Meg Cabot - Size 14 Is Not Fat Either

“You should go to bed,” I say to him. “We’ve got things covered in here, Sarah and I.”

“I can’t go to bed.” Now Tom looks shocked. “A girl’s been found dead in my building. Can you imagine how that would look to Jessup and everybody? If I just… went to bed? I’m still on employment probation, you know. They’d just decide I can’t hack it and—” He swallows. “Oh, my God, did I just say the word hack? ”

“Go back in your office, shut the door, and close your eyes for a while,” I say to him. “I’ll cover for you.”

“I can’t,” Tom says. “Every time I close my eyes, I see… her.”

I don’t have to ask what he means. I know, only too well. Since the same thing keeps happening to me.

“Hey.” A kid in a hoodie, with a tiny silver pair of barbells pierced through the bottom of his nose, leans his head into the office. “Why’s the café closed?”

“Gas leak,” Sarah, Tom, and I all say at the same time.

“Jesus,” the kid says, making a face. “So I gotta walk across campus to get breakfast?”

“Go to the student union,” Sarah says quickly, holding out a meal pass. “On us.”

The kid looks down at the voucher. “Sweet,” he says, because with the voucher, the meal won’t be subtracted from his daily quota. Now he can have TWO dinners, if he wants to. He shuffles happily away.

“I don’t see why we can’t just tell them the truth,” Sarah declares, as soon as he’s gone. “They’re gonna find out anyway.”

“Right,” Tom says. “But we don’t want to cause a panic. You know, that there’s a psychopathic killer loose in the building.”

“And,” I add carefully, “we don’t want people finding out who it was before they’ve gotten hold of Lindsay’s parents.”

“Yeah,” Tom says. “What she said.” It’s weird having a boss who doesn’t actually know what he’s doing. I mean, Tom’s great, don’t get me wrong.

But he’s no Rachel Walcott.

Which, on balance, is something to be grateful for… .

“Hey, you guys,” Sarah says. “What am I? Ha, ha, ha, thump.”

Tom and I look at one another blankly.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Someone laughing his head off. Get it? Ha, ha, ha, thump.” Sarah looks at us reprovingly when we don’t laugh. “Gallows humor, people. To help us COPE.”

I glance at Tom. “Who’s with the birthday kid?” I ask him. “The one at the hospital? If you and I are here, I mean?”

“Oh, crap,” Tom says, looking ashen-faced. “I forgot about him. I got the call, and—”

“You just left him?” Sarah rolls her eyes. Her contempt for our new boss isn’t something she tries to hide. She thinks Dr. Jessup should have hired her to take over, even though she’s a full-time student. A full-time student whose part-time hobby is analyzing the problems of everyone she meets. I, for instance, allegedly have abandonment issues, due to my mother running off to Argentina with my manager… and all of my money.

And because I have not pursued the issue as aggressively as Sarah thinks I should via the courts, I allegedly suffer from low self-esteem and passivity, as well. At least according to Sarah.

But I feel like I have a choice (well, not really, because it’s not like I’ve got the money to pursue it in the courts, anyway): I can sit around and be bitter and resentful over what Mom did. Or I can put it behind me and just get on with my life.

Is it wrong I choose the latter?

Sarah seems to think so. Although this is only the stuff she tells me when she’s not busy accusing me of having some kind of Superman complex, for wanting to save all the residents in Fischer Hall from ever coming to harm.

It really isn’t any mystery to me why Sarah didn’t get the job and Tom did. All Tom ever says to me is stuff like he likes my shoes, and did I see American Idol last night. It’s much easier to get along with Tom than it is with Sarah.

“Well, I think murder trumps alcohol poisoning,” I say, coming to Tom’s defense. “But we still need to have someone there with the resident, especially if he doesn’t end up getting admitted… .” If Stan finds out we have a resident in the ER with no one there to supervise his care, he will flip out. I don’t want to lose my new boss just when I’m starting to like him. “Sarah—”

“I have a lab,” she says, not even looking up from the sign-in sheets she’s gathering to photocopy, ostensibly so the police can check to see if Lindsay had any guests the night before who might have decided to repay her hospitality by cutting her head off.

Except, of course, Lindsay hadn’t. We’d been over the logs twice. Nothing.

“But—”

“I can’t miss it,” Sarah says. “It’s the first one of the new semester!”

“I’ll go, then,” I say.

“Heather, no.” Tom looks panicky. I can’t tell if it’s because he genuinely doesn’t want to put me through a New York City ER waiting room after what I’ve already been through this morning, or if it’s just that he doesn’t want to be left alone in the office, considering the fact that he’s so new to his job. “I’ll get one of the RAs… .”

“They’ll all have classes, too, just like Sarah,” I say. I’m already on my feet and reaching for my coat. The truth is, I’m not trying to be a martyr. I’m actually seriously welcoming the chance to get out of there. Though I try not to act like it. “Really, it’s fine. They’ll have to admit him soon, right? Or let him go. So I’ll be back soon. It is a he, right?”

“What girl would be stupid enough to try to drink twenty-one shots in one night?” Sarah asks, rolling her eyes.

“It’s a guy,” Tom says, and hands me a slip of paper with a name and student ID number on it, which I shove into my pocket. “Not the most scintillating conversationalist, but then, he was still unconscious when I was there. Maybe he’s awake by now. Need petty cash for cab fare?”

I assure him I still have what I’d grabbed from the metal box earlier, when I’d been on my way to spell him… before we’d found out about Lindsay.

“So,” Tom says to me in a quiet voice, as I’m about to head out the door. “You’ve dealt with this before.” We both know what he means by this. “What, um, should I do? ”

He looks really worried. That and the bed head make him seem younger than he really is… which, at twenty-six, is still younger than me. Almost as young as Barista Boy.

“Be strong,” I say, laying a hand on his massive, Izod-sweater-clad shoulder. “And whatever you do… don’t try to solve the crime yourself.Believe me.”

He swallows. “Whatever. Like I want to end up with my head in a pot? No, thanks.”

I give him a reassuring pat. “I’ll be on my cell if you need to reach me,” I say.

Then I beat a hasty retreat into the hallway, where I run into Julio, the head housekeeper, and his newly hired nephew—nepotism is as alive and well at New York College as it is anywhere else—Manuel, laying rubber-backed mats along the floor in order to protect the marble from salt the residents will track in when it finally starts snowing.

“Heather,” Julio says to me worriedly as I breeze past, “is it really true, what they say? About… ” His dark eyes glance toward the lobby, in which police officers and college administrators are still swarming like fashionist as at a sample sale.

“It’s true, Julio,” I stop to tell him, in a low voice. “They found a… ” I’m about to say dead body, but that isn’t strictly true. “Dead girl in the cafeteria,” I settle for finishing.

“Who?” Manuel Juarez, an outrageously handsome guy I’d heard some of the female—and even some of the male—student workers sighing over (I don’t bother, because of course I don’t believe in romance in the workplace. Also because he’s never looked twice at me, and isn’t likely to, with so many nubile nineteen-year-olds in belly-baring tees around. I haven’t bared my belly since, um, it started jutting over the waistband of my jeans), appears concerned. “Who was it?”