Disclaimer: I do not own 17 Again or its characters.

You won't believe how hard it was to write this chapter. It took a while. Just a note: I use actual dialogue from the movie if you didn't catch that already. The story will follow the plot of the movie for the first series of chapters, but it will deviate the farther we get into the story. I'm writing a fanfiction, I'm not rewriting the movie. Keep this in mind as you read. As usual, read and review! Feel free to provide me with some constructive criticism, if you're up for it! :)

It's nearly a quarter past three when we take a right turn off of Sugarbush Road into the quaint Californian neighborhood of Woodbine Station. The characteristic ranch houses along the street were built for the booming post-war middle class on the West Coast, for returned soldiers and their young brides looking to start families. Construction went on through the 1950s, and the subdivision expanded another couple acres when phase two was put into commission. The project went underway in 1963 to provide housing for the influx of migrants coming into town, seeking out temporary economic advantages and industrial sources of employment. During the early 1980s economic recession, the factories many family figureheads depended on for income went into foreclosure, leaving many of the town's secondary workers unemployed and up to their eyes in debt. In the following years, most of the residents moved on, looking to be hired in other factories across the country. They put their homes up for cheap on the real estate market, hoping to be cut loose from their financial burden as quickly as possible.

That's how my parents, two married Caucasian teenagers from average income families, were able to buy a house in late 1989 with nothing but the money they'd saved up senior year, along with the couple thousand my grandparents had discreetly deposited into their conjoined bank account. The house had been in shambles when they had first moved in a week after their high school graduation. My mother had been six months pregnant with me then, climbing on paint ladders and supplying me with the nourishment she and my dad could afford: the wholesome diet of prepackaged Ramen and Coke. (Stellar prenatal-care if you ask me.) They were so broke at that point that my mother even admitted taking plastic snack baggies into the grocery store so she could smuggle out the public bathroom dispenser soap in her purse. Despite the financial struggles and unstable employment, my parents still made ends meet.

Our family has always struggled with money. Although my parents never told me, I had more than half the wit to figure it out. Neither my mom or dad had ever attended a university, it just seems there had never been enough time or wherewithal to do so. My mom gave birth to me a couple weeks before her eighteenth birthday; my dad had become a legal adult himself five months prior. My mom tells me he was destined to be a basketball prodigy, that he was all set up for a full-ride scholarship to play college ball at Ohio State. He was planning on taking her with him, so he claims. They had met their senior year and fell in love fast and hard. Their relationship quickly escalated over the fall semester, perhaps for the worst. At the end of Christmas break, the pregnancy test was positive and their romance took a bitter twist. My dad gave up the idea of playing for a major league. He gave up the glory of winning a gold and sterling silver NBA trophy. He gave up a future of New York Penthouses and fame and fans shouting his name across the court. He gave up his Ohio State scholarship so he could marry my mom, so he could raise his mistake. Me.

Ned, his best friend, went on to become rich and affluent. The cunning little genius made millions off of computer software. He lives in a seven figure mansion. After the misery years of high school, the world was given to him gift-wrapped in golden paper. He accomplished all my father dreamed of. He's the stark contrast of our lower middle-class suburban lifestyle, driving his luxury sports cars and playing on his surround-sound computer monitors all day. Still, he's the kindest person I've ever met. He's generous with our family, constantly providing us with money. He saved my parents from counting all their pennies. Throughout my childhood, he bought me and Alex all the toys we couldn't have otherwise afforded; his donations allowed us to travel, for me to buy shirts without Wal-Mart tags. His money also bought me my first cellphone, my first earrings, my first homecoming dress. Every material object I've ever had the privilege of owning is because of him.

That's why I think, under my dad's love for his best friend and family, he despises us. He sees his failure reflected in our faces. Just my conception was a catastrophe all on its own. It cost him his ambition, and inevitably, his marriage. Though the latter was mainly his fault. My parents were married their senior year, in the rainy spring of 1989. That's nearly two decades ago now. Up until my ninth birthday, my dad had nearly no regrets. He had even been happy, with a healthy son and daughter. Back then his love for my beautiful mother cut so deep it bled the stars and moon. Then, one day, everything changed. He went from content and devoted to bitter and unhappy, though the reason why has never been illuminated. Honestly, I think it was his impending thirtieth birthday, hanging over his head. That 3 and 0 together must have reminded him he was stuck, with affordable income housing and a crap job for Viagra telemarketers.

