Fading Away

  After all the food was eaten and the gifts opened, I found myself sitting alone in the living room. The Christmas tree was lit up, with some strings of lights pulsing. The television was showing some sappy old Christmas movie, but thankfully somebody had turned off the sound.

  Then Coralee wandered in from the kitchen, where the adults sat drinking coffee and exchanging family gossip.

  She flopped down at the opposite end of the sofa. She didn’t say anything. She just sat there, pretending to be interested in the movie, which she couldn’t even hear.

  Finally she said, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I said.

  “You still mad at me?” she asked.

  I looked over at her. “I never was mad at you. You were mad at me.”

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Were so,” I said.

  And we ended up almost getting into an argument over who had been mad at whom. We stopped and looked at each other, and then broke out laughing. It was so ridiculous.

  After our laughter died down, Coralee sat close to me.

  “Girl, you’re looking good,” she said.

  “I never started it to look good,” I said. “I just wanted to feel better.”

  “Whatever, you still look great. I always thought you just had a fat face, but you actually have high cheek bones.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Who knew?”

  After a thoughtful pause, she muttered, “I hate you, bitch,” and gave me a playful shove, and we cracked up all over again.

  “But, seriously,” Coralee said, then, “I don’t think you should push it too far.”

  “Oh, I’m not,” I said.

  “Because-- now don’t get me wrong; i think you’re smoking’-- but you look a bit pale.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, but just a bit.”

  “I’m not even down to my ideal weight,” I pointed out.

  “Ideal weight? Listen to you,” she said, and sighed. “I shouldn’t have pushed you into all of it. I think I ruined you somehow. Ideal weight. You wouldn’t have ever said anything like that before.”

  “It’s all right,” I told her. “It feels great. That’s all I ever wanted.”

  “You were happier before I opened my big mouth.”

  “I’m still happy.”

  “Are you? You seemed pretty miserable.”

  “Only because you weren’t talking to me,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Sure.”

  “And that was the only reason.”

  “Yeah, why else?”

  She seemed satisfied, but still wouldn’t explain why she had got all snarky on me to begin with. “You should just eat regular now, the way you did before, you know? Even if you gain back a couple pounds.”

  “I always planned on doing that,” I said.

  “You sure?-- you sure you’re not, like, obsessing.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and to prove it, I made her follow me into the dining room, where the two of us pigged out on leftover cake and homemade Christmas cookies.

  All in all, it was the best Christmas I had ever had, despite the fact that the cake and cookies didn’t sit right on my stomach and later I had to go to the bathroom to throw up-- yeah, other than that it would have been so perfect.

  ************

  Some things take on a life of their own. Sometimes that’s good. Sometimes it’s bad. Whatever the case, you have no control over what is happening, and that can get pretty scary.

  By the time I returned to school, I had been on my old diet for over a week. It didn’t seem, though, that I was gaining back any weight. At first I thought this was a good thing, but then one day, after gym, I weighed myself on the scale in the locker room. I was astonished to discover I’d lost another two pounds! How was that even possible? I’d eaten like this before and never lost an ounce.

  Coralee suggested that maybe the scale was wrong, but I didn’t think so.

  “I actually feel it,” I said.

  She scoffed at me “How can you feel it? That’s impossible. It’s only two pounds.”

  “Two pounds on top of thirty-three pounds,” I said.

  But she just shook her head. “No way. Everything will go back to normal. Just keep eating like that,” she said, nodding at my lunch tray; I had two chili dogs, French fries, a piece of chocolate cake, and a non-diet soda.

  “I’ve been eating like this,” I said. “Shouldn’t it be making a difference already?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe your metabolism is all jacked up into high gear. Maybe you should cut back on the running.”

  “I already did that. I was up to three miles a day. Now I’m down to one. I don’t want to stop completely, because I sort of like it.”

  “Like running? You’re sick, you know that,” she said. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s just gonna take some time to get back to nor--” she stopped, as though struck by a troubling thought. “All the food you’re eating-- it is staying down, right?”

  “Well…”

  “Lisa!”

  “Well, most of it,” I said.

  She groaned.

  “I’ve been eating nothing but vegetables and fruit…. My stomach just doesn’t seem used to junk anymore.”

  “So you’re not… doing it on purpose.”

  “No,” I said. “That’s gross. Why would I do that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Some people do, you know.”

  “Well, not me. It’s doing it all on its own. My stomach’s just a little messed up-- it’s getting better.”

  “Promise?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then I’m sure it’ll be all right,” she said, but didn’t sound too sure.

  ************

  According to the ideal weight calculator I used, my ideal weight was 103.5 pounds.

  When I finally hit that weight, I decided that the calculator had to be wrong. If it was right, my ideal physical condition was freakishly thin.

  My cheeks seemed a bit to hollow, and on some days I woke with dark circles under my eyes. Worse than how I looked, I started to feel bad. I felt drained all the time, and so I had to give up running.

