Thinning Out
Chapter One: Welcome Back to Hell
On my eleventh first day of school, I tried to have people not look at me. This task proved impossible, because I'm five foot six and weigh two hundred and eighty nine pounds. There's Jenny Christfield and her friends, all dressed in little white Vans and light-wash skinny jeans from Hollister, breezy tanks that are most certainly out of the dress code sticking to their perfect skin. Jenny looks at me and twists her naturally pretty face with an unsure disgust that says, "Jesus, I beg You to never make me look like her." Her rose-gold cross hangs down a large chunk of her white gauzy shirt. She clutches her orange schedule in a thin, pale, perfectly manicured hand. Her hair is flat against her back in a shiny, glossy, yellow-blonde sheet. Her friends all straighten too, but none of their hair can ever hope to be as straight as Jenny Christfield's. They diet as much as they can, but they can never hope to be as skinny as Jenny Christfield. They try out for volleyball ever year and some of them even make the team, but they can never be as good as Jenny Christfield. They follow her eyes and stare with disdain at me. I must have upset Her Skinny Highness.
I turn away but am met by my reflection in the window of the cafeteria. Thar she blows. My hair is somewhat reminiscent of a tumbleweed. It used to by wavy. My face is sheened with sweat. It used to be velvety. My hoodie is drenched in sweat. My jeans wrinkle near the ankles because I'm not tall enough for them. I turn away again.
There is no escape when you're a teenage girl who happens to weigh as much as a SmartCar. Brayden Dannes and his possee of Jokes are there. Boys are less subtle than girls about their hatred for the obese. They all snicker. They're all dressed in Nike athletic wear, in colors that make them look like walking highlighters. The mark of assholes.
"Hey Dumbo, eat a lot cheesecake over the summer?" Brayden yells, to a chorus of laughter from kids who desperately want to be liked.
Fuck this, I need an escape. I know I'm not allowed to go into the hallways until four, but I push into one anyway and find the nearest bathroom. No one is in there, just as I had hoped. I enter the big stall, because my hips touch the walls in the other four, and lock the door. I pull my legs up on the toilet with me and reach into my backpack. I have potato chips in there that I stole from Dad's "pantry." The bag opens with a snap and a wave of salty air.
Heaven, I think, as each and every chip rests itself on my tongue and dissolves. I don't have to think about Jenny or Brayden or any of their wealthy lemmings while these beautiful thin potato slices were soothing me.
Five minutes later I walk out of the bathroom, throwing away the aluminum bag crumpled in my hand.
The schedule line takes forever. Mine does, at least, but I finally get up front. The woman keeping track of things is an elderly woman with than skin and horn-rimmed glasses.
"Name?" Her voice is surprisingly gruff and loud.
"Um, Ellen Henkes."
"Emma Hanes?" She shouts back at me.
"Ellen Henkes," I repeat a bit louder.
"Ellen Chang?" She yells. Color floods my cheeks. Somehow the room has gone quiet and people are laughing at me.
"ELLEN HENKES!" I scream back at her.
She looks at me as if I had just called her an incompetent shitsack and practically throws my schedule at me. I catch it and fumble out of the room to an accompaniment of ironic applause, insults, and entertained rich kids.
Geography first period. Don't want that at seven thirty in the morning.
English second period. Useless.
Study Hall third period. Good for naps.
Geometry I fourth period. Good luck getting me to stay up for that.
Spanish III fifth period. Whatever.
PE sixth period. I think I'd rather shoot myself.
Biology seventh period. The most boring of all.
Maybe for extra credit in math I could calculate the distance I'd need to run off the roof of the auditorium in order to successfully impale myself on the flagpole.
My new locker is 246. I pull open my backpack and shove in my fresh new textbooks. I don't plan on taking them home. Three binders, five notebooks, a case of pencils and pens, other shit I shoplifted (no one suspects the fatass is actually a really slick shoplifter,) slam it shut, lock it with the same lock I've had since seventh grade. With effort, I pull myself off the ground and turn around, expecting to see an empty hallway.
"Hi!" says the source of my heart attack.
"Shit," I wheeze.
"I didn't mean to bother you."
"It's okay." I look up. Standing before me is a pretty black girl in a stylish outfit and heeled boots.
"My name is Tasha Greene, I'm from Alabama and I need to make friends." She stick out her hand.
"Elle." I say. God, it's been a year since I've said that name. I shake her hand.
