Just a Few Inches

133 lbs.

The next morning, the bathroom scale showed I had lost two pounds, but I assumed it was slightly off. I stepped off and on it at least a dozen times both before and after my shower to confirm the reading, which stayed the same.

It was the day before the dance, and time was running out. No significant weight change meant no dress, which meant Janelle would win. Although I could have returned or exchanged the dress, I wanted that dress—it was beautiful, and I wanted Todd to see me as more attractive than Janelle when I wore it. I swallowed a couple more pills, downed a cup of black coffee to keep the ensuing dizziness at bay, and then headed off to school.

Lauren and I were the last two to leave the locker room for the bus to the away basketball game that evening. She had changed into her uniform in one of the bathroom stalls, but I deliberately chose to lag behind so I could take a few more pills without anyone seeing.

"What are those?" Lauren snatched the bottle from me and examined it. "Drugs? Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"Nothing else is working."

"And these are?"

"Not yet."

"How many did you just take?"

I was embarrassed to answer, so I mumbled. "Three."

"Three?! But the label says—"

"I know what the label says, but I'm running out of time."

"That's called an overdose. What if you get really sick? What if you get addicted? You don't know what these pills will do to you." She shook the bottle to further punctuate her point.

"I'm not going to take them after tomorrow night. I'll throw them out, I promise."

Lauren sighed contemptuously and left the room. Meanwhile, I sprinted for the toilets and threw up.

The long and bumpy bus ride didn't help much. Many sticks of gum from Trish freshened my breath but not my spirits, and unfortunately, I needed to display lots of spirit that night. The Tigers took the lead early and held it for the rest of the game, so I had to do plenty of jumping around.

Todd approached me after the victory and gave me the usual greeting of a kiss on the forehead followed by resting his chin on my head. He commented that he was relaxing his shoulders just a bit to get his chin down to my head, but I told him it was because I wasn't feeling well and was slightly slumped over.

"Will you feel better for the dance tomorrow night?" he asked.

"Yeah," I replied, even though I expected I'd still feel side effects of the pills. But I couldn't not go to the dance. Janelle needed to see me there in the dress.

Then Janelle strutted over. "Hello, Carrie," she said without looking at me, while she was stroking my boyfriend's arm. "Another awesome game, Todd."

"Thanks," he said. "You guys were good too."

"Has Carrie told you about the smoking hot new dress she bought?" Though she was talking to Todd, she had turned to me, her head held high as she glanced down her nose at me. I knew I wasn't feeling well and was slouching, and Janelle had already put on her pair of heels. "Ask her what color it is."

"What color?"

"Red," I answered, glaring at Janelle with eyes that were surely red—bloodshot from not feeling well and angered from Janelle's catty behavior.

"My favorite color? Score!" Todd put his arm around me. "I'm sure you'll look great, Short-Stuff."

"It's only fitting that Carrie chose your favorite color." Janelle tightened her eyes to hold her gaze on me while she smirked. "And it was a tight squeeze...she got the last one like it in the store."

As much as I despised her, I had to admire her devious plan. From her pointed double meanings, which I knew Todd didn't catch, I knew she could tell I hadn't lost enough weight. Two, maybe three pounds at most, was not enough to fit into the dress. Even if I owned another red dress, girls didn't go to dances in dresses they had already worn. And I wasn't going to rush around on the afternoon of the dance trying to find a dress just as pretty because Janelle would know. By building up his hopes of seeing me in a hot red dress, she had set the stage for me to fall flat on my face and disappoint him.

"Can't wait to see what you look like tomorrow," she said as she walked away.

I closed my eyes, trying to fight tears and avoid seeing whether Todd was watching her walk away. He bent down to kiss me on the lips, which made me smile and reassured me we were still a couple. Thankfully, I had chewed enough gum to eliminate any hint of what my breath had smelled like earlier.

During the ride home, I didn't speak much to Trish and Lauren. I kept replaying the scene in my head, and my loathing for Janelle grew. Inside, I was seething because I had less than twenty-four hours to fit into that dress or face whatever humiliation she'd have in store for me.

In the anger and desperation that hadn't gone away when I got home, I took four more tablets. Before I knew it, my bedroom started spinning. Trying to squeeze away a throbbing headache, I clenched my eyes tightly and collapsed on my bed. As I willed myself into unconsciousness, I decided that the next day I was going to skip breakfast and do whatever exercise I could think of. Anything to make the reading on my bathroom scale change just enough to get into that stupid dress.

How was I to know that a big change had already started taking place?