‘If you want, I’d be happy to work out with you.’
I looked at him, confused.
‘At work we always tell people, “Don’t eat your feelings”.’
I could feel my face burn with humiliation. Shame.
Spencer kept going. ‘I’m not being an asshole. I can’t help but notice that you’re looking a little puffy and I can help. It’s my job.’
‘Puffy!’ My eyes filled with tears.
Even Spencer, who wasn’t what you’d call the brightest crayon in the box, realised he’d gone too far.
‘I didn’t mean it in a bad way,’ he backtracked. ‘I’m just so used to everyone in the business being super lean and athletic, you know.’
‘Wrong answer!’ I yelled before rushing off to the safety of my bedroom.
The worst thing was, I’d actually been feeling okay about my looks. I was planning to wear my midnight blue lace dress to the funeral, knowing it would help me feel confident enough to face the day we were all dreading. And Spencer had gone and ruined everything with one word.
Puffy.
That’s when I’d decided I’d had enough. No longer was I going to provide fuel for people like Spencer and Grandma Joan and Mirko Palovich to call me names. I was going to become skinny. Powerful. Invincible. I would not get fatter and fatter until I ended up like Grandma Joan, dead in her floral print muumuu and oversized coffin.
It was time I took control.
Chapter 16: Churn and Burn
Grandma Joan’s funeral was what you might call a churn and burn kind of affair. I spent the day sucking in my stomach and waiting for the whole thing to be over. Which really wasn’t long. It was Grandma Joan’s last hurrah, but everyone seemed to be in a hurry to get out of there.
Uncle Max came straight off the plane. He flew in that morning and he was flying back to Saudi Arabia the next day. He looked tired as hell, his face pale and flabby and his gut hanging over the top of his chinos. He had a tan, but that had only aged him further. His skin was like leather. He had Mum’s dark eyes, but all her hard work had definitely paid off. She looked at least ten years younger.
‘I can’t stick around,’ Uncle Max said when Mum asked him how long he was planning to stay. ‘Too busy at work.’ Mum tried hard to hide her disappointment, but I could see it behind her attempt at a neutral face. So could Dad. He put his arm around Mum and said, ‘Let’s go sit down.’
We moved to the front row, not that seating was in high demand. There were probably only about twenty people here for Grandma Joan, including us. The plan was for her remains to be cremated, her ashes stored at the same memorial park we were at now. A minister, who’d never even met my grandmother, spoke for ten minutes, a condensed and fact-driven account of her life, when she was born, who she married, how many kids she’d popped out. Not once did she mention the fact that Grandma Joan had killed herself.
Mum sat between Dad and Spencer, holding their hands. I sat on the aisle, not sure what to do with my face.
After the ceremony, a sparrow-like woman with short hair, dyed a colour Mum disparagingly referred to as ‘menopausal maroon’, approached us. She was wearing a black pant suit that made her look like an office worker, but when I looked at her face I could see that her eyes, which wrinkled at the corners, were kinder than most.
‘She was at peace when I found her,’ the woman told us. ‘She knew it was her time to go. She didn’t want to die in hospital with a tube down her throat, surrounded by strangers. She was a proud woman.’
‘You found her?’ I asked.
‘Elsie was Mum’s nurse,’ Mum explained.
I didn’t even know Grandma Joan had a nurse.
‘That’s good,’ Spencer remarked. ‘I’m glad she didn’t suffer.’
‘Were you scared?’ I asked. ‘When you realised what had happened?’
Spencer gave me a look. I’d overstepped. Again. But Elsie didn’t seem to mind.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘The dead don’t scare me, not like the living.’ She laughed in a way that sounded like church bells.
‘Oh.’ I was surprised. ‘We didn’t know Grandma Joan very well.’
Spencer gave me another look.
‘Family’s funny like that,’ Elsie remarked matter-of-factly. ‘You might never see them. You might not even like them, but they’re always tied to you, no matter where you are or how much you try to avoid them!’
Elsie chuckled again and even Spencer laughed.
Dad passed around trays of biscuits and after about twenty minutes one of the staff came and told us we had to leave to make way for the next funeral.