"What's your schedule?" She asks, with quite possibly the most optimistic smile I've ever seen in my life. I hand her my vibrant orange paper, and stare at the mural of Frank the Florida Panther on our wall, in all his unrealistically orange glory. "HONESTY," one of our schools "four essential virtues" is scrawled in black block letters under his paws, which almost makes me laugh, because this is the most dishonest school I've ever seen in my life.
"We have English together!" Tasha cheers, shoving the schedule back into my hands.
"That's great," I say, unsure of what to say to a random positive hurricane that just scared the shit out of me and demanded my schedule.
Principal God's voice comes up on the mic. "Hello Panthers! Are we ready for another HONEST, RESPECTFUL, HARDWORKING, and CREATIVE year?!" The groans are audible. "Well, it's time to get on down to your first period class to meet your teacher and grab your syllabus! Go panthers!" The mic cuts off with a ring. Feet shuffle.
"I'll see you later, Elle!" chimes Tasha, as she practically skips off to meet new people.
"Bye, Tasha," I say wearily.
I drag my feet to Geography. I grab a white syllabus and listen to a gray-faced woman named Mrs. Stansell go on for seven minutes about the vitality of knowing where Azerbaijan is. Principal God cuts her off and tells us we must all be herded into our second class.
Entering my second classroom, I see an old man standing at the board who looks like he's wearing a pair of funny glasses with a nose on it. Tasha waves at me giddily, and I wave back and take a seat next to her. A pink syllabus waits on the desk. Jenny narrows her eyes at me as I sit down. Bitch, I can't help but think. The teacher introduces himself as Gerard MacDonald, literary mastermind and part-time philosopher. The pretentious dick goes on and on about the wonders of literature and it's effect on society's development, and I pretend to pay attention until the mic comes on again and we can leave him to his own strange, condescending devices.
Third period has no syllabus, because it's fucking study hall. Some of Brayden's friends are there. As I sit in a chair they make fart noises with their mouths, and thier peers laugh. Such refined gentlemen. Hope they burn in hell. The moderator is a thick guy named Mr. Jonas, who just tells us that we better be quiet and do our work when we're in here for forty five minutes every day. God speaks. We leave.
Geometry is an absolute snore. Mrs. Poland is a small, thin, sickly woman who looks a little bit like big bird and is wearing obscenely colored shift dress. She talks about the concepts of geometry while handing out a bright yellow syllabus and appears to think that if she smiles at us a lot we'll give a shit about math. Jenny's friends are here. One sits next to me in our little groups. Her name is Kaitlyn, I think. Something like that. She glances over at me, gives me a look of immense pity, then throws her shiny black hair over her shoulder and looks back at the screen of her iPhone Whatever'sNewest. We are dismissed.
Spanish is next. Srta. Juancho speaks to us only in Spanish, at a rapid fire pace all the way up until the bell rings. I follow along relatively easily. This is my ninth year of Spanish. I don't know why I still sign up for this. The syllabuses are morado and written completely in Spanish. She's chipper, but Brayden himself is in here, and he leers in the desk behind me the whole time, cough-saying words like "lard" and "fatass" and apparently now "Moby Vagina." I'm not sure what "Moby Vagina" is, but I'm assuming it's a rich white boy trying to be clever. I'm the size of a whale, like Moby Dick. But I'm a girl. I don't have a dick. Therefore, I am Moby Vagina. His intelligence is clearly existential.
Then comes the big one. PE. The class designed to exploit the fat kids so that the skinny kids can feel like they're doing something right. Coach Morris is a large beefy man who's upper body is much stronger than his lower body, and his female counterpart, Coach Richardson, stands beside him. They both wear orange jackets and black shorts and caps that say "Go Panthers!" I look around, and my stomach drops. I've got Brayden in this class, plus four of his friends, and Jenny, plus three of hers. I start the flagpole equation now.
"This class requires hard physical work," says Morris with the voice of a paranoid ex-marine sitcom stereotype. "This class will teach you how to get fit and live an active lifestyle. It will teach you discipline, respect, and teamwork." He half shouts. These syllabuses are green. Behind him are bins of clothes. I know this fucking game. Far left are extra-small unisex gym uniforms and far right are XXL ones. Well played, Morris, and may you be reported as a spy to the North Korean government and disappear in the night.