Ned has an affinity for wealth, and with no wife or kids of his own, he constantly dotes on us. I'm grateful for all of Ned's generosity, but I think my dad sees his charity as something other than a blessing. Though there is no doubt my dad loves Ned like a brother, I get the feeling that he envies all he has and secretly wishes their roles to be reversed. Ned's fortune reminds my dad of all he's lost - the money, the glory, the satisfaction of success. Add on to the fact that his best friend pays for his wife and kids' financial assets - and you have completed one step of the equation on why my dad is so disappointed with his life. He can't be the hero, not even for his family.

So now my dad's in the throes of a middle-aged crisis, putting on weight and sleeping odd hours of the night because he just can't forgive and forget the impulsive choices he made at seventeen.

That's the hard part, isn't it? Remembering the glory days of the past and letting them go. The transparent memory of them just makes you want to cling even tighter to what was and what could have been. What was it Yoda said in Revenge of the Sith? Attachment leads to jealously, and jealously leads to greed? Something like that, though I think that it was meant for the possession of ties to people, not irrational emotions. It may be a fictional world, but there must be some truth to a Master Jedi Knight's wisdom. You get a taste of the greenest pastures and become and so smitten that when your attachment is taken away, no single thing in the world can cope with the loss.

My dad lost a scholarship that could have made his life heaven on earth; he lost it to a broken condom and a positive pregnancy test. Under the wreckage from my conception, he was given a family. But we just have never been enough. He is not happy with what he has, nor will he ever be content with the things we give him. The way he sees it, his fate fell short of its potential. His career is a disappointment; the opportunity to attend college has come and gone, and it is a blow from which he will never recover. No one can make it up to him. Not his wife or children. Not his best friend or his money. I look at my dad's stoic expression and see a miserable, regretful man who fears for his future; he sees it as a continuous downward trend into the inferno of Hell. To my dad, Mike O'Donnell wandered into his grave at seventeen, when he proposed marriage to his pregnant high school sweetheart. And it seems all his love, talent, and happiness slowly died along with him.

Dad pulls into the driveway of my childhood home and cuts the engine. Once the divorce goes through, this will be listed on the estate deed as my mom's property. I can hardly wait. Though he doesn't share the same address with us anymore, Dad will just randomly pop in to grab little trinkets of his that he'd forgotten to bring with him to Ned's after my parents separated. But when Mike and Scarlet O'Donnell's marriage is officially denounced, Dad won't own a key to the house. He'll have to knock on the door, like he's a complete stranger. And then I'll have permission to slam said door in his face. Sweet, sweet retribution. I stopped feeling sorry for him a long time ago, when he slept in bed all day on my seventeenth birthday, too hungover from a night of drinking to make an appearance when Mom cut the cake. He didn't even kiss me on my cheek and tell me happy birthday, like he always did as his formal tradition that special time of the year. That had been all I wanted from him, but he was too busy griping about himself to remember or care.

I unbuckle my seat belt and slide out of the car, hoisting my messenger bag over my shoulder. My house looms over me, an incorrigible amalgam of grey wood side paneling and clapboard shutters. I make a beeline for the front door, Alex a couple strides ahead of me. Dad calls out to us with a detached inflection to his words, "Ok guys, see you soon. Love you. Nice... chatting with you."

As the door slams behind me, I hear the cacophony of a whirring chainsaw. Alex hears it too and stands at attention. Simultaneously, we drop our bags on the couch and sprint to the window like giddy children crowding in to see a schoolyard fight. Through the glass, we witness the collapse of a scrawny deciduous trees, leaves spraying across the autumn-browned yard like confetti. Mom stands beside a rusted blue wood chipper - brandishing water-logged garbage from dad's days of negligence and making the backyard his trashcan - before tossing it unceremoniously in through the hatch. From the machine, a fine shower of shredded chips is expelled, floating in the air and catching on mild breezes before settling into the grass wasteland. Though Alex is habitually taciturn, he laughs as Dad walks in through the back gate to behold Mom's massacre on his sports balls, books, and trophies. Basically, everything she found under the bushes that our old dog had pissed on and all the stuff collecting dust in the attic. And in an even broader category, all Dad's belongings.

