Bon Bons to Yoga Pants

Chapter 12-The Girl On TV

It took me all of ten seconds after breakfast to find myself sitting in our front room, searching for the remote. With an egg white omelet sitting in my stomach—just barely satisfying the hungry, insatiable beast—I settled in for my favorite past time.

Television.

With full time school and working part time, I didn't get a lot of bonding time with our TV anymore, and I missed the brainlessness of it. When I watched stories unfold, I forgot my own shame, my own grief, and if a box of sweet candy became involved, my depression. The taste of sugar overrode how much I really hated myself.

The memories of sitting with my dad, sharing a bowl of popcorn with extra butter while laughing at Seinfeld lived again when I resumed my usual place on the couch. Over time, the cushion had perfectly formed to my bottom. I sighed.

Feels so good.

It seemed kind of sad that I would mostly think of Dad while doing nothing except eating, but I pushed the thought aside. I flipped through the stations just to reorient myself to the channels. I'd never watched TV this early because I never woke up this early, except for class. Despite the early morning hour—it was just past eight, which still seemed an unholy time to be awake on a day off—there were still definite possibilities. An old rerun of Friends popped up, but of course it would be the Thanksgiving episode that showed Monica fat, so I flipped to a different station.

"Hey. What on earth are you doing awake right now?"

Our front door slammed open, and McKenzie strolled in like a Greek goddess just returning from her morning ablutions with the mortals. Her long hair, straight instead of frizzy like mine, hung in a ponytail down her back. She wore one of those cute workout outfits, the kind I'd be arrested for trying to wear, with the tight black leggings and form-fitting long sleeved shirt. Her face was flushed from the cold morning air, which meant she'd just returned from her daily run.

"Oh. I . . . I couldn't sleep."

She cast me a wary look, then gracefully lowered her ballerina body to the floor and contorted her legs into a stretch. I grabbed a pillow and hugged it to my stomach.

"You never wake up before eleven on a Friday," she said.

"Well today I did."

"Hmmm." Her eyes slipped to the TV, which had landed on a rerun of Jerry Springer. It promised to be one of the violent ones, so I left it there for the moment. Nothing made me feel better about my life than watching others who had screwed up theirs.

"So . . . nice run?" I asked, feeling pressed by the awkward silence to make conversation. When McKenzie wasn't nagging me about losing weight for her wedding, or spouting off sonnets about her Casey, the two of us didn't speak much. We had nothing in common. Kenz was too much like Mom: the living embodiment of everything I wasn't.

"Yeah, it was good," she said, frowning down at a massive computer-watch on her wrist. "I pushed myself and went six miles instead of the usual four, but I had to slow my pace to make it."

"Six?" I cried, my eyes bugging out of my head. The blood in my legs still seemed to be pumping from my two mile treadmill walk that morning. I couldn't imagine adding four more miles at a run. Some things in this universe were just not feasible, and getting my body to move at those speeds was one of them.

"Wow, Kenz. That's . . . that's great. Six miles would be really tough."

Her eyes narrowed on me from where she lay folded over her legs. I glanced away again. My stomach would never permit me to stretch that far. It would stop me like a plug in a bath tub. The sudden urge for a bag of Fun Yuns overcame me, so I hugged the pillow tighter.