Castles crumbling (Taylor Swift's little sister)

It's nice to have a friend (part 1)

Everything was just fine. You were getting your period, eating various foods, still had many fear foods, but your eating habits were okay. Your mom had gained back the trust in you and your relationship had never been better. Taylor was away again, living in New York most of the time and visiting a few days every two to three weeks. Austin had moved out and your dad was living in another continent with his new family. School was doing even better, you were getting excellent grades and having fun with your friends, even going out and doing fun stuff on Fridays and in the weekends with them. In the beginning of February, you were completely discharged from the outpatient treatment center and now you only supposed to be going to regular checkups with your doctor every three to four months. The disordered thoughts hadn't gone away but you were getting better at ignoring them.

It started as a new year's resolution, but it was not too alarming until mid-April. In mid-January you asked your doctors from the treatment center if you could increase the amount of exercise, you were doing, and they agreed. By mid-February you thought that you could increase it a bit more to feel stronger, to feel better about yourself, as long as you were eating the right amount of food. When schoolwork got you busy by the end of February, it soon turned into feeling guilty if you weren't able to work out as much as you'd like to; so, you decided to decrease a bit the food you were eating. Not to change drastically the way your body looked, but just to be sure of "staying within the healthy range".

After that, everything went downhill. You would exercise compulsively at school bathrooms, always take the stairs, convince your friends of walking around the school rather than sitting down at recess. Then you would come home, throw some workouts clothes on and follow cardio workouts videos on YouTube. You would take advantage to extra work out if your mom was not home when you got there to run on the treadmill that was -now unlocked- in the basement. Then you would do your usual workout with the videos and tell your mom you were doing homework before she got home, when in reality, you were running frantically on the machine that was in the underground room.

By the beginning of April Taylor was visiting and immediately knew that something was wrong with you. She noticed that you were wearing layers of clothes and the dark bags under your eyes. The next day, while you were at school, they were having breakfast together and she decided to speak with Andrea about it:

- "Mom, is Lizzie struggling again?" Taylor asked Andrea concerned.

- "Ermmm. Not that I'm aware of. She's working out about 30 minutes a day, she's eating what she normally eats, I'd say she's following her old meal plan. Why, darling?"

- "She looks thinner" Taylor replied sipping on her coffee.

- "I'll be paying more attention. Talk to her and confront her immediately if it's the case. We haven't been talking much lately, she's always studying" Andrea replied both anxious and discouraged.

- "It'll be fine, I believe that she has better ways of dealing with everything now" Taylor said confidently, trusting that you wouldn't let this turn into a relapse, but it had already happened.

At school, your friends noticed that something was off but couldn't tell for sure if it was eating disorder related. You were all tired because of the exams and often spent recess studying because you were all planning on taking different AP courses next year, so each one of you had different goals in mind. Still, you tried to study and spend time together. It started with leaving a bit of food on your plate at lunch, until it turned into sometimes leaving half of your plate untouched and unconsciously putting the napkin on top so no one would notice how much food you were not eating.

That day you came home and found Taylor working via zoom with Tree, she lived in the same city as you but traveled almost everywhere with Taylor. However, this time she was still in New York. You popped into the camera to say hi to your favorite redhead: