Chapter Three; The Twitter Lockdown

I called in sick that day, unable to build up the courage and will to brave school today. It just wasn't possible. I spent time lounging in my bed like nothing mattered. I didn't even eat dinner last night I was so stressed out, but it was slightly normal for me to not eat anything for a period of time. I had a small glass of water this morning just to fill my stomach up without consuming any calories or carbohydrates.

So, here I sat. It was nearly noon and I was still lying uselessly in bed with my laptop perched up on my thighs while I scanned Tumblr and all the stories they had and funny pictures that would occasionally have a smile tugging at my lips. This website always cheered me up when I was all depressed. It sounded kind of lame, but the Internet was my lifesaver and literally my only friend. That sounded so dumb and retarded, I can't even say anything.

I had been in this position for the last three hours or so, just clicking and scrolling on the laptop while trying to see as much as possible through the two swelling eyes I had from my father. They were probably bruised as well, so I couldn't go out into public right now until I iced it or used some kind of medication to let the swelling die down. I tried using Tylenol but that was an absolute worthless attempt at relieving pain.

Suddenly, while I was reading some One Direction fan fictions on Tumblr, I felt my phone vibrate through the sheets and blankets, notifying me I had received a text. I scrambled around before grasping it and opening it to see who it was from, my eyes wincing slightly from the pain the light caused.

From: Unknown Number

Hey Skyler! The boys and I were wondering if you wanted to hang out today since we have nothing to do. We were going to go to a fast food restaurant. Let me know!

~Liam

I was considering declining it, but sighed. I didn't want to disappoint, even though I knew it wouldn't be much of a disappointment if I rejected their invitation since he probably sent the text out of politeness and not even caring. I would accept anyways, since I really needed to get out of the house. Spending the entire day on the computer isn't going to solve my problems. Actually, yeah, it would, but I still would go out to the restaurant with them. It sounded nice.

To: Liam

Sure, would love to. Pick me up in an hour?

~Skyler

Kicking the warm sheets off of me, I put my laptop to sleep before setting it on the floor and getting up. I stretched real fast before kicking into gear. I said an hour and I had to do a lot of things to alter my appearance in just an hour. Stripping down from my pajamas and desperately averting my eyes from the mirror, I stepped into the shower and started the water, feeling it hit my skin in a soothing manner. I shampooed my hair with some coconut shampoo and washed my body with vanilla body wash before hopping out and wrapping a towel around myself.

Drying my hair and straightening it quickly, I pinned back the bangs that threatened to fall in my face before starting on the makeup. Applying the usual foundation and blush, I put some silver eyeshadow on just to stand out and make it noticeable before putting both eyeliner and eyeshadow on. I rarely ever did that, but I would try to make my appearance okay for once since I was going to be seen in public. That decreased the amount of bruising on display on my face. Putting some shiny lip gloss on, I capped that up and stuffed everything into an old purse that I would take with me to hold the makeup.

Walking into my wardrobe, I put on some denim skinny jeans and a turquoise shirt that reached to my mid-forearm and had lace designs on the sleeves. It had a defined collar as well, and I liked the shirt. It was one of the only nice shirts I had. Pulling on socks, I walked downstairs leisurely knowing I had some time, about fifteen minutes to kill.

Taking my phone out, I played a couple games of Pac Man on it before the doorbell chimed out quite loudly in fact. I strode to go get it and opened the door to reveal five smiling boys. Letting a small smile overtake my face, I walked out but not before grabbing my Vans. I slipped those on as they were all black, even if they were a size too small and made my feet look absolutely tiny and I despised the fact, but it was the only one even close to my size.

"Are you ready to go, Skyler?" asked Liam graciously, nearly bowing. Holding his hand out for me to take, an offer I absolutely ignored I walked out before locking the house up, even if there was nothing of value in the residence since neither my father or I owned anything truly special.

"Yeah," I replied, not bothering with long replies. I was ready. And I said so. There would be nothing more out of me for now.

I hopped into their expensive car and admired the leather interior slightly before leaning back. Louis was driving but all the boys would occasionally sneak glances at my face to see how much the bruises had formed overnight. "Does your face hurt?" asked Niall bluntly.

