Big Boned

“You, too, right, Dr. Kilgore?” Tom asks, with a smile.

“Me, too,” Gillian says grimly, tying on her blindfold.

“Mark,” Muffy says. “I can’t quite get mine. Can you help?”

“Oh,” Reverend Mark says. “Well, mine’s on already… but I’ll try… ”

Reverend Mark reaches out fumblingly for Muffy, and manages to grab a big handful of the boob she’s thrust directly into his palm.

“Oh my God!” he cries, blanching.

“Oh!” Muffy blushes prettily beneath her blindfold, though I know full well she’s thrilled. “That’s all right.”

“I’m so sorry!” Reverend Mark looks like he wants to kill himself. His handsome face has gone from snow white to beet red in three seconds flat. Even his neck, all the way to his shirt collar, is red.

“It’s not your fault. You can’t see!” Muffy reminds him. She manages to secure her blindfold the rest of the way herself, as she’d always been able to in the first place. “Oh, look at that. Never mind, I got it.”

“Are y-you sure?” Reverend Mark stammers. “Perhaps Dr. Kilgore… or Heather—”

“It’s all good,” Muffy purrs.

“Well, now that Heather is our team leader,” Gillian says dryly, “perhaps she ought to start leading.”

“Sure,” I say. “Mark, why don’t you show us how you make those wall thingies you’re doing?”

“Well, it won’t be easy,” Reverend Mark says. “Especially blindfolded. But I suppose, in the spirit of coming together as a team, I can try. First, you take a sheet of newspaper, and you tear it, like so—”

Gillian and Muffy both begin ripping strips of newspaper. Tom fumbles forward in an attempt to take a piece of newsprint off the pile, and leans in the direction of my ear—or what he approximates to be my ear, though it’s more like the top of my head. “This,” he whispers, “is the gayest thing I’ve ever done. And I don’t think I should have to remind you that I am, in fact, gay.”

“Could you just keep making those pole things you were doing earlier, before the Origami Master came along?” I whisper back. “Because we’re never going to beat Wasser Hall at the rate we’re going.”

“Heather,” Tom says, giving me a mockly disapproving look. “This isn’t about wi

“Shut up,” I say. “We’re going to cream Wasser Hall if it’s the last thing I do.”

In the end, of course, that’s exactly what we do. Our “house” is completed well before anyone else’s. I corral the members of my team into it, then raise my hand and call, “Dr. Fly

Dr. Fly

“Oh, yes,” he says. “Great job. Just great. Really excellent teamwork, all of you.”

“Can we take our blindfolds off now?” Muffy wants to know.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Dr. Fly

Muffy, Reverend Mark, Gillian, and Tom all remove their blindfolds and look around at the newspaper house they’re sitting in.

“Isn’t it amazing, you guys?” Dr. Fly

Gillian is staring in astonishment at the four flimsy newspaper poles that are holding up an equally flimsy newspaper canopy… like the cheapest wedding chuppah in the world over two extremely confused couples.

“But… where are the walls we wove?” Muffy wants to know.

“Oh,” I say. “That was going to take forever. So I made an executive decision not to use them and go with Tom’s idea.”

“Well,” Gillian says, looking down at her ink-blackened fingers—and the consequent stains all over her cream-colored linen suit. “You could have said something.”

“You guys were so enthusiastic,” I say. “I didn’t want to break your pioneering spirit.”

“Well,” Reverend Mark says, as he crawls out from beneath the paper structure. “That was fun. Wasn’t it? Oh, here, let me help you up… ”

“Oh, thank you so much.” Muffy does appear to be having some trouble climbing to her feet, especially considering how tight her pencil skirt is, and how high her heels are. She slips both her ink-stained hands into Reverend Mark’s and, looking up into his eyes, allows him to pull her to her feet.

“‘My love,’” Tom sings softly into my ear. “‘There’s only you, in my life… the only thing that’s right… ’”

“Do we have to continue with this pointless charade?” Simon, from Wasser Hall, rips off his blindfold to inquire. He pronounces charade the British way. “They won. So why do we have to keep on—”

“It’s not about who wins or loses, Simon,” Dr. Fly

“But that’s not fair. Heather and Tom have worked together before,” Simon whines. “They’re obviously compatible. I hardly know the people I’m teamed up with—no offense, guys—”

“Simon!” says Dr. Jessup, who is wearing a multicolored scarf around his eyes and sitting in the middle of what appears to be a semicompleted teepee made of newsprint. “Put your blindfold back on!”

It’s at this moment that the library door opens and a student walks in.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Fly

The student looks around at all the grown men and women—presumably college officials, in professional attire—wearing scarves over their eyes and sitting in houses built out of old newspapers. His expression is, understandably, confused.

It’s only then that I realize that the student is Gavin McGoren.

“Um,” he says. “They told me downstairs I could find Heather Wells here?”

I quickly separate myself from my group and hurry toward him.

“It’s okay,” I assure Dr. Kilgore. “This will just be a minute.”

“Well, hurry back,” Gillian says, her brows knit with disapproval. “We still need to process what we’ve learned about ourselves here today.”

Yeah. Like how much I hate you? No need to process that, I already know.

I tilt my head toward the door, indicating to Gavin that he should join me outside, in the hallway. He does so, barely able to hide his amusement.

“What the hell is going on in there, woman?” he wants to know, as soon as we’re safely outside. “Some dude gets a bullet in his head and you all go completely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?”

“Gavin.” I quickly close the library doors. “We are trying to help each other process through our grief. What do you want?”

“By playing cowboys and Indians? And who’s the hot babe with the boobs?”

“Her name is Muffy. Seriously, you’re go

“Muffy?” Gavin shakes his head in disbelief, as if now he’s finally heard it all. “Okay. Well, here’s the deal. I thought you’d want to know. There’s this chick on my floor, Jamie?”

I shake my head. “Yeah?”

“Well, I guess she had some meeting with Veatch or something this morning?”

Comprehension dawns. “Oh, right. Price. Jamie Price. Gavin, seriously, I don’t have time—”

“Whatevs!” Gavin holds up both hands in an I-surrender motion. “You know, she told me nobody would care. But I told her, I was, like, listen, Heather is different. Heather cares. But if you’d rather go back in there and play cowboys and Indians—”

I glare at him. “Gavin, what is it? Just tell me.”

Gavin shrugs. “Nothing. Just… well, I heard this Jamie girl… she was in her room, crying, right? And her roommate comes out and says she won’t stop, right? And I go, Let the Gavinator have a try at her, you know what I mean?”

“Gavin.” I seriously can’t believe my day. I really can’t. And it started so early. Six in the morning! Only to be followed by pain—my pain—and okay, then sex. But then bloodshed. And now this. “Do you want to die right now? Because I will—”