Falling Into Shadows

As I gazed at the plain black and white calendar that hung on my mundane white wall, I saw the striking contrast between the dull pages and the red X’s I had previously written over the dates of October. I glanced at the thirty-one crosses I had made last month and noticed that today was the first day of November. I didn’t actually need any prompting of today’s date because I had waited a year for this day to come, so I wasn’t startled by the date at all.

I flipped the page of the calendar over and saw the unmarked page of November. There weren’t any traces of red ink flowing throughout the blank sheet, but I knew that this would all change in a matter of seconds. I grabbed the red permanent marker, which depended on the frail cream-colored string to spare its life as it gripped onto it with fear, and took off the small red cap from it. I grinned as I drew a circle over today’s date. I almost felt the urge to jump up and down on my bed, but I settled on suddenly feeling energetic instead, when it was only seven o’ clock in the morning.

November first was the first day of the annual competition that my friend, Jessica, participated in and hosted. She allowed the others in the group, which fortunately included me, to compete in her contest as well. We competed against each other over the course of thirty days in November to see who would be the “skinniest of us all.”

The rules of the competition were simple, for the only rule was to abide by the honesty code, and we expected everyone in the contest to do the same. We all knew that it would be foolish to deceive ourselves by pretending we didn’t eat something when in reality, we did. The consequences of lying to our friends and ourselves would be gaining weight from the food we “didn’t” eat. We would also be that much closer to saying goodbye to perfection and possibly lose our membership to the group.

But the objective of the challenge was much more difficult than it truly seemed. In order to win, the contestants, which only included my friends and me, would have to deprive ourselves of any sources of food, but the temptation to eat was too overwhelming for some of us to resist. If we ate a meal,—this included a piece of fruit or a small granola bar—then we would have to record the number of calories contained in each meal in our personally customized notepads, which had a rhinestone encrusted letter, symbolizing the first letter of our first names.

Dieting Month had first begun when Jessica had decided to challenge all of us to consume the least amount of calories throughout the course of a month in our freshman year of high school. Some of us had taken this challenge far more seriously than the others had, while others had thought that it would be an interesting game to participate in with our friends. I hadn’t taken the contest as seriously as Jessica and my other friend, Peyton, but I had considered it to be more than just a fun game to elapse the time.

My best friend, Lindsey, had won last year, and I was truly happy for her victory, but I had wished that I had won instead of her. I had wanted the others to acknowledge me as the skinniest of us all, but I had known that even with their adulation, I would still be the corpulent girl, who was yearning to abandon the layers of her fat and release the skinny girl that lay within, others perceived.

I already knew that everyone conceived me as a short, plump girl who disrupted the beauty in the air and radiated my imperfections throughout the atmosphere. I remembered the comments about my weight and the looks I had received when I was younger. I had repulsed everyone around me, and I knew that I still did.

My silver alarm clock vivaciously rung to life and woke me from my reminiscence, smashing the thoughts of my past and scattering them throughout the wooden floor. I had woken up an hour earlier than it was necessary for me to wake up and had forgotten to turn off the alarm, so it wouldn’t give me a temporary heart attack, but it looked like it was a little too late for that to not happen. I had already gone through most of my morning routine,—brush my teeth, take a quick shower, and comb my hair—but I still needed to change my clothes.

I quickly got dressed into a random graphic tee and a pair of jeans I chose from my closet before I saw my reflection in the full-length mirror. I fought the urge to scream and shatter the glass that was in front of me. Gazing at my reflection was a big mistake because the girl in front of me was looking back at with me disgust in her eyes. Her gray eyes masked fear behind lugubrious clouds and showed only anger and repulsion.

I could have sworn I heard her whisper, “Don’t you dare gain any more weight because you’re already corpulent enough and losing those pounds won’t be too tough,” in my ear, prompting me of her unforeseen return.

Her words were enough to penetrate through the mirror and pierce my skin, leaving an invisible wound that I couldn’t conceal. I grasped my arm in despair and screamed in agony, shattering the silence and scarring my reflection.

“Stop shouting and leave the sight before you do any more damage than you’ve already done,” the girl whispered into my ear, glaring at me without changing her facial expression, but her eyes showed enough hatred to make me quiver in fear.

