“So you kissed him and then ran away?” Vicki asked, crossing her legs in the chair. She was wearing a giant purple sun hat today, and we were sitting by her pool.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“And do you know why you ran?” she asked.
“I think it was because of what Amber said to me.” I ran my fingers around the hem of my dress nervously.
“The reason you ran had nothing to do with what Amber said to you and everything to do with what you say to yourself.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Are we back to my inner bitchy bully?”
“Until you learn to silence her, you’re going to run away from all the good things you deserve.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lori, your fears and insecurities and what you think about yourself, those things are all sabotaging you, and if you don’t learn to silence those voices, you’re never going to have the things in life that you deserve.”
“Okay, be direct, won’t you.”
“It’s true. You never finished that painting for Blackwell properly because you were too afraid to paint your body as you saw it.”
“Wait, are you saying that I sabotaged my chance of getting in?” I sat up in my chair and glared at her.
“I’m just saying that your fears are stopping you from having the things in life that you want and deserve.”
“So you’re saying I deserve Jake? That someone like me deserves him?”
“Why not?”
I shook my head. “You don’t get it. You’re not my age. You don’t understand how the world works these days. It’s easy for you to say that, when you’re sitting over there.”
She pulled her hat off and put it on the table in front of her. “Tell me how your world works.”
I sighed. “The girl like me, the fat girl, is only good for a few things. She’s either the best friend who’s really easy to talk to, the funny girl who makes everyone laugh, the sassy fat girl, or the weird fat girl . . . she is those things—and those are supporting roles, by the way. They’re not leading roles. They’re not the leading roles in the big Hollywood rom-coms. No! We don’t get to be stars in our own rom-coms, we don’t get that guy. We don’t get Jake Jones-Evans—star water-polo player, hottest guy at school—unless we’re in the pages of some unrealistic YA book that totally throws social conventions out the window and sets itself in this totally made-up world where fat girls win and the guy looks past all her cellulite and sees the girl inside. We don’t get that.”
“And yet last night you were kissing that guy under a sprinkler,” she said, eyeballing me. “Maybe this world you’re referring to is not as unrealistic as you think. Maybe your view on the world is actually the outdated one, fueled by your own faulty beliefs about yourself. You’re still living in a world where plus-sized models have never looked hot on Instagram and Lizzo never took to the stage.”
“The kissing was an accident!” I said.
“There’re no such things as accidents,” she replied.
“Now you sound like Xander Orange,” I said.
“Maybe he’s right about that one.”
“Fine, then it was this weird thing that happened because we were caught up in a moment and there was fake rain and running and painting and we thought we were going to get caught, but we didn’t so there was relief and excitement and, and, and . . . and!” I huffed loudly and folded my arms. “Just and.”
“And?” she probed.
“Yes, and!”
“And what?”
“And have I told you how much I hate the body positivity movement on Instagram.” I sat straight up now.
“Why?” she asked.
“Well, it’s just one more way to make the rest of us feel crappy about ourselves. Because if you’re not totally happy with your curves and embracing them and posting pictures of yourself in bikinis, then there’s something wrong with you. It’s like, if you’re fat these days, you have to be positive and happy about it. You have to be okay to show it off to the world. There’s no middle ground. What if I don’t want to be fat? Am I then betraying my kind, who are all waving the flag against fat shaming and being happy with who they are? Maybe I’m not happy with who I am.”
“And maybe that has nothing to do with being fat?” she said.
“Huh?” I looked at her and blinked.
“Do you think if you were thin you would be happy with yourself?”
“Uh . . . yes!” I said.
She shook her head. “I don’t think you would. I think you would still find something to criticize, and still find a way of putting yourself down.”
I shook my head and then tears welled up. “No, I don’t think so. I think I would be happy if I was skinny because then all the bad things wouldn’t have happened to me.”
“Tell me about the bad things.” Vicki leaned in closer and locked eyes with me.
“His name was Bradley Marcello.” I spat the words out quickly. “We were twelve and I had such a huge crush on him. I’d had a crush for two years. And then one night, at Libby and Rachel’s party—the most popular girls at school—they told me that Bradley wanted to play seven minutes in heaven. You know the game where you go into a closet with someone you like and do whatever?” I looked at her and she nodded. “I was naïve and stupid and an idiot to go, because of course they locked me in the closet. There was no Bradley. Just me, alone and scared in the dark cupboard for what felt like hours.”
She waited for a while and let me cry. They were familiar tears, I’d cried them many times before. And when the last of them was out, she passed me a handful of tissues. I dabbed my face. “Was that when the panic attacks started?” she asked.
I nodded. “I think it started building then, but they really started after the pool.” I took a deep breath. It was jagged and jerky and hurt my ribs. “When they pushed me in and then held my head underwater. Why are people so disgusted by fat? Why do they literally want to drown you because you weigh more? Is it so gross and distasteful, like that crack in the pavement?”
“And look what you did to that crack. You made it beautiful.”
I turned and looked up at the mountain—this defining feature that seemed to be intrinsic to Cape Town in every way.
