by Liane Shaw
“So, that’s it. You can get dressed. I’ll be back in a minute or so to talk with you a little.” He smiled at me in that aren’t-you-a-good-little-three-year-old way adults use and left the room. I got dressed at the speed of light but was still buttoning up my shirt when he came barreling back into the room without so much as a tap on the door.
“So, you’re generally pretty healthy,” he started, looking at a file folder as if it held the mysteries of the universe.“Now, about all I need to tell you is that you might want to start thinking about watching your eating habits. A girl your age doesn’t want to be adding any unwanted weight.” He closed the folder and looked at me as if expecting some brilliant response. I could only stare. Unwanted weight? Did he think I had unwanted weight?
What was he talking about? I mean, I knew that the old hips and thighs were a little bigger than before, but Mom said that was normal. Of course, she said everything was normal. Had she lied? Did she send me to the doctor because she thought I was heading for a weight problem?
“Don’t worry. It’s not a big deal. You just need to be more careful about what you put in your mouth now that you’re menstruating and your growth has slowed down significantly. Now, stop by the desk on the way out and the nurse will give you a nutrition fact sheet that should help you.” He smiled at me again, as if he had given me good news, and then left me alone to wander out of his office. I found myself thinking about dragons and wished that there was one in the waiting room who enjoyed doctors for lunch. I didn’t stop at the nurse’s desk for the nutrition sheet. I didn’t want her to know that the doctor thought I was fat. I didn’t want my mother to see me with the sheet that confirmed her suspicion I was gaining unwanted weight.
When I got home, I stood in front of the mirror. I looked at myself from the front and the side and used a hand mirror to look at the back. I could definitely see that I wasn’t exactly skin and bones but I didn’t really think I looked fat. Maybe the doctor didn’t mean anything. Then again, why would he even mention weight if he didn’t think it was worth thinking about? I looked again. Well, maybe my butt bulged out a little more than it should. Maybe I should try to lose a pound or two.
It didn’t seem like that big a deal. Just cut out snacks. That didn’t sound hard.
So, I wasn’t too uptight about the whole weight thing at first. After all, none of my friends had ever said I was fat. No one had ever run screaming in horror when they saw me walking down the street. It wasn’t a big deal.
Besides, I had much bigger things on my mind. Annie and I were about to enter the hallowed halls of high school. We were a mess of mixed emotions. No, that’s not true. I was a mess of mixed emotions. Annie was, of course, cool. I was running around like a hyperactive puppy chasing its tail while Annie sat comfortably and laughed at me.
“What are you doing?” she asked me one day as I frantically emptied out my entire closet, trying on one outfit after another.
“I am trying to find the perfect first-day outfit, of course!” I said, my voice disappearing into the sweater I was trying to pull down over my head while pulling on a pair of pants at the same time. I stood in front of the mirror and tried to see myself from all sides. I looked disgusting and made a sound that matched my looks.
“That’s very ladylike of you.” Annie shook her head. “Stop staring at yourself in the mirror. It’s getting to be a very weird habit. You look fine in that, just like you looked fine in the last ten outfits you tried on. It’s just school. You need to relax.”
Grinning widely, she smacked me in the face with a pillow. In my mind, it was the dragon pillow, but I’m not sure of that anymore. Anyway, I couldn’t let her get away with such violence and I quickly responded with a volley up the back of her head. That started a full-fledged war. Everything was a weapon, including all of the clothes I had thrown on the floor. Stuffed dragons finally took flight, soaring through the air, hitting everything in the room but Annie and me. We totally trashed my room and fell backwards on my bed, laughing at the ceiling.
“You aren’t scared at all?” I asked her when I could breathe again.
“No, not really. What exactly are you scared of?” She looked at me sideways, her long black hair half covering her face and spread all over the pillow in a million directions.
