Disclaimer: I do not own Life with Derek.

A/N: This idea came to me from a book I read, but it's not the exact plot or anything. And it's not like any of the other stories involving Casey and an eating disorder. At least, I'm really pretty sure it's not. It might be a Dasey, it might not. I make no promises.

Chapter 1…Omniscient Lizzie

x o x x o casey's p.o.v. o x x o x

Lizzie used to be a great sister. She was eleven and, for the most part, inexperienced. But now she is twelve and all knowing. And she knew exactly what I was doing in the bathroom that day.

"Casey?"

I heard her irresolute voice and froze, gripping the hair I was holding away from my face even tighter and slowly lifting my head from the toilet bowl to meet her gaze, her mouth slightly open, jaw tensed.

"What were you doing just now?" she asked me, crossing her arms over her developing chest.

I wiped consciously at my mouth with my sleeve, looking down at the floor. "Lunch. Didn't settle with me right," I said quickly, the words stumbling out as they came to me as I tried getting to my feet as gracefully as possible. Unfortunately, with a nickname like Klutzilla, doing anything gracefully is practically impossible and I felt my feet slip from underneath me. Bursts of pain traveled through my bottom and I let out a groan.

Lizzie just ignored my slip up as if she knew it was going to happen and continued her interrogation. "Casey, I had the same thing for lunch. But you don't see me leaning over a toilet puking my guts out, do you?"

"Not yet," I grumbled getting up again and distracting myself with grabbing a towel to clean up the soapy culprit of a mess on the bathroom floor, a genuinely irritated look on my face.

"Casey, I know what you're doing. I've read about it. I… I could help you if you wanted…" Lizzie said, gazing at me intently and letting her words trail off and linger around my ears.

"I don't need help Liz, I'm just sick from lunch, that's all," I said, putting the soiled towel in the hamper. "Now what I really want is some Tylenol for this headache you're giving me," I said, a little meaner than I meant while catching her eyes with mine in a look of pure frustration, crossing my own arms across my chest.

Lizzie just shook her head and left the room. I turned back to the toilet guiltily and flushed the mess, watching evidence of my secret spiral away into the plumbing.

Well, I thought, Not exactly a secret anymore.

x o x x o x x o x x o x x o x x o x

I weighed 124 pounds when I started my… habit. I don't even remember the first time. I do remember why though. Why I still do it now. Why I feel like I can't stop.

But… It's kind of hard to explain. And if I do try to explain it, I'm afraid I'm going to sound like a sad story, telling the kind of stuff that therapists tell their patients to help them make sense of what they were doing and why it felt so addictive. I already know. It's having control in a life where there seems to be none at all. Every time I look in the mirror, step on the scale, I feel a wave of satisfaction crash over me, temporarily drowning the hunger and the pain in my throat from forcing food hastily into it and hastily out of it. But in the back of my mind a little voice says, "It's still not enough Casey."

So I'd find myself once again sitting on the bathroom floor, legs curled up underneath me as I leaned over the bowl, grasping the edge of the bowl with one hand, shoving the end of a toothbrush in the back of my throat with the other until I felt the familiar burn of vomit rushing up my itching throat.

It was a month after Lizzie caught me that she finally cracked. Over dinner too. I was mortified. My mother had pulled me aside in the middle of dinner and taken me down to her and George's room. I remember her hand clasped tightly around my forearm as she practically dragged me down the stairs. I couldn't feel it though. After Lizzie had let it slip, I just felt my body go numb and even number as I looked around the table as all eyes rested on me, even Marti's. For some reason I connected eyes with Derek. His mouth was hanging half-open in shock and was still full of food. In any other situation I would have laughed, but I couldn't even form coherent words, not even when we reached the basement. My mom sat me on the bed, placing a hand on either shoulder and kneeling down in front me, her eyes already glassy with tears of complete concern.

"Casey," she said, shaking my shoulders slightly when I didn't respond. "Casey, is it true?" Her eyes flitted from one of my eyes to the other as I felt myself staring into oblivion. "Casey?" she repeated. "Is it?"

I looked at my hands, folded in my lap and then at the wall adjacent us, doing my best not to get caught in her web of desperate need and worry. She shook my shoulders again and I tensed up before taking a deep breath and muttering, "Yes…"

I finally looked down to see her close her eyes tightly and shake her head, much like Lizzie had the day she'd caught me. I swallowed deeply, feelings of guilt creeping in the back of my mind.

Well, I thought, Where to go from here?