113.5

Brilliant

Fat
disgusting
whale

But on track, Goal 110. 100,90,80,70 vanish.

I tuck the scales away in my super-secret hiding place and replace them with my ‘real’ ones. The ones that lie to my father, my stepmother, my stupid fucked up brain. I messed with wires and locked screws so it flicks between 120 and 124. They want me better, they won’t question the facts.

I flush the toilet; empty bowels mean clearer readings, my stepmother Carole always says. Seconds later she is at the door, with her stupid clipboard with weight after fake weight jotted down like a roll call for whales anonymous.

I strip off my joggers , leaving my modesty in a plain white t-shirt and step onto the scales, my tampering doesn’t fail me. “121, down two on last week, Kurt. That’s not good.” She accuses, waving a pointy witches finger at me as if she can zap the fat on my bones with her disappointment.

I shrug and step back into my joggers, I have to pull the tie twice as tight as I did when I bought them, if I leave it loose they pool around my ankles, slide off my hipbones revealing my too thin fat horrible thighs.

“Dinners on the table, come and eat.” Eat, a weird word, so short and normal yet with so many implications. Eat and I get fat, eat and wobbly bobbly flesh will flop over my pants and pour out of my skin and drown the whole world. Just one bite, or two or three or scoff down plates and plates of greasy mouth-watering meals I’d rather die.

It’s lasagne I see as I sit down, fat fat fat hanging over the edges of the chair and creep towards the floor. Dad has a plate ready for me (408) dripping with grease, meat sliding over the china leaving a messy orange slime behind it. I could eat it all, then some more then Finns, then Carole’s, then more, No way is that going in me. I can picture it coating my insides, the slime painting my guts orange, taunting me, messing with me, hating me. No. I turn it down.

“I’m not that hungry, Dad. Big lunch.” I pat my empty full to bursting stomach and he looks doubtful but gives in, better not make a fuss when Carole’s perfect quarterback son is there. Can’t let him in on this family secret, can’t let him know how fucked up I am.

I put 3 pieces of broccoli on a small bread plate (24 each) and half a cup of peas (58.5). Cut the broccoli into tiny squares and stare at the wall while I draw each bite into my mouth. Finn has devoured 2 plates of disgusting greasy lasagne and goes for my rejected plate. It’ll go straight to his tubby belly and bloated thighs, no amount of football can work that off. I shake my leg while I swallow the last bite; I have to hold myself back from the Stairmaster in the basement for 10 minutes so as to appear more normal.

“Nana Vetty wants you to go stay there this weekend.” Dad says suddenly and my leg stops shaking.

“No.” I say.

“She just wants to see you.”

“She just wants to feed me.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Yes no yes no yes no yes no yes no yes no yes no yes no yes no yes.

I say nothing.

Nana Vetty is Moms Mom. Real Mom’s Mom. Real dead Mom’s Mom. Yvette Collins, PHD. Except she doesn’t have a PHD, not really. She has a piece of paper she printed off the internet after her week long express counselling course that she framed and hung up pride of place in her office. But she tells people she has a PHD, that way she can crawl inside people heads and dig out their deepest thoughts and secrets with a sharp edged shovel and nobody asks any questions.

She’s just nosy, nosy and rude and she wants to claw her way into my brain because I remind her of her Daughter, her dead daughter, my dead mother. She tries to fix me, over and over and over and over and over and over. She tried harder than anyone because she has to fix things, she can’t have something broken unless she breaks it. Then it must never be put back together again.

I think she broke my Mom.

“It can’t hurt to see her for a couple of days, she misses you.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Kurt.” He warns and I can see the fat on his bald head wrinkle when he frowns.

“You can’t make me.”

“I’m taking the StairMaster.”

He think’s that’ll make me cave. Because he thinks he knows me well enough. He doesn’t. Take it, Dad, take it and I’ll run up and down the stairs instead, my basement stairs are concrete you won’t hear me as I run run run run run run run run run run until 3 in the morning, up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down until I feel like I’ll faint or throw up the non-existent contents of my stomach and then I’ll run some more.

I lift my fat ass from the chair.

“Sit down.” He says.

“I’m tired, I’m going to bed.” I say.

I don’t wait to hear his arguments. The fat blood is pounding in my ears and I’ve waited too long to work off this food and it’s rash action time.

I kneel before my toilet, the floor digging into my bones, crushing them against the porcelain tiles. I never had the proper gag reflex for this, a girl in my support group does, she can puke before her fingers even touch her tongue. Not me, I’ve tried, believe me I have tried over and over, fingers-spoons-a ruler in the bathroom at school, nothing.

Instead I tilt my head back and squirt some soap into my throat and gargle gargle gargle gargle gargle until foam pours out of my mouth and runs down my chin and my throat twitches, my stomach rebels and gives in shoving everything back up my gullet and sloshing into the water below my head. I grip the sides of the toilet bowl and gasp as it happens over and over and over until theres nothing left inside me and gooey chunks of something in the water.

My knees are cold. My arms are cold. My heart is cold and I flush flush flush the toilet until it’s clean clean clean. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, ignoring the blood that smears my skin, and click open the door.

Back in my bedroom I pull on a purple turtleneck and then a raggedy old sweater and finally an oversized grey sweatshirt that used to be Dads and curl up on my bed.

I’m not sure if I fall asleep or pass out.

Not that it matters.