The only way I can describe the priceless expression on Dad's face is that he looks like someone just ripped a massive band aid with extra adhesive off his upper lip. He hollers above the peeling noise, "What the hell are you doing?" Dad's brow wrinkles as Mom raises up an authentic leather valise and feeds it to the blades. He recoils, "Hey! That's my stuff!" Mom tosses plastic wine cooler after football after portable radio into the machine. Every object reduced to shreds further tightens Dad's scowl. "Why are you destroying our yard?" he protests.

With another figurine clock in hand, Mom replies evenly, "It's not our yard. It's my yard, remember?" A flick of her wrist sends Dad's old desk ornament in a projectile path into the wood chipper, where it spews out the other end as bite size pieces. "You took the road not taken. And I get the yard." With the destruction of one of Dad's last few baseball gloves to vent her misplaced anger, Mom powers the wood chipper down. As the noise fades into silence, Mom regards Dad with a carefully constructed mask of candid calm. She removes her padded ear plugs and positions her safety goggles up on top of her head, where they rest firmly in the curls of her strawberry-blonde hair. Her exposed eyes are brightened to a warm hazel in the sun, but the glare she directs at Dad is still not thawed of its hostility in the warm afternoon light. "I'm going to turn it into a showpiece for my clients," she says. And the compassion I normally associate with my mom gradually creeps back into her voice.

Dad looks taken aback. "Clients of what?" he inquires.

"Landscape design," she replies. I see her bite her lip, to suppress the urge to tell Dad about her plans. She always gets carried away with talking. Spend an eternity with my mom and you'd never run out of conversation. But it was always different for her when she spoke with Dad - a relief, like coming up for a breath of air when you'd so nearly drowned. In the happy and romantic years of their marriage, my parents had not only been lovers, but best friends. They told each other every secret, staying up al hours somel nights just whispering to each other over damp pillowcases. So I think Dad's absence has a left a giant, festering wound in Mom's heart. I know she misses that person she can share anything with. I wish I could give her that, but I know she would never ask me for it. Maybe I should just break the communication boundaries. I don't know. I'm completely up the creek in that situation.

But what I do know is friendliness is my mom's hamartia; the fatal flaw that could inevitably lead to her downfall in this divorce. I know she wants Dad back. She considers it often. Even forgets how miserable she is with him. Luckily, she's taking lessons from me on how to be rude to people, especially Dad. It'll make the death of their union a clean, swift break. So as she remains silent and avoids eye contact with Dad, I smile. She's a fast learner.

"Landscape design?" Dad leaves the end of the question open for discussion.

Mom nods and says assertively, "I'm going to show people what I can do." She walks and talks, trampling leaves as she stomps over to the dismembered remains of the pitiful tree she hacked down with a chainsaw. Grabbing it by the trunk, she totes it over to the wood-chipper, where it will suffice as her next inanimate victim.

Dad rains on her parade with his usual negativity. "Yeah, well, the divorce isn't final for another eight weeks, so you have no right," he argues.

Mom bristles at his animosity. "Really?" she retorts. "So I've spent the last eighteen years of my life listening to you whine...about the things you could have done
without me, and I have no right?"

Dad shoves his hands in his pockets, kicking around a pine cone absently with his foot. "It's just... I put a lot of work into this yard," he whines.

Mom scoffs, "Did you?" She drops the tree and approaches him slowly, her cheeks pink with faint sunburn and her eyes burning like kerosene lamps. "Really? Like the barbecue pit?" She motions with her arm to a heap of decaying bricks, loosely stuck together with mortar.

Dad says stubbornly, "Yeah."

Mom shakes her head. "Yeah. The way I remember that - is that you spent about an hour working on it...and then you spent the next two days
complaining about...if you had gone to college, you could have hired someone to do it."

Dad is quick to preserve his image as he interrupts, "I don't think it was a whole two days."

There is a brief respite from the exchange as Mom's eyes flash with a brief shadow of anger. "Or the hammock over here," she continues.

Dad glances over her shoulder at a tumble of striped cloth and wooden support poles. "Yeah," he says, with more caution this time.