It was a relief.
On the way home Mum and Dad talked about how Grandma Joan was able to access such a hard drug and whether Nurse Elsie had anything to do with it.
‘We could look into it more, maybe press charges,’ Dad said. ‘If you want.’
‘No,’ Mum snapped. ‘No way. It’s what Mum wanted.’
For once, Spencer and I remained silent.
We were home by lunchtime.
Chapter 17: More Than Just Friend Material
We ordered takeaway the night of Grandma Joan’s funeral. I remember it clearly. Thai. I had Tom Yum. No rice, definitely no prawn crackers. Spencer had a green chicken curry. No rice. Mum ate a prawn salad. No rice. Dad ate an entire tub of massaman beef curry with coconut rice and a serve of spring rolls. And a side of roti. Then I went to my room and tried to Skype Melody and George, but I couldn’t get through. I wanted chocolate, went to my cupboard and then remembered that I’d given my entire stash to the neighbours. Phew. I made myself a T-shirt with some leftover cheap pineapple print jersey (which took 45 minutes, max), put it on and went to sleep. It felt good to be a little bit hungry.
And that’s when something shifted. I started to enjoy feeling hungry, empty and light. Okay, so maybe enjoy isn’t the right word. But being hungry made me feel kind of powerful, at least in the beginning. I still ate, but I never snacked and I stuck to three small meals a day, with black coffee in between. It was surprisingly easy and no one even noticed, which I guess wasn’t that shocking, seeing as Mum had begun to spend even more time at the gym and Dad was always at work and Spencer flew back to LA two days after the funeral. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had some control over my body.
So this is what it feels like to be one of those girls.
I also started spending more time with Oliver. I hadn’t seen him much since the George-kissing-mistake and Grandma Joan. I missed him. Though, as any girl worth her weight in The Rules knows, it’s good to act like an extremely busy person while attempting to attract a mate. Like hanging out with a boy-crush is doing him a favour. We walked a lot. Me, Oliver and Bruce. We’d meet after dinner and hang out at the dog park, rugged up against the increasingly cold nights, talking and throwing the ball and making up stories about the dogs as if they were people.
‘He’s a sleazy old bastard, that one,’ Oliver would say. ‘Look at the way he’s eyeing that puppy over there.’
‘That one’s a reality TV star,’ I’d reply, pointing to a perfectly bred ’oodle of some sort. ‘She’s got a role on Hoochilicious Party Bandits with my brother. They’ll have a messy one night stand that they’ll be too wasted to even remember, only the whole thing will be caught on camera so there will be no denying it. Amanda will dump Spencer’s sorry ass and the ’oodle will run off with Ken.’
‘Who’s Ken?’ Oliver would ask.
‘Louisa’s husband, duh. Don’t you know anything?’
‘I really like you,’ Oliver blurted out.
‘Oh,’ I muttered like an imbecile, my face red-hot and my heart beating so fast it was like I’d just run a one hundred-metre sprint.
‘I mean, you’re not like other girls. I can talk to you and you make me laugh, like, all the time.’
I glanced over at Oliver and he was looking at the ground, his cheeks almost as red as his hair. He was a dork, no doubt about that, but he
was so adorable it was ridiculous.
We looked at each other, and then laughed again.
‘I guess you’re okay, too,’ I replied.
My walks with Oliver and Bruce were becoming the highlight of my life. My heart would beat a little faster as I walked to our meeting spot at the dog park. I would always wonder, Will this be the day that he tells me he’s in love with me? And now, it was kind of happening. Okay, so not quite. He might have meant that he just liked me as a friend because of my personality. Maybe I was too fat for him.
So I stuck to my ‘diet’ and it worked. Pretty quickly, I have to say. Three weeks after I started, I noticed Mum looking at me while I made my green smoothie as a quick before-school breakfast.
‘You’re looking good,’ she said.
Mum had already been to cardio-Pilates class and she resembled a model on the Lululemon website.
‘Thanks.’ I shrugged like it was no big deal. But it felt pretty great. I was wearing a gold pencil skirt that was usually tight around the hips. Today, it felt loose. My hard work was paying off. Soon, I told myself. Soon Oliver would notice that I could be more than just friend material.
