Keeping The Moon(36)

“I,” Isabel said, dragging out another egg and putting on her sunglasses, “was saving it for a special occasion. See you later,

okay?”

Now, finally, Morgan smiled. “All right. You don’t have a date for the fireworks already?”

Isabel chucked that egg in her mouth too, grinning the entire time. Then she shook her head. “Nah. These are good,” she said.

Then she looked at me as she pushed the door open. “You come too, Colie. Okay?”

I was surprised. “Sure,” I said.

“Good. It’ll be Chick Night.” She stepped outside. “Later!”

We watched her walk over to the Rabbit, then make another one of her trademark gravel-scattering exits. As she pulled into traffic,

someone speeding by in a pickup truck whooped and beeped at her. And then she was gone.

“Chick Night,” Morgan said slowly, walking over and lifting out two eggs. Then she wiped the back of the plastic wrap. “You

know, I think that’s just what I need right now.”

I nodded. She handed me an egg and I took it. We stood there, chewing, until our first customers pulled up.

Chick Night, I thought. Another first for me. I didn’t quite know what to expect.

But I would find out soon enough.

We could hear the music from the end of Mira’s driveway. I was carrying the tray with the few eggs that were left; I myself had

eaten six and was trying not to look at them.

“Ah,” Morgan said, as we came closer, the music getting louder and louder. “Disco.”

“What?”

She nodded towards the little house. All the lights were on and the door was open. “Disco,” she explained, “is great for

healing. Not to mention dancing.”

At this I froze, my fingers tightening on the egg tray. No one had mentioned anything about dancing.

“I don’t dance,” I said.

Morgan looked at me. “What?”

“I said I don’t dance.”

“Everyone dances,” Morgan said simply.

“Not me.”

She pulled open the door, letting out a burst of music: Sister Sledge, singing “We are Family”; a standard on Kíki’s Disco Years

Workout tape. On it my mother wore a purple leotard and bell-bottoms, doing the Hustle, while three rows of overweight people

huffed and puffed behind her.

“You will,” she said. And she reached behind her, holding the door open, the music spilling out to greet me.

I didn’t dance. And I had my reasons.

As a fat girl, I’d experienced a wide range of humiliations. Add in the fact that I was almost always new, too, and I hit trouble

everywhere I went.

Once, in elementary school, I came home after a particularly bad day and gorged myself on Oreos. I sat down with a full package and

a half-gallon of milk to drown my sorrows, twisting off the tops and licking out the white insides, one after another.

Thirty minutes later I was in the bathroom, kneeling before the toilet and throwing up black stuff, which swirled away only to be

replaced by more black stuff, and more black stuff, for what seemed like an eternity.

I never touched an Oreo again. I honestly cannot even be in the room with one.

I feel the same way about dancing.

It was the Fall Harvest Dance. My first dance. As usual, I was at a new school: Central Middle, in some small suburb of Maryland.

My mother was working at a dentist’s office; it was the first time in my life I’d had clean, well-inspected teeth.

Maybe this made me feel confident enough to go to the Harvest Dance. Or maybe it was my mother, who never let her extra pounds get

in the way of having a little fun. Either way, when I was only two months into a new school, fat with no friends (other fat kids

wouldn’t hang out with me because I was new, part of the complex stratification even among the losers at Central Middle), my

mother spent all the grocery money to buy me a new pair of Misses Plus jeans and a cute top.

The top was long-sleeved, with green and pink stripes. I wore my white Keds and a pair of heart-shaped earrings my mom had given me

for my birthday. We spent a lot of time selecting this combination, and she even let me wear some of her makeup. She dropped me off

on the other side of the football field, the cool thing to do, so I appeared to have just walked out of the woods.

“Have fun,” she called after me. I’d gotten the sense, through all the shopping and preparation, that she would have gladly

traded places and gone herself. I was more than ready to let her.

The engine of the Volaré rattled as she drove off. “You look great!” she yelled as I stepped through the brush and started across

the field. I could already hear the music, could see the lights in the cafeteria, and despite myself I felt a little flutter of

excitement.

I paid my three bucks and went inside, passing clumps of kids along the hallway; no one seemed to be dancing yet. The fat girls

were all in a far corner. One of them had brought a book and was reading it.

I went to the bathroom and checked my makeup under the glaring fluorescent lights, to see if I looked different. Then I washed my

hands twice and went back to the cafeteria.

By then some people were dancing. I went inside and stood against the wall, watching as the most popular kids took the floor, the