Alex and I move farther behind the curtain as Dad adjusts his stance.

Mom wraps her arms around her midsection as she says bravely, "Yeah. I think you quit that one because you just decided not to try anymore."

Dad searches her face, as if he's still looking for the wife who used to lay her slim arm across his shoulders and listen patiently as he complained about every single thing that was wrong with his life. But as I see my mom now, I know she's outgrown that woman. As for Dad, his maturity is still at ground zero. He goes off on his quintessential tangent as he protests,"Look, try to see things from my point of view. I am extremely disappointed with my life."

Mom isn't buying his persuasion tactics; this time around, she does not have an invitation to Mike O'Donnell's pity party. "I never asked you to marry me," she says.

Dad shrugs his shoulders, almost in frustration. "Yeah, but I did."

Alex and I exchange a brief look. Both he and I know Dad only made that comment for dramatic flair, but it really hits hard with Mom. She weathers the storm by herself as she stands alone, stunned to silence for a moment. "Well, you don't have to do anymore favors for me then," she stammers, her voice wavering. "We're not going to hold each other back anymore, okay?" She turns away from Dad so he won't see her lower lip tremble and her eyes water.

As he slowly comes to realize his blunder, Dad's face slackens from harsh and bitter to mournful. "Scar-" he starts.

Mom's voice is thick with tears as she interjects, "I'll see you at court."

"Scarlet," Dad says softly, pleadingly.

She begins to rev the motor of the chainsaw again. "I'll see you at the trial," she says, drying her damp cheeks on her shirtsleeve.

Alex sees the Wicked Witch of the West before I've even stopped watching my parent's soap box play out. "Holy shit, it's Noami," he mumbles.

"Naomi," I correct him automatically. After twelve years of making Christmas presents for "Aunt Naomi", it seems to have become one of my regretful habits.

I turn my line of vision to witness the regal tenacity of Her Royal Bitchiness herself clicking into the backyard on ridiculous stiletto heels. Mom sees her best friend since high school and suddenly her world is in the right alignment. She shouts Naomi's name in glee and rushes over to trap her in a tight embrace. It's a good thing flaky-minded Mom actually remembered to switch off the chainsaw, otherwise we'd have a yard of minced brick and sod. "You came!" Mom beams.

Eavesdropping on my parents has now become a dull affair. I blame it on Naomi. I yawn and pull away from my hiding spot. "Where are you going?" Alex asks inquisitively.

I reply, "To do homework."

Alex has the refinement to not look relieved about my leaving. I could hardly put fault on him even if he did. When your boyfriend beats around your brother and you use it to threaten him, you get kind of a bad reputation as an older sister. Alex keeps up the courtesy, though, in hopes of getting on my good side. "You're about to miss the good part," he says, looking back and forth between me and the adults outside.

"With Naomi, hardly," I scorn. "She's so shallow that if I stood in a puddle of her, I wouldn't get my feet wet."

Alex smirks. "Quoting Danny Phantom? I'm surprised you remember it. Isn't it considered cheesy for the in-crowd? You know, you used to be a lot like the character Sam Manson."

"Are you insulting my personality as reclusive, goth, and recyclo-vegetarian?" I narrow my eyes and balance my hands on my hips.

Alex appears inordinately pleased. "So you do know it."

"Shut up," I snap. As I retreat down the hallway, I add in a voice tinged with malice, "Have fun getting caught for spying when Mom and Naomi walk in for waxing or whatever." Alex takes my advice and skulks to the kitchen. I slam my door shut, and only when I flop down on my bed, do I realize I left my school bag on the couch. After kicking my shoes across the room, I open the door and pace down the hall to retrieve the bane of my existence: homework.

Mom and Naomi flounce past me. "Really, Scarlet. For your age, your butt is fabulous!" Naomi pipes, continuing on a conversation that probably has its origins in the backyard. "I mean, it looks so cute in these jeans!" she gushes.

"You two should get a room," I quip.

Mom cracks an amused smile; Naomi gives me a wrinkled frown. I'd like to tell her all the crows feet I counted around her eyes, but I keep my trap shut. "Mike's daughter," she sniffs in disdain.

"Noami," I respond, pronouncing her name wrong just because it bothers her.