“He touched my waist,” I suddenly said.
“Who?”
“Jake. He touched my waist, and no one has ever touched me there, like that. I—I . . . didn’t want him to feel it. Because it’s . . .” I looked away from the mountain—looking at it was irritating for some reason. It seemed to be looking down at me expectantly now. “What if he’ll want to do more than touch my waist?” I looked over at her now.
“I’m sure he will,” she said. “He’s an eighteen-year-old guy. I’m sure he wants to do a lot more than touch your waist.” She shot me a very penetrating stare. “And I’m sure you do too.”
“I’ve never thought of myself in that way,” I whispered.
“As desirable?”
“Mmm-hmmm,” I mumbled.
There was a silence again; the breeze blew and made the surface of the pool ripple.
“This is a complicated and exciting time for you, Lori,” she finally said.
I sat up and turned to her. “Is that seriously what you’re going to say to me now? Complicated and exciting?”
“Well, it is. You’re coming into your own. You’re finding your voice in this art that is so powerful, it’s got the whole city’s attention. You’re discovering new things about yourself, making new friends, and entering into a romantic relationship for the first time. You were thrown out of your comfort zone when you came here and guess what, this was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to you.”
“Things with my mom and dad have never been worse, though,” I quickly said. “So how can this move be the best thing?”
“Sometimes things have to hit rock bottom before they get better.”
“I think finding your mom in a hot tub with your school counselor is pretty much rock bloody bottom, not to mention finding out your dad is marrying a woman who could be your sister.”
“Homework.” She stood up and clapped her hands together.
“What about it?” I asked.
“How’s your list?”
“It’s okay, I guess.”
She eyed me suspiciously. I didn’t think my list had been going that well, to be honest. I’d crossed and uncrossed so many things that I no longer knew what was even written there anymore.
“Well, now you have new homework,” she said. “I want you to stand in front of your mirror naked and look at yourself.”
“What?” I almost choked on a fleck of spit as it shot down the back of my throat. “Can’t I just do the list?”
She shook her head. “Start small, in your underwear maybe. And look at yourself. Really look. Look at everything. Get to know it. Maybe you’ll surprise yourself and find something you like?”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you’re going to learn to like the parts you dislike. Because if you don’t learn to like them and become comfortable with them, no one will be able to put their hands on your waist without you running away.”
I folded my arms and looked at her. “Are you sex therapizing me now?”
She raised her eyebrows at me. “Nothing gets past you, ne.”
I sighed. “I haven’t seen myself naked in . . . a while.”
“Well, I think it’s time to meet that part of yourself again.”
“You know this is completely weird and lame and is probably something that I would find recommended in some hashtag self-help book.”
“Maybe it’s in the self-help books for a reason.”
I rolled my eyes; no way I was doing this week’s homework. I turned when I heard a noise behind us, and that was when I noticed the man in the navy suit. He stood there looking very 007-ish, if I do say so myself. He was hot. Older, but totally hot.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb.” He looked at me apologetically for a moment and then looked over at Vicki. “Sorry, I thought your session today was canceled, or I would never have disturbed you.”
I shook my head. “It’s okay.” Who was he?
“It was canceled, and then filled again. Sorry, I forgot to tell you,” Vicki said, looking over her shoulder at this man.
He gave me a killer smile and then mouthed another sorry my way. He walked up to Vicki and then to my surprise, leaned down and planted a kiss on her forehead.
“I’m leaving now. I’ll probably be back at ten,” he said so sweetly and lovingly.
She smiled up at him. “Hurry home,” she said.
He gave me a small wave before he walked away. I stared after him in shock. I looked back at Vicki only when she cleared her throat and put her big hat back on.
“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “See, we fat girls do get the hot guy too. Sometimes we do actually get to be the stars in our own Hollywood rom-coms.” And with that, she put her glasses back on her face and lay back in her lounger, smiling. I watched her for a bit.
“You see, Lori, what you have to realize is that these hetero-normative beauty standards that we all hold ourselves up to are total crap! They’ve been forced on us by magazines and catwalks and the beauty industry. And women everywhere are finally fighting back, taking to the stage and Instagram and showing the world that we can be hot too. Besides, beauty often has very little to do with outward appearances. Take an artist like Picasso—he certainly wasn’t painting what would be called beautiful. Francis Bacon, Frida Kahlo, the list goes on. But how do you look at those paintings? As great works of art. As things that contain beauty. The concept of beauty, and what others find beautiful, is complicated and layered. It’s not as simple as a flat stomach and a perfect face. Some find great beauty in a person’s laugh, in their mind . . . bloody hell, some people like feet. And the sooner you realize that, the better. I had to learn to measure my self-worth and beauty by a different yardstick—I know I’m no great beauty, but I also know that the other qualities I possess make me hot as hell! And someone, one day, maybe sooner than you think, is going to look at you and think you are the most beautiful woman in the world, just like someone looks at me like that.” She turned to me and pulled her glasses down her nose and looked at me over them. “See, I really do know how the world works.”