Running Lean by Diana L. Sharples Read Free Book Online

about that girl. Stacey hated taking her clothes off in front of anybody. Freshman PE class had made for the worst year of her life in so many ways.
    Chubbikins, Chubbikins …
    “I’ll be right back.” She hurried across the hall to the bathroom.
    The tag on the blouse read
S
for small. It would probably fit like a corset, pushing stuff up and out. Holding the blouse against herself, she studied her reflection in the mirror. Pretty. Maybe it’d fit if the manufacturer had cut it large.
    Stacey hung her sweater on a hanger on the back of the bathroom door. A dozen tiny buttons secured the lace top over her body. Although the front didn’t gape open anywhere, the material didn’t give and squeezed her torso when she took a deep breath. The sleeves cinched her arms. The collar cut into her throat, and the heart cutout showed some cleavage. And the bottom hem stopped short, leaving a line of bare flesh above her belted jeans. Bloated, pasty flesh. Stacey pinched it between her fingers.
    Not done yet
.
    Such a romantic top, though. Calvin would like it. He’d blink too fast and laugh, the way he did whenever he got “flustered.” Then he might stroke her face and say—
    A tap sounded at the door. “What are you doing in there? Come on, let me see.”
    Stacey blinked.
What am I thinking? I can’t wear this thing
. She flung the door open and faced Zoe. “I can’t wear it.”
    Zoe gaped at her. “What are you talking about? It’s perfect. But those baggy jeans have got to go.” She grabbed Stacey’s arm, turned her around, and tugged at her waistband. “Look at all this bunchy fabric under your belt. How much weight have you lost?”
    “Not enough.”
    “How much?”
    “I don’t want to say.”
    “Why not?”
    Stacey jerked her arm out of Zoe’s grip. “Because! Because … I don’t want you to know what a fat cow I was before. It’s embarrassing, okay?”
    Zoe held her hands up defensively. “Okay, relax.”
    Stacey threw her head back and groaned. “I’m sorry. I love the shirt. Maybe it’ll be okay when I’ve lost a few more pounds. Are you sure you want to give it up?”
    “Yeah. It’s not my style, and it’s gorgeous on you. Know what? Let’s go shopping tomorrow and find something that goes with it.”
    “I can’t. I already have plans to see Calvin.” Stacey nudged Zoe out of the bathroom before the girl could respond with something sarcastic. Safely alone, she changed back into her sweater then tucked the lace top into her laundry basket. It’d probably shrink when she washed it anyway.
    Zoe’s heels thumped the side boards of the bed as she turned the pages of Stacey’s sketchbook. Stacey sat next to her. When was Zoe going to tell her what had happened at home? Probably more of the same: drunken rages and arguments over stuff that didn’t matter much or some snarky comment made at the wrong moment. It wouldn’t be long before Daddy and his fellow officers hauled somebody in handcuffs out of that rundown house. What would happen to Zoe and her little brother if both her mother and the sleazeball boyfriend were busted?
    “You’re so talented, Stace,” Zoe said. “I wish I was this good.”
    Stacey looked at the page and saw her drawing, a sleek heroine climbing a rocky stairway in a ruined landscape. Across each step, Stacey had inscribed lines of a poem, using her eraser rather than the lead.
    Nightly Vision
    Anxious Devotion
    Hopeless Obsession
    Desperate Mission
    Art therapy. She’d done the drawing last September, when Calvin was just a face in the hallway of a new school. For the good-girl daughter of a cop, now living in the vast and strange countryside,friendless and holed up in her bedroom with impossible dreams, love had seemed unattainable. Everyone knew everyone else in this place … except her. She was the interloper, the awkward city girl.
    Calvin’s Facebook friend request had changed everything.
    “You should make this,” Zoe said.
    “Huh? Make