Good Luck, Fatty

barely above a whisper.
    Is he breaking up with me? “To do what?”
    “Nothing,” he says with a groan. “Anything. Just some time for, um, a break.”
    There he goes, tossing the word break around. “Fine by me,” I say, sort of snottily. Because, to be honest, I’m starting to long for the good old days, when all I had to worry about was which boy was next in line to screw me.
    “So I’ll call you?”
    “If you want,” I mutter.
    He says, “Don’t be like that.”
    “I’m not.”
    Without so much as a goodbye, the phone clicks off. I pull the receiver from my ear and stare at it, realizing there’s no way I could’ve hung up on Tom, because the nubby little button (which, for no good reason, reminds me of a tongue) that shuts the phone off is eight feet away, mounted on the wall. And no one’s touched it.
     

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    One sixty-two point nine! After untold hours of pumping along from the now-wobbly seat of the Schwinn, I have taken off a total of fifty pounds (or thereabouts, since I didn’t have the luxury of a scale when Tom and I began our training).
    It just so happens I’ve taken off a few other things too: six fingernails, a three-inch patch of skin from my knee (and a matching one from the opposite elbow), at least two-hundred strands of hair (or so I’ve estimated, a clump of my chestnut locks ending up wrapped around a rubber band every time I ponytail them).
    But it’s all been worth it, I think as I roll up to The Pit in the predawn blackness of race day, my mind swimming with last-minute tasks I’ve promised to complete for Harvey.
    I ease off the Schwinn and wiggle the key to The Pit (Harvey’s trusted me with my very own copy!) from my shorts, then open the place up and wheel my bike onto the showroom floor, where I kickstand it to a stop in front of the display window.
    It takes me about an hour and a half to plow through the handwritten list Harvey’s marked out on a neon-orange sheet of construction paper and duct taped to the counter by the cash register.
    As the sun begins streaming into the shop, I cozy up on the bench where Lex Arlington’s girlfriend (I wonder if they’re still together?) once traded her bejeweled flip-flops for a sweet pair of K2s.
    Then, apparently, I promptly fall asleep, because, the next thing I know, Harvey’s friend (boyfriend?) Scott is gingerly poking at my shoulder. “Hey there, sleepyhead,” he says in the juvenile tone adults reserve for puppies and small children. (If he weren’t so nice, the baby talk would irk me.)
    I pinch my fingertips against the bridge of my nose. “Hi,” I murmur. When I try to stand, my back spasms, and I drop back down on the seat cushion. “Ouch,” I say under my breath.
    “Harvey’s on his way,” Scott tells me, my eyes having trouble focusing on his smiling, mustachioed face.
     “That’s good.” I shake my head to clear it. “What time is it?” It must’ve been just after six when I drifted off.
    Scott notices me scooting to the edge of the bench and offers me his hand. “Seven o’clock,” he says. “Right on schedule.”
    The Yo-Yo officially kicks off at ten a.m., but there’s a ton of pre-race prep work (to be completed by an army of volunteers, including Denise and Marie) still left to do. I take Scott’s hand, force the kink out of my back as I straighten up. “Everything’s done here, I think,” I tell him.
    “What about the goodie bags?” he asks, dropping his backpack on the floor with a thunk.
    “Goodie bags?” I remember Harvey mentioning something a month or two ago, but the details are fuzzy.
    “Come on,” Scott says, winking an ocean-blue eye at me. He gestures toward the office. “I believe everything we need’s back here.”
    I stretch out in a yawn, clomp along behind him to the office, where, piled in the corner, we find fifteen or so large paper sacks stuffed to bursting with donated doodads and thingamajigs. (Harvey’s been hitting the community up hard for consolation prizes for the Yo-Yo.) On the desk are numerous packages of brown paper lunch bags and a few colorful spools of ribbon.
    “How do you want to do this?” I ask, a wave of exhaustion washing over me.
    He plucks the top bag off the pyramid and unceremoniously dumps its contents onto the worn carpet between us. “Three or four goodies per bag?” he says, presumably doing a little mental math.
    He sinks to the floor, and I flop down opposite him. “Flea collars?” I say, suppressing a