I thought about her question for a minute. What was I scared of? A better question would have been, what wasn’t I scared of? I was scared that I wouldn’t have good enough marks to get into university some day. I was scared that the teachers would be scarier than the dragon lady in kindergarten and that they would expect me to already know everything. I was scared that I would have ten hours of homework every day. I was scared that I wouldn’t fit in with the high school kids. I was scared that there would be boys there and they wouldn’t notice me. I was scared that there would be boys there and they would notice me. I was scared that my clothes wouldn’t be right, or my hair wouldn’t be right, or my backpack wouldn’t be right, or my shoes wouldn’t be right, or my face wouldn’t be right, or my body wouldn’t be right – or I wouldn’t be right.
“Oh, I don’t really know,” I said out loud, closing my eyes so that Annie wouldn’t be able to see the truth. It wasn’t really a full-out lie anyway. I really didn’t know how to answer. There were too many choices to pin it down! She probably saw it anyway. Annie could always figure me out even when I didn’t want her to. It was like she was psychic. Maybe she was some kind of a seer, like those women we read about in all the dragon books we used to obsess about. Maybe I should have asked her to see into my future and let me know if I was actually going to survive this whole growing up thing at all.
April 1
April Fools’ Day. My parents are coming to see me today. Kind of fits, doesn’t it? We all feel like fools when we sit there politely with nothing to say. I don’t want to talk to them. They took my friends away from me and told me it was for my own good. Ha. They put me in here and they won’t take me back out. I don’t have anything to say to them. But if I refuse to see them, it’ll get everyone all excited and I’ll have to go the psycho doctor for an extra counseling session. She drives me crazy, sitting there trying to look all understanding when she never says anything that shows she understands a single thing about me. Maybe she does it to keep up business for herself. She would probably be just thrilled if I refused to go see Mommy and Daddy and they could decide I have some sort of parent-hating disorder on top of everything else they’ve diagnosed me with. Maybe they’ll decide that I’m a sociopath with violent tendencies who hates her parents.
Do I hate my parents? I’m PO’d for sure. They will not listen to me at all. They want me to admit to my “problem” and start eating crap and then I would be able to come home and live happily, and fattily, ever after.
Sometimes, though, I kind of wish I could do it for them. They seem so sad when they come. I hate that they’re sad. I mean, they deserve to feel guilty for putting me in here but I never wanted anyone to be sad.
I don’t hate them. I hate the doctors who persuaded them that I have some big disease.
I didn’t make them sad. The doctors made them sad. Maybe the doctors can visit with my parents instead of me.
I wish I were a sociopath. Then I could make the doctors pay for their sins.
chapter 5
We did manage to start high school and even survived grade nine. I discovered that some of the stuff I had been scared about wasn’t so scary after all. I also discovered that some of the stuff was scarier than I had imagined it was going to be. The teachers weren’t as bad as I expected. The work wasn’t terrible but it wasn’t easy either. I worked pretty hard and I had lots of homework. Maybe not ten hours a night, but I still kept pretty busy.
The kids were definitely the scariest part. I couldn’t totally figure out who was who at first. Annie and I came from a really small public school and we didn’t know all that many kids who went to the high school downtown, which was enormous and had kids in it from all over
the city. Oh, in case I am coming off too pathetic here, let me state for the record that Annie was not my only friend. She was just my best friend. I wasn’t exactly a social butterfly either but I did have a few people around who seemed to enjoy my company. They weren’t what you would call cool. As shocking as it might sound, I was never fully accepted into the cool crowd. This caused me the occasional moment of angst. Annie was somewhat uncool too, but she was also unconcerned. I, however, wondered at times, many times, what it would be like to be popular.
