A/N: I forgot to thank all the reviewers last time. Your feedback/support/just taking the time to review means loads to me. Thank you.
Also, the text messages might be kind of confusing, I know. I apologize.
Trigger warning for eating disorders.
…
Lucy pushes through the bathroom door, then turns and locks it and fishes the scale out from beside the toilet.
She takes a deep breath – and then gets dizzy.
Her hands find the edge of the sink and she grips with all her might, willing away the blackness at the edges of her vision.
When it does finally clear, she looks down, and steps on the scale, and then wonders if it was just a figment of her imagination or if the plastic really did creak that much under her weight.
Her teeth bite down on her lip, and she mentally counts down from three before she opens her eyes.
167.4 pounds.
And then she's on the floor and she's crying, and the scale is shoved back to it's place beside the toilet and that goddamned number just keeps swimming in front of her vision and she feels like she's in a nightmare that she'll never wake up from.
…
She's only eaten a salad (one half one day and another half the other day) in three days and she's starting to feel the repercussions.
Mr. Gomez's voice kind of rings in and out of her ears, and when they stand up to do the pledge of allegiance, she sits back down as soon as she can and puts her head on her desk, willing the black in her vision to go away.
"Hey." Someone whispers next to her, and she sits up and blinks over at Mike Chang, the only football player who's not even remotely as dickish as the rest of them. "You okay?"
"Uh – " Words get caught in her throat, and it's been so long since she's interacted with anybody other that Sam, Rachel, her parents, and Sam's parents that she thinks she's forgotten how to socialize like a normal human being.
"You just looked kind of, um, sick for a second." He explains, his eyebrows furrowed and his voice in a rough whisper.
"Oh." Lucy says. "I'm fine. I – yeah, I'm fine. But thank you."
He nods, and then leans back over into his desk and taps his pencil against his notebook.
…
"Bottoms up!"
There's something sort of invigorating about a morning slushie facial. Maybe it's the way that it wakes you up, or the way that you're suddenly aware of all the places that the slushie is dripping to.
She grits her teeth, because she just closed her locker, and then turns and is about to go and open it again when she feels her sneaker slip into something sticky and icy.
She doesn't even notice that she's falling backwards until her books hit the floor, followed by by a sudden blankness in her vision.
…
Her eyes open to two loud voices, one that's calling, "Luce? Luce, are you okay?" and the other one saying, "Oh my God.. Are you alright? You look a little sick, are you alright?".
Bracing her hands behind her she pushes up, and then feels an ache in her lower back that she's positive wasn't there a few minutes ago.
She's confused, and her back hurts, and she's dripping with slushie, so looking around she asks, "What happened?"
"You passed out." She recognizes the voice as Sam, as she recognizes the worry etched around his words as well.
"Oh." Lucy says, because she really can't think of anything else to say. Partly because, yes, her back is killing her in the way that it's a bit of a chore to try and focus on anything else, and partly because she's 99% sure that she knows why this happened.
"Are you okay?" And then Rachel's face is in her personal space, and she blinks behind her orange stained glasses in surprise. "Are you alright? Does it hurt anywhere? Do we need to go to the hospital? Oh, god, should I call 911?"
Her "I'm fine," isn't as convincing as it should be, but it stops Rachel from pulling her phone out of her backpack.
"Are you? Are you sure? Because if you're not – "
"Dude." Sam cuts in, a light laugh falling from his lips. "Chill out."
"Chill out? Chill – "
"Yeah, Rach. Um, chill out." Rachel glares at her a moment, but quickly gets over being interrupted when she remembers that Lucy is currently injured. "I just need to go – " she gets up, and then mutters a "wow" at the ache in her back " – um. Get cleaned up and stuff."
Her locker is right there, as are her ruined books, and the circle that had gathered around her slowly migrates down the hall with her, some people getting bored and leaving when she stops and opens her locker.
There's a fresh sweater and t-shirt mushed against some notebooks and the side of her locker, so she grabs them, and then tucks them under her arm and puts her History book in their place.
"Do you need help?" Rachel wonders with worried eyes.
Lucy moves to nod, but then subtly grips onto the lockers when the floor starts spinning underneath her.
"No." She says when she opens her eyes. "No, I've got it."
…
Hey Lucy?
Lucy?
Lucy?!
Lucy...well, I don't know your middle name, but answer me!
Those are the text messages that she wakes up to, reading them as she rubs the sleep out of her eyes and yawns through her morning breath. Her fingers tap out a reply quickly; she's almost sure that Rachel is about ten seconds away from calling her.
you're lucky i'm awake. It was only a half lie, really, and she didn't want to hurt her feelings by passive aggressively telling her that even though she is very much a morning person (crazily so, sometimes) not everybody is. And one of those everybodies would include Lucy.
