Butter

For Mom and Dad,

my first readers and my very best friends

Contents

Part 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Part 2

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Part 3

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Books by Erin Jade Lange

Part 1

One stick of butter

Chapter 1

You think I eat a lot now? That’s nothing. Tune in December 31st, when I will stream a live webcast of my last meal. Death row inmates get one. Why shouldn’t I? I can’t take another year in this fat suit, but I can end this year with a bang. If you can stomach it, you’re invited to watch . . . as I eat myself to death.

—Butter

Most people would say the website is where this wild ride began. But for me it started two days earlier, on a Tuesday night in front of the TV in my living room. I was watching the news, because that’s what my mom had on when she got up to make dinner, and she left the remote all the way across the room on the entertainment center, right next to the TV.

Why do people do that—put the remote by the TV? What’s the point?

She probably did it to force me to get up and get some exercise, as if a couple steps across the room would make any difference.

Anyway, there was this story on the news about airlines charging obese people for two airplane seats.

Look, I get it. It sucks to be next to the fat guy on the plane. Maybe he’s taking up too much of your armrest or crowding you into the window, but trust me, nobody’s more uncomfortable than that guy, having to squish into that tiny seat and knowing nobody wants to sit next to him. The humiliation is payment enough, let alone an extra charge.

This chick with one of the airlines was in the story, saying the double billing would start January 1 and trying to play it off like it was for the benefit of the big people, like they’d be more comfortable with two seats and it was only fair to charge them. Well, I call bullshit on that, lady. I knew there was nothing—including cramming my ass into one of those itty-bitty lame excuses for an airline seat—nothing worse than being the guy taking up two seats so everyone on the plane sees you and thinks, Oh! So that’s how big you have to be to pay double. No thanks.

I was getting riled up watching the story, when I looked down and remembered two airline seats were the least of my worries. Right then, I was taking up two cushions on the couch.

My eyes slid from the cushions to the coffee table. An empty candy dish with crumbles of peanut M&Ms, a half-melted tub of ice cream, and a bag of Doritos were just a few of the spoils before me.

A single Dorito was balanced precariously on the edge of the bag. I rescued it before it fell out and transferred it to my mouth. The flavors exploded over my tongue—salty, sweet, spicy—everything I liked all rolled into one. God, I love Doritos. As an added bonus, the crunch filled my ears, drowning out the sound of the hated story. But as soon as I swallowed, I heard the final line, delivered by some traveler at the airport—a girl so anorexic thin and bleach blond, she could have easily been one of my classmates at Scottsdale High.

Yeah, I think it’s fair! She popped her gum. "Why should the rest of us have to share the seats we paid for with people who can’t lay off the snacks before dinner?"

I froze with a meatball sub halfway to my mouth. Damn! Can’t a guy enjoy a little sandwich in his own living room without feeling like he’s being judged? But it was too late to be defensive. Suddenly that sub didn’t look good at all, and the smell of it made me sick. In fact, everything in front of me instantly looked revolting. I hated every brightly colored candy, every salt-coated chip.

I quickly scooped it all off the table and picked up the tidbits that had slipped between the sofa cushions. I’d experienced this before, these waves of resolve. They never lasted and usually ended in an epic binge. But when they came on, they came on powerful, and I was convinced I’d never eat another bite.

I padded out to the kitchen with my armload of snacks and dropped everything in the trash without a word to my mother, who had her back to me, humming away at the stove. Then I headed to my room to wrap my lips around the only thing that tasted good during one of these episodes—my saxophone.

• • •

I lost myself in a melody for about twenty minutes before I got winded. Sometimes just standing too long wore me out, and the way I moved when I played was more exercise than my body could handle these days.

That’s beautiful, baby.

My mom was in the doorway, leaning against the frame with that dreamy expression she always gets when I blow. I stopped abruptly and lowered the sax to punish her for sneaking up on me, something I’d told her repeatedly to knock off.

