Super Fat Friend Vol. 1
The Librarian
If you already know what you’re getting into, you can skip past the synopsis and content rating and get to Vol. 1, but if not, let me set the table for you…
Story Synopsis
Sabrina Stolarz is an expert avoidant. Whether it’s fleeing her home city of Chicago after a traumatic loss, hiding her curvy frame beneath modest layers of clothing, or masking her feelings for a handsome history teacher, Sabrina can bob and weave from life in ways that would make even Sugar Ray Robinson drop his jaw.
Now living quietly as a school librarian in Los Angeles, Sabrina finally feels gloriously concealed. But after her only close friend gets attacked on a night out, she feels called to action to find the perpetrators.
Reeling from the adrenaline high of reviving her boxing skills and fighting crime on the streets, Sabrina is drawn into a world of elevated gang activity, trafficking, and becoming an overnight in-feed sensation. When she encounters another vigilante on an equal bent for revenge, the gloves really start to come off.
A Warning About Content
Though I am a Christian who happens to be a writer, I don’t write squeaky-clean “Christian Fiction.” I write people and situations as they are without being overly graphic or gratuitous. There will sometimes be language or disturbing sequences and some heavy topics related to crime and assault, but there will always be hope and light as a compass—my promise to you, dear Reader.
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself…”
Matthew 22:39
Vol. 1
The Librarian
The world cannot wait to inflict an archetype on us. They are woven into our stories without consent, clinging mercilessly like wetsuits—and it can often take a lifetime to peel them off. Sabrina Stolarz may have been given a myriad of labels—the side character, the second lead, the fat friend—each one tight and unforgiving. But this is not the story of how Sabrina Stolarz was crushed under the weight of those involuntary roles. This is the story of how she crushed them.
At first glance, one may even say she earned all her labels. She didn’t look particularly memorable—reaching with wide arms and unmanicured fingers to the top of one of the shelves in the library she managed with a militant demeanor. Even the brawniest athletes in the school took a step back when faced with her imposing gait. Her personal uniform of modest dresses, tights, and simple flats hid the tall range of her curves nicely. A pleasant but ordinary face was made brilliant by the long mane of golden hair that reigned wildly over her muscular shoulders. “A healthy Slavic princess!” her family would chant whenever she felt down about herself.
It didn’t help.
Sabrina hopped down from the stepstool and pushed the cart back to the circulation desk, where a group of students in disheveled uniforms waited for assistance. Per the usual, her student workers were off in the stacks flirting or sending each other amusing TikToks instead of doing their jobs. Sabrina gladly worked circulation—always ecstatic to see young people with books. She ran each barcode beneath a beeping red scanner, followed by a gentle thud on the countertop as she formed each checkout into a tidy stack.
“Thank you, Ms. Stolarz!” the students sang together as they left the library.
One hand fidgeted with the saint medal around her neck while the other waved goodbye to them. Sabrina never left the house without the sterling silver pendant resting like armor against her breastbone.
St. Ambrose was a random saint to be so attached to. The patron saint of candlemakers was remembered more for raising St. Augustine in the faith. Even non-Catholics know Augustine, but Ambrose is often eclipsed by his greatness—regardless of his own successful life. Sabrina felt a little like the Ambrose of her family and friends, most recently, dear Heather.
Heather Cha—“Charming Cha,” Sabrina always teased—lived to party and somehow sobered up enough to teach mathematics to unruly flocks of 10th graders the next day. Heather didn’t understand Sabrina’s outdated modesty or quiet lifestyle, but she accepted her all the same, and that was enough.
Usually, Heather would have sped into the library by now with her gleaming stack of glassware filled with gimbap, scallion pancakes, or even a comfort serving of mac and cheese. It was an hour past her usual lunchtime and Sabrina hadn’t received so much as a text. Her stomach rumbled a little as she always waited for Heather to share each other’s food while also sharing each other’s gossip. But the time had passed, and a protein bar would have to do before the afternoon classes started filing in.
Sabrina glanced at her phone for the fiftieth time. Her unread messages in Heather’s text thread waved red flags that would have to be ignored for at least the next hour. Just then, a clamoring of 11th-grade History students barged in.
Sabrina’s heart fluttered and she tugged at the Ambrose medal again, dropping her phone into her dress pocket (yes, they have pockets!) and straightening her posture. Her freckled cheeks darkened a shade as he walked in.
There’s one at every job, school, or [insert group of choice here]. That one person who is the main character of your loveliest dissociation daydreams. Mr. Padilla—Sebastián, as his peers were allowed to call him—was Sabrina’s. Truth be told, he was probably everyone’s and certainly the closest to a TV drama she’d ever get. He robbed the room of attention whenever he walked by with his 6-foot+ frame and a taut face curtained by a swoop of black hair. His many years of playing baseball certainly made him a sight to behold.
Sabrina tried not to belittle herself and believed in her value, but if ever there was such a thing as leagues, he certainly seemed out of hers. Still, he was always kind, and genuine kindness is inescapably compelling.
