Meg Cabot - Size 12 Is Not Fat

• Название: Size 12 Is Not Fat
• Автор: Meg Cabot
• Жанр: Современные любовные романы

HEATHER WELLS ROCKS!

Or, at least, she did. That was before she left the pop-idol life behind after she gained a dress size or two—and lost a boyfriend, a recording contract, and her life savings (when Mom took the money and ran off to Argentina). Now that the glamour and glory days of endless mall appearances are in the past, Heather's perfectly happy with her new size 12 shape (the average for the American woman!) and her new job as an assistant dorm director at one of New York's top colleges. That is, until the dead body of a female student from Heather's residence hall is discovered at the bottom of an elevator shaft.

The cops and the college president are ready to chalk the death off as an accident, the result of reckless youthful mischief. But Heather knows teenage girls… and girls do not elevator surf. Yet no one wants to listen—not the police, her colleagues, or the P.I. who owns the brownstone where she lives—even when more students start turning up dead in equally ordinary and subtly sinister ways. So Heather makes the decision to take on yet another new career: as spunky girl detective!

But her new job comes with few benefits, no cheering crowds, and lots of liabilities, some of them potentially fatal. And nothing ticks off a killer more than a portly ex-pop star who's sticking her nose where it doesn't belong.

---

I feel really cold, but it isn’t from any wind. It’s as warm a day in fall as any.

Magda, who has joined us, seems to agree.

“There is no wind today,” she says. “On New York One they said it would be mild all day long.”

“None of those planters ever blew over before,” Pete says. “And I been here twenty years.”

“Well, you can’t be suggesting someone pushed it,” Rachel says, looking horrified. “I mean, the students don’t even have access to the terrace—”

“Students?” The cop squints at us. “This some kind of dorm, or something?”

“Residence hall,” both Rachel and I correct him automatically.

The EMS workers load Jordan onto a backboard, then onto a stretcher, and then into the back of the ambulance. As they are closing the doors, I glance at Rachel.

“I should go with him,” I say to her.

She gives me a little push toward the vehicle. “Of course, you should,” she says kindly. “You go. I’ll take care of things here. Call me and let me know how he is.”

I tell her I will, and hurry after the EMS guys, asking them if I can hitch a ride to the hospital with them. They’re totally cool about it, and let me take the passenger seat of the cab.

From the front seat, I can look back through this little door and see what the paramedic who isn’t driving is doing to Jordan. What he is doing to Jordan is asking him what day of the week it is. Apparently, Jordan’s regaining consciousness. He doesn’t know what day of the week it is, though, and only grunts in response, like someone who’d really like to go back to sleep.

I think about suggesting that they ask him who he’s engaged to, but then decide this would be too mean.

As we pull away from the hall, I notice that Rachel, Sarah, Pete, and Magda are all huddled on the sidewalk, gazing worriedly after me.

I realize then, with a kind of pang, that yeah, okay, maybe I don’t have a boyfriend.

But I do have a family.

A weird one, maybe.

But I’ve got one.

18

You got me crying

With all your lying

Why you gotta be

So mean to me?

Baby, can’t you see

You and me were

Meant to be?

Instead you got me

Crying

And you’re not even

Trying

Baby why you gotta

Be this way?

“Crying”

Performed by Heather Wells

Composed by Dietz/Ryder

From the album Summer

Cartwright Records

In the nearly four months since I started working at New York College, I’ve been to just about every emergency room in Manhattan with various sick or injured students. St. Vincent’s isn’t really one of my favorites. There’s a TV in the waiting room and everything, but it’s always turned to soap operas, and the candy machine is always out of Butterfingers.

Also, a lot of junkies go there to try to convince the triage nurse that they really need some morphine for these mysterious pains in their feet. The junkies are entertaining to watch for a while, but when they start withdrawing they get hostile, and then the security guard has to throw them out and then they beat on the windows and in general make it very hard to concentrate on Jane magazine or whatever I happen to be reading.

But though the waiting room at St. Vincent’s sucks, the medical staff is excellent. They ask me all sorts of questions about Jordan that I can’t answer. But as soon as I say his full name, they whoosh him into the emergency room ahead of everybody, because, you know, even doctors have heard of Easy Street.

Visitors aren’t allowed in the ER except during the first five minutes of every hour, so I’m banished to the waiting room. But I employ my time there wisely by calling Jordan’s dad to give him the details about the accident.

Mr. Cartwright is understandably upset by the news that his most popular male solo artist—oh, and son—has been felled by a geranium planter, so I don’t take it personally when he is very curt on the phone with me. Our most recent conversation before that hadn’t gone very smoothly, either—the one where he’d told me that he’d get Jordan to dump Tania and “fly right” if I’d just quit demanding to sing my own songs on my next album.

