Diary of a Mad Fat Girl by Stephanie McAfee

iron pottery shelf with about six hundred
flower pots on it. I turn around to grab it and think I’ve got it
steadied when I see one little pot teetering on the top shelf. I
watch in terrified silence as the pot falls, flowers first,
straight down onto Lilly’s head. She squeals like a pig and
stumbles back into a patio chair and I watch in horror as the pot
bounces off her head, onto the table, and down to the concrete
patio where it shatters into sixty million pieces. Lilly jumps up,
looks inside the house and, in a rush of movement, pulls out the
camera, steps up to the window, and flash!
    Yet again, I am blind, but that doesn’t stop
me from trying to get the hell out of there. In my sightless haste,
I stumble over a yard gnome and fall face first into a bed of
monkey grass.
    “ Get your ass up and let’s go!” Lilly
scream-whispers. “Here they come!”
    I jump up and run through the yard like a
rat on acid, hurl myself over the fence, and roll like Rambo down
into the ditch.
    I look around and Lilly is nowhere to be
seen.
    I hear a woman screaming for someone to call
the police because there are burglars everywhere and in fifteen
seconds flat, every back yard on the block is saturated with light
and people are buzzing around like bees trying to figure out what
all the fuss is about.
    A spotlight sweeps the air a few feet above
my head and I hear sirens and dogs barking and I know I have to get
back to my car. Fast. I strain my eyes against the darkness in the
ditch and don’t see Lilly anywhere, so I hunker down and scurry
away like a lizard on crack.
    I stay low to the ground as I crawl out of
the gully and make my way back to the apartment complex. I am
peeking around the brick dumpster box trying to make sure the coast
is clear when my cell phone buzzes in the back pocket of my shorts.
I scream like a toddler at the dentist and take off in a dead
sprint toward my car. I drop my keys three times and my cell phone
once before I finally get in, and when I do, I spin out of there
like Ricky Bobby when he had that cougar in his car.
    19
    I don’t recognize the number of the missed
call, so I dial it back and, lo and behold, it’s Sheriff J.J.
Jackson.
    “ Ace,” he barks, “where are
you?”
    “ Uh, in my car,” I answer in a small
voice.
    “ Would you happen to be close to the
west side Wal-Mart?”
    “ Why, yes, as a matter of
fact-”
    “ Get over here and get Lilly before I
change my mind and take both of y’all to jail!” he
yells.
    “ Lilly,” I say, trying to be coy,
“where’d you find her?”
    “ In the damned field between Wal-Mart
and Mrs. Dana Dannan’s house where some burglars made a mess of the porch and since Tate
is out of the country, Dana was quite alarmed by the intrusion. Now
get over here right now!”
    “ On my way,” I peep like a baby
chicken.
    “ Behind Dollar General!” he yells and
hangs up on me.
    I’m nervous as a tick on a bald dog as I
pull up behind Dollar General, but much to my relief, the Sheriff
is gone. Lilly is sitting on the curb covered from head to toe in
dirt. She gets up and walks around to the passenger side of the car
and taps on the window.
    “ Can I get in or do you want me to
walk home because I’m so ridiculously filthy?” she asks with a
dejected look.
    “ Nah, that’s what leather seats are
for,” I say and motion for her to get in.
    “ Shit,” she says, closing the car
door, “I haven’t ran that fast since,” she pauses for a second,
“hell, ever.”
    “ How did you get so dirty?” I ask,
trying not to laugh. “Did you fall down?”
    “ How did you get so dirty?” she mocks.
“Well this,” she points to the black streaks in her yellow hair,
“is potting soil, my friend, from where you hit me in the head with
a damned flower pot.”
    “ Accident,” I say quickly.
    “ And this,” she waves her arm across
her body, “is from where I fell down in an irrigation ditch trying
to get away from the scene of the