10 Days With Fatty
Chapter seven: Some People Are Different
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She waited, like usual, for the lunch crowds to disappear before she got up. Oliver was still on her mind, was the dare over? Would things go back to normal every morning? Most likely. She sighed heavily and braced her hands on the table, with a huge heave she pushed up feeling the tire rolls of her fat bounce slightly around her waist.
"Do you want som' help?" Startled, she instantly dropped back into the chair her head whipping round at whoever had spoken. Whoever had witnessed. The poor chair groaned and she could feel it start to cave in under her, but she didn't move. She was frozen stiff staring at the man who was working his way towards her, weaving through the lunch tables.
"Are you OK? You look a lil' pale" She nodded, folding her hands on her lap and staring down at them picking at her no-existent nails.
I look a lot of things, she thought silently. Oh shh, self pity won't get you anywhere woman.
"I'm fine, just a little tired" she dramatically yawned to prove her point sneaking a look out of the corner of her eye to see who he was. Oh great, the caretaker. Great.
"Shouldn't ya be 'n class?" She pulled at the fabric of her uniform, looking down again.
"Yeah, probably" She mumbled.
I wonder how many chins he sees when I look down like this? She joked to herself. Well, half joked, she already knew the answer.
Four big, five to six small.
The caretaker rubbed his stubbly chin, he had two brown leather belts around his waist holding hammers and brushes and lots of other cleaning delights. Like bleach, apparently to pour in naughty kids eyes. Or hers, according to the whispers across the corridors, if she got too close.
He stood a whole table away, but there was a completely clear space between them. He had big, fat soled walking boots, caked in mud which left a scattered trail behind him. The only thing in common they had was his beer belly, stretching his dusty blue boiler suit and hanging about three to four inches over his belts. Though she didn't drink beer, but that wasn't the point.
"Well, I'll tell ya whut" He wedged both thumbs in his belts and rocked forward on his heels and then back.
"If ya 'elp me clean de's tables, then I won't tell nobody ya didn't go. But that ya felt ill an' went a' all der way home, like doe's lil' piggehs" She nodded a silent response and attempted to smoothly stand up. She wasn't sure she'd be able to clean many tables, but the caretaker was giving her a ticket out of school early, and she would never turn that down.
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It wasn't half as bad as she thought. In fact, it was probably the best thing she'd done all day. The company was nice; he spoke most of the time. She didn't really have much to say. He told her about his wife and grandchildren while they worked with soap and sponges. He didn't seem affected by the way she looked, moved, was. He didn't seem to notice that she couldn't reach to the middle of a table and worked at half the pace that he did, and cleaned even less. He laughed when she knocked over a table with her belly, but in a friendly way, which in the end she joined in. She could even dare to say that he was enjoying the company too.
She caught herself a few times, when there was a lull in the conversation to admit to... well, she didn't really know what she was going to say, just that she had a twisting feeling in her stomach building through the conversation to tell someone about whatever she needed to tell. And it was a driving feeling; it was almost desperate to say something to tell someone. And he was the first person she had talked to properly in a very long time, too long a time.
"I miss her" He sighed quietly wiping the last table dry with an old towel.
"Who?" She asked hesitantly.
"My daughter, Tasha. She died last year" He tucked the towel under the higher belt and dropped the two sponges in a red bucket three quarters filled with dirty water.
"Oh" She breathed taken aback by his bluntness.
"A Father shouldn't have to bury his child, it's against nature. It's not right. It's not right" He wailed flinging his arms around in anguish. Then he just stopped, and sat down on the nearest plastic chair his teeth gritted and face taunt with anger and sadness. Then nothing, he relaxed and his wacky grin that he had worn the whole time they had talked replaced the nothing, but it didn't touch his eyes, and it was slightly slanted differently than before. Slightly smaller. Slightly less wacky. Slightly less than before.
"Hey lass I've been a' holdin' you here far too long. I'm a man of my word and I'm plannin' ta keep to it. It was a joy meetin' ya" She nodded slowly and kept nodding as she turned away, as she picked up her bag, as she pushed open the cafeterias door and only stopped when the door swung shut behind her and she had walked as fast as her chubby little legs could carry her, her breaths coming heavier than they had ever before out of the school and into the fresh air.
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She keeled over on the grass outside the gate and wretched out lunch onto the trampled browning blades. The smell of soapy water was masked by the ghastly smell of sick attacking her nose. She rolled over, not as far as she wanted, away from the steaming pile of sick and turned her head away disgusted. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand she spat at the grass to try and get rid of the acidic taste but to no avail.
"Oh God" She snivelled when she realised what position she was in. There was no way she was getting up from that position with no leverage. She was doomed to lay there until someone passed by or, she gulped, a teacher came out. But they would only come out at the end of school, after everyone had walked right past her snickering and laughing, maybe a few kicking her as they walked by mocking her at their leisure...
She did cry then, a whole river of tears. No one would help her before the students came out, joggers don't pass this way due to the beautiful forest path. And it's not like the students would help her, they never had before, why would they now? She already knew hours ahead what Fiona would say, and this would be a whole forest for the fire she burns so high.
Her face hardened and she stopped crying. Wiping her cheeks with her hands she took control.
This is pathetic.
I will not give Fiona the satisfaction in her ice cold heart of hers.
That anorexic pig.
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So I'm reading this a couple of years later and by god is this a terrible story. It's so bad ahahah, I think I was around 13 when I wrote this, and now I'm at the end of the teenage years which is dreading to think about. I'm definitely not going to write any more to this, it's so so bad, but I'm leaving it up for my own amusement at my lack of ability to write and stick to any sort of plot line as my younger self.
Sorry!
-C
YOU ARE READING
10 Days With Fatty
Teen FictionJamie Anne Louis is the fat girl of M.C. State Academy, and she deals with it. But when messed up classmates find it funny to set up a twisted game which plays with the young, naïve hearts of the untouchables, Jamie, unknowingly herself, is the core...
