The Next Big Thing

All my life I’d been waiting for things: calls that never came, guys who never showed, invitations that got “lost in the mail.” But mostly, I’d been waiting to be thin. I wanted a thin body so badly I could visualize it, like a beacon in the distance. I spent a lot of time preparing for my “thin life.”

 

I even bought clothes for it.  

 

I have box filled with supplies—my skinny box—lodged in the back of my closet.

 

Before the show, I’d never told anyone about it, not even Donna, my closest friend. Every fat girl has her skinny outfit, the one she pictures herself wearing when she miraculously drops 70 pounds overnight. The dress she imagines all her friends and ex-boyfriends swooning over. I was walking through the Oak Court Mall when I spied it: my dream dress. It was absolutely jaw-droppingly gorgeous, made of black velvet. My eyes locked on the mannequin wearing it, and something inside me came to life.

 

She was thin—but not as thin as mannequins generally are—and in addition to the velvet dress she had on a pair of knee high black leather boots. Everything about the image overwhelmed me.

 

This mannequin was me—the me I would become.

 

My mind flashed forward, spiraling past a summer of strict dieting and hardcore exercise, and I could see myself wearing that gorgeous black velvet dress with the knee high boots. People would stand with their mouths agape, watching in awe as I passed by. My hips, my slim little hips, would swivel seductively from side to side.

 

No more size eighteen.

 

Who the hell is that? They’d wonder. She must be from New York or maybe somewhere on the West Coast. No one that cool lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

           

I usually don’t shop in skinny stores; I don’t like the stares I get from salesgirls. What is she doing here? We don’t have clothes in her size. I could feel their eyes on me the second I walked in. I was pushing 200 pounds at the time, and I knew this particular store didn’t carry above a size fourteen; I didn’t care. I was feeling invincible, spurred on by the vision of Kat Larson, skinny person. I walked in, head held high. I wasn’t worried about checking to see whether or not I could squeeze into an XL.

 

Today I was buying mediums.

 

I spent over two hours gathering clothes left and right, snatching up anything and everything that caught my eye. A leather skirt, a tight gray turtleneck, a plaid jumper, a deep red button-down shirt with black cuffs. No one spoke to me the entire time. No one asked how I was doing, or whether I was having a good day. None of the sales reps offered to help. I knew they thought I was strange, but I felt like a genius. I had found the secret recipe to weight-loss success! Wasn’t it all about motivation? And nothing would motivate me more than a closet full of expensive, thin-person clothes. I would look at them every morning and they would remind me of who I wanted to become.

 

Who I would become.

 

In the end, I bought nine things, including the spellbinding black velvet mini-dress and the knee-high boots. The salesgirl—a snazzy redhead hell bent on ignoring me—folded and wrapped my purchases in tissue paper, then placed them gingerly in a large white and purple bag that I held like a trophy as I made my way out of the mall.

 

I did not get slim that summer, and I never wore those clothes.

 

They sit in my closet to this day, still in the tissue paper, and horribly out of date.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One

 

Put the ‘Real’ Back into Reality TV

 

 

No matter where you work, dragging yourself out of bed into the office after a weekend is never pleasant. But at Hood & Geddlefinger Public Relations, Mondays are especially brutal and Richard Geddlefinger is the man to thank for it. He doesn’t believe in easing into the work week. “Nobody ever got anywhere in life by taking it easy,” he’s  fond of saying. “Monday sets the tone for the whole week.” So he holds an hour-long mandatory staff meeting every Monday at 8 a.m. sharp to “kick things off right.” His words, not mine.

 

I’m not a morning person by nature. Unless I have some profoundly exciting reason to be out of bed at the crack of dawn – like, say, a date with Colin Farrell – it usually takes several hours and about a gallon of coffee before I fully wake up.

 

That particular Monday, the day I first learned about the show, was worse than usual. I hadn’t received my nightly e-mail from my boyfriend Nick and I’d stayed up late trying to catch him online before he left for work. London is six hours ahead of Memphis, and I knew Nick got online promptly at 7:30 a.m. (I knew because I’d waited up for him on more than one occasion).

 

When he hadn’t signed on by 1:30 a.m. Memphis time, I panicked. Nick and I had a routine, and we never varied from it. In the three months we’d known each other, Nick and I had spoken on the phone at least once a week and he’d e-mailed every single day without fail, even if it was just a short note telling me he was too busy to write.

 

His e-mails mean everything to me. I print them out and whenever I get bored, or sad, or lonely I read them. It’s strange how someone so far away can have such an impact on my life. Like the day, so many weeks ago, when Nick told me that he loved me. I carry a tattered copy of that e-mail in my purse.