“Ms. Stolarz.” He bowed his head slightly.
“Mr. Padilla,” she returned.
They laughed and lamented the formal greeting, but you cannot lose your authoritative face in front of kids, not even for a second.
To his class, he said, “Go start researching the topic you chose for your mid-term paper, and if I see a single phone out, that’s a write-up!”
The students scrambled about, and neither Sabrina nor Sebastián believed they’d follow directions for more than a few minutes, but that was enough time for them to talk. Just enough.
Sebastián leaned over the counter, his sleeves rolled up just enough to show off those sinewy forearms. A designer watch handsomely accented his wrist like a very expensive price tag.
“So, your Cubbies have a decent lineup this year,” he said. “They may even make it through spring training intact.”
Sabrina crossed her arms. “You really want to start the week this way, Padilla?”
“I’m just saying, you’ve been in LA long enough. It’s time to switch loyalties.”
She wrinkled her nose. “To the Dodgers? Never. Even with Shohei as an incentive.”
“What is it with women and Shohei?”
“It’s nice to see someone nice succeed.”
They both smiled, and the silence thickened the tension between them, forcing Mr. Padilla to divert as he always did.
“That’s a pretty dress. I like the uh, the pattern...”
“Thanks.” She looked away to where his students were starting to congregate in rowdy couplets again.
His eyes followed her gaze and he knew their time was up. “I better go deal with the miscreants…”
Sabrina stopped him as he walked away. “Hey, really quick… Have you heard from Heather at all today?”
He paused momentarily, rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger. “No, I think she called out today and Jeremy is subbing. Why?”
She knew it should just be an ordinary thing. Everyone calls out once in a while—it’s normal. But a tingling sensation buzzed between her ears and down her arms that she couldn’t shake.
“Just curious. She must be pretty sick, then. Thanks.”
He nodded and turned his attention back to his students.
Sabrina took her phone out of her pocket again. Her last two text messages to Heather pulsed with unread awareness. The intuitive tingling grew in intensity, so she gave her anxious arms and hands something to do and pushed the cart back out to shelve.
★★★★★
There are many ways to deal with stress or handle our emotions, but rarely is it our first inclination to do anything that actually heals. Sabrina found that nothing got her higher faster than hitting something. The adrenaline of shuffling toe-to-toe with an opponent or just pummeling a rubber dummy until her wrists felt like they’d break was an unmatchable rush. Not a truth she was about to shout out from the rooftops, but chasing these fleeting highs kept her alive, or at least willing to live.
She hadn’t set foot in El Campeón Gym in a couple of months, and she could tell by the cocky gaze from the head trainer, Ricardo, that she was about to get an earful.
“Vuelve la hija pródiga! Look who crawled back to us.” His accent curled his words into barbs.
She rolled her eyes. “Dramatic much? It hasn’t been that long.”
“Long enough for you to be looking a little flabby, eh?”
“Careful, Ricky.”
Sabrina tossed her bag on the floor and rummaged through her gear. Despite being deep in an activity deemed masculine, she made sure that everything she owned, from her robe to her gloves to the tape pulled tight across her palms, was pink. Nothing annoyed her more than people claiming that beautiful things resemble weakness. Pink is power.
She drew back her boxing gloves until they were snug over her knuckles as Ricardo grabbed his training mitts. They both ducked their heads and slipped through the ropes to begin.
Sabrina was off, way off after so much slacking, but her emotions delivered brute force to her fists that everyone delighted in. Even Ricardo knew she had this euphoric rage, which is why his mouth transformed from a cod-shaped frown to a Grinch-like smirk as soon as they started training.
As sweat gathered and streamed down her forehead into her abundant blonde hair, she thought of her brother. He had a golden, sweaty brow just like hers when he fought. Once, he had been the trainer with the mitts. Once, he had been unstoppable.
Once was a long time ago.
She started to draw a few spectators who cheered her on as she backed Ricardo into a corner. He hit the bell.
DING! DING! DING!
“Very good, very good. I take back the “flabby,” but you need to be more consistent. You’re still the sloppy Taz Devil you were when I first met you.”
“Tasmanian,” she corrected with a tap on his shoulder. “And I get it. I’ll be back.”
Sabrina slogged on the treadmill for half an hour before finally folding into a fatigued heap on the bench as she packed up for the night.
While chugging a bottle of sour electrolytes, she overheard one of the other boxers speaking to Ricardo from across his desk. She wiped her mouth and pretended she didn’t notice the man peeking over his shoulder at her while whispering, “She’s his sister? The sister of THE Stolarz?”
That fanboy tone. Her ears could pick it up even if whispered after a homerun in Wrigley Field (or Dodgers Stadium would be the more current reference, she supposed). Yes, the sister of THE Stolarz. Stolarz, the King, they’d say.
It’s terrible what happened to him.
That’s what happens to homewreckers.
He should have kept his dick in his pants.
