The Songs We Sang In The Fire

Vicious Traditions [E]

Like the title suggests, music will play a big part in the story for our two main protagonists, so make sure to check out the song that will be posted above before each chapter. It will correlate directly with that chapter and provide a fuller and more interesting reading experience.

Enjoy xx

"fight your way out of this one"

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EVELYN'S MIXTAPE
0:00-4:47
TRACK 1- SIDE A

WHEN I was twelve years old, my mum told me that boys didn't like fat girls like me.

Later, after harsh times of divorce, family counseling and, eventually, rehabilitation, she told me that this was to help me, not hurt me. She said that knowing the truth--the raw and honest truth, no matter how much it might have hurt--was better than tiptoeing on eggshells and stuffing cotton in your mouth.

So, when people ask me (with clipboard and blue pen in hand, ready to make my confession into two-dimensional words that would define me as a person, a patient, a piece of broken glass) why I stopped eating, I tell them exactly that.

Boys don't like fat girls like me.

Was that the truth? Not exactly.

Sure, having to shop in department stores for clothes because cute, tween stores didn't carry my size sucked. Having to buy new clothes every few months because they kept tightening up wasn't fun. And don't even mention having to throw out my favorite black Adams Family (I liked to pretend I was Wednesday) shirt because it had shrunk in the wash.

No. It wasn't because I was fat. I remember reading articles and seeing posters that said things like:

You aren't fat, you have fat!

And:

You are beautiful just the way you are.

Always stay true to you!

You can't weigh beauty!

Can't you though? There is a reason my mum told me her very important piece of advice.

No. In the end, it wasn't because I was fat, though that was what all of the doctors wrote down on their sheets of dead trees. It was deeper than that. A visceral fear.

It was the words boys didn't like that translated to boys will never love which quickly morphed into nobody will ever love.

If my own parents didn't love me, how could anybody else? My dad left as quick as he could. He hitched his ass across a whole goddamn sea to get away from me. On a plane and straight to a gym, probably. Couldn't have a daughter that looked like me and also be the owner of the most successful chain of gyms on the East coast!

Later, of course, I would find out the real reason my father left was because my mom was having an affair with his partner at work. I would find out that my mother had a nervous breakdown when he left and ran as quickly to the bottle as I used to run out to the streets on a hot August day when I heard the ice cream truck's monotonous jingle echoing throughout the neighborhood.

My mum had told me the truth in the form of hate. She wanted to protect me from her own shattering weakness. Her own inexorable fear. Love is a weakness. Love is a curse.

And this was planted in the depths of my mind. It was there even before I was born, growing and festering with each scream of my mother and each angry yell of my father. Now it was everywhere. In my lungs, my gut, the back of my knees. And soon, this disease prevented anything from entering my mouth.

And so we go on. You can't weigh beauty, but you can weigh pain.

I met Adam Alexander on a rainy Tuesday morning in early July. I was nineteen years old. Seven years after my mom had told me about my fate. And yet.

I was no longer a fat girl, at least not on the outside. My insides were made with dripping frying oil and acidic lumps of white and grey. Leftovers, scraps, slop. My guts were for feeding chickens. My heart was for feeding pigs.

I met Adam Alexander when I was working at a old music store on the edge of town. Someplace I could be lost forever, hidden by the deserted roads and the calming melodies of an antique turntable.

Except he found me. I don't know how.

But he found me.