What is that tune? Is that something new?

No, Ma, it’s ‘Parker’s Mood.’ You’ve heard me play it a hundred times.

Mmm. You do like your Charlie Parker.

Yeah, I guess.

Well, I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to tell you dinner’s in about ten minutes.

I’m not hungry.

Mom’s mouth twitched in a sad smile, but she didn’t say anything. Somewhere around the time I turned eleven, she’d stopped talking to me about food or exercise or anything to do with my weight. And the bigger I grew, the more she pretended not to see it. I used to think she was embarrassed by me, but I eventually figured she just felt guilty—like she was a bad mother for letting me get so big.

Okay, she said. We’ll start without you. She moved to leave, then turned back with one hand on the doorjamb and that sad smile still plastered on her face. Really, baby . . . just beautiful.

I cringed. I hated it when she called me baby. I was sixteen years old and a hell of a lot bigger than a baby. But it was better than Butter, which is what all the kids at school called me. I loathed that nickname, but at least most of them had forgotten how I earned it.

I lifted the sax to my lips to start again, but the movement made me feel tired, so I returned the instrument to its cradle. I didn’t need the practice anyway. I was no child prodigy or anything, but I’d picked up my first sax when I was eight years old and hadn’t missed a single day playing it since. Pathetic. Nothing better to do than sit at home alone playing music.

Of course, that wasn’t entirely the case. There was one other nightly distraction.

I switched on my laptop and settled into the extra-large armchair next to my bed. I logged on to the Internet under my handle, SaxMan, and held my breath, waiting to see if she was online.

She was. My friends list popped up on the right-hand side of the screen—a few kids from fat camp, a couple brass players I used to jam with . . . and Anna. Perfect, sweet, sexy Anna.

I had stalked Anna online for months before I finally got up the courage to send her a message. I contacted her through one of the few social media sites that didn’t demand photos, and of course, I didn’t tell her who I was. Hey, I’m that guy with the specially built oversize desk in the back of your composition class! Want to chat? Yeah, right.

I told Anna I went to private school and that I wholeheartedly agreed with her posts about the band RatsKill being so over. She’d loved that. And now, three months later, I was pretty sure Anna loved me. Even now, it was like she’d been online just waiting for me to show up. The second I signed on, a message popped up from Anna.

Hey handsome! What are you up to?

I smiled. I loved that Anna didn’t use lame shorthand or smiley faces to communicate. But my grin didn’t last. Handsome. Right. There was no way she could know that. I’d certainly never sent her a picture, and I refused to send her a fake photo, because I just couldn’t lie that blatantly to her. And truthfully, I didn’t want her falling in love with some other guy’s mug. She had asked me for a picture over and over again, but I’d finally convinced her the mystery was more romantic.

Hey beautiful. I just got done playing your song.

Okay, that wasn’t true, but even when I was playing Charlie Parker, Anna’s song was always running through the back of my mind. It was a careful, sultry solo I’d come up with after an all-night Internet session with Anna—the only song I’d ever written myself. Anna was over the moon when I sent her a recording of me playing it.

Aw! You know I fall asleep listening to that every night, right?

My grin returned.

I know.

When am I going to hear you play it in person?

Anna was getting increasingly pushy about meeting up in real life, but that obviously wasn’t an option—not yet, anyway. I just needed to lose some weight—okay, a lot of weight—before I revealed my true identity.

Soon babe. Very soon.

God, I could not stop lying to her tonight. Soon? Who was I kidding? When I first started chatting with Anna, I had delusions of shedding enough pounds to tell her who I was in just a matter of months. But Doc Bean convinced me it would take years to get down to a normal size. He was always preaching the value of patience. Well, patience was something I didn’t have. In fact, the news that I had years of hard work ahead of me had sent me into a binge, and in the three months since I’d been talking to Anna, I’d put on another nine pounds.

