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can’t believe she went to say hi to them.
    Her pretzels gaze up at me, each piece of salt a sympathetic eye—staring, feeling deeply sorry for me. I think these pretzels understand me more than Cara ever has.
    A few minutes pass. Has Cara abandoned me? Her laugh reaches their volume, and I slide farther down in my seat. The advertisement for Rocco’s Italian Palace taunts me from the screen. The mounds of lasagna and garlic bread, displayed on a red-and-white checkered tablecloth, look so good I can almost taste the garlic. I eat one of Cara’s pretzels instead and listen to the girls’ voices. Despite how loud they are back there, I can’t make out much of what they are saying. I’m midchew when one word slices through the noise: fat . My whole body freezes and I hyperfocus. More uproarious laughter, and then there it is again: fat . My stomach drops, and I cringe as I swallow the dough and salt.
    Now the salt-eyes can see me from the inside. The private me. The real me. Will they still be sympathetic?
    I drop my chin and stare into my boobs. I am a freak. One of the older women in the back tries to shush them. A girl shouts, “It’s a free country, lay-dee!” I’m pretty sure that was Brandon’s little sister.
    Cara returns, skipping across our row of seats toward me. Shit, she’s a skipper now. I look down at Cara’s tray. “Great,” I announce. I’ve eaten all but two of her pretzel bites. She notices as soon as she sits down.
    “Geez, Dell. I asked you to hold them, not eat them.”
    I hold out my popcorn.
    “No. I don’t want that. Whatever.” She checks her phoneand then shoves it back into her pocket. “You saved me the calories anyway.”
    I’m waiting for her to tell me why she went up there, to tell me what they said. Maybe even apologize for not inviting me up and introducing me.
    She doesn’t.
    “I applied for a summer internship at West Chester University last night. My dad helped me with my essay.” Cara shoves a drippy pretzel bite into her mouth, leans over, and whispers, “He wro tha whole thin.” She swallows. “He wrote the whole thing,” she clarifies. I eat a handful of butter-soaked popcorn.
    The last pretzel bite finds its way to her mouth. She nods and says, “He’s awesome.”
    “Nice.” My father wouldn’t write an essay with me, let alone for me. I crunch on more popcorn.
    “I wonder where everyone is. Sydney said they were seeing this movie too.”
    The theater goes dark, so I don’t have to hide my disappointment. Right now would be the ideal time for some magical intervention—presto, I’m gone.
    Cara is slipping away from me. I’m starting to feel like I’m a nuisance, Cara’s annoying fat friend who just won’t shrivel up and go away. Instead, I get bigger and bigger.
    I lick the greasy butter from each finger and crumple thepopcorn bag. I’m still hungry. Small portions are unsatisfyingly frustrating. Like when I was a kid in the sandbox, and I’d packed the bucket with dry sand, pushing it down real tight, then turned it over, expecting to see a sand castle, but it collapsed into nothing. I used to hate when that happened.
    As gunfire explodes on-screen, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I jump a little. It’s a text from my father. He has used all caps. He’s pissed. I excuse myself and tell Cara I have to go to the bathroom. I refuse to read the text until I’m in the privacy of a stall. Whatever he has texted will infuriate me.
    Apparently the people who design bathrooms are skinny, because I can barely maneuver my body inside to close the door. No one else is around, which is good, and I slam the door and the entire row of stalls shakes. I don’t actually have to go to the bathroom, so I stand in the stall. It is a damn tight squeeze. I feel like the wicked stepsister’s foot crammed into the glass slipper. I’m already breathing heavily, mostly out of frustration. “God!” I yell.
    I read the stupid text from my stupid father:
     
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