips to the weather god’s ears,” I say. Then, pushing aside my—only slightly—guilty conscience, since I knew I was about to do something both Cooper and Detective Canavan wouldn’t like (but really, if either of them would show just a modicum of respect for the deceased, I wouldn’t feel obligated. I mean, how come guys who have a lot of sex are considered players, while girls who have a lot of sex are considered sluts?), I continue, “Listen, Reggie. What do you know about a kid named Doug Winer?”

Reggie looks blank. “Never heard of him. Should I have?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “He appears to be Big Man on Campus. He lives over at one of the fraternities.”

“Ah,” Reggie says knowingly. “A party kid.”

“Is that what they’re calling them these days?”

“That’s what I call them,” Reggie says, looking mildly amused. “Anyway, I haven’t heard of him. But then, party kids and me? We travel in vastly different social circles.”

“Probably not as different as you might think,” I say, thinking about the marijuana haze hanging over the Tau Phi Epsilon pool table. “But will you ask around about him, anyway?”

“For you, Heather?” Reggie gives a courtly bow. “Anything. You think this boy has something to do with the young lady who lost her head?”

“Possibly,” I say carefully, conscious of Detective Canavan’s threat about the litigiousness of Doug’s father.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Reggie says. Then he knits his brow. “Where are you going? Back to work? They’re making you keep very long hours this week.”

“Please,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Don’t even get me started.”

“Well,” Reggie says, “if you need a little pick-me-up… ”

I glare at him. “Reggie.”

“Never mind,” Reggie says, and drifts away.

Back at Fischer Hall, the excitement about the staff’s Dinner and B-Ball Game With the President is palpable. Not. In fact, entirely the opposite is true. Most of the staff are milling around the lobby looking disgruntled. The cafeteria staff—day shift—are being particularly vocal in their protest that, as this is a mandatory function, they should be receiving overtime pay for it. Gerald, their boss, is maintaining that they’re getting a free meal out of it, so they should just shut up. Understandably, his employees seem to feel that eating the food they helped prepare in the cafeteria they help maintain and which was, just the day before, the sight of a grisly murder is not as great a treat as he seems to feel it is.

It’s odd to see the maintenance staff out of uniform. I barely recognize Carl, the chief engineer, in his leather jacket and jeans (and multiple gold neck chains). Head housekeeper Julio and his nephew Manuel are almost unrecognizable in sports coats and ties. Apparently they went home to change before coming back.

And Pete, out of his security uniform, looks like any other father of five… harried, rumpled, and anxious about what the kids are up to back home. His cell phone is glued to his ear, and he’s saying, “No, you have to take them out of the can first. You can’t microwave SpaghettiOs still in the can. No, you can’t. No, you—See? What did I tell you? Why don’t you listen to Daddy?”

“This,” I say, coming up to Magda, who is resplendent as usual in tight white jeans and a gold lamé sweater (the school colors), “sucks.”

But there are bright spots of color in each of Magda’s cheeks… and not the painted-on kind, either.

“I’m seeing so many more of my little movie stars, though,” she says excitedly, “than come in during the day!”

It’s true that the dinner hour is the most highly attended meal of the day at Fischer Hall. And it looks as if the president’s decision to set an example, by boldly taking a tray to the hot food line and choosing the turkey with gravy, has had an impact: the residents are trickling in, getting over their skittishness about eating in Death Dorm.

Or maybe they just want to see the president’s expression when he takes a bite of the café’s (in) famous potatoes au gratin.

Tom sidles up to me, looking grim-faced. A second later, I notice why. Gillian Kilgore is following him, looking unnaturally perky.

“See, wasn’t this a good idea?” she asks, looking at everyone milling around the tray cart, trying to grab forks and knives. “This shows that you all have some real bonding in the workplace. Now the healing can begin.”

“Apparently nobody told her attendance is mandatory,” Tom whispers to me as he slips into line behind me.

“Are you kidding me?” I whisper back. “This had to have been all her idea. You think the president came up with this one on his own?”

Tom glances over his shoulder back at Dr. Kilgore. She’s at the salad bar, checking out her lettuce options (iceberg and… iceberg). “Evil,” Tom says, with a shudder.

We’re joined, a second later, by a panting Sarah. “Thanks for telling me,” she says sarcastically to Tom, as she slides her empty tray next to his.

“Sarah,” Tom says, “this is just for full-time staff, not students.”

“Oh, right,” Sarah says. “Because we’re second-class citizens? We don’t get to share in the therapeutic benefits of bonding together over shared pain? Was that Kilgore’s idea? Excluding the student workers? God, that is so typical of a Freudian—”

“Shut up,” Tom says, “and eat.”

We find a table at what we consider a safe distance from the president’s and start to sit down, but President Allington catches us.

“Over here,” he says, waving to Tom. “Come sit over here by us, Scott.”

“Tom,” Tom corrects him nervously. “It’s, um, Tom Snelling, sir.”

“Right, right,” the president says, and beside him, Dr. Jessup—who clearly felt it important to show support for Dr. Allington’s plan and was attending both the dinner and game with the Fischer Hall staff—points out, “Tom’s the director of Fischer Hall, Phillip.”

But it’s futile. President Allington isn’t listening.

“And you’re Mary, right?” he says to me.

“Heather,” I say, wishing there was a hole nearby I could crawl into. “Remember me? From that time in the penthouse, when you used to live here in Fischer Hall?”

His eyes glaze over. President Allington doesn’t like being reminded of that day, nor does his wife, who rarely, if ever, comes into the city from their summer home in the Hamptons anymore because of it.

“Right, right,” President Allington says, as Dr. Kilgore joins us with her tray, apparently not noticing she is being followed by an angry-faced Sarah. “Well, I think we all know each other—”

“Excuse us, President Allington?”

Five cheerleaders are lined up in front of our table, all staring at the president.