A/N: There's quite a bit of dialogue in this chapter, but most of it is important so I couldn't take it out. That's all I really have to say about this to be honest.
Don't forget to vote if you like the chapter c:
It was funny how most of the time you only ever noticed the little things when they hurt you. Years ago, there would have been a time when Kitzie never noticed the ridiculous amounts of weight loss ads everywhere. She would have never noticed the numbers on the backs of packets, let alone read them over and over. She would never have cared that everyone around her always seemed to be eating, or that what they ate was so scarily full of calories that it made her nervous.
The thing was, she did notice, and they did hurt her.
It was simple, really, how she had ended up in this mess. Someone said she ate too much. Of course, being the easily-influenced and far too doormat-like 14-year-old she was, Kitzie wanted to prove them wrong.
Three years later, she didn't even see them anymore, let alone remember their name. If she couldn't remember them, they definitely wouldn't recall who she was. Yet, she was still stuck with a mental block that wouldn't leave her alone. She was trapped in the cage, but no matter how many times she rattled the bars, they weren't going to break.
She couldn't blame anyone but herself though, she thought, because she was the one who decided at 14 that she didn't look pretty enough or weigh little enough. At 14 she was the one who decided she wasn't good enough.
And now at 17, she was still paying the price for that. She would give anything to feel some self-love, but that wasn't how things worked. It was strange because now she'd be complimented all the time on how thin she looked. She'd never had the courage to be honest to people who asked what her secret was. Of course, Lola knew, but that was it.
Or, at least, that was supposed to be it. Her secret was slowly being found out by a tattooed crazy who belonged in a mental hospital, and she didn't know who he was going to tell along the way.
She needed it to be secret, something just between her and her demons, but she didn't seem to be getting a choice.
"Kitzie," Conor said from next to her. His voice was soft and he glanced towards Lola, who nodded. Kitzie could tell what was going to happen, but that didn't mean she wanted it to. She glanced up at him, prompting him to continue.
The others were in the room, too, all sharing the pizzas that had been ordered. The one slice Kitzie took in order to throw the others off lay on a paper plate in front of her, untouched. Conor's eyes focussed on it before he looked back her face.
He had to give it to her, she was incredibly good at keeping her cool. In fact, she was almost perfect at pretending nothing was going on. Maybe that was why none of the others had ever seemed to realise. He always wondered if they just didn't notice, or whether they turned a blind eye to it because they didn't know how to deal with it.
"Can I talk to you for a minute?" He said quietly.
Kitzie nodded, knowing that if she avoided the conversation she would only have to have it later.
Lola expertly involved everyone in a conversation as Conor and Kitzie left, providing a distraction so no one would question where they went.
There was a sense of deja vu that Conor tried to push away as he remembered Lola's talk with him a couple of nights ago. Memories of standing with barely a stride in between them as she wore a serious expression came back into the front of his mind as the same thing began to happen with Kitzie. But Lola had made him promise to try and help, so that's what he was going to do.