Chapter 18: No Cake, Thanks. I’m on a Diet
The less I ate, the better my life became. At least that’s what it felt like in the beginning. I was down to about a 14 when Maria told me about her niece, Mabel.
‘She’s looking for someone to help her in her shop. Do you know it? It’s called Mabel’s. She’s an independent designer, you know. Very successful. I told her I know the perfect person.’
Tessa was pretending to hem her pyjama pants, but I could tell she was listening in. I was dedicating sewing night to making alterations to some of my favourite pieces as they were all getting too big. My gold pencil skirt was almost falling off me.
‘I know you are busy at school, but you’d only have to work Fridays after school and Saturdays,’ Maria continued.
‘Are you kidding me?’ I grinned. ‘Yes!’
I didn’t tell Maria my main concerns.
1. I’d never had a job before.
2. I was still too fat to even consider a career in fashion.
3. I’d never been much of a fake-it-till-you-make-it type.
‘Excellent,’ Maria said, handing me a hot pink business card. ‘Call her.’
Not many people can pull off wearing a bird’s nest fascinator, complete with leaves and baby birds.
Mabel could.
She wore a silk shift dress that matched her blue hair, with gold lace-ups and navy nail polish.
She was fat. Fatter than I’d ever been.
Only, somehow, she was beautiful.
‘You must be Winter!’ Mabel gushed enthusiastically. ‘Aunt Maria told me all about you. She thinks you’re pretty ace, by the way. You must be a breath of fresh air after all the flannel pyjamas most of her students try to sew up.’
I blushed. Mabel was so cool, she intimidated me. I figured she must be somewhere in her late 20s, though it was hard to tell. She wore hot pink lipstick and actually knew what she was doing when it came to make-up application.
‘Yeah, she’s really nice,’ I mumbled, feeling like a complete idiot.
‘I love your outfit,’ Mabel gushed again. ‘Did you make it?’
‘Yeah,’ I said, feeling a bit proud of myself. It was a two-piece ensemble in floral sateen with a pencil skirt and slight crop top that made me feel like I was okay-looking.
‘Great colours,’ Mabel said. ‘You look really cute.’
Maybe Mabel could sense my awkwardness because she made a huge effort showing me around her two-room studio/warehouse/shop. The back room was packed with boxes and fabrics and racks of samples.
‘I sell a lot online,’ Mabel said. ‘Especially tights and accessories and things like that, so one of your jobs will be processing orders and organising shipping. It’s really important that items get posted ASAP. It’s a tough market out there, which means customer service has to be impeccable.’
Mabel spoke to me like a grown-up, not a teenager. She also seemed to trust that I knew what I was doing even though I had never had a job before.
‘This is what we use to wrap online orders.’
Mabel had a giant roll of pale green rice paper on a big wooden table. ‘Then we wrap the package with twine and tie on one of these paper flowers. I also like to write a little note. You can just write “Enjoy” or something like that.’
Mabel also wanted me to organise fabrics when they came in and unpack stock. A lot of the shop was full of Mabel’s own designs, but she also ordered stuff in from outside.
‘And now,’ Mabel said, ‘it’s time for tea and cake.’
We headed towards a sunny nook in the corner of Mabel’s studio. Mood boards filled with fabric swatches and sketches covered the walls and three dress forms were lined up, wearing mock-ups that Mabel had been working on. They were all floral dresses; two had full skirts and one was a more fitted sheath-type dress.
‘I love that sheath dress,’ I said.
‘Yeah, it’s cute isn’t it? I’m thinking of making it up in an emerald green as well. You know, like real jewel tones.’
‘That would be brilliant!’ I almost forgot my self-consciousness for a second.
‘I think you would totally rock it,’ Mabel said. ‘Yes, I’m definitely going to make you a green one and you can wear it when you start working up front.’
‘You mean, in the shop? With customers?’
‘Sure, why not?’ Mabel said, as though me working in a cool clothing shop was the most natural thing in the world. ‘I think the customers would love you. Why? Don’t you want to?’
