Big Summer Read online

  I stared at the door for a long moment. Then I pulled out my phone, opened my Instagram app, went into my stories, flipped the screen so I was looking at my own face, and hit the “Go Live” button.

  “Hey, ladies!” I tilted my face to give the camera my good side and tensed my bicep so that my arm wouldn’t wobble when I waved. “And guys! I know both of you are out there!” I did have male followers. Just not many. And I suspected that the ones who did like and comment on my posts were less fans than perverts, although maybe that was just me being paranoid. “Let me know if you recognize this spot.” I raised the phone to show the bar’s sign. Already, I could see the hearts and thumbs-up and applause emojis racing across my screen, the comments—OMG and YOU WENT BACK and QUEEN! as fans reacted in real time.

  “Yes, this is the bar where it all went down.” I saw more clapping hands, more sparklers and streamers and animated confetti. “And good things are happening,” I announced. “I just got some amazing news. I can’t tell you what, quite yet, but I can tell you that, for me, getting honest, not hiding, being real, and figuring out how to love myself, or at least, you know, tolerate myself, in the body that I had, has been the best decision of my life.” I smiled at the red hearts and party hats, the comments of I LOVE YOU and YOU’RE MY HERO. “If you don’t know the story, go to my bio, click the link for my YouTube channel, and go to the very first video I ever posted. You can’t miss it.” I kept the smile on my face as I let myself remember the night that everything had changed; the night at this bar when I’d decided to stop being a girl on a diet and just start being a girl.

  * * *

  It began when I’d agreed to go dancing with my friends. That would have been a normal night for most nineteen-year-olds in New York City, home on spring break of their sophomore year of college, with free time and a decent fake ID, but for me, each of those things—bar, friends, dancing—was an achievement, a little victory over the voice that had lived in my head since I was six years old, telling me I was fat, disgusting, unworthy of love, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of existing in public, even of walking outside; that a girl who looked like me did not deserve to have fun.

  Most of the time, I listened to that voice. I wore clothes designed to disguise my body; I’d mastered every trick of making myself small. I’d gotten used to the rolled eyes and indignant sighs that I saw and heard—or thought that I could see and hear—when I sat beside someone on a bus or, worse, walked down the aisle of a plane. I’d learned every trick for taking up as little space as possible and not asking for much. For the last two years, my freshman and sophomore years in college, I’d been dating the same guy, Ronald Himmelfarb. Ronald or, as I secretly called him, Wan Ron, was perfectly pleasant, tall and thin with skin the bluish-white of skim milk. Ron had a beaky face and a fragile, narrow-shouldered build. He was majoring in computer science, a subject about which I knew nothing and couldn’t make myself care, no matter how hard I tried to pay attention when he talked about it. I wasn’t attracted to Ron, but he was the only guy who’d been interested in me. I didn’t have options, and beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  Mostly, my life was in a holding pattern. I spent most of my spare time exercising, counting calories or points, weighing food, desperate to transform myself, to find the thin woman I just knew had to be living somewhere inside me. My only non-dieting activity was crafting. My mother was an artist and an art teacher and, over the years, with her tutelage and on my own, I’d mastered knitting, crocheting, embroidery, and decoupage, anything I could learn to make something beautiful with my hands. Needle felting was my favorite: I would stab my needle into the clump of wool, over and over and over, each thrust a perfectly directed excision of my anger (plus, the motion burned calories). When I was sixteen, I’d set up an online shop on Etsy where I sold my scarves and purses, embellished birdhouses and stuffed felted pigeons and giraffes, and a blog and an Instagram page and a YouTube channel where I’d showcase my work to the few dozen people who wanted to see it. I never showed myself, not my face or my body. I told myself, As soon as I lose twenty pounds. Twenty-five pounds. Forty pounds. Fifty. As soon as I can shop in normal stores and not have to buy plus sizes; as soon as I’m not ashamed to be seen in shorts or a tank top or a swimsuit. Then I will go dancing. Swimming. To the beach. Then I’ll take a yoga class, take a plane, take a trip around the world. Then I’ll download those dating apps and start meeting new people. But that one night, I felt so tired of waiting, so tired of hiding, that I let the girl I thought was my best friend talk me into meeting her for drinks and dancing.

