by Dyan Sheldon
I looked at Amy, tall and thin and pretty, wearing a bright blue sweatshirt and flowered leggings. I looked down at myself, not tall, not thin and not pretty, wearing baggy jeans and a flannel shirt with a mustard stain and potato chip crumbs down the front.
I raised my chin. “So?”
“So you don’t fit in. You don’t act right. You don’t look right. You—”
“No, you!” I shouted. I wanted to grab her curly blonde hair and yank it out of her head. “What about you? Am I the kind of girl you don’t want to hang around with?”
Amy opened her mouth and closed it again.
“Well?” I screamed. “Am I?” When she still didn’t say anything, I started walking away. Quickly.
“Don’t start sulking!” Amy shouted after me.
“I’m not sulking!” I screamed back. Which was true. I’d passed sulking and was about to hit crying.
She came after me. “Jen,” she said, “Jen, listen to me, I’m not telling you all this to hurt your feelings, you know. I’m your best friend. I’m trying to help you.”
“Oh, thank you,” I answered. “That makes me feel a lot better.”
“I mean it, Jen, I am. What else are friends for? If I can’t tell you the truth, who can?” She touched my shoulder. “Don’t you see, Jen?” she continued. “High school is our big chance to start over. We can make new friends, we can do different things. You and I were nobodies in middle school, but now we can really belong.”
I’d been right. Amy and her new pals were part of a secret society. The secret society of Miss Perfect Teenagers.
“You mean you can,” I answered. “I’m the one who has everything wrong with her.”
“But you don’t have to,” said Amy eagerly. “You could change. You could get some nice clothes. You could lose a few pounds. You could wear make-up. You could fix your hair. There’s a lot you could do.”
I was racing down the street, trying not to burst into tears, listening to my best friend list the hundreds of ways I could improve myself.
“I’m only telling you this for your own good, you know,” Amy said when she’d finally finished. “You do know that, don’t you, Jen?”
“Oh, sure,” I mumbled. “I know.” But inside I was wondering, Why did people have best friends? Why didn’t they just have enemies? It would be a whole lot less confusing.
The rest of the way home Amy talked about cheerleading while I listened and tried to act like everything was the same as ever. We were both pretty relieved when we got to her road. She stood there for a few seconds, swinging her book bag. “Oh, yeah,” she said, not quite looking at me, “Kim’s mother is going to be giving me a lift to school from now on, so you don’t have to wait for me in the morning.”
I started walking. “Thanks for telling me,” I said.
“And don’t forget I have cheerleading practice after school the next two days,” she called after me.
I didn’t turn around. “Don’t worry, I won’t forget.”
“See you!” she shouted.
I started down the street. Oh, sure, I thought, see you in my dreams!
I walked fast. I walked fast because I wanted to get home and into the safety of my room. So far I’d managed not to cry, but there was no guarantee that that would last.
But I also walked fast because suddenly I had this idea that everybody was watching me.
“You see that man over there?” I asked myself.
“Where?” I answered.
“Over there.”
“Oh, over there. Yeah, I see him. He’s washing his car.”
I shook my head. “He’s only pretending to wash his car,” I informed myself. “Really, he’s looking at you.”
“At me?” I said. “Don’t be ridiculous, he’s not looking at me. He’s getting the bird poop off his bumper.”
“Of course he’s watching you,” I hissed back. “Just look at him! Look! He’s nodding at you! He’s thinking, That girl should really do something about her hair. And look at those clothes…”
I wasn’t going to give in to panic. I started walking a little faster. “Oh, yeah,” I replied. “And I suppose that woman playing ball with her kids is looking at me, too.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Look! She just smiled at you! She’s thinking Good grief, that poor girl. I hope none of my children turn out like that.”
I tried to sooth myself. “You’re letting Amy get to you,” I said. “That’s all. You shouldn’t pay any attention to her. You don’t have to look like Rosie Henley to be a worthwhile person.”
“Look!” I shrieked to myself. “Did you see that? That curtain just moved!”