"Everyone line up and get your uniforms!" yells out Coach Richardson. She'd be a really good obstetrician, she has a voice that seems like it was made for yelling "Push! Push! Push! Ten centimeters! Push!" These littles shits all line up at their respective lines. Jenny and her little squadron are all in the XS line, trying to find black shorts that'll cling to their pencil-thighs and "ew"-ing at the fact that they are not made of vegan materials and have been previously owned. Brayden and his cult-following get in line for the mediums, so they can pretend they have muscles that need to be tended too. I, however, am frozen. I know where my bin is, and no one is there, because I'm the only person out of fifty-eight kids that's fat enough for an XXL. Richardson spots me. "Uniform!" she shrieks, calling for the attention of Jenny, Brayden, and everyone in the tri-state area. They're chuckling. I can hear them.
"Oh my fucking God, bro, she's huge," says an unrecognizable male voice.
"I kinda, like, feel bad for her," whispers a female voice.
I slowly drag my feet to the big plastic tub and fish out a tent-sized orange t-shirt with "Autumnville Athletic Department" stamped on it and an enormous pair of black basketball shorts.
"It's a fucking circus tent!" Screams a voice that can only be Brayden's, and all the guys (except for that one guy, Vick) craft a Hyena Honors Choir and the girls all look shocked, pitiful, and disturbed. My vision starts to blur with tears and my face feels like it's on fire. Someone blows their whistle, but it doesn't do jack shit. The tears slip off.
"Holy fuck, she's fucking crying, dude."
"Oh my God, I feel so bad for her."
Coach Richardson blows her whistle with so much air that I wonder if she can sing opera. "When we blow the whistle, you are QUIET!" she screams. "Locker rooms!" She shouts again, and keeping my head down, I shuffle into the locker room. The Lungs assigns us all a shoebox sized locker. I cram my uniform into it and clip the school-provided lock shut. My face is still wet. One of the Jennys, Chloe (who used to be my friend), looks over at me like she's about to say something, but looks down, closes her lock, readjusts her smoky hair-sheet in her compact, moves around her little shelf bra under her blouse, and walks towards the other Jennys. I wipe my face and miss my potato chips and Lucy.
I stood at my locker in the gymnasium of Lakeview and pulled my clothes on. I didn't want anyone to know that I was crying. Lucy walked over and tapped me on the shoulder.
"Hey. It's Elle, right?" I looked up at her and sniffed.
"Don't listen to Nick. He's an idiot. He's in my pre-algebra class and he can barely tell multiplication from a pile of shit." I laughed.
"Thanks Lucy." I said.
"Let's walk to class together. Just to let that asshat know you're with me. No one can hurt you when you're with me." Lucy looped her arm in mine, and the beauty that hid disaster called herself my friend. I had no choice. I had been deemed tall enough to ride by fate, and there were no stopping points until the end of the roller coaster.
I shake the memory out of my head. Fuck, I hate locker rooms. God lets us know we can approach freedom and head to seventh period.
The teacher looks different than my other teachers. She's about thirty, pretty, and is wearing fun clothes, not khaki or plaid or kitten heels or neutrals. She has a stool painted lime green that pretty blue syllabuses rest on. I take one and sit down. "Mrs. Gwenyth" is written on the board. When she finally speaks, it startles me. She has a severe southern twang.
"Hey guys, welcome to biology. I'm Mrs. Gwenyth. This year we'll be covering glycosis, cell organelles, DNA, what makes a protein, lipid or carbohydrate, why plants eat the way they do, and more. I'm real excited to get to know all of you. You all look like wonderful kids, and I can tell you'll exceed my expectations." She smiles, and it's genuine. Even better, I don't see any of the Jennys or Brayden's lambs. "
"Since, I'm going to know you, I think you ought to know me. My name is Leanne Gwenyth-Jones, and I grew up in Larsow. My husband's name is Jack and he's an engineer. We don't have any kids, but we have a cat named Kickass. I became a teacher because I love science, and I love transferring knowledge. I can't wait to learn about you guys."
Principal God announces that seventh period's tour has ended and we all are free to go home. Mrs. Gwenyth gives another genuine smile and catches my eye. She winks at me. I offer an awkward grin. I get up and leave the grounds. No one tries to talk to me, which is good. I make it to the neighborhood surrounding the school and make it to the bus stop on time. I drop a dollar into the pay box when I step on and see the looks of shock on people's faces. I know, I'm fat. Fuck off. I squeeze through the isle and sit in a seat. I take up two. I spend the ride trying not to think about Lucy, which is thinking about Lucy in an indirect way. The bus screeches to halt what seems like hours later, I clamber off of it, and drag my feet home. I'm breathing heavy by the time I get there. Mom is snoring in her room, even though I can hear her TV is on. I open the fridge.