Not Just a Number: A Young Adult Contemporary Novel

by Sara Michaels

  My bedroom door had just closed behind me when I heard my mom’s bedroom door open.

  She was halfway down the stairs when she called out to me. “Abby, I’m running late, hun. Have you had something to eat?”

  I held a blueberry between my forefinger and thumb, wondering how many calories a single blueberry contained. I should Google it. “Yes, Mom. I have eaten already, thanks.”

  If she passed through the kitchen for coffee on her way out, she would see my bowl in the sink. She would be able to leave the house with the peace of mind that her youngest child was fed—and she was, just not with what she thought.

  “Okay, love you. See you later.”

  “You too, Mom.”

  I squashed the blueberry between my fingers, the black juice running down my hand, and put it in my mouth. I did the same with the other four until they were finished. I nibbled on the rice cake, which literally tasted like nothing. I wondered why they would make a food that tasted like nothing, and then realized that it was for people like me—people that didn’t deserve to taste food because they’d gotten themselves into a food funk and spoiled themselves.

  The blueberries were delicious, and I could definitely have more of those. They were packed with antioxidants, I knew, which was a good thing, but they still contained sugar, and sugar equaled calories.

  At least if Ryan or Kya got on my case at lunch again, I would not be lying when I said I had eaten.

  6

  Kya walked in front of me up the stairs in her house. Her house was really similar in set-up to ours, as were many of the houses in our neighborhood. In fact, the only difference in layout was that they had an extra bedroom upstairs, which they had converted into a study. Other than that, everything was exactly where it was in my house, which was weird but also comforting.

  Kya’s mom and dad would only be home later. Her older brother was still living at home, and he was in his room when we got to her house. He stuck his head out of the door when we came up the stairs, his cocoa skin identical to his sister’s.

  “Oh hey, Abby,” he said, as friendly as he always was. “How are you doing?” Before I could answer, his eyes ran the length of my body—not in a creepy way, he was like a brother to me too. “Damn Abby, what exercises are you doing? You’ve lost a lot of weight since I saw you last.” He said it very kindly, not in a judgmental way at all. I liked that he focused on what exercises I was doing and did not ask if I was eating properly like everyone else. Everyone always assumed that weight loss came from reducing calories, but a big part of the challenge was increasing your activity levels too.

  Kya was clearly irritated by her brother’s observation, although she never seemed to need an excuse to show irritation toward him.

  “Stu!” she squealed with her hands on her hips and a shocked look on her face. “You know it’s not polite to comment on a lady’s weight.”

  Stuart looked exasperated, and I felt bad for him. I also wanted to laugh out loud at her outdated statement, and seemed sure she had just invented that rule for herself in the moment.

  “It’s totally fine, Kya.” I tried to placate her. “I’m pretty sure it was a compliment.”

  Stuart rolled his eyes at his sister, and looking at me again, continued, “Have a great day, Abby.”

  “Thanks, Stuart.” I said it to a closed door as the young man retreated back into his room.

  “So rude,” Kya muttered. “Wait till I tell my mom he’s commenting on guests’ weights.”

  I laughed at that. I was hardly a ‘guest’ anymore anyway and would not have described myself as one for quite some time.

  Kya’s house felt like my second home. I had grown up here as much as I had in my own house, and it was the same with Kya in my house. Neither of our parents batted an eyelid if they found us in one another’s houses after school. It had happened a lot more in earlier years, and not so much this year as we were both super busy with other stuff. It was just another thing that was changing that I had no control over. Just like everything else, and this would be another place for me to miss when I was no longer here.

  “It’s really fine, Kya. He wasn’t being rude. I didn’t take it in an offensive way.”

  She continued to mutter under her breath for a bit longer, and I took off my shoes and sat cross legged on her double bed while she dug in her school bag. “Don’t you defend him.” She wagged her finger at me, only half joking. “It is really no wonder that he doesn’t have a girlfriend considering he talks to girls like that.” She muttered it more to herself than anyone else.