 

Dear Kat,

It’s nearly 3 a.m. and I should be sleeping, but I’m not. Instead I’m lying here, thinking about you. The things you say, the way you laugh. I memorize everything so I can play it over in my mind. Maybe this is what it means to fall in love. It’s as though all the other girls I’ve been with were a trial run. As though this is what I’ve been preparing for all my life.

I love you,
            Nick

 

Nick is never shy with his emotions and he’s always prompt. So when I didn’t here from him, I freaked. What if something bad had happened? I debated calling, but it was still early in our relationship; I wanted to keep psycho possessive girlfriend behavior to a minimum. After hours of obsessing, I wound up typing him a quick email: Hey baby, hope all is well. I missed hearing from you tonight. Love, Kat.

 

So that Monday I woke up later than I’d intended, and had just enough time to grab a quick shower and visit the drive-thru Starbucks before coming into the office. I burst through the door at 8:04 a.m., making it into the conference room just as Richard called the meeting to order.

 

“Sorry,” I said breathlessly, squeezing my chair around the crowded table. I set down my Venti house blend and cracked open my notebook. I glanced around and realized my best friend and co-worker Donna Bartosch hadn’t arrived yet either. This surprised me; Donna had recently been issued an official warning from Human Resources, informing her she was being closely watched for “excessive tardiness.”

 

“As I was saying before Kat got here,” Richard shot me brief look and then continued talking, “I lined up several prospective clients over the weekend. I may have bitten off more than we can chew, and I’m going to ask all of you to put in a bit of overtime, but I think you’ll find it’s worth it. We’re talking big names, people. If we can land these clients, it’s going to take Hood & Geddlefinger to a whole new level.”

 

All around the conference table people cringed, including me. We’d been down this road before. The last time Richard said “a bit of overtime” I wound up working nearly seventy hours a week for a month.

 

“Great work, Mr. G.,” Cindy Vander, a sprightly blonde who worked my last nerve, responded. “I’m sure I speak for everyone in the room when I say we will do whatever it takes to make these deals happen.”

 

I groaned inwardly. It figured that she would say that. Cindy couldn’t resist an opportunity to suck up to the boss. 

 

“Good, I knew I could count on all of you,” Richard beamed. “I’m going to need to meet with each department and with certain people individually.” He reached down and picked up a piece of paper, scanning through a list of names.

 

It seemed all we ever did at Hood & Geddlefinger was meet. We even had meetings to plan meetings. It was a wonder we got any work done at all.

 

“After we adjourn, I want to talk with the researchers and fact checkers,” Richard said. “Kat, Donna, and William.” He paused, looking around the room. “Where is Donna?” He said this to everyone, but I knew the question was directed at me. It was common knowledge that Donna and I were best friends.

 

I thought fast. “She’s probably having car trouble,” I covered. “Her beat up old Nissan’s on its last leg.”

 

“That’s a poor excuse,” Richard griped. “If your car doesn’t run, get a new one.”

 

“Well, you know, maybe if Donna earned a little more money,” I said in an I’m-joking-but-I’m-really-serious tone. It was true. We made peanuts at H&G. A few people around the conference giggled politely.

 

“I’d be happy to take notes for her if you’d like,” Cindy the kiss-ass volunteered.

 

“That’s not necessary.” Donna came breezing through the door as if on cue. Her face was flushed red and her shoulder-length blonde hair was still damp. Her earrings didn’t match, she had a copy of USA Today tucked under her arm, and I noticed off-handedly that she wasn’t wearing any concealer. Not that she needed it. Donna’s skin is flawless. If it wasn’t for her wicked sense of humor and never ending generosity, I’d probably hate her size-four guts. Donna pushed a chair over to the conference table and plunked down next to me.

 

“I suppose you have a good excuse,” Richard said flatly.

 

“Actually, sir, I do,” Donna said. “In the local paper this morning, did you read about the house fire in Bartlett?”

 

“I read the paper, Donna.” Richard held up a hand. “Don’t try to claim that was your house, Bartosch. I know you live Downtown.”

 

“It was my boyfriend Chip’s place. He lost everything he owned,” she said, sounding righteously aggrieved. “He had to sleep at my apartment last night, and this morning he woke up crying. Crying,” she said again for emphasis. “By the time he pulled himself together, I was running behind.”

 

I eyed her curiously. If I wasn’t mistaken, Chip lived in an apartment.

 

Richard cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to hear about that,” he said, turning his attention to his laptop. “I’ve prepared a brief PowerPoint presentation detailing some of what we’ll need to do to get started.”

 

I took a quick survey of the room. Richard was busy fiddling with his computer, and everybody was waiting for him to begin. I saw eyes fixed on the floor, the walls, the ceiling. No one was looking at me. I hastily scrawled a message on my notepad and passed it to Donna. So what’s the real story? I wrote, thinking she had a lot of balls lying about a thing like that. I’d never have the nerve.

