Size 14 Is Not Fat Either Read Free Page B

office. Unfortunately, Justine, the girl who’d had my position before me, had felt the same way, and had spent all of Fischer Hall’s petty cash on ceramic heaters for her friends and family. The Budget Office still scrutinizes our petty cash vouchers with an eagle eye every time I take them over for reimbursement, even though each and every one of them is completely legit.
    And I still haven’t figured out what a ceramic heater is.
    I finish rescheduling all of Tom’s appointments, then polish off my café mocha in a gulp.If you were thinner. You know what, Barista Boy? With those long nails you won’t trim because you’re too poor to afford a new guitar pick, you look like a girl. Yeah, that’s right. A girl. How do you likethat , Barista Boy?
    Quick stop at the cafeteria to grab a bagel to eat on the way to the hospital, and I’ll be ready to go. I mean, café mochas are all well and good, but they don’t supply lasting energy…not like a bagel does.
    Particularly a bagel smothered in cream cheese (dairy) over which several layers of bacon (protein) have been added.
    I’ve grabbed my coat and am getting up to get my bagel when I notice Magda, my best work bud and the cafeteria’s head cashier, standing in my office doorway, looking very unlike her usual self.
    “Morning, Magda,” I say to her. “You will never believe what Barista Boy said to me.”
    But Magda, normally a very inquisitive person, and a big fan of Barista Boy, doesn’t look interested.
    “Heather,” she says. “I have something I have to show you.”
    “If it’s the front page of thePost, ” I say, “Reggie already beat you to it. And really, Mags, it’s okay.I’m okay. I can’t believe she took him back after that whole thing at the Pussycat Dolls with Paris. But, hey, Page 11

    Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
    his dad owns her record label. What else is she going to do?”
    Magda shakes her head.
    “No,” she says. “Not thePost . Just come, Heather. Come.”
    Curious—more because she still hasn’t cracked a smile than because I actually think she has something so earth-shattering to show me—I follow Magda down the hall, past the student government office—closed this early in the morning—and Magda’s boss’s office, which, oddly, is empty. Normally, the dining office is filled with kvetching cafeteria workers and cigarette smoke, Gerald Eckhardt, the dining hall director, being an unapologetic smoker. He’s only supposed to light up outside, but invariably I catch him puffing away at his desk, then blowing the smoke out the open window, like he doesn’t think anyone is going to catch on.
    But not today. Today the office is empty—and smoke-free.
    “Magda,” I say, as her pink smock disappears through the swinging doors to the cafeteria’s loud, steaming kitchen, “what is going on?”
    But Magda doesn’t say anything until she’s standing beside the massive industrial stove, on which a single pot has been set to boil. Gerald is standing there as well, looking out of place in his business suit among his pink-smocked employees, dwarfing everyone else with his massive frame—a result of sampling his own recipe for chicken parm a little too often.
    Gerald looks—well, there’s only one word for it: frightened. So does Saundra, the salad bar attendant, and Jimmy, the hotline server. Magda is pale beneath her bright makeup. And Pete—what’sPete doing here?—looks like he wants to hurl.
    “Okay, you guys,” I say. I am convinced whatever is going on has to be a joke. Because Gerald, being in food services, is a prankster from way back, a master of the rubber rat in the desk drawer, and plastic spider in the soup. “What gives? April Fool’s isn’t for another three months. Pete, what are you doing back here?”
    Which is when Pete—who’s wearing, for some reason, an oven mitt—reaches out and lifts the lid from the merrily boiling pot, and I get a good