I looked again. The curtain had moved. “It was probably just a cat or some—”
“Cat, my grandmother’s dentures!” I practically shouted. “Don’t you understand? Everybody’s acting like they’re inside their houses, reading their papers and watching football, but really they’re peering through their curtains, watching you!”
“They’re not,” I protested. “It’s statistically impossible that nobody in Red Bay has anything better to do than—”
“And you know what they’re saying to each other? They’re saying, ‘Quick! Come over here! Isn’t that Jenny Kaliski? Remember what a pretty baby she was? Remember what an adorable little girl? Well, look at her now! Her poor parents. It’s a wonder they let her out in daylight.’”
By the time I got home I was a nervous wreck. I pretty much ran into the house and into my room. I locked the door. There was a series of thumps as Percy threw himself against it. I unlocked the door again and let him in. He jumped into my arms. At least he was glad to see me. “You love me, no matter what I look like, don’t you Perce?” I asked him. He licked my face. Even though my mother doesn’t believe in dogs on the furniture, Percy and I lay down on the bed together. I spent the rest of the afternoon going over and over what Amy had said. Percy fell asleep.
“Mom,” I said to my mother later that night. “Mom, do you think I’m fat?”
I was washing and my mother was drying. She didn’t look over at me as she lifted a handful of knives and forks from the drainer.
“Of course you’re not fat,” said my mother. “Where did you ever get an idea like that?”
But I knew my mother well enough to know how tricky she could be with language. She had me believing in Santa Claus for years because any time I’d ask her if there was a Santa she’d say, “Well, look around you, honey. What do you think?”
“OK,” I said. “Not fat. But do you think I could stand to lose a few pounds?”
This time my mother looked over at me. “What for?” she wanted to know.
What for? What for did she think? “So I’d be thinner,” I explained patiently.
“You don’t need to be thinner,” said my mother. “You’re just the right weight for your height.”
For some reason, this information didn’t really cheer me up. “But don’t you think I’d look taller if I were thinner?” I probed.
My mother took a bowl from the dish drainer. “You might look taller if you walked on stilts, too,” she said, smiling, “but I think you might have trouble getting into the back of the car.”
“But, Mom—” I began.
“But, Jenny,” my mother interrupted. “You’re a very attractive young woman.” She put her hand on my shoulder. She looked into my eyes. “Believe me,” she said. “You’re just fine the way you are.”
“Dad,” I said to my father later that night. “Dad, do you think I’m fat?” My mother was on the telephone in the kitchen, and we were in the living-room watching television. Well, my dad was watching television. Normally, I liked the same stuff he liked to watch, which was mainly science and nature programmes, but tonight the only thing I could think about was my body.
My father said, “Uh.”
“Dad,” I repeated. “Dad, do you think I’m fat?”
My father was watching something about birds of the Amazon.
He’s as nuts about birds as I am about planets. He doesn’t even care if the birds aren’t doing anything very interesting – you know, if they’re just eating bugs or something. He told me this show was fascinating. He was wrong. The bird the narrator was talking about now was called a hoatzin. It didn’t even eat bugs, it ate leaves. How’s that for interesting? It was the weirdest bird I’d ever seen. My father’s eyes didn’t leave the screen. He thought the hoatzin was beautiful. “Fat?” he asked. “Who’s fat?”
“Dad!” I shouted. “Dad, listen to me. Do you think I’m fat?”
He turned in my direction. “What?”
“Fat,” I repeated for what seemed like the zillionth time. “Do you think I’m fat?”
“You?” He looked at me as though he’d never seen me before.
Good grief, I thought, it’s a miracle he and my mother ever got married. Every time he turned his back on her he probably forgot what she looked like.
“Yes,” I said, “me. Do you think I need to lose a few pounds?”
“Are you kidding?” My father grinned. “You don’t need to lose any weight, Jen. You look great.”
“But I’m short,” I reminded him.
“Short but perfectly formed,” said my father.
“But, Dad, if I lost—”
“Just a minute, Jen,” said my father, distracted by something flapping on the screen. “This is a crucial moment.”