  I’d dressed with special care, in my best-fitting pair of black jeans and a black top, slightly low-cut, to show off my cleavage, hoping that the black would be slimming and that the boobs would distract any man who looked my way from the rest of me. Years of practice had given me the ability to blow-dry and straighten my medium-brown hair and apply my makeup without ever actually looking at myself in the mirror. My minimizing bra had underwires; my shoes had a little bit of a heel; I wore Spanx underneath my jeans; and I’d contoured believable shadows beneath my cheekbones. I felt okay—not good, but okay—as I met my best friend, Drue, and her friends Ainsley and Avery on the sidewalk. The three of them had squealed their approval. “Daphne, you look hot!” Drue said. Of course, Drue looked stunning, like an Amazon at Fashion Week, with red-soled stilettos adding three inches to her height, leather leggings clinging to her toned thighs, and a cropped gray sweater showing just a flash of her midriff.

  There was a line out the door at Dive 75. Drue ignored it, sauntering up to the bouncer and whispering in his ear. I had my fake ID clutched in my sweaty hand, but the bouncer didn’t even ask to see it as he waved us inside.

  We found a high-top table with four tippy barstools in the corner of the bar. Drue ordered a round of lemon drops. “The first—and last—drinks we’ll be paying for tonight,” she said with a wink. Lemon drops weren’t on the list of low-calorie cocktails that I’d memorized that afternoon, but I sipped mine gratefully. The vodka was icy-cold, tart and sweet, the grains of sugar around the rim crunched between my teeth. The bar was dark and cozy, with booths and couches in the back, where people were eating nachos and playing Monopoly and Connect 4. One drink became two, and two became three. With my friends by my side and the music all around me, I was happy and relaxed, as comfortable as a girl with wire digging into her breasts and heavy-duty elastic cutting into her midsection could be, when Drue whispered, “Daphne, don’t look, but I think you have an admirer.”

  Immediately, I turned around, peering into the dark. “Don’t look!” Drue said, fake-punching me and giggling. Right behind us was a table of four guys, and one of them, a young man in a dark-blue pullover with red hair and freckles, was, indeed, looking right at me. Behind me, Drue waved. “Lake! Lake Spencer! Oh my God!”

  “You know him?” I asked as the guys crowded around us, dragging their chairs and pushing their table up against ours.

  Drue took the guy’s hand. “Lake is one of my brother Trip’s friends. Lake, this is Daphne. Daphne’s one of my best friends.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” said Lake, nodding at my empty glass. “Get you another one of those?”

  I thought of the poem attributed to Dorothy Parker: “I like to have a martini / Two at the very most / Three and I’m under the table / Four and I’m under the host.” “Sure,” I said, feeling reckless, as Drue nodded her approval. The guy disappeared, and Drue wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “He likes you,” she whisper-shouted in my ear.

  “He just met me,” I protested.

  “But he was checking you out,” Drue said, and hiccupped. “He’s into you. I can tell. When he comes back, ask him to dance!”

  I cringed. Across the table, Ainsley and Avery were chatting with two young men, while two more were staring at Drue, clearly impatient for her to finish up with me and pay attention to them. Then Lake was back, with my drink in his hand. I took a gulp an
d slid off my stool, hoping I looked graceful, or at least not like a blubbery trained seal sliding off its box after its trainer had tossed it a herring. The music was so loud I could feel my bones vibrate. “Want to dance?” I hollered at him, and he gave me a thumbs-up and a smile.

  On the dance floor, I quickly discovered that Lake’s version of dancing was hopping up and down at a pace that had no relation to the beat. Oh, well, I thought as we started to shout our biographies into each other’s faces. I learned that he was a senior at Williams, studying philosophy, that he and his family spent their summers in the Hamptons, near Drue and her family, and that not only was he friends with Trip, his sister and Drue had been debutantes together. Lake’s skin was milky-white under splotches of dark freckles; his nose was a sharp blade with flaring nostrils. His reddish hair was thick and wiry, full of cowlicks, the kind of hair that wouldn’t stay in place, no matter how carefully it had been cut, and when his face relaxed it assumed an expression just short of a smirk. Not cute. But who was I to judge? He seemed interested in what I had to say, or at least he was acting interested, and I hadn’t noticed his attention straying to any of the prettier girls on the dance floor. We danced, and talked—or, mostly, Lake talked and I listened—and I wondered what would happen as the clock ticked down toward closing time, and the moment when the bartender would inevitably holler, “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!”