 

Donna slid my notebook back, along with the Life section of her USA Today. “You should think about it,” she whispered in my ear. “It sounds kind of fun.”

 

I looked down at the paper and discovered she’d drawn a big arrow pointing toward one of the stories. As discreetly as possible, I unfolded the USA Today on my lap and started reading.

 

Reality show aims to be the next big thing by Mark Tibulini, Staff Write        If Zaidee Panola has her way, the days of skinny Survivors and bikini-clad Big Brother contestants will soon be a thing of the past.      Panola, executive producer of the upcoming reality show From Fat to Fabulous, thinks America is ready for a little more fat in its television diet.      “We’re going to put the ‘real’ back into reality TV,” said Panola, speaking via phone from her office in Los Angeles. “In its earliest days, the genre was a bit more open [to different body types]. Now, every single reality show, from MTV’s The Real World to ABC’s The Bachelor, is overrun with people who could easily pass for models. Sure, models make nice eye candy, but when was the last time you saw someone who looked like that in real life?”      The concept of From Fat to Fabulous is simple: a group of young women, all size sixteen or larger, will battle the bulge – and each other – for fifteen weeks on national television. Holed up in a Hollywood Hills mansion, they’ll be given access to the best weight-loss tools money can buy: a spacious home gym, an on-call nutritionist, a personal trainer, and a weight counselor. The house also contains a large fridge full of healthy snacks – and an even larger pantry crammed with junk food.      “We call it the Tomb of Temptation,” Panola laughed. “Our primary goal is to help these girls win their personal war with weight, but we’re not going to force them into deprivation. The so-called ‘bad foods’ will be there in the house, but we’ll do everything we can to persuade the girls not to touch them.”      However, should a contestant be tempted to cheat, Panola and crew won’t hesitate to document it.      “If someone sneaks downstairs to eat a brownie at 2 a.m., you’d better believe we’ll be there,” she said.       The end of every episode will feature a weigh-in, the results of which could be worth thousands of dollars.      “Each girl has her own personal bank, and we add or subtract money according to what the scale says,” Panola revealed. “If she’s down two pounds or more, then we add $10,000. But if her weight has increased by two pounds or more, then we subtract $20,000.”      Staying the same weight as the week before or having an increase or decrease of less than two pounds will result in no change to the bank. Additionally, the contestants can earn extra dough by logging hours in the gym. At the end of the game, whoever has earned the largest bank wins the cash. Panola said designing the reward system proved extremely difficult. Several alternatives were considered, including awarding a pre-set amount of money to the girl who lost the most weight overall. The system they wound up choosing was designed under the guidance of several medical experts.       “Since the show is about weight loss, at first we thought it made sense to give the money to the girl who’d shed the most pounds. But everybody loses weight differently,” Panola said, “it wouldn’t be fair to reward someone based solely on the fact that her body responds the quickest to diet and exercise.”      Lest viewers think the whole routine could grow old, Panola hints that a few twists are in store.      “We do have some stuff up our sleeves, yes,” Panola said. “I can’t tell you much, but I will say this: the girls are going to have other opportunities to earn money, aside from the weigh-ins. They’ll be able to perform special tasks and compete in some very unusual competitions.” Ultimately, the show is about testing one’s motivation.      “We’re giving them the best incentive in the world to lose the weight,” Panola said. “If they can’t do it in this kind of a situation, they probably can’t do it period.”

A sidebar next to the article gave the show’s Web site and listed the instructions for applying. “Submit application form (available online) and a two-minute introduction video telling us why you’d like to be a part of the show. All materials must be received (read: received, not postmarked) by Friday, April 26.” This upcoming Friday.

“So, what do you think?” Donna whispered as soon as I’d finished reading.

 

I didn’t respond at first. I was still digesting everything. The last sentence of the article—We’re giving them the best incentive in the world to lose the weight—really struck a chord in me.

 

From the age of ten, my life has been about diets. All through middle school I ate nothing but Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine. In high school I moved on to Jenny Craig, then got inventive and crafted my own weight-loss methods. There was the “Chew and Spit” which involved chomping on things like barbecue potato chips while leaning over the toilet. After chewing the food into pure mush, I chucked it straight out of my mouth into the toilet, savoring the taste while discarding the calories. If I didn’t have a major aversion – bordering on a phobia – of throwing up I’d have likely made the jump to bulimia. 

 

Then there was the “Nothing But Five Fat-Free Yoplait Yogurts Every Day” plan. I lost forty pounds in less than three months, but I also lost huge clumps of my hair. By the time I graduated college I could name the number of Weight Watchers points in any fast food item. I’d gone through stints eating both low-fat and low-carb. I’d also tried L.A. Weight Loss, SugarBusters, and hypnosis. Most recently The South Beach diet. All of these worked for a little while. But you can only down so many Subway sandwiches before the sight of a Veggie Delight starts to makes you gag.