He could have been the GOAT.
Gone too soon.
Such a shame.
Ricardo needs to keep his mouth shut, she thought, swinging her bag over her shoulder as she left.
A dizzying weakness took hold as she moseyed down the gum-speckled sidewalk of 6th Street, Koreatown. At first, it might have been mistaken for post-workout hunger, but then the nausea crashed through her system. It came in waves sometimes when thinking of him. The salty drops on the mat of that back-alley ring… the sound of bones breaking on pavement…
…a pool of dark red blood.
She made it across Western before she started wobbling. The pungent, skunk-smoke aroma emitting from several nearby windows was not helping. Sabrina steadied herself on the stairs of a random apartment building and inhaled sharply.
Breathe in for six…and out for six, she soothed herself, reiterating the techniques she had learned in therapy until the queasiness passed.
As Sabrina forged homeward, she heard yowling, a cat crying out in the night. At first, she dismissed it as tomcats having a moment, but the shrillness of it crescendoed until it chilled her blood. It sounded like torment—pain. Then, another sound came to her ears—laughter.
She rounded the corner where a group of young men circled a black cat as if performing a cult ritual, dragging the poor creature around by a discarded clothesline they had tied to one of its paws.
Sabrina’s blood went from chilled to boiling. She clenched her fists, calculating her moves as each knuckle released a crack.
They had a boxy dog with them, beaten into submission. They were also trying to get him to torment the cat, but the pitiful creature was an unmovable iceberg of fear.
“Man, this thing is fucking worthless. Just put him down, already,” one grumbled, shoving his comrade holding the leash into the chainlink fence.
They bobbled menacingly like phantoms in T-shirts—their teeth glinting in their grinning mouths like glass shards in the lamplight. They continued loops around the cat in a rising chorus of machismo heckling.
“Hey!” she yelled. “Get away from it!”
“Wassup, baby. You want some of this?” One of them swaggered over toward her, grabbing his crotch. The others trailed, sniggering behind him.
Sabrina backed up into a parked car on the street.
“Oh, you don’t want some of this? You shouldn’t call if you can’t deliver.” He looked her up and down and laughed. “Damn, it looks like there’s enough of you for all of us to have a piece.”
His abysmal laugh and that glance back to his other two friends was just the moment Sabrina needed. She reached into her jacket pocket and then covered him in pepper gel.
“Ahhh! God dammit!” He tripped backward, clapping his hands against his face.
“Back off!” Sabrina roared back as she side-stepped away from the street toward the gate where the cat was still trapped. “I got a taser and plenty more where this came from.”
“Man, fuck you, b-”
She sprayed the second one, then said to the third with the dog, “Get out of here unless you want some too, junior.”
Like the dog, he could only stand dumbfounded while the other two groaned and rubbed their eyes in agony. He looked up and around, noticing a few neighbors spectating through their windows.
“Let’s get out of here,” the last man standing urged his friends.
Sabrina’s voice hoarsened, “That’s right. GET OUT!”
They stumbled away from the scene, throwing out lines like “This ain’t over, bitch.” or “You’re dead.”
Once they were at a safe distance, Sabrina cupped her hands around her mouth and called out, “AND I’M COMING TO GET THAT DOG NEXT!”
She returned her attention to the cat. He was like a thrashing void, a little black hole in the darkness with two amber eyes glowing fiercely. He hissed as she removed her bag and approached, then growled as she swaddled him in her jacket. Clutching him to her chest, she tried to balance undoing the clothesline with one hand while subduing him with the other. He wriggled and wrenched, scratching her wrist as she finally freed his limb.
Grrrrrr, he said.
She sat with him for a moment, rocking slightly, petting his head with the rest of his body cloaked under her protection.
One Uber Pets ride later, she and her new friend were at the emergency vet. They gave him a light sedative and checked his vitals. Apart from being dirty and having suffered injuries from his bullies, he was a healthy boy, about two years old. The vet even gave Sabrina’s scratch wound the attention it needed. She placed her left wrist next to his front left paw, where he had been tied up. They were twins in their fresh bandages.
“We match,” she sighed, petting him on the head.
Their moment was disturbed by her phone vibrating in her pocket. It was already 10 p.m., and it was odd for anyone to call her this late—odd for anyone to call her at all, really.
It was Sebastián.
“H-Hello?” she stammered, her stomach plummeting like a rogue elevator.
“Hey, Sabrina. I’m sorry to call you so late,” he replied. His tone was crestfallen.
“No, it’s okay. I’m good. What’s going on?”
“I just heard from someone…about Heather…”
Her heart joined the dropping elevator in her stomach.
“…she’s in the hospital.”
This is off to a wonderful start! It's fun to finally enter the world of this story that you told us about one year ago this month. :)
You completely won me over to Sabrina by the fact she has pink boxing gear - YES. Love that. Also the commentary on the St Ambrose medal was so interesting, and I love what that says about her character and how she perceives herself. A very intriguing start.