I have made something of a study of this whole popularity thing, and even now I don’t really understand what it is that makes someone cool, other than being accepted by the cool crowd, that is. I mean, who decides what cool is in the first place? Someone has to be the first cool person, the one who sets the standards for other cool people. But where does that person come from and how does he or she become cool? Is it a chicken and egg thing – which came first, the person or the cool? Do they just wake up one morning and hear a voice from somewhere in the heavens telling them to embark upon their journey of cool? In all those teen movies, most of the so-called cool types are not exactly nice. They always seem to be incredibly rich and do all kinds of nasty things to the poor uncool people – and to each other. You’d think they’d be happy, but they always look annoyed. Anyway, the movies I found really amazing were the ones in which some poor geeky person becomes cool by taking off their glasses, putting on lots of makeup and wearing tight clothes. It sends a really nice message, doesn’t it? All you have to do to be accepted is completely change everything about how you look.
In my school, the so-called cool kids tended to be a little snobby, but I’d never seen anyone do anything particularly terrible to anyone else like in the movies. Anyway, being uncool in our school didn’t seem to be the big agony that it is in movies. Hey, I wonder who decided to use the word “cool” in the first place? Cool means “neither warm nor very cold” – just kind of somewhere in between. Maybe cool people are just wishy-washy, mediocre people who don’t know how they feel. Something to think about.
What was I talking about? Oh, yeah. Friends who aren’t Annie. Well, there’s Ruth Edelstein who’s smart and funny and lives with her mom on this weird little farm just heading out of the city. There’s Alyssa Petroni, who’s into art and music and even managed to get Annie and I into the band. We both played clarinet and neither of us played it very well, but we had fun. And of course there’s Devon, who is a total jock woman, extremely tall and extremely strong. She tried to get me to try out for a couple of teams but stopped after I went to a volleyball tryout with her and tripped her twice and knocked her down three times. I decided to stick with solo sports like riding my bike and … well, riding my bike. Devon runs like the wind and always talked about running in the Olympics some day. I told her I’d make the sacrifice of helping her train in a nice warm climate somewhere but she turned me down. I don’t know why. I think I’d be a great coach.
That’s about it for people I liked, and who liked me, enough to actually put in this so-called story of my life. Five of us. We hung out together at lunch and sometimes got together at one of our houses for a DVD or something. Our part of the city doesn’t have a movie theater or a video arcade or a bowling alley or a swimming pool or a McDonald’s or anything much at all, so it took effort and a city bus to do anything more exciting than watch TV.
One of the most exciting things I remember from grade nine is when Annie and I got invited to Nancy Gerig’s chalet for the weekend. We were pretty pumped about the whole thing, because Nancy was super rich, which made her instantly somewhat cool – although she wasn’t one of the totally cool – and she had the world’s cutest older brother. Actually, I should say that I was excited. Annie thought it sounded like fun but didn’t seem as impressed as I was.
I was very impressed. Everyone we knew wanted an invite to the famous chalet of the über-rich Gerig family. I had never even seen a chalet up close and personal. I wasn’t actually sure what a chalet was and why it was more exciting than a plain old cottage, but I didn’t really care. It sounded wonderful and exotic and I couldn’t believe she had actually picked us.
“Maddie, it’s not like the president has invited us to the White House. She’s just a kid like us,” Annie understated one day.
“She is not just a kid. She is one of the cool kids. Well, not exactly one of the cool kids, but she hangs out with them sometimes and they think she’s OK because she has all this money and stuff which makes her almost a cool kid and she actually invited us to her chalet and we’re not cool at all!” I babbled back at her brilliantly.
“Speak for yourself. I think we’re cool enough … although you sound like you’re getting a little heated up at the moment!” Annie laughed at her own not-very-funny joke and shook her head.
“Oh my God, I look like I’m wearing a tent!” I whined pathetically. I had a dress on, which is something I didn’t wear too often, but I thought it suited the importance of the occasion. I didn’t have a lot of pretty clothes and I figured that people who owned a fancy chalet would expect me to bring something nicer to wear than my usual shorts and T-shirts. I had thought it was wonderful when I first bought it. It was a nice shade of sky blue that the saleslady had assured me matched my eyes and it had short sleeves and was kind of tight around my chest but then sort of floated out around my body. The salesclerk had also told me that it was a very flattering style for me. Maybe because it was supposed to hide most of me from view. Obviously they used magic mirrors in the store that made you look better than you looked in the real world so that they could sell more clothes to unsuspecting schmucks like me. When I looked at myself in the store I hadn’t looked like something you would camp in.
