Meg Cabot - Size 12 Is Not Fat

The police arrive before the ambulance, take one look at what I’m doing, and apparently approve, because the next thing I know, they’ve started shooing people away, telling them the show is over.

I say, urgently, “Take statements from the witnesses! This thing didn’t just fall, you know. Somebody pushed it!”

Everyone gathers eagerly around the policemen, wanting to tell their story. It’s right around then that Rachel comes running out of the building, her high heels clacking on the pavement.

“Oh, Heather!” she cries, picking her way through the shards of cement and clods of dirt and geranium. “Oh, Heather! I just heard. Is he—is he going to be—”

“He’s still breathing,” I say. I keep the towel pressed to the wound, which has finally stopped bleeding. “Where’s that ambulance?”

But right then it pulls up, and the EMS workers leap out and, thankfully, take over. I’m more than happy to get out of the way. Rachel puts an arm around my shoulders as we watch them take Jordan’s vital signs. One of the cops, meanwhile, goes inside, while the other one picks up one of the larger chunks of planter and looks at me.

“Who’s in charge here?” he wants to know.

Rachel says, “I guess that’d be me.”

“Any idea where this came from?” the cop asks, holding up the slab.

“Well, it looks like one of the cement planters from the Allingtons’ terrace,” Rachel replies. She turns and points up, toward Fischer Hall’s facade. “Up there,” she says, craning her neck. “Twentieth floor. The penthouse. There are planters like this lined all around the terrace.” She quits pointing and looks at me. “I can’t imagine how it could have happened. The wind, maybe?”

I feel really cold, but it isn’t from any wind. It’s as warm a day in fall as any.

Magda, who has joined us, seems to agree.

“There is no wind today,” she says. “On New York One they said it would be mild all day long.”

“None of those planters ever blew over before,” Pete says. “And I been here twenty years.”

“Well, you can’t be suggesting someone pushed it,” Rachel says, looking horrified. “I mean, the students don’t even have access to the terrace—”

“Students?” The cop squints at us. “This some kind of dorm, or something?”

“Residence hall,” both Rachel and I correct him automatically.

The EMS workers load Jordan onto a backboard, then onto a stretcher, and then into the back of the ambulance. As they are closing the doors, I glance at Rachel.

“I should go with him,” I say to her.

She gives me a little push toward the vehicle. “Of course, you should,” she says kindly. “You go. I’ll take care of things here. Call me and let me know how he is.”

I tell her I will, and hurry after the EMS guys, asking them if I can hitch a ride to the hospital with them. They’re totally cool about it, and let me take the passenger seat of the cab.

From the front seat, I can look back through this little door and see what the paramedic who isn’t driving is doing to Jordan. What he is doing to Jordan is asking him what day of the week it is. Apparently, Jordan’s regaining consciousness. He doesn’t know what day of the week it is, though, and only grunts in response, like someone who’d really like to go back to sleep.

I think about suggesting that they ask him who he’s engaged to, but then decide this would be too mean.

As we pull away from the hall, I notice that Rachel, Sarah, Pete, and Magda are all huddled on the sidewalk, gazing worriedly after me.

I realize then, with a kind of pang, that yeah, okay, maybe I don’t have a boyfriend.

But I do have a family.

A weird one, maybe.

But I’ve got one.

In the nearly four months since I started working at New York College, I’ve been to just about every emergency room in Manhattan with various sick or injured students. St. Vincent’s isn’t really one of my favorites. There’s a TV in the waiting room and everything, but it’s always turned to soap operas, and the candy machine is always out of Butterfingers.

Also, a lot of junkies go there to try to convince the triage nurse that they really need some morphine for these mysterious pains in their feet. The junkies are entertaining to watch for a while, but when they start withdrawing they get hostile, and then the security guard has to throw them out and then they beat on the windows and in general make it very hard to concentrate on Jane magazine or whatever I happen to be reading.

