Skinny • Book 1 In The Reality Series

Katy

I had come to the halting conclusion that I was deeply and irreversibly flawed.

I would always be fat.

I would always be dumb.

I would always be poor.

I would always be awkward.

And I would always be sad.

I realized this when I was shaken away in the early hours of the morning, by Dorothy. She was not yet dressed for work and her hair was tied up in a sloppy bun.

Frowning I looked out the window, the sky was still dark, it's outer edges just starting to turn blue, a faint magenta stain lining the edges.

"Katy."

"What's going on?" I muttered, my voice deep with sleep.

"Mom's dead."

The words seemed to take ages to process, my mind spinning like a loading symbol on a computer.

I realized that Dorothy was crying, before I felt my own eyes moisten. I sat upright.

"What the fuck do you mean M-she's.... Don't fucking say that!"

Anger came first, explosive and violent.

I grabbed Dorothy by her shoulders, an action our Mother had done to us both on countless occasions.

"You're lying!"

"Katy, please..."

I heard the faint sound of crying from the next room. I'd woken the kids up but I didn't care.

"Where is she?!"

"At her house."

"At my house! Our house! I should be there! I should have been there the entire time! This is all your fault! This is all my fault!"

"Katy you can't go there."

"The fuck I can't."

"Katy."

"Move!"

Leaping from bed I crammed my feet into the first pair of shoes I saw.

"Katy it wasn't anyone's fault. Mom is bipolar. It's not the first time that she's...."

I stopped listening as the cold, realization of how she'd died, of what she'd done, ebbed it's way into my mind.

"She killed herself?" I whispered, the news much worse then my original assumption that she'd perhaps choked or had a hard attack.

"It wasn't you and Sam okay." Dorothy tearfully assured me, "She was just having a downward bit."

Up bits and down bits.

That was our mother's term for when she was manic twice a year and tried to clean the living room, or when she wasn't. When the entire house had a dark storm cloud over it because of the brooding negativity that spilled out of her every move and word, and glowered glance.

I remembered, back when Dad was around, she'd tried to kill herself several times. She'd been thinner back then, skinny even. Once when I was two she went to a psychiatric hospital because she didn't eat anything at all.

He left after she'd tried to hang herself.

They put her on a lot of pills after that, and then she'd started eating, everything in sight.

She used to always say that I was just like her and it scared her. It had scared me too, but it had never horrified me, chilling me to the bone until then.

Until I realized that the world is dark, and cold. And that the creatures that inhabit it are creatures of habit.

I would always be fat.

I would always be sad. I'd inevitably kill myself too undoubtedly once I raised my kids enough to be self sufficient or maybe before that.

There was no point to anything, not in me, not in the world, not in life, not in love.

And so I ran to my old house to see the woman who'd raised me one last time.

I pushed past the police waiting there then stopped at the sight of what must have been her body beneath a bloodied sheet.

Realizing that I couldn't bare to see her corpse, her lifeless eyes, or slackened mouth, I left. I couldn't look at death. Not again.

I ran all the way to Calum's house. And pulled the note I'd written one of the several times I'd decided he was too good for me and I was unworthy of him, out of my pocket.

I couldn't bare to see him so I left it with his Dad and then again I ran.

This time to nowhere in particular. I simply ran, away from reality, away from my problems, away from the truth, away from image of my Mom beneath a sheet, and towards the unknown.