Fat Boy Swim by Catherine Forde Read Free Book Online

drown.’
    GI Joe’s features, slick on the head of a seal, emerged from the water millimetres from Jimmy’s foot. He blew through the ref’s whistle in his mouth as he spoke.
    ‘Stop.’
    The pool had widened, completely filling Jimmy’s dreamscape. Any pathway to the deep end of the pool had vanished. There was only one way for Jimmy to reach his Shadow Shape.
    ‘Go and get changed,’ said GI Joe. ‘I’ll help you swim.’

Chapter 10
    Tough love
    Jimmy didn’t feel he’d been asleep, but must have been. His mouth was thick with the aftertaste of too much chocolate. There were great ridges down one side of his face where he’d lain on crumpled wrappers. His hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat.
    He felt awful. Heavier than ever staggering into the hall, bulk compressing his lungs, denying him breath in this airless afternoon.
    He leaned his head on the cool wood outside the kitchen, wheezing. On the other side of the door, Mum was shouting:
    ‘– you think Jimmy should be out gallivanting, do you? Meeting girls? You of all people. You’ve a short memory, Pauline. A very short memory.’
    There was a long, long pause. Something hanging, thought Jimmy. Unsaid.
    ‘It’s not the same for Jimmy, and you know that.’ When Aunt Pol spoke, her voice was minute. ‘I just wish he was – you know,
normal.
I mean – he’s pathetic. Bingeing because he’s so flipping miserable. No pals. What existence is that for a teenager?’
    ‘I hope you’re not suggesting it’s
my
fault –’ Mum’s voice quavered in indignation.
    ‘– You
know
I’m not saying that,’ Aunt Pol interrupted. ‘I know what you’ve done. And I’m grateful. It’s just – I look at Jimmy, and it cracks me up inside. He’s enormous, and we’re letting him get that way.’
    Jimmy winced at what came next:
    ‘Our Jim’s fat. Obese.’
    ‘He is
not.
’
    ‘Gross.’
    ‘He is NOT!’
    ‘And he’s getting worse. Where did I put that article?’
    Jimmy heard objects clattering on the table as Aunt Pol tipped her handbag out.
    Pathetic,
Aunt Pol had just called him.
Fat. Obese.
    How could she? Aunt Pol. Who never seemed to notice his size. Jimmy didn’t even feel fat around her.
    ‘Here it is. Fat Farm. Somewhere in Yorkshire. You get the GP to refer him –’
    Mum’s voice quaked as she cut in. ‘Why are you saying this, Pauline? Jimmy’s fine here. He’s going nowhere. I watch his diet.’
    ‘Ach, you never make him stick to anything. Buy him junk. Let him comfort eat. You’re too soft. Jim needs tough love.’ Aunt Pol sighed then added so quietly that Jimmy had to strain his ears. ‘You should know.’
    ‘Pauline.’
    There was silence. Jimmy could hear the kitchen clock ticking on the mantlepiece. A chair scraped.
    ‘Sorry,’ whispered Aunt Pol.
    She was crying. Aunt Pol, who never, ever cried. ‘He breaks my heart,’ she said.
    Not since Victor, Maddo and Dog-Breath chased Jimmy with knives and forks, chanting
Kill the Pig
had Jimmy moved so fast.
    The knowledge that Aunt Pol thought the same things about him as everyone else twisted Jimmy’s stomach like a dose of indigestion after a dodgy pudding supper. It hurt.

Chapter 11
    Help
    Out in the street, Jimmy felt vulnerable. Exposed. Everyone second-glanced him: from the bloke lovingly waxing his car, whose bonnet darkened with Jimmy’s passing reflection and who turned to gawp at the real thing, to the old dear sitting in her deck chair lost in the
Sunday Post.
She lowered her reading glasses, stared and stared until Jimmy was out of sight.
    ‘Get a load of that, Darren,’ Jimmy heard a man tell his son as they suspended a garden kick-around.
    ‘Who ate all the pies, eh, Da?’
    I’m fat, not deaf.
    Miserable as he’d ever been, Jimmmy walked on. He didn’t even know where he was going, having walked blindly from his row of tenements into a nearby housing scheme, taking unfamiliar side streets and crescents. Only the occasional flash of an orange