But though the waiting room at St. Vincent’s sucks, the medical staff is excellent. They ask me all sorts of questions about Jordan that I can’t answer. But as soon as I say his full name, they whoosh him into the emergency room ahead of everybody, because, you know, even doctors have heard of Easy Street.

Visitors aren’t allowed in the ER except during the first five minutes of every hour, so I’m banished to the waiting room. But I employ my time there wisely by calling Jordan’s dad to give him the details about the accident.

Mr. Cartwright is understandably upset by the news that his most popular male solo artist—oh, and son—has been felled by a geranium planter, so I don’t take it personally when he is very curt on the phone with me. Our most recent conversation before that hadn’t gone very smoothly, either—the one where he’d told me that he’d get Jordan to dump Tania and “fly right” if I’d just quit demanding to sing my own songs on my next album.

Mr. Cartwright is kind of a jerk. Which might be why Cooper hasn’t spoken to him in almost a year.

After I hang up with Jordan and Cooper’s dad, I can’t think of anyone else to call. I guess I could let Cooper know his brother’s been hurt.

But Cooper is bound to ask what Jordan was doing at Fischer Hall in the first place. And the truth is, I’m not the world’s greatest liar. I just have this feeling Cooper will see right through any attempt on my part to pull the wool over his eyes.

So I sink into a plastic chair in one corner of the waiting room and have fun watching other emergency patients being carted in instead of making any more phone calls. It’s just like Trauma in the ER, on the Learning Channel, only, you know, live. I see a jovial drunk with a bleeding hand, a frazzled mom with a baby she’s spilled her cappuccino on, a kid in a school uniform with a big cut on his chin being steered around by a nun, a construction worker with a broken foot, and a bunch of Spanish women with no visible problems who talk very loudly and get yelled at by the triage nurse.

I sit for twenty more minutes, and then the security guard announces that everyone waiting has five minutes to see their loved ones in the ER. So I herd along with the nun and the nervous mom and the Spanish ladies through the double doors and look around for Jordan.

He is unconscious again, or at least his eyes are closed, the white bandage around his head contrasting startlingly with the deep tan of his skin. (His parents have a really nice summer place in the Hamptons. The pool has a waterfall and everything.) They’d put his gurney in a pretty secluded, quiet section of the ER, and when I ask, the nurse tells me a bed is being prepared for him upstairs. They’re still waiting for his X-rays, but it looks as though a concussion is likely.

I guess I must look really worried or something since the nurse smiles at me and puts her hand on my arm and says, “Don’t worry. I’m sure he’s going to be back to doing dance moves in no time.”

In spite of the nurse’s assertion, I can’t bring myself to leave him there all alone. I can’t believe no one from his family has shown up yet! So when my five minutes of standing there and staring at Jordan are up, I go back to my plastic seat in the waiting room. I’ll stay, I decide, until he’s moved upstairs, or until a member of his family arrives. I’ll just hang out till they get here. And then—

And then I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m convinced—one hundred percent convinced, surer than I’ve ever been about anything, which I realize isn’t saying much, but whatever—that someone has just tried to kill me.

Right? I mean, hadn’t that been what the guy from the chess circle had said? “Good thing you moved, lady, or you’d have been the one it hit,” or something like that?

And the someone who pushed that planter over could only have been Christopher Allington. Who else had access to his parents’ terrace? Who else had reason to knock geranium planters onto my head? It wasn’t a premeditated attempt at murder—it couldn’t have been. How could he have known I’d be on my way back into the building right then?

No, he must have just looked down and decided fate was on his side and given that planter the heave-ho. If I hadn’t ducked, it would have hit me, and not Jordan. And it probably would have killed me, because, you know, my head isn’t anywhere near as hard as an ex-member of Easy Street’s.

But why does Chris want to kill me? Just because I suspect him of being a murderer? Suspecting someone of being a murderer and actually having proof of someone being a murderer are two entirely different things. What possible proof could Chris think I have? I mean, aside from the condom—which only proves he’s randy, not a killer—I have nothing on him. I don’t even have proof that there’ve actually been any murders.