  Despite her ongoing quips at her brother, I knew she loved him and would not stand for anyone else running him down. I had seen Kya in full defensive mode over her brother at school, and it was a thing of wonder, to be honest. I certainly wouldn’t mess with Stu when Kya was around, even if I had wanted to.

  In return, Stu was just as protective over his little sister. I recalled with amusement the first time Ryan had come to Kya’s house and Stu had demanded to know what his intentions with Kya were. It had taken some convincing to persuade Stu that Ryan was just our friend and nothing more. The terrified look on Ryan’s face had been priceless as this muscled older boy towered over him, accusing him of messing with his little sister. We had teased him about that for weeks afterwards. Now Stu and Ryan greeted each other like old friends whenever he came to the house.

  Both Kya and I had assignments to work on. Mine was for physics class and Kya’s for biology. I had been surprised at my friend’s interest in biology, considering she was much more artistic than I was, but she had explained that you could not create art, especially around the human form, if you didn’t understand the biology of it. That made sense when she explained it, although I never would have made that connection myself. That was one of the things I loved most about my friendship with Kya. We were very similar, but also different enough that we could help one another to see the world in different ways. I would see the finer details, and Kya would see the beauty in the bigger picture.

  Our bedrooms were clear identifiers of the differences and similarities between us. We had similar pieces of furniture, but Kya’s dresser and bedside table had been hand-painted by her and customized so that they beautifully reflected her personality.

  My hands itched when I was in Kya’s room because she wasn’t one for putting things away regularly. She always said that my room looked like no one lived in it, and hers had that “lived in” feeling.

  I had joked and said that it looked like it was lived in by several people. It wasn’t messy exactly, but there were items of clothing hung across several surfaces and shoes lying scattered across the carpet. It was easily corrected by a few minutes of cleaning. I knew that her mom had argued with her on more than one occasion to keep her room tidy, but eventually they had agreed that Kya could keep her room as she wanted it as long as she kept her door closed. She had no problem with that.

  My bedroom walls at home were pretty bare except for the calendar that Ryan had given me; again, I felt like unnecessary stuff on the walls just equated to clutter. Kya’s walls, though, were jam-packed with her own artwork and copies of pieces of art by artists she admired.

  Kya’s phone battery was dying, and she reached into her drawer for her charger. When she opened it, I spotted a box of tampons. Although I had not exactly forgotten, that reminded me with a start that I should have been on my period at that moment, but I still wasn’t. There was no sign that it was on its way either.

  I tried to push it out of my mind. I needed to focus on my assignment; otherwise I would have something else to worry about.

  I did not realize that I was tapping my pen on my blank pad of paper until Kya looked at me under her eyelashes with a small smile.

  “Something on your mind?”

  “No…” I knew my answer was nowhere near convincing. “Nothing serious anyway.”

  Kya looked up and put down her own book and tablet on the bed next to her. “Okay, nothing seriou
s does not mean nothing, and it’s clearly bugging you because we’ve been sitting here for half an hour and you haven’t written a single word yet.” I glanced at my empty page in astonishment, and then at Kya’s half-filled page. “But you have tapped that pen against your book about forty million times.” Kya laughed, and so did I.

  “Oh hell, I’m sorry.” I put the pen down on the bed so that I wouldn't be tempted to fidget with it any longer. “So I’m supposed to have my period right now, but I’m not.” I failed to mention that it was actually the third month in a row that I hadn’t had my period.

  “That’s strange,” Kya said. “You’re not…” The air was pregnant with the unspoken word for a moment until we both started laughing.

  “Uh, yeah, with my invisible boyfriend?”

  “Well, you never know. You could have a secret thirty-six-year-old sugar daddy on the side that you haven’t told me about.”