She visibly cringes but decides to ignore me and dote all her attention on my mom. My eyes make a full rotation floor to ceiling. Does Scarlet O'Donnell know how lucky she is?

The two women disappear into my mom's room, and the last thing I hear before the door closes behind them is Naomi's nasal inflection saying, "... we're going to try waxing in some unorthodox places..."


By the time I've completed the return trip to my bedroom, my dad's car is already gone from the driveway. The sky outside is a potpourri of violent grey, black, and dark purple. The sunlight is obscured by the darkness. Delaying my assignments, I lean on my window seat and watch the storm clouds roll by. I love the color of the clouds before rain falls; it has to be the most mysterious and beautiful shade of violet-grey on this planet. It only has one drawback - it's a rare sight that can only be seen shortly before a downpour. So I admire it when and while I can. After a few minutes, the heavy clouds open up and expel fat droplets of precipitation.

I pull away from the window reluctantly. My room is cast in dimness as the swirling curtains of rain patter against the roof. Thunder rumbles like the monotonous beating of a heart. After I pull a chair up to my bedroom desk and sit down, I immerse myself in homework. I've already made sure to hang the "Do Not Disturb" sign on my door.


"Maggie, sweetheart, it's time for dinner."

I'm aroused from sleep bleary-eyed by Mom's tentative knock on my bedroom door. Kicking my way out of the sheets, I roll out of bed and answer with a drowsy, "Coming." The cold floor is a shock to my bare feet, and I shiver as it transmits shock waves through my nerves. Outside, the sky is still dark as pitch. The continuous torrent of rain for the past few hours has flooded our flat little front patch of lawn. It's now a brown lake freckled with cataracts of mush and mud. Astray leaves float like self-propelled boats down the gutter streams, before they're caught in the turmoil of a storm drain whirlpool and collapse in on themselves. As cars drive by with headlights blazing, they kick up whole sheets of polluted street water that splash across their front hood.

I'm mesmerized by the sight briefly, before I wander off into the kitchen to share a sit-down dinner with my family.

When I walk in, my first unfortunate observation is that the kitchen reeks of burned cellophane. And when I take a look at the Pyrex dish on the stove, I figure out that the horrible smell is dinner. I take the paper plate from my place at the table and serve myself a small portion of the mystery meal. I really hope the suspicious chunks peeking out of the green pulpy mess are red onions and not meat. Shuffling back to my seat, I situate myself as comfortably as I can on the hard wood. At this little dining table, my brother sits on my left and my mom occupies the space on my right. The empty chair across the table is where my dad used to sit. As per usual, no one mentions it.

Alex and Mom eat silently. Alex never speaks at mealtimes, but Mom usually has something to say. In fact, you sometimes have to remind her to eat because she always gets so caught up in conversation. Mom even does it at restaurants, where she'll incessantly talk and leave her steak untouched for twenty minutes. Some waiters, thinking she was finished, have taken her plate away before she could even start. It would be funny if it didn't cause so much grief with the check. Yet tonight she's practically gorging herself. I would wish to have her enthusiasm for this meal if I wasn't to busy wondering why she was upset.

Did her emotional talk with Dad this afternoon cause all this distress? Or is it the pain from Naomi's waxing in "unorthodox places"? I'm honestly too afraid to ask.

Instead, I try to lighten the mood with joke. "What a feast!" I declare with strained laughter. "I mean, look at the quality of these paper plates! Only problem - I think you left out the eye of newt in this delicious, nutritious American goulash."

Mom always likes it when I tease her about her cooking, but one sniffle too late and she's crying. I watch her bawl into her napkin and instantly want to turn invisible. I made my mother cry. What the fuck is wrong with me?

Alex asks me the same thing silently with his steely glare. I extend my arms across the table and clasp Mom's left hand between mine, squeezing in gentle reassurance. I feel the rugged edges of the small, cheap diamond on her wedding band and the prongs supporting the precious stone jab into my skin. I don't care. I tighten my grip, to let her know I love her and I'd never abandon her. Because it's the honest truth. I love her even more than I love Stan. My high school boyfriend will always take a backseat when it comes down to him and the woman who carried me and gave birth to me and raised me. Who, at the age of seventeen, sacrificed her life to care for her child. Who has never resented any moment of it. She has been a committed mother to me from the day she found out she was pregnant. She has always been there for me. Now during this rough divorce, I can do the same.

