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15- thanksgiving day

tw ed

On the last Friday before winter break, all the kids of East High's drama department were very excited for rehearsal to be over so they could start their break.

"Okay, people! Let's wrap it up!" Called Miss Jen after a million runs through "stick to the status quo".

"Yes!" Exclaimed EJ.

Miss Jen gave him a pointed look.

"Sorry!" He replied quickly.

Miss Jen chuckled. "Moving on... I want to get you all out of here but of course I'm me and I have notes; as you all should know, our first day back will be our tech rehearsal. So over the break, I want you all on vocal rest. And your homework is to run your lines, which may be a little difficult on vocal rest... but I need you all off book by the time we get back if you're not already. Enjoy your breaks!"

Alexis packed up her belongings and was ready to leave until she hear Seb's voice; "Party at Ashlyn's on thanksgiving night; everyone's invited!"

Gina walked over and says bye to her. "See you on Thursday!" She called, even though Alexis had not confirmed she would be at the party.

***

On Thanksgiving Day, Nini Salazar-Roberts had been watching the Macy's parade with her grandmother while her Moms cooked in the kitchen.

Her grandmother knew about her part in the play. "I want to hear one of your songs!" She gushed. No matter how small or big of a role Nini had, her grandmother was always one of her biggest supporters.

"Okay! Hold on, let me go grab my show book." She quickly ran up the stairs and opened up her backpack searching for her book that all the cast members had with lines, songs, etc written in. But she couldn't find it. Instead she pulled out a purple spiral notebook that wasn't hers.

Ugh. She thought. I must've picked this up thinking it was mine.

She flipped it open to see who's it was. A name was written messily in sharpie on the inside cover: Alexis Swan.

Oh... oh! She thought. This is gonna be good.

She flipped open the notebook. On the first few pages were unfinished songs. Nini read over the lyrics. Most of them were all sad and dark at the beginning, but as she went on they became more happy and cheesy. She rolled her eyes at some; "your love's like the sun shining in January, like a light in the dark."

Ugh.

She was about to stop snooping through until something caught her eye. In the very last few pages of the notebook after many empty ones. Numbers. With food names next to them. And dates. She realized that it was like a food log of how much the girl had eaten per day, some of them dating back to nearly a year ago but a lot of them recent. She read one in its entirety.

Monday, November 16th
apple: 57 calories
granola bar: 100 calories
gum: 5 calories

That was it. That was it for the whole day. Obviously Nini wasn't a nutritionist however she was about 100 percent sure this wasn't the right amount of food anyone should be eating. It's, like, super not enough. Also, no one of a sound mental state would be tracking how much they ate...

Oh my God. Nini thought. Alexis has an eating disorder. She had to stop herself from laughing. No wonder she's so skinny. She told herself that it's not funny and that she was being mean and automatically felt bad. But it was like she couldn't stop being so mean.