  “Oh, yuck!” Even though I was well aware that thirty-six was not that old, I had the image of a graying man with a beer gut and beer breath in my head. I shook my head to get it out. “That is so gross, Kya.” I covered my mouth in mock nausea.

  “Some girls like older men. You know,” she shrugged and winked, “they are more mature and stuff apparently.” She was still joking. “So, what are you going to call it?”

  “Call what?”

  “The baby!” We erupted in laughter again, and I playfully whacked her on the side of her head with a pillow. She feigned injury. “I would hit you back, but I could never hit a pregnant woman.”

  It took some time for us to get over the giggles that our crazy scenario had activated. I really hoped that Stu hadn’t been standing behind the door listening to our weird conversation, although he would probably be more embarrassed than us to hear us talking about “girl stuff”.

  I remembered an argument I had witnessed between the siblings about Kya having forgotten her bra in the bathroom when she had showered. A much younger Stu had been mortified and her father had been running interference between the two, understanding that his young son was not mature enough to consider that his sister was actually a girl! I could not remember how that argument had ended, but I seemed to remember Kya grabbing one of her bras and chasing Stu through the house with it while he howled like a wounded dog for her to stop.

  We had never had that problem in our house. Girls’ stuff was just totally normal, and I could not imagine having to be careful about where you left your bra.

  Kya’s face soon looked a little more serious than I liked. I did not want this to become a big thing, and I definitely did not want her asking too many questions, because that could inevitably lead in the wrong direction. I probably shouldn’t have even mentioned it in the first place.

  “I guess it could be because you’re exercising so much more now than you used to?” Her last word hung in the air, an option I would like to consider, and I quickly grabbed at as a lifeline out of the food conversation.

  It could be that. I had been pushing myself, and I could feel how tired I was. Maybe I had thrown my hormones out of whack and they would soon settle back in again.

  “Yeah, it could be. I mean, I’m not doing that much, though.” The room was suddenly serious, and I longed for the hilarity of the previous moment. While I wanted the conversation to be about exercise and not my eating habits, I also didn’t want Kya focusing too much on that aspect either, so I was in a bit of a catch-22.

  “But your body is not used to it.” Kya bit her bottom lip. “Maybe you should go get it checked out, like by a doctor or something.”

  I could not picture myself sitting in a doctor’s office talking about my missed period, and everything I had done that could have led up to it. “You know what, I think it might just be stress.” That option sounded far better than any physical ailment. Stress would ease. Stress would go away all on its own without any medical intervention. Stress could not be diagnosed, really. It was an invisible ailment, and I liked it as an option. “I mean, I’ve got exams coming up, college starting soon, Jen’s wedding.” I ticked off the items on my fingers like somehow adding them up physically would make them seem more of a likely issue in their sheer abundance.

  “Could be, I guess.” Kya did not sound convinced.

  Almost every student in our school was experiencing the same levels of stress, and they were not experiencing the physical problems that I was, at least as far as we knew. Kya was experiencing a lot of the same stress and she was fine, but she had always been good at dealing with stress in healthy ways.

  “Maybe you should just ease up a bit on the exercise, you know? Maybe only go running a few times a week like you used to. Your body does need time to recover from exercise.”

  I nodded my head in agreement, hoping that she would believe that I would take that into consideration and cut back. I knew full well that I would be back out for a jog the very next morning—period or not. I also knew that she was right. You weren’t supposed to do structured exercise every single day. Not even professional athletes did that. Your body did need time to rest, but as far as I was concerned, my body had rested enough, and look where it had gotten me.

  With the air cleared, we worked on our assignments for a while. I knew that I was going to have to work on mine at home as well, though, because we kept on getting wrapped up in conversations. That was pretty normal for our joint ‘study’ sessions—so much so that if I knew I was going to be studying with Kya, I would study beforehand to make sure I actually got some of the work done.

  Kya was staying local for college, so she would continue living at home until she wanted to move out. We discussed what I would be taking to college, how tiny the dorm rooms were, and how it might just be better to rent a small apartment off campus with a roommate.

