“GET OUT OF MY CHAIR!”
I bang on the Plexiglas window to the studio, rounding to the door. The LIVE light glows ominously, as if it knows exactly what shade of furious I am. Mick looks up from the microphone, startled.
“Yo, girl!” he greets as I throw open the door. “I was just holding down the fort until—”
“Out, out!” I'm trying not to yell. Everyone who’s listening can hear what's going on, so I lean over and hit the OFF switch on the microphone before they can listen to any more of the catastrophe. Then I sling the roller chair away, with Mick in it, toward the other side of the studio, away from my precious radio show. I’m shaking, pretty visibly. I raise one clenched fist toward him.
“I’m going to murder you!” I cry.
Mick gives me a look like a deer caught in headlights. “I was just filling in . . .”
“I don’t care!”
“Why’re you so mad?”
“Mad?” I scoff, throwing my hands into the air. “You think I’m mad! You practically told everyone I needed to Jenny Craig myself! It’s none of their business!”
He stands, as if being a head taller will bring this fight in his favor. It won’t. “I said you are beautiful just the way you are, and I stand by that.”
I grit my teeth. “You don’t get it.”
“What don’t I get, Ingrid?” he asks in that calm I'm-A-Responsible-Adult-Who-Wants-To-Help-You voice, and puts his hands on his hips like all those condescending teachers at school. It’s the movement right before they scold you. Never scolding the person who calls you Chub-a-lub. Nor the person who writes Fat Amy Jr. on your locker. Or the kid who trumpets about your thunder thighs or asks you if your arm flab can help you fly. Or the person who calls you all the names of cattle and drops jars of gumdrops on the floor for you to clean up. It’s the stance of people who want to care but don’t understand how to.
“You shouldn’t hide who you are, girl,” he chides.
I cross my arms over my chest. “You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me,” Mick says, ’cause I’m just an old geezer who don’t understand nothing.”
“First thing you got right tonight!” I snap. The edges of my voice wobble. This is the one conversation I don’t want to have. It’s the reason I’ll never get that internship. It’s the reason my college reapplication is sitting on the counter. It’s the reason Mom never takes me with her on her whirlwind adventures.
I grit my teeth and look down at my dirty Chucks. “My radio show is the only place I can be myself, where people don’t have to judge me, and now they can. Oh, she’s fat, so she has to be funny. Oh, she’s a radio deejay because she can just sit there on her fat ass. Oh, no wonder she’s never been in love—no one wants to love her.”
“But none of that’s true,” Mick says, “and to be fair you are funny, and you give great advice. Best advice. Golden.”
I start to leave. I can’t do this, not now. But then Mick takes a hold of my arm. He stops me.
“Get out of my way, please,” I all but beg. “I don’t feel like putting on a show tonight.”
He nudges his head toward the microphone, looking a little pale. “Um . . . I think you just . . .”
To my horror, the LIVE light is still on. I thought I turned it off. Didn’t I turn it off? I feel my throat beginning to close in panic.
They heard everything. My listeners. Heard. Everything.
The phone lines begin to ring. A caller, third line, the red light flashing with the sound. Against my better judgment I move toward the microphone. Mick rolls the chair over again, and I slide into the seat.
I push up the slider to cue the caller in.
“Hello,” my voice warbles, “this is KOTN 93.5 and you’re on the air . . .”
“Glad you’re okay, Niteowl.”
My bones melt to his voice. Soft, suede. The same voice I’ve come to expect every Saturday night, the one I don’t realize I want to hear until he calls. Dark. I wanted the caller to be him so, so badly, it scares me. I don’t even know who he is, or what his name is—and I’m fairly sure he’ll never think of me the same way ever again.
I clear my throat. “Sorry you had to hear that. So go ahead and get whatever it is off your chest—”
“I’m sorry,” he starts. “And I think you’re more than just funny. You’re thoughtful. You respect everyone else’s feelings over yours, and you’re unabashedly selfless. We’ve all been so caught up with ourselves that we never thought to ask about you—how you are, if you’re okay. And I know this goes for me, but I think everyone else will agree . . . we’re here for you, Niteowl, even though we’re not there.”
As he talks, slowly, as if my world is waking up, the other lines begin to light up with callers, one by one, their red lights flickering like fireworks.