The Queen of Everything Read Free Page A

want to gag. "I wouldn't
say that," I said.
    "No? Still, you must be close. The
father-daughter bond and all."
    "I saw it in a movie once," I said. I don't
know why I said that except that maybe I was trying to let her know the daddy's
girl crap had no place in my life. After I said it though, I felt my conscience
jab me at this small betrayal of my father. I mean, we were close in our own
way. But if we're being honest here, getting truly close to fathers is like
trying to dig out a really old tree stump. You get exhausted with the effort and
don't actually get very far.
    Not only was my conscience being Goody
Two-Shoes, but I also started feeling a little embarrassed about what I'd said.
It seemed kind of personal for a first conversation, even with the hard-on ice already broken. But Gayle D'Angelo only laughed. I could hear
the rustling of bodies in the weigh-in room, papers shuffling, the sudden burst
of mixed conversations. Laylani was finished. "Our health consultant should be
right out," I said.
    "That's all right," Gayle D'Angelo said. "I'm
only here for the information." She waved the brochure in the air.
    Melissa popped her head out of the
weigh-in
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    room door. "Show time," she said. She looked at
Mrs. D'Angelo, caught my eye, and raised one eyebrow, a trick I always wished I
could do.
    "Nice to meet you," I said to Gayle
D'Angelo.
    And it was. Afterward I carried around a
strange thrill. The kind you get when something seems possible that didn't
before, or after you've been truly seen. I wondered if she was the
"influential person" my horoscope that day said I'd be meeting. I didn't
consider, until much later, that maybe what I felt were really the
hypervibrations that come with warning; the way your heart pounds when you are
playing hide-and-seek and sense someone is about to spring out at you. Even
salmon, Big Mama says, can sometimes get caught after their instincts have
confused them.
    Melissa and I usually walked home together
after work. Whiffs of Gayle D'Angelo's perfume had lounged around True You's
waiting room the rest of the day, and now it was following along behind us.
Though it was early evening, and only the very beginning of June, it was hot
out, unusually so for Parrish at that time of year. Normally that kind of
weather starts mid-August and ends two weeks later. But, hey, if you can guess
the weather in the Northwest, we'll probably crown you ruler of the
land.
    Outside, the air was stifling; it felt like
trying
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    to breathe through a knitted scarf. "Wanna get
doughnuts?" Melissa said in the parking lot, as True You's door shut behind
us.
    "Maple bar sugar hit," I said.
    "Let me see if I've got money," she said. She
swung her backpack off her shoulder and rooted around inside.
    "How can we even think fried food after
Laylani's lecture?" I mock-scolded.
    "Yeah, they usually make me too sick to eat,"
Melissa said to the inside of her backpack. Two cars started up in the parking
lot, one belonging to one of our team members, another to a customer of the dry
cleaner next door, a garment sheathed in thin plastic hanging from her back
window. The door to True You opened again, and a girl just a little older than I
stepped outside. She squinted and blinked, as if the world was more bright and
shocking than she could stand. She had stayed behind for a one-on-one with
Laylani, something Laylani required when she felt on the verge of losing a
customer. The girl looked down, avoiding our eyes when she passed us, and her
huge frame, draped with a floral cotton dress, moved with great effort through
the parking lot and toward the sidewalk.
    Melissa held up her wallet. "We're covered,"
she said. She followed my gaze. "Aren't you just entirely sick of
fatties?"
    Her voice was loud. Too loud. I could see
the
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    girl flinch, her shoulders lifting ever so
slightly. And then her purse slid from her arm, dropped to the sidewalk, and
spilled. She stopped,