"Mom, I'm so sorry," I apologize repeatedly. "I didn't mean to make you upset."

"No, no, no, Maggie," she says hoarsely, her eyes smiling through the reflection of her tears. "I'm not upset at all."

My brows furrow together in confusion. "I thought you started crying because I made that smart-ass comment about the food."

Alex nods in acquiescence. "That was my thinking, too. Your daughter can be a real asswipe, Mom."

"Watch it, O'Donnell," I snarl.

Mom interrupts our quarrel with a surprising burst of laughter. Her vacant hand takes Alex's, linking our table of three table into one, inseparable unit. The power of the moment hits me and I'm quickly blinking back tears before anyone can notice. With sound be in stitches, Mom says happily, "I love you two so, so much. Have I ever told you this?"

Alex smiles and says softly, "Only about a million times, Mom."

Mom shakes her head. "No, you don't understand," she sighs softly. "You don't understand how you guys make every second worth living for me. My heart beats for my children." A new flood of tears spills down her cheeks. "This brutal divorce hasn't even gone through yet, but I still feel like I've gone through hell and back. Both of you have been my anchor this whole time. You know, ever since I was a little girl, I had always wanted someone who I deeply loved to spend the rest of my life with. I thought I would get that special person through marrying your father. And, in a way, I did. I received not only one person I could love with all my heart, but two. And even if my marriage wasn't able to remain standing on its rickety foundations, I could never be happier, because I get to spend this life being your mother."

"Both Alex and I think the same thing, but doubled," I add, smiling because it's contagious and I can't help it. I feel embarrassed to say it, but I feel my heart throbbing. With love, with tenderness, with happiness. Is this normal for the brooding species of teenagers?

"Actually, we love you triple," Alex dissents with an easy grin.

Mom's cheeks are pinched into an earnest smile, but her eyes seem detached, wistful. I don't know what to call her facial expression. It just seems... sad-happy. Bittersweet. "Don't grow up. Don't grow up and away from me," she pleads.

I chuckle, "I'm pretty sure it's too late for that, Mom. Do you not see the boobs stretching my t-shirt?"

Mom raises my hand to her lips and kisses my knuckles. She does the same with Alex. "It doesn't matter how much you physically grow. Just don't allow your heart to outgrow me."

"We wouldn't think of it," Alex reassures her.

For once, I'm in agreement with him. "Never," I promise.


After tonight's emotional dinner, I feel pretty drained. Like an active participant in household chores, I wash the dishes before returning to my bedroom to prepare for bed. Once the door is closed behind me, I plug my phone into an outlet to charge overnight and then strip down. Opening the drawers seems to be a strain for my lazy ass tonight, so I hardly put an effort into selecting my pajamas. I choose the set closet to the top. After I change into cotton shorts and a black tank-top of thick material, I migrate to the bathroom for two minutes of mechanically brushing my teeth.

The rain seems to have lightened up to a faint drizzle as I settle myself down on the soft, soft mattress of my bed and sprawl out. Before I switch out the light, I set my alarm clock to wake me up at seven for school. In the dark, I comb out my black-dyed hair with my fingers until its a fan of silk across my pillow. It's a weird ritual I have; it's stuck with me since I was seven, when my parents told me I had to give up sucking my thumb to fall asleep. Combing my hair was the second best thing. I find it soothing, even now. I hope I never go bald. Then how else would I encourage my body to sleep?

I curl up on my side, close my eyes, and drift off to the steady rhythm of the leak in my bedroom ceiling.


Three hours later, I wake up a fidgety mess. My stomach feels like a horrible, writhing pit of fire, and my throat is parched with thirst. The hunger pangs are so intense I wonder if the Gate to Hell has made my body its new vacancy. It makes sense. I wasn't brave enough to actually consume Mom's dinner. Kicking the sheets to the foot of my bed, I roll off the mattress and hightail it to the kitchen. Like a feral animal, I tear through the fridge, rummaging through leftovers until I find something dense in carbs.

