Size 12 Is Not Fat Read Online Free PDF

feeling that way. She’s still a dead eighteen-year-old, whether she was one of my student workers, or not!
    “How did it happen?” I ask.
    Pete gives me a sarcastic look. “How do you think?”
    “But,” I say. I can’t help it. Something is really confusing me. “Girls don’t do that. Elevator surf, I mean.”
    “This one did.” Pete shrugs.
    “Why would she do something like that?” Magda wants to know. “Something so stupid? Was she on drugs?”
    “How should I know?” Pete seems annoyed by our barrage of questions, but I know it is only because he is as freaked as we are. Which is weird, because you’d think he’s seen it all: He’s been working at the college for twenty years. Like me, he’d taken the job for the benefits: A widower, he has four children who are assured of a great—and free—college education, which is the main reason he’d gone to work for an academic institution after a knee injury got him assigned to permanent desk duty in the NYPD. His oldest, Nancy, wants to be a pediatrician.
    But that doesn’t keep Pete’s face from turning beet red every time one of the students, bitter over not being allowed into the building with their state-of-the-art halogen lamps (fire hazard), refers to him as a “rent-a-cop.” Which isn’t fair, because Pete is really, really good at his job. The only time pizza delivery guys ever make it inside Fischer Hall to stick menus under everyone’s door is when Pete’s not on duty.
    Not that he doesn’t have the biggest heart in the world.When kids come down from their rooms, disgustedly holding glue traps on which live mice are trapped, Pete has been known to take the traps out to the park and pour oil onto them to free their little paws and let them go. He can’t stand the idea of anyone—or anything—dying on his watch.
    “Coroner’ll run tests for alcohol and drugs, I’m sure,” he says, trying to sound casual, and failing. “If he ever gets here, that is.”
    I’m horrified.
    “You mean she…she’s still here? I mean, it—the body?”
    Pete nods. “Downstairs. Bottom of the elevator shaft. That’s where they found her.”
    “That’s where who found her?” I ask.
    “The fire department,” Pete says. “When someone reported seeing her.”
    “Seeing her fall?”
    “No. Seeing her lying there. Someone looked down the crack—you know, between the floor and the elevator car—and saw her.”
    I feel shaken. “You mean nobody reported it when it happened? The people who were with her?”
    “What people?” Pete wants to know.
    “The people she was elevator surfing with,” I say. “She had to be with someone. Nobody plays that stupid game alone. They didn’t come down to report it?”
    “Nobody said nothing to me,” Pete says, “until this morning when a kid saw her through the crack.”
    I am appalled.
    “You mean she could have been lying down there for hours?” I ask, my voice cracking a little.
    “Not alive,” Pete says, getting my drift right away. “She landed headfirst.”
    “Santa Maria,” Magda says, and crosses herself.
    I am only slightly less appalled. “So…then how’d they know who it was?”
    “Had her school ID in her pocket,” Pete explains.
    “Well, at least she was thinking ahead,” Magda says.
    “Magda!” I’m shocked, but Magda just shrugs.
    “It’s true. If you are going to play such a stupid game, at least keep ID on you, so they can identify your body later, right?”
    Before either Pete or I can reply, Gerald, the dining director, comes popping out of the cafeteria, looking for his wayward cashier.
    “Magda,” he says, when he finally spots her. “Whadduya doing ? Cops said they’re gonna let us open up again any minute and I got no one on the register.”
    “Oh, I’ll be right there, honey,” Magda calls to him. Then, as soon as he’s stomped out of earshot, she adds, “Dickhead.” Then, with an apologetic waggle of her nails at Pete and me, Magda goes back to her