Then, “What’s your problem, anyway?”
Piper is asking this. Her voice is soft, girlish.
And I don’t know the answer. “You want me to limit myself to just one?”
She laughs. “I would kill to be you,” she says.
“Yeah, right,” I mutter.
The girlish tone in her voice disappears. “You look like a plus-size model. And if you’d just—”
“—lose weight I’d look just like my mother,” I snap. “I know.”
“You don’t want to look like her? You don’t want to look like Leslie Vonn Tate?” Piper sounds surprised.
“I don’t want to be anything like her,” I say.
“So,” she says slowly. “Why won’t you wear the uniform? It’s not that bad.”
“It’s okay, I guess,” I say. “It’s just that I make my own clothes. And what I wear is the one thing that I can...”
“Control?” Piper finishes.
Another silence.
“How’d you get stuck here?” I ask her, eager to change the subject.
She doesn’t answer right away. I start to think she’s fallen asleep when she almost whispers, “Online contest.”
“Wait. You wanted to come here?” I demand.
“Yeah, Cookie Vonn,” she says. “I wanted to come here. My family. My mum keeps saying we’re all big-boned. My brothers have such big bones, they get tossed from the cinema for taking too many seats. There are five of us. No one’s been asked to a dance.”
I say nothing.
“Coming to this camp is twelve thousand Oz dollars. So you can think I’m pathetic if you want. Maybe I am pathetic. I had to write this whole big thing. ‘How would Fairy Falls change your life?’”
“I don’t think you’re pathetic,” I whisper.
“I want to get married. To hang glide. To surf,” she says. “I want to go to the senior dance. My mum thinks the five food groups are meat pie, lamb leg, fish-and-chips, chocolate biscuits and lamingtons. This is my only chance.”
I should say something. I know it. About how life has to be about more than just one chance. How there has to be more to life than how we look on the outside. How happy endings can’t be reserved for the thin.
But there’s a knock at the door. A soft knock.
“Cookie? Cookie Vonn?”
I open the door a crack. That dickhead Getty called lights out a while ago, but the guy outside the cabin holds a small, battery-powered camping lantern.
“I thought you might want some dinner,” the guy says. Piper leans forward on her bunk, trying to catch a glimpse of what’s happening.
“Who’re you? And why do you care if I get dinner?” I ask.
He shakes the lantern next to his head of blond, curly hair. “It’s me. Tommy.” He says this like I should recognize him. Like we’ve been bosom buddies all our lives.
“Tommy who?”
He lowers the lamp and his shoulders slump. His camp tee is a couple sizes too big. It’d be a stretch to say the guy has twenty pounds of extra weight on him. Whoever shipped him off to fat camp is more evil than Chad Tate.
“Tommy Weston.”
The name doesn’t ring a bell.
“My mom works for the Cards. We met at the Cards versus Giants game.”
I think about that game. The only thing I remember is Chad Tate spilling beer on my new pair of oxford loafers.
“I see you at Donutville every Sunday when I pick up a dozen for church.”
Yeah, you and every other Catholic within a five-mile radius.
“Oh, come on! I sit behind you in Trig.”
That sort of rings a bell. Like maybe I’ve seen his poofy mop as I pass back quiz copies or something.
“Yeah, okay. Hi. What do you want?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Piper recoiling in horror. I’m pretty sure I’m losing whatever ground we gained during our heart-to-heart.
“I heard about the thing with Mr. Getty. And, well...my mom knows your dad... I thought you might be hungry... I thought maybe I should—”
I put my hands on my hips. “Chad Tate’s not my dad.”
“Yeah, sure. Sorry.” He holds up the lantern again. He’s like the blond boy from the cover of The Little Prince. Hopeful. And a bit lost. “So you don’t want to go on a picnic? See Fairy Falls?”
I bite my lower lip. “Fairy Falls is a real thing? Not just some bizarre-o marketing gimmick from the mind of Herbert Getty?”
“It’s real. We went up there this morning. It’s more of a walk. Took about forty-five minutes. Come see it.” He smiles and his teeth glow green.
I know I can’t hike in my skirt and wedges. “Did he put you up to this? Did Getty send you over here to trick me into wearing that Hulk costume?”
His mouth clamps shut and he shrugs. “Wear whatever you want. I’m just offering you a sandwich.”
Sandwich. I have no idea when Getty will let me eat, and that’s enough to motivate me. “Okay. Hang on.” I shut the door and tug on the oversize green sweats. Piper gives me a smile and a wave as I lace up my Converse and leave the cabin.
“Hey! Don’t hurt me, Hulk,” Tommy whispers as I join him outside.
“Ha ha. I’m wearing the sweats. Now, where’s my sandwich, Pavlov?” I experiment with the placement of the sweatshirt’s ribbed edge, trying to figure out which option makes me look less fat. No one option seems better than any other. And the green color is such a crime against humanity that it probably doesn’t matter anyway.
He dims the light and motions for me to follow him up the path. “You know, it doesn’t look that bad. Why did you make such a big deal out of it?”
I have to stay close to keep from tripping in the darkness. And I don’t say anything. Partially because the land has started to rise in an incline and I’m having trouble breathing. Partially because I no longer know the answer. Something about Piper got to me. Made me think that camp wouldn’t be all bad.
“Wouldn’t it be easier to just go with the flow once in a while?” he asks.
“That’s what Churchill...said when the Nazis...invaded Poland.” I hope the panting isn’t too obvious.
“Ah, so you’re comparing me to Hitler now?”
The moon rises higher and higher in the sky and it feels like we’ve been walking all night. We finally come to a stop and Tommy turns the lantern to full brightness. He holds it up, illuminating the rocky edge of a water hole. White steam rises off the surface and sends a rotten-egg smell in our direction.
“The Grand Prismatic Spring,” he says in a booming voice. In a quieter tone, he goes on, “You should see it during the day. It looks like something from another planet. The colors change. Sometimes you see a deep blue, sometimes gold and then red.”
“It’s the algae,” I say. “And bacteria. This place is basically one big infection. And it smells like one too.”
He laughs, and we start walking again. Typical. I just caught my breath. I can hear rushing water ahead in the distance. Tree branches poke into the pathway and with another wave of the lantern,