Chapter One
I felt hollow as I looked at Lia Overbrook's body. As her neighbours my family had been invited to the wake, and I had gone up to the coffin to pay my respects.
Lia looked strangely serene, more peaceful in death than she had been in life. Her bluish lips were set in a line, and her eyes were closed. It was then that I realised – I didn't know what colour they were. All these years of living across the street from Lia, so many opportunities to talk to her, and I didn't even know her eye colour. It seems stupid, I know, but that day it seemed vastly important. As I said before, I wish I had known her better.
Smooth and unlined, with cheekbones jutting sharply; her face looked as though it had been carved from ice. Blue veins criss-crossed her fragile arms, with faint scars visible across the wrists. Her parents had changed her out of her hospital gown and into her favourite dress, which hung loosely on her skeletal frame. She couldn't have weighed more than 75 pounds.
I knew what had killed her; the gossip spread around school like wildfire. Quite simply, she starved herself. Inevitably, the damage she inflicted on her body caused her heart to fail. There was nothing the doctors could do, I was told. By the time they got her to hospital, it was too late.
Dead at nineteen. What a pity, what a waste… but she was so beautiful. There was something fascinating for me about her skeletal appearance. That was the day that I wondered – could I be as thin, as breath-taking, and as ethereal as Lia?
Realising how weird I must have looked, staring at a dead body, I walked back through the crowd to my parents.
"Naomi."
Dr. Marrigan's eyes were puffy and red-rimmed from crying; she looked so different from the stern-faced woman I was used to. She held a large cardboard box.
"Hello. I'm so sorry…"
"It's… it's alright. I was just wondering – I thought you might like some of Lia's things. You aren't much younger than her, are you?"
Dr. Marrigan held out the cardboard box and I had no choice but to take it. I didn't mention that I was actually five years younger than her daughter. Attempting to disguise my confusion, I made an excuse to leave. I barely knew Dr. Marrigan; what would I do if she started crying?
"Um… I have to go back to my parents. They're leaving soon. It was nice to talk to you, Dr. Marrigan."
As soon as we got home, my parents were arguing again. They were always screaming at each other over some tiny little annoyance. Being an only child was most difficult at these times; I had no older sibling to protect me, no younger sibling to be strong for. On this occasion, I shut myself into my bedroom and began to go through the box of Lia's possessions.
The items seemed fairly normal at first. Revision books, hair accessories, novels, and clothes (far too small for me, of course). Towards the bottom of the box I found a pile of notebooks, bound together with an elastic band. Taking off the band, I inspected the books.
This diary belongs to Lia Overbrook, aged 12!
Lia Overbrook's Diary (aged 14!)
My Diary – Lia Overbrook
The final notebook was dated 2 years ago, when Lia was seventeen. I flicked through the pages and guessed by the amount of writing, she had still been using it up until her death. That's crazy, I thought. Unsure what to do, I contemplated putting them back into the box or returning them to Dr. Marrigan. It seemed like an invasion of Lia's privacy, even though she was gone. Yet I felt a nagging desire to find out Lia's secret, to discover how she got so thin.
I opened the first diary and began to read.