One Fat Summer by Robert Lipsyte

Author:Robert Lipsyte
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1977-02-08T13:00:00+00:00

12

I am going to die.

I am sinking into the island. My hands and knees are in mud puddles rising to drown me. Soon the water will reach my belly. The wind-whipped rain streams off my back. Soon it will rise to my chest and I will sink to meet it, my mouth and nose submerged in muddy water that will fill my lungs and kill me.

Poor fat Bobby Marks. One fat joke. Better if they never find my body. I don’t want to be caught dead with my clothes off.

I shiver as the water touches my stomach, a bloated hammock swaying beneath me. In a little while it’ll all be over.

The water reaches my elbows, laps at my backside.

They’ll be sorry. Dad and Mom and Michelle and Joanie and Pete and Dr. Kahn and Connie and Homer and the man in the grocery store and even Jim Smith and Eddie and Laurie and Annie. Maybe even Willie Rumson.

Poor fat Bobby Marks. We knew he was a slob and a fat pig and a laughingstock, but we didn’t want him to die for that. It was just a joke. Like him.

The water feels warmer now, it’s up to my shoulders. It covers my back like a blanket. Just a few minutes more.

Serves me right. Should have been a junior counselor taking care of little kids, let them make fun of me, that’s all I’m good for. Serves me right. Who did I think I was? Big shot. Lie about my age to get a job. Wasn’t even my own idea. Joanie made me do it. Just walk all over Bobby Marks like a rug, push him around like a beach ball, jerk him up and down like a Yo-Yo. Always making up stories about heroes because you’re nothing yourself. Nothing but a nothing, nothing but a fat, ugly, hanging bag of flab, disgusting; they won’t be sorry when they find your body, they’ll just laugh their heads off. What’s a dead whale doing in Rumson Lake, they’ll ask.

Crybaby. Slob. Fat nothing. Better off” dead.

“On your feet, Marks.”

I looked around. I saw no one in the darkness.

“Stand up.”

The voice was familiar.

“Up. Get up.”

Lightning hit the water, the black sky parted like curtains at high noon, flooding the island with light. But there was no one there.

“I SAID GET UP. YOU CAN DO IT, BIG FELLA.”

The water touched my lips. Be so easy now to relax into the soft mud, get it over with.

“ON YOUR FEET. YOU’RE NOT GONNA LET THOSE BASTARDS KILL YOU. YOU BEAT THE LAWN, YOU CAN BEAT THEM. YOU’RE TOUGH. YOU RAN, YOU FOUGHT, YOU’LL DO IT AGAIN. YOU’LL DO IT TILL YOU WIN.”

I recognized the voice.

Captain Marks, Commander Marks, Big Bob Marks.

It was me.

I stood up.

There were wet, sucking sounds as I pulled my arms out of the mud, as I stumbled up to higher, drier ground. I waited for the next streak of lightning to look around. The old cabin. I ran toward it, ignoring the stones and branches cutting my bare feet.

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