“You look fine. The color is nice on you,” Annie looked at me and shrugged her shoulders as she turned the page in the magazine she was reading. She had the same old jean shorts and an old T-shirt on that she’d had for about three years and it didn’t seem to bother her at all.
“I’m not talking about the color. I’m talking about how fat it makes me look! I can’t believe this! I can’t wear this! What if her brother is there? He’ll think there are two of me! Now I have nothing but my crappy old shorts which probably look even worse on me!”
“What are you talking about? You don’t look fat. You look like you have a pretty dress on. If you really want to look sexy, you should try wearing one of these!”
She laughed and handed me the page she was looking at. The model was ultra thin and totally beautiful, every rib standing out clearly underneath the two little triangles that called themselves a bathing suit top. More bones stuck out just above the slightly larger triangle that was pretending to be a bathing suit bottom. She was standing on the deck of a sailboat, pretending to steer it and looking very pleased with herself. I thought of my own bathing suit, a one-piece wonder in black. I bought it because someone told me that black was slimming. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but now I started wondering why anyone thought I needed slimming or that I needed a flattering dress. I knew that I didn’t look anything like that model when I had my bathing suit on. Most of my bones were pretty well buried and I didn’t think anyone would call me sexy.
Annie snagged the magazine back, still smiling.
“Isn’t that pathetic? As if she actually knows how to sail a boat. Besides, she’s so thin she’d probably blow away if a decent wind came up! Anyway, kid, I’ve got to go. I have to do my ten minutes of packing. See you tomorrow!”
I didn’t sleep well that night, between the excitement and the worry. I couldn’t stop agonizing about how I looked in my dress or my bathing suit, or my skin for that matter, and whether or not Nancy’s brother was going to be there. Not that I thought he would notice me anyway, but I didn’t want him to think bad stuff about me. I don’t remember the next day’s drive up to the chalet very well. I was probably half asleep.
Boys were very confusing back then. I wanted them to notic
e me but I could never think of anything to say to them when they did. I kind of wanted a boyfriend but I had no idea what I would do with one if I found him. I wanted boys to think I was pretty but I didn’t really want to know what they thought just in case they thought I was an ugly pig. When I thought about boys, it was kind of like my mind turned into a blender where I put all of these weird thoughts and feelings that swirled around totally out of control.
I do remember my first look at the chalet. It’s like a snapshot in my mind, clear and well developed. It was pretty amazing. It was made from logs and was incredibly tall with two levels of balconies on the outside overlooking the ski hills. Inside was even more incredible. There were balconies on the inside as well, surrounding a huge stone fireplace that reached all the way to the ceiling. The furniture was all made of heavy wood and had colorful cushions that looked soft and comfy.
Nancy’s brother was there, but he wasn’t particularly interested in his sister’s little friends. That was fine by me. At least, I thought it was fine, but at the same time I couldn’t help but wonder why he wasn’t interested. As I said, totally out of control! Anyway, there was lots to do there, between the boats and the swimming and the walking trails, and we had fun, which took my mind off all my messed-up thoughts, and we were all starving when we came in for supper. Nancy’s mom had made a delicious meal and we all dug in. Once we had finished the barbecued hamburgers and potato salad, Nancy’s mom brought out this absolutely amazing-looking chocolate cake. Man, did I want a piece of that cake! But as she brought it to the table, I had a sudden flash of the sight of the oversized blue tent in the mirror.
“No thanks,” I said politely, as a piece was passed my way.
I peeked over at Annie to see if she had noticed, but she was already digging into hers so she was distracted by the chocolate. Mrs. Gerig looked surprised.
“Oh, dear. Don’t you like chocolate cake?” she asked, in the same tone she might have used to ask me if I liked breathing.