While my mother talked to her sister on the phone about her sister’s latest home improvements, and my father watched semi-flightless birds on TV, I went into my parents’ room. I stood in front of the full-length mirror. It wasn’t like I’d never looked at myself before. I’d looked at myself a trillion times. But not like this.
I twisted to the left. I twisted to the right. My thighs really did wobble. And my bottom looked like a watermelon. How could a person who wore “petite” have such a big bottom?
I stepped forward. I stepped back. I’d known I was no great beauty or anything, but it hadn’t ever bothered me before. Not really. Only that time Miss Marilu hadn’t let me be the fairy princess. That had hurt. But that had been when I was nine. I’d figured I was pretty normal now. But maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I’d gotten used to being me. A misfit. A geek.
I turned to the left. I turned to the right. I stepped forward. I stepped backward. I shook my legs. I waved my arms. Maybe Amy was right. Maybe if I lost a few pounds, and did something with my hair, and had myself stretched, I could look perfect too. I turned around again. Or maybe not.
Inside Martian Control
Don’t get me wrong. I knew I was never going to be a Miss Perfect Teenager. My hair wasn’t going to suddenly turn curly and blonde. My teeth weren’t going to suddenly look like a movie star’s. I would never wear a size six. No matter how much I prayed it was unlikely that I was going to grow. And it’s not like I even wanted to be Miss Perfect Teenager. I mean, me? I mean, who wants to spend their Saturdays jumping around a football field in shorts screaming, “Red Bay! Red Bay! Show them the way!”? If I wanted to be anything while I was in high school, I wanted to be a lifeguard. And afterwards, of course, I wanted to be an astrophysicist. Those were the things that were important to me, not being pretty and popular. I told myself that several times in the next couple of days, so I knew it was true.
* * *
But after my talk with Amy – or Amy’s talk with me, to be more exact – I began to have this fantasy of waking up one morning and discovering that I was incredibly beautiful and thin. I was even sort of blonde. I could just picture the look on people’s faces as I strolled into school.
“Who is that?” they’d all be whispering to one another. Kim and Amber would be tripping over themselves trying to meet me. Rosie Henley would invite me to her Hallowe’en party, but I wouldn’t be sure if I could go. The most popular kids in the school would be fighting to have me sit at their lunch table. “Please,” they’d beg me, “don’t sit with those Martians, sit with us.” I’d be asked out on a date. Maybe not even just one date. Maybe I’d be asked on three or four. Amy would dump Kim and Amber to hang out with me again. It’d be like Cinderella transformed by her fairy godmother, but without the coach and horses and those dumb glass shoes.
So I decided that though I wasn’t going to become one of those girls who thinks about nothing but boys and clothes, I would improve myself a little. There was no harm in that. There were things I could do without too much trauma.
The first thing was I could go on a diet. After all, thin was the one thing that everyone wanted to be. Not everybody looked good with curly hair. Not everybody looked good in cycling shorts. But everybody looked good thin. And I was sure that what I’d told my mother was right. If I were thinner, I’d look taller. Tall and thin. My fantasy shimmered before my eyes. There I was, striding up the path to school. Boys were nudging each other. Girls were hugging. “Good grief!” they were whispering. “I know who that is!” It’s Jenny Kaliski! Who would’ve guessed how attractive she really is?”
I know this must sound weird, but even though I was fourteen, I’d never been on a diet before. My mother and Amy’s mother and all their friends and relatives had been on diets. A lot of the girls from school had been on diets. And I knew from magazines and movies and television that everybody diets most of the time. But I’d never been on a diet. I decided to keep it a secret. I was going to surprise everyone. Especially Amy. I couldn’t wait to see her face. I figured I’d spend a week or so being careful about what I ate – you know, no chips, no butter, no soda, no sweets – and then one morning I’d wake up, just like in my fantasy, and none of my clothes would fit me any more. It was going to be really easy.
“You want some cakes?” asked Sue, pushing a paper plate full of squares of something iced and chocolate towards me.
