Rosefort Rehabilitation Centre.

"It's time to get you weighed. C'mon now,"

//Dedicated to and mostly written by BeckoningShadows! Go read their stuff!// 

Mikey, 2013

Just before he met Jayden and Rae, pacing back and forth in his room, an eighteen year old boy ran his fingers through his brightly coloured hair as he contemplated his options. Today marked his monthly weigh-in to check his dietary progress and, honestly, he had made no improvements that month…or any month, for that matter. Looking in the mirror, his cheekbones jutted out more prominently than in most and his rather deep-set, green eyes hadn’t looked any less sick than when he had arrived.

Thankfully, his large sweater concealed his thin arms and unusually noticeable collar bone, but more importantly it covered up his terrifyingly thin stomach region, his ribs and vertebrae incredibly visible. Normally, his black skinny jeans didn’t help much with hiding his small legs, but since it was the weigh-in he decided upon wearing sweatpants.

On his bed rested little packages of various coins, things that, when obtaining a certain quantity of them, could possibly give the illusion of added weight. But something in his head was telling him to just face being reprimanded for the lack of improvement rather than lie about it. However, when he weighed the pros and cons of each option, his bony hands took one package of coins at a time and tore off the wrapping. The wrappings were simply tossed back onto the bed messily while the glittering coins were deposited into each of the boy’s sweatpants pockets.

“Michael?” an older woman’s voice seeped through the door followed by a gentle rapping upon the door. With wide eyes, the boy quickly scooped the coin wrappers off of the bed and kicked them underneath it so that she wouldn’t catch them.  He only piped up once all of the evidence was safely out of view.

“T-The door is open,” the teenager answered, his voice soft. Michael watched the doorknob turn, the light clicking sound indicating that the door was about to open a tad. It creaked lowly to the point where the nurse outside could poke her head into his room, a warm smile on her features.

The boy with obnoxiously colored hair had dealt with quite a few weigh-in nurses, but out of all of them, the woman at his door now had to be the nicest with him. It almost made him regret the whole cheating thing with the coins, but there was no going back now. The nurse’s name was Esther, and it seemed that only Mikey was allowed to address her by her first name besides the rest of the staff. She was an older woman around her mid-fifties, but she didn’t seem to have a mean bone in her body.

“It’s time to get you weighed. C’mon now,” as she spoke, Esther opened the door so that he could step through and meet her in the hall. The way she spoke with him was very similar to the way one would when caring for a child, but in some ways the boy was very much like a shy child. When he first arrived, even the smallest of things made him tremble in fear or flinch, so this gentle way of communicating soothed him enough to keep his nerves steady.

Reluctantly, the teenager approached the older woman, staying close to her side as he shut the door behind him. As he moved, Michael did his best not to make his pockets erupt with the jingling and jostling of the coins.

“Right this way, bud,” the woman motioned for him to follow as she started down the hall. Gulping, he brought himself to follow her down the seemingly endless hallway, praying that the coins remained dormant at the bottoms of his pockets. If Esther even caught the tiniest of sounds, his plan would have been ruined and the truth on his progress, or lack thereof, would be known. He was sort of glad that on this walk the nurse hadn’t tried to ask questions about how things were going, or worse, how he was feeling.

The weight room consisted simply of one scale in the corner of a relatively small office, the tightly knit space causing the stress to build up within him, though it was certainly worse when he first arrived. There, Mikey was instructed to remove his shoes and step on the scale, but as his second foot was brought onto the scale, it shook a bit and made his pockets emit a series of jingles. He had been so close. Esther’s ears perked up at the sound of this, her eyes squinting at the young boy before her.

“Mikey…” she began, arching her brows, “what’s in your pockets?”

“U-Uh, nothin’…just a few little paperclips,” the boy stammered, the expression on his face giving him away.

“Michael Clifford, do I need to check your pockets myself?” As she questioned him in a more firm tone, Mikey’s lower lip quivered and his eyes prickled with tears mostly out of the build-up of stress and guilt for his actions. Cautiously, the male dug into his pockets, producing a handful of coins in each as he burst into tears.

Esther was shocked that he had attempted to pull such a stunt, though others had done it in the past. However, to see the boy bawling his eyes out in front of her made her eyes soften. She just couldn’t bring herself to yell at him.

“I-I tried r-r-really hard to change, but I-I-I just couldn’t!” Mikey stammered through his tears, his nose beginning to run.

“Michael, I know this whole process is hard for you, but I would have been less angry with you if you just stepped on the scale truthfully. Faking progress will only make things more difficult.” Reaching over, Esther plucked a tissue from the box resting on the nearby desk and lightly dabbed beneath the boy’s eyes, hoping he’d quiet down soon. When she finished with the tissue, she disposed of it in a trash bin before gently removing the coins from Michael’s grasp. By that point, his cries were letting up, leaving him a sniffling mess as he struggled for breath.

“Don’t stop trying, bud. I know it’ll be difficult, but if you need some help, there are people here that will give you a hand, okay?”

In response, the boy nodded his head a little as his sweater covered hands furiously wiped away his remaining tears, his body trembling with every sniffle and attempt to catch his breath.  After wiping beneath his eyes, Mikey removed the remaining coins from his pocket and handed them to Esther as well, just wanting to complete the weigh-in with honesty now.

“Good boy, Michael. Now let’s see how much you weigh,” setting the coins aside, the nurse then approached the scale and completed the weigh-in. Even though he didn’t improve (he actually lost two pounds), he felt better knowing that at least the results were honest, so he could live with the lack of progress that month.  Pushing the door to the small office open with a surprising amount of force, he felt it hit something. Spinning quickly around to see what he’d forced the door into, he gasped.

“Fuck, did I just... Oh god I’m so sorry!” He whimpered, looking from the girl to the door.

“It’s cool mate. Just. Don’t do it again, yeah?” She removed her fingers from her face slowly, as if assessing the damage. “I’m Rae.”

“Hi Rae. I’m Michael.” The bright haired boy smiled sheepishly. Maybe… Maybe he could make a friend…? That could help… Well. He could at least give it a go.