Don't Complain If You Can't Win

She sat in her room crying, somehow enabling herself to hold in the hot tears for two hours until Courtney left. Her body was curled up in a ball as she laid atop her bed; a headache had come along from her crying so hard and she slowly felt herself becoming sick. Sick of crying or sick of everything going on around her, Leighton didn't know. But all the crude and beyond hurtful comments she had been getting about her weight had began to take on more than a toll. She was physically wrecked.

Biting her lip seemed to be her only other movement other than the slight shake her body took on while she cried that she had no control over. The inside of her lip became raw and little blisters formed from biting so long and so hard. Each blister came with discomfort, but none of it seemed to faze Leighton. All she cared about was the horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that seemed to worsen since that day of torture started.

"Honey, are you okay in there?" Leighton's mom knocked on the door and toggled with the doorknob only to find it locked.

Leigh attempted to clear her throat to make her voice seem normal before replying with an "I'm fine" just to get her mother to go away. When she heard the footsteps walk down the stairs, she once again burst into tears. Each tear that slipped from her eye made her feel childish and stupid for crying over something that deep inside she didn't care about. Leighton was her own person, and so were those boys. If they chose to make fun of her just for their own entertainment, then so be it, she would tell herself.

But telling herself that their opinions and jokes didn't matter was easier said than done; she couldn't cease the tears. Saying that she really doesn't care didn't stop the hurtful feeling she was getting from all this. And the more she thought about it, the more she felt herself slowly start to care.

Pushing her body up from her bed, Leighton sniffled and wiped her eyes with the round part of her palm by her wrist. Gazing around her room, a heavy sigh slipped between her lips causing a slight twinge of pain but she wasn't bothered by it. Instead of caring about her mouth, Leigh softly tip-toed out of her room and scurried for the bathroom down the hall, locking the door closed once she was in. The first thing she did was check herself in the mirror; her brown eyes were severely red and puffy and multiple strands of brown hair were poking out of her ponytail in different directions from lying her head on her pillow.

After grabbing some toilet paper, Leighton wiped her eyes and her cheeks, fanning her face in hopes it'd help reduce the flushed pink tint covering her features from crying. With a shake of her head, she held herself up over the sink, spitting the extra saliva from her mouth before gazing at her reflection once more.

"Who are you?" she asked herself. "Since when have you ever cried this much over anything? Never! So why start now?" Giving herself a shrug, Leighton hung her head low and shook her head.

She looked down at the hem of her shirt, grabbing a hold of it and stood up straight then lifted the cloth just until it was right below her bra line. For the first time ever, Leighton examined her stomach, growing disgusted with how she looked underneath the protection of her clothes. "This is hideous," she muttered to herself, running the tips of her fingers along forming and pre-existing stretch marks.

With another shake of her head, Leigh removed her clothes leaving just her bra and undies on and continued to scrutinize her body. "How did I ever let myself get this bad?" she whispered to herself, ignoring the tears that began to sting her eyes. Leighton turned around to look at her back side and immediately choked on a sob that she didn't even know was there. "I'm fifteen years old with an old fat lady's body!"

Muttering incoherent profanities, Leighton turned around towards the bathtub and began to fill it up with hot water hoping that soaking in a bath would ease her senses and get her back to a normal state of mind. As the tub was filling and steam clouded the small room, Leigh snatched her towel she had dropped on the floor and noticed the weighing scale stationed on the floor in front of the toilet. The device had never been used since it was purchased, Leighton knew that much, because she had forgotten all about it and her mother never used this bathroom.

Eyeing the bathroom as if someone was watching, Leighton stepped on, closing her eyes as she heard the beep and the scale begin to calculate her weight. After a brief moment, another beep sounded signaling it was done. Leigh inhaled deeply before exhaling heavily and opened her eyes as she looked down at the digital numbers to immediately have tears once again slip from her eyes.

"Two hundred and fifteen pounds," she read aloud.

--------------------

"You're late," Courtney whispered to her friend when the teacher turned around, back to class, after harassing Leighton for being late to class.

She nodded after dropping her bag loudly to the floor. "I know," Leigh whispered back and rested her chin on the palm of her hand, not even bothering to pull out her binder and a pen to begin taking notes as instructed by the teacher. Courtney continued to look at her as if she was mentally asking "why". "Alarm didn't go off?" Leighton replied with more of a question than a statement because she was lying.

