Wicked Jealous: A Love Story by Robin Palmer Page B

to get in the car and drive to Ralph’s and buy the biggest sheet cake they had. Maybe even an Entenmann’s Louisiana Crunch Cake to go with it. Perhaps even a box of doughnut holes as a chaser.
    If I did that, it might help soften the blow that he was pretty much choosing Hillary over me. At least it would soften it for a little while—as long as it took for the sugar to wear off or for me to feel completely sick to my stomach. But there were two huge problems with that particular solution—(a) my Saab was in the shop
again,
and (b) I knew it was only a temporary fix. Plus, the last few times I had had a sugary baked good, I had broken out in this weird rash on my chest because my body wasn’t used to it anymore.
    “Don’t worry about it,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, although what I really wanted to do was cry. “Because what I wanted to tell you is that I’m really glad you’re letting me stay with Max while you’re gone. I’m really looking forward to it.”
    “You are?” Did he have to look so
relieved
?
    I nodded. Because Nicola said I had one of those faces where everything showed, I tried extra hard to look convincing, but seeing as how by that time my father was in the process of turning his iPhone back on, it didn’t matter anyway.

    “I’m glad you came to your senses,” Nicola said the next day at lunch, yelling over Castle Height’s resident treehugger, rally organizer, and all-around protester Wally Twersky’s daily rendition of “We Shall Overcome” on his guitar a few tables away. “And not just because that means I’ll get to see your brother a lot more.” She cringed as Wally got louder. “What’s he trying to overcome this week?”
    “I think I heard him tell Ajara Monihan that it’s the unethical treatment of bunnies for cosmetic testing.”
    “They do cosmetic testing at Castle Heights?! Where? In the chemistry lab?”
    I shook my head. “No. Just, you know, unethical treatment of using them for testing in general.”
    “Oh. Anyways, speaking of unethical treatment . . . now that we have a deadline on our hands, we really need to address
your
unethical treatment of that totally smoking bod you’ve got growing in that veggie/Zumba petri dish. Because BFFs don’t let BFFs show up at a houseful of college guys with a suitcase full of ratty old cargo pants being held up with safety pins and T-shirts that are way too big.”
    As I looked down at my cargos, I had to admit she had a point. Even using the last hole of the belt I had to wear to keep them up, they were still big.
    She grabbed my arm and turned me toward her and gave me an After-School Special look. “Simone, listen to me—you’re not the fat girl anymore, okay?”
    I began to examine my left cuticle as if it contained all the secrets of the universe. I knew where she was going with this. She wasn’t talking about my weight—she was talking about how I still wanted to keep hiding from the world behind the invisible pane of glass that I felt kept me apart from people. Sometimes the glass was Windexed and was so clear I almost forgot it was there—like in gym class the week before, when Ananda Desai told me she liked my Olivia Newton John T-shirt. But sometimes it was dirty and covered with fingerprints and hard to see through, like when Marc Rabel said, “Here comes Cousin Itt,” under his breath as I passed him on my way to the board in trig class. It had been there for so long it was as if it had grown roots.
    “Obviously, I already know how awesome you are,” Nicola went on. “But now it’s time that other people get to see that, too. And more importantly, that
you
do. And this is the perfect opportunity.”
    I felt like I was in therapy again. And there wasn’t even a bowl of M&M’s around. I knew that there was some truth to what she was saying. Being That Weird Fat Girl meant I could hide out and not have to deal with people. The nickname hurt for a while, and yeah maybe at first I