We were just finishing lunch. Or those of us who weren’t on a secret diet were finishing lunch. Those of us who were on a secret diet were nibbling slowly on a carrot stick, chewing every bite twenty-six times. “No, thanks,” I said.
“My mother made it,” said Sue.
“Sue’s mother makes great chocolate cake,” said Tanya.
“I’m sure it’s terrific,” I said, “but I’m really full…”
Joan raised one eyebrow. “Full? From what? You’ve hardly eaten anything.”
“Well, if Jenny doesn’t want her piece, I’ll take it,” said Tanya. “I’m starving.”
She reached for the cake, but Sue slapped her hand. “Starving?” shrieked Sue. “Tanya, you never stop eating long enough to know what it feels like to be slightly hungry.” She pushed the cake towards me again. “Come on, Jenny, my mother always gives me enough for everybody.”
“Don’t tell me we’ve got another Marva on our hands,” said Maria, laughing. Marva had already refused some cake because she didn’t want to poison her body with sugar.
Marva smirked. “Laugh all you want,” she said to Maria. “But I’ll be the one who laughs last.”
“Just take a little,” urged Sue.
I looked at the square of cake in front of me. It was really dark chocolate and the icing was white, just the way I liked it best. I could practically taste it in my mouth, all soft and crumbling with sweet and grainy icing. On Monday I’d had one bowl of cereal for breakfast. I’d had one sandwich and an apple for lunch. I’d had one helping of supper, no salad dressing, no potato, no butter and no dessert. No snacks. Today was Tuesday. I’d had two pieces of dry toast for breakfast, and a sandwich and a carrot for lunch. On the one hand, I didn’t want to go off my diet already, not when I was doing so well. On the other hand, maybe Tanya really wasn’t starving, but I was.
“Oh, go ahead,” Joan said. “It’s not going to kill you, is it?”
“That’s what you think,” said Marva.
I looked at the cake. It wasn’t a very big piece. How many calories could there be in one tiny, infinitesimal piece of chocolate cake? Hadn’t I passed up ice-cream last night? Ice-cream and mashed pot
atoes? “Well…”
“Oh, go ahead,” said Sue. “If you don’t like it, Tanya will finish it for you.”
I was weakening. I could feel it. That piece of cake was calling to me. “Jenny,” it was saying, “Jenny, I’m small. You can eat me and it won’t make any difference. What’s dry toast compared to double fudge?” When you’re weakening you need something to hold on to. I looked around the table. Maybe I could use a little support on my diet after all. Maybe keeping it a secret wasn’t the best thing I could do. Amy’s mother always told everyone when she went on a diet, even people she didn’t know very well. I’d thought she did that so they’d be sure to tell her she looked thinner. Now I realized it was so they’d stop her from eating.
I leaned forward. “The thing is,” I said, keeping my voice down and trying to sound casual, “well … you see the thing is, I’m sort of on a diet.” I might as well have waved a banner and shot off fireworks. They all began to shout at once.
“A diet?” howled Sue. “To lose weight, you mean?”
“You’re nuts,” boomed Marva, “diets just make you fat.”
“Oh, Jenny,” said Maria, “you don’t need to lose weight. You’re just right.”
“You?” Tanya practically fell off her chair. “What are you on a diet for? If anybody should be on a diet it’s me.”
“Did you know there are celebrities who’ve been on diets for twenty years?” asked Sue.
“What kind of diet?” asked Joan.
I looked at her. “What?”
“What kind of diet?” Joan repeated. “Calorie, fibre, fat or carbohydrate? Are you eating one type of food, substituting nutritional shakes for meals or following menu plans?”
I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Well … I … well … I’m not really being that strict about it.”
“Oh, but you have to be,” said Joan, “or you won’t get anywhere. My sister’s been on every diet there’s ever been. Diets where you eat all the calories you want, but nothing before noon. Diets where you only eat a thousand calories, not one more or one less. The ice-cream diet, the kumquat and spring-water diet, the spinach diet, the wholewheat-bread diet…”