I had to admit that I was different. It was a lot easier for me to dwell on things and continually run them over in my mind so that, just when I thought I was over something, I would put myself back in a funk. My mother had countless childhood tales of me sulking for days over a spilled milkshake or a confiscated game. I mulled over things for a long time when I latched onto something; there was no doubt about that. Sometimes it was a positive thing because I could end up dissecting a problem and figuring out a better, more inventive solution than most.
Many times, though, it did not play in my favor and resulted in me overthinking situations in far too much detail. I would get myself lost in a loop of thoughts and anxiety and only emerge days later. Normal people wondered how I could still be holding onto something that was so long past. Well, clearly, I was not normal.
I had been sitting in the living room, half watching television and half chatting to Kya and Ryan on Discord, when Jen and Jacob had come home. They had entered the door laughing, holding on to each other, and kissing. They really were the sweetest pair, and I could picture them in their retirement still loving each other just as much as they did at that moment. I felt like it was a rare and pure kind of love, the kind I had yet to experience. I wondered where I would be when they were happily enjoying their love together. I would probably be three doors down in the retirement home, in a single person’s unit, waiting for the nurse to bring me my dinner so that I could have someone to talk to.
Well, that was a happy thought, Abigail!
“Oooh, Abby, look at this!” Jennifer sunk into the couch next to me, holding a catalog from Beautiful Bride that she had just collected out of the mailbox. The dress she pointed out was gorgeous. “The neck is really similar to my prom dress, right?”
I nodded in agreement. “I love that color,” I said, feeling a thrill of excitement that I tried to quell for fear of the inevitable disappointment that would follow. Part of me said that the color was the only thing that would work for me about that dress. I felt the panic start to wash over me again. Dresses, dresses, and more dresses. When would it end?
“It is gorgeous. I wonder what that color is called.” She leaned over to the couch next to us where Jacob was sitting. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked, and he snapped to a level of attention he clearly hadn’t been paying to begin with, dropping his phone into his lap.
“Oh yes that is really pretty, you would look stunning in that, babe.”
Jen slapped him playfully over the head with the catalog while he continued to smile at her lovingly. “It isn’t for me, silly, it’s a bridesmaid’s dress.”
Jacob smiled broadly at his wife-to-be, clearly grateful that she wasn’t too put out by his blunder. He too would benefit from Jennifer’s never-ending capability to forgive. “I know that,” he said, his love for her leaking out through his eyes, “but you would still look gorgeous in it.”
Oh, good save, Jacob, I thought. He wasn’t saying it just to save face; I knew that he really meant every word.
Jen planted a kiss on his cheek.
He was certainly not wrong. Jennifer would look amazing in it. I felt like she would look amazing in pretty much anything, regardless of the body type nonsense that the sales lady spewed. I was now completely convinced that it was nonsense.
Jacob continued, doing his absolute best to sound engaged with the conversation. “Isn’t that color called, like, cornbread blue or something?”
Jennifer and I looked at each other in a single shared moment of incredulousness, eyes wide in disbelief, before we both burst out laughing. “It’s cornflower blue, Jacob!” Jennifer said. It took us all a while to get over the giggles his comment had triggered.
“Same thing,” he said, stifling another laugh at himself and shrugging his shoulders.
“I saw an amazing dress online the other day. Let me see if I can find it.” Jen pulled her phone out of her pocket and navigated to another bridal design website. She angled the screen so I could see it. “I don’t know so much about the cut, but I love that material.”
The dress was made of a gunmetal gray silk-like material. I figured it probably wasn’t real silk because the price tag was actually reasonable. It looked close enough, though, and I loved the color too. The model wearing the dress in the photo pulled it off impeccably. The material clung to her lithe body in all the right places, and I could not help but think that, on someone bigger, it would cling to all the wrong places.
“That material is so beautiful.” I looked at Jen with a small grimace. “Also, probably a bit unforgiving, though.”
She looked at the picture again. “Yeah, it probably wouldn’t look great on Taylor, but I definitely think it would look amazing on you and Jasmine.”
I loved her for including me in the “it’ll look great on you” group. The weird thing was that when I first saw the picture, I instantly loved it. I could picture myself pulling it on and feeling the soft caress of the material on my skin. That lasted for about ten seconds before another part of me started to focus on the fact that I would never be able to pull it off.
Maybe if I was able to lose some more weight before the wedding.
Jen seemed to notice the shift in my energy, and I suspected I had started something. “Where has this sudden lack of self-confidence come from, Abby?” Her voice was low and serious, but loving. The change in tone of the conversation even made Jacob look away from the television screen.
It was not that sudden, I wanted to say. I had never been a big fan of myself, really.
“I love you, and you are beautiful.”
I really did not want these false compliments.
Jen planted a kiss on my head and started to get up. I didn’t respond, mainly because I was terrified that this was going to turn into another conversation about my weight.