 

Incentive.

 

Maybe that is the secret ingredient I’ve been missing all this time.

 

And what could be a better incentive than being paid $10,000 every week to lose weight? When I began talking to Nick online, I had hoped he’d be the perfect motivation. Nick Appleby works as an editor for Status, a sophisticated men’s magazine in London. We met in a chat room. I know, I know. Insert groan. It embarrasses me how we met, and I have carefully avoided telling people the truth. Instead I say we got together while I was visiting my parents in Denver. “He was there on holiday with friends,” I lie. “We met at a ski lodge. It was love at first sight. It was devastating when I had to return to Memphis and he had to return to England, but our love is strong enough to survive the long distance.” It’s pure bullshit, but most people buy it.

 

Only Donna knows the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

 

“It’s not like you’re one of those dorks who only has Internet friends,” Donna said when I told her. “You were bored and looking to have some fun. You couldn’t have predicted you’d meet a guy would sweep you off your feet.”

 

It was a massive understatement. I’d never met anyone from England before and our e-mails were so great, so connected. Nick painted a magical picture of London, and often promised to fly me over for a visit. Money wasn’t a concern for him; his journalism job was low-paying, but his family was loaded. “You’ll love it here,” he wrote. “We can stroll hand-in-hand along the bank of the Thames, visit Oxford Street, eat Indian food. London’s a multicultural city, which I absolutely adore. We have the biggest Indian population outside of Asia. I can’t wait for you to learn all about Britain.”   

  

It was a wonderful fantasy, but I had no idea how to make it a reality. I didn’t plan to meet Nick in person, at least not for a very long time. Even though I trusted that we’d one day live happily ever after together, I hadn’t been perfectly honest with Nick. To put it bluntly, I first blew it when I told him I had a flat stomach. It was, without a doubt, the dumbest mistake I have ever made in a relationship. The thing is, Nick alluded to the fact that he wanted a woman who could “comfortably fit into a size four, though I can handle a size six.” We had exchanged blurry scans of ourselves. His showed him to be tall and handsome, with jet black hair and dark eyes. Mine showed me to be thin, a feat I'd accomplished by taking a picture of myself snapped eight years earlier when I was at 174 pounds, my lowest weight ever – and doctoring it in Photoshop.

Nick wrote back that I was pretty, and he was happy I had a flat stomach. He went on to say he thought a size eight was “really pushing it” and a size ten was “way too fat for my tastes. I make a lot of public appearances for Status, so these things have to be considered.”

I didn't have the heart to tell Nick I was a size eighteen. Instead I told myself, finally, just what I need to kick start my weight loss dream. I knew I either had to lose the pounds or I’d lose Nick. Sooner or later, he’d demand a meeting. Yet even with that horror hanging over me, I hadn’t made any headway.

 

Maybe a monetary incentive was exactly what I needed.

 

“So?” Donna prodded, growing impatient.

 

If anyone other than Donna had handed me that article I’d have rolled it into a ball and shoved it up their ass. But I knew her intentions were good.

 

I thought about the downside. For starters, I’d have to reveal my real weight on national television. I don’t reveal my weight to my closest friends and family, not without knocking thirty pounds off. How would I do it on TV?

 

I rationalized. True, all of America will see how fat I am, but then they’ll also see how hard I work to fix it. I often think the general public believes people my size do nothing but sit around and eat cake and bacon (not at the same time). This would be a great opportunity to prove this isn’t true.

 

I picked up my notebook and wrote, You think it’s worth a shot? Then passed it back to Donna.

 

Absolutely! Imagine if you won all that money? What would you even do with it?

 

That was easy. I was grinning at the thought. Quit my job and move to England. Marry Nick. Then launch a career as a—

 

“Excuse me, Kat.”

 

Instinctively, I dropped my pen.

 

“You want to share that with the rest of the group? If it’s so fascinating I think we ought to know.”

 

Richard had stopped his presentation and was staring straight at me. Around the room a few people snickered. My ears started burning and my face felt prickly with heat. It was like being in grade school, getting caught passing notes by the teacher.

 

“I’m sorry, Richard,” I said, quickly putting the notebook away. “I was filling Donna in on what she missed.”

 

I hoped he would buy it, but he didn’t.

 

“I’m paying you to work, not pass notes, kiddo” he said, pausing before pulling up a new PowerPoint screen. For some inane reason, Richard has taken to calling me ‘kiddo.’ Never mind the fact that I’m twenty-seven. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind paying attention, I think we’d all appreciate it.”

 

I breathed a sigh of relief. It had been embarrassing, but at least he hadn’t grabbed my notebook and read what I’d written. After such a close call I tried to pay attention. But I was already planning my post-reality show life.

 

I was going to be a star.

 

A rich, beautiful, thin star.