FAT: Two days before NutriNation

      Here’s what happens. You have to show up at the airport and hope for the best. Flight attendants get to decide if you’re too fat to fly.

      I’m on my way to New York. Tomorrow, I get to see my first fashion preview. I’m the SoScottsdale blog’s nod to the brave new world in which 48 percent of Americans are classified as overweight.

      I don’t know if I’m going to make it there.

      This is how it starts. There’s a plane change at O’Hare. I get the feeling the airline employees are watching me from behind the counter. I tell myself how paranoid that sounds. But I find myself pulling my arms close to my body, trying to look as small as possible in my seat in the waiting area.

      The smallest of the three of them, a petite gray-haired woman, approaches me as I sit in a long row of passengers waiting to board. She gestures for me to join her near a window that overlooks the runway. In the distance, the lights of Chicago’s massive buildings twinkle through the terminal’s windows. There are people in those buildings, coming and going, moving through their homes and offices, sending signs of life into the darkness.

      “I think you’ll need a second seat, dear.” The flight attendant has a bright, cheery demeanor. Like she’s Mary Poppins when not on duty in her faded cotton-wool-blend uniform. “This is awkward, I know.”

      “I’m on a layover. I haven’t gotten any bigger since I got off the other plane forty-five minutes ago,” I say.

      She smiles at me. Fake sympathy. “We have to go by what we see, dear. You know, depending on how full the flight is. We have to make a judgment call. I realize it’s awkward.”

      Yep. Awkward.

      I follow her back to the ticket counter.

      These are my options:

      a) Pay for a second seat. That’ll be $650. Plus tax. But oh, there’s a problem. The flight is sold out.

      b) Wait for a flight with extra empty seats. That’ll still be $650. Plus tax. When I get home, I can call the hotline for a refund. But oh, the next flight with empty seats is, um, tomorrow.

      You’d think Ms. Spoonful of Sugar would have thought this through a bit before she dragged me up to the counter.

      “I don’t have six hundred bucks,” I say.

      “Maybe you could call your parents, sweetie,” she suggests.

      I scowl and adjust the sleeves of my hand-knit cashmere sweater. “My parents aren’t sitting by the phone with a credit card.”

      “A young girl like you—” People always tell me I look like I’m twelve years old.

      “I’m seventeen,” I say. “And if it weren’t for the plane change, I’d still be on the flight.”

      “We have to make a judgment call,” she repeats.

      “I just want to get to New York.”

      “I’ll put you on standby,” she says with another insincere smile. “If everyone checks in, you’ll have to wait for the next flight. If not, I can sell you another seat.”

      “How am I supposed to pay for it?” I glance behind me at a bald man who shifts his weight and rolls his eyes, checking his watch every few seconds.

      “You’ve got about an hour to figure that out, dear,” she says.

      It’s an agonizing hour. I’ve got less than twenty bucks in my bank account. I can’t get ahold of my mom. I’m pretty sure the last time she paid child support, Grandma spent the money on Pampers.

      I consider calling the blog office and decide I’d rather walk back to Phoenix than tell my boss, Marlene, I’m too fat to fly. She’s throwing a massive bash for her grandparents’ fiftieth anniversary this weekend and her assistant, Terri, has four kids with the stomach flu. The situation is a perfect storm that won’t happen again. I won’t get another chance to cover an editorial preview as a student intern. A Gareth Miller preview. Real designers at work.

      I run my fingertips over the Parsons application tucked in my bag. Fred LaChapelle will be there. He’s the dean of Admissions, and Miller is his favorite alum. I’ve been dreaming of Parsons since I was five, when my grandma handed me a biography of fashion designer Claire McCardell and I couldn’t read the book’s words but I saw the clothes and I felt them. McCardell invented American sportswear in the World War II years and was the first woman with her own label. McCardell’s women roamed sandy beaches, rode their cruiser bicycles to small-town markets and used cocktail dresses like weapons. They were free and fabulous and powerful.

      I hoped, and wished and believed, that this was who I was meant to be. McCardell studied at Parsons and I know, more than I know anything else, that I need to start there too.

      My portfolio will get me in. On paper, I’m the perfect applicant. The daughter of a supermodel who can stitch in a zipper in my sleep. In real life, I’m not Barbie; I spent my summer frosting doughnuts for eight bucks an hour instead of hanging out at Michael Kors, and it’s tough explaining why my mom made $1.2 million last year but the ATM makes a boing! sound when I stick in my card.

      Still, I make magic when I make clothes. If I can get Miller and LaChapelle to see that, then it won’t matter that my grandma’s rainy-day fund is barely enough to cover the application fee to the school. They’ll make sure I get a scholarship and, come next year, I’ll be packing for Parsons.

      You have to make this work. In my head, I repeat this mantra over and over.

      But what happens if I can’t get on the plane? I can’t afford a hotel. My luggage is already checked. It’s going to JFK with or without me.

      The whole thing is all my fault, I know that’s what everyone is thinking. Saying behind my back. If I would just stop stuffing my face with candy bars and fettuccine Alfredo, everything would be perfect.

      I have to do it. I have to call Tommy. He’s been mowing lawns since the fifth grade and stashing the money in a savings account. He’s my best friend, and I’m pretty sure there’s something in the Friendship Rule Book that says he has to come through in times like these.

      “I didn’t know who else to call,” I say into my cell phone. They’re reading unfamiliar names over the intercom system. The waiting area is filling up, and the pilot passes me on his way to the plane.

      “It’s okay,” Tommy says. It’s noisy on his end too. He’s busy being nerdy at a FIRST Lego League competition.

      “The flight attendant said I’ll probably be able to get a refund. If not, I’ll pay you back. I promise.”

      “Cookie. It’s okay.” He doesn’t even ask why I need the ticket or seem to care when I’ll pay him back. He’s that nice.

      “I’m really sorry, Tommy.”

      “Don’t worry about it.”

      I luck out, I guess, and there’s a cancellation. The gray-haired woman types in the number of the credit card that Tommy’s dad gave him for emergencies. She gives me another boarding pass and a large red sign that reads THIS SEAT RESERVED in bold, black letters. That’s when the fun begins.

      When I say she helps me board the flight, believe me, I mean it. She opens up the door to the ramp even before preboarding begins. She takes me and another man right onto the plane. He’s probably eighty. He’s got a jumbo oxygen tank connected to his nose. It’s on wheels, and the flight attendant pulls it behind her as we walk.

      She helps him into an aisle