Meg Cabot - Size 12 Is Not Fat

I say, keeping my voice low-pitched so Rachel can’t hear how badly it’s shaking, “Okay. So I was there. So I know about you and Chris. So what? Rachel, I’m on your side. I totally understand where you’re coming from. I’ve been dicked over by guys before, too. Why don’t we talk about this—”

Rachel is shaking her head. Her expression is incredulous, as if I, not she, am the one cracking up.

“There’ll be no talking about this,” she says, with a bark of laughter. “The time for talking is over. And let’s get one thing straight here, Heather.” Rachel uncrosses her arms, her right hand going to a lump I hadn’t noticed before beneath her cardigan.

“I am the director,” she goes on. “I am the one in charge. I decide whether or not we’re going to talk about it, because I am the one who schedules the meeting. Like I scheduled the meetings for Elizabeth and Roberta. Like I’ll schedule yet another meeting for Amber, later. Like I’ve scheduled this meeting, now, between you and me. I am the one in charge. Do you want to know what qualifies me to be in charge, Heather?”

I nod mutely, my eyes on the lump under her sweater. A gun, I think. A gun definitely qualifies Rachel to be in charge.

But it isn’t a gun at all. When Rachel draws it out, all I see is a black plastic thing that fits snugly in her hand. There are two evil-looking metal pieces sticking out of the top, giving it an appearance not unlike the head of a cockroach. I have no idea what it is until Rachel flicks a switch with her thumb, and suddenly a thin blue electric line buzzes between the twin metal prongs.

Then I know, even before she says it.

“Heather, meet the Thunder Gun.” Rachel speaks proudly, like some of the parents had on the first day of check-in, when they’d been introducing their kid to me. “A second of contact with the one hundred and twenty thousand volts the head of the Thunder Gun delivers can cause confusion, weakness, disorientation, and loss of balance and muscle control for several minutes. And the wonderful thing is, if blasted through clothing, the Thunder Gun leaves only a very small burn mark upon the skin. It’s a fabulously effective repellent weapon, and you can order it from any number of catalogs here in the U.S. Why, mine only cost forty-nine ninety-five, nine-volt battery not included. Of course, it’s not legal to own one here in New York City, but then, who cares?”

I stare at the crackling blue fire strip.

So this is how she’d done it. No chloroform, no bashing over the head with a baseball bat. She’d simply shown up at Beth’s door, and then later, at Bobby’s, stunned them, then shoved their limp bodies down the elevator shaft. What could be simpler?

And Detective Canavan had said killers were dumb. Rachel isn’t dumb. What kind of doofus would have the savvy to pull off this kind of crime? Because so many young people kill themselves doing stupid stunts like elevator surfing, no one would ever think that the girls had actually been murdered, not when there was no hint of suspiciousness to their deaths.

No one except a freak like me.

No, Rachel isn’t dumb.

And she isn’t crazy, either. She’d thought up the perfect way to get rid of her romantic rivals. No one would have suspected a thing if it hadn’t been for me and my big mouth.

If it hadn’t been for me and my big mouth, Sarah and I wouldn’t be about to become Rachel’s third and fourth victims.

“But this isn’t the only thing that qualifies me to be in charge around here, you know,” Rachel assures me, casually gesturing with the stun gun to emphasize her point. “I have a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. Did you know that, Heather?”

I shake my head. Maybe one of the RAs will key in to the office to pick up his mail. Yeah. Or maybe Cooper will have gotten that message I’d left on his cell phone….

“It’s amazing what one can do with a bachelor’s in chemical engineering. One can, for instance, learn to build small incendiary devices—so simple, yet so effective. Do you know what an incendiary device is, Heather? No, I would imagine that you don’t. After all, you were far too busy twitching your ass at the local mall to finish high school, weren’t you? Let me see if you know this one. What do you get when you stand a bunch of blonds next to each other, shoulder to shoulder?”

I look at Sarah. She’s still sobbing, but she’s trying to do it quietly, so Rachel won’t slap her again.

I shake my head.

Rachel laughs humorlessly and says, “A wind tunnel, Heather! A wind tunnel!”

“Oh, wow, Rachel,” I say, amending my previous thought. She’s definitely crazy. Nuts, even. “That’s really funny. But you know what? I have to go now. Cooper’s waiting by the guard’s desk. If I’m gone too long, he’s bound to come back here, looking for me.”

“He can look all he wants,” Rachel says with a shrug. “He doesn’t have a key. And we aren’t going to let him in. We’re working, Heather. We have a lot of important work to do.”

“Well, you know what, Rachel?” I say. “If we don’t open the door, Cooper’ll just have Pete call one of the RAs to let him in—”

“But the RAs don’t have keys to the office anymore. I had the lock changed.” Rachel’s cheeks have twin spots of color in them now, and her eyes sparkle every bit as brightly as the thin volt of electricity that leaps from the prongs of the weapon clenched in her hand.

“That’s right,” she says happily. “I had the lock changed yesterday, while you were in the hospital, and I’m the only one with a key.” Then she turns those too-bright eyes on me and says, “You understand, don’t you, Heather? I mean, this isn’t a career for you. This is just a job. Assistant director to Fischer Hall. It’s just a rest stop between gigs, isn’t it? A steady paycheck until you get the guts to go on the road again after your little dispute with your record company. That’s all this position is to you. Not like me. Higher education is my life. My life, Heather. Or at least it was. Until—”

She stops speaking suddenly, her gaze, which had become a little unfocused, fastening on me like a vise. “Until him,” she says, simply.

I want to sit down. My knees shake every time I glance at the weapon in Rachel’s hand.

But I don’t dare. Seated, I’m an even easier target. No, somehow I have to distract her from whatever it is she intends to do to Sarah and me—and I have a pretty good idea what that is.

“Him, Rachel?” I ask, trying to sound friendly, like we’re just chatting over cups of coffee in the cafeteria, something we’d actually done, once or twice, before the killing had begun. “You mean Christopher, don’t you?”

She laughs bitterly, and that laugh makes me more afraid than anything so far, even the stun gun.

“Christopher,” she says, rolling the word on her tongue like it’s a piece of chocolate—something Rachel never allowed herself to enjoy. Too fattening. “Yes. Chris. You wouldn’t understand about Christopher, Heather. You see, I love him. You’ve never loved anyone before, Heather, except yourself, so you can’t know what it’s like. No, you can’t know what it’s like to feel that all your happiness in life is dependent on one single individual, and then—and then to have that individual turn around and reject you—”

The look she gives me could have frozen a hot buttered bagel. I think about mentioning that I know exactly what she’s talking about… that this is how I’d felt about Jordan, who is at this very moment probably playing Mad Libs with Tania Trace in his hospital bed.

But somehow I don’t think she’d listen.

“No, you wouldn’t understand that,” Rachel says. “You’ve always had everything you’ve ever wanted, haven’t you, Heather? Handed to you on a silver platter. Some of us have had to work for what we want, you know. Take me, for example. You think I always looked this good?” Rachel runs a hand up and down her lean, hard, thousand-crunches-a-day abs. “Hell, no. I used to be fat. A real lard ass. Kind of like you are now, actually. A size twelve.” She laughs. “I drowned my sorrows in candy bars, never worked out, like you. Do you know I never got asked out—never, not once, until I turned thirty? While you were strutting around like a little slut for Cartwright Records, I had my nose buried in my books, studying as hard as I could, because I knew no one was going to swoop down and offer me a recording contract. I knew if I wanted out of my hellhole of a life, I was going to have to use my head.”