Meg Cabot - Big Boned

And our breakfast hadn’t been awful at all. Unless he means awfully delicious.

Still, trying to be gracious, I say, “Thank you so much, Tad.”

“Sorry I didn’t get you anything, Cooper,” Tad says, with a rueful smile. “I didn’t know you were going to be here.”

“Oh,” Cooper says affably. “That’s okay. I filled up on three-bean salad earlier.”

Tad grins, knowing Cooper is joking, then adds, “Oh, and hey… congratulations. On being an uncle. Well, future uncle.”

Cooper looks confused. “Excuse me?”

I can tell Jordan may have let his fans know about his soon-to-be-expanded family, but he hasn’t bothered calling his own brother. Nice. Also, typical of Jordan.

“Jordan and Tania are expecting,” I explain to Cooper.

Cooper looks horrified—the appropriate reaction, under the circumstances.

“You’re kidding me,” he says. He doesn’t add,What happened? Did the condom break, or something? because he’s too classy. You can tell he’s totally thinking it, though. Because anyone who knows them would think that.

“Yeah,” I say. “Apparently their publicist posted it on their websites this morning.”

“Well,” Cooper says. “That’s great. Good for them. I’ll have to go buy them a… rattle. Or something.”

“Yeah,” I say. Then, seeing that Tad is standing there clutching his bag of three-bean salad and protein shake and looking at me with his eyebrows raised expectantly, I say, “Well. We better go eat, I guess. Before someone else gets shot.”

No one laughs at my little joke. Which I guess wasn’t really all that funny after all. But, you know. Like Sarah says: Often we resort to gallows humor in an effort to break the connection between a horrifying stimulus and an unwanted emotional response.

“Yeah,” I say, taking Tad’s arm. “Okay. So, let’s go eat. See you, Coop.”

And I steer my boyfriend inside.

Tad is concerned about me. That’s what he keeps saying. That he’s concerned.

“It’s just,” he says, “that it could have been you.”

I put down my fork. We’re sitting in the Fischer Hall cafeteria, in a dark, out-of-the-way corner where, if Tad wanted to, he could ask the question he’d shied away from asking this morning, because the time wasn’t right.

Although truthfully, if the time wasn’t right when we were both naked in the shower, the time probably isn’t right when we’re eating three-bean salad a few hours after my finding my boss with a bullet through his head.

“No,” I say. “It couldn’t have been me, Tad. First of all, there isn’t even a window in my office. Remember? That’s what the grate’s for. To let in a little natural light. And second of all, whoever shot Owen obviously had something against him. No one has anything against me. I’m not that kind of person.”

“Oh? And Dr. Veatch was?” Tad laughs, but not like he actually thinks what I said was very funny. Especially the part about the grate. I get that a lot (people not actually thinking I’m as funny as I think I am). “A balding, divorced, middle-aged college administrator?”

“Who knows?” I shrug. “I mean, it’s not like I ever saw him outside of work. Maybe he was selling babies on the black market, or something.”

“Heather!”

“Well, you know what I mean.” I pick through my bean salad with my fork, hoping that through some miracle I’ll come across some stray piece of ham or macaroni something. No such luck, however. Where’s a damned rigatoni when you need it?

“All I’m saying is that there’s a killer on the loose, Heather,” Tad says urgently. “He went for your boss, a man who as far as we know is about as threatening as—as this three-bean salad. That’s all I’m saying. And I’m… well, I’m really glad it wasn’t you.”

I look up from my plastic container with a laugh, thinking Tad’s kidding… I mean, of course he’s glad I wasn’t the one who got shot in the gourd, right? There’s no need actually to say this out loud, is there?

But apparently, to Tad, there is. Because he’s also reaching across the table to take my hand. Now he’s looking tenderly into my eyes.

Oh God. He’s serious. What do I say? What can I say?

“Um. Thanks. I’m… uh. I’m glad it wasn’t me, too.”

We’re sitting there like that, holding hands across our three-bean salads, when Sarah strides up, a mulish expression on her face.

“Hello,” she says, but not in a salutary greeting sort of way. More in a where-have-you-been? sort of way. “There you are. Everyone is looking for you. There’s an emergency administrative housing staff meeting in the second floor library upstairs. Like,now. The only person who’s not there is you.”

I jump up, sliding a napkin over my mouth. “Oh my God, really? I had no idea. Sorry, Tad, I better go—”

Tad looks perturbed. “But you haven’t even finished your protein shake—”

“I’ll be all right,” I assure him—no offense, but that protein shake had tasted like chemical waste. “I’ll call you later, okay?”

I refrain from kissing him good-bye—it’s the cafeteria, crowded with residents on their lunch break, and our relationship is still supposed to be purely student/teacher, after all—and settle for giving his hand a quick squeeze before I follow a still scowling Sarah past Magda’s desk, out into the lobby, and up the stairs to the second floor library, which still contains the nineteenth-century mahogany bookcases that once held the Fischer family’s extensive leather-bound collection of classic literature, and where we’ve attempted, numerous times, to keep books, only to have every single one of them stolen, no matter how battered or cheesy-looking the cover, and then sold on St. Mark’s Place.

The room is still amazingly popular, however, with residents who have a test to study for and who need to get away from their partying roommates. I’m the one who made up and posted the Shhhh! Quiet Study Only Please! and Group Study Down the Hall in Rm 211 signs and posted them under the plaster cherub moldings that a hundred years earlier had looked down on sherry parties, not kids pounding on Mac-Books. But whatever.