I nearly chocked on the tears I hadn’t known I had cried and listened to her command. I quickly grabbed a fleece from my closet before I sprinted out my bedroom door and the front entrance. I ran to school as an attempt to erase the morning’s events.

I halted to a stop when the school building came into sight. My breathing became uneven, but I waited for my heartbeat to return to its normal, steady pace. I made sure that none of my peers witnessed the frantic scene I just starred in, before I walked towards the school’s front entrance.

I quickly plastered a smile onto my face and straightened my back. I reminded myself to look up and never gaze at the ground. I pretended to walk with confidence and overlooked any sense of insecurity that would shatter my façade. I prompted myself to walk through the blue painted doors with radiance and just breathe when I felt asphyxiated.

As I walked through the narrow hallways of the school, I noticed that everyone was staring at me with mixed emotions—some of my peers had a look of envy, while others looked at me with admiration. I wasn’t sure why they were all looking at me in that matter, but I continued to glide through the corridors as I pretended to appear more confident than I truly was. My peers were all oblivious to the façade I held up, but I wasn’t complaining about it. They just didn’t know that the girl they saw walking in the hallways and radiating her confidence throughout the atmosphere was shattering inside to the rhythm of the clock’s ticking.

I decided to overlook everyone’s gaze as I reluctantly walked to my first period class, which was unfortunately Geometry. I really didn’t want to be in this class because I loathed math; I hated anything that involved numbers, such as test scores, math equations, and most importantly, my weight. Perhaps my fear of numbers had something to do with my resentment towards the subject, but I didn’t really want to think about the topic any further.

I had waited for the first three hours of school to end, so I could push through the wooden doors to the lunchroom and resist the tempting smell of food. Students had already filled the cafeteria, but I could see past the large crowd that my friends were sitting at our round table. Lindsey motioned for me to join them, and I quickly walked to my seat, forgetting the temptation of food.

I smiled sheepishly as a silent apology for being late to the first meeting. It wasn’t my fault that my chemistry teacher decided to let out the class late, or that the stairways were crowded with students who desperately wanted to have lunch.

“Now that everyone is here, we can finally begin,” Jessica said, smiling. “I hope that you’ve all realized what today’s date is.”

“Of course, we all know what today is,” Peyton answered for all of us, speaking in an almost nonchalant tone.

“Well, then, just in case anyone of us has forgotten, today is the first day of our exclusive competition. And the rules of it are simple. Just abide by the honesty code, and none of us will shun you from our group or revoke you of your membership. The only goal of this contest is to become the skinniest of all five of us. Lindsey won last year and of course, she can compete in our little game again.”

Lindsey smiled shyly. “Thank you, Jessica.”

“You’re welcome. I hope that you all still have your personalized notebooks and won’t lose them in the future because you’ll need it, if you’re going to record the number of calories you consumed throughout this month. Are there any questions?”

“I have a question. Do you have any tips for us today?” a girl named Savannah asked timidly, biting her lip.

“Yes, I do. Tip number one is: The deeper the shadow of your collarbones is, the closer you are to becoming beautiful,” Jessica prompted us. “Are there any more questions?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

“All right, then. Good luck to you all and let us see who will win this year.”

My eyes glistened with hope as I sighed. I wanted to win this year, and I knew that I would have to eat less than last year. I didn’t mind skipping a few more meals, if it meant that I would win the title as the skinniest of us all.

I got up from the table and threw away my lunch bag into the trashcan. I didn’t even know what was in it, and I frankly didn’t care because for all I knew, there were probably too many calories in it that would surely make me gain more unnecessary weight. I was going to starve myself for the next two days and eating lunch would only violate my monthly policy of not eating anything for the first two days of each month.

I sat back down at the table and saw that Savannah was reading a magazine. On the cover of it was a beautiful model with a flawless body and face. I instantly admired her looks and wished to switch bodies with her because she was perfect.

I envied the faces in a magazine and yearned to look as skinny as they looked on each flawless photograph. The models were all thin and beautiful with their perfectly blown-out hair, while I was corpulent and repulsive with imperfect features that I could never delete with the click of a magic wand tool. If I wasn’t tall, which I wasn’t, then I needed to lose weight, so I could be as skinny as they could.

If being thin were the only way that I could be perfect and lovely as those girls in the magazines, then giving up on eating wouldn’t be a large price to pay, for it would allow me to look skinny on the outside as well.