Mr. Cartwright is kind of a jerk. Which might be why Cooper hasn’t spoken to him in almost a year.

After I hang up with Jordan and Cooper’s dad, I can’t think of anyone else to call. I guess I could let Cooper know his brother’s been hurt.

But Cooper is bound to ask what Jordan was doing at Fischer Hall in the first place. And the truth is, I’m not the world’s greatest liar. I just have this feeling Cooper will see right through any attempt on my part to pull the wool over his eyes.

So I sink into a plastic chair in one corner of the waiting room and have fun watching other emergency patients being carted in instead of making any more phone calls. It’s just like Trauma in the ER, on the Learning Channel, only, you know, live. I see a jovial drunk with a bleeding hand, a frazzled mom with a baby she’s spilled her cappuccino on, a kid in a school uniform with a big cut on his chin being steered around by a nun, a construction worker with a broken foot, and a bunch of Spanish women with no visible problems who talk very loudly and get yelled at by the triage nurse.

I sit for twenty more minutes, and then the security guard announces that everyone waiting has five minutes to see their loved ones in the ER. So I herd along with the nun and the nervous mom and the Spanish ladies through the double doors and look around for Jordan.

He is unconscious again, or at least his eyes are closed, the white bandage around his head contrasting startlingly with the deep tan of his skin. (His parents have a really nice summer place in the Hamptons. The pool has a waterfall and everything.) They’d put his gurney in a pretty secluded, quiet section of the ER, and when I ask, the nurse tells me a bed is being prepared for him upstairs. They’re still waiting for his X-rays, but it looks as though a concussion is likely.

I guess I must look really worried or something since the nurse smiles at me and puts her hand on my arm and says, “Don’t worry. I’m sure he’s going to be back to doing dance moves in no time.”

In spite of the nurse’s assertion, I can’t bring myself to leave him there all alone. I can’t believe no one from his family has shown up yet! So when my five minutes of standing there and staring at Jordan are up, I go back to my plastic seat in the waiting room. I’ll stay, I decide, until he’s moved upstairs, or until a member of his family arrives. I’ll just hang out till they get here. And then—

And then I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m convinced—one hundred percent convinced, surer than I’ve ever been about anything, which I realize isn’t saying much, but whatever—that someone has just tried to kill me.

Right? I mean, hadn’t that been what the guy from the chess circle had said? “Good thing you moved, lady, or you’d have been the one it hit,” or something like that?

And the someone who pushed that planter over could only have been Christopher Allington. Who else had access to his parents’ terrace? Who else had reason to knock geranium planters onto my head? It wasn’t a premeditated attempt at murder—it couldn’t have been. How could he have known I’d be on my way back into the building right then?

No, he must have just looked down and decided fate was on his side and given that planter the heave-ho. If I hadn’t ducked, it would have hit me, and not Jordan. And it probably would have killed me, because, you know, my head isn’t anywhere near as hard as an ex-member of Easy Street’s.

But why does Chris want to kill me? Just because I suspect him of being a murderer? Suspecting someone of being a murderer and actually having proof of someone being a murderer are two entirely different things. What possible proof could Chris think I have? I mean, aside from the condom—which only proves he’s randy, not a killer—I have nothing on him. I don’t even have proof that there’ve actually been any murders.

So why is he trying to kill me? Isn’t he putting himself more at risk by trying to kill me than by just laying low? Especially since foul play isn’t suspected in the deaths of Elizabeth and Roberta—

By anyone but me, anyway.

A deep, familiar voice breaks in on my meditations. I look away from the snoring junkie I’ve been staring at unseeingly, and up into Cooper’s calm, smiling face… and suddenly feel like throwing up.

“Heather,” he says, with friendly nonchalance, as he folds himself into the plastic chair beside me.

“Um.” That’s all I can think of to say. Swift, huh? After a lot of mental turmoil, I finally add, “Hi.”

Cooper gazes with mild interest at the snoring junkie. He looks, in his scruffy but form-fitting jeans and black leather jacket, good enough to eat. Better than Ho Hos, even. Cooper, I mean. Not the junkie.

“So,” he says, in the same conversational tone. “What’s new with you?”

I go cold all over, then hot. It’s totally unfair, the hold this guy has over me. And he’s never so much as asked me out! Okay, he asked me to move in with him, but, hello, that was out of pity. And I live on a whole separate floor. With a whole separate set of locks on the door. Which I’ve never actually used, but has he ever bothered to find that out? No!

“Nothing much,” I say to him, hoping he can’t see how my heart is leaping around inside my T-shirt. “Did, um, your dad call you?”