I stared at the laptop screen, waiting for Anna’s response. I knew her silence meant she was pouting. She wanted something more specific than soon. Oh well, what did I have to lose? At this rate, I would never tell her who I was anyway. What’s one more lie tonight? I placed my fingers on the keyboard.

New Year’s Eve.

Her response was almost instantaneous.

But that’s a month away!

It’ll be here sooner than you think.

I waited while she thought it over. Finally, she responded.

I guess a New Year’s meeting is pretty romantic.

I smiled at the thought, imagining the moment—locking eyes with Anna across the room of a crowded New Year’s Eve party, approaching her with a bundle of two dozen roses while a twelve-piece band begins to play her song—a moment that would never happen.

An ache filled my chest, and I knew I had to end the conversation before I told any more lies.

Okay babe, I just signed on to say hi. I gotta run.

I waited long enough to see her signature signoff—

Okay, sweet dreams!

—then closed the laptop.

The ache in my chest threatened to rise up as a lump in my throat and turn into tears. I forced it down, trying to shove the knot into my stomach. That’s when I realized I was hungry.

I tossed my laptop aside and headed down to dinner.

Like I said, the resolve never lasted.

Chapter 2

Breakfast the next morning was the usual fare: egg-white omelets and turkey sausage for Mom and Dad; pecan waffles, Canadian bacon, and poached eggs for me. No syrup for the waffles this morning, though. I didn’t ask why because I could guess the answer. Mom was trying to sneak the sugar out of my diet again.

When it came to feeding me, Mom bounced between whole grain and whole fat, vegetables and cupcakes, hope and resignation, the way I bounced between binging and purging.

I shoveled the dry waffles into my mouth and tried to catch my dad’s attention over his newspaper. What’s the word, Dad? Anything interesting in there? I poked the back of his paper.

Dad directed the answer at Mom. The Cardinals are never going back to the Super Bowl if they keep playing like this.

Mom, who could not have been less interested in sports, merely hummed.

I tried again. Do they have anything about the jazz fest in there? They’re supposed to announce the lineup this week.

Dad grumbled something to himself about preferring the Beatles and lifted his paper higher in front of his face.

Mom may have stopped talking to me about my weight, but around the time I tipped over four hundred pounds, Dad stopped talking to me altogether.

When I was growing up, he said my big frame was built for playing football. When I started growing out, he just didn’t know what to do with me. He tried to get me into the gym, shove his nasty egg-white omelets down my throat, and tell me I wasn’t a lost cause. But all that led to was a bunch of shouting matches.

I was actually pretty relieved when I hit four hundred pounds and he finally just shut the fuck up.

I still tried to talk to him at breakfast sometimes, though, just to see if I could trip him up and get him to say something directly to me. It was a little game I liked to play.

I finished my plate and stood up to kiss Mom on the cheek. She handed me my backpack and waved me out the door, humming under her breath, as always. I smiled. I bet she had no idea the song she was humming was Parker’s Mood.

• • •

Ten minutes later, I parked my BMW in a handicapped spot in the school parking lot. Yeah, BMW—my BMW. I know. Poor little rich kid. Maybe he’s big, but at least he drives a Beemer. And look, if I lived anywhere else, I’d agree, but where I’m from—Scottsdale, Arizona—seeing a teenager driving a BMW is about as common as seeing a one-armed cactus. We’re everywhere.

When I got my driver’s license sophomore year, I got called down to the school nurse’s office, where they gave me something I didn’t ask for—a handicapped sticker for my car. Apparently, my mom had requested it. I didn’t even think to be embarrassed or offended. I just remember thinking there was no way I would tarnish the Beemer with that ugly blue sticker, so I refused to park in the handicapped spots.

That only lasted through a few episodes of me running late for school and having to park at the far end of the lot and huff and puff half a mile to the building. One time I nearly collapsed right there in the parking lot. That was almost twenty pounds ago. So junior year I started using the spots.

