Kaitlyn walks into the spacious cafeteria at Valley Ridge Academy high school. The air smelled like a nauseating mixture of tater tots, erasers, lunch meat, and antiseptic. She stands next to her circular lunch table in the middle of the cafeteria as the chubby, elderly cafeteria lady scrubbed down the table with a wet cloth she used on every… single… table. Kaitlyn grimaced just thinking about the germs, and sat down once the lady in the hairnet walked away.
She takes the bottle of Cranberry-Raspberry Slenderize Fuze (5) out of the large messenger bag at her feet and places it on the streaky, wet lunch table. She tosses her straight, glossy brunette hair over her bony shoulder and clamps her hand over the cap of the drink. She gives it a twist, but it won't budge.
After a few more tries, she finally manages to crack it open. She takes a small sip, careful not to spill the translucent liquid spill all over her brand new size-00 skinny jeans. "Hey, Kaitlyn," her three best friends say simultaneously, sitting themselves down in the chairs around the table.
"Hey," she replies with a fake smile. Her friends had grossly insane amounts of food on their plastic lunch trays. All together, they had a cup of chocolate ice cream (250), two slices of pizza (361), a small bag of Lay's Original Potato Chips (300), a blue raspberry slushie (220), two containers of French fries (1078), and three Fruit-By-the-Foot packages (240).
Her friends had athlete's metabolisms. Randi was a cheerleader, Hannah was a volleyball player, Lyndsey was a softball player, and McKenzie was a dancer. They could eat whatever they wanted to and not gain an ounce. So unfair, Kaitlyn thinks. She could feel a growl coming on inside of her stomach, so she rinses it back down with a swig of her Fuze.
Kaitlyn looks over to the glass walls that enveloped their cafeteria. Her body was reflected in the glass. From across the room, she couldn't see the fat. But when she looked down at herself, there it all was: the fat rolls bunching up over her stomach, her thighs smashed flat sitting down, and her jiggly arms.
"I feel a bit nauseous. I'll be in the restroom," Kaitlyn explains, standing up. She shoulders her bag, pushes in her chair, and picks up her bottle of Fuze.
"You sure have been feeling sick lately. Maybe you should go to the doctor sometime," Hannah suggests.
"Yeah, maybe," Kaitlyn replies, shrugging, knowing full well she would never go to the doctor. No matter what. "See ya, guys." Kaitlyn high-tails it out of there, tossing her barely-touched Fuze into the trashcan on her way out, just for good measure. It would just turn into sugar, anyway. And sugar would eventually turn into fat.
She walks down the hallway, sunshine warming her chilly skin. Her tan Ugg boots softly scuff along as she walks, past the bathroom and past the nurse's office to the library. Kaitlyn walks to the very back corner, to a sunny over-stuffed plush chair next to the window. She plops her bag on the floor, sits down, pulls her knees up, and puts her feet on a small footrest. She pulls a white three-ring binder from her messenger bag and props it up against her thighs. The binder was heavy.
Her French-tipped nails pinch the cover and gently open her journal. Her Ana journal, her most prized possession. The binder was heavy with pages of poems, envelopes of pictures of models, pads of paper with tips, a spiral notebook full of diets, and lists of quotes. This journal has survived years of wear and tear, ever since she became anorexic.
Kaitlyn opens her trusty journal and flips to the food-diary section. For today, she jots down the bottle of Fuze in her curly handwriting that hasn't changed since she's learned to write. So far, she's eaten nothing. Besides the Fuze, of course, but that was zero-calorie. For dinner, she was planning on just drinking a Diet Coke and pretending she ate a sandwich. Yes, sandwiches were easiest to fake.
She looks out the window, numbers and calculations gliding through her head. Calories gained, calories burned. In, out, in, out. Everysingleday. It would be easier just to not eat. But if only she were strong enough. She was weak. Fat. Disgusting.
The bell rings, a harsh metallic sound that hurts her ears. Like any normal person, she should be rushing to get her stuff together and to get to class so she wouldn't be tardy. Kaitlyn puts her Ana journal in her messenger bag and shuffles out of the library. The repetitiveness of school bored her. What was the point?
She merges into the flow of traffic, students all wanting to go opposite directions through the hallway, making things more difficult than they have to be. Everybody around her bumps into one another in order to get to where they're going. But nobody touches her. She's untouchable. Invincible. With an Ana forcefield. Get too close, and it'll suck you in. Trapped.
Kaitlyn climbs up the stairs, her matchstick legs carrying her monstrous body up higher and higher. She smiles to herself, knowing eight calories were gone, just by climbing those stairs. Her heavy messenger bag whacked against the back of her thighs as she walked. Her bag felt like it weighed thirty pounds. Any second now it would dislocate her shoulder or cause her legs to buckle.
But it didn't happen. She made it to geometry right as the tardy bell rang. Kaitlyn collapsed into her seat at the back of the room and took out her geometry notebook. It was important to at least pretend you were paying attention, or Mr. Neeman would give you an extra page of homework as punishment.
