Size 14 Is Not Fat Either by Meg Cabot Read Free Book Online Page B

in the St. Vincent’s ER waiting room, unless I’m willing to settle for Funyuns and Milk Duds from the candy machine. Which, under ordinary circumstances, I would be.
    But in light of this morning’s events, my stomach is feeling a little queasy, and I’m not sure it can handle a sudden influx of salt and caramel with its usual ease.

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    Plus, it’s five of the hour…the time when the security guards open the ER doors and allow each patient inside to have visitors. In the case of my student, that visitor would be me.
    Of course, when I need it, I can’t find the slip of paper Tom had handed to me, the one with the student’s name and ID number on it. So I know I’ll have to wing it when I get into the ER. Hopefully there won’t be that many twenty-one-year-olds in there, sleeping off way too many birthday shots from the night before. I figure the nurses might be able to help me out….
    But in the end, I don’t need any help. I recognize my student the minute I lay eyes on him, stretched out on a gurney beneath a white sheet.
    “Gavin!”
    He groans and buries his face in his pillow.
    “Gavin.” I stand beside the gurney, glaring down at him. I should have known. Gavin McGoren, junior, filmmaking student, and the biggest pain-in-the-butt resident in Fischer Hall: Who else would keep my boss up all night?
    “I know you’re not asleep, Gavin,” I say severely. “Open your eyes.”
    Gavin’s lids fly open. “Jesus Christ, woman!” he cries. “Can’t you see I’m sick?” He points at the IV
    sticking out of his arm.
    “Oh, please,” I say disgustedly. “You’re not sick. You’re just stupid. Twenty-one shots, Gavin?”
    “Whatever,” he mutters, folding his IV-free arm over his eyes, to block out the light from the fluorescents overhead. “I had my boys with me. I knew I’d be all right.”
    “Your boys,” I say disparagingly. “Oh, yeah, your boys took great care of you.”
    “Hey.” Gavin winces as if the sound of his own voice hurts. It probably does. “They brought me here, didn’t they?”
    “Dumpedyou here,” I correct him. “And left. I don’t see any of them around anymore, do you?”
    “They had to go to class,” Gavin says blearily. “Anyway, how would you know? You weren’t here. It was that other tool from the hall office—where’d he go?”
    “If you mean Tom, the hall director,” I say, “he had to go deal with another emergency. You’re not our only resident, you know, Gavin.”
    “What are you riding on me for?” Gavin wants to know. “It’s my birthday.”
    “What a way to celebrate,” I say.
    “Whatevs. Not for nothing, but I was filming it for a class project.”
    “You’re always filming yourself doing something stupid for a class project,” I say. “Remember the reenactment you did of the scene fromHannibal ? The one with the cow brain?”

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    He lifts his arm to glare at me. “How was I supposed to know I’m allergic to fava beans?”
    “It might surprise you to know, Gavin,” I say, as my cell phone vibrates in my coat pocket, “that Tom and I actually have better things to do than hold your hand every time you pull some stunt that ends up with you in the emergency room.”
    “Like what?” Gavin asks, with a snort. “Let those ass-kissing RAs suck up to you some more?”
    It is very hard for me not to tell Gavin about Lindsay. How can he lie there, feeling so sorry for himself—especially after having done something so incredibly stupid to get himself into this position in the first place—when back in the building a girl is dead, and we can’t even find her body?
    “Look, can you just find out when I can get out of here?” Gavin asks, with a moan. “And spare me the lectures, for once?”
    “I can,” I say, only too happy to leave him to himself. Among other