  “ ’Scuse me,” said Lake, giving me a smile. “I’m going to use the little boys’ room.”

  I wasn’t especially fond of the phrase “little boys’ room,” but I could let it slide. Lake departed, but the smell of his cologne lingered, a warm, spicy scent that reminded me of the one day I’d been a Girl Scout. My mom had signed me up with the local troop after she’d noticed, a little belatedly, that I was spending lots of time painting and knitting and reading, and not a lot of time with kids my own age. Just try it, Daphne, maybe you’ll make friends! she’d said. The troop met in an apartment building on the Upper West Side. Twelve girls sat in a circle on the living room floor and stabbed cloves into oranges to make pomanders for Mother’s Day. I’d liked that fine, especially when the troop leader had praised the spiral pattern I’d made. I’d tried to ignore the other Scouts sneaking looks at me, whispering and giggling. When the meeting was over, the leader opened her apartment door and the members of the troop went spilling into the hallway, laughing as they raced toward the elevator. “Free Willie!” one of them called. I couldn’t bring myself to turn to see if the leader was still there, and if she’d heard. At home, I told my mother that I didn’t want to go back. “It was boring,” I’d said. Before I’d gone to bed that night, I’d washed my hands over and over, in water as hot as I could stand it, so I’d stop smelling cloves on my fingers and remembering that horrible ache inside, the plummeting sensation, like I’d swallowed stones, that went along with not being liked.

  I went back to the table, where Drue grabbed my arm, “OMG, he likes you!” she squealed as she did a little dance. It stung that she seemed so surprised that a boy was interested, but I was pleased nonetheless, and amused by her antics, as always.

  “He’s a hottie!” Ainsley crowed.

  “And an older man!” Drue shouted. “C’mon, let’s go powder our noses.”

  The four of us linked arms and were on our way. I was flushed, pleasantly tipsy, feeling almost pretty in my jeans and with my cleavage. I did my business, washed my hands, checked my lipstick, and left Ainsley and Avery fussing in front of the mirror.

  I stepped into the hallway. To my right was the bar, and the dance floor, by now a knot of writhing bodies, gyrating in time to the percussive thump of the bass. To my left was a door marked EMERGENCY EXIT… and Drue and Lake. My body had just registered the sight of them together when I heard the word “grenade” and saw Drue shake her head.

  “Dude, do you even own a mirror?” she hissed at him. “Do you think one of the Kardashians is saving herself for you?”

  Lake’s shoulders were hunched as he muttered something that I couldn’t make out. Drue shook her head again, looking annoyed. “I sent you her picture. I told you. Stop being such a pussy.” She thumped his shoulder, not a play-punch, but one that looked like it hurt.

  “Grenade.” I knew what that meant in this context. Not an explosive device, but an ugly girl, upon whom a volunteer agrees to throw his own body, sacrificing himself to give his fellow soldiers a clear path to their objective: the hot chicks.

  I could feel myself starting to tremble, my body vibrating with shame. I could hear Ainsley and Avery talking, but it sounded like they were underwater, their voices echoey and indistinct. But I lost ten pounds! a tiny, mournful voice in my head was whispering. But of course it wasn’t enough, would never be enough. I could have lost twenty pounds, forty pounds, a hundred pounds. It would never be enough to transform me into the kind of girl who belonged with Drue Cavanaugh.

  I closed my eyes. I thought about walking home, how the cool night air would feel on my hot face. I’d leave the lights off, go right to the kitchen, and pull a pint of ice cream out of the freezer and a bag of pretzels out of the breadbox, and I’d sit in the dark, eating. I’d let the creamy sweetness and crunchy saltiness fill me, pushing down the pain and shame, stuffing me so full that there wouldn’t be room for anything else; not anger, not embarrassment, not anything. Ben and Jerry, the two men who have never let me down, I thought.