As the hour passed, her head grew heavier and heavier with the words of her math teacher rambling on and on. It felt as if her ears absorbed all the words he said, stuffing up her hearing so it sounded like she was at the end of a long tunnel. Words like parabola, corresponding, transversal, bisecting, and midpoint all thrummed through her head like a throbbing bass beat. They weighed her head and eyelids down, making them feel heaver until she could barely even keep her head up…
The bell rings, giving her a mini-heartattack. She shoves her untouched notebook into her bag and avoids eye contact with her teacher on the way out the door. "Hey, Kaitlyn," her guy-friend, Logan, says. He walks next to her, their steps synchronized and their arms brushing against each other.
"Hey, Logan," Kaitlyn replies, "How are you?"
Logan has been her friend for longer than any of her other friends, ever since third grade, actually. He moved to America from South Korea, and he hardly knew any English, which was partially why he never talked to anybody. As a result, the other third graders ignored him since they all thought he was too shy. Kaitlyn, on the other hand, was shy too. They immediately clicked, became best friends, and gradually became, well, less shy.
"I'm great. Know why? Mr. Saunders is retiring!" he exclaims with a huge grin on his face. His excitement causes Kaitlyn to smile back, which is usually what ends up happening. His personality is contagious.
"Why do you hate Mr. Saunders so much?" she replies. They turn a corner and get to the busiest part of the school; the foyer by the stairs and front offices. Three hallways and two staircases merged here, and in addition to that, it was a busy meeting place for cliques of friends. To get through here to get to your class, you'd have to either shove your way through or crawl between their legs… Not really, but it does take a while to get through.
"If you actually had him for science, you would. But no… you have to be in the smart class," Logan jokes with a faux scowl on his face. Kaitlyn grabs the strap of a random person's backpack in front of her, and Logan grabs onto her bag so they wouldn't get separated.
"I didn't mean to be put in the 'smart' class. I hate it, actually," Kaitlyn informs him. She had already had biology as her second block, and it was torture. Not only was it confusing, but it was also boring. The two factors both combined to form a deadly mix for her GPA. "But seriously, why do you hate Mr. Saunders so much?"
"He gives us, like, five pages of notes a day. And there are certain things he tells us to highlight for whatever because they'll 'be on the test.' Then once the test day comes, none of what he said would be on the test actually is. Not to mention he's the world's strictest grader, so we all get bad grades," Logan complains, right in her ear.
Kaitlyn follows the path the person in front of her plows through the crowd. Once she reaches the stairway, she lets go of the stranger's backpack and stands in line to get up the stairs. "Oh, I hate that," she sympathizes.
"I know, right?" Logan replies.
As the 2-minute-bell rings, the crowd thins a little bit, enough so that they're finally able to climb the stairs to the third floor. Logan chatters a bit more about the other dreadful and appalling features about Mr. Saunders. Kaitlyn stops in front of her biology classroom and faces Logan, who was finishing up his rant about his teacher. "And worse of all," he finishes, "His breath smells like eggs and milk twenty-four-seven."
Kaitlyn can't help but burst out laughing. The tardy ball rings and she quickly gives him a hug. "Talk to you later," she says.
"See ya!" Logan calls over his shoulder, half-jogging across the hallway to his own classroom. From his desk, Mr. Saunders glares at him from over his bifocals. Kaitlyn turns around and slips into her class, undetected.
"Get out your To Kill a Mockingbird books, please," the elderly Ms. Clark announces to the class. She had the kind of dark auburn hair that almost every old lady had, with silvery-gray roots. Her eyes were formed in a permanent squint from years of refusing to get reading glasses. Fortunately, she had gave in about a year ago, but the wrinkles were still there.
Kaitlyn takes out her book and plops it on her desk, the hard spine loudly cracking against the wood desktop. Her class started reading it a few days ago and was already finished with it. Others, however, were merely halfway completed.
For the rest of the block, the teacher leads a discussion on the assigned chapters from last night. A few of the teacher's pets raise their hands repeatedly to try to gain Ms. Clark's admiration. The majority of the class, however, is talking to their friends. Ms. Clark either doesn't notice, or doesn't care. Kaitlyn sneaks an iPod earbud into the ear facing away from Ms. Clark and begins playing her thinspiration music, which she always played near the end of school so she wouldn't be tempted to eat a snack right when she gets home.
The bell rings sooner than expected. After collecting all her stuff and putting her mechanical pencil in her back pocket, Kaitlyn heads into the hallway to meet Logan. She sees him talking to Mr. Saunders, though, and Mr. Saunders looked pretty pissed. So Kaitlyn just walks off down the hallway to get a bus ride back home, knowing Logan would text her later to tell her all about it.
But for now, it was time to rush to catch the bus, ignore the calling of the junk food in the pantry, and relax into her computer chair to read the silent screams of girls like her in online blogs.