“I’ll prove it to you!” She slapped my thigh playfully, and jumped up, bounding up the stairs before anyone could say anything. How exactly was she going to prove this to me? Jacob looked at me and then up the now empty staircase. I heard Jen’s bedroom door open and close upstairs. Jacob looked at me questioningly, and I shrugged.
“I don’t know.” I went back to focusing on Discord. “She is your fiancé.” I laughed, and he grinned.
“She was your sister first,” he countered before Mom’s voice broke into our laughter. She stuck her head around the door that separated the lounge from the kitchen, smiling at the joke she had not heard, but mostly at our jovial energy.
“Dinner is almost ready.” The first thought that entered my head was that I would miss those words that I had heard almost every night of my life when I went off to college. It was Mom’s way of saying, “Switch off all your devices, wash your hands, and don’t let the food get cold,” without actually saying all of those things. “It will be about half an hour; I’m just finishing off the chili.”
My initial reaction was excitement. I loved Mexican food, and I especially loved Mom’s Mexican food. She had been given recipes by a Mexican lady she worked with, and it tasted as good as authentic. That initial reaction was soon tempered by this new part of me that triggered a completely different thought process. How many calories would that be? Could I take on those calories? Did I need them? How long would it take me to burn them off?
“Awesome, thanks, Mom. That sounds great!” I replied immediately and without a hint in my voice that I felt anything other than what I was saying. I was getting pretty good at that.
Jacob chimed in to say that he was starved and the food smelled delicious.
I entered the food thought loop without realizing it. One minute I was picturing the delicious aromas and tastes of Mexican food, and the next I was wondering what Mom was making with the chili. If it was just chili, that would be okay. I could work with protein, but the carbs that inevitably accompanied the chili would be the problem.
I was still working out how to get around adding carbs to my plate when Jennifer appeared again.
“Whoa!” J
acob exclaimed. “I did not expect that.”
I looked up to find my sister having gone back in time. She was wearing her prom dress.
The scooped neckline perfectly showed off her long neck and accentuated the top half of her body. The maroon organza overlay shimmered against her skin, and I had a flashback to her walking down the stairs on the evening of her prom. Jacob, my mom, and I had been waiting at the bottom. My mom had wielded the video camera and squealed at how beautiful Jen looked. She really had looked stunning, and she looked just as beautiful now.
“Remember your prom dress?” Jennifer asked with a smile. We had agreed that I would wear it too. “It’s perfect for both me and you, but it wouldn’t look great on Taylor, for instance. We can pull off dresses that other people can’t.” She said it like it was some sort of achievement. She whirled around so that the skirt lifted slightly with the momentum. “And other people can pull off dresses that we can’t. It doesn’t make them better or us worse, it just makes us all different.”
For a moment, I felt like I was stuck inside one of those children’s books where the main character is out to teach a life lesson to the child reader. I pushed my irritation down, knowing full well that Jennifer was not trying to be condescending. Instead, I smiled at her and nodded silently in agreement.
I was grateful when Jacob spoke. “You look gorgeous, Jen.” His face filled with love and admiration for the woman he was about to marry. “I remember that night like it was yesterday.” I knew what he was picturing in his mind. He was picturing Jen gliding down the stairs like she was floating on air, her dark, glistening hair cascading around her shoulders. “I feel like that night was really the beginning of our journey together.” Jacob’s words hung in the air between us all. He was not the most expressive of people, but when it came to Jen, he knew exactly how to say what he felt.
Jen’s face lit up, and she pulled him up toward her and wrapped her arms around him. The warmth that welled up inside me at the sight almost pushed away the irritation I felt.
“I feel the same way.” She looked up at him. “You looked so handsome in your suit, and I think that was the first time I really realized how I wanted to be with you every day for the rest of my life.” The sentiment was sickly sweet, but the two of them pulled it off without seeming forced or unrealistic.
I could not picture my sister with anyone else other than Jacob, or vice versa for that matter. They matched each other perfectly, with the strengths of one making up for the weaknesses of the other and the other way around. They also hardly ever fought, which I thought was weird, but I had heard them having words on occasion. They always seemed to resolve their small issues, though, and the next time you saw them they were the happy couple again.
Looking at Jennifer at that moment, a part of me knew that she was right. If I put that dress on right now, it would fit me, and probably look fine. ‘Fine’ was not good enough, though. I could picture it, but then there was that other part of me. Not quite a distinct voice, but loud enough to be heard over everything else, saying, “Yeah, it would look fine, but if you lose a little more weight, it will look amazing.” It was that same part of me that groaned internally when Mom stuck her head around the door again.
“Right, dinner is ready, gang! Come and get it.” She saw Jennifer in her prom dress. “Oh, wow, Jen, now that is a blast from the past.” She smiled and moved into the living room.
Jennifer whirled around. “I know, right?” She looked down at the dress, smiling happily. “And Abby is going to wear it to her prom too.”
“That is an awesome idea!” Mom exclaimed, and then, a look of concern passing over her face, she added, “If you want your own, we can totally get you your own, though.”
