Chapter One, Part 2

An Eye For An Eye

It was time to get dressed. She stumbled to her dresser and put on the basics. There was a time not long ago when she would have coordinated her lingerie with her outfit but not today. Not any day in recent memory. Now it was whatever lay on top in the drawer became the chosen piece for the day and if she had been devoting any thought at all to dressing, she would have appreciated how much that streamlined and shortened the process.

She wasn't thinking about clothes though. There were noises coming from downstairs now and it sounded as if an army had moved into the kitchen. She groaned a little as she slipped on a skirt. She had been hoping to slip out before her mother awoke but no such luck.

The skirt fell to her knees and the groan was replaced by a voice that sounded like Alex Trebec asking, "When is losing a weight a bad thing?" She laughed and answered, "When you're trying to starve yourself to death!" Ding! Ding! Ding! "Congratulations, you move to the bonus round now!"

She did appreciate this aspect of being on the verge of total physical and mental collapse. The hallucinations came so easily and it was like having a TV conveniently embedded in her head.

And what exactly would be wrong with continuing to lose weight until you fade away to nothing? Another voice asked. That would be such a clean, uncomplicated way to go. No body to swell and rot and become worm food. Nothing to burn or bury, just a very simple, elegant exit leaving nothing behind but memories. And courteous as well. No one would have to go through the horror of discovering the body if there was no body to discover.

She tried on more clothes until she found a pair of pants that fit reasonably well and a top that sort of matched. She sat down in front of her mirror and groaned again as she did the best she could to hide the puffy bags under her eyes and the stress lines on her face that appeared to be conspiring to become wrinkles. She wished for a second that she had Cordelia's flair with advanced makeup techniques but it didn't last long. If wishes could come true, she wouldn't waste any of them on makeup tips.

"That will have to do," She said at last, when she was convinced that she looked a tad bit better than the Bride Of Frankenstein. She gathered up her books and formulated her strategy for doing combat with the evil mom demon that awaited downstairs. She forced herself to smile again. Sullen and broody would get her nowhere. But happy and cheerful might just get her out the door unscathed.

She was assaulted before she could get more than three feet into the kitchen. "Good morning, honey!" Her mom said brightly as she thrust an ice-cold glass of orange juice into Buffy's right hand. "Sit down and eat up! I hope I made enough food!"

Buffy looked at the table and thought, 'Mother, thy name be overkill.' It was covered with eggs, bacon, toast, sausage, pancakes and waffles. Pancakes AND waffles? Buffy wondered almost aloud. Three kinds of syrup and two bowls of fresh fruit. "Mom, I think you made enough food to feed Xander," She said as she set the orange juice down and went to the refrigerator. She took out a twenty-ounce bottle of Coke and opened it and downed almost half of it in a quick gulp. Her throat was parched and scratchy and the cola burned as it went down but she needed the caffeine kick and the sugar rush made it more than worth the pain.

Joyce frowned but didn't say anything about the Coke. "So sit. Eat. Talk. I didn't see you much last night so catch me up on everything."

Buffy pasted the fake smile back on her face and said, "I wish I could, mom, but Willow wants to study before school, big quiz today…and I promised I'd be there. And as far as catching up on everything, everything is still the same. School, homework, slaying, friends, you know the same old busy happy routine that it has always been."

Joyce continued frowning. "Don't lie to me, Buffy. Nothing where you're concerned is happy or routine anymore. For weeks now, you haven't been eating or sleeping and I've been patient, way more patient than I think I should have been. I feel guilty…I mean, I always knew there would come a day when something would happen with the first really big love of your life and you'd be devastated cause that happens to everyone and I knew all the right things to say and not say but then you turned out to be the slayer and Angel turned out to be a vampire and suddenly I was in the deep end, not knowing how to swim. I want to help but honestly I don't know what to tell a girl that has had to send her boyfriend to a demon dimension. And so far, Perfect Mother magazine hasn't covered that topic yet."

Buffy was amazed and more than a little touched. Her mother wasn't nearly as clueless as she had thought. That didn't alter the fact that she mostly just wanted to die though. She gulped the rest of her soda and returned to the refrigerator to grab another for the road. She turned and faced her mother again and said, "You have it nailed down pretty tight, mom. But give me a few more days, please. The eating and sleeping will come when I'm ready and I'm just not ready yet."

Joyce swallowed hard and turned to the counter. She knew that raising a teenage daughter by herself wasn't going to be easy but she had never counted on anything like this. She opened a package of jumbo-sized blueberry muffins and took two of them out. She turned again and opened Buffy's book bag and placed them inside. "If you become ready anytime in the near future, start with these. And don't go too fast or you'll just throw up." She swallowed again as another futile idea popped into her head. It probably wouldn't work either but she had to try. She took a twenty-dollar bill out of her pocket and placed it in Buffy's book bag next to the muffins. "Take your friends out to lunch or for a snack after school…just don't forget to order something for yourself."

Buffy didn't know how to tell her that the void she was feeling couldn't be filled with food, so she said, "I'll try, mom. I promise."

Joyce nodded and took a step forward and hugged her. So tightly that Buffy felt that her ribs were going crack. "OK, here's the deal. Today is Tuesday. If there isn't any big improvement by Saturday, we're going to check you into the hospital and at least get your body back in shape. I don't where to go from there but I'm not going to keep watching you waste away."

Buffy nodded and said, "That sounds very fair, mom." She of course thought that the whole plan was ludicrous but she also knew that if a slayer wants to leave a hospital, or a house or even a prison for that matter, she can and no one can stop her. And if she ended up being tied down and force fed, maybe that would be ok. Maybe not. Either way, the final choice was hers and hers alone.

Mostly out of frustration and the desperate need to do something more, Joyce raised her right arm and slapped her daughter's bottom hard. "And make sure you do your homework!"

Buffy jumped a little and said, "Sheesh, mom! I'm not eight!"

Joyce nodded and said, "Sometimes it's hard to tell. Now, don't you think you should be going before I change my mind?"

"I was thinking exactly that and if you just loosen up your grip a bit, I think I can manage to go," Buffy answered.

Reluctantly, Joyce let her go. Buffy stayed where she was for a moment and then kissed her mother's cheek. "Don't worry, mom, I'll be fine. Really." She then turned and fled out the door.

Joyce sat down and cried for a moment. She wasn't sure how long Buffy could go on like this. Rupert had assured her that slayers were capable of going for months without nourishment and that helped a bit sometimes but most of the time she saw Buffy as an ordinary girl and that she was scared.

At last, she collected herself and began packing up the enormous amount of food. There was a church right on the way to work that accepted donations for the homeless.

It always made her feel good to donate and even stay and help out when she could but this morning she knew it was going to do something more. It was going to erase some of the feeling that was utterly useless.