  The last few lost pounds changed a lot of things. Guys who had been hovering around, looking for an opening to talk to me, slowly shied away. Everybody gave me odd looks now. At home my parents grew fretful. I probably didn’t even look like their child, but rather some kid they had had pity on and adopted. They insisted I see a doctor, but after he examined me and reviewed my blood tests, he claimed that I was in excellent condition.

  Which was hard for me to believe. I didn’t feel in excellent condition; most of the time I felt like a wrung-out wash rag. I couldn’t stop thinking about how Coralee said doctors only practice medicine.

  Coralee stopped talking about my weight or vitamins or anything like that. I wasn’t sure whether that was because she felt guilty or because her interest was already waning, giving way to another interest. She was talking an awful lot about needlepoint.

  One weekend she rented some movies, and brought them over to my house, so that we could watch them on the big-screen television that was in the basement of our house. She ordered pizza, too, and paid for everything, which told me she was feeling some guilt, because she was extremely cheap and almost never parted with any of her baby-sitting money.

  We pigged out on deep-dish pizza, and watched movies. It was a good time, and for a while, I forgot about how I was slowly fading away.

  Then she put on the last movie, which was called Thinner, which was based on a Stephen King book. It was about a fat guy who gets cursed by a gypsy and keeps losing weight until he looks like a skeleton.

  When I realized what the movie was about, I was horrified.

  “Coralee! How could you?” I thought it was a cruel joke.

  “Honestly, I didn’t know,” she said, and went on the claim she had believed the movie was about a d
og.

  “A dog?”

  “I thought that was the name of the dog.”

  “Thinner? Who would name their dog Thinner?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “People name their dogs all kinds of weird things.”

  “Don’t you read the boxes when you rent a movie?”

  “Sure…sometimes.”

  “Just turn it off-- turn it off,” I said. I had my eyes half-covered with my hand; I couldn’t bear to look at the screen. I certainly didn’t want to know how the movie ends.

  After she turned off the big screen, we sat on the floor and finished the pizza. It was could and lay on my stomach like a brick.

  When Coralee spoke again, she asked if I wanted to turn on the stereo. I could tell that she felt pretty bad about the movie. You knew? Maybe it was an honest mistake. Maybe out there somewhere somebody would name their dog Thinner.

  “No,” I said about the stereo. I didn’t run the risk of hearing some song about bulimia. That just would have been too much.

  So we sat in silence and ate.

  Our basement was always chilly during the winter, but I still felt warm. I was wearing just an old tee shirt and a pair of cut-off jeans. My legs looked like sticks, and my knees look like large knobs in the branch of an old tree. Beneath my skin you could see the roadmap of blue veins that ran everywhere.

  When she thought I didn’t notice, Coralee sneaked looks at me. I caught the pained expression on her face.

  I wanted to make her feel better. None of it was her fault; there was no way she could have known what kind of reaction I’d have to a simple change of eating habits. Suddenly my stomach started to churn and make a gurgly sound, and I knew what was about to happen-- something I noticed a couple weeks before, something that I thought would cheer her up.

  “Hey,” I said. “You want to see something trippy?”

  “What?”

  “Watch this.” I lifted my shirt so that she could see my stomach. She winced, and I told her, “No, just keep watching.” And then it happened.

  A small ripple ran under my skin from one side of my upper stomach to the other.

  I thought it was hilarious, but Coralee’s eyes bugged out in horror.

  “What-- what was that?” she stammered.

  “I’m not sure,” I said “I think it’s the pizza getting digested. Pretty weird, huh?”

  “Girl, you need to see a doctor,” she said.

  “I did. He said I was perfect now.”

  “Well, he never saw that, that’s for sure. No way is that normal.”

  “It’s funny, though, isn’t it?” I said.

  “No, it’s not funny. Nothing about it is funny,” she cried. She jumped to her feet and began pacing the way she always did whenever she was upset. “I should have kept my big mouth shut. I can’t believe I did this to you--”

  “You? You didn’t do anything--” I tried to tell her, but she wasn’t listening.

  “Stupid-- stupid-- stupid--” she hissed, and with each word she cuffed herself in the side of her head so hard that I was afraid she might actually knock herself out.

  I tried to stop her, but couldn’t. Everything must have built up inside her over the weeks, and now she just had to get it all out. Finally she flopped down to the floor like a rag doll, and sat their softly crying and sniffling.

  I knelt down next to her.

  “Coralee, it’s all right,” I said.

  “Don’t say that,” she said gravely, too gravely for the situation as I saw it.

  “Don’t say what?” I asked.

  “Don’t say it’s all right,” she said, and sniffled as though she needed to blow her nose. “That’s an awful thing to say.”

  “It’s all right?”

  “There, you did it again. I swear,” she said, and balled her hand into a fist, “if you say it again, I’ll punch you right in the head.” And she looked about ready to do it, too.

  “I don’t understand what the problem is,” I said, and really didn’t.

  “It’s it obvious?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “You’re dying,” she said, “and it’s all because of me-- me and my big mouth.”

  “Dying?” That was ridiculous. Of course, I wasn’t dying. “Coralee, I’m not dying. What would put that in your head?”

