Wonderland

by GraceWinter

After years of self-starvation, Lia Overbrook is dead aged 19. 14-year-old Naomi, who lives across the street from the Overbrooks, had always admired Lia. After learning about Lia's illness, Naomi becomes fascinated by weight loss and wants to be as thin as Lia was. Slowly, Naomi slips into the poisonous world of an eating disorder - and sees it isn't the Wonderland she'd expected.

1. Prologue

Prologue

I wish I had known her better.

Lia Overbrook. Quiet, troubled and thin, so thin.

She was five years older than me. When we were younger it hardly seemed to matter – we were the only kids on our street. At least, until Cassie Parrish came along.

All three of us were friends for a while, but when I was seven years old – they were twelve – we drifted apart as they slipped into destructive habits.

Six years later, Cassie died. Lia followed less than a year after her. I wasn't told how, or why, but I knew; everyone knew. An obsession with thinness, tightening like a vice until they could no longer cope. I just couldn't put a name to what killed them; the words 'anorexia' and 'bulimia' were seldom spoken in our small town.

Who would have known that the same obsession would overcome me?

My guilty secret is killing me, creeping further into my mind, but I don't want to stop. Lia was so perfect - if I follow her footsteps, maybe I can be as beautiful as she was. Losing weight, counting calories, self control; falling deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.

My name is Naomi Summers, and this is my Wonderland.