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"Look, I don't even need to be here," I say, wrapping my braid around my hand. "I'm perfectly fine."

"Sure. Perfectly fine people take appetite suppressants at their friend's direction because they're never quite thin enough. Perfectly fine," she says with no small amount of sass.

I'm taken aback. She's not supposed to talk to me like this. I open my mouth to say something sharp and jagged but she cuts me off. 

"The point is, your doctor referred you to me, and your parents agreed, so someone thinks you need to be here." She taps the end of her pen against her clipboard, studying me behind the brown square frames of her glasses. Everything is very symmetrical in this office, very organized. It's all the same shiny mahogany; it makes the fairly open space look cramped and claustrophobic. My already uneasy stomach rolls at the thought of everything compressing and getting smaller. My hands sweat. "Why don't we start at the beginning of all this, Gemma?" my therapist, Dr. Jaeger, says.

"What is the beginning?" I shoot back, an edge to my voice. Coming here was not my idea. I'm letting my anger at the situation boil over to her. I try to bite it back, to calm down. "There wasn't a specific time when I said 'Oh, I'm gonna starve myself to death.' It just happened."

She's unfazed by my attitude. She must be used to people like me. "Let's start when you were a kid -- first, second grade? Where did you go to school? What kind of person were you? Tell me about your friends, about who you went to went to school with." I stare at her for a second. I can hear the clock above my head ticking the seconds away.

"You have to be here for an hour. We can spend that staring at each other, or you can tell me a story. It's your choice."

"Okay," I sigh. "Are these stories pertaining to my . . . issue, or are they arbitrary?"

"Whichever you choose." She sounds pleased that I'm at least giving her something.

I take time to consider, dredging up memories until I've found the bottom. "Okay, well I was a chunk when I was a kid. I wasn't obese or anything, but I definitely wasn't picked first for relay races." I prop my feet in the leather chair beside me. I might as well be comfortable if I'm going to lay my bleeding heart on her polished desk. She glances at them but doesn't say anything. "I remember a birthday party I had. The last one I ever had, in fact. It was High School Musical themed. We had karaoke and barbecue in the backyard, and I think I invited the entire grade." I take a deep breath. I feel stupid sharing this embarrassing thing I haven't thought about in years with her. I haven't even told Felix about this day. He doesn't even know I'm here.

↢ ↣

The stickers adhered to my finger as I stuck them on their invitations, smoothing out the edges of the stars. Mom had to help me address them, and she had to seal the envelopes because I didn't like the taste, but I put the stamps on and put them in the mailbox. The postman smiled as he carried them to his car. I gave him an extra sticker--this one a heart. He stuck it to his chest accordingly.

I had put extra stickers on a few of the invitations. I really wanted this group of about 7 girls that always hung out together to come. They were the It girls of the first grade. They were in pee-wee cheerleading, gymnastics, and dance. Their moms were best friends. They even got haircuts together. All of them. It was unnatural how well they all got along, especially for little girls, but I wanted to be part of whatever they had going on.

I had everything they liked at my party. If it had actually been a party for me, there would have been a lot more cake, and probably guns of some sort. Nerf, paintball, laser—I would have figured it out. But since the party was actually a lure for those girls, there was High School Musical everything and a dainty sheet cake set off by streamers and balloons in the backyard. Dad had even built a little deck to serve as a stage for the karaoke part. I think Mom hired a photographer, but that could have just as easily been my Aunt Margaret with a digital camera. I didn't pay much attention to anything except those girls that day.

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