I eat a container of spaghetti cold - meatballs and noodles and sauce. I don't even sprinkle the Parmesan cheese on my pasta. I take the bottle and dump a pile into my hand before lapping it up like a dog. My appetite is sickening. I clean out a pint of vanilla ice cream crumbled with Snickers and baking chips. I find my hand at the bottom of a bag of Doritos and my mouth sticky with soda. And not the diet kind.

I'm not proud of my binge. Not at all. In fact, when I see it's past midnight, my mind is triggered to panic. The guilt is more painful than a third-degree burn; it cuts deep like a knife. If Stan could see me now, after what I've done, he'd call me fat. He might not even love me anymore. My heart is racing, and it feels like my entire world is folding in on itself. I can't live with this. I can't.

I've made Stan my home. Where will I go if he abandons me? Who will protect me from the cold and rain? I need him to give me warmth and shelter. No, I won't allow myself to become less than perfect. I need to stay beautiful for Stan. He'll look away in disgust if I gain weight. He'll leave me.

I wish I didn't have to gorge. Really, I wish it didn't have to be like this. For the past six months, I've been caught in this constant cycle of binging and purging. Three times a week I'll have episodes of overeating. Who knows how many calories I consume? Thousands? Most definitely a number too large to count on my fingers. The worst part of the inability to stop binging is the shame afterwards. Horrible, smarting shame that forces you to think about how disappointed your loved ones would be if they found out. I'm too much of a coward to own up to my bulimia. So I duck into the kitchen when everyone else is asleep and compulsively eat in secrecy, to curb my cravings, for that short-lived respite of joy when I'm too smothered by stress to breathe.

I'm stuck. There's no way out. It's a constant downward spiral. By eliminating the calories from my binge, I manage to dig myself out of the hole temporarily. Until my next episode, that is. I don't think there's a cure. There's vomiting, and although it eases my mind, it hurts my body. I see it in the burst blood vessels in my eyes, in the calluses on my knuckles from when I use my fingers to induce vomiting. I can't tell anyone, not even my mom. It's painful to imagine the way she'd look at me with pity. I don't want it. I'm stuck. Are there any other words for my situation?

I muffle my sobs with one hand as I mix hot tap water and table salt together. I hate this part. Pinching my nose with one hand, I chug the emetic down. It tastes horrible and it burns my throat. When I've sucked the glass dry, I pace around the kitchen as I wait for it to take effect. My stomach flips and writhes and burns with irritation. When I feel my muscles tighten, I sprint for the bathroom. I run the water to keep the noise of my vomiting camouflaged. Once the fan is humming, I collapse into a kneel beside the toilet, bruising my knees in the process. Tucking my loose hair into my shirt, I hang my head unceremoniously over the toilet. In less than a minute, my body spasms like the recoil of a gun and I'm retching uncontrollably.

When the first wave is over, I press my flushed cheek to the cold floor tiles, feeling refreshed for a moment all too brief. My neck is cramping in its uncomfortable slant as I heave the second wave. A third follows shortly. By the fourth, my stomach is empty. Without reservations, I sigh in relief and abruptly burst into tears. The bloat is gone and my body feels achy and exhausted but otherwise normal. The weeping will stop soon. I'm okay now. Stan won't feel inclined to leave me. I evaded the weight gain.

After I turn off the water and power down the fan, I dry my damp cheeks with toilet paper and brush my teeth for the second time tonight. When I've washed the puke-taste out of my mouth, I switch off the bathroom light and close the door softly behind me. I hear someone speaking from my bedroom. Functioning on instinct, I draw back into the shadows in hide. At first, I think it's my mother's voice. Was she listening to me in the bathroom? Does she suspect? Or worse? Does she know? But as I strain my ears, I recognize the deep baritone of Stan. He's here? I barrel into my room on quiet feet and lean on my door to close it. I inspect my room for a nightly visitor. When I observe nothing but corners of shadow and mountains of dirty laundry, I'm almost convinced that what I heard was a figment of my imagination.

I walk over to my bed, willing to melt into the warmth and softness of it. A soft song medley is echoing inside my head as I rearrange my blankets and fluff my pillows with expertise. As I'm preparing to lay down, a loud noise rattles me. When my heart resumes to beat, I figure out the sound. It was a knock. On glass. I turn my face to the window, and a very rain-drenched Stan stares right back at me.