  She stopped sniffling. “I know what you’re doing,” she said. “And don’t tell me you’re not.”

  “Not what?”

  “You’re making yourself sick.”

  “No, I’m not,” I said, astounded that she would accuse me of such a thing. “I told you before-- it’s just that my stomach bothers me sometimes-- that’s all. Trust me. I’m not doing that, and I’m not dying.”

  “How much do you weigh now, anyway,” she asked, and seemed to dread the answer

  “I’m not sure,” I lied. “I haven’t weighed myself in a week.”

  “How much?” she asked, totally not believing me.

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “How much?”

  I hedged before I told her, “A hundred even.”

  “A hundred!”

  “But it’ll be all right.”

  “How? How’s it gonna be all right?”

  “I’ve been watching it really close. It took a lot longer to lose the last couple pounds. My stomach is feeling better. It’s about to stop.”

  “Sure, it has to stop,” she said. “You don’t have anything else to lose.”

  “It’s been all right,” I promised.

  Then she said the strangest thing. “I loved you when you were fat.”

  “Uh, I though you said I wasn’t fat.”

  “Oh, you were fat,” she assured me. “But that was you. I don’t know why I even had to mention it.”

  “It never had anything to do with my weight, anyway. I just wanted to feel better, and I do-- even now,” I said.

  “Really? You’re not just saying that?”

  “No, so stop worrying, because there’s nothing to worry about.

  ~

  My weight finally bottomed out at 97 pounds, before I slowly regained some of the lost pounds.

  By summer I was back to 111 pounds, and it seemed as though that was where my weight would settle. I resumed running, which, even today, I still enjoy. It makes me feel good. Of course, there is always that little letdown after I run, but that only makes me look forward to the next day, when I can run again. I am up to six miles a day, and I am sure that in the fall I will have no trouble making the cross-country team.

  Coralee went through three or four more hobbies. Sometimes, I lose track. By summer she was into archery. She tried to get me interested, too, but I begged off; I couldn’t shake off the image of an arrow zipping straight for my forehead as she tried to shoot an apple off my head. This even caused a couple nightmares.

  Her family moved away at the beginning of summer. In the fall she will be attending a different school. As annoying as she can be, I will still miss her. If nothing else, she has always been well- meaning. And she really does care, in her own demented sort of way. Sometimes I still laugh to myself at how she actually believed I was sticking my finger down my throat to make myself vomit. I mean… as if…. I still wonder where she got the idea; even I couldn’t picture myself doing something like that. Oh, sure, there were a couple times I did do it. But it was never a habit. My stomach was bothering me and I was going to throw up anyway. I figured I’d just save the time, and get it over with. Also, I felt a little stupid standing and leaning over the toilet, and waiting. So, why not?

  All that is behind me now, anyway. My weight is fine. My stomach is fine. I’m running six miles a day, and by the fall, I will be up to seven or eight, or maybe even ten. Who knows? All I know is that everything is fine and it’s going to stay that way-- really.

  For sure.

  Freaky Jules

  Vanished

  1

&
nbsp; It would have been a typical day at Adler High, except that Mary Jo Mason disappeared yesterday.

  Cops came and went all day. All the classrooms and lockers had been searched yesterday, along with every nook and cranny of the basement that was the haunt of the school’s creepy janitor. There were two squad cars parked at the front of the student parking lot at all times. It was hard to tell if they were always the same two cars. Every now and then, the school secretary came on the public address system and requested that some student or other report down at the main office.

  I didn’t have to worry about being summoned. Mary Jo wasn’t a friend of mine—not many people were. I knew who she was; I’d seen her around. She was one of the Green clique, an annoying group of tree-huggers who constantly complained about how the school, and the school district, could be more environmentally friendly. But I had as much in common with them as I had with any of the other cliques at school. Tree-huggers, jocks, nerds, artsy-fartsy types—forget all of them; I was a clique of one, without much chance of adding on more members.

  School gossip was running thick and fast today. Somebody had sneaked into the school and kidnapped Mary Jo. Or she decided to run away and marry some old dude from Greenpeace. Or Carl Brunner, the creepy school janitor, had done something awful to her…. Gossip never ends. It’s a cozy constant that helps you get through the day in high school.

  Whether or not I wanted it, I got the lowdown on Mary Jo from Melody Hansen, who was my best friend because she was my only friend. You could say she was my best friend by default. She was hopelessly shallow. She would talk, talk, talk, mostly about paltry things, and it was easy for me to tune her out. She was probably the perfect friend for me.

  Without a doubt we were the two most unpopular girls in school. I never spoke with anybody, and if anybody tried to strike up a conversation with me, I just ignored them. I didn’t want anybody to get to know me, because I was sure nobody would like me anyway. I figured it is always better to be unpopular by your own choice.

  Melody was a social outcast for an entirely different reason. The mere fact that her mother was the assistant principal in charge of discipline drove a stake through the heart of possible popularity. Without even trying, she was condemned to be as popular as me, and I was only slightly more popular than vaginal warts.