crash&burn.

  In the mirror, I look tired. My eyes used to be blue, but now they're grey. My hair used to be sun-gold on top, and bark-brown on bottom. Now, it's mouse-yellow and dirt-brown. The girl in the mirror has dead skin, waxy-pale skin with flaking patches.

   The Girl spends her weekend doing fun things she's missed. The Girl wears clothes that fit for once. The Friend turns her mouth into an O when The Girl walks out. "Wow...Your usual clothes make you look so much bigger that you are. I'm not surprised, but damn..." she says, staring at me. I can't tell if I was just complimented or insulted.

   We go to the barbecue at The Friend's Grandfather's house. I wear a swim suit, with guys shorts and a tank top. People keep asking about the scars on my shoulders and legs and arms and I laugh and talk about how clumsy I am, as my stomach ties in knots. I don't know why I thought going out this weekend was a good idea. People are staring at me.
   In the middle of the party, I get out of the pool. I feel too dizzy to keep swimming but all I can do is sit and stare and be jealous that all these people are swimming and burning more calories than I am. I'm sipping Diet Coke and paying attention to the feeling of it going into my stomach when Verna, The Friend's aunt, comes up to me. "Baby, I'm worried about you. It looks like it hurts. You look like you hurt." I blink once, twice, like I'm surprised. "No, no, I'm okay. I'm fine," I say with a smile and float away, pretending that I have to use the restroom.
    I hear The Friend's mom talking. "No, it's not like she doesn't eat...She just eats very.....heathily. She'll fill out, she's a teenager. They always do." Is she talking about me? She must be talking about The Friend or one of her cousins. But all the girls here, besides me, have eaten junk food this entire time. That leaves me to be the one they're talking about, except I'm not thin enough to be the person being discussed. It's not body dymorphia, it's the fact than I am genuinely fat.

   After I push worry into the corners of my head I start to have fun and feel alive. I'm a normal girl, diving underwater and coming back up with eyeliner running down my face, tackling The Friend into a pool, running and shooting water from a plastic gun.
   But then, after the show and the curtains close I get to step on the magic scale in The Friend's house, the digital one that weighs thirds and forths of a pound. I reweigh myself three times. I'm twenty pounds lighter than I'd estimated. It doesn't make sense, not at all. I'm three pounds heavier than I was in the hospital.
I'll lose the three pounds, but after that I won't be in the hospital. I won't be stupid. I'll let the numbers drop slower, I'll try to drink water, I'll try to take vitamins. I'll try to hold myself together for a few more months. But the breakdown can't happen yet. Forty pounds in the past few months and it can't stop now.

   On Thursday, they're monitering my heart, with the same pads they stuck all over my chest and hooked up to machine, like last year. EKG, I think it was called.