‘No, that would be awesome,’ I said, trying to act confident and self-assured.
‘Take a seat.’ Mabel gestured to a painted blue table decorated with a vase of posies. She then pulled out a vintage floral tin filled with a rich-looking chocolate cake. My heart started to race and I could feel my palms getting sweaty.
‘Cake?’ Mabel asked.
‘Oh, I don’t really eat that stuff anymore. I’m kind of on a diet.’
‘Fair enough.’ Mabel smiled. ‘I hope you don’t mind if I have some.’
We drank tea and Mabel ate cake and told me how she finished her law degree but only lasted about five seconds as a lawyer.
‘I hated it,’ Mabel said. ‘It felt so soulless. It’s a cutthroat world, law. And legal aid was just too depressing. Though I admire people who do that.’
I looked at the chocolate cake. Was it normal that I couldn’t stop thinking about it?
‘I guess I just wanted to do something more creative, so I started this business. I wouldn’t say I’m rolling in it, but it’s doing okay. Sure you don’t want some cake? It’s chocolate and Earl Grey.’
I wondered how Mabel did it. How did she look so gorgeous and seem so content even though she would have been a size 18 at least!
‘I love baking,’ Mabel continued. ‘Further down the track I might transform some of this space into a little café or something.’
‘When my dad got retrenched from his job he used to bake cakes all the time. I didn’t even know he knew how. Mum’s hopeless at baking. She only cooks health food. So it did make a nice change.’
‘Ha!’ Mabel scoffed. ‘There’s food that’s good for your body and there’s food that’s good for your soul. This cake, for example, is good for the soul.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, doubtful. I didn’t want to disagree with her too strongly.
‘I used to be like you. I worked really hard to be as thin as possible. No carbs, no sugar, no fun. And then one day I woke up and thought, stuff this. Life is too short to be so neurotic. It’s just food, for God’s sake! We’re lucky to have it. Now I just try and be relaxed about what I eat. I mean, it’s not easy sometimes. We live in a thin-centric world – that much is true.’
‘I guess,’ I muttered, wondering if I could ever be like Mabel. Confident and strong and happy. ‘Especially in
fashion. In fashion everyone is thin.’
‘Not anymore,’ Mabel said. ‘There are so many bigger girls online looking amazing and talking about body confidence and fashion. You should take a look. It’s really inspiring.’
‘Sure,’ I said, not expecting much.
So Mabel ate her cake and I drank my peppermint tea and we talked about sewing and fashion and body image. Her confidence was almost enough to inspire me to forget dieting and eat cake. But not quite.
Chapter 19: Beauty Fades.
Dumb Is Forever
Melody loves Barkly Square, a suburban-style shopping centre with a giant Kmart and two supermarkets and cheapo shops selling homewares and clothes. She says it makes her feel at home because when she was small her mum would take her to Kmart and shoplift packets of stickers and hair accessories for Melody, along with make-up for herself. It was the most fun they ever had together.
We’d both had a long and boring day at school so we decided to head to Barkly Square for an after-school Japanese snack. I ordered sashimi, justifying the snack by promising myself to only eat a salad for dinner, and Melody had crispy chicken rolls.
‘Retail is exhausting,’ Melody said, talking about the job at Kmart she’d just started. ‘And the customers. Don’t get me started.’
‘Just wait till you’re a doctor and you have to look at old people’s ingrown toenails.’
‘Stop it!’ Melody said. ‘I’m eating. Besides, paediatricians work with children!’
Which is when a tall blonde woman wearing expensive Rag and Bone booties and a classic blazer approached us.
‘Hello,’ she said, looking at Melody. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but my name’s Jane and I work for Hotalious. It’s a modelling agency. I just haven’t been able to take my eyes off you. I think you’ve really got something.’
‘What type of modelling are you talking about?’ I asked, suspicious.
‘Here’s my card,’ Jane said to Melody, ignoring me completely. ‘Oh my God. Those cheekbones.’
Melody took the card, speechless.
‘Google me,’ Jane said. ‘You’ll see. Don’t wait too long.’
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