Good Luck, Fatty

front of the helmets, plucks the blueberry one off its hook. “Your birthday’s right around the corner, isn’t it?”
    “A week from today,” I say.
    He holds the helmet up to my head, as if he’s mentally trying it on me. “Think this’ll match your bike okay?” he asks. “Because you’ve got no business risking your skull out there.”
    My heart swells with happiness, because even though I can’t stand those obtrusive things making my scalp sweat and itch, compressing my temples and gouging their straps into my double chin, I know Harvey’s only trying to protect me. “It’s perfect,” I say as he hands it to me.
    Harvey grins. “Happy Birthday. A little early, but…”
    I jiggle the helmet onto my head, adjust its straps wide enough to fit and then click the thing into place. “Not bad,” I say with a nod.
    Harvey gives the helmet a satisfied rap of his knuckles and says, “Stellar. Just the thing to help me sleep at night.”
    Is it wrong for a teenage girl to kiss an old dude (on the cheek, of course)? An old dude for whom she works? An old dude who, once upon a time, was her high school principal? An old dude who is a perfect gentleman and, in fact, may very well be gay?
    I don’t bother riddling out the answers to these questions but instead sling my arms around Harvey’s shoulders and plant one a few inches in front of his ear. He startles briefly and then returns my hug. And my kiss. To the helmet.

 
     
    chapter 12
     
    TOM IS waiting outside The Pit when I get off work, his BMX balanced on its side against the curb, where he squats over a cluster of stones he’s arranged into a rough pyramid. Behind him on the sidewalk is a knotted plastic shopping bag, its contents obscured.
    Obviously, he’s here for me.
    As a girl of enhanced size, I’d like to point out that, although some large people are easy to hear coming—puffy breaths, slacks rustling between their thighs, the slap of meaty footsteps—others, like me, can be quite stealthy, even to the point of imperceptibility.
    I clear my throat to let Tom know I’ve slithered up next to him.
    “Oh,” he says, jumping to his feet and brushing his jeans off. His nose twitches nervously. “Hi.”
    I have never found Tom Cantwell more darling than I do right this moment, yet I can’t think of a thing to say. “What are you…?”
    “I didn’t know when you’d be getting…” He glances at the sun as if he’s checking a watch. “…uh, out here.”
    “The Pit closes early on Fridays now,” I say with a tilt of my head in the shop’s direction. “Harvey joined a knitting club.”
    “That guy…” Tom says, chuckling. “I don’t know…” When his eyes lift to meet mine, I get a sudden urge to let him screw me. A bolt of lightning in my netherland.
    I shake off the sensation and, in Harvey’s defense, argue, “He’s all right.”
    Tom rights the BMX and mounts it cockeyed, one foot balanced on a pedal and the other on the sidewalk, where it threatens to strike up a game of footsie with me. When I reach for his shopping bag, he takes an abrupt dive, beating me to it.
    “What’s that?” I say, not bothering to disguise my curiosity.
    He loops the bag around his wrist, where it dangles and periodically smacks against the bike’s steering column. “I’m headed to Bob’s Lunch,” he tells me, adroitly changing the subject. “Wanna come?”
    “They’re open?” I have been to Bob’s Lunch—a ramshackle diner-esque eatery by the railroad tracks with actual greasy spoons—plenty of times with Gramp, but always at noon-ish. We are now solidly in supper territory.
    “ ‘Bob’s Lunch’ is a misnomer,” Tom tells me. “They should drop the ‘lunch’ and just call it Bob’s.”
    I take a couple of lazy steps toward the Schwinn and say, “It’s a what?”
    He hops a tire up onto the curb. “MIS-nomer,” he repeats. “Badly named; wrongly named. It means something like that, in Latin anyway.”
    Bob’s Lunch is at least a mile from The Pit. Maybe more. I point the Schwinn in the right direction. “What are you, one of those idiot-savants?” I joke. Gramp adored the movie Rain Man, which, until he died, we watched—and re watched—every Christmas Eve and Easter morning. I think he fancied himself a bit like the Dustin Hoffman character: a mental genius who couldn’t punch his way out of a paper bag.
    “Possibly,” Tom says, not seeming the least bit insulted.
    He kickstarts the BMX and floats