Following the lives of three teens all being forced to face their biggest fears, it seems like none of them will ever learn to overcome it.
Walter's mom won't come back from the dead,
Maya will never look perfect,
And Micah will eventually have to...
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I scrutinised my nude body in the full-length mirror in front of me, deciding what I liked and didn't like about it.
After about half an hour of running my fingers over my collarbones, squeezing my hip bones, pinching the skin around my ribs, and wrapping myself with a tape measure, I made a mental list.
I liked how I could make out the faint lines of my ribs, and trailing my fingers lower I could feel my abdominal muscles tense. I liked how I could follow my collarbone from the inner end all the way out to my shoulder, and the defined gap it had. I liked that there was little to grab of my inner thighs, and when I would hold my waist, it just felt thin.
I didn't like how wide my hips were, or the way my belly button wasn't elongated enough. And I hated that my breasts were too big for my liking. I fit into a B-cup snugly, but I wouldn't mind being an A-cup. It was unfortunate. I met my perfect body at thirteen, and three years later puberty attacked me with curves I never asked for, nor wanted.
It was easier to maintain my ideal body when I was still homeschooled. I could workout when I wanted and prepare my own meals at home without using up time that could have been spent doing other things; I had my own schedule that I swore by, and it never failed me. Between studying and exercising, I didn't need to spare time for the friends that I didn't have. It's how I liked things to be.
Ever since we moved back to America after out five year abode in Spain, I was forced to go back to attending a public school, as per Dad's request. Learn to make friends before you go to university. He had said. Social skills are something you can't just study from a book.
That was stupid. I was smart. I was learning things at a rate that at least half of the students that attended school couldn't keep up with. Frankly, I didn't want to jeopardise that for the sake of making some friends that I know I would never see again. As far as I was concerned, Dad was setting me up for failure by pushing me to do my last year of high school in an actual school. It's one thing to send me to school after years of practicing my own academic system, but it was another thing to admit me to the school a month into its reopen.
"Skeleton! Dinner!" Carmen called from downstairs. Her accent was particularly strong when she spoke Spanish. More-so than mine.
I rushed over to my desk to jot down the conclusions I made about my body, along with my measurements for this month into my small orange notebook.
I was disappointed, to say the least. Seeing the numbers on paper made me feel worse, given that they were bigger than last month. But it's fucking hard. To meet the deadlines provided by the school while also trying to meet the ones provided by me; I don't know what to prioritise. It was easier to balance everything when I was in charge of my own life, it felt more natural. I had tutors that taught me the harder topics, the ones that required more than just the read-and-write study method to learn, but Mom let me arrange them to come at my convenience.