  And then I stopped.

  I stopped and asked myself, What did I do wrong? Who am I hurting? Is this what I deserve just for having the nerve to leave my home, to dance and try to have fun? I’m fat. That’s true. But I’m a good person. I’m kind and funny; I’m generous; I try to treat people the way I’d want them to treat me. I’m a hard worker. A good daughter. A good friend.

  I was listing my other fine qualities when Lake and Drue saw me. I saw the surprise cross Lake’s face and moved my mouth into a reassuring smile. He smiled back and took my hand, leading me to the dance floor. By the time we’d arrived, the DJ had switched to a slow song, with lyrics about angels and fire and true love forever. Lake put a tentative hand on my shoulder. I thought that I could sense him steel himself before settling the other one between my waist and my bra. I imagined his internal monologue. Okay. Just a little. It won’t be that bad. Probably just squishy. Warm and jiggly, like a waterbed. He looked at me with his big brown eyes and smiled a warm smile, a smile I would have believed was full of real affection and promise. And maybe it was the booze, on top of the shame, and the knowledge that Drue was somehow involved with this mess, but I decided that for once—just once—I was not going to smile and take it.

  I looked down at my legs, my big, strong legs, the legs that carried me along miles of New York City sidewalks every day, legs that had propelled me over hundreds of miles on treadmills and elliptical climbers and stationary bikes and had performed hours of squats and lunges and kicks in various aerobic and boxing and barre classes over the years. Leg, meet Lake, I thought, as I picked up my right foot and brought it down—hard—on Lake’s toes.

  Lake’s eyes went wide, and his mouth fell open. He let loose with a shriek, a high-pitched, girlish squeal. “You fat bitch!” he screamed. “You stepped on me!”

  The music stopped. Or, at least, it did in my imagination. In my imagination, I heard the sound of a record scratch, and then absolute silence. Every eye on the place was on him as he hopped on his left foot and clutched at his right, glaring at me… and all those eyes turned to me as I started to talk.

  “You know what?” I said. “I am fat. But that doesn’t mean you get to treat me like garbage.” My voice was shaking. My hands felt icy and my mouth was dry, my heart thumping triple-time as every cell in my body screamed, Run away, run far away from here, people are looking, people can see. But for once, I didn’t listen. I stayed put. I settled my hands on my hips and gave my hair a toss. Feeling like a character in a movie—the sassy, fat best friend, finally having her brief
star turn—I swept one hand down from my neck, past my breasts and my hips to my thighs. “You don’t deserve any of this,” I said. “You don’t deserve me.”

  Someone said, “Ooh.” Someone else yelled, “Tell him, girl!” And someone, possibly the bartender, started to clap. First it was just one person, then another one, then another, until it seemed like everyone in the bar was applauding, clapping for me, laughing at him. That was when I noticed that one of the girls at the edge of the dance floor was holding her phone, filming me. My heart gave another dizzying lurch, like I’d just come over the crest of a roller coaster and realized I wasn’t in a car. What’s done is done, I thought, and, with as much dignity as I could muster, I walked across the dance floor, through the door, and out into the dark.

  I was halfway down the block when Drue caught up with me. “Hey,” she shouted. I didn’t turn. She put her hand on my shoulder and jerked me around to face her. “Hey! What the hell was that?”

  “Why don’t you tell me,” I said, and pulled myself away.

  “Look, I’m sorry. I was trying to do you a favor.”

  I widened my eyes. “Am I supposed to be grateful?”

  Drue looked shocked. Probably because I’d never confronted her, or complained about the way she’d treated me, any more than I’d ever stomped on some random guy’s foot.

  “I didn’t ask for your help,” I said, and turned away.

  She grabbed my shoulder, glaring at me with her pretty face contorted under the streetlight. “Well, you need it. You’re dating this guy who you don’t even like, and that’s after not even kissing a guy the entire time we were in high school.”

  “So?”

  “So either you’re gay, which I’ve considered, or you’re in love with me…”

  I made a rude noise.

  “Or,” Drue continued, “you needed someone to set you up.”

  “If you wanted to set me up,” I said between clenched teeth, “you could have asked me first.”