Typical Mom, I thought lovingly, always making sure no one felt left out. Although from a financial perspective it always made sense for hand-me-downs to be a thing in our family, it had never been forced on me. Thankfully, I had always idolized my sister so much that I had felt it an honor to wear anything that she had, often even before she was done wearing it.
“No, I want to wear it, Mom.” I forced a smile to assure her of my happiness. “I can’t wait.”
Mom smiled back.
The notion was genuine, but the excitement was not. I had a lot of work to do before I could wear that dress with pride. People had seen my sister in it, for heaven’s sake. I did not need negative comparisons being made.
“Okay then,” Mom said, then turned to Jen. “Well, I suggest you get changed out of that dress unless you want tacos all over your sister’s prom dress.” We all laughed.
“I’m sure Abby won’t mind a spot of chili on her dress.” Jen pulled her tongue at me, and I reciprocated. She bounded back up the stairs to change.
“It’s just a DIY dinner tonight, everyone. There’s chili, tacos, rice, and salad. Help yourself. I’m going to eat and then finish up some work.”
That was music to my ears. It was far easier to eat less when I was dishing up for myself, and more so if Mom was going to be distracted. Often Mom would make dishes like lasagna, and I would get this enormous chunk of calorie-ridden pasta and gooey cheese on my plate. The thought of it made me want to run to the toilet and throw up. There was no way to hide not eating something like that, so I would inevitably have to make up excuses. Thankfully, excuses were becoming my forte.
By now, my mom probably thought her cooking skills were taking a dive because I had “gone off” so many different meals. Thankfully, the number of times I had pretended to no longer like something she made had not yet correlated in her mind, it seemed. She would inevitably mutter something about me suddenly becoming a fussy eater and clear our plates with mine still three-quarters full.
As children, my mom had never forced us to finish our food the way other parents did. She seemed to understand that we would go through phases where we tried to exert our individuality through food, and she allowed us the space we needed to do that. Inevitably, we had both settled into pretty good and varied diets, and it was only recently that Mom was starting to see this ‘pickiness’ in me about what I would and wouldn’t eat.
Of course, it had nothing to do with her food, or the types of food. It was just food in general that was no longer my thing.
“Sounds great, Lorraine.” Jacob was enthusiastic about every meal. You could probably tell him he was having burgers for dinner every night for a week and he would still be equally excited every night. He had started out calling my mom “Mrs. Hall” when he and Jen first started dating, but very soon Mom told him to stop and just call her by her first name. He was part of the family, after all, she said. “Coming, Abby?” he asked me as he hoisted his tall frame out of the chair and headed toward the kitchen.
I pretended to be busy on my phone. “Yep, I’ll be there in a minute.” I did my best to sound distracted. In truth, my phone’s screen was blank. I was just giving Jacob time to get into the kitchen and start dishing up so that he would be close to finished by the time I got there. It was these types of strategies that came from my overthinking. Whether they were good or bad was determined by which side you were standing on. I thought they were pretty darn smart, but they were exhausting sometimes.
In the kitchen, my mom was seated at the breakfast nook with her laptop open in front of her, a complex spreadsheet filling the screen. She had worked at an engineering company for as long as I could remember. If I was correct, she had started there as the receptionist when we were very young, and she had worked her way up to secretary, then sales assistant, then sales representative. Finally, she now managed an entire division. She was a hard worker, and I was grateful that her company recognized that. They were a good company to work for, lots of opportunity for growth, and once a year they would have a company picnic for all the employees and their families.
I guessed my mom would have to go to next year’s one alone. The thought briefly filled me with sadness, and I made a mental note to ask her about her plans for when we all left.
It was only fair to show some interest in her feelings too.
The individual components of the meal were lined up on the counter like a buffet in a restaurant. Jacob was halfway through the line-up and barely had any more space on his plate, but he was just piling stuff on top now. I marveled at his metabolism. He ate like several starving horses but never gained any weight. I guess guys are just lucky like that. It seemed to only be around forty that men started getting those beer guts if they did not work out. For women, it was a lifelong battle.
Being overweight also seemed to bother men a lot less than it did women. I often saw older men carrying far too much weight around their middles, but they still pranced around like they were complete studs. Women, on the other hand, hid themselves if they put on weight. So sad and unfair, really.
“Mmmm…” Jacob seemed to be salivating while loading his plate, and Mom smiled at the noises he made while looking at her laptop. I thought Jacob was the son she never had. He definitely added a different dynamic to our all-girl household.
I lifted a plate from the stack on the counter and filled half of it with salad. The lettuce leaves would at least bulk up my plate and make it look like I had dished up more than I had. I was thankful, at that moment, that Mom had never been one to shred lettuce leaves. She didn’t have time for that and just popped them in the salad the same way they came off the lettuce head. That was helpful because it covered more area on my plate than shredded lettuce and made it look like I had dished up more than I had.
Those big leaves were also useful for hiding things that I didn’t want to eat, like carbs. Oh, the strange things I had started to notice recently.
Not Just a Number: A Young Adult Contemporary Novel Page 5