Nobody knew. N one imagined. No one recognized the signs. There were the faint white lines on the inside of her leg. There were the empty boxes of those Lofthouse cookies with the pink icing in her trash, and the way she insisted on having a manual toothbrush, despite the fact that everyone knew that electrics cleaned better. It was something her father would never let her forget. When ever her mother threw away her manual brush, she went to his office and stole another one. She figured no one could object to clean teeth at school.
She was a good liar, maybe one of the best around. She was a perfectionist, and that helped. She got good grades, she sang back-up in the Glee club, she tried cheerleading. No one ever suspected her secret, except that time she stopped eating. And then, she did it because of the pressure. Oh sure, she could get up in front of everyone and sing beautiful. Sure, she loved her body and could accept her true self, but only with help.
And, that help came in the form of a little white pill marked with a 10. It was the pill, and a little bit of ambition, that kept her from climbing back into bed and sleeping until 3 pm. It was that pill that kept her from binging and purging every night. Not binging and purging because she wanted to loose weight, but binging and purging because she wanted to feel something. So, every morning, she reached for orange bottle on the shelf of her medicine cabinet, and read the label as she brushed her teeth. "MERCEDES JONES, TAKE ONE EVERY MORNING."