  Kya brought up that I might want to get a small bar fridge to keep in my dorm room for snacks, but I quickly changed that topic of conversation.

  “So, have you thought about prom yet?” I asked Kya. That was a safer topic. We both had dresses in mind, but neither of us had a partner. Kya had been dating a guy from a school in a neighboring school district, but it had not been serious. When she found out that he was going to college in Florida, she ended it, saying that it was better to do it now than later. I got the feeling she was using that as an excuse to do what she wanted to do anyway. “Maybe we should just go together.” I was only half joking.

  For the next while, we spoke about the boys at school, which ones had really improved with age and grown into themselves, and which ones seemed to be losing the plot where personal hygiene and clothing choices were concerned. We were both getting to the age where we wanted to be in relationships with more mature people. Most boys of our age were far too immature for proper relationships.

  “Brady Thompson smiled at me again in biology class the other day,” Kya said, faking a shiver for effect. The boy had nursed a year-long crush on Kya, but he was a bit creepy about showing his affections. Instead of talking to her, he would just sit and watch her, and then when she eventually made eye contact, he would smile. Kya had made it clear to both Ryan and I that she was not interested in Brady. We had asked why she didn’t just approach him and ask him to stop staring at her, but she felt weird about it. I could not remember a single relationship that Brady had had throughout our high school years, but this wasn’t the first strange crush he’d had. In fact, Grace had been another girl that he had followed around, smiling wanly at. He seemed harmless enough, and he would eventually give up, but I had to admit I was glad he hadn’t developed a fixation on me.

  Although, why would he?

  Then Kya hit me with a question right out of the blue. “So...” Her tone betrayed the fact that she was about to say something I may find strange. “Have you ever thought about Ryan as anything other than just a friend?” At first I thought she was joking, but there was no sign of a smile on her face.

  “Ryan? Uh…” I had absolutely no idea how to respond to that. “I have no ide
a.” My words were slow to escape, punctuating my confusion. “I’ve never really thought about it, to be honest. He’s always just been...Ryan.” I shrugged, thinking that pretty much explained it. Ryan was Ryan. He was sweet, kind, thoughtful, and pretty much the nicest guy I had ever met. “Why do you ask?” I was suspicious now. What did Kya know that I didn’t?

  Kya chewed the inside of her cheek and then bit her lip, clearly considering her response. Kya was not one to weigh her words very often, only really when she had something important she wanted to get across. Usually, she pretty much said whatever popped into her mind, often with disastrous and hilarious results.

  “Well, I don’t know this for sure,” she began carefully, “but I’m getting vibes from Ryan that he might see you as something more than just a friend.”

  Say what? I just sat there and looked at her for a minute. She was serious. Ryan? “Ryan likes me? He likes me?”

  Kya held her hand up. “I don’t know this for sure, Abby, don’t freak out. It is just a feeling I have.” She was clearly wondering how much she should tell me about this ‘feeling’ of hers, and I wanted her to tell me everything. “He just...I don’t know, he looks at you differently than he used to, and definitely differently than he looks at me. Like I might be totally off, but I don't think I am.” Kya’s vibes were usually pretty accurate. She had told us that she had spotted energy between a few different people at school shortly before they officially became couples. Often, they were combinations of people that no one would have guessed, like the time Paige Elderson, the prettiest girl in school, briefly hooked up with a guy from math club. Kya had called that one and we had all laughed at her, but it had turned out to be true. Sadly, the relationship hadn’t lasted long because Paige had been mocked so badly by her friends, but Kya’s vibes had been spot on.

  She had also spotted vibes between the Little League coach and my mom when they had briefly dated the previous summer. I know my mom had ended that relationship because she felt like she didn’t have enough time to dedicate to it with work and us girls. I wondered if she would pick it up again when we left the house. He was a nice enough guy, and it really was time my mom had something else in her life other than us and work.