“No,” Cooper says. “Your friend Patty did. When she came to your office to pick you up for lunch, Magda told her what happened. Patty had the baby with her, or she’d have come herself.”

“Oh,” I say. I’d forgotten all about my lunch appointment with Patty. Glancing at the waiting room clock, I see that it’s after two. “Well.”

“What she couldn’t quite explain,” Cooper says, “is what, precisely, happened.”

Which is when it all comes spilling out.

I don’t want for it to. I don’t mean for it to. It’s just… well, I guess that’s why Cooper’s such a good detective. There’s something in his deep voice that just makes you blurt out everything you know…

Well, okay, not everything. I did manage to keep the whole part about what Jordan and I had done on Cooper’s hallway runner under wraps. Wild horses aren’t going to drag that information out of me.

Oh, and the part about me wanting to, you know, peel off Cooper’s clothes with my teeth, of course.

But the rest of it just comes out in this giant gush, the way the hot chocolate in the dorm cafeteria does sometimes, right after Magda’s poured the mix in but before anybody’s stirred it…

I tell him, starting with the lip-synch the night before, when I’d first begun to suspect that Christopher Allington was Elizabeth and Roberta’s killer, and ending with the geraniums cracking Jordan’s head open, skipping over the part in between where his brother and I made the beast with two backs in his foyer.

I’ve overheard Cooper in action with his clients a couple of times. The washer/dryer is on the same floor as his office, just off the kitchen, and I’ve been in there washing my control top underwear (I only wear it on special occasions, like customer service training seminars or cultural diversity awareness workshops) when he’s met with people who’ve hired him. He talks to them in this totally calm, careful voice…

… a completely different voice, it turns out, than he uses on his nonpaying clientele.

“Heather, are you insane?” He looks really mad. He sounds really mad. “You went and talked to the guy?”

It would be nice to think that the reason he’s so angry with me is because my near brush with death has finally made him realize his true feelings for me.

But I think all it did was reinforce his suspicions that I’m a complete and total whacko.

“Why are you yelling at me?” I demand. “I’m the victim here!”

“No, you’re not. Jordan is. And if you’d just listened to me—”

“But if I’d listened to you, I wouldn’t know that Chris Allington is the dangerous psychopath we’ve been looking for!”

“A fact of which you still don’t have any proof.” Cooper shakes his head. He has dark, thick hair that he hardly ever gets cut and that is always growing past his collar, giving him a distinctly nonconformist air, even without the whole private eye thing. “That planter could have been knocked over by anyone. How do you know the Allingtons’ gardener wasn’t watering the plants and accidentally knocked the thing over?”

“Directly onto me? Isn’t that just a bit of a coincidence? Considering the fact that I was just questioning Chris Allington the night before?”

I swear I see the corners of Cooper’s mouth twitch at this.

“I’m sorry, Heather, but I doubt your interrogation skills are such as to goad Chris Allington into a murderous frenzy.”

Okay, Miss Marple I may not be. But he doesn’t have to rub it in.

“I’m telling you, he tried to kill me. Why don’t you believe me?” I hear myself cry, before I can shut my mouth. “Can’t you see that I’m not a stupid little teen pop star anymore, and that I might just know what I’m talking about?”

Even as the words are coming out, I’m wishing them unsaid. What am I doing?What am I doing? This is the guy who, without my even asking, offered me a place to live when I had nowhere to go… well, okay, except the guest room in Patty and Frank’s loft.

But, you know. Besides that. How ungrateful can I be?

“I’m so sorry,” I say, feeling dry-mouthed with panic. “I didn’t mean it. I don’t know where that came from. I’m just—I think maybe I’m just upset. You know. From the stress.”

Cooper is just sitting there, looking at me with a totally unreadable expression.

“I don’t think of you as a stupid little teen pop star” is all he says, in a tone suggesting mild surprise.

“I know,” I say quickly. Oh God, why can’t I ever seem to keep my mouth shut? WHY?

“I just worry about you sometimes,” Cooper goes on, before I can say anything else. “I mean, you get yourself into things…. That whole thing with my brother—”

What whole thing? Did he mean… my relationship with his brother? Or last night? Oh please, don’t let him have seen the Post ….

“And it’s not like you have anyone.” He shakes his head again. “Any family, or anyone to look after you.”

“But neither do you,” I remind him.

“That’s different,” he says.

“I don’t see how,” I say. “I mean, except that I’m younger than you.” But what’s seven years, really? Prince Charles and Lady Diana were twelve years apart… and okay, that didn’t turn out so well, but how likely are we to repeat their mistakes as a couple? If Cooper and I ever were to become one, I mean. Neither of us even likes polo.