Watch other people eat, and feel superior!

-Tip on most pro-eating disorder websites

Alice put the toothbrush away the second she saw her baby sister watching could never allow that to happen again, when her sister became old enough to understand what Alice had done, would she attempt to try it herself? If she wanted what Alice had, and decided that if she did it, than it was okay? Alice had put the idea in her mind, whether it stuck to her memory or not. When she was older, would she get a faint flash of Alice kneeling over the toilet, with a toothbrush jammed down her throat? The very monster Alice was trying to shelter her from was flapping a tail, a fin, out of the water, splashing Cynthia in the face. How many more time would this happen?

Alice picked Cynthia put and took her back to the living room. She would pretend that nothing ever happened, to help Cynthia forget about it completely. After all, memories are never totally forgotten, maybe one day you will get a rendering of some thing that happened when you were very young, and in a flash, that memory would be gone. Just because they are not brought up, does not mean they are forgotten. Alice hoped this one would stay bogged down for many years.

While Alice watched her sister play, not able to comprehend what had just happened, Alice decided to check her phone for messages. She fished around her purse which she had flopped onto the kitchen table until her fingers made contact with her Voyager, and she yanked the phone out, unlocking the touch screen at the same time with a deft maneuver. She had two new text messages, one was from Rosalie, the other, from a number she did not have on her phone.

Alice's heart lifted into her throat, and for a second, she felt the familiar tingling to purge herself. It was never a good idea to stop right in the middle of purging, but she had to, it wasn't like she could do it with her sister watching.

Alice held back what had become her instinct however, and she opened the unknown text message, knowing who it had to be. He was sure early, he said tonight, and it wasn't even four yet. Alice added the number to her contact list before she opened the text message, not wanting to delete the only way she had to talk to him. The message was only a simple hello, and Alice quickly typed out an answer.

Hey, what are you up to? Alice sent it, hoping her phone didn't lose it. She had been having trouble getting messages through every time ever since she had dropped her phone while texting while she giving Cynthia a bath. She really didn't want Jasper to think she was ignoring him. You could only be ignored so many times before the person starts to drift away...

Driving, you? He answered within the minute. Well, some people had no sense of self safety.

Isn't that dangerous? And I'm just watching my sister. Alice pounded back as soon as she could.

Not if you know how to do it right. Jasper informed her. He was a seriously fast texter... didn't expect that from a poet, now did you? Expect the unexpected.

If you crash and burn and die, totally not my fault. Alice wrote back, hoping he would be able to take a joke when he saw one. As soon as Alice sent it, she wished she could take it worried if he would think she was a stupid little kid now.

Haha, don't think I could find a way to pin this on you if I was dead. He had answered.

Good point. Alice said, still wishing she hadn't sent that stupid message.

Suddenly, Alice wondered what she was even doing talking to him. He was a nineteen year old poet, and she was a sixteen year old Rexie, they didn't even belong in the same world. They should never have even met, and now Alice was talking to him like she had known him for years! What was she doing! It would be so easy to mess up every thing, years and years of painstaking work she could so easily mess up. And over what? A boy that she most likely would not even remember a year or two from now? She could mess up her entire life... and yet she could not put the phone down. A part of Alice died right then.

That scared her. It would be a good thing for her if the part that was still the vibrant and happy child she had been before she... well... you know, but for Cynthia, it would be very, very bad. If the larger part of her mind, the part that had been taken over by the parasite that she thought of as her God had died... Alice could not go on. Alice did not even notice that her phone was buzzing until it had been for a good twenty or thirty seconds, and she was able to snap out of her trance, to see the real world again.

And at that time, Alice knew the small child that had some how survived so long, who had become her sister's protector from the devil within, the devil Alice loved, had been the one to surcome. She didn't know what made her think that part of her was the part to 'die',but she was sure of it. Maybe because, even though she had been off food for four days, and purged any liqiud calories she had allowed herself to take in, she still was horrified at the thought of eating. Even more than usual.

Alice girmly looked at the phone. The new text message read, What did you expect from a person who sees the world in a light?

That sounds so beautiful when you put it that way. Alice typed back.

While she waited for an answer, she looked at Cynthia, playing on the floor, banging two blocks together and giggling. Now, there was nothing inside Alice that, even deep down, wanted her sister to have a different future than her. She told herself that she should start to show Cynthia the works as soon as she was old enough to understand weight gain, and even earlier. Alice wished that some one had been around to show her, she was totally in the dark when she was first starting out. Who knows, if Cynthia was a true anorexic and or bulimic, she would already be marked, set up for it like a train on a turntable. All she had to do was find her trigger, and bam! You've got yourself a domino effect. Maybe Alice wouldn't have to do any thing at all.

This wasn't Alice, but she didn't know that. She thought this was who she was and what she wanted, but it was not, in any way. It was the bug, the defect that stuck deep in her genetic makeup. She didn't really want what she was doing, but Ana and Mia, the two most poisonous people in the world, the two people Alice loved most, had conqured their last battle, Alice was now their puppet, to use as they wished.

As if on cue, her chest panged and stabbed with pain from twisting around to see where a crash came from. Some thing had simply fallen off a shelf, but the pain that racked Alice's body was enough to make her sit down and clutch her side. Nothing like that would ever happen again. Alice promised it to herself.

Her phone buzzed with a text message, and Alice almost expected the addresser to be from an Ana or Mia. To knock on her door and rub the fact that they had her in a little bit, before making her do some thing she didn't want to, to use her. She knew that they would start with making her never talk to Jasper again.

The text was not from the ghost of the people that Alice had come to call her friends, but from the very person they wanted her to pull and yank away from before it became too painful for her to do so, before she wanted him to stay with her, and she could not break the fabric of the cloth of life they had woven together.

Peace cannot be kept by force, It can only be achived by understanding.

Albert Einstein? Poet can't come up with some thing on his own? Alice asked, a smile creeping onto her face. She thought she was the only one left in the world that knew that quote.

We all run dry at some point, give a guy a break! He answered playfully.

I'll see what I can do. Alice answered, then, right after she sent it, typed out another one, I gotta go, my sister needs me.

She didn't like lying to him, but it had to be done. She had to sort out her thoughts, new thoughts that flooded her system, and decide if she could handle talking to him or not.

Alice told herself that she had to do this, that if she just dove right into talking to him, she would regret it. She had to take things slowly, if she even did decide to speak with him at all. She didn't know, things could go either way right now. She didn't want him to get hurt if she kept this... friendship? Going for years, and then backed out when he started to suspect some thing was up with her, just like every one else did. Alice cared about his feelings, she really did.

Ok, bye... I'm really glad I met you by the way. Alice shoved her phone back in her bag, not bothering to answer this text message, to tell him that she was glad she got to meet him as well.

What gave him the right to say that he was happy that they had met? He barely knew her! She wanted to be mad at him because of this, to never want to talk to him, to let him slip away and become a ghost like so many other people in past had. She could have done it, easily, if she wanted to.

The strange thing was, she didn't.