The stall I always picked was right on the edge of the student lot where it spilled over into the faculty lot, so the first person to greet me when I got out of my car was the Professor. Professor Dunn, that is, but everyone just called him the Professor, because if you spread out his credentials, side by side, they would stretch around the world twice or something like that.

The guy had played with the Boston, Philadelphia, and New York symphonies, among others. He had the highest degrees from Juilliard and honorary degrees from every other impressive musical school you could imagine. But he’d come back to his roots in Arizona to settle into semiretirement as the Scottsdale High band director. I wondered if he’d gotten more gray hairs from his years of performing or from the teenagers he now taught.

He waved. Morning, Butter!

He was the only teacher who called me Butter, and I didn’t mind it coming from him. I think he suspected how I really got the name, but he always told people it was because I made the alto sax sound as smooth as butter.

You pick your classes for next semester yet? he asked, falling into step with me.

Everything but those electives. I’m still trying to decide between underwater basket weaving and leprechaun hunting. I grinned. I knew exactly which elective the Professor wanted me to take, but I had to have a little fun with him first.

If only your comedy were as impressive as your music. The Professor sighed. At least the comedy you are willing to share.

Hey! You make it sound like I’m being selfish. I told you, Prof, I’ll come jam with you and your Brass Boys anytime. But the school band? That’s just not my style.

Mom had forced me to join band freshman year. Both she and the Professor acted like it was the sinking of the Titanic when I dropped out after one semester. I think the Professor started letting me crash Brass Boys rehearsals in hopes of luring me back in, but all it did was introduce me to jazz and cement my decision that school band was not for me.

We reached the east entrance to the school, the one the teachers used, and the Professor stopped with his hand on the door. I only ask that you think about it, Butter. You could help me make the selections; we could pull some solos you like. Maybe a little Charlie Parker, huh? He nudged me, then opened the door with a wink. After you, big guy.

• • •

First period. Composition. Anna.

I loved that my day started out with a perfect view of her long, straight blond hair and her lean tan legs. That day she was crossing and uncrossing those legs impatiently. She kept tapping her pen on the edge of her desk and glancing up at the clock. What’s the hurry? School’s just begun. I was so focused on Anna and wondering what had her so pent up, I didn’t even hear the teacher call on me.

Huh?

The teacher repeated the question with more patience than she would have offered any other student. Teachers pitied me and apparently thought I had enough to worry about without getting in trouble at school. I answered automatically—and correctly. I was practically a straight-A student; I aced everything but math. That kept the teachers off my back too.

I wanted to follow Anna after class, but whatever was on her mind caused her to put on her running shoes. She bolted out the door the second the teacher dismissed us, and I just couldn’t keep up with her in the hallway. Besides, I felt like a stalker. It’s not like Anna and I had ever talked in person, so I couldn’t very well ask what was wrong. I sucked it up, deciding I could make it through algebra and chemistry before seeing Anna again at lunch.

No classes ever passed so slowly. By the end of two hours, I had algebraic proofs in my chem lab book and chemical equations doodled all over my algebra spiral. I couldn’t have cared less. At eleven thirty, both notebooks tucked securely in my backpack, I trudged off to the cafeteria.

She should have been hard to spot. The Scottsdale High cafeteria was a sea of tall, tan, and blond. But I could always pick Anna out of a crowd. Her smile stuck out among the faces of other girls trying hard to look bored or annoyed. And her genuine laugh sounded like a melody while other girls’ cackles struck sour notes. She was as fake blond and fake tan as the rest of them, but something real still shone through.

I scanned the pale bobbing heads of giggling girls clustered at tables and knew in an instant Anna wasn’t there. I felt an irrational surge of anger at her, like we’d had a lunch date and she’d stood me up.

Or maybe she was just late, I reasoned. With that thought as comfort, I began skirting the cafeteria, headed for my usual table in the back. Most of the tables in the cafeteria were round, surrounded by slim plastic chairs that made those airline seats look downright roomy. But in the back there were a