Meg Cabot - Size 14 Is Not Fat Either

Probably.

“Fine,” I say. “I’ll just be going now.” And I turn to leave.

“Wait. Ms. Wells?”

I turn back to face them. The younger detective is holding out a pen and a notepad.

“Sorry, Ms. Wells, I almost forgot.” He looks totally serious. “Can I have your autograph?”

I narrow my eyes at him. What kind of joke is this?

“Seriously,” he says. “I told my kid sister you hang around the station a lot, and she asked me to get your autograph for her, if I could.”

He looks sincere. I take the pen and notepad, feeling a rush of embarrassment for having been so huffy to him.

“Sure,” I say. “What’s your sister’s name?”

“Oh, she just wants your signature,” the detective says. “She says autographs don’t sell as well on eBay when they’re personalized.”

I glare at him. “She wants my autograph just so she can sell it?”

“Well, yeah,” the detective says, looking as if he can’t believe I’d think anything else. “What else is she going to do with all those old CDs of yours? She says she has a better chance of selling hers if she can throw in an autograph. She says it’ll make her stand out from all the millions of other people selling their Heather Wells collection.”

I hand the pad and pen back to him. “Goodbye, Detectives,” I say, and turn to go.

“Aw, come on,” the detective calls after me. “Heather! Don’t be that way!”

“Can’t we all just get along?” Marty wants to know. He’s laughing so hard, he can barely get the words out.

When I get to the elevator, I turn and tell them what I think of them. With my middle finger.

But this just makes them laugh harder.

They’re wrong, what they say about a crisis bringing out the best in New Yorkers. It so doesn’t.

I make it back to Fischer Hall in one piece… more or less. I can’t find a cab—there just aren’t any. The few cars I see on the road are cop cars. One of them bottoms out on Sixth Avenue, then sits there, its rear wheels spinning, while a bunch of people come out of the nearby coffee shop and Gap to help them get unstuck.

Not me, though. I’ve had my fill of cops for the day.

I’m still grumpy about the autograph thing when I finally step into my office… only to find Tom in my seat, and the door to his office closed. Behind it, I hear the murmur of Dr. Kilgore’s voice.

“Oh, come on,” I say, yanking off my knit hat. I can feel my hair floating in the air because of all the static, but I don’t care. “You’re telling me she’s here again?”

“For the rest of the week, I’m afraid,” Tom says glumly. “But cheer up. Tomorrow’s Friday.”

“Still.” I pull off my coat and slump into Sarah’s chair. “I feel violated. Who’s in there?”

“Cheryl Haebig,” he says.

“Again?”

He shrugs. “Her roommate got killed. She’s all broken up about it.”

I glower at the Monet print on the wall. “Lindsay wasn’t as great as everyone thinks she was,” I hear myself say.

Tom raises his eyebrows. “Hello?”

“Well, she wasn’t,” I say. “You know she totally sweet-talked Manuel into giving her his key to the café. What did she need it for? She told him she left something in there that she had to get. But why didn’t she go to one of the RAs if that was the case? They’d have been able to let her in just as easily as Manuel, if all she needed to do was grab something. No, she went to him because he was on his way out to a date and she knew he didn’t have time to wait for her to get whatever it was, and would just hand over the key if she asked for it. So then she’d have it all night. She was working him. The way she worked all the boys. And the girls, even. I mean, Magda was gaga for her.”

“You seem to have a lot of issues with Lindsay,” Tom says. “Maybe you need to talk to Dr. Kilgore next.”

“Shut up,” I advise him.

He grins wickedly. “You got some messages.” And hands them to me.

Jordan Cartwright. Jordan Cartwright. Jordan Cartwright. Tad Tocco.

Wait. Who’s Tad Tocco?

“I’m getting coffee,” Tom says, getting up with his mug. “You want any?

“Yeah,” I say, barely paying attention. “Coffee’d be good.” Who is Tad Tocco, and why is his name so familiar?

Then, after Tom’s left the office, I yell, “Put some hot cocoa in it!”

“Okay,” Tom yells back.

Tom’s office door is tugged open, and Dr. Kilgore sticks her head out to look at me.

“Could you,” she says testily, “keep your voice down, please? I have a very distraught student in here.”

“Oh, sure,” I say guiltily. “Sorry.”

She glares at me and slams the door.

I slump more deeply into my seat. Sarah has left a copy of the school paper on her desk, open to the sports page. There’s a photo of Coach Andrews on it, clapping his hands and yelling at a blur on the court in front of him. The caption reads,Steven Andrews shouts encouragement to his players.

And my blood goes cold in my veins.

Steven. Steven Andrews.

And the next thing I know, I’m on the phone to the Athletic Department.

“Uh, hi,” I say, when someone finally answers the phone. “Is Coach Andrews in today?”

Whoever answers sounds cranky… possibly because he, like me, was forced to come in to work on a Snow Day.

“Where else would he be?” the cranky person asks. “He’s got another game this weekend, you know.”

The guy hangs up on me. But I don’t care. Because I’ve found out what I need to know. Coach Andrews is around. Which means I can go over to the Winer Complex and question him about his relationship with Lindsay… .

No, wait. I can’t do that. I promised. I promised everyone I wouldn’t get involved this time… .

But I promised Magda I wouldn’t let Lindsay’s name be dragged through the mud. And if Coach Andrews was sleeping with her, as Kimberly suggested, then that meant Lindsay was being taken advantage of by a person in a position of power. Well, as much power as a basketball coach can have over a cheerleader. At the very least, the relationship was completely inappropriate… .

But what could Lindsay possibly have left in the cafeteria that she’d needed to give back to Coach Andrews so desperately?

There’s really only one way to find out. Which is why I get up from Sarah’s desk and, after stopping by the recycling pile at the bottom of the basement stairwell and snagging a good-sized box, I hurry out into the lobby, winding my scarf back around my neck and nearly colliding with my boss, who is carrying two mugs of coffee out of the cafeteria.

“Where are you going?” Tom wants to know, eyeing the box.

“Lindsay’s parents called,” I lie. It is seriously scary how easily these things trip off my tongue. It’s no wonder I can’t seem to find the guts to sing in front of anyone. It’s becoming more and more clear my true talent lies in a completely different direction than vocal performance. “They want somebody to clean out her locker over at the Winer Complex.”

Tom looks confused. “Wait… I thought Cheryl and her friends did that already. When they got the sweater.”

“I guess not,” I say, shrugging. “I’ll be back in a bit. ’Bye!”

Before he can say another word, I throw myself out into the wind and cold, using the box to shield my face from the snow. It’s slow going—no one has had a chance to shovel the sidewalks yet, due to the fact that the snow has only slowed down a bit, not stopped. But I have my Timberlands on, so my feet stay dry and relatively warm. And anyway, I like the snow. It covers the empty marijuana baggies and nitrous oxide canisters that litter the sidewalks, and muffles the sounds of sirens and honking car horns. True, car owners won’t be able to dig out their vehicles for a week, since the snowplows—their lights blinking orange and white, orange and white, as they go by, reflecting against high drifts piled on either side of the street—will just cover them again.