of a rocky ledge facing into the darkness. Behind me, I hear a thud as Tommy drops his backpack, and in front of me, the patter of water rolling off the cliff. He joins me with his lantern and holds it up over a skinny stream of water.
“Fairy Falls,” he says.
“It’s not too bad.” I smile. In spite of my hatred for the camp, for Getty, for Chad Tate, there’s something interesting about the gray granite rock formations and the tree trunks that litter the hillside. It’s like the opening sequence of a bad teen horror movie. Or the site of a giant game of pick-up sticks.
“Come on,” Tommy says, grabbing my hand.
We sit on the cold blanket. From inside his backpack Tommy unpacks ham sandwiches, sea salt quinoa chips and apples. And chocolate pudding. It’s pretty gross camp food. But after the day I’ve had, it’s a gourmet feast.
“Look, I know you’re not happy to be here,” he says.
“Um, yeah,” I say in between bites, “is there a reason you find the prospect of eating lettuce wraps and getting up at four in the morning to jog so thrilling?”
Tommy shrugs and opens his pudding cup. “Jogging’s okay. I guess I don’t love salads. And we don’t have to get up at four.”
I put down my sandwich. “Okay. But why are you here? You’re...not fat.”
He smiles. “My mom had a weight problem growing up. She keeps going on and on about genetics and history repeating itself. So here I am.”
“That totally sucks.”
He thinks about this for a minute. “Well. It was either this or visit my grandma and spend the whole break trying to cross-stitch Walt Whitman quotes. And this is fun, right?”
I sigh. I knew he was playing the odds. It happens a lot. Guys will be nice to me in the hopes that I’ll go on the cabbage diet and end up strutting around a catwalk in a bra like my mother. People say we look alike. I’m the image of supermodel Lindsay Vonn Tate as seen in a funhouse mirror.
Before I can tell Tommy Weston to go screw off, he points at a small reddish blob on the horizon. “You ever watch Arcturus?”
I followed his gaze up to the night sky. “What’s that?”
“A star. Fourth brightest, actually. The Bear Watcher.”
I snorted. “Great. Now you’re Bill Nye the Science Guy.”
He ignores me. “My dad used to tell me this story. About how they used the light from Arcturus to open the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.”
I sit cross-legged and stare at the star too. “How did they do that?”
Tommy turns to face me. “Well, they set up photocells and used several large refracting telescopes to—”
“Okay. Forget I asked,” I say, and we both laugh.
“The point is that there’s Arcturus. It can be this impersonal ball of gas floating around thirty-seven light-years away, having nothing to do with anybody or anything. Or we can take a telescope, focus its light and shoot it over a crowd of ten thousand people. And it’s up to us what we do.” He’s watching the dark sky. Wishing on a star.
There’s something sweet about him and this world he’s imagining. “So this is your dad’s version of a motivational speech?” I giggle. It sounds kind of weird.
“My dad’s a physics teacher. He likes to go with what he knows.”
We pack up the garbage and walk back to camp. The walk back is way more pleasant than hiking up, since it’s mostly downhill.
When we arrive at Juniper, he extends his hand. “Friends?” he asks.
“Friends,” I agree.
I watch him go over to the boys’ side of camp. Low, snow-covered mountains billow across the landscape behind him.
Inside my cabin, Piper’s still awake. “Some counselor brought your bag. Don’t worry. I said you were in the toilet. I guess Mr. Getty’s lawyer says, strictly speaking, he can’t refuse to give you food.”
I shrug and pull the bag into the corner near my bunk. “I think I’ll just wear the uniform. I mean, what’s the big deal, right?”
Piper grins at me. “Got anything else in there besides fancy clothes?”
Unzipping the bag, I hold up several magazines. “Can I interest you in a copy of Seventeen? I never leave home without one.”
Fairy Falls sucks.
Not being alone completely rules.
SKINNY: Day 738 of NutriNation and there’s nothing to eat
Miller’s people have pulled out all the stops. I guess they must really be worried I’ll make him out to be the anti-Christ.
I ride in a fancy limo to the Refinery Hotel. The driver makes a point of telling me to have anything I want from the minibar. He tells me three times.
Finally he shakes his head. “You pretty girls never eat.”
My right eye starts to twitch. “When Gareth Miller rides in a limo do you think he eats?” The rest of the drive is pretty quiet.
The Refinery is an opulent palace of white marble and maple paneling. It looks like only cool Swedish people should be allowed to stay in the rooms. Piper hangs around in front, standing underneath a glass overhang, trying to fold a black umbrella. One awesome thing about this trip is that it’s also an opportunity to hang with my BFF.
“You made it!” she calls.
“You look great.” I point to her hair. “You’ve gone a bit darker.”
Piper nods. “Yeah. I’m trying to pull off Dannii Minogue. And, of course, I’m wearing a Cookie Vonn original.” She gestures toward her outfit like a game show model. She’s paired her platform heels and jeans with a sweatshirt I made. It’s my own pattern of distressed retro rockets inspired by the TWA Moonliner rocket I saw that one time Grandma took me to Disneyland.
Piper is my muse.
Hubert de Givenchy had his Audrey Hepburn. Calvin Klein got a decade of inspiration from Kate Moss.
I have Piper, who’s bold and beautiful and brainy. Someday, when I have my own brand, I hope girls like Piper will be standing at department store cash registers buying armfuls of my stuff.
The first year or so after Fairy Falls, Piper was pretty much the camp’s poster child. It was like she lived to eat lettuce wraps and read Runner’s World magazine. I’m sure somewhere in Wyoming, Mr. Getty was probably shitting himself with excitement at the thought of getting a new testimonial for the camp brochure.
She lost fifty pounds.
And then.
Her weight loss totally stalled. She got down to twelve hundred calories and exercised so much that she was even doing calf raises on the school bus. We Skyped twice a week, and I don’t think she cracked a smile in six months.
One day during a video chat, she leaned in close to her screen and said, “I’m a size twenty and I’m going to stay that way. I have become a Giver of Zero Fucks. I’m going to do what I want to do and be happy.”
And then she did.
My attention snaps back to a guy standing on the sidewalk. He starts to say something. “Hey! Are you from—”
Piper pulls me through the hotel’s sliding glass doors before the guy can finish saying Australia. We both roll our eyes. Piper gets this routine a hundred times a day.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I say. “Can the guys at Columbia get any studying done with