"No. I took Tylenol," I lied. Tylenol is absolutely useless, but I didn't want to say so. I wouldn't want to make a big deal about my face. It happened nearly every week, and even if it stung slightly my father had done much worse to me.

"Alright," replied the Irish blond, turning his head back to face forward.

Silence enveloped the car directly after our short conversation and I could nearly cut the awkwardness with a knife right now, that's how…weird it was in their car right now. It was like they didn't even want to talk to each other when I was around or something, which made sense, I suppose as I was not necessarily a fun person to talk to. The five boys were slowly taking after the kids in my school, but it didn't matter to me anymore because I was used to that as well.

After ten more minutes of no speaking, the car pulled into a parking lot and pulled up into a slot. People with cameras and weirdly shaped microphones were milling around. Paparazzi were here, but why? I don't understand why they feel they must stalk celebrities and their personal life. I hoped they wouldn't make too much of a deal of a new girl being with the most popular boy band in the world, but somehow I knew that they would make a huge deal out of it.

Liam stepped out of the car first and blinding flashes erupted; I felt bad for the poor boy, even if he had been through it many times already. It just didn't seem right to do such a thing like shove cameras and microphones into peoples' faces when they were walking to go eat or something.

One by one, the boys emerged from the vehicle and then Harry, who exited last, turned and beckoned to me to come out. This was absolutely great. I came to a food place, even if I wasn't going to eat anything, and awkward silence would engulf the entire table while we were there, and now I had to face paparazzi? This was nearly worse than yesterday.

Sighing, I resigned to heaving myself out of the car, and turned to the boys to follow them up into the restaurant. Even more flashes blinded me when I emerged from the car because I was some girl with One Direction, so now the entire media has to flip out. If you would take the time to please note that sarcasm, thank you because it was there. Harry latched onto my hand for reassurance even if I didn't need it.

Questions followed as well, "Which member of One Direction are you dating?" Wait what? One Direction? I knew that they were five boys…but I didn't think it possible to meet them. I just thought they were five egotistical boys. That changed my whole perspective on them. So, that's why Zayn asked me if I recognized them or not. Everything seemed to click together now.

"Is it Harry?"

"Harry, is this your new girlfriend?"

"Louis, is Eleanor pregnant with your child?"

A lot more questions followed which the boys and I all deftly avoided before entering the building and Harry dropped my hand. I snarled, "You didn't have to hold my hand like I was a child."

"I just thought you would need some aid since you haven't done it before," Harry responded blandly as we finally found a seat.

"I didn't," I muttered under my breath, as I was not very happy at this moment and all I wanted to do is get home. Now, I would be forced to consume food loaded with calories in front of these boys, and that didn't feel very appealing to me, but neither did food so this was practically a lose-lose situation for me.

Sitting down, a waiter came over. "I'm John," he introduced himself. "I'll be your server today; can I start you off with any drinks?" He was quite pleasant, but a bit overboard.

"Water," I said for myself while the rest of the boys ordered sodas and things like that, which almost made me gag from the amount of calories, sugars, and carbohydrates in those beverages. We all received glasses full of what we ordered and the boys started gulping down their sugary drinks. I drank my water peacefully. I loved water. You could fill yourself up on it while having no calories or other assorted things that were going to make you fat. Sometimes, I would just drink water all day and not eat anything and be satisfied for the day.

That's what I loved about liquid diets as I had taken a few on occasion. They make you lose weight so fast, and they were quick, maybe a month or so. Drifting off into my thoughts on how not to eat much in front of the boys, I scanned the Weight-Watchers part of the menu. Even then, there were more than a hundred calories eat and I felt disgust. That isn't watching your weight, that's watching you weight increase.

When John came back around to take our order, he asked the boys first and they ordered cheeseburgers, while Niall ordered three cheeseburgers. Then, the waiter turned to me and dread took over, churning my stomach. This wasn't going to be good. My throat felt dry as I knew that One Direction was waiting for me to order.

