Read Online Good Luck, Fatty by Maggie Bloom - Free Book Online

up with our dinner. “Wilma’s, uh…”
    Drunk? I feel like saying, because it’s the God’s honest truth. I’ve only seen someone so intoxicated in the movies (and in an anti-drunk driving video the middle school showed us during an eighth-grade assembly, but I’m pretty sure that guy was an actor too). “Can we go somewhere?” I ask. Fat people get overheated quickly, especially around so many other bodies.
    A few steps from the kitchen is the glorious basement door, which Tom motions toward with his head. Our hands are full—mine with the pop and his with the food—so he drags his forearm over the knob to twist it open, then elbows the door ajar. A girl of about ten, with ringlet curls and a crimson velvet dress, gives us the hairy eyeball as we slip downstairs.
    Tom sets the plates on a coffee table and takes the drinks from me, so I can sink into the sofa without making a sloshy mess. “How come we’re the only ones down here?” I ask, surprised at the basement’s tranquility given the cacophony above.
    He chuckles, passes me a plate of food. “My cousin, Annabelle… She broke one of Wilma’s favorite Hummels last year. It was a rare one too. Cost her like two-hundred bucks. She was pissed. ”
    “So…?”
    “Well, now the kids are banned. No more ‘horsing around’ in the basement,” he tells me with a mischievous grin.
    I want to horse around with him right now. “That’s too bad,” I say, trying my hand at a little suggestive flirting.
    We nibble through the meatballs and mac ‘n cheese, me trying my darndest to come off as ladylike despite our lack of simple accoutrements like napkins. “This is good,” I say about the pasta, which dissolves on my tongue like a gooey fondue. “Is it homemade?”
    He nods. “Yup. My uncle’s new wife owns a catering company.” He has a step-aunt? It seems like the men in his family are unlucky in love.
    I try to eat slower, just so I don’t finish before him, but it’s no use; my jaw muscles are too well-trained. I leave the empty plate behind on the coffee table and get up to wander.
    And Tom watches me. “There’s some cool stuff back there you can check out, if you want,” he tells me as I approach an orderly tower of mismatched furniture and caved-in cardboard boxes (leftovers from when Wilma ditched her apartment and took up residence here?).
    I tug at the flap of a box that looks like it’s about to disintegrate, and, sure enough, one whole side of the thing comes apart in my hands. “Shoot,” I say, pressing my jellyroll forward to stop an avalanche of stuff that’s headed my way.
    Tom hops up from the sofa, drops his plate on top of the mini-fridge and speeds to my aid. “I got it,” he says, squeezing against me from behind and wrapping his arms around my sides, steadying the box in place.
    I have an unclean thought that involves me and Tom and that secluded old tree house. “Now what?” I whisper.
    His body is hot against mine. “Turn around,” he says.
    I’m pinned in place and will be just as trapped if I’m able to wiggle myself to face him. “I don’t know if…”
    Out of nowhere, his tongue shoots to my ear (a crime of opportunity?) and something tightens in his frontal pants region. I want to scream (in a good way). He says, “Trust me.”
    I do as he says, twist and shimmy between his arms (all the while massaging my squishy flesh into his considerably leaner bod) until we end up eye to chin. Now I can barely breathe, and the junk in the box is digging a hole into the small of my back. “You’re up, Houdini,” I say.
    “What’s your rush?” He cocks his lips fiendishly. The stuff behind me shifts, and he gives it—and me—a good ramming. “That should do it.”
    There is a release of pressure from my backside but not from his front. Impulsively, I tip my face up and mold my lips to his, that anxious tongue of his darting and probing. I settle my hands on his hips and try to inhibit the memories of other