Oh. Hello.
did you really text me at Lucy looks up at the clock in the corner of her phone8:14 just to say 'hello'?
No! Well, I mean, I did text you to say hello, but not just for that.
what's up? She clenches her eyes closed when a loud growl runs through her stomach and fists the sheets, half out of embarrassment and half because she's so hungry it actually is starting to sort of pain her.
Would you maybe like to hang out today? If you're not busy, of course.
Guiltily, Lucy realizes that it's never crossed her mind that she's never really hung out with Rachel outside of school besides that time at Sam's house. Whenever Lucy thinks of Rachel, there's always a tiled hallway in the background, filled with Cheerios and jocks and slushies.
that'd be fun she texts back, because it would. can i invite sam?
Rachel's too nice to say know, she knows, so she opens up a conversation with Sam while she waits for Rachel's reply. you wanna hang with rach today?
Of course! The more the merrier. Is what Rachel texts back, and Lucy smiles slightly before tapping back to Sam.
Tht question couldn't have waited til like 930 or w/e
She snickers, and feels bad for a second, and then, no.
…
She doesn't really remember ever coming to the park, for some reason. She figures that she probably has before, because sometimes on of the only ways to calm down a little girl is to take her to the park and let her play on the swings for a little while.
She doesn't want to think about her dad as a "fun-sucker" – because that's a little bit immature and actually a little bit too silly to seriously describe her father – but if she can't even remember her last visit to the only park in the small town of Lima, Ohio, that must be what he is, in some weird, more-than-mildly-disturbing way.
There's a lake with a sort of dock thing extending into it, and since the swings are currently occupied by a family of five, they make their way over to it, Rachel sitting cross-legged, and smoothing down her skirt so she doesn't unintentionally flash anybody, Lucy sitting identically next to her, and Sam plopping down with his feet hanging over the edge, the toe of his worn sneaker skimming the water.
"It's a nice day." Rachel comments, and Lucy nods.
"Awesome fishing weather." Sam says, and leans back on his palms.
Lucy snorts, and doesn't look up from picking at the canvas on her shoe when she asks, "Are there even fish in there?"
"I think so. Like...trout, or something."
"What was that face for?" She hears Rachel wonder with a laugh, and then looks over at Sam who's blushing pink under his floppy bangs.
"Um. You know that Cheerio? Santana Lopez, I think."
Lucy nods, because she's pretty sure she's the one that came up with Lucy Caboosey in the first place.
"Well, um. She calls me Trouty Mouth." Lucy and Rachel have to stifle laughs. "Because my mouth to fave ratio is 'totally off', or something like that. And I – " He turns and frowns. "Come on guys, it's not funny."
"It's not." Lucy agrees through her laughter. It's cruel and hurtful, really.
But she's not laughing at the nickname itself, more so Sam's reaction. She notices the way he tries to tuck his lips into his mouth, but all that really does is make him look like an old man that lost his dentures.
…
One thing about Lucy that really only Sam and her parents know (and now Rachel, too) is that she's really, really amazing at climbing trees.
She guesses that since she never did go to the park that she had to figure out a way to entertain herself, and in her young mind, 'fun' involved scaling to the very top of the oak in her backyard.
On more than one occasion did she injure herself, and during the winter she still feels a bit of the ache in her forearm from the summer before fourth grade, when a branch broke and sent her spiraling to the ground.
It was worth it though, and despite both of her parents protests, as soon as she was able to maneuver around with the chunky purple cast on her arm, she was off to the top again, her darkening hair getting stuck in all the loose branches on her way up.
It's one of the few childhood things that she still has, because age and problems and teenage drama doesn't even come close to dampening the childlike spirit that seems to burst out from nowhere when she's sitting on one of the top branches of a tree.
She's not as high up as she would like to be, because she thinks that with her weight, it wouldn't really go over that well. Breaking her arm is an uncomfortable feeling that she's pretty sure she never wants to experience again.
She looks down, and she catches Sam and Rachel sitting on one of the lower branches, talking and laughing and hand gesturing and when Rachel catches her eye and smiles and gives her a little wave, she waves back, hair blowing into her eyes and her sneaker tapping against bark of the limb beneath her.
…
She weighs herself when she gets home.
163.
…
A/N: Read, review, all that stuff. It motivates me to write, you know.
Also, I changed the title. I thought it fit a little better.