Good Luck, Fatty

dad every year, instead of Happy Birthday. ”
    I glance at the record jacket and note that the tunes are by Queen, a band about which I know next to nothing. “ Bicycle Race? ” I say, reading the title of the A-track.
    Tom chuckles, shakes his head. “Uh-uh,” he says. “The other one.”
    I feel weird reading the title of the B-track aloud, but I do it anyway. “ Fat Bottomed Girls? ”
    He grins. “She thought it was about her, I guess,” he says, without a trace of self-consciousness, or pity, or meanness.
    “Do you have a record player?” I ask, wondering how a song about an overgrown body part could inspire an actual fat person to adopt it as their anthem.
    He raps his knuckles against a blond wood cabinet that’s the base of our archeological dig.
    I blink. “Huh?”
    He raps again. “Right here.”
    “That’s a record player?” I ask. The turntable Gramp had was the size of a suitcase.
    “Not the whole thing,” he says, in a tone that suggests I may be brain-dead. “Just the guts.”
    “Does it work?”
    “Last I knew.”
    Without me having to ask, he begins unearthing the cabinet, and I arrange the boxes out of the way, along the wall. Together we drag the cabinet over by the sofa, where there’s access to an electrical outlet. With a what-the-hell? shrug, he plugs it in (since when do we plug in furniture anyway?). Then he flips the lid open, revealing the turntable inside. “Got the record?” he asks, his string-bean fingers extended.
    “Oh, hang on.” I slip over and fetch the 45 from the floor and return it to his waiting hand.
    “Here goes nothin’,” he says, an air of skepticism in his tone as he slides the vinyl disc over the spindle, powers the turntable on (it’s spinning!) and gingerly coasts the needle to the sweet spot at the record’s edge.
    All I can do is stare at that glossy black disc revolving and revolving (this thing won’t put me in a trance, will it?) as the music starts to crackle out. “It’s working!” I squeak, suddenly giddy at our success in resurrecting a bygone technology. “I can’t believe it!”
    As Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, a band about which I know next to nothing but not absolutely nothing (they do sing Bohemian Rhapsody, after all) croons about the virtues of rounded feminine derrieres, Tom gets inspired to sample a bit of this fat girl’s bottom.
    And I let him, at least for now. But before things can progress to the next level between Tom Cantwell and me, I’m obligated to bring him up to speed on the whole sordid truth of my sexual promiscuity, including the fact that I may now be carrying Brent Flynn’s (or Justin White’s or Craig Benson’s) baby.

 
     
    chapter 8
     
    LUCKILY MARIE and Duncan decided they were above celebrating Christmas, despite their return to the motherland (too much commercialism, consumerism, and plain old American greed, they said), which left me to enjoy a pleasant holiday with Orv, Denise, and Denise’s family.
    By the time New Year’s Eve rolled around, I hadn’t laid eyes on my parents in nearly two weeks, and things had almost returned to normal.
    Then the phone rang.
    “Hello?” Denise says in the kitchen.
    It’s seven p.m., and Orv and I are settling in for a rerun marathon of Penal Code 911. Ever since I told Orv about Lex Arlington and the Yo-Yo race, he’s been obsessed with all things Lex-related. (I bet if I asked him Lex’s birth date or his favorite song, he’d know.)
    I’m not paying strict attention to the conversation in the other room, but Denise’s tone has gone wildly animated. I slide off the couch and peek around the corner, just in case I’m missing something of consequence.
    As soon as Denise spots me, she hangs up. “Get your coat,” she tells me, her voice tight and professional. “We’re going to the hospital.”
    I wrinkle my brow. “Why?”
    “Orv, come on!” she shouts into the living room. “Your Aunt Marie’s in labor!”
    Something makes me stop breathing for a few seconds. Maybe it’s the realization that, as little as I’ve mattered to my parents thus far, their loyalties will now be divided even further. Or maybe it’s the fear that I may be walking in Marie’s shoes in another eight months, give or take.
    Orv plods into the kitchen, his feet heavy even without those steel-toed boots he scuffs around in eight to twelve hours a day. “It’s New Year’s Eve,” he says, as if the stork should be off getting snookered