Hemorrhage.

John was my trigger.

It probably wasn’t even John exactly, but rather the people he associated himself with. The girls killed me the most - they were always perfect, with B-cup breasts, size 2 waists, and perfect hair. They had blemish free skin and high giggles. I was not them. I had a C-cup, size seven jeans, and this curly/wavy mess that was generally thrown up in a pony-tail. I had taken Acutane when I was twelve, so my skin wasn’t very bad, but I had scars for miles.

I was not one of them, and that killed me.

John and I were friends, though. We lived two houses down since I was in kindergarten and he was starting second grade. He swam with me during the summer and we walked to school every day before he started driving. We hung out at lunch occasionally, when Tanya was absent or we were fighting.

I had always strived for his approval. At first it was subconscious, but then when I realized what I was doing I only started trying harder. I wanted him to think highly of me - I wanted to be pretty, smart, funny.

I knew I was, I guess. I knew that guys thought I was pretty and that I had a high GPA and I had some dry humor. That didn’t matter. John’s opinion was the only thing that mattered.

I was so pathetic.

It was one of those days where Tanya and I had gotten into a fight. It was the second day of Sophomore year, and she had ditched me on the first day of school to go hang out with Ivan, her boyfriend. I was pissed. I was beyond pissed, even, and I had blown up at her after school. She yelled back, screaming words like “clingy” and “dependent” all over the place. When we got to school in the morning, she gave me this look, which was basically a white flag, but I kept on walking. At lunch, when she started coming towards me, I turned the other way and found myself at John’s table.

I was stubborn. I could hold a grudge.

“Hey,” I said as I stood next to him. “Is it alright if I sit down?”

He said yes, and that’s when it happened. Lunch had been fine. Everyone included me in the conversation and we were all laughing a lot. It was fun.

Then it happened.

I had four cold French fries left, but they were looking mighty tasty dipped in loads of Ketchup, so I wasn’t giving them up. John was eyeing them, and I slapped away his hand.

“C’mon, Emelie,” he rolled his eyes. “It’s not like you need them anyway.”

It was like all conversation at the table stopped. It went from obnoxiously loud to scarily quiet in .07 seconds. Jared was looking at John like he was about to kill him. I think Jared got this a lot, too, because he was a bit chubbier than the other guys, and I don’t think he wanted it to happen to me.

I hadn’t even realized then that my body was so wretched. I had a flat stomach, but my hips were large and curvy and when I held my feet together my thighs touched. I hadn’t thought that was wrong, just that it meant that I was healthy. Apparently, to John it meant that I was fat.

“What the fuck?” Jared asked John harshly, his eyes narrowing.

John looked shocked. “What?” He asked innocently.

Pat interjected. “She’s not fat, John.”

John’s eyes furrowed in confusion. “I never said she was…” he trailed off, but Jared shook his head.

“No, but you fucking implied it,” he hissed. “Just because she’s not one of those skinny bimbos that you love doesn’t mean she’s fat.”

I shook my head at them, feeling the need to break this up before a real fight broke out. “Stop, you guys,” I said. “It’s fine. He was just joking.”

John looked relieved, and sent me a small smile. “Yeah, I was just joking. Emelie understands.”

Jared still looked pissed, and Pat looked a little peeved, but we let it drop. I hadn’t meant to cause problems.

I gave John the fries.

We acted like nothing had happened.

It all changed then, though.

That was all it took.

That was the day I vowed to become transparent.

I had never worked so hard in my entire life to do something. I hadn’t put this much effort into getting valedictorian or my college applications. Everything came second to The Goal. It had been simple at first, and I started doing little things because I was scared of my results. I only drank water and I started skipping lunch. I also worked a little harder during PE, and started walking places instead of getting a ride.

I lost ten pounds in a month and a half. That was okay for me, at first. I went from being 152 pounds to 142. My hips looked slimmer, and my cheeks didn’t look as chubby. I got a few compliments, from people that I talked to regularly, but people didn’t really notice.

Or, John didn’t notice.

Then, I started running before school. I would get up at five o’clock in the morning (it was the hardest thing I had ever done) and I would run two miles. First I had to do it under twenty minutes. Then eighteen, then sixteen, and then I was running a mile in six minutes flat. I got fit.

My PE teacher was the one that noticed then, and she gave me this huge smile and started letting me help her with grades and getting me out of English to help count the freshmen push ups.

I also cut out meat when I started running, and this time I lost 7 pounds. It wasn’t as much, and that hurt me, but it was still an improvement, because now I was 135. I did look slimmer now, on my tall frame. I didn’t look so “big boned.”

John might have noticed, but he didn’t directly say anything. When Pat complimented me, though, John nodded and put in a “yeah.” That was it.

That’s when I started trying harder.

I ran three miles every morning, and for breakfast I had a piece of whole wheat bread, ¼ a teaspoon butter, and water. If my stomach growled at lunch, I ate two saltines and loaded up on water. Dinner was the hardest to escape, because my mother and I had this tradition for always eating together at the kitchen table.

I just served myself smaller portions, spread them around my plate, and picked until we were done and I could get away with it.

Then I cut out diary.

I lost 13 pounds. That was a feat for me, and I remember smiling like an idiot when I stepped off the scale. I still wasn’t happy being 122 pounds, but it fit for then.

It was a year after the first incident, and I was 122 pounds. I was proud of myself.

Junior year was when I started getting serious. Things had started to get really busy, and I was getting more and more stressed out. That’s when I started doing things I didn’t think I would - skipping meals, or binging and then purging. I was disgusted with myself, but satisfied with the number on the scale.

John never noticed.

Not junior year, at prom, when I was 107 pounds and fit into a size two dress that “looked amazing” on me. Not senior year, when I started wearing things in my closet that I never imagined wearing to school - dresses, high-waisted skirts, super skinny jeans.

Boys started saying that I looked like a fashion model, but John never noticed.

Maybe if he would have, I would have seen it sooner - the sunken-in look of my cheeks, or the pastiness of my skin. How you could see my rib bones if you looked closely, or how my hair was thin and dry.

Maybe it would have been a sign, if John had noticed, when my period stopped.

Maybe it would have helped, because even at the back of my mind I knew that being 5’7” and one hundred and two pounds was not healthy.

The thing though, was that John never noticed.

So neither did I.