“What’s going on?” I ask Sarah, as we trot up the stairs. “What’s the meeting for?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Sarah says with a sniff. “Student staff is not invited.Our meeting is tonight at nine. Once again, we apparently aren’t considered good enough to mingle with the exalted professional staff.”

“I’m sure it’s just because they figured the majority of you would be in class right now,” I say, taken aback—mainly at the bitterness in her tone. Sarah hates not being involved in anything that the professional staff is doing… for which I don’t blame her, exactly. She certainly works as hard (if not harder) as any of us, and for room and board only, on top of which, she goes to class full-time. It really does suck that now the college is planning on yanking her insurance and everything else. She has every right to complain—even to strike.

I just wish there were some other way the GSC could have gotten the president’s office to listen to them than to resort to such an extreme. Couldn’t they all just sit down and talk?

Then again, I guess they’d tried that. Hadn’t that been what Owen’s job was?

Look how well that had turned out.

“How’s it going?” I ask her, as we reach the second floor—quiet at this time of day, since most of the residents are either in class or downstairs, eating. “I mean, with the GSC stuff, now that Dr. Veatch is… you know. Out of the picture? I know it’s only been a few hours, but has there been any… progress?”

“How do you think it’s going?” Sarah demands hotly.

“Oh, Sarah,” I say. “I’m sorry—”

“Whatever,” Sarah says, with uncharacteristic—even for her—venom. “I bet I can tell you exactly what’s going to happen at this meeting you’re about to step into. President Allington is going to appoint someone—Dr. Jessup, probably—as interim ombudsman—until a replacement for Dr. Veatch can be found. Which is ironic, because Dr. Veatch was a replacement until a replacement for Tom could be found. Sebastian insisted it wouldn’t go down like this—that once Veatch was out of the picture, Dr. Allington would have to meet with us one on one. I tried to tell him. I tried to tell him that would never happen. I mean, why would Phillip Allington sully his own hands with filth like us, when he can hire someone—someone else — to do it?”

To my surprise, Sarah bursts into tears—right in the second floor hallway, in front of the second floor RA’s safe sex bulletin board display. Concerned—for more reasons than one—I put my arms around her, cradling her head against my shoulder as her crazy frizzy hair tickles my nose.

“Sarah,” I say, patting her back. “Come on. Seriously. It’s not that bad. I mean, it’s bad that a guy is dead, and all. But your parents already said they’ll pay your insurance. I mean, they just bought a winter place in Taos. It’s not like six hundred more bucks a semester is going to break the bank. And don’t Sebastian’s parents own every movie theater in Grosse Pointe or something? He’s not exactly hurting for cash, either… ”

“That’s not it,” Sarah sobs, into my neck. “It’s the principle of the thing! What about people who don’t have parents with seven-figure-a-year incomes? Don’t they deserve to be allowed to go to Health Services? Don’t they deserve health care?”

“Of course they do,” I say. “But you know, it’s not all up to Dr. Allington. A lot of the decision over whether or not to negotiate a new contract with you guys is up to the board of trustees—”

“I told Sebastian that,” Sarah says, abruptly letting go of my neck, and wiping her tears with the backs of her wrists. “God. He’s so… adversarial.”

I want to warn her about her word choice—especially with the likelihood of the police looking to the GSC for possible suspects in Owen’s murder—but don’t get a chance to, because the door to the library suddenly pops open, and Tom, who’d been my boss here at Fischer Hall a few months earlier, until he’d been promoted, looks out, sees me, then hisses, “There you are! Get in here! You’re about to miss all the good stuff!”

I know bygood stuff he means hilarity in the form of senior administrators making asses of themselves, something the two of us thoroughly enjoy observing, usually seeking the back row during staff meetings, so we can watch it together.

“I’ll be right there,” I say to Tom. To Sarah I say, trying to push some of her excessively bushy hair out of her face, “I have to go. Are you going to be all right? I’m worried about you.”

“What?” Sarah lifts her head, and the tears are, miraculously, gone. Well, mostly. There are still a few brimming, unshed, in her eyelashes. But they could be mistaken for an allergic reaction to the pollen season. “I’m fine. Whatever. Go on. You better go. Don’t want to be late to your big important meeting. ”

I eye her uncertainly. “Is Detective Canavan still down in my office? Because if he’s not—”

“I know,” she says, rolling those tear-filled eyes sarcastically. “Somebody ought to be down there manning it to make sure the residents have someone to talk to about the recent tragedy. Don’t worry. I’m on it.”

“Good,” I say. “When I’m through here, you and I are having a talk.”

“That’ll be good,” Sarah says, with a sneer. “Can’t wait.”

I give her one last concerned look, then slip through the door Tom’s holding open.

“I see Miss Pissy Pants,” Tom says, referring to Sarah, “hasn’t changed a bit since I left.”

“She’s had a tough week,” I say, in Sarah’s defense. “She’s fallen in love with the head of the GSC, and he doesn’t know she’s alive.”

Tom doesn’t look the least bit sympathetic. “Now why would she want to go and do that? That guy barely even bathes. And he carries a murse. Like I need to point that out.”

I nod, then turn to see that the whole of the Housing Department—well, all nine of the residence hall directors; their assistant hall directors; the three area coordinators; the on-staff psychologist, Dr. Flynn; the department head, Dr. Jessup; Dr. Gillian Kilgore, grief counselor; a man I’ve never seen before; President Allington; and, for some reason, Muffy Fowler—are gathered into the Fischer Hall library, all perched on the institutional blue vinyl couches (or, more accurately, love seats, since whole couches would have encouraged residents to sleep there, and we want the students to sleep in their rooms, not the common areas).