"I'll have the Caesar salad, but instead of the Caesar dressing, can I have light vinaigrette instead?" I said and the waiter nodded and scribbled something down onto his notepad before bidding us a goodbye and scurrying off to the kitchen to tell the cooks what we ordered. The five boys were all staring at me strangely.

"What?" I asked irritably.

"Why did you order so little?" Niall asked, confused.

"I'm not hungry," I responded. That was always my answer when people asked me. I didn't have an eating disorder I just despised eating food and always thought about what I ate. Most people would call that anorexia, but I wasn't underweight for my age, but I was overweight, so no I wasn't even close to anorexia, even if I always had a voice telling me I was fat in my mind, but I blamed the kids I went to school with about that.

{}{}{}{}{}

The boys ate quickly while I picked at my salad, not interested in eating. I got maybe halfway through when the boys claimed they were finished while they, again, gave me weird looks, but this time I ignored them. The waiter came over once more and asked if I was done since I was the only one with food on my plate. Nodding my head, I pushed the plate toward him, as I didn't want to eat any more. I had already consumed maybe seventy five calories in that salad and it was not even late afternoon yet, I felt utterly disgusted.

We all headed back out where paparazzi were still swarming around, having nothing better to do than stalk people. More flashes of camera were seen, the blinding white lights dazing me and leaving dots swimming before my eyes. There were many more questions shouted out, but again they were ignored.

"Let's just get back to our house," Louis muttered. He seemed upset by all the questions that were shot his way about him and Eleanor.

"What about dropping me off?" I asked, surprised. My eyebrows arched.

"We aren't taking you home. You shouldn't be alone after that. Now that they know who you are, they won't leave you alone. They're probably following this car now," Liam said with a scowl implanted on his face.

"Oh," I said. I didn't really know what to do about this.

Pulling out my phone, I went onto Facebook as I had nothing better to do at this very moment since silence swamped the car once more. The restaurant and the car ride there had been difficult enough, now I had to spend time at their house for an indefinite amount of time? I was starting to dread this, even if their house was crazily extravagant.

Many people had posted on my wall, several being Directioners that had nothing better to do with their lives. Pictures of me with the boys had been uploaded and I knew I was in some trouble. I braced myself for the insults before scanning through it. They were horrid. I was fat; I was ugly, among other assorted and really quite creative insults. It hurt me deeper and deeper each time.

"Do you have Twitter?" questioned Zayn suddenly. He seemed worried.

"No…" I replied, unsure of what he was getting after.

"Good," he said. He seemed relieved. I felt so out of the loop right now.

Suspicious of what he was talking about, I went to my phone and downloaded the Twitter application. I wanted to know what was going on. I formed my own account and looked at the circling tweets right now. There were several pictures of me with the boys, flinching away from the people taking pictures. The retweets below were even worse.

Ergh, that new girl with 1d is so ugly!

Totally! And fat, to add on top of that!

It kept on going like that and I started shaking. This was so bad; I couldn't even handle it anymore. Closing out of the lap, I leaped out of the room and into the bathroom once more, shaking. I wouldn't cut again, no. I just sat here shaking. I knew I was ugly and I knew I was fat, why must people point it out to my face. This was worse than high school since it was people I didn't even know insulting me. Tremble after tremble passed through me and I didn't know how much longer I would last with talking to One Direction and being talked about on media before I snapped.

From the bathroom, I heard murmurs coming from the boys. "We can't let her see Twitter," muttered Zayn.

"She would snap. Did you see her salad today?" returned Niall.

All of them were serious about this. Well, too late, guys because I already saw Twitter, and I'm slowly breaking anyway even without the help of the public although they certainly sped it along. I knew I liked One Direction, I mean they were cool guys, but hanging out with celebrities was difficult. I was vulnerable mentally and then paparazzi just have to go and snap pictures of me and then Directioners talk about me on Twitter and Facebook. I hate my life right now.

Sighing, I drifted in and out of suicidal thoughts, even if it were utterly horrible that I did. Who cared? One Direction didn't. They were just people I met at a McDonalds that thought I was interesting. They wouldn't care. Nobody at school would care. I had no relatives that cared. I didn't even have any friends. Why was my life worth living anymore?