"Is everything okay, Leigh? You seem...different," she pointed out, glancing at the teacher writing notes on the chalkboard. "Does it have anything to do with after school yesterday?"

Even if she had nailed the problem, Leighton was determined not to falter and settled for yet another lie to tell her best friend. "Are you kidding? I'm over that," she flung her wrist towards Courtney. "I pretty much forgot about it until you brought it u-"

"Miss Warner and Miss Johnson, I sure hope you're writing this all down! I assure you it will be on Tuesday's test," their English teacher, Ms. Peters, told them sternly while giving them a harsh look for talking before turning back around.

Courtney pushed a piece of paper onto her desk and looked up to the front of the class to pay attention; Leighton unfolded the note and read "we'll talk later" that was neatly written in bold letters across the top. With a deep breath, she let it out while leaning over to grab her binder from her bag to at least pretend she was really paying attention to the notes being given.

It didn't take long for the first four periods of the day to fly by before lunch time rolled around. The two friends met up in the quad to head over to the cafeteria together without Vivian and Brooke. Standing in line, the girls remained quiet but Leighton knew Courtney was trying to figure out how to ask her something; she knew by her body language and with how she was fidgeting her legs and her tray.

"Quit moving, you're making me nervous," she told her friend while they walked forward; Leighton reached for a salad as Courtney also placed a salad and an apple on hers.

"Sorry, I didn't realize I was doing it," she muttered and grabbed a fruit juice, waiting for Leigh to grab a water before they went to go pay. "So, Leigh, I wanted to talk to you," Courtney told her upon getting her change from the lunch lady.

"About what?"

"Well," Courtney walked out of the cafeteria, nodding at the nerdy boy with glasses who politely held the door open for them before he walked in, "about what's been going on."

Leighton looked down at her lunch and set it down when they reached an empty table. "What about it?" She began to lose her appetite.

"You don't seem like yourself..." Courtney trailed off. "I mean, you seem really down and not so lively and sarcastic like you used to be. I wouldn't say you fall into being depressed, but I think you're beginning to be."

"You think I'm getting depressed?" Leigh asked incredulously. "No, Court, absolutely not! I"m fine, really. You just have to believe me; I'll be okay. They're just being jerks and are trying to be funny. They'll realize that it's not funny to make fun of people."

Courtney tried to see passed the reassuring smile that Leighton had given her, but didn't know that it was in fact a fake one. Leighton wanted to be convincing and didn't want her friend to worry about her. She knew she'd be okay, especially since she thought she'd try to help herself out with her situation.

"You know, I've been thinking," she said out loud after lunch while they were walking to class. Courtney hoisted her bag higher on her shoulder and gave Leighton her full undivided attention. "I think I might want to sign up for a sport, like volleyball or something."

Chuckling a little, Courtney gave her friend a look. "You want to join a sport? Why? I thought you said sports were stupid."

"And they are, but it'll give me something to do with my time instead of spending it doing nothing at all." She smiled at her friend before looking away, seeing who she thought was the cutest boy in school, Zack, and his two friends walking towards her. Looking away quickly, she hoped they wouldn't say anything to her as they passed, and much to her surprise, they just kept talking about some sort of band, or band practice.

"Well, that's a good way to put it. If you want to, go for it! But, you do know volleyball is over, right?" She shrugged. "But there is softball tryouts coming up. You should do it!"

"I think I will," Leighton stated proudly. "You do know Zack and his two friends walked by us a second ago."

"Oh, did they?"

"Mmhmm, and they didn't say anything. Why's that?"

"Maybe they didn't see you? Or, or maybe it's just those other boys who are cruel and maybe Zack isn't." Courtney smiled.

"Please, he's said horrible things before. He's not that perfect."

"No one is perfect, Leighton. No one. It could just be that he wants to impress those guys so he does it too," she added.

Leighton understood that no one is perfect, but she couldn't help but feel like she wanted to be, just to be able to have Zack look at her differently. She just wanted to be like those other girls she's seen him around: skinny and pretty. In her eyes